In 1973 I saw some people at Dockweiler Beach south of the Los Angeles airport who were launching gliders off a small cliff that was about 15 feet higher than the sand below. I parked and went to talk to them. One was nice enough to let me try a flight. That was my first experience flying the early hang gliders that were designed to look and work like the wing invented by Frances Rogallo for NASA. Here is a short biography

Francis Rogallo, an engineer at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, invented the “Rogallo wing” concept in the 1950s. Later it was primarily used for hang gliders. North American Aviation gave this wing to the Smithsonian in 1967 on behalf of NASA.

NOTE that since it was designed just for dropping goods safely to the ground you can see that it has no controls other than the bar in front of the pilot. The pilot can use the bar to shift body weight to the right and left to cause the “kite” to turn and to shift weight back away from the bar to raise the nose to slow down for landing or shift weight toward the bar to drop the nose to accelerate. A variation on the use of a seat was the use of a horizontal flying harness that allowed the pilot to shift weight much farther forward for even faster flight.

THE ENTIRE DESIGN IS SO DANGEROUS THAT IF IT GETS THROWN BY WIND INTO A NOSE DOWN POSITION THERE WAS NO WAY THE PILOT COULD RECOVER AND MANY DIED AS A RESULT.

Here is the wing –

Shortly after that initiation I bought my own glider – a fixed wing design done by a Mattel toy designer. Here I am flying it at Pismo Beach in 1974. That was a magical day – the wind was a light breeze blowing straight up a huge sand hill that was larger than a football field and sloped almost perfectly up at about10 degrees. So the breeze lifted me gently and I was able to literally stop all forward motion, then tilted the nose up and the glider flew backward! This picture was taken when I was soaring right over the spot I had taken off from. What an experience!!