I believe that perceptions that they weren't "real hang gliders" contributed greatly to this failure. The original SWIFT and the Mill were not successful in the market in spite of their huge leap in all three of these areas. Performance, safety, and handling continue to improve.
So, does your wing have a floating crossbar? Does that change the shape of your wing to initiate a turn? Exactly where do you draw the line? Even an ATOS, which uses weight-shift to control the spoilerons is a "high bred"? Could you please clarify? Your opinion seems to be that a wing with movable control surfaces is not really a hang glider. I've never flown it without foot launching. But, for your consideration, I'd like to point out that I've had a Millennium for about 3 years now. JR, I respect your viewpoint and I am not trying to start anything here. You could call them a foot-launchable sailplane, although I doubt you'll see many pilots launching these aircraft by foot." "I wouldn't call a Swift a hang glider, anymore than I would call a Millinneum or Carbon Dragon a hang glider. The design would have looked completely different if we didn't care about foot launch and landing. Not every pilot chooses to fly these gliders this way but mostly fly foot launch/land in my Millennium. Manfred Ruhmer regularly foot launches his Swift and there have been several Class 2 World meets where Swifts flew foot launch only. I guess there are many people who weren't around then and never heard of this glider. 20+ years ago the classification of the Swift was hotly debated in the hang gliding forums but that seems like ancient history now. In 1993 Brian Porter and Eric Beckman flew Swifts in the Owens Valley Pre-World meet and they foot launched fully loaded Swifts at 9000'MSL during the competition. On my YouTube channel (smorrismlbco)you can also find videos of the Swift prototypes being flown showing launch and landings. I fly a Millennium which is a "trainer" version of the Swift and you can see me landing it in zero wind in the video below. It's not as forgiving as a Falcon but with practice it is very foot launchable and landable. I have personally foot-launched and foot-landed Swifts over 100 times at many training hills under a wide variety of conditions and my log book shows only 1 bonk, a record that far exceeds my successful landings in flex wings. To this day, the Swift is still the highest performance hang glider ever produced (L/D 27:1 with pilot fairing) so you can imagine what the performance difference between a Swift and a 1992 flex wing looked like when we first introduced it.
It was marketed as a "Foot-Launch-Sailplane" because we wanted to stress the huge performance difference between the Swift and hang gliders of the day. You are thinking of Class 1 gliders which are weight shift only, the Swift uses aerodynamic controls although it is responsive to weight shift in pitch. It is a foot-launch/foot-land Class 2 hang glider. The Swift was designed in the late 1980's and entered production in 1992. You could call them a foot-launchable sailplane, although I doubt you'll see many pilots launching these aircraft by foot. I wouldn't call a Swift a hang glider, anymore than I would call a Millinneum or Carbon Dragon a hang glider. That's not being a splitter, just being realistic. I think it's an awesome aircraft, but I still wouldn't call it a hang glider. It's not controlled by weight-shift and the pilot's location in relation to the the wing, doesn't seem to be a determining factor on whether or not it's a hang glider. I didn't see how it was launched in the video, but it was landed on wheels.
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