Copyright 1997 by Mike Meier
It is three sheets of paper, typewritten and mimeographed, and stapled together in the upper left-hand corner. Near the top of page one is the title: GROUND SKIMMER NEWSLETTER, and to the right is written “May, 1972 – No. 1.” The editor is Dick Eipper, and it is the monthly newsletter of the Southern California Hang Gliding Association.
The publication date is one year after the event which most recognize as marking the birth of the modern sport of hang gliding; the first Otto Lilienthal Meet, organized by Jack Lambie and held at a grass covered hillside in Corona Del Mar, Southern California on May 23rd, 1971, in honor of Lilienthal’s 123rd birthday. Three of the six pages of the newsletter are devoted to listing the names of the first 100 members of what would eventually become the United States Hang Gliding Association. Dick Eipper is number one. Lloyd Licher, Joe Faust, Frank Colver, Bob Lovejoy, Dave Cronk, Volmer Jensen, Taras Kiceniuk Jr., William Allen, Ernest Feher, Carl Boenish, Herbert Seidenberg, Michael Riggs and Jim Maupin are among the members listed. Dick Eipper’s three paragraph “editorial” on page one cites the primary concern of the new association: “At this time, I’d like to ask all members to try and save the flying sites we have.” For those of us who imagine that issues like securing and preserving sites, landowner liability concerns, waivers, litigation and FAA regulation are modern day problems, the literature of the early days of the sport is illuminating reading.
Listed on page five of the newsletter are seven magazine issues featuring articles on the new sport of hang gliding. Among them is the February 1972 issue of National Geographic, which had already become the inspiration for three young men in their early twenties from Santa Ana, California to build a series of bamboo and plastic Rogallo type hang gliders, which they dubbed the “Bamboo Bombers.” These were the first hang gliders built by the team that was to become Sport Kites, Inc., later to be known as Wills Wing. The three young men were Chris Wills, his brother Bob Wills and their friend Chris Price.
By June, issue number two had expanded to fourteen pages and included reports on the Second Annual Otto Lilienthal Universal Hang Glider Championships, Taras Kiceniuk’s flight of his new Icarus II biplane rigid wing hang glider from the cliffs of Torrey Pines, Bob Lovejoy’s work on his new monoplane hang glider (which would eventually evolve into the Quicksilver), and expressions of interest in the new sport of hang gliding from England. Around this time, Chris and Bob Wills and Chris Price were hard at work on their first “real” hang glider, a more conventional Rogallo built from Dacron sail cloth, aluminum tubing and steel cable. Some of the building techniques remained classic shade tree mechanic, however. In order to judge when the nico press sleeves were properly pressed, they simply hammered them into the asphalt driveway until they were level with the surface. On July 4th, 1972, at a time when most hang gliding was confined to ground skimming, Bob Wills flew the original Wills Wing glider from the top of 5000 foot Saddleback peak.
In that same month, Ground Skimmer reported on Taras Kiceniuk’s duration record of 71 minutes on his Icarus II at Torrey Pines, and on an attempt by SCHGA member Pat Page to obtain clarification from the FAA regarding licensing requirements for hang gliders. The new member list in the July issue extends to one hundred and fifty two, a fifty percent increase in 60 days.
The August issue lists Bob Wills as member number 164, and in September the first photos appear, including one of Roy Haggard flying seated, and without helmet at the second annual Montgomery Meet. In October, the first foot launched fatality – Ed Gardia – is reported, and in November the first advertisement for a hang glider manufacturer appears on the inside front cover of what is now a legitimate magazine. It is for Bill Bennett Delta Kites, and ironically features a picture of and congratulations to factory sales representative Bob Wills for his three hour and three minute duration record at Torrey Pines. (Other sources indicate the record flight took place on December 7th, indicating that the “November” issue was actually published a month or more late.) Bill Bennett, whose hang gliding roots were in Australian water ski tow kites, had come to the United States in 1969 to fly towing exhibitions. At the time, there was a very limited amount of foot launched hang gliding activity in the U.S., and what was being done on Rogallo type kites was being done with very primitive equipment. Bill’s kites were much more sophisticated, but too small for foot launching. Eventually, Dave Kilbourne scaled up one of Bennett’s tow kite designs and in 1970 became the first person to foot launch a Rogallo hang glider with a control bar.
