Another newsletter appearance from early last week:
http://ozreport.com/21.201
David Aldrich, out sitting in his field
The photo's live so I guess he's still out sitting in his field and staring and pointing his finger at the camera. (Gotta be a point at which the vultures are gonna get interested.)Davis Straub - 2017/10/09 15:50:21 UTC
The easy chair way to aerotow
The photo is live.
Cowboy Up in Wharton, Texas.
So let's take another look at the promo video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFGueoCKsVk
Easy Flyer Promo
...with its random use of periods at ends of sentences.FLYWillsWing - 2017/09/07
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFGueoCKsVk
0:05 - Check out the new "EasyFlyer" from Wills Wing
0:17 - It's a fixed carriage with tricycle landing gear attached to a Wills Wing Falcon 4 or Alpha Hang Glider
0:24 - The Pilot is seated instead of prone
0:32 - This configuration reduces many of the physical demands associated with launching, landing and flying a hang glider
0:43 - The fixed carriage sets the angle of attack at an ideal attitude for take-off.
0:48 - It can be aero-towed
0:50 - or rolled down a hill to launch
1:02 - The fixed attitude also reduces the pilot skill requirements compared to a conventional trike carriage.
1:23 - It's an excellent "first experience" training glider
1:32 - The first pre-production models will ship to select schools in September
1:54 - Future versions will be quick-breakdown and easily transportable
3:09 - "Pretty hard to whack this thing!"
3:18 - "Too much fun!"
3:21 - Wills Wing
Kinda like the way they were at the dawn of the sport when gliders had four-to-one glide ratios and were towed to get airborne? What are the full implications of that in terms of speed, performance, control, safety?0:24 - The Pilot is seated instead of prone
And eliminates the ability of the pilot to pour on extra power during launch, clean up his profile if/when a shallow glide path becomes necessary, use the top half of the glider's certified speed range, safely and quickly recover from a severe dump, safely utilize crappy landing surfaces if he comes up short of the LZ.0:32 - This configuration reduces many of the physical demands associated with launching, landing and flying a hang glider
And let's take a look at your Falcon 4 Owner's Manual with respect to launch:
May wanna do a bit o' editing to make the glider more compatible with the carriage.Launching And Flying The Falcon
1. If the wind is more than 10 mph or gusty you should have an assistant on your nose wires on launch, and, if necessary, an assistant on one or both side wires. Make sure all signals are clearly understood. Do a hang check immediately prior to launch. The angle at which you hold the glider should depend on the wind speed and slope of the terrain at launch; you want to achieve a slight positive angle of attack at the start of your run.
2. Run aggressively on launch and ease the bar out for lift off.
3. The flying characteristics of the Falcon are typical of a medium performance flex wing. Make your first flights from a familiar site in mellow conditions to give you time to become accustomed to the glider.
4. We recommend that you hang as close as possible to the basetube in the glider - this will give you lighter control pressures and better control.
- See above.0:43 - The fixed carriage sets the angle of attack at an ideal attitude for take-off.
- Interesting that you're using THIS:
still - in the AJX Happy Acres putting green; glider empty, stationary, pointed UPhill - to illustrate the way the fixed carriage sets the angle of attack at an ideal attitude for take-off.
So presumably the fixed carriage sets the angle of attack at an ideal attitude for take-off for an ideal launch slope with an ideal surface in ideal conditions.
- Ever hear of a crosswind launch situation in which it's advisable to start with a low wing? Just kidding.
So can a kitchen sink. And the kitchen sink can be LEGALLY and SAFELY aerotowed. How 'bout the Easy Flyer? Got any videos of emergency situation simulations? Lockout drills, inconvenience stall recoveries?0:48 - It can be aero-towed
Or up a hill and without a pilot - as you illustrate above.0:50 - or rolled down a hill to launch
- Yeah.1:02 - The fixed attitude also reduces the pilot skill requirements compared to a conventional trike carriage.
No shit. See, people of varying ages? You don't need to do anything beyond just sitting there to pilot these things. And if you ever need to release in an aerotow emergency situation (which no one but a total moron would allow himself to get into in the first place) you can make the easy release with one hand while still holding another one in reserve.http://www.willswing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/1000x667_easy_flyer_news_8.jpg
Ken Howells demonstrates no-hands while test flying the Easy Flyer
That is deceptive advertising and anybody doing it oughta get a felony conviction. How would we feel about automobile advertisements which featured college kids doing shit like that?
My my. Look how far we've advanced over the course of the past 43 years.Manned Kiting
The Basic Handbook of Tow Launched Hang Gliding
Daniel F. Poynter
1974
"Never take your hands off the bar." - Tom Peghiny
- Yeah? How?
How much skill is involved in pitch and roll control? The glider tends to trim itself pretty well in pitch and if one can't deal with roll control in the benign environments and conditions for which this configuration is suitable then how good an idea is it for one to be getting airborne in a situation in which pitch and roll inputs will be required?
And compare/contrast the pilot skill requirements involved in making the wing go forty in Easy Flyer and conventional configurations.
Yeah? How do you know?1:23 - It's an excellent "first experience" training glider
- You're not shipping this thing to any schools till next month and the only people we've been able to identify flying it so far are Steve Pearson, Mike Meier, Ken Howells, David Aldrich, Malcolm Jones - and all of them are a helluva lot closer to their last than to their first experiences. If you'd have ever actually had anyone under a Five with quadruple digit airtime hours you'd have shown us him and/or her in this video. Not even any quotes from any advanced Ones or low Twos.
