A small afterthought...as the story above took place in the 80s, it's fairly certain that the downtubes were round and not faired/streamlined. I'd guess that anyone who has ever succeeded in hanging on to their control frame after launching unhooked also had round tubes. My point? I haven't tried it, but I bet it's incredibly hard to hang on to the faired downtubes of a Talon, Sport 2, U2, etc. (And obviously I don't intend to ever have reason to!)I launched unhooked in the early 80's off of Vedder Mtn. Which has a 2600ft. Cliff launch. Like most unhooked launches, I was previously hooked in and preflighted and then made the mistake of unhooking to attend to other distracting tasks.
Once I was airbone (unhooked), my first reaction was to let go but being a cliff launch and looking at the tops of the pine trees I quickly passed on that idea. I froze in terror looking up at my glider while my hands were jammed into the corners of the control bar as the mountain quickly dropped away below me.
I knew I couldn't hang on for long as the glider was in a screaming dive due to all my weight being ahead of the CG, so with all my strength I pulled myself up and stood inside the control bar. My steep dive path would result in my crashing on the side of the mountain so I pushed out the base bar with my feet, which in turn put me into a sharp climb and a forth coming stall! I then flung my hips and chest through the front of the A frame and was hanging off the glider with my feet and hands behind me. This felt very unnerving as I was worried my flat soled runners would slip off the base bar leaving me to dangle with my arms behind holding onto the uprights.
I quickly learned how to control the pitch by sticking my ass out the back of the control frame to slow down or thrusting my pelvis forward to increase speed. I'm sure I was yelling "s***!" When I was hanging my ass out and yelling "f***!" When I had to thrust my pelvis to increase my speed!
So there I was crouched inside the A frame, somewhat in command, gliding out to the valley using my f***/s*** method of control. Heart rate is down to double of norm. I see my hang strap airborne behind me so I come up with this great idea of reaching down for the carabineer and hooking back in! As soon as I take my grip off of one downtube to grab the biner, the wind on my chest blows me sideways like a barn door! I'm now hanging off the glider with one arm and one foot! Also this puts the glider into a turn back into the mountain. My heart rate quadruples as I'm no longer heading out towards the valley...
I bicycle turn the glider so it is pointing in the right direction and I'm back to my f***/s*** method of pitch control. I try one last time to hook back in but the barn door results are the same so I'm content to just be alive and head out for tera firma. Now some of you readers must be saying "throw your chute" but back in the early days of hang gliding, it was customary to spend your money on the more important vario than a chute so I didn't have that survival option.
Coming into crash land, I was faced with a peculiar problem. How do I slow down the glider and flair if I'm not connected to the glider? Just seconds before impact, I leaped off the glider and the strangest thing happened. The last thing to leave the glider was my feet on the basetube which resulted in an aggressive forward motion on the basebar. As I was doing a parachute roll on the ground I watched my glider do a perfect flaired landing not even bending a downtube!
I knew that if I didn't get right back on the horse so to speak, I would never fly again, so later that day I went back up and launched my glider, this time making sure I was hooked in!
Ever since that death defying day, I always view my glider and my harness as one piece of equipment. After I build and preflight my glider, I hook in the harness and only unhook the harness when it is time to break down.
If you see any pilot walking around launch with their harness on and a carabineer in their hand, smack them on the left side of head and yell "f***", then hit them on the right side and yell "s***" when they ask "what did you do that for?" Tell them it was an instant message from me!
Scott