Flyfunston

At the last WOR meeting, Safety Director Pat Denevan described a simple method for achieving better control when landing; just cross your ankles!

Why would this work? Because it gives you almost twice as much weight to shift. Our legs are usually the heaviest parts of our body, with big bones and large muscles compared to our torso. Our legs are also farther out on the pendulum and therefore have more authority on the glider.

You can get a visual on this with the following example; Make a “peace sign” with your two fingers then hold it upside down to represent your legs when on approach. (like the “let your fingers do the walking” guy) Now pivot your fingers left and right as if they were swinging under the control frame. You can see that one finger takes the place of the other, and only the weight of one “leg” actually changes location. Now cross your fingers and do the same thing. TaDa!, twice as much weight is shifted!

You can see this technique in practice here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwgCsP6T8lo

CAUTION: This clip is meant to demonstrate the effectiveness of crossing the legs but the landing was accomplished at the edge of stall and can be very dangerous. DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS!

On the other hand, it is a good example of launching from the base bar. I’ll be happy to mentor anyone who would like to learn this technique, just drop me a line; srskypuppy@earthlinkdotnet
Cheers!