Bennett became one of the very first manufacturers of hang gliders in the U.S., and in the summer of 1972, came upon Bob Wills, who in Bennett’s words, was “flying a dreadful machine with exceptional ability.” Bennett offered Bob a flight on a “good” hang glider, and eventually a job demonstrating and selling kites.
By this time, membership in the SCHGA was over 700, a seven-fold increase in six months. That November issue also carried advertisements for five other “manufacturers” though other than Bennett it isn’t clear whether anyone else was offering more than plans or kits. By the December 1972 issue that had changed; four manufacturers were clearly offering factory built hang gliders including Bennett, Eipper-Formance, Velderrain and Co., and a new company called Sport Kites, Inc.
1973 saw continued explosive growth in the sport and industry of hang gliding. It was during this year that the Southern California Hang Gliding Association formally recognized its national scope, and became the USHGA. In its first two years, hang gliding had attracted the interest of a large and disparate group of people, and within this group were a number of people with serious levels of formal training and experience in conventional aerodynamics. (In fact, the total amount of formal aerodynamic expertise among those at least peripherally involved in the hang gliding community in the period from 1971 to 1973 probably far exceeds the level involved at any time since.) A group of such people including Paul MacCready, Irv Culver, Peter Lissaman, Henry Jex, Bruce Carmichael, and Taras Kiceniuks; (Jr. and Sr.) gathered in early 1973 for a round table discussion on the subject of ultralight soaring. A partial transcript was published in the March issue of Soaring Magazine, and reprinted in the May issue of Ground Skimmer. It makes for fascinating reading, as the group works its way through a definition of the essential desirable elements defining this new activity. (These by consensus included foot launchability, low speed, portability, and low cost.) The group then goes on to identify and explore virtually all of the concerns that have since occupied hang glider designers and pilots; including simplicity of design, ease of assembly, weight and structure, aero elasticity, stability and control, dive recovery, effects of turbulence on low speed aircraft, and overall safety.
Many of those involved in the early days of hang gliding who had formal aerodynamic training ultimately disdained the Rogallo type kites for their pitifully low performance, inherent lack of stability and for the supposedly “proven” limitations of weight shift control. Among the new design projects reported in Ground Skimmer at the time, Rogallos were out numbered by rigid wings. Yet by late 1973, it was clear that the Rogallo wing, with all its limitations, had taken over the sport of hang gliding. And in the end, the sport and the evolution of design were to be advanced primarily not by the trained aerodynamicists, but by people like Bob Wills – young men who displayed immense natural talent as pilots, unfettered imagination mixed with intuitive genius as designers, and who were not constrained by the knowledge of what couldn’t be done. (A humorous illustration of this appears in an ad for Sport Kites in the April-June 1974 issue of Ground Skimmer in which it is proudly proclaimed that “the makers of the Wills Wing flew for over two hours before beginning to manufacture kites.”)
In October of 1973, the first U.S. National Hang Gliding Championships were held at Sylmar, California. The event was sponsored by Annie Green Springs and covered by Sports Illustrated. Hang gliding had gotten both the attention and the respect of the mainstream media, and its treatment in the media at this time was both widespread and very positive. Chris Wills won the meet, and his brother Bob took second place.
In December of 1973, I arrived in Southern California having moved west from New York. With me was the woman who would later become my wife and business partner, Linda. My interest at the time was motorcycles, and while riding along the cliffs of Palos Verdes one day I spotted two men bending over a long yellow bag with the words “Sport Kites” stenciled on the side. I pulled over and asked one of them, “Is this what they call ‘hang gliding’ and are you really going to do it?” It was, and they were, and I stayed to watch. I remember being fascinated and thrilled by the elegant simplicity of the device. I watched as one of them launched from the cliff, made a few passes back and forth with obvious complete control, and landed softly on the beach below. I stopped long enough to get from the second man the name and address of Sport Kites and Bob Wills, and then got on my bike and rode home. I remember during the ride being so euphoric and excited that I could barely contain myself. This was what I was going to devote all of my time and energy to – there was no question about it.
