Blessings of the Free Market ... meet Hang GlidingWe live in a time of choices in hang gliding.
If you want a paid membership with ratings and a magazine, you've got USHPA.
If you want a free membership with ratings and a forum, you've got the U.S. Hawks.
If you want a free rating without any effort at all, you've got USHGRS.*
If you want a free forum without ratings, you've got the Oz Forum or Jack's living room.And that doesn't even consider all the services offered by local clubs!
The coolest thing is that you don't have to choose any one over all the others. You can have ratings with USHGRS, U.S. Hawks, and USHPA. You can get USHPA's magazine and still participate in forums on ushawks.org, ozforum.com, and hanggliding.org. It's very cool!! That's the beauty of the free market.
One of the few threats to this new freedom comes from those who want to suppress this information. Of course Jack Axaopoulos (sg) who runs hanggliding.org is at the front of that list. Jack is so desperate to keep a lid on these choices that he
banned Joe Faust for simply posting about USHGRS.
* Footnote to my comment about "effortless" USHGRS ratings:
It's important to separate ratings from skills. Skills are hard won by one's own considerable effort. Ratings are just someone else's assessment of a person's skills. Skills will normally take time, effort, and sometimes money. Ratings, on the other hand, can be easy and convenient (USHGRS way).or a costly and annoying pain in the neck (often USHPA's way). My comment here was intended to say that the USHGRS rating system itself is about as easy as it can be ... even effortless. That makes no statement about what it takes to get those skills - which is usually a good bit more than effortless!