By : Steve Carlsson

About 12 months ago, being disheartened by standing around the paddock in light and variable conditions waiting for the wind to come on, myself and a flying buddy, Ken, each purchased an Explorer harness from Airtime Products in Queensland. Based on the research we had done (and some finger crossing) we were looking forward to launching on those light and variable days without waiting on the end of the rope for the wind to decide to blow from something like the direction of the tow strip: an exciting prospect!

Having sent our cash to Bob and Bud at Airtime (who, by the way, have proved top after sales support) we eagerly awaited the arrival of our means of escaping the paddock while everyone else queued up for a car tow. With much joy and rapture we (like a couple of kids at Christmas) tore open the freight box and looked at our new toys with gleaming eyes. A quick unpack followed, during which the resident rodent from Bob and Buds' premises showed its relief at being released from the confines of the packing case by relocating to my patio flower pots. Other than, all was well.

OK, so we have the new toys, now all we have to do is figure out how to fly them. Having watched the video and read the manual I headed for the paddock. The theory was simple enough: keep the bar in, run like hell with full power on, don't let the nose pop on take off, and enjoy. Well, I ran like hell with full power on and after popping the nose (it happens pretty quickly) proceeded to pull the bar in just in time to avoid the ensuring stall at 15-20 ft. In fact, just after launch I looked down and noticed that I had almost zero ground speed (but just enough air speed given the headwind at the time) and thought: this is not good! So I pulled in, and thankfully the glider gained some additional speed and started to climb.

The next take off I overcompensated for the nose popping routine (the wind had dropped off as the day went on) and flew along with the basebar too close to the ground for comfort prior to easing it out and climbing away. At least this time there was plenty of ground and airspeed, Phew!... two out of two successful, if eventful, take offs.

The landing are the easy bit; at least I think so. Simply set up the approach as normal, pull on lots of speed and wait for the landing skids to contact terra firma. The skids assist in slowing the glider as does the free wheeling prop, so in nil wind conditions landing is not too fast. In fact, due to the free wheeling prop acting prop acting as a big air break one needs to keep the bar in to avoid flying too slow (this is no longer an issue as Bob and Bud have produced a prop brake). Flare hard right on stall and the glider will stop on a dime. The danger lies in letting a wing drop due to a late flare. This means you potentially run through an arc towards the dropped wing and could end up with the prop in the sail. However, the side limiting lines should prevent this if they are correctly set up - another learning curve.

After the first few flights, and until just recently, I have been ruing the a I'd start flying the Explorer. In fact I have been close the selling all my gear and getting out of hang gliding altogether. Why? Well, for most of my flights in the harness I have felt a disturbing lack of control over the glider. This, added to the unusual flight dynamics of the glider, I thought, put me at considerable risk of losing control in anything but the smoothest conditions. The annoying thing being that Ken was enjoying his glider and harness and clocking up some good hours, and other pilots seemed to be reporting good results too. So, what was the problem for me? This is where the point of writing this article comes in. I recalled a comment by Dennis Pagan about emotional readiness to fly which prompted me to put this piece together.

A couple of nasty events led up to a lot of concern. Just prior to purchasing the Explorer harness I had mishap while thermalling in a Shark 144. At about 4,500 ft agl I made a gentle left turn in smooth 400 up and, Pow!, next thing I knew I was diving head first towards the ground. My heart rate accelerated, to say the least. To this day I can only assume that I hit something akin to wind shear. There were no warning bumps, no indication of the day being rough, just a sudden roll to the left that felt like someone had dropped a couple of thousand kilos on the left wing tip. The glider rolled and inverted into a dive during which I lost around 700 ft. I have been told since that I was lucky not to end up one the silk that day. This little incident was same flight, only this time I simply went over the falls in what was close to a tuck and tumble at about 2,800 ft: one second the glider was straight and level, the next it was nose first and totally stalled. Again, a huge loss of height was followed by relatively smooth flights. What made the situation worse for me was that these events occurred the day prior to a fatal trike crash which claimed the life of WA pilot and instructor Andrew Humphries. Now, although the two events may be totally unrelated, it bought home to me just how close we are to the edge when challenging the elements in our sport.

So, now that I had the proverbial scared out of me, I was flying an Explorer which felt decidedly wrong. Some serious thought had to go into finding a solution. I had Ken fly me harness which he thought was OK.. mmm was it just me? I had another pilot fly the harness...he thought it was OK, but did not feel comfortable. OK, so I went back to regular flying for a while (in my Sting 154) to see it I could rebuild some confidence. The S ting left pretty good, but a quick flight in the Shark still felt wrong, too twitchy and not enough control.

After a period of not flying I got back into the Explorer and, yep, nothing had changed; it still felt wrong. Each time a thermal or anything like turbulence was encountered the glider simply went wherever it wanted to, and certainly not where I wanted it to. Pulling on speed was difficult as the basebar seemed too far away. Ah... a light bulb flicked on: perhaps the basebar was too far away. I did a hang check and the bar was two fists below the harness (which is how I normally fly), so that appeared to be OK. After landing I checked Ken's set up and found his hang loops to be 120 mm longer than mine. Another hang check, this time with the others watching and contemplating, and there it was: a too-simple solution. The harness had a chest mounted chute, not a side mount as I am accustomed to, and it was packed such that it was very thick. So two fists (and a bit) in this harness is actually a chute (about two and bit fists) plus two fists. Add to this the fact that when the motor is at full power the pilot is pushed through the A frame, placing the basebar even further away. I was flying way too high in the A frame. Hence, the feeling of a lack of control was in fact a real lack of control. The catch is that from the pilot's perspective the basebar appeared to be correct relative to the harness during the hang check. Compared to my regular harness, however, I was now flying with at least four and a half to five fists of clearance from the basebar. This fact, added to the design of the Explorer (which tends to place the pilot further forward to the basebar than occurs in a regular harness due to the need to compensate for the weight of the motor), created a situation where I was barely able to control the glider because of a loss of weight shift control and reduced arm reach (Must invest in longer arms!).

A few minutes after this discovery the harness was hung lower by attaching a second carabiner to the longer reserve hang loop. This allowed the secondary hang loop to become the primary hang loop. Also moving the hang point back a few centimetres brought the bar forward at trim. A quick test fly with the new configuration proved the point. The glider was now smooth and responsive, it was able to turn, was controllable, and felt good. More testing will be required to ensure the very best flight position is obtained, but all indications are that the Explorer harness will now be virtually the same to fly as a regular glider (which it should have been from the start), the main difference being the need to have a little extra speed on to compensate for the increased stall speed resulting from the extra weight of the harness.

As it turns out my hang position for both the Shark and the Sting have always been on the high side, it's just the way it was. So, the lesson learned here is to look at the obvious and assume nothing. While I am still cautious about flying with the harness on strong thermal days, it is now very comfortable to fly. The harness is most pleasant on scenic coastal flights; it will take you to cloudbase and through blue holes to fly above the clouds (very nice) on winter days when regular flying is not even contemplated and opens up a whole range of new flying from sites which would otherwise be out of the question.

(Reproduced from Australian Gliding Sky Sailor - Mar 1999)