I took two days of “lessons” while visiting my sister in Oregon, but never really flew. The quality of instruction in those days wasn’t very good. “Run as hard as you can and push out” was about all the instruction I got. I bought a kite anyway – a Manta 17 foot standard Rogallo – and during the summer of 1974, taught myself to fly at Escape Country. Unknown to me, future business partner Steve Pearson was at the same place at the same time, visiting California from his home back east, and having his first lessons in hang gliding. Steve had built an aluminum and plastic hang glider in 1972 by scaling up drawings out of Joe Faust’s Low and Slow magazine, though he had never quite achieved a successful flight. In the summer of 1973, while working for his uncle in Southern California he had been exposed to “real hang gliding” as a driver for fellow employee Chuck Bonneau, who was the first to hang glide from Pine Flats. Back in Massachusetts, Steve went on to re-build his original kite with a sail purchased from Sky Sports, and in the summer of 1975, built his first kite of his own design. By the end of 1975, he had moved to California permanently, and during the following year he met and began flying with the Wills Wing factory pilots.
My other future business partner, Rob Kells, had his first exposure to hang gliding in the summer of 1973, ground skimming on a ski slope on a sixteen foot standard. Having already flown sailplanes, Rob was relatively unimpressed with the level of performance of the standard Rogallo, and put hang gliding aside for a few years. In the summer of 1976, he would watch as a friend got an extended soaring flight on a new Wills Wing SST, and decide that the sport had progressed to where he was again interested.
The sport of hang gliding in 1974 continued to grow explosively, and began to suffer the ill effects of that growth. Fatalities increased dramatically. Younger brother Eric Wills was an early victim in March of 1974; he died attempting a 360 with too little altitude for his level of skill. The Wills family came to the very edge of giving up on the sport and business of hang gliding as a result, but in the end, decided to press on. It was during this time that the media slant on hang gliding changed from positive and promotional to a sensationalized “death sport” portrayal. The design of hang gliders was evolving at a break neck pace, and many manufacturers were finding it difficult to keep up. Bob Wills and crew were working on a new design called the Swallowtail – a high aspect Rogallo with a deep spiral cut in the trailing edge. The pace of design development and the exploding number of new manufacturers trying to make money in this rapidly growing new sport were setting the stage for the industry’s first major shakeout. By December of 1975, the hang glider directory published in Ground Skimmer Magazine listed a total of fifty different manufacturers tying to sell to the U.S. market.
In 1975, I purchased my first Wills Wing glider – a 20-20 Swallowtail. When I went to the factory to order it, all the factory pilots were off in Greece filming Skyriders. I was amazed at the Swallowtail’s performance. In my Manta “standard,” which among other things was at least one size too small for me, I had flown in a controlled plummet mode, barely out gliding the terrain. In the Swallowtail I was clearly getting close to twice the glide ratio, and it was a whole new experience.
By April of 1976, I had decided it was time to get really serious about hang gliding, and that the way to do that was to go to work in the industry. I applied for a job in response to a help wanted ad in Glider Rider placed by Ultralight Products. My resume arrived just after they had hired someone else, though Pete Brock later told me he had been impressed and would have liked the chance to interview me. In the meantime, Bob Wills had his next creation on the market, the Super Swallowtail, or SST. It was being billed as “the high performance kite you already know how to fly,” and that appealed to me. I went down to Sport Kites to order one, and Chris Wills mentioned that they were gearing up to increase production. I suggested he hire me, and two weeks later I had given up a $1000 a month job in the motorcycle business to go to work for $700 a month at Wills Wing. A short time later, Linda was hired to replace Chris’s wife Betty Jo, who was getting ready for the birth of their first child.
