IS SEX POSSIBLE ON A HANG GLIDER?
EAGLES DO IT IN THE AIR, BUT CAN HUMANS?
I once saw a sketch of a design of harness where a couple were enjoying themselves in a version of the missionary position, but despite riffling through hundreds of magazines I cannot locate my original source. The harness had straps in all the right places to support the girl in her ecstasy, but the man had no footholds, so he could "assume the position", as the Americans say, and smile willingly, but it was difficult for him to actually do anything.
How did they take-off? They could not have been 'engaged' first and then launched, because he would have ended with a hernia. Further, one needs to concentrate one's mind on take-off, and he could quite easily have lost the means to stay engaged with the girl while his thoughts were on other matters...such as staying alive. Could they have launched by winch? There was no evidence that they had, and in any case a winch involves a third party and this is a private matter. So it had to be a foot-launch, and conditions had to be soarable, because nothing could be more embarrassing than to be getting on with the job and suddenly find a landing was imminent in a field or a beach, with interested spectators! And how, with that harness, could they have landed? Would you like to whizz over the ground, bare-assed and backwards at 30 mph, the apparent fate of that brave girl in the sketch?
I think terms of reference need to be written for sex in a hang glider. One needs to examine the qualities of the wing, the harness, the man, the woman, the site and the weather conditions.
Looking at the site first, it has to be in a warm climate, so Rhossili in South Wales, high, smooth lift, wide beach landing, top-landable, otherwise quite suitable, is out. You cannot rely on the weather there, and it will always be too cold. Some hills on a good summer's day in the Yorkshire Dales might work, and of course the Long Mynd, Devil's Dyke or Pandy would be suitable in summer. The problem is that warm weather is not usual in Britain, and when it is and these sites are soarable, they are crowded with pilots. One wants a bit of privacy.
On the other hand, I think Owens is out, certainly in the summer, because catching a 3,000 ft/min dust devil could, to a man not devoting the whole of his energies to flying, put him off his stroke. And what if our couple ran into the conditions that regularly break up kites and cause parachute deployments? Nervously fingering a parachute is likely to make either party wish they were somewhere else with a cup of tea instead.
Europe has some brilliant sites, Grenoble or Lachens, big enough to get lost on. Monte Carlo has much to commend it, especially the thought that a couple could enjoy the bliss of a physical affair at 3,000 feet while so many thousands below would not have the faintest idea what was happening. Perhaps it might be best on the magic lift generated at Lookout Mountain in Tennessee? But the cliffs at Hawaii could possibly be the most suitable, full of smooth easy soaring, so long as the right time is chosen. The occasional flyer who may be in the same air is likely to be so stoned out of his mind he wouldn't know what our heroic pair were up to anyway.
It goes without saying that the wing should be strong, have good handling qualities, be easily erected, capable of a smooth take-off, able to stay up for long periods of time, have high penetration, cope easily with turbulence, maintain height, and when it is all over, be capable of a landing without crashing.
These qualities are also necessary in the man.
In addition, he has to be purposeful, to be able to do two jobs at once and fail at neither, and he should not let one job interfere with the other because the consequences could be more serious than a patronising coo from his partner. He has to be a good organiser, because if he has not thought ahead then matters like the removal of clothing from some parts of the body could actually become life-threatening!
The girl, of course, must be comely, full of imagination, possess a go-for-it spirit, and have a great deal of trust in her partner. I do not think it necessary for her to be a flyer, but in certain positions it might help. A great deal of attention has to be paid to her clothing. It is a given that the climate must be warm, and her harness at takeoff must render her decent. But if she has to wear a flying suit, perhaps it could have a velcro section at the front, easily detachable from, say, the neck down to her knees and including her upper arms. Care must be taken to park this part of the garment before proceeding, to avoid subsequent embarrassment. There is an added attraction that she would be left looking as if she was wearing stockings, likely to have a positive effect on the efforts of some men. A fishnet flying suit?
