Once you fly for several hours with a fully adjustable head support, you'll never want to be without one again. The photos below show details of my set up.

The arrangement I've flown with for 8 years.

I can even rest my head when it's turned 90 degrees to either side.

Great for when you're thermalling.

Each end of the line ends just inside the helmet with a knot. Getting the placement of the holes just right that the pink perlon (4 mm) goes through is the only thing that you really want to take your time on.

With the holes too high on the helmet the lines will try to pull the front of the helmet up and off your head when you raise your head while it's fully supported.

With the holes too low on the helmet, the lines will try to pull the back of the helmet up and the front over your eyes when you lower your head.

See more details on how to set this up below.

I used to have a pulley where you now see a black ring. But the pulley would squeak periodically and drive me nuts every time I'd move my head. The pulley would also on occasion snag and tangle up in the loose, #2 weak link and prevent me from being able to move my head from side to side.

The simple, black ring works better. Plus, the extra friction holds your head in place better when you don't want it to move.

As you can see, I have 2 weak links. They are both your standard kite string. They are there to keep the 800 lb+ test pink perlon from snapping my neck in case of a hard landing, crash or tumble and break.

If the tight weak link breaks in the air, the second one takes over. If they both happen to break, which is very rare even in strong air, I'm still able to loosen the line from the jam cleat, pull the helmet line over to in front of my eyes and replace the weak links while still flying.

Just make sure your adjustment line is long enough to do this. Practice while hanging in the garage.

Not much to say here. Keep it simple.

Just make sure that this loop and ring are on the same side as your jam cleat before you launch.

You'll want to make sure that the angle you mount it on your harness matches the angle of the line going up to your carabiner. If it doesn't it will tend to torque and twist the jam cleat when the line is under the load from your head.

Also make sure to get a jam cleat that has the little bridge that holds the line against the teeth of the cleat before allowing the line to exit.

If the cleat doesn't have this, the line will pop out of the cleat the second it's loaded up.

This line is also 4 mm but is softer so that the jam cleat can grab it better than the stiffer perlon. Make sure this line is non-stretch as well.

Below you can read more of the details as they appeared in the Oz Report.

"Davis:

I've flown with a head "bungie" for about 8 years now and can't imagine flying without it. Only it's not a bungy. When I tried a true bungie I found that in order to get even close to enough head support, the tension nearly strangled me.

That's when I came up with the idea to make an easily adjustable in flight head support. So I mounted a black, hard plastic jam cleat (from a sailing supplies store) on my hip oriented lengthwise towards my caribiner, ran some small diameter perlon through the jam cleat, up through the carabiner (or small ring on the carabiner), then down to a baby biner at the other end of the line.

From my helmet I have a length of perlon of similar sized running from one ear area to the other with a small pulley (or ring) on it. On the pulley I have a weak link of kite string, two actually, which then I clip to the baby biner and line that runs from the jam cleat through my main carabiner on my harness. I clip into this weak leak when I do my hang check.

The system is really simple, inexpensive and provides a few things that bungies or tensioners can't. With the jam cleat on my hip I can adjust within half an inch of just where I want my head to be totally supported. It's simply a matter of touching my hip, grabbing the line coming out of the jam cleat, raising my head a couple of inches, adjusting the line length then resting my head again, all within just a few seconds. When I'm on glide I can lower where my head rests, or raise the setting if I want to fly a bit more head up if I'm thermalling and looking at the clouds.

The bridle and pulley (or even just a ring) on the back of my helmet allows me to turn my head from side to side, nearly 180 degrees, and while my head is STILL fully supported. This is particularly nice when thermalling, especially in the light stuff, as I can set my head on it's side towards the direction of my 360 and thermal like I have my head resting on a pillow. This has a cascade effect as it allows me to totally relax my neck, shoulders, back, etc. This leads to much more effective thermalling in the light stuff as I am hanging like a true sack of potatos in my harness.

The weak link is a precaution in case I pound a landing, tumble and break or for any other situation that I haven't thought of where the line might get caught. By raising my head high and coming down strongly, I can break the weak link. Now that I have fine tuned the weak link strength, I can still break it without too much trouble yet virtually never have it break in flight. This continues to amaze me as I have had the device under tension in some pretty radical air.

The weak link reduces the hanging myself factor if any of the line gets caught on something, like in a tumble, break and deploy situation. I'm thinking of making a weak link on the helmet line as well. I have even accidentally broken the weak link in the air, when the link was too weak in the testing phase, yet was able to replace it in a few minutes and have my head support back again after only a short amount of time of mild, unintensionally aerobatics (look ma, no hands!)

But the best part of all is that I can be flying along with my head fully supported, perhaps thermalling in that 0-50 up, raise my head 3 inches and have no pulling tension on my head at all what so ever... as if I had no head support device. I can then look around then set my head back down for full support again. The best of both worlds. Having a constant pull on my head, like when I had a true bungie, drove me crazy.

The downside for those of you who want to reduce drag to a minimum is that you do have an extra line out there in the breeze but other than that this device has dramatically increased my flying stamina and enjoyment. After 4 consecutive days and some 13+ hours of flying XC in the Owens, I was able to fly 115 miles in 6 hours on the 5th day in large part because I was able to rest my poor, weary head and shoulders on my $2.50 of line and weak link.

Thought this would be useful information to a lot of those weekend warriors out there who suffer from neck and shoulder fatigue while flying."

- Andy Long