This is so freaking incredibly COOL! All that damage done by one lousy little four and a quarter page draft letter that I never even wanted to send. Can you imagine what would happen if TWO people wrote draft letters? How's that Arlo Guthrie song go?
People who've got nothing to hide don't behave that way. They're scared. This is gonna be fun.
Sorry I haven't been able to participate in this before now but I've been busy over at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TUGS/cutting Tracy Tillman's tiny little balls off and shoving them down his f***ing throat - something I've REALLY wanted to do for a VERY long time. And you gotta take these opportunities when they present themselves.
Warren,
I wish I could but I believe I'm censored more places than anyone else here!
Let's find out.
Capitol Hang Glider Association (Cragin Shelton)
Skysailingtowing (Peter Birren)
HangGliding.org (Jack)
Paragliding Forum (Steve Uzochukwu)
Oz Report (Davis, with collaboration from Sam Kellner)
Houston Hang Gliding & Paragliding Association (popular demand)
And currently I've got a REAL good shot at:
TUGS (Jim Gaar)
So watchya got - PUNK?
Straub sells a particular style of tow release different than that being discussed when the discussion was abruptly censored.
Davis and Highland Aerosports - the alma mater of Jim Rooney, his equally misshapen clone - sell the same dangerous junk that was a big factor in this scooter towing negligent homicide that Davis and Jim wanna make sure nobody learns anything from.
Pudpud is Mike Lake - one on a rather short list of my heroes in this idiot sport and an important historical figure. He was there in the thick of the core of the birth of the branch of modern towing that got things mostly right. He invented the first bridle/release system that allowed towing with an increasing tow angle (a la stationary winch, for example) without interference with the basetube. It was the predecessor to the Koch two stage.
And to see scum like Davis and Jim treat somebody like that like that...
Bob,
Dennis Pagen...
I think I can make a pretty good case that Donnell Hewett's Skyting "theory" of towing is the biggest disaster ever to hit aviation - and I don't mean just within hang gliding.
Towing Aloft isn't far behind. There's some really good stuff in there that I'd have at least had a real hard time figuring out on my own but maybe the bulk of it is unbelievably stupid ROT. And if you wanna kill as many people as possible give them rot but mix in a lot of good stuff to put them off guard.
Third, I'm not an expert in towing, but I consulted someone who knows the topic pretty well. His comment was that while it might be good for USHPA to make recommendations in this area, there is still plenty of room for innovation. For that reason, he doesn't think USHPA should mandate any kind of obligatory system that would stifle that innovation - whether Mr. Eareckson's or any other. I have very little background in towing, so I'm just passing this perspective on for your general consideration.
Any chance of me finding out who this idiot is? This sounds a lot like Donnell's 1980/01 letter to the editor opposing the requirement that gliders meet airworthiness standards before being allowed in competition.
http://kitestrings.prophpbb.com/post29.html#p29(Ask George Worthington how that approach tends to work out in the short run.)
We've seen how tow equipment "innovation" with no ground rules works out - most recently eighteen days ago.
Did you ask this idiot to catalog all of the "innovation" that this USHPA No-Ground-Rules Utopia has been producing in the past three decades?
As far as what's in use on any significant scale in the US...
What's happed in aerotowing tow equipment since the Dragonfly started circulating in 1991 and we had a cable with a two dollar panic snap on one end and a loop on the other?
Oh yeah, we replaced the two dollar panic snap with a seventy-five dollar spinnaker shackle so's we could snag the weak link and kill Robin.
And we put a brake lever where the loop used to be and moved the bottom end from the basetube to the downtube so we could kill Rob Richardson and Mike Haas and JUST MISS killing Davis - lose/lose/lose.
Then we decided that we really didn't need a two point release anyway and put a bent pin inside a little chunk of aluminum tubing and tied it to a shoulder and half killed Holly Korzilius and fully killed Steve Elliott.
In surface towing we innovated the three-ring release in 1982. Well, we really didn't innovate it - we ripped it off from Bill Booth who innovated it for skydiving in the Seventies. And then we figured out ways to modify and rig it to make it not work when we wanted it to - and kill Richard Graham, Debbie Young, and Frank Sauber - and work when we didn't - and kill Brad Anderson and Eric Aasletten.
And, of course, everybody knows that a single loop of 130 pound Greenspot is the PREFECT weak link for ALL gliders so no improvement on that need be even considered.
Yeah, it's great "for USHPA to make recommendations in this area". Like this:
The United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, Inc.
Standard Operating Procedure
12. Rating System
02. Pilot Proficiency System
10. Hang Gliding Aerotow Ratings
-B. Aero Vehicle Requirements
05. The weak link at the tow plane end of the towline should break with a towline tension approximately 100 lbs. greater than the glider end.
