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Flying squad
A short history of the east coast U.S. hang glider manufacturer Sky Sports, by Everard Cunion, June 2016, including photos and info from Chris Gonzales and Robert W Cordier
Some of the images on this page are artistic derivations of contemporary photos. Others are largely unedited photos by Chris Gonzales, Robert W Cordier, and Hugh Morton. See Copyright of early hang glider photos.
In 1972 or 1973 Tom Peghiny, Ed Vickery, and Mike Markowski formed hang glider manufacturer Sky Sports out of Ted Strong’s parachute loft near Boston, Massachusetts, New England.(1) While Peghiny was a mainstay at Sky Sports for years, Markowski soon moved on to form Man Flight Systems, where he developed the Eagle III. (See Scientific American hang glider.)
Looking for a new England
When hang gliding caught people’s imaginations around the world in the mid 1970s, they typically tried to find a supplier of materials to build their own, or a manufacturer of kits, or — more expensively — a manufacturer of complete gliders ready to fly. That is, ready to teach yourself to fly unless you were lucky enough to find an instructor within reach. In upstate New York, Chris Gonzales failed to find a supplier of bamboo that would enable him to build a Batso (one of several bamboo and polythene Rogallo wing designs). He then obtained Ed Vickery’s phone number from Ground Skimmer magazine. A few months later Chris had acquired Sky Sports’ brochures and was taking lessons from instructor Mike McCarron in Saratoga. More from Chris Gonzales later…
The flying in New England is arguably more demanding than in California, where most hang glider manufacturers were based, because of the wind and rain. A bit like where I (the original author of this web site) live in old England, by the sound of it. However, unlike old England, the flying regions of New England are largely tree-covered, with ‘tree slot’ launches and tight landing areas.
Sky Sports then moved to Ellington, Connecticut.(2) At least some of their sails were made by Odyssey Sails of Wilton, New Hampshire.
While some trained aeronautical engineers made great contributions to early hang glider development, on the whole they did not build better hang gliders than those who were self taught. As far as I know, Sky Sports originally relied on designs by hang gliding pioneer Tom Peghiny, whose early work included a ‘cylindrical’ Rogallo wing with highly curved leading edges. (For photographs, see Cylindrical Rogallo in Rogallo wing definitions and diagrams.) His later work included a monoplane with a V-tail, which was nevertheless weight-shift controlled, like conventional Rogallo wings (see Jaguar in Hang gliding 1978 and 1979 part 3).
LARK
Stepping back four years from the 1978 Sirocco to the glider in which Chris Gonzales learned to fly…
Dan Poynter of north Quincy, Massachusetts, wrote the first widely read authoritative book on the subject; Hang Gliding, the Basic Handbook of Skysurfing. Chris Gonzales obtained a copy of that book and it guided him into the world of hang gliding. LARK is an acronym for Low Aspect Ratio Kite.
As I progressed up the hill, the Lark II was brought out. It had a single batten at each wing tip and a shorter chord at the root.
— Chris Gonzales (4)
For an experimental wing that is claimed to be based on the LARK, see Cylindrical Rogallo in Rogallo wing definitions and diagrams.
Bobcat
The Bobcat was designed to be easier to fly than their contemporary higher-performance wings.
In this photo, either the bird art had not yet been applied to the sail or it is a different glider from that in subsequent photos.
See under External links later on this page for film of Tom flying at this event.
The Bobcat 2 featured three battens each side, each at a different angle, to support the slight roach cut of the sail near the tips. Its smallest size, being of only 181 sq.ft. (how times change!) was named the Bobkitten.
Kestrel
Terry Sweeney eventually designed for the east coast company Sky Sports and, of course, everyone flying today is familiar with the name Wills Wing. In fact, both of these evolutionary paths were well underway by the time I had seen what first influenced me — an almost thumbnail sized image of Hall Brock flying a standard Rogallo.
— Chris Gonzales (4). For Hall Brock, see the Ultralight Products of California and Utah related topics menu.
While Wills Wing in California improved the performance and handling of the Rogallo with the Swallowtail design, Sky Sports on the east coast went in a different direction, the result being the Kestrel. (It has no connection with Kestrel Kites of Dorset, old England.)
The pilot of the wing on the left is aerodynamicist Bill Figuerido and the other pilot is Tom Peghiny. The original photo is by W.A. Allen.
Here is a picture in words by Chris Gonzales, who flew a Kestrel B while his Sirocco II (see farther on) was being built:
When I started at Barber’s Hill, it was lush with Kestrel Bs, a string of them slowly advancing in stages up the path on the 200-foot hill. They glided flat and long, landing deep into a far hayfield.
— Chris Gonzales (4)
This screenshot from the Pico Peak 1978 competition film (see Mid-day lightning in Vermont) is annotated by Chris Gonzales to identify Sky Sports wings set up, presumably, near the landing strip.
