Hang Gliding Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about hang gliding

Hang Gliding Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is hang gliding?
A: Hang gliding is an air sport or recreational activity in which a pilot flies a light, non-motorized foot-launched heavier-than-air aircraft called a hang glider.

Most modern hang gliders are made of what?
A: An aluminum alloy or composite frame covered with synthetic sailcloth to form a wing.

Typically the pilot is in a what?
A: A harness suspended from the airframe.

How does he control the aircraft?
A: By shifting body weight in opposition to a control frame.

Early hang gliders had a low lift-to-drag ratio, so pilots were restricted to what?
A: Gliding down small hills.

By the 1980s this ratio significantly improved, and since then pilots can do what?
A: Soar for hours, gain thousands of feet of altitude in thermal updrafts, perform aerobatics, and glide cross-country for hundreds of kilometers.

The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale and national airspace governing organizations control what?
A: Some regulatory aspects of hang gliding.

By the end of the sixth century A.D., the Chinese had managed to build kites large and aerodynamic enough to do what?
A: Sustain the weight of an average-sized person.

It was only a matter of time before someone decided to do what?
A: Simply remove the kite strings and see what happened.

Most early glider designs did not ensure what?
A: Safe flight.

What was the problem?
A: It was that early flight pioneers did not sufficiently understand the underlying principles that made a bird's wing work.

Starting in the 1880s technical and scientific advancements were made that led to what?
A: The first truly practical gliders.

Otto Lilienthal built controllable gliders in the 1890s, with which he could do what?
A: Ridge soar.

His rigorously documented work influenced later designers, making Lilienthal one of what?
A: One of the most influential early aviation pioneers.

His aircraft was controlled by what?
A: Weight shift and is similar to a modern hang glider.

Hang gliding saw a stiffened flexible wing hang glider in 1904, when Jan Lavezzari did what?
A: He flew a double lateen sail hang glider off Berck Beach, France.

The biplane hang glider was very widely publicized in what?
A: Public magazines with plans for building it.

On November 23, 1948, Francis Rogallo and Gertrude Rogallo applied for a kite patent for a what?
A: A fully flexible kited wing with approved claims for its stiffening’s and gliding uses.

What was it called?
A: The flexible wing or Rogallo wing, which in 1957 the American space agency NASA began testing in various flexible and semi-rigid configurations in order to use it as a recovery system for the Gemini space capsules.

The various stiffening formats and the wing's simplicity of design and ease of construction, along with its capability of slow flight and its gentle landing characteristics, did not go unnoticed by whom?
A: Hang glider enthusiasts.

In 1960–1962 Barry Hill Palmer adapted the flexible wing concept to make what?
A: Foot-launched hang gliders with four different control arrangements.

In 1963 Mike Burns adapted the flexible wing to build a what?
A: A towable kite-hang glider he called Skiplane.

In 1963, John W. Dickenson adapted the flexible wing airfoil concept to make another water-ski kite glider; for this, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale vested Dickenson with what?
A: The Hang Gliding Diploma (2006) for the invention of the "modern" hang glider.

Since then, the Rogallo wing has been what?
A: The most used airfoil of hang gliders.

There are basically how many types of sail materials used in hang glider sails?
A: Two, woven polyester fabrics, and composite laminated fabrics made of some combinations.

What is woven polyester sailcloth?
A: It is a very tight weave of small diameter polyester fibers that has been stabilized by the hot-press impregnation of a polyester resin.

The resin impregnation is required to provide what?
A: Resistance to distortion and stretch.

This resistance is important in maintaining what?
A: The aerodynamic shape of the sail.

Woven polyester provides the best combination of light weight and what?
A: Durability in a sail with the best overall handling qualities.

Laminated sail materials using polyester film achieve superior performance by using what?
A: A lower stretch material that is better at maintaining sail shape but is still relatively light in weight.

The disadvantage of a polyester film fabric is that the reduced elasticity under load generally results in what?
A: Stiffer and less responsive handling, and polyester laminated fabrics are generally not as durable or long lasting as the woven fabrics.

In most hang gliders, the pilot is ensconced in a what?
A: A harness suspended from the airframe, and exercises control by shifting body weight in opposition to a stationary control frame, also known as triangle control frame, control bar or base bar.

This bar is usually pulled to allow for what?
A: Greater speed.

Either end of the control bar is attached to an upright pipe, where both extend and are connected to what?
A: The main body of the glider.

This creates what shape?
A: The shape of a triangle or 'A-frame'.

In many of these configurations additional wheels or other equipment can be suspended from what?
A: From the bottom bar or rod ends.

A control frame for body weight shift was also shown in whose designs?
A: Octave Chanute's designs.

It was a major part of the now common design of hang gliders by whom?
A: George A. Spratt from 1929.

The most simple A-frame that is cable-stayed was demonstrated in a Breslau gliding club hang gliding meet in a battened wing foot-launchable hang glider in what year?
A: In the year 1908 by W. Simon.

Due to the poor safety record of early hang gliding pioneers, the sport has traditionally been considered what?
A: Unsafe.

Advances in pilot training and glider construction have led to what?
A: A much improved safety record.

Modern hang gliders are very sturdy when constructed to what?
A: Hang Glider Manufacturers Association, BHPA, Deutscher Hängegleiterverband, or other certified standards using modern materials.

Although lightweight they can be easily damaged through what?
A: Misuse or by continued operation in unsafe wind and weather conditions.

All modern gliders have built-in what?
A: Dive recovery mechanisms such as luff lines in king posted gliders, or "sprogs" in topless gliders.

Pod harnesses are put on like a jacket and the leg portion is where during launch?
A: Behind the pilot.

Once in the air the feet are what?
A: Tucked into the bottom of the harness.

They are zipped up in the air with a rope and unzipped before what, with a separate rope?
A: Landing.

A cocoon harness is slipped over the head and lies where during launch?
A: In front of the legs.

After takeoff, the feet are what?
A: Tucked into it and the back is left open.

A knee hanger harness is also slipped over the head but the knee part is what?
A: Wrapped around the knees before launch and just pick up the pilots leg automatically after launch.

The shoulder straps are put on before launch, and after take off the pilot does what?
A: Slides back into the seat and flies in a seated position.

What do pilots carry enclosed in the harness?
A: A parachute.

In case of serious problems, the parachute is what?
A: Manually deployed and carries both pilot and glider down to earth.