How to Adjust a Hang Glider Harness

Video Transcript

"Hi, this is David Duke. Welcome to Expert Village. In this clip we'll talk about the harness, this is a training harness. And it's great out here because it's light weight and it doesn't have a lot of the other stuff on it that we use when we're really hang gliding. It stays down here in your legs, it's only this tall, and you can run and you can move your legs around and a beginner can put his legs down and land and run in it. They have a carabineer to hold you up. It's not a hang glider because we hang on with our fingers until we can't hold anymore, we hang on because we're hanging in this with our shoulders up here. And essentially what happens is that the weight is distributed right over your center of balance, and you're hanging there just you're in a comfortable hammock. Our chest straps are usually adjustable. And our leg straps are adjustable here. Modern harnesses have a loop all way through all the way around all of these are continuous. So the fabric means nothing to the sport. And this one it's relying on the fabric to hold you up and that's not appropriate for modern altitude harness. But here two feet on the dunes, it's great. When I get into a harness this one I get in through the back and I put my foot through the leg loop, shimmy it up and put my arms out here. Then I have my hang strap back here to hold me. I tighten them up to where they're comfortable, they're not dangling like this, and they're about right here. They ride here much like a parachute harness would. And your shoulder needs to be such that the harness doesn't do this on you when you're flying."