Almost as much as we’re looking forward to the video. We hope to release our new quad design in the coming months. In order to capture these shots, I used a prototype fpv drone that I’ve been developing with my friend Zach Carrizales. Here’s what the YouTube description says:įrom loop de loops to spins, Ian Brubaker fearlessly defies gravity in his hang glider with an fpv drone several feet away. For the video we’re about to see, he’s flying a new prototype quad. In fact, he’s only looked ahead – figuring out the next challenge or build. Basically he put in 60 dedicated hours on a simulator, made the transition, and hasn’t looked back. What’s amazing (and should give some of us hope) is that Nikolay only started flying in February 2020. We’ve seen a number of ace vids from him ( here’s the last one we wrote about), and there’s no denying his skill behind the sticks. But wow, you’d sure want a good FPV pilot as your wingman. But what if you could actually follow them through the sky with a First-Person-View drone? In theory, you’d wind up with a pretty dope video. We didn’t hit a pole.)Īnyway, those pilots generally record their own flights with action cams. (By the way, I did actually try a tandem flight using a ground-based towing system a couple of decades later. Well, maybe not quite like that, but with such skill that they make loops and spirals and dives look simply easy. Experienced hang-gliding pilots who can maneuver their kites like they’re piloting a fighter jet. You may well have seen some of this on YouTube already. But I was in very rough shape and blame that incident for occasional back problems that have dogged me sporadically ever since. Martin set the world record for straight distance after he was able to fly 764 kilometers or 475 miles in Zapata, Texas. It absorbed some of the shock, bending completely out of shape. I landed upside-down on my back, directly on that triangular bar used for controlling the kite. And so straight down I went, some 30-40 feet. You don’t flutter when you fall with a hang glider you just fall.

At the last second, I pulled my legs out of the prone harness and tried to kick the pole and glance off it, thinking I could somehow redirect my flight. I became fixated on the target and – though I tried to turn away – kept heading directly for it. To make a long story short, I launched and was somehow soon heading directly for a pole that held lights for night skiing. Most were short hops, but on an exceedingly windy day we made the decision that I could launch from a high hill used for downhill skiing. When I was a teenager, a poster popped up in my high school. Because this involves hang gliders, I thought I’d give you a little backstory.

Hang glider flight