by Rick Masters » Fri Jun 08, 2012 7:09 pm
Like many posters here, I have observed tandem flying from the earliest days. When tandem hang gliding began, it was a joyous sharing experience between the pilot and a close friend, male or female. The pilot had extreme PERSONAL concern for the safety of his passenger, who he knew well and cared deeply for. The double check, the triple check, was automatic. Because the pilot cared deeply about his passenger, he held an innate and overriding concern about safety. This concern was not diluted by any other interest such as MONEY.
But the entire purpose of tandem flying moved to almost pure commercialization in the 1990s to the present. The innate concern for a close friend's safety transformed into a sometimes fallible mental checklist for a professional commercial endeavor. The unnecessary endorsement of the national organizations for the myth of tandem "in$truction" has been a strong element in the transformation of the sport of free flight into a commercial business where pilots often made hundreds of dollars for every flight. Worse, the influence of too much MONEY led the USHGA toward other promises of income -- and we ended up selling the USHGA to the paragliding business. Worse, we hang glider pilots effectively lost our representative organization.
Let's call a spade a spade. Tandem commercial hang gliding helped lead to the destruction of the national hang gliding organizations worldwide which were subsequently taken over by paragliding interests. MONEY talks. The only way to shut MONEY up -- and we could do it anytime with a simple vote -- is to BAN COMMERCIAL TANDEM OPERATIONS in both sports.
I won't miss it. And you won't believe how fast things will change when we get rid of it.
Also, I agree entirely with ALL of Joe's observations. Most pilots, it seems to me, have lost sight of what hang gliding really is.