Joe Bostik in the Oz report
The Wills Wing Sport helped me to climb to the top of the World ranking also, in 1987. I won the French Nationals and got 2nd place at the Preworlds in Fiesch , Switzerland . Never in my whole soaring experience I had more fun than when I flew the Wills Wing Sport 167 European (7075 frame).
Biggest advantage was the ease of handling. It was not a racing glider, but it was fun. And fun is what one has to have to win contests. Or continue hang gliding. It was safer to land, that is why I picked it to begin with.
These days everybody needs to have the best equipment. But the best equipment is hard to fly, it is unforgiving. It takes a season to grow into it, and that is about the time to get a better glider.
Consider a top hang glider pilot returning to the sport after 10 years. It will take him at least 6 month to feel totally comfortable to fly contests. Now you put a new guy on a top of the line hang glider. At first he will be blown away by the performance and then he will be very upset when he can not thermal with everybody.
So he switches to the next manufacturer. He tries them all. And tries and tries and tries. Keeps tuning and tuning. Talks numbers and glides. In the mean time there are a lot of pilots who fly only the intermediate gliders. They all walk around with smiles and stories to tell. And hope to get a high performance glider some day. Why are we this way?
Thought I'd just try to explain... well peer-pressure, glider envy (yes, when you don't getthat crinkly noise anymore you start looking around), and maybe even the odd glide you go on and find you don't stay up?
I personally don't want 100% convenience (otherwise I'd probably fly a paraglider ;-) and I'll trade some for performance. But the glider has to be easy to take off, easy to land, too. And there seem to be few manufacturers taking this market seriously.
8:51:25 AM 
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