"SHOULD". Just a "recommendation". That way a**hole tug drivers can and do use weak links lighter than the ones on tandem and solo gliders and, since there's no minimum...
The weak link at the glider end must have a breaking strength that will break before the towline tension exceeds twice the weight of the hang glider pilot and glider combination.
can and do leave them on until they disintegrate.
So everything's totally cool after Arlan Birkett and Jeremiah Thompson do a fatal two hundred foot whipstall off the end of the runway at Cushing Field.
And it's also totally cool WHEN gliders are frequently left with 250 feet of Spectra draped over the basetube - potentially at 75 feet over the fence at the end of the runway. But hey, when was the last time anybody heard about a trailing towline snagging and killing anybody?
Let freedom ring.
About the only things that don't totally suck in hang gliding are the gliders themselves. And the gliders themselves stopped totally sucking the instant they were - for all intents and purposes - REQUIRED to meet minimum strength, stability, handling, and glide standards. Innovation within those standards has been phenomenal. The top competition gliders are things of stunning beauty and there's been a convergence of evolution so that they all are built, look, perform, and handle pretty much the same and are probably near the peak of what physics and technology will allow.
Yeah, on rare occasions in violent air they tumble. But there's probably not much we can do about that without designing something that stops being a hang glider. We accept that risk and deal with it the way paraglider people accept collapses and deal with them.
But nobody's complaining about how crappy the gliders are and clamoring for something better.
Release systems... No standards; no requirements; no innovation; no evolution; failure accepted as normal, cost of doing business, "occupational hazard"; regularly scheduled kills; everybody's scared sh*tless of them...
And a nonstop thirty year cry for something better.
And the market flooded with total crap with no performance or reliability - just the claim of excellence by the commercial interests.
And a national organization made up of those commercial interest and thus heavily invested in making sure that none of the crap they sell is subjected to any minimum performance and reliability standards.
We need to consider getting an injunction against this guy communicating with the FAA on this subject.
They want to get an injunction to prevent a private citizen from communicating with a government agency? What a bunch of cowardly Nazi thugs.
We can't force Tad to work within the USHPA framework...
I TRIED LIKE HELL to work within the USHPA framework starting on 2008/10/07 when the Towing Committee Chairman asked for my involvement but never followed through when responded. But, then again, Gregg never follows through on anything.
I spent a month and a half revising the SOPs and Guidelines from when Gregg asked me to on 2009/02/11 and the BOD meeting in Colorado Springs at the end of March. I submitted tweaked revision after tweaked revision requesting comments. I hung by the computer and telephone that whole weekend to field questions. None of you useless illiterate motherf***ers even bothered to skim it.
None of you useless illiterate motherf***ers even bothered to contact me for a month after the meeting and tell me that none of you useless illiterate motherf***ers even bothered to skim it.
It wasn't until 05/09 that I asked y'all to take a look at the letter I was thinking of sending to the FAA. I immediately got this letter from one of your top Regional Director / Towing Committee sh**heads:
http://kitestrings.prophpbb.com/post95.html#p95After y'all went berserk for a day I said OK, I won't send it as long as you discuss the issues with me. The instant the heat was off was the instant your attention spans bit the dust and you went back to chasing squirrels. So by the end of October when I hadn't had a single solitary peep I sent the f***ing letter and posted it online.
...but we can make it unpleasant and expensive for him if he chooses to makes derogatory and false statements about USHPA to the FAA he can't back up.
Yeah a**hole? All I gotta do is copy and paste from thirty years of your own stupid magazine archives. You bet your a** I can back it up. I can cite names, dates, and causes of death of the top of my head with my eyes closed. Don't even think about trying to challenge me.
And my life sucks so much as things are now that you probably wouldn't have a helluva lot of luck trying to make it worse.
If I understand the previous comments, his sending USHPA a draft letter is an indication of willingness to engage in some dialogue before going to the FAA.
But you never did and, after Matt got me to waste a couple of weeks at Lookout at the end of May / beginning of June on the pretense that he was interested in participating in getting some safe standards on the books, you never will. Matt's not the solution - he's the problem. And he's USHGA. So y'all can go f*** yourselves. Y'all are EXTREMELY legally vulnerable if a legal team gets coached by someone who really knows what he's talking about and knows where all the skeletons are buried.
Aside from the details of this particular incident, it was interesting for me to see how the Board "circled the wagons" and how several Directors immediately began suggesting that USHPA should spend our member's money on lawyers to attack Tad.
And never once did anybody even look at a single sentence of the revisions and say "I'm not sure this is a good idea because..." which was all I ever wanted. And they were - and are - solid and bulletproof. And if anybody reads them he would see that, had they been implemented, Shane Smith would still be paying for USHGA membership for many years to come. And I would too. But hey, plenty more where we came from.
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