Chris says of the Kestrel B, “Amazing glider for its simplicity (three straight metal curtain rod battens per side and a curved nose batten).”
Incidentally, for a newer photo of the Sirocco 1 in the screenshot, see farther on.
See also Hugh Morton’s photos (related topics menu).
The painted sail example has an extended keel. Reason unknown, but it is usual to have a projecting length of tube like that nowadays because it makes inserting and extracting the battens easier when rigging the glider standing on its control frame (American style).
Merlin
Of the Merlin, Chris Gonzales has this to say:
Similar to a Kestrel, but with more double surface, higher aspect ratio and more battens, it looked sexy and a little dangerous.
— Chris Gonzales (4)
Osprey
The Osprey was a popular intermediate-level wing.
Sirocco
Eventually, Tom Peghiny was joined by another self-taught hang glider designer, Terry Sweeney, an electronics technician (self taught in that too) working in the field of radar jamming electronics for the military. Together, they created the Sirocco, likely the first double-surface flex-wing hang glider in which the cross-tubes are enclosed between the upper and lower surfaces of the sail.
Notice the shape of the sail of the Sirocco in the accompanying screenshot from the Francis Freedland documentary film 1978 Pico Peak International Hang Gliding Meet (see my review, linked farther down). The inboard battens were secured in position with cables to the control frame corners and (apparently) to the top of the king post. The sail was thereby kept from applying upward (or in the event of severe misfortune, downward) force on the crosstubes. (Nowadays they build the crosstubes strong enough to take any additional bending forces imparted by the sail.) Those wires arguably also improved the span-wise twist distribution of the wing.
Incidentally, the pilot in the screenshot is flying in a seat harness inside the control frame.
This Sirocco 1 originally belonged to Chris Gonzales’ instructor, Mike McCarron. It is the actual same one in Chris’s annotated screenshot farther up this page.
Double surface wings enclose the cross-tubes between the upper and lower surfaces of the sail, which eliminates the aerodynamic drag of the crosstubes. This photo also shows deflexor cables cluttering the leading edges. They added strength and kept the lanky tubes from distorting out of shape. However, those deflexors also created a lot of drag, increased the cost of manufacture, and increased the time you spent rigging and de-rigging your wing. Modern hang gliders do not have them. Nevertheless, they provided an ability to fine-tune a glider’s handling:
I was able to optimize for steep turns, say 60 degrees, the kind of turn you would use in a strong thermal core. With careful tuning, I could set up up a sweet spot within which the glider really coordinated well in that bank and climbed extraordinarily well.
— Chris Gonzales
Sweeney worried about the lack of pitch stability of the standard Rogallo in a dive, as many of us did. According to reports, at zero angle of attack, the sail ‘luffed’ (flapped uselessly) and created no lift to shift your weight relative to, so you were unable to pull out of the dive. (See Luff in the time of cholera.) Given enough height, the drag of the flapping sail would — in theory — pull you out, but we rarely gained enough height for that in those days. In 1973, Sweeney added a strut under the sail near each wingtip, with a cable to the top of the king post that limited the strut’s downward arc about its attachment to the leading edge. In an extreme dive, it acted as an up-elevator. It was a combined dive strut and reflex bridle, as we would understand it today.
Sirocco II
The Sirocco II, which was Sweeney’s own project with input from Sky Sports test pilots, had six battens per side, as compared with the original Sirocco’s five per side. The Sirocco II also had a wider nose angle and more area at the tips. Chris Gonzales describes it as a “great design.”
One of the pilots who contributed to the design of the Sirocco II was 1978 US champion and author of a series of technical articles in the magazine, which eventually he turned into reference books, Dennis Pagen.
We travelled to Pico Peak in Vermont to see Tom Peghiny and Malcolm Jones flying the new version in the infamous Pico Peak International Invitational Meet. I ordered my Sirocco II the next week.
— Chris Gonzales (4). See Mid-day lightning in Vermont, a review of a documentary film of that event, including a photo of Chris’ entry ticket.
This photo shows the cable from the control frame corner to the inner-most batten, reducing washout at the root. See Jaguar in Hang gliding 1978 and 1979 part 3 for an experimental hang glider designed by Tom Peghiny that shows similarity of structure to the Sirocco II.
Jim Morton, the photographer for the Sirocco advert, is Hugh Morton’s son. See also Hugh Morton’s photos (related topics menu).
The sheer number of wingnuts that must be fully removed and installed is amazing. Even the midspan washout cables have them.
