US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

As a hang gliding purist, I do not recognize towing as a necessary component of hang gliding.
As a hang gliding purist, I have also protested vociferously against paragliding being combined with hang gliding by the XUSHGA.
It seems that everybody wants to jump on hang gliding and drag its hard-earned safety record into the mud to raise up their own sport's dismal record by averaging them in.
The very worst example is the trend of national organizations to lump paragliding, kiting and hang gliding together in their statistics, calling them "free-flight accidents," as if accidents share the same cause across types!
I'm fed up with it.
Hang glider pilots should stand up for their sport.

Kiting (towing) is not hang gliding in my eyes.
It is something else.
Another more dangerous sport that I have never practiced or even wished to practice.
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NMERIDER wrtes on another forum:
"According to the Houston FB group, Jeff's family have been notified of the tragedy. This could not have happened to a nicer and more safety conscious guy. Jeff is one of several highly trained, skilled and accomplished professional, commercial and/or military aviators who have died from hang gliding and paragliding accidents. We must never forget just how unforgiving our sport is.
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If you or the driver or winch operator make a mistake during your tow, it may not very forgiving for you, the guy on the kite.
That is because weight-shift aircraft are not good candidates for towing.
If like me, you don't accept towing as a necessary component of hang gliding, you realize your sport actually is much more forgiving because there is a lot less that can go wrong.
Hang gliding is safer than we are saying.
Why isn't that reflected in the fatality count?
Well, it's pretty obvious to me the reason is because hang gliding is combined with kiting.
They are two very different sports.

So my question is, "Why are we adding dead kiters to our hang gliding statistics?
All these dead kiters make our sport appear more unforgiving
It doesn't make any sense to me.
Why are we painting this false picture?
Why do we force this bad press on ourselves and deliberately skew the statistics by adding kiting fatalities that shouldn't be included?
And why do all you tow advocates insist on calling kiting hang gliding?

I'm a purist and proud of it. To me, hang gliding is running off a hill or mountain with a hang glider on my back.
I can control the conditions for my take off simply by waiting until I judge them as good.
I would like to be able to tell people how safe my sport is.
That's a lot harder to do with kiters calling themselves hang glider pilots and killing themselves, then pooling the numbers of dead into the hang gliding fatality list.
You are kiting. That's what towing a hang glider is before release.
That's not hang gliding.
That's not even remotely hang gliding.
I would not advise anybody to do that.
It's too dangerous.
But it's another sport.
Do what you want.
Just stop calling it hang gliding.

Don't lump my sport into other sports and drag it down with higher accident rates.
You kiting people are dumping on my sport when you get killed "kiting" and all your buddies call it hang gliding.
Knock it off. Be honest. It's not hang gliding until you release.
Kiting is a much more dangerous sport.
By calling it hang gliding, you are dumping on the sport of hang gliding.
Be honest and call it kiting.

Honest global numbers for 2016 through mid May (incomplete):
2016 kiting fatalities:4
2016 hang gliding fatalities: 5
2016 all paragliding fatalities: 31    

excellent observation Rick,
Kiting is indeed not hang gliding until release. Thank you for pointing that out as it really had not occurred to me until I read your post just now.
Thank you for planting that seed of truth within my conscious awareness....RS

Rick Masters wrote:
Honest global numbers for 2016 through mid May (incomplete):
2016 kiting fatalities:4
2016 hang gliding fatalities: 5
2016 all paragliding fatalities: 31    

I would like to see the hang gliding stats seperated further into tandem and non-tandem (single pilot)

I was just having this type of talk yesterday in a coffee shop in MOrton with Kim Smith, a local paragliding guru I have a lot of respect for. i was sharing the Austrian stats with him showing how much more dangerous paragliding was than hang gliding. He listened quietly so I am not sure if he believed me or not.

Breaking the stats down even farther into kiting versus foot launch....tandem versus non-tandem and Publicizing broadly needs to be accomplished by someone but not me...Im too busy getting ready to splat. re-rigging the air piston to the rear of the keel today to test that idea and build a functional bermuda triangle prototype to test that idea as well.
I am going to rig a fish scale into all devices tested to measure poundage exerted upon 200 pound test dummy and keep a journal so we will know how much force is absorbed by each device.