One of the first projects I was involved with at Wills Wing was the positive load structural testing of the SST. Sniping among manufacturers was relatively common in those days (some things don’t change much). In December of 1975, Mike McLane had experienced a tumble and structural failure on an SST in a lee side rotor at Mt. Wilson during strong Santa Ana winds. (Mike’s account, printed in the May 1976 issue of Ground Skimmer, remains one of the all time best articles written on the subject of safety and decision making in hang gliding.) Wills Wing had been under some criticism for using 1.5 inch diameter tubing in the leading edges of the SST. There was at the time no formal industry testing program for airworthiness. It would be more than a year before vehicle testing, pioneered by Tom Price, would become widely used for testing hang glider structural strength. Bob wanted to find out just how strong the SST was, and employed the most direct testing method he could think of. He had already flown up to four people on the standard Wills Wing, and he had plans to fly six on an SST. Virtually the entire shop traveled to Guadalupe dunes in April to attempt the flight. On April 25th, with the wind blowing in at 35 mph off the ocean, Bob launched first four, and then five people on the SST. (Bob and one passenger sat in a tandem swing seat, while the others hung by their hands from a bar suspended below the seat.) Offered one of the “cheap seats” I declined, and instead elected to be the wire launch crew. The glider distorted severely under the load, and each time when the passengers below let go, the SST with its two remaining passengers would catapult high into the air above the dunes. Bob next tried to launch with six (four on the bottom bar) but could not quite achieve sustained flight. The distortion in the wing was so great that even with an airspeed of 45 mph the glider couldn’t lift the 1000 plus pound gross weight. Through all the flight attempts, however, there was no permanent deformation of the glider’s airframe. It was a fascinating demonstration of aero elasticity.
By June of 1976 Chris Wills had left Wills Wing for medical school, and I had left after being fired by the person they had hired to replace Chris as general manager. (He in turn was gone within three months after that, and I eventually returned to the company, first as an outside contractor, and later as an employee.) Linda was still working there, alongside Chris and Bob’s mother Maralys in the front office. In the spring of 1977, five very young men in a motor home with hang gliders on the roof showed up at Wills Wing. Among them was Rob Kells. Wills Wing was in its usual state of organizational disarray, and Rob and his friends decided that instead of pursuing their plan to become traveling sales representatives and air show pilots, they would first help Wills Wing get organized. The next thing I knew there were five young kids with clip boards running around the shop trying to figure out how to make Wills Wing run like a business. After a short time, four of them left, but Rob stayed on.
On June 24, 1977 tragedy struck the Wills family a second time when Bob was killed while flying for a Jeep commercial at Escape Country. As a business, Wills Wing was already in serious trouble and had been for more than a year. The hang gliding business was still fiercely competitive, and since Chris’ departure the company had lacked adequate organizational structure. Beyond that, Bob’s latest design – the Cross Country – had experienced some problems common to several of the high performance models of that year; sails had been stretched to zero billow, and stability and damping were minimal. Now the company had lost its designer, its prime competition pilot, and its heart. I walked into Rob’s office the following day and said, “You know of course that it’s all over now.” But Rob didn’t, or wouldn’t know that. He rallied the employees to work without the promise of pay, and encouraged the family to allow the company to try to survive. Modifications were made to the Cross Country to solve the problems of marginal stability, and with Chris Wills’ help, Rob worked to get the XC’s and SST’s certified to the newly established testing standards of the HGMA. Later, he went on the road to visit the dealers and restore confidence. Somehow the company went on. Steve Pearson, who had been helping out at Wills Wing since Bob’s death, made a second prototype of Bob’s last design – a glider Bob had felt so good about that he had chosen it to fly for the filming job during which he had been killed. Later that fall, at Steve’s suggestion, I was hired by Wills Wing to head up the development and certification of that design for production, and in March of 1978, it was released as the Alpha, and became the seed of the company’s rebirth.
Steve quit his regular job, and took a full time position at Wills Wing doing glider design. Later that year, Rob convinced the Wills family that the future of the company depended on the continued interest and efforts of the four primary people who were working to keep it afloat, and he negotiated with the family to sell a total of 50% of the company stock to himself, Steve, Linda and me. At the time, Wills Wing had about 6% of the U.S. hang gliding market, there were five other manufacturers who were larger and there were still sixteen manufacturers viable enough to send teams to that year’s HGMA Manufacturer’s Meet in Telluride.
In the nineteen years since, there have been other shakeouts in the industry; one due to the powered ultralight explosion in the early eighties, another due largely to the advent of paragliding in the early nineties. The business of hang gliding has never been easy, and has seldom been profitable. Only those who are or have been in the business can truly appreciate the old saying about how one makes a small fortune in aviation: start with a large one.
But it has always been interesting, and for the most part, it’s been a lot of fun.