U.S. Hang Gliding Pilots

In a message dated 4/20/2015 8:04:35 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, Editor@upperwindpower.com writes:
Wow, Jack !
So, glad you put your memory to work and shared. Treasure!
Richard Miller was the the mid 1960s produced of the Low, Slow & Out of Control private newsletter that you mentioned. He and I contracted and I took over the rights of that newsletter and republished all his editions as he stopped the group of about 30 correspondents; my deal was the Low & Slow magazine and later morphed it to Hang Glider Weekly and Hang Glider Business Weekly and Hang Glider Magazine. I co-founded the USHGA . Frank Colver was the variometer guy and Sky Sail designer maker.

Is it OK with you to edit to "Frank" and not "Chuck" for the variometer guy? And publish your history memory letter in US Hanks Hang Gliding Association forum in the history section? The text is free to all the world. And free join online. Or you may publish your letter in the forum! Here is the URL for the forum:
http://www.ushawks.org/forum/
There is a Register link there. Free to register.

Any personal notes would be neat also; introduce yourself!

Jack,
You wrote to one of my email addresses. I publish many hang glider pages on the Internet. RogalloHangGliders.com is one of the sites. Thanks again for the input.

Are you any relation to the the Hall of the Hall Wind Meter?

Wishing you and yours the best of Lift in Life,
Joe Faust

Jack,
Great. Thanks. Will edit gently and post in our new national org place: US Hawks Hang Gliding Association. We are specializing on hang gliding with airframed hang gliders and letting canopy paragliding do their thing in their arena. Two orgs.

Dave Cronk is alive and well; so it was not Dave. Dave went on to work in Vertigo which was acquired by Hunter Defense Technologies, Inc. He has stayed creative in design work, loves the outdoors; he does not hang glide now.

​C​huck Kocsis Perennial Plaque​ exists. Awardees are noted for service to the hang gliding scene in San Diego.

We are still in total communication with our first official historian Neil Larson who was a teen at the Gas Company meetings that you mention.

Soon,
Joe

== Of course you can correct any errors of memory I may have had. You are absolutely correct- It was Frank Colver. A nicer guy would be hard to find. His wife's name was Judy.

== I imagine you have the book by Dan Poynter- sort of a Whole Earth Catalog of Hang Gliding.

I designed and built a Rogallo wing hang glider which I called Hall's Hawk. After several years of working on the Hawks, I started selling plans for Hall's Hawk in 1974. I also sold plans for a prone harness separately from the hang-glider plans. The harness plan was also a part of the hang-glider plans. I did not sell too many plans- probably about 175 Hall's Hawk plans and perhaps 80 or so harness plans. I charged $7.50 for the plans and (I think) $3.00 for the harness plans. I had an ad in the back of the Ground Skimmer, the magazine of the USHGA

I also taught hang gliding from about 1975 to 1978. I had Jack Hall's Hang Gliding School in Berkeley. I was using it to help pay for school expenses. I limited classes to 8, and taught over 100 people how to fly. I had the flying part of the class over at Daly City at the horse stables sand dunes just south of Fort Funston.

Another instructor who later became a good friend shared the site with me. His name was Lee Sterios, and he had Chandelle of (south?) San Francisco. Lee was killed in a flying accident when a glider that he was test flying for someone went into a non-recoverable dive.

Lees' death was really the final straw for me; and I decided to quit hang gliding. It was just too tough on me having my friends die. Not only that, but I was about to graduate as an optometrist, and my wife was pregnant with our first child. I also had had a back injury, and my doctor told me that a rough landing could possibly result in my being in a wheelