The Complete Handbook of Hang Gliding & Skydiving

Chapter 1: Understanding Hang Gliding & Skydiving

Hang gliding and skydiving are often grouped together in the public mind as "extreme sports," but that label obscures what they actually are: two distinct, highly technical forms of flight shared by a common set of physical principles and a similar culture of disciplined risk management. To understand them properly, you have to start with the machines and the forces that make them work, not with the marketing imagery.

Hang gliding is the operation of a foot-launched, weight-shift-controlled glider. The pilot is suspended beneath a wing that is stiffened by an aluminum frame and covered with a carefully shaped fabric sail. The pilot controls the glider not by moving control surfaces like a pilot in an airplane, but by shifting their body weight relative to the wing's center of gravity. This is the defining characteristic of the sport, and it has not changed fundamentally since the modern hang glider was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, even as materials and aerodynamics have advanced considerably. When the pilot pushes out on the control bar, the glider pitches up and slows down. When the pilot pulls in, the glider pitches down and accelerates. Shifting the weight left or right banks the glider into a turn. It is a direct, physical, low-latency connection between the pilot's body and the wing.

Skydiving, in contrast, is the deliberate descent from an aircraft or fixed object using a parachute system. The modern skydiving parachute is a fabric airfoil known