- You're emphasizing across the board reductions in skills requirements and promoting this heavily as a training tool. So obviously if less skill is being REquired less skill as being ACquired.
- Is a traditional training hill or scooter tow foot launch flight typically overloading new students with skills demands? And if you wanna talk about the...
...landing then why aren't we just rolling them in on the wheels - they way a huge chunk of them end up doing, instinctively - anyway?Gil Dodgen - 1995/01
All of this reminds me of a comment Mike Meier made when he was learning to fly sailplanes. He mentioned how easy it was to land a sailplane (with spoilers for glide-path control and wheels), and then said, "If other aircraft were as difficult to land as hang gliders no one would fly them."
My own "first experience" was off a dune at Jockey's Ridge on a Sky Sports Eaglet 180. Proned out IMMEDIATELY, both hands on basetube, flew straight, adjusted pitch, rolled in on the wheels still proned out. Wouldn't trade it for an Easy Flyer "first experience" with a gun to my head and wolfed down as many skills challenges as my instructors would feed me and more. And when some fucking douchebag named Dave took us out in high winds and started giving us pony rides to be able to tick off the five flights of the lesson I pushed out until he had to make a choice between letting go of my sidewire and getting his fingers cut off. (He let go - much to my disappointment.)
And do ya really wanna be attracting people into the sport who aren't junkies for skills challenges and advancements? (Tom Lyon comes to immediate mind.)
At which point we might be able to start finding out something about how great a "first experience" this thing makes for. And a good way to do it would be to do an intro ground school, explain the options, give them the choice. Or just alternate them every other flight. See what people gravitate to, compare retention and progress rates. But I won't be holding my breath.1:32 - The first pre-production models will ship to select schools in September
Now that I think about it... That claim HAS TO BE a LIE. If you fly the carriage as a "first experience" you can't then have a conventional foot launch as a "first experience" and make a valid comparison. And vice versa. And there's nobody yet out there who's flown this thing as a "first experience" anyway.
Assuming the sport's still around.1:54 - Future versions will be quick-breakdown and easily transportable
- "And totally physically impossible to get any speed on this thing!"3:09 - "Pretty hard to whack this thing!"
- Pretty hard to whack this thing:
1-2717
http://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2900/13998435883_a9b341927e_o.png
2-3017
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5222/13952337472_43b71cf6a2_o.png
5-4401
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5281/13975491923_4587b30d6d_o.png
6-4518
http://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7151/13952329131_03e535bc8b_o.png
7-5106
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5522/13952325072_2d15610fc2_o.png
too.
So how come you've never once in your entire fucking corporate lifespan promoted or even acknowledged it? Can't afford to admit that hang gliders can...- "Oh, that's so much more brainless than landing on your feet!"
- "That was beautiful!"
- "That was a GREAT landing, Rotor!"
- "Who cares if it's downwind!"
- "Ooh shit, that was awesome!"
...and SHOULD be wheel landed? How is it possible to introduce this carriage and still endorse this foot land bullshit for the conventional configuration? Afraid you'd get dropped by all the stunt landing schools and/or your asses sued out of existence by stunt landing school victims?Gil Dodgen - 1995/01
All of this reminds me of a comment Mike Meier made when he was learning to fly sailplanes. He mentioned how easy it was to land a sailplane (with spoilers for glide-path control and wheels), and then said, "If other aircraft were as difficult to land as hang gliders no one would fly them."
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=274153:18 - "Too much fun!"
Friday the 19th with Hawks & Friends!
NMERider - 2012/10/24 21:47:05 UTC
I have to say that landing on the wheels is so much fun it's not funny.
Note that the only things that look like active cumulus clouds anywhere in this video appear over the mountains on the horizon left of the Crestline launch in the opening sequence and all the Wallaby towing and sled sequences are under near or completely clear blue skies in glassy smooth air. And we don't see any gliders getting bumped around anywhere.3:21 - Wills Wing
So what's this thing good for?
Virtually anyone can run a glider off the top of a training hill and the gliders fly themselves in straight enough lines until they run out of steam.
- Are there enough training hill bucket listers incapable of foot launching who wanna be able to say they soloed a hang glider once to justify this investment?
- If I've got a legitimate student I'm gearing up for ridge soaring and thermal mountain flying I'll need to be training him for launches and conditions it which a carriage is inappropriate, totally useless, not doable. Every carriage flight is a waste of valuable time and energy. Anybody who can foot launch a hang glider already has the skills to sit down and do nothing as gravity takes control.
- And note that nowhere in any of these promo videos do we see this thing going UP a training hill or dune. Guess they excluded those parts 'cause they didn't wanna totally overwhelm us with the fun factors.
It's gonna be more comfortable for a Three and up to boat around for a couple hours in mild soaring conditions. And good luck trying to blast to the next thermal after topping out in the last one.
No, wait! I've been looking at this issue mostly wrong!
The object of the Grebloville/Lockout flavor instructor is to teach the paying student as much nothing as possible in order to keep him as a paying dependent student as long as possible. Turn a two hour rating into a forty hour rating which still leaves the student unqualified to do anything. Come back for a clinic if you wanna learn how to fly prone and make turns below a thousand and above two hundred feet.
So now a student will be paying $150 for a five flight lesson to learn how to sit in a harness, lift his feet when he wants to start flying, put them back down after he stops. Brilliant.
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P.S. - 2017/10/18 12:35:00 UTC
Just found us on Page 2 with a Google search for:
"Wills Wing Easy Flyer"
We're on the map.