Don't get the impression that I hate paraglider pilots.
I hate seeing paraglider pilots die or become cripples.
There's a big difference.
And it's especially hard for me, knowing as I do that the hang glider's airframe would prevent about 75% of PG fatalities.

I would like to see the hang gliding stats separated further into tandem and non-tandem (single pilot)

I have that list.
It's global.
It's incomplete.
It's ugly.
But it hardly compares to paragliding.
Paragliding is a slaughter.
The 1490th paraglider fatality that I know of happened in the University Hospital in St. Polten, Spain, early this morning.
And those horrific PG numbers didn't even start accruing until 1986 - 15 years or so after the first hang gliding death.
You should request that list from the XUSHGA and we'll compare it here on the US Hawks.

The FAA agrees with Rick on ground based towing.

Applicability of 14 C.F.R. part 101 FAA Interpretations Nov 9, 2009

Mcculloch-parasail safety FAA Interpretations Aug 26, 2011

How many ground based tow operators are in compliance with marking the tow rope when towing above 150’ agl?

Paragliding incident - airplane almost crash to my towing line

§101.17 Lighting and marking requirements.
(b) No person may operate a moored balloon or kite between sunrise and sunset unless its mooring lines have colored pennants or streamers attached at not more than 50 foot intervals beginning at 150 feet above the surface of the earth and visible for at least one mile.

How many ground based tow operators are in compliance with marking the tow rope when towing above 150’ agl?

Not this one    


Good thing those hang glider pilots send their money to the RRG, huh?
That would have been a $2-million dollar claim, for sure.
Would have lost that case, for sure. Maybe next week.
Hang glider pilots better come up with another $500 each pretty quick.
This kind of luck won't hold...

What does this have to do with hang gliding?
Nothing.
But it's what hang glider pilots want, so...

More Interpretations from the FAA: It is whether the flight had the intended purpose of free flight.

Palmaz Applicability of Part 101 to Ultralight Vehicles During Tethered Takeoff

Yeah.
I can call a cow a duck but it still ain't gonna quack.

I ran these stats by Kim Smith (Paragllider neighbor) and he had some good input. Kim said he would like to see the stats broke down even farther and thinks we could learn a lot from them, he mentioned, in addition to the catogories listed Above:

1. Ratio globally of para verses hang.....31(pg) fatalities compared to 9 (hg) but what is the ratio of para to hang....
2.Not just population ratio but how many flights per pg pilot compared to how many flights per HG pilot ( valid point, they do take more flights than we do, this could be broken down to flights per pilot, hours per pilot, or both)
3. Stats broken down by not only countries but Regionally. Kim gave me a good example why.
He said he has noticed in washington state, for instance, we have eastern WA. with few trees and Wetern WA. that is covered in trees and the only PG fatalties he knows of in this state are all Eastern WA sites such as Baldy and Chelan Butte even though here in western WA. at sites like Tiger Men., pilots go in so regularly there is a guy making a living retrieving paragliders from the trees atTiger Mtn...but in spite of all the Pg pilots that go down there are zero fatalities at Tiger Mtn.
Kim could not recall ANY PG deaths in Western WA......because of the trees, but lots in Eastern WA.(no trees)
So I asked him, ....so.... if there were no trees in Western Wa. pG fatalities would be even higher?.....
Kim said they probably would.
So trees are the primary Safe splat device for PG pilots in Western WA.

I ran these stats by Kim Smith (Paragllider neighbor) and he had some good input.

I don't do statistics. I compile lists.

Kim said he would like to see the stats broke down even farther and thinks we could learn a lot from them, he mentioned, in addition to the catogories listed Above:
1. Ratio globally of para verses hang.....31(pg) fatalities compared to 9 (hg) but what is the ratio of para to hang....

    There is a ratio of HG to PG accidents. Comparing weight-shift gliders to modified parachutes is problematic. I have not determined the ratio because there are too many variables and my data is incomplete. This is not to say that I don't know. It is clear to me that there is much more risk involved in flying paragliders in turbulence below 400 feet than is the case for hang gliders.

