No BHPA dual power qualification is currently available. A BHPA member holding a BHPA Power rating can legally fly such a machine and be insured under the BHPA master policy.īHPA Power qualifications are for solo flight only. Thanks to a 2017 Exemption to the Air Navigation Order, powered hang gliders that take-off and land on wheels, weighing less than 70kg (or 75kg if fitted with an emergency parachute) and having a stall speed below 20kts can be flown without the need for a pilot's licence. Of course if lift is not so abundant you may decide to keep your engine running and simply set course for a distant objective, watching the fascinating landsacpe unroll beneath you.Įither way you are enjoying one of the simplest, most minimal forms of powered flying. Ten minutes later you reach the first promising-looking cloud and switch off you engine to conserve fuel, and begin to thermall as you would on a conventional hang glider. It's just like a normal hang glider take-off, but from level ground, and then you immediately begin to climb.

Then, throttle wide open, you begin to run. The motor is gently ticking over behind you as you walk your hang glider to the start of the take-off strip in a kindly farmer's field. Subscribe to Skywings the official magazine of the BHPA, or buy back issues Grandfather Mountain and other sites in the western section of North Carolina have also become favorite spots for hang gliding enthusiasts.Enter the first part of your postcode to find your nearest BHPA recreational clubĮg. In fact, the ridge’s name has become almost as synonymous with hang gliding as those of nearby Kill Devil Hills and Kitty Hawk are with the first flights by Orville and Wilbur Wright in 1903. Thousands of people, men and women, children and seniors, have taken lessons and learned to fly hang gliders at Jockey’s Ridge. The procedures followed by the first people to experiment with the Rogallo Wing have continued, as fliers using hang gliders the world over have learned to climb and stay aloft for hours by flying back and forth in rising air currents. The easiest part of all is landing: the rider simply noses way up, causing forward motion to stop, and lands on his or her feet like a bird.

To nose down, the rider pulls forward a little bit to nose up, the rider pushes back and to turn left or right, the rider pushes his or her body to the desired side. Once in flight, the rider hangs in a prone position, face down, in a harness that hugs his or her hips, with hands holding on to the crossbar in front. The position of the nose must be exact, because miscalculating can result in either too much drag or the nose dipping and ramming into the ground. The rider takes off in the Rogallo Wing running downhill as fast as possible with the wing in front. Interest in the new activity spread so rapidly that the first national hang gliding meet was held in the summer of 1973 at Jockey’s Ridge.Ī Rogallo Wing has no engine, no wheels, no brakes-in fact no moving parts. The term “hang gliding” soon came into use, probably when practitioners had difficulty describing their unusual activity as Rogalloing or, even worse, Rogallo Winging. The couple moved to Southern Shores in 1972, by which time people were building and flying their own Rogallo Wings with modifications that included the addition of tubes on the wings and keel and a crossbar in front. The Rogallos began examining the possibility of developing a man-carrying Rogallo Wing at Southern Shores, just north of Kitty Hawk, in 1967, conducting experiments on the beach in front of their cottage with the help of a daughter and interested neighbors. The result, patented in 1947, was the Rogallo Wing, which was considered in the early years of the space program as a possible method of returning space capsules to earth. Francis Rogallo and his wife and coinventor Gertrude set out in the early 1940s to see if they could design a kite or flexible wing that could be held together in controlled flight by the action of the air itself. Hang gliding has been associated with the North Carolina coast from the sport’s earliest incarnation.

Hang glider with motor name