Everyone needs to keep in mind that the perception of the Hawks is that the club is actually made up of 6 or 8 crackpot pilots and the rest are just pilots that were willing to join for nothing. The only way we can really change that perception is to charge a membership fee and have an expiration date. I believe there are other pilots in the club that care enough, we just have to prove the naysayers wrong once again.

There will always be a concession, the question is will there be better oversight in the future? I don't have anything personal against the current lessee, but there does need to be fairness in the operation of the site.

Agreed. But I also like Joe's comments regarding how other public/private arrangements have been structured where there are multiple concessions and the public has a choice.

The real problem with Torrey is not so much that there is a concession there, but that the concession controls the public's access to the site. There's nothing wrong with the City allowing a hot dog concession at a public beach ... but you can't have the hot dog vendor deciding who can (and can't) go into the water!!

I think we should work toward decoupling the concession (a business which sells equipment and lessons) from the public's access to the flying site. This includes decoupling the money as well. I would like to see all flying fees (day use and annual) going to the City and NOT to the concessionaire. I'd also like to see the Flight Director be accountable to either the Advisory Board or the Soaring Council (providing that the Soaring Council is properly balanced - which it is NOT now).


I don't think that perception is universal. If you get away from the Torrey PG crowd (which has infested the SDHGPA), you'll find that there are lots of people who view the Hawks as working to preserve hang gliding at Torrey Pines. Even in my recall election (where I was smeared with misinformation) I got more than twice the votes of the entire membership of the SDHGPA. So don't let the SDHGPA/Torrey propaganda mislead you. By the way, now that Jeremy Bishop is President of the SDHGPA, it's very clear that the Torrey concession controls that club. This should be additional ammunition for putting the Torrey Hawks on the Soaring Council ... to represent pilots rather than the concessionaire.


We may have to do this, but I don't like the idea that "naysayers" get to force our club to do something that we wouldn't otherwise do. Furthermore, if they are going to gauge our club's "support" by our number of "paid" members, then we are at a disadvantage to other clubs because our members don't get any flying privileges for their money. When someone joins most clubs (Crestline, Sylmar, even the SDHGPA) they get access to a flying site. We can't give that at Torrey because it's controlled by the concession. Now the Torrey Pines Gulls (RC club) seems to have an interesting arrangement. According to the lease, the Torrey Pines Gulls members get a reduced day use fee (reduced from $5 down to $3). If we could provide something like that, then we might be on a more level playing field when charging for membership.

As Regional Director, would you have any power at all to make the necessary changes at Torrey

USHPA chooses their representative on the Soaring Council. It's typically the USHPA President (one of the Directors) who makes the appointment, but the USHPA Board can pass resolutions requesting different representation or directing USHPA's representative to take certain positions. That's how I got the 2010 resolution passed which directs our representative (Ken Baier) to work to increase our sports representation on the Council. So far, Ken has done a terrible job of carrying out that resolution. Last Monday night we found out why.

Brian started this topic back in 2012. I think it contains a lot of good background material, and it provides a valuable look at where we've been.

I've been asking USHPA's newest Region 3 Director (Ken Andrews) to look into the Soaring Council issue, and I was pleased to see him at last week's meeting. But there's a lot that Ken doesn't know. I hope this topic will help.

My previous post (above) was written on September 20th, 2012, and that turns out to be the day before I applied to renew my San Diego Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association (SDHGPA) membership. At that time I had a long history of occasional membership in the SDHGPA, and that was years before my testimony in the Hamby case (and USHPA's subsequent expulsion). I handed my application directly to one of the SDHGPA officers with a cash payment of their fees. A few days later I got the application (and fees) back in the mail with the large red letters "Application Rejected!" written across the bottom:



No reason was ever given. I was a USHPA member in good standing at that time, and as I said, it was years before my testimony in the Hamby case. This is further proof of the need for an alternative hang gliding association in San Diego. The Torrey Hawks was formed because the SDHGPA has been a puppet of the Torrey concessionaire for at least a decade now. This is also further proof that we need our own representation on the Torrey Pines Soaring Council.

If anyone wants to criticize the membership criteria of the Torrey Hawks ... they should consider the kinds of shenanigans that have been perpetrated by the SDHGPA!!