Drogue Chute
A harness mounted Drogue Chute, manufactured in the USA, designed to increase drag and reduce glide ratio for landings. A great accessory for XC flights, as drogue chutes can help you land in smaller areas, or land shorter in a field to avoid turbulence from trees.
Read more about Drogue Chutes below, and if you have ay questions please contact us.
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Also called a “drag chute”, used for landing your hang glider in a tight spot. Drogue Chutes can make a great safety accessory, and especially useful for cross country and competition flying.
Drogue Chutes reduce the glide ratio of a glider so therefore can assist landings in many ways:
- Allows you to set up your approach much higher, and avoid obstacles in the approach path
- Helps to have more accurate target landings due to the steeper glide angle and shorter distance to travel
- If you end up high after turning onto final, a drogue chute allows you to shorten you final glide due to the ability to fly faster
- Drag created from the drogue allows you slow to landing speed more quickly after you round out. Which could help with flare timing.
Drogue Chutes can be such an asset for flying. I like to use mine to help land in a tighter area when there's little landing options around. I also find it really helps to keep landings shorter, so even if I'm landing in a large field, it keeps you out of any lee-side turbulance on the far end of the paddock. Not to mention saving a long walk back to the retrieve vehicle with a heavy glider.
Using a drogue chute is very simple and easy. There's just a few things to know before you start using one; be sure you read through the Manual and Safety Considerations before you use your drogue. And practice using your drogue in a large LZ until you become comfortable.
I've seen a number of pilots, mostly europeans (!), that give drogue chutes a bad name as you see them pop out the drogue chute, then proceed to whack? in!! The fact is, that these guys would be whacking in, with or without the drouge chute, as they need to get some re-training or stop flying gliders beyond their ability. While, I think drogue chutes help flare timing slightly, they should really only be used for getting a steep final glide into a tight spot.
