[Rick Masters]

Actually, I think "Paraglider Collapse" is Rick Masters, an 80's-era pilot from the Owens Valley with a particular fetish about paragliders.
http://ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2046&sid=28736c7758488c672bc670fe89dac122&sid=28736c7758488c672bc670fe89dac122#p13423

Mark Forbes, the chattering numskull who acts as the Insurance Chairman of the United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, has stated that I have a "fetish" about paragliders.

fetishor fetich
[fet-ish, fee-tish]
noun
1. an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or as having magical potency.
2. any object, idea, etc., eliciting unquestioning reverence, respect, or devotion

But he clearly has it backwards. Those who fly paragliders are obviously the ones with the fetish, somehow believing that the deadly and flawed devices have some magical power to support them after the airfoil collapses - even within the Paraglider Dead Man's Curve ("PDMC). So to illustrate this, I am creating this blog to demonstrate the extent of this fetish: The unquestioning devotion by a supposed Insurance Chairman and his delusional associates of a supposed aircraft that will turn its operator into a helpless falling human without a moment's notice.

Hang gliders do not do this. Airfoils are important to real pilots. Real pilots like their aircraft to maintain the shape of their airfoils from takeoff, in flight and at landing. There are several reasons for this that range beyond the aesthetic, but why bore you with details when a picture is worth a thousand words? So instead of posting photos of the more than one thousand, three hundred and fifty eight corpses generated by paragliding since 1986, let's look at the "airfoils" of paragliders themselves - not the ones in the glossy USHPA Magazine designed to sell paragliders, but photos and videos of the actual paragliders in flight when they lose their airfoil shape - but before they maim or kill their operators.

[Rick Masters]

Paragliding can provide a feeling of relief that hang glider pilots simply can never experience.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Actually, I think "Paraglider Collapse" is Rick Masters, an 80's-era pilot from the Owens Valley with a particular fetish about paragliders.
http://ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2046&sid=28736c7758488c672bc670fe89dac122&sid=969db5422f38e898f3506a0993ce5275#p13423

Mark Forbes, the chattering numskull who acts as the Insurance Chairman of the United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, has stated that I have a "fetish" about paragliders.

Over the years I've come to believe that Mark Forbes is one of the core problems at USHPA. USHPA Presidents and USHPA Excecutive Directors have come and gone, but the one constant has been Mark Forbes and his control of the purse strings and insurance.

With regard to the photos of "airfoils" I think someone will have to start a new NACA series for those odd looking configurations!!

[Frank Colver]

I can't honestly figure out why anyone keeps flying these non-airworthy gliders. In the early days of modern hang gliding some gliders were non-airworthy and nobody is flying those anymore.

Maybe Torrey Pines has smooth enough air, throughout the year, to justify PG there, I wouldn't know. But how many places are there like that?

Take a look at my time lapse of cumulus forming over my desert place, on July 30, and ask yourself: If you were in the air here, would you rather be in a HG or PG?

https://vimeo.com/135015470

FC

[Rick Masters]

I can't honestly figure out why anyone keeps flying these non-airworthy gliders.

People (non-pilots) keep asking me this about paragliding and my only answer, after seven years of study, is "We are not dealing with the sharpest tools in the shed."