Hang 3 technique ahh-haas

[Frederick]

Valuable things I didn't understand for 435 flights/170 hours of airtime:

Quadruple penalty of not touching down soon enough on landing:
1. If you refuse to start moonwalking at the necessary time, you put the glider into a stall and when you are forced to start running, you'll have to run harder, for the stalled glider isn't supporting as much of your weight as it would have unstalled.

2. Since you put the glider into a stall, it's falling out of the air and that falling translates to additional run effort required, because of the impact having to be absorbed by your legs. Additionally, this exacerbates (1) because falling radically changes the angle of attack of the wing.

3. Pushing out hard on the stalled glider downtubes is merely pushing the glider out in front of you (and using up your arm extension range), thus giving the glider a head start such that when you do start to run you'll have to run fast enough to overcome that and get back under the glider.

4. Getting behind the glider (3) and hitting at a higher speed for the glider being stalled (1), means you'll have to run even more quickly else your not keeping up will be a nose-down pitch input to the downtubes, which causes the glider to accelerate forward -- requiring an additional speed from your run to keep up.


Alternative:
Start moonwalking as soon as the glider starts to settle because it can't support your full weight anymore. (You've an option to flare right away too).

Understanding this makes it all so much easier for me it's like cheating. Prior to this I just muscled it, and got all 4, on no-wind landings.

I did some treadmill testing with my flight boots and figure I could run with my full bodyweight at 3-5 mph faster than the 10mph max of the treadmill, but could no-weight moonwalk 20-30mph. So getting some weight support out of the glider makes a big difference at no-wind landing speeds. (And tailwind landing speeds).

Thanks for the long talking-to, Joe.

[stebbins]

Alternative:
Start moonwalking as soon as the glider starts to settle because it can't support your full weight anymore. (You've an option to flare right away too).

There is virturally no penalty for starting your moonwalk even earlier, and it makes sure that you don't start it a bit too late by accident.... I've started mine as soon as my feet could reach the ground, and going at least 35 mph. I've seen others do it a bit faster.

Merry Christmas everyone