— Chris Gonzales (4) after he rigged Mike McCarron’s Sirocco in 2017 following many years of storage
Calculus
Bear in mind that the personal computer was still years away. Unless you had links with academia or, like Barry Hill Palmer, you worked in California aerospace, in which case you might obtain time on a mainframe computer, you either used a slide rule to aid hand-written calculations or you used a programmable calculator to help design your wings. If you were a bit outside the box, you used a Hewlett Packard reverse Polish notation calculator, which did not even have an equals = key!
Terry Sweeney’s hang glider design program, which he used on the Sirocco project, contained 224 steps. However… “We still sort of handle the shapes intuitively — the nose angles and the sweeps, and the anhedral/dihedral tuning, and stuff.” (3)
Nevertheless, hang gliding was (and is) not just a by-product of the space age or of developments in computing. As Chris Gonzales points out: “Of course, hang gliders owed much to sailboat design and technology. The art of sail making and time-tested hardware allowed designs to advance quickly.”
A further use for the computer is in generating airfoils. The Sirocco II exhibits a higher mean camber in the root section in a rearward moving high point away from the root. This again helps prevent tip stalls by evening out the lift distribution.
— Dennis Pagen in Hang Gliding, May 1978
The DECSYSTEM-20 is the cabinet at the back (with the ‘terracotta’ burnt orange horizontal stripe). We had one where I (the original author of this web site) studied computing in the late 1970s. I attempted to write a Rogallo hang glider stress analysis program on it, which I never finished, in Fortran 4.
Boy, things happened fast in those days. They were literally designing faster than the magazine could report on them!
— Chris Gonzales
Sources
A prominent pilot, who wants to remain anonymous, provided information and contact details of some potential and actual contributors.
Bob Cordier provided photos via FaceBook Messenger.
Chris Gonzales sent me info and photos by e-mail. In addition, I added more snippets from his subsequent article, Sky Sports Gliders of the Late ’70s, published in the USHPA magazine Hang Gliding & Paragliding, September/October 2017 (linked later on this page).
Details of the hang glider development process: In addition to the interview with Terry Sweeney by Bill Allen (see References), in about 1980 I used a desk-top programmable calculator at work (radar jamming electronics, same as Terry Sweeney).
Related
Computing in hang gliding related topics menu
Graeme Bird’s hang gliders, the New Zealand sail-maker’s work that advanced the state of the art
Mid-day lightning in Vermont, my review of the Francis Freedland documentary film 1978 Pico Peak International Hang Gliding Meet
External links
Bob Cordier, who provided much material on this page, flying an approach and landing (into a tight LZ) in his Sirocco 2 at the Pico Peak competition in 1978: 1978 Pico Peak meet by bobbylangs on YouTube starting at 6 minutes 51 seconds.
For photos of an artistically painted Sirocco, see this post on hanggliding.org.
Hang Ten Hang Gliding World Meet, Part 2 (1974) video on YouTube starting at 3 minutes 54 seconds, where Tom Peghiny makes his speed run in a Sky Sports Merlin
Hang Ten Hang Gliding World Meet, Part 3 video on YouTube starting at 4 minutes 5 seconds, where Paul Courtney performs an ‘aerial bellet’ (a required competition task in those times) in a Sky Sports Merlin. (The video also starts with Courtney flying an earlier task.)
Kestrel, I am fairly sure, launching: 1976 Kössen 1 de 3 15 min digitized film on YouTube by Roman Camps taken at the second world championship, Kössen, Austria, in 1976, starting at 11 minutes 40 seconds
Sirocco launching and flying: 1976 Kössen 1 de 3 15 min digitized film on YouTube by Roman Camps taken at the second world championship, Kössen, Austria, in 1976, starting at 8 minutes 13 seconds
Sweeney’s hang glider: Terry Sweeney’s home made biplane of the early 1970s set to music by the band Sweeney’s Glider. (Is there any limit to this guy’s talent?) See also Big Blue Sky — The history of modern hang gliding – the first extreme sport! by Bill Liscomb on YouTube starting at 2 minutes 41 seconds, which is a clip from Sweeney’s hang glider narrated by Bob Trampenau of Seedwings.
Tom Peghiny flying the Sky Sports Bobcat and landing on the target carved on the sand in Soaring and Gliding Festivals 1973-1974, a digitized ‘Super 8’ (8 millimetre) film on YouTube by John Elwell. Filmed at Elberta dunes, Michigan, in 1974 starting at 26 minutes 29 seconds
Tom Peghiny flying again, starting at 39 minutes 47 seconds
References
1. Dan Chapman, Aerie, the Hang Gliding Magazine (an independent east coast oriented publication) May 1976
2. Sky Sports advert in Hang Gliding, August, 1977
3. Interview with Terry Sweeney by Bill Allen, Hang Gliding magazine, August 1977
4. Sky Sports Gliders of the Late ’70s by Chris Gonzales with photos by Tina Sheppard in Hang Gliding & Paragliding Vol47-Iss5 Sep-Oct 2017
