Can I build my own hang glider?

This article is not very relevant to regular Hang Gliding these days, but if you are the rugged individualist, or financially challenged, or maybe half a bubble out of plumb, then you might want to build the first glider you ever try to fly. It’s basically a Bad Plan.

Maybe it’s possible, but usually, it’s a waste of good flying time, money, skill, and sometimes even yourself (-not all injuries can be healed). There are lots of safe, good used gliders on the market, for every level of pilot skill. If you think you can build something for less money than a used, USHGMA or European Certified glider might cost, then you need to shop around a LOT more. If you consider the prices for which you buy and then sell the glider, then a year or three on a decent glider might only cost a few hundred bucks. That’s cheaper than building anything! I might also ask if you plan to build yourself a beginner’s glider, then an intermediate glider, e.t.c.?

If you buy and sell well-known Certified gliders to match your increasing skills as you need them, and at fair prices, the yearly costs are really hard to beat. In twenty-nine years of HG flying, my gliders have cost me less than US$0.50 cents per day. Even adjusted for inflation, that is not much. (Your Mileage May Vary.) This low price also came with the confidence of flying only those gliders fully Certified by the USHGMA. This Certification program also gave me access to flying sites (and HG competitions) that are not available to unknown or home-made gliders (usually as a requirement of an insurance company, the flying club, or the land-owner).

That last point needs emphasis. Your home-made glider will not be permitted to fly at most of the best flying sites, if they have liability insurance, a sane land-owner, or lawyers in your country. I’m no fan of the insurance companies, but their coverage has allowed us access to property that would otherwise be denied. Even good towing fields are not always plentiful, and a well-set towing field can be as valuable as a well-positioned mountain. This site limitation also means that your homemade glider cannot be sold easily, when you soon outgrow the need for forgiving handling, mushy landings, and the poor glide-ratio that these things imply. You may have the design genius to build an excellent glider, and succeed in every aspect of safety, handling and performance, but another pilot still would need to be wildly optimistic to believe that, enough to risk life and limb on your design. Few other HG pilots will want to fly where you must, because they usually will have much better, insured sites. You will miss out on much of the social side of HG, and with it, the vital knowledge that we are still accumulating as a group, even today. While you may accept these limitations on the safety/ social/ informational side of HG, the poor-to-none in re-sale values, and the ever-present possibility of surprise dangers in a glider that has never passed the standard certifications testing, the heir to your best efforts may not be very happy about these things, down the road. Even if you do manage to sell your old glider, do not be surprised if the new HG pilot soon comes back, demanding a refund.

Designing/building your own tailless glider can be very dangerous, especially if you have never flown at 20 mph (32 kph) before. The aeronautics textbooks stop talking below 50 mph (80 kph), so you are completely on your own, there. Trying to copy the work of an expert sailmaker is both expensive and time-consuming. That old sail you found has probably stretched measurably by now, so if you try to use it for a pattern, your glider may come out flying rather poorly, if it continues to fly at all.

If at all? Yes! The problems don’t START until it leaves the ground. Going airborne is the easiest part; I could make two golf umbrellas fly, with sufficient tailplane surfaces. Even *if* it were strong enough and light enough, then you would face all of the usual stability and control issues that every aircraft designer must resolve. Remember, there may be a very high price to be paid -by the pilot- for any mistakes or omissions. The sky does not accept excuses, such as I Did Not Know About That... In the past, the Hang Gliding community has seen a few new glider designs that ACTUALLY FLEW RATHER WELL, but they had some hidden flaw.

Any new design might :

- refuse to pull out of a dive,
- refuse to recover from a slipping turn,
- flip repeatedly like a tossed Venetian-blind slat,
- tuck,
- refuse to turn,
- turn the wrong direction (adverse yaw),
- refuse to stop turning (a spiral dive, into the dirt),
- refuse to fly fast (high speed is vital, if the wind increases),
- refuse to fly slowly (to launch and land, how fast can you run, really?)
- or break structurally.

Any of the problems above may be concealed at low speeds or shallow bank angles, but then suddenly appear, beyond some certain number. That home-made glider that felt so safe and responsive on the beginners’ slopes may one day surprise you very badly, when the air demands more of it than you ever dreamed was required. I certainly hope that you then have a parachute, and the time, altitude, and skill needed to deploy it.
If you plan to build your own glider, I have two suggestions. First, find out what has caused any such malfunctions, in past designs. Then, find out what changes were made to avoid that particular problem in recent (safer) times. It should be obvious that any untested design faces every possibility mentioned. Any one flaw could be physically dangerous in the extreme. I really hope that nobody fails to learn from our ancient history; it costs *you* too much to find these things out the hard way.
You should also know that every HG pilot with a few hundred dollars (and common sense) flies with a HG reserve parachute. No matter how individualistic you may be, a ‘chute is called "life insurance" around here, and we don’t mean some silly "death-bet" that you never get to collect on. A reserve ‘chute will bring you and the glider down together, safely.

It always amazes me to learn that a builder assumes they can actually fly with skill in an aircraft nobody has flown in before. In reality, the builder has a very small chance of success, unless they are first an experienced pilot in similar aircraft. Even then, their chances are no better than the plans that they built from. Those plans must be entirely sufficient in aerodynamic design, engineering, and completeness, to provide any good chance of success. Hey, there are "plans" out there that do not even locate the Center of Gravity of the resulting aircraft! If this Most Important Information was omitted, you *have* to wonder what else was forgotten. Any lack of the proper skills, materials, or building procedures will result in pain, of the financial type at the very least, and maybe not just to the pilot.

Maybe it is a great dream - building your own wings. Tackle this little project after you have a HG Expert rating and a few hundred hours of airtime; then, you might stand a chance. I built my own, once, long ago, when there was a somewhat valid reason - no company built a glider with the performance that I wanted. I was already a fair HG pilot. I had machinists helping with some special fittings, and a real HG factory working with me. Anyway, it did hit the ground, hard and very fast ("Freeway speed", according to witnesses). I survived, unhurt, only because I had the big training wheels on it. It rolled, instead of "crashed", on those big wheels.  (Of course, you *are* going to use training wheels, right?  Now, if there might be some other stuff that you need to know before you go play test pilot, you could email me.)  Today, that same glider would be worse than useless; it’s entirely dangerous. Anyway, a good, used intermediate glider today flies ‘way better, and costs much less.

I regard any building project as a serious waste of good flying time, unless you have something else to fly in the meanwhile. No matter what you build, or how well, remember: all of those good flying days will be lost and gone forever. A non-pilot might be willing to discard a single day of their life, building, that they could have spent flying. I don’t think very many serious pilots would be willing to do that. If you have the urge to build, you can do that when it’s snowing, or raining. The EAA will tell it to you straight - "If you want to build something, fine, you can probably do that. If you want to fly something, buy something".

Now, my advice is this - grab a nice, cheap, Certified wing, and let’s go FLYING!

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