SOARING through the air 10,000 ft above the ground, a hang-glider is the perfect vehicle – light, silent and open to the elements.

"It's just a fantastic feeling up there – you're free and you haven't got motors around," self-confessed obsessed hang-glider Graeme Garlick said.

"When you've got a choice of mowing the lawn on a Saturday or going flying, guess which comes first every time?"

Hang-gliders can legally fly up to 10,000 ft in Australia but for most areas around Sydney the restrictive height is 4000 ft.

With a few simple rules like keeping away from clouds, hang-gliding is the cheapest air sport.

A new hang glider will set you back between $3000 and $5000, or secondhand between $1500 and $2000.

Blacktown-based Blue Mountains Hang-Gliding Club has up to 50 members during summer, who usually fly at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains or Stanwell Park near Wollongong—"Any-where the wind takes us."

At Kareela Reserve, Doonside, last week, Wayne Evans, 28, of Blaxland said: "If we could get off here, we would."

While hang-gliding is thought to be a dangerous sport, safety has significantly improved in the past few years.

Despite the "cowboys" as Evans calls them, there is only a 1 per cent equipment failure rate and no-one was killed in Australia last year.

Each glider has an emergency parachute and the sport is heavily regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority and the Australian Hang-Gliding Federation.

"It's tested to destruction—it's an aeroplane, it's not a kite," Mr Evans said.

There are about 3000 participants throughout Australia and that number is growing.

Mr Garlick, 38, of Wilmott said: "This is flying at its purist—it's basically you against the wind."

There are two styles of flying: ridge riding (catching the winds over mountains and hills) and thermal flying (following the dark patches of earth and roads which release hot air).