probably almost nobody here has any idea what I’m talking about.
If you know anything about wind energy you probably already know this. The problem, if I understand it, was a now-well-known tendency of airfoils to exhibit a tendency toward positive pitch (tendency to pitch forward, or down). Luckily for me, I never got stuck in a dive like that. Flew it several times and enjoyed dive-bombing family and friends below, only learning in more recent years that those old gliders had a fatal flaw - they could get stuck in a dive and kill the pilot. There were no instructors then - you just bought one and flew it. I even have one of that same model here at my house - people give away old hang-gliders! I tried to build one and fly it but the results seemed dangerous and not very promising, so I bought one instead - an Eipper (brand) “standard Rogallo” hang-glider built by Dick Eipper. This was in about 1974-1975 when I was in high school. I read that anyone could build one out of aluminum antenna masts from Radio Shack, clear plastic sheeting, and duct-tape. I remember reading an article in Popular Science magazine outlining the new extreme sport of hang-gliding, featuring some of the early home-built gliders such as “The Bamboo Butterfly” and “The Conduit Condor”. Saw a fantastic video outlining the history of hang gliding, including the development of the Rogallo Wing, the first hang gliders, featuring a lot of footage about Joe Faust, who published the first hang gliding “magazine” called “Low and Slow”.
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