vjaqua wrote:

Paul wrote:

What happens when you spin a hang glider Mike? How do you recover?
Isn't your body thrown to one side because of the centrifugal force?

Paul Lamar

Mike Wills wrote:

  Ive never experienced a spin in a hang glider. Never seen one done and
never talked to anyone who has ever spun one intentional or otherwise. I'd
never go so far as to say they are "spin proof" but they are built with a
considerable amount of washout which apparently helps prevent this from
occuring. I'd do the same thing you'd do in any aircraft - level the wings
and get the  nose down to get the stalled wing flying again.

  I have stalled a hang glider straight ahead intentionally but you would
have to be pretty inattentive to stall in normal flight and atmospheric
conditions. When inadvertant stalls occur in a hang glider it is usually
due to poorly executed aerobatics ( a loop with insufficient entry speed
and stall over the top) or thermalling in extremely turbulent conditions .
Stalls under these types of circumstances frequently lead to a severe nose
"tuck" with the glider going inverted. The subsequent inversion sometimes
results in a negative g structural failure. In my 15 years of hang gliding
I saw this happen twice.

Mike Wills

I. of course, have much more limited experience with hang gliders than Mike. But
I do believe that I stalled a rogollo with a stupidly executed lanch, and it
fell off uncontrollably to one side  much lkie a classic break, and I painfully
collected the hill side. Like the other delta planforms, it will continue to
lift at high angles of attack, with high drag, and thus would be very stall
resistance. The lateral effects of the keel would also be rather spin resistant,
but I think it would spin if adequately provoked. The current high performance
double surface birds, I am sure would spin, and I think you would be in deep
guano.

Vance

 
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