Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/03/owen-morse-sets-hang-gliding-w.html
“This flight was a dream come true for me. For six years I’ve been chasing the out-and-back world record, and this year, all the pieces of the puzzle finally came together beautifully.” — Owen Morse, hang glider pilot
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Hope they call it Owen’s Valley now.
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222 miles is not a distance record. Thats only 357km.
This is a record attempt, trying to break 764km:
That’s a different record, total distance versus out and back. There are a lot of records in that range and I’m not sure which one this is because it isn’t on the list yet. https://www.fai.org/page/civl-records
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Owen, you can take your finger off the app now.
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Wow, that’s a long flight. I’d like to do that, without all the “training” and “practice” and “skill acquisition” of course
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There are multiple world record categories - open distance, triangle distance, triangle speed, out and return distance and out and return speed are the primary records. You can see them all at https://www.fai.org/page/civl-records. The one you are referring to is the open distance record which is held by Dustin Martin, not Jonny Durand.
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Yes yes yes. There’s a toggle to view the stats but I didn’t even notice it while I was following the squiggly line. The GPS is a little off on the landing spot (showing him up in the air), but per the video he absolutely nailed that too.
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I maybe understood half of that. It’s probably the same as if I was describing with some detail a long rock climb and the reader was just an average joe.
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This was an unfortunate artefact on the post when I opened it.
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Thanks for the link, and welcome to boing boing!
I couldn’t tell how long Owen’s flight lasted. Is that recorded somewhere and I’m just missing it? I’m really curious how long he was up in the air.
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Much respect, that’s a hell of a flight! Nice to see it done with a Wills Wing, too; I was lucky enough to see Bob flying one of his early Rogallo wings at a BHGA (British Hang Gliding Association) competition at Mere, in South Wiltshire, England, in the early 70’s,
Hang gliding and paragliding have fascinated me since then, but I’ve never had a opportunity to fly, sadly.
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Most impressively, he accomplished this without a T.V. or sofa.
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Yeah, but I wish he’d thought of Depends. 
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I mean, forgetting the risk of the flight itself, if he had to ditch for some reason-- being in the backwoods, not knowing your location, with no food, water, bivvying sack-- I just wonder what the plan is if he had to ditch. (For sure, you’ve got a Sat GPS for navigation.) If that went on the fritz, could he navigate back to his truck with no other aid?
I have photos around of Rogallo wings flying at devils dyke outside Brighton. My family were on holiday in the UK in 75 and my dad worked for Steve Hunt at Highway Hang Gliders for a while. Got to meet a few crazy people around that time.
I recently got in to paragliding in Australia and I found the training hill stuff to be pretty awful. Paragliders are hard to get off the ground because they have less ground effect, then when lugging them to the top again, they are just a mess of strings and sail cloth. But they are fantastic to fly off proper hills though, and very safe in light winds and thermic conditions.
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Yeah, paragliders can be a bitch to launch sometimes, but they can’t be beat for ease of landing.
Gyroplanes are simple to land also, and generally safer
Uh you can parachute while attached to a paraglider. Not so from a gyroplane.
I will require strong motivation to jump from a gyroplane.
