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What are the current record flights
for
 Foot Launch Flatland Long Gliding (FLFLG)? 

  • Indoor?
     
  • No-wind outdoor? 
     
  • Wind?
     
  • Wing size and description? Distinctions at this level tend to form record categories.
     
  • Description of the pilot (size, age, gender, experience, builder of the wing or not, etc.).
     
  • Description of the flatness of the land or floor used?
     
  • Altitude of the flight site? Below mean sea level? Mean sea level? Altitude above mean sea level?
     
  • Ambient air temperature?
     
  • Latitude?
     
  • Earth, Moon, Mars, Space Colony, or ___?
     
  • The idea is to get no flight propulsion from ground slope and no help from lifting gusts or thermals. The ground or floor is to be level within reason.
     
  • There is to be no stored energy in the craft besides the momentum from the pilot's own running of self and the wing. That stored energy along with the potential energy of the flight system derived from the height of the system's mass above ground level provide part of the means for getting the glide longer.
     
  • FLFLG is to distinguish itself from human-powered flying by refraining from inputting propulsion other than that obtained from the pre-takeoff running.
     
  • Human-power flight traditionally allows adding energy by pilot muscle effort after the system loses touch with the ground by driving propellers or flapping surfaces or energetic porpoising.  Such methods form other classes of flight that are interesting, fun, and challenging, but are  not part of FLFLG.

Opportunities to get a longer glide from takeoff mark to first touch-ground point?
Wing design, pilot fitness, practice, mastery practice, harnessing, drag reduction, timing, site, morphing, precision movements,  ...   The drive to glide farther while working within budget and personal parameters define a possibility space for each person. Competition with self can drive new personal records. Open game competition can drive records. Standardized categories generate a variety of records for FLFLG.

A cousin to FLFLG is FLFHF or foot launch flatland high flying where height is a target, not length of flight.

Safety is encouraged in all FLFLG and FLFLHF efforts. Keep the fun flying going by staying safe. Design of harness and wing are a big part of safety. Slapping pitch-down whacks for unsafe pilot postures can bring on life-changing injuries and even death.

One category has several long-historied specified and organized events; that category is the where the wing is the empty wing, that is, where the wing has no substance or material, only mental presence, if any. Running, skipping, hopping, hurdling, jumping, high jumping, and long jumping belong to the FLFLG and FLFHF. Some of these events are in Track & Field or Athletics or play; others are on ice where the pilot wears ice skates. Some of these events are Olympic events. Notice that the long flight of ski jumping glides are slope users and thus are distinct from FLFLG. What will be the long-jump record in Moon City? Someone has high jumped over 8.03 ft (2.45 m) with the empty wing [{   }]for a FLFHF flight.  Can that be improved by use of an unpowered carried wing?   The world record on Earth for a long jump may be Powell's 8.95 m with the empty wing and allowed tail wind. Long jumps over a set of barrels (barrel jumping) on ice in the some winter gaming places with empty wing are also part of this scene.

What can be done with non-empty wings?  Running is common ground-school action in hang gliding. However, extend that to an activity where running and launching to a long glide on flats becomes a target activity. Then consider advance the wing and harnessing of a carried wing with the focused target activity of just flatland long gliding. What are the possibilities?

Another category with its sub-events regards extant hang gliders. Pilots take their hang gliders to flatland or indoor level floors. They run their hang glider as fast as they can and then launch into a glide until they touch part of the system to the floor, either their feet, knees, wheels, tail, etc. They mark their take-off point and their first point of touching the ground or floor again. Safety is key here, as is using a wing that may not be optimized for FLFLG safety

The FAI has not yet recognized many categories of gliding or high flying while people keep setting FLFLG and FLFHF records in specified events. We often drop "FL" when no confusion occurs. FLG  and FHF.  The flatland distinguishes the flying from slope gliding, slope soaring. cliff launching, etc.     Great designing and fun can be had at your choice. It is not yet clear what next specified event in what category will become organized into to national and international competitions, but the fun and technology development can occur without such organized recognition. What specific even most interests you? There are neat windows of opportunity and innovation in FLFLG and FLFHF as well as sport human-powered flight.

Theoreticians and others are invited to study and report on theoretical limits to various FLFLG and FLFHF events under strictly faced assumptions of conditions, site conditions, etc.  Down the timeline will be cousin pilot-inputs toward gaining from winds and microlift tactics for launching from flatland to soaring in affordable craft in some settings. Meanwhile ...  

Send in your carefully described personal records and notes on these matters  to
 Lift@EnergyKiteSystems.net  for possible publication in Lift.