2.Not just population ratio but how many flights per pg pilot compared to how many flights per HG pilot ( valid point, they do take more flights than we do, this could be broken down to flights per pilot, hours per pilot, or both)

    Paraglider pilots die primarily due to falls from three to 100 meters. Unlike hang gliders, where the pilot can be considered part of the airframe, paragliding canopies do not carry kinetic energy, even in the extreme case of nose-down spiral dives. Virtually all the kinetic energy is retained by the mass of the pilot. That is not good when things go wrong, as is shown by the high number of extremely serious injuries in paragliding. The paraglider pilot takes the full blow of a primarily vertical vector. For the hang glider pilot, the airframe often absorbs much of the impact of a primarily horizontal vector.
    Paraglider pilots can fly in laminar air without problems. Turbulence is the problem. Turbulence usually presents itself inland, not on the coast. Ground turbulence is responsible for the major part of paragliding injuries. Once one acknowledges this fact, it becomes clear that adding hours from coastal and laminar flying simply dilutes a meaningful determination of risk. The real measure, if one wishes to compare HG to PG, would be the result of examining the hours flown by paragliders and hang gliders in turbulence below effective PG reserve deployment altitude. There is a clear winner and a clear loser in this contest.
     I would argue that comparing HG (or other types of aviation) to PG to determine meaningful numbers is fruitless. It should be enough to realize that, unlike all other aircraft, paragliding commits its operator to at least two zones of little recourse in the event of collapse - take off and landing. It is within these zones of little recourse that almost all serious accidents happen. These zones were unheard of, outside of the Helicopter Dead Man's Curve, prior to the advent of paragliding. Few understand this.

3. Stats broken down by not only countries but Regionally. Kim gave me a good example why.
He said he has noticed in Washington state, for instance, we have eastern WA. with few trees and Wetern WA. that is covered in trees and the only PG fatalties he knows of in this state are all Eastern WA sites such as Baldy and Chelan Butte even though here in western WA. at sites like Tiger Men., pilots go in so regularly there is a guy making a living retrieving paragliders from the trees atTiger Mtn...but in spite of all the Pg pilots that go down there are zero fatalities at Tiger Mtn.
Kim could not recall ANY PG deaths in Western WA......because of the trees, but lots in Eastern WA.(no trees)
So I asked him, ....so.... if there were no trees in Western Wa. pG fatalities would be even higher?.....
Kim said they probably would.
So trees are the primary Safe splat device for PG pilots in Western WA.

    Since paragliding accidents happen inland, mostly on mountain ranges, I use mountain ranges as my regional areas and disregard national boundaries.
    I can't believe your friend is unaware of the death of Ken Blanchard in a flight off Tiger Mountain in August of 2011. "Witnesses told authorities they saw the paraglider gliding on what appeared to be a thermal current, and watched as he came toward them in a northeasterly direction. Then suddenly the wing of the paraglider started twisting and spinning out of control and it collapsed about 40 to 50 feet above the ground," falling into the backyard of a residence. Neighbors ran to him and began performing CPR but Blanchard died at the scene. Is he also unaware of an instructor with the initials SW who "lost control" of his tandem paraglider on June 2012, clipped a tree and fell 80 feet, resulting in an open leg fracture for him or his passenger? I'm still searching for any HG reports. Can't find any at all.
    Didn't Kirk Lewis kill himself by releasing his harness on a flight from Tiger Mt. in September of 2003? This was a suicide so it shouldn't count except for the reason - he couldn't take the pain any longer of a broken back incurred in a PG top landing attempt five years before. And they say Eric Jansen died of a heart attack in a flight off Tiger in July of 2008, so that doesn't really count, either. However, they were guys who died on PG flights off Tiger, so your friend does not seem to me to be much acquainted the history of Tiger Mt.
    Yeah, trees seem to save the lives of many, many, many paraglider pilots, particularly in the Alps. See the topic, "Nesting Behavior of the Ozone Warbler" at US Hawks.