The key to progress for a determined couple is, of course, harness design. Each needs a different type of harness. The old-fashioned side-by-side tandem take-off will not work; think of the problem of the man - and it must be him - moving from one harness to the other with all those straps in the way! No, we must look to one of the more modern teaching methods where both flyers are prone, the teacher with a shortened harness and dangling above the pupil. He must fly in a front-loading cocoon harness, while she should choose the old-fashioned (but well named!) hammock harness. I think they probably need a spreader-bar, so her harness lines to the hang-point are outside his.
The initial problem is the girl's; how is she to turn around? We must reject suggestions here that she shouldn't turn around at all, because we are romantics; this must be a face-to-face affair in the missionary position. But there is a more practical reason than romance. Hang gliders are steered by weight-shift, and if the girl does not turn around then the ensuing porpoise flight could put them both off and even cause a crash. It would certainly betray what they were doing to anyone else in the air, and attract an audience.
Turning the girl over is not an insurmountable problem. Twisting her shoulders should enable her to change arms at the top end of the harness, while the leg loops necessary for safety on take off and landing could have velcro fastenings that she can remove and re-fasten as she changes position. Again, to certain male imaginations, these could look like genuine old-fashioned garters, another plus point.
So they have taken off, the air is smooth and warm, no one else is around, and the girl has turned over and smiled sweetly at the man. They have parked the pertinent bit of her clothing (where? Perhaps around one of the uprights?). The man has to unzip his harness, and there he is! If he has made his preparations before hand, all he really has to worry about are his leg loops, which are liable to suspend him about six inches away from where he wants to be. Again, velcro loops may be the answer to this.
Should they remove their helmets? Purists might argue over this. One school has it that they are so far away from the ground that helmets are not necessary, and anyway, she might have long beautiful hair that is part of her sexual allure. They could strap the helmets to the base bar. Another school, perhaps with traces of the OFT (the Old Farts Tendency), is quick to write to magazines at the slightest helmet infringement, however daring or exciting the flying. Not that a photograph is going to be produced here, but should rumours get around, this is the first question the OFT will ask.
Foreplay is limited. They can talk to each other, whisper and giggle, and in the restricted position they are in certain moves are possible. However concerned he is about her pleasure, oral sex is probably out, even if he is a contortionist. After all, they are not lying on a mattress; one wrong move could have him over the edge with a 3,000 foot journey and the rest of his short life to regret his actions. And how would it leave her? Alone at 3,000 feet, on her back, and dishabille...what could she say later? The man could not don a personal parachute in his attempts to be more imaginative, because, frankly, the girl might suspect he was not sincere in his intentions and intended to bale out halfway through.
Finally, contraception. It is a matter that has to be raised. I think we must be firm about this, and put the responsibility on her. She should either have taken precautions before hand, or have a few morning-after pills readily available. The idea that he should fiddle around with the wrapping on a rubber contraceptive in that situation is asking too much, even for a New Man. And how many New Men fly hang gliders?
If all the precautions are taken you can see that it is indeed possible to make love in a hang glider, and aerial manoeuvres by the pilot, so long as they are not too radical, can add to the thrills. What is more, a simple reversal of the process of coupling can leave the pair able to land later without anyone knowing what they have been up to.
What about the other aircraft of the New Aviation? On a trike, of course, it is a simple matter, but the terms of reference change. The natural position on a two-seater trike is that the pilot sits between the legs of the passenger, but they both start off facing the same way. If a trike is to be used for aerial dalliance, one disadvantage is the noise, and the normal necessity for full-face helmets. There are good intercom systems, and therefore a chance for the verbal encouragement that always makes sex richer, but one will have to put up with a compressed tinny quality to the groans and gasps. There are advantages to trikes, though, in that one can take off and find an empty piece of sky and just get on with it. Given a bit of warmth, sex in a trike is less weather-dependent than sex in a hang glider.
