Aerodynamic Harness

For a few years I had been reading about the antics of cross country pilots at home on the mainland. The year was 1983 and I had finally made my decision to learn to hang glide while I was living in Hawaii. I had already owned a hang glider and made my own harness (a plastic swing seat) but it was obvious to me that I was going to die if I continued.

I would need a little professional help.

I ordered my first ever hang gliding harness, a High Energy Sports "Advantage" from then Rich Pfeiffer (ex husband of Betty) who was the epitome of cross country hang glider racing in the Owens Valley. The harness arrived in short order and like many custom harness, it took a little of my own customization to get it ready. I didn't like the way the zipper worked, it was like the harness was not finished so I just took off a cord lock to my sleeping bag and fashioned a cinch system to close the "bombay doors" and everything was set.

I loved that harness, very sleek, cool and I felt good in it. I had my first 5 hour soaring flight in it and I could still barely move when I landed! At the time I was surfing and skateboarding while I was hang gliding on my freetime, my day job was a U.S. Army Infantry Medic so there was a lot of exersize in my life and I was a skinny little guy with major attitude...

I went from a Hawaiian ridge pilot to a Arizona thermal flyer and the transition was not easy. Every flight was treacherous for me, radical, turbulent and scary. Each time I landed, the guys would laugh, "Adam, you flew right through several thermals" until one day, I could not escape a giant one that boosted me nearly eight thousand feet in a single climb. I traded in my single surface glider for a more efficient one and bought another Advantage harness.

We have a place here in Northern Arizona called lovingly, "the craters" which is sort of opposite of what they really are, they are cinder cones in a ancient volcanic area. It is a great place for learning to fly the conditions of the area. There are schools that teach hang gliding here and it's still a place that will challenge even the best pilots with all sorts of conditions. I don't think I will ever grow tired of the place.

Anyway, I set up my first on board camera and got this shot thermaling over Merrium Crator. Already I had figured out that I loved aerodynamic harness and helmet. My old helmet, a Jack Lambie "Aerodyne" nearly fell off during a landing where the hang strap lifted the tail so I had decieded to get a more practical helmet until there was a aerodynamic one available that would actually stay put and protect me if needed.


True single suspension harness were here!

Jay Gianforte and Eric Raymond were making similar harness, Jay making the "CG-1000" and Eric making the "Equalizer" I simply had to have one so I wrote Jay and called him up to find out what I needed to do to get one. I sent in my measurements and what I got back was a tremendous flying harness, I loved that thing even more than my Advantage harness. The landing position, doors open, feet down with hands on the uprights was more upright. You slid down the webbing track on the back frame giving you more upright position with the effect of less pressure on your hands to hold your landing position. My landing stops got even better and better and more importantly, the flying position was comfortable.

I started flying cross country and I went through a stage where I felt that I should have the strongest helmet available so I found a good manufacture, Bieffe, that was somewhat aerodynamic and very light. It was chock full of padding and made of kevlar which made it very strong to withstand impact. I began to fly it with the visior down and I really liked it. It kept the wind noise down and was warm when I was really high.

But it was a hassle and even though it was light, during long flights, my head got tired and I just knew that this wasn't really a good hang gliding helmet for me. I kept flying with it and I began to travel to California and Colorado to fly. I loved flying Torrey Pines, it was just the ticket I needed to relax and enjoy my old type of surfing, like flying at Makapuu. Again I began to set up the camera on my wing, I wasn't doing the photography for anyone except myself. The pictures came back ok and they made for a lot of sweet memories and stoke to get back flying to the places I love. But I just got tired of the motorcycle helmet. No matter how light and how protective it was, it just didn't seem like a good helmet for me.

So I began looking for a more aerodynamic version of a full face helmet. I also bought a set of "speed sleeves" from Jay that was especially designed to fair in the gaps in the harness. This completed the suit. I often fly with only surf trunks and a t-shirt as well as a good set of running shoes and with these speed sleeves tucked in the harness, I never have to worry about a jacket or sun burning my arms on a flight.

