RECREATION : HANG TIME : The Sport of Hang Gliding Continues to Win Converts Despite Concerns Over Safety and a Lack of Open Spaces

Myron Newman deftly hoisted the triangular-shaped hang glider to his shoulder and paused to catch his breath before trotting down the hill. A smooth breeze lifted the hang glider a few inches off the ground, giving Newman a brief, exhilarating thrill he had never expected.

Even after Newman landed at the base of the hill, the most difficult part of his first hang-gliding experience was still to come. For the 68-year-old retired switchboard operator, telling his wife he has taken up hang gliding was to be the toughest part of the adventure.

“My wife doesn’t know I’m doing this,” Newman said. “She’s very old-fashioned and I didn’t think she would understand.”

Newman, of Sherman Oaks, never imagined himself hang gliding before he signed up for a class with Windsports International, a Van Nuys hang-gliding school and store.

“The first time I saw hang gliders I thought it was completely impractical for me,” Newman said. “But when you’re taking a class, it’s not like you are just running to the end of a cliff and jumping off.”

Three times a week, a Windsports instructor teaches a group of six students the basics of hang gliding. They meet in the rolling foothills above Simi Valley, one of a dwindling number of hang-gliding areas in Southern California that have not been encroached on by housing projects or other developments.

Most students, like Newman, had never seen a hang glider up close before taking their first lesson. Others, such as Jenise Collins, 31, of Los Angeles, are getting back into the sport after a long layoff.

The last time Collins was strapped into a hang glider, 10 years ago, she crashed while landing, injuring three vertebrae and almost breaking her back. Collins couldn’t shake the memory of her accident.

“I was really afraid on my first flight in the class,” Collins said. “I waited a long time to try this again, but it was still like getting back on a horse after falling off.”

After instructor Andy Beem shows his students how to assemble a hang glider, he runs downhill alongside the student, holding one of the glider’s two steering lines. He shouts instructions throughout the brief flight as the student tries to get accustomed to dangling from a 30-foot wing.

If a student advances past the introductory lesson, tandem flights with an instructor are conducted at either Kagel Mountain in Sylmar or in the desert surrounding Palmdale. High-altitude hang-glider flights began at Kagel Mountain in the early 1970s, soon after the sport took root at Dockweiler State Beach in Venice.

Southern California is still considered one of the best places in the world for hang gliding, according to Gil Dodgen, editor of Hang Gliding magazine, a monthly publication of the U. S. Hang Gliding Assn.

“Southern California is still considered to be the mecca for hang gliding,” Dodgen said. “In the 1970s, Southern California was a place where people were always doing new and bizarre things, so hang gliding was a natural sport for the area. People from all over the world come here to fly.”

Outside of California, hang gliding was still an obscure sport when Dodgen, 38, taught himself to hang glide in 1973.

“It was a big thrill in those early days to go out on a hill and find another hang glider,” Dodgen said.

Hang gliders are far from lonely today, however, especially in Southern California. While the sport’s popularity has grown in the past 20 years, landing sites have become increasingly scarce.

In Ventura County, Windsports was forced to move from Moorpark to Simi Valley after a housing development crowded its training site.

“Hang gliders still have their share of troubles in terms of places to go,” said Joe Greblo, vice president of Windsports. “Houses are just going in everywhere.”

Windsports now holds its introductory classes in an isolated area southwest of Simi Valley. But even that site is owned by a private developer and could soon be targeted for a housing project.

“Availability of landing sites is one of the biggest problems in the sport today,” Dodgen said. “The problem is that everybody is afraid of being sued if a hang glider gets hurt on their property. There are also environmental concerns and housing projects to contend with.”

The fear of injury is well-founded. Jerry Bruning, executive director of the USHGA, says 29 hang-glider pilots have died during the past two years and that he blames many of the deaths on pilot error.

The USHGA and glider manufacturers organized in 1978 to improve safety conditions in hang gliding after a record 48 deaths were reported nationwide in 1977. In addition to advances in the manufacturing of hang gliders, flight controls were imposed by groups, such as the Sylmar Hang Gliding Assn., to regulate some of the more dangerous launch sites throughout Southern California.

The growth of hang-gliding schools in the past 10 years also has helped to improve the safety record of the sport.

“Based upon the percentage of flights compared to the number of incidents, I would say hang gliding is a safe sport,” Bruning said.

Dodgen, who has not had a mishap in more than 1,500 flights and 16 years of flying, agrees--to a point.

“It’s a high-risk sport,” he said. “How dangerous it is depends on how careful you are. You have to play the game by the rules and not take chances.”