The trike must be capable of being flown from the rear seat, so it needs a hand throttle, a standard fitting, but also instructor's bars, which are a special item. One would hope that instructors do not try to use their influence to ensure they have a monopoly of such bars; being reduced to controlling a trike from the back by hanging on to the rear rigging can be dangerous. I know the French do it, but as Scott Fitzgerald said about the rich, they are different from you and me, and I think even the French would baulk at using the back rigging during sexual intercourse.
In sex-by-trike, the girl has to be a pilot, and it is not necessary for her partner to be able to fly, though he does need great nerve as well as strength of purpose. All the suggestions about clothing we discussed for hang gliders, especially the velcro-front of her flying suit, are necessary. But there comes a point, a key point, when the man has to unclip his safety waist strap and turn 180 degrees to face his lady. Unless she has made great efforts, and the air is smooth, his mind is going to be so far away from the job in hand that nothing will be possible until he has recovered his equilibrum. He should then be in a position ready for a call to action, kneeling on his seat with his feet on the passenger ground-steering bars, and his hands holding the seat on either side of her. She may move her feet to rest on the base of the control bar, and one variation is to fix 'shoes' there so she can steer by foot, leaving her hands free for other things. On the other hand, if she gets excited (as she should!) she might kick out and the man could find himself in a series of whooping stalls, liable to lose his stroke....if not his life.
Should the man ensure his safety by having a strap velcroed to one leg, so that if he did fall out the strap would prevent him falling to the ground? If the girl has a mischievous sense of humour and some of the instincts of a black widow spider, she might feel inclined to throw the trike around a bit at her climax, knowing that even if the man did fall out he would be safe. But faced with a choice of being flown back to my airfield dangling half naked by one leg over the side of my trike, and the mercifully quick end of a thousand foot fall, I believe I would choose the latter.
From then on, once the man's mind and body have responded the situation, sex on a trike should be a doddle. Like hang gliding it can be enhanced by shallow or steep 360 degree turns and even the odd stall or two. I must caution that however exciting the climax, aerial loops are probably out. Too much wear and tear on the man. I know Geoff Ball can do six loops in a trike with a passenger, but I bet he's never done it like this.
Finally, paragliders. Thinking about them, especially the growth of two-seaters, they were almost built for sex, and this comment does not flow from the much greater number of young women who have taken up paragliding. A paraglider pilot's wings do not go too fast, their harnesses are not too complicated, they can be carried to remote parts of the world easily, and the position of both flyers is in tandem, one behind the other. The harness straps would be considered, in some quarters, rather exciting, and the wholesale removal of the front of a garment that purists consider necessary in sex in a hang glider is not necessary here. All the front passenger has to do is find some simple method of reversing the harness in the air, and she is face to face with her partner. This works whether or not the paraglider is powered.
Will aerial sex happen in the New Aviation? I cannot believe it has not happened already in paragliders, especially in countries like France, Italy and Switzerland, where they have agile and lively imaginations. After all, what dangers does aerial sex have to a tough young woman like Francoise Mocellin who walks along the top sail of a hang glider at 6,000 feet...and then goes off to learn how to parachute? I don't think it has yet happened on a trike or a hang glider, but it will, soon.
In the constant competition with Mainstream Aviation, sex in the New Aviation is highly likely to give a great deal more pleasure than current attempts at the Mile-High club, with scrambled manoeuvres in the toilet of a Jumbo.
The only precaution I would say to anyone trying sex and the New Aviation, don't fake it. You won't need a barograph, and the FAI will only take an appalled dis-interest in the feat. But if you say you did, and you didn't, the tabloids will get you in the end. Imagine them coping with this claim; it is like visualising piranha fish in a feeding frenzy. Poisonous Butterflies and sex as well! So before you make a claim, think of the damage you will do to hang gliding's reputation...and make sure you are telling the truth!
I hope you survive the experience.
Brian Milton
© Copyright Brian Milton 1995