Again, I received a helmet from Jack Lambie, a full face "Aerodyne" and had it painted by my cousin. He paints helmets for all sorts of racers and he did a really good job on my helmet. It has a lot more padding and a webbing harness that held the helmet on a whole lot better than the previous one that I started out with.

As you can see in the above photograph, I started to powdercoat my uprights. I love the look of a glider/harness that has a good color scheme. I researched powdercoating aluminum and the temperature that it takes (350 degrees) is not too much that it will change the physical properties of aluminum so I started doing this in threes. A set for the glider and a extra. I even took off the king post and had it coated, on one glider, I had Wills Wing send me the kingpost and had it coated and sent it back and they delivered the glider with it. I'll tell you this, it is real incentive to not waste aluminum.

In a stupid move, I tried to move up again and it hurt me, bad.

Larry Tudor was putting out major cross country flights in a Wills Wing Z-1 harness. Larry was coming to Arizona to fly quite a bit and I talked with him about the harness. He knew that I had the background for it so I ordered mine to match a new Ram Air that I had on order. The first harness was delivered by Larry at a Wills Wing demo days and it was waaay too small. I flew it anyway and it was all I could to zip up the door to just past my knees. Larry could see that it was too small and Wills Wing was good enough to help me with a new harness with the right cut.


A few weeks later it arrived and I was in except the harness was so hard to get upright in. The harness mains were too far back and placed to much fulcrum on my hands. I had to literally crawl up the uprights to get that way to land. Fortunately, I was flying a lot and I was able to overcome the trouble with sheer determination. I had cross country fever and I was flying away every chance I could.

Aerotowing was getting big with the advent of the Dragonfly tug and I had the chance to do a big aerotow flight. I set things up and did one 10,000' above the ground. This harness was a blast to fly in but landing sucked and it sucked big time. I could fly around all day in comfort, hell, I think the fact that I hated landing in this harness had a lot to do with my staying up. On this particular flight, I had set it up to land in a field about 20 miles away from release. Two vertical miles up, I figured that with a ten to one glide, I could do that but I ended up gliding in with about 7 thousand feet to spare. I wanted to keep going but I had the airspace maped out in my brain and there was a couple of airports to contend with and lots of air trafic so I flew my flight plan and landed at home.

I got my longest cross country flight in this harness and hovered down in a big cross wind 60 miles from Mingus Mountain. It was an amazing flight and I did it with so little effort compared to all the tries I had given it for seasons past. I hated the harness but I was doing well in it so I just let it go.


One flight I had remembered so well, a friend and I had been on pursuit for a good cross country and we were on vacation. We had tried hard for a few days and things were not looking so good so we went for a little flight at Sheba Crater. It was a fishbowl flight, not enough strength in the wind to overcome the convection for a standing wave but there I was goofing around. I guess I was feeling mean so I dove on my friend from above and behind. He was flying a slower lower performing glider so I could overtake him easily. His skills were so much better than mine though and he could easily out fly me on that alone and sometimes he did. But on this flight, I did the dirty dive and waked him good. Little did I know that he had a camera and I got back a framed photo a month or so later.

On one of my next trips to the Craters for a fun fly, in mellow conditions, the harness finally caught up with me and coming in to land, I bobbled with the harness about a span above the roundout and couldn't get it all straightened out ready to land comfortably into the wind and had a horrible nose in. I had taken out one of my expensive powdercoated downtubes. I was laying there under my glider, I had vomited in my helmet because I had hit so hard on my stomach and all I could hear is this WHACK! WHAAAACK! from an idiot Elsinore styled pilot. A guy who I had actually had loaded up on a Aerovac Helicopter from sliding out of a tree landing, breaking his pelvis while he was screaming for help in pain.

What an asshole.

I had enough, hang gliding was too much, I was getting old, my children were young and I thought it was time to hang up my wing and I thought I could turn my back on the sky.

Boy it was hard, I did it for about ten years. Finally, my own divorce made me realize that it was time to live again, time to divorce myself from the ground and time to get myself back in flying shape.

