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Kimmeridge Khmer Rouge
Kimmeridge is a semi-coastal site that combines sea breeze effects with thermals from the extensive farmland and patches of forest between the hill and the sea. Most of my paragliding training, in 2000, was carried out there.
The club site guide is essential reading, especially if you fly a hang glider there.
1970s
These photos by Roly, sailmaker for Birdman Sports in Wiltshire, were taken in early 1979.
Incidentally, although it might look as though he used the flat-rigged hang glider as a launch trampoline, I am sure that is an optical illusion!
Peter T’s Hiway Superscorpion partly obscures Roly’s Birdman Cherokee.
Peter Robinson started hang gliding in 1975. I recall soaring the Kimmeridge in my Skyhook IIIA standard Rogallo and Peter, in a white Hiway standard, was always a little higher than I was. He became the area distributor for Birdman and I recall him flying a Solar Wings Storm at Weymouth white horse in 1980 (when I was flying a Cherokee). Peter subsequently became a top paraglider pilot before transitioning to sailplanes.
See also Birdman and Solar Wings of Wiltshire, England and the Roly Lewis-Evans, sail maker, related topics menu.
New century
This new century keeps bringing you down
All the places you have been
— from the lyrics of Supreme by Robbie Williams, 2000
Hang gliders: Airwave 166 Magic 4, Aeros Discus 148, and Airborne 154 Sting 3
Harnesses: Solar Wings Edge 2 and Aeros Myth 2
In-flight camera: Ricoh FF-9 compact 35mm film
That’s Gary Dear in his Airwave Magic 3 hang glider dodging slower-flying paragliders in 2001 or 2002. (See Paragliding.)
This photo was in August, 2005. The wing is an Aeros Discus 148.
The photos of a black and white Airborne 154 Sting 3, taken on a light sea breeze day at Kimmeridge in June 2010, are of poor quality. I include them because hang gliding is a rare occurrence at this once popular site. Indeed, access and parking is so problematic there that, by 2015, it is not used much even by paragliders. (Ringstead serves the same wind direction — south west — and it has a public car park on the top of the hill.)
Notice the people walking along the path behind the stone wall. At this height in a paraglider, you can wave and even say a few words to them. In a hang glider, you are worrying about staying high enough to reach a landing field if you encounter sinking air.
In the photo taken near the south end of the ridge (the Kingston end) the ridge on the right is at a right-angle to the main ridge, which runs parallel to the fence and style just visible at lower left.
The Clubman, an easy-handling double surface wing, was originally made by Southdown Sailwings, but production was taken over by Avian.
Here, long time sail-maker Roly Lewis-Evans is on the front wires for Gary Dear’s hang check in October 2021. The mountain-biker in the blue helmet is Arthur from the USA, who has flown paramotors in Utah and was at this time studying at Bournemouth University, just a few miles from Kimmeridge.
Hang Gliding History 