What kind of harness am I going to use to get back into the sport?

You guessed it, an aerodynamic.

I had always wanted one of Eric Raymond's creations. I had purchased a CG-1000 that was pink, grey and had a new parachute container placed on it by Betty, I didn't color choice it so she added a green one, a pink, grey and green harness? Way too out there, there is a bit of vanity involved in my choices and that harness was flat out ugly. I sold it somewhere but I did find a great black and white "Equalizer" on e-Bay for $100 so I bought it. I took that harness apart and inspected it stitch by stitch. I also searched the members of the ozreport web site for any and all comments on the Equalizer, just about all responses came back positive, there were no obvious complaints (except those of a competition pilot)

The experience of completely dismantling the harness and washing it, inspecting it was excellent for my belief in the engineering. I had never really known the theory behind the back frame and how it worked, I knew sort of but never had really gotten down to taking it apart and inspecting it. I scrubbed every inch with mild laundry soap, completely rinsed and hung it out to dry. Every zipper was inspected and dry siliconed, every buckle was looked at for oxidation and cracking, all minor lines and rigging were replaced with thiner and stronger material without compromising the original intent. I replaced the main hang loop and had my parachute repacked and bought a new square carabiner which I also searched on the ozreport for more information.


The harness was finished! It actually fit quite well with a pair of surf trunks and a t-shirt but that isn't always how I flew and with a glider bag, it was just a tight fit and everytime I flew, I had to get a friend to zip it up. The leg loops were also detachable by buckle and were hard to get through without un-buckling. Launch, flying AND landing all were excellent, it was a great harness that was a slightly tight fit.

I gave in and made a decision to order a brand new competition minded harness, one with a back plate and all the storage I could handle plus a custom fit. Again I went to the internet and found a maker that was promoted by a competition pilot. This pilot in addition to saying that the harness was comfortable, had also a deployment in it with very little damage. I began the process of contacting the manufacture and after at least 30 e-mails and two failed international money wire transfers, my order was placed.

I waited.

It finally got here and I had to send the deployment bag if I wanted to keep with the stock harness retention system. So I sent the deployment bag off and when I finally got it all back and stuffed, I started hanging and familiarizing myself with it.

In the interim, I sold my Equalizer, another mistake.

I flew with it and the zipper came undone from the top down to the waist and that left me supported from the waist up by a little buckle at the sternum and the shoulder straps which my shoulders were trying to separate. Granted I was more than a thousand feet up in orographic lift with a thirty mile an hour wind component. I remained calm and flew down to a good touch down.

The first flight in this custom harness was a disaster and I had made a big mistake selling a harness that worked well for me. I had commited this mistake before and now I had done it again!

Unreal.

I knew right then and there I would never be comfortable in the new harness, I would always worry if it were going to unzip again. The first flying impression was horible, nothing I could do was going to change that and I won't afford the opportunity of making mistakes over and over if I can help it. I doesn't matter whether it is my fault or not, this is how it goes with me, wanting to upgrade and letting go of what I knew and loved and I had absolutely no reason to love this harness.

Immediately I began to search for another CG or Equalizer. The search was extensive, my search the internet posts are still out there and I began to network with other pilots and soon found one at a shop in California.


I bought it and I am in the process as we speak, inspecting, detailing and upgrading. It is a CG-1000 just like my old colors and I am flat out stoked again even though I have made a $1,000 mistake, at least I'll be comfortable the first flight in it and there is a lot more room and pockets on this one. I have sourced a good set of speed sleeves and they are on order too. I have since had plenty of time to think about what I like in a harness and how it effects the way that I fly. For me, right now, hang gliding MUST be fun and free from anxiety as I am older and have made too many mistakes that I must not re-create.

If I can impress anyone who is still reading this 25 year aerodynamic harness story, I have a couple of thoughts. I think the harness is more important than the wing you choose. A harness is your comfort zone, it's the feeling you have, security, and your harness should work for you and NEVER against you in any aspect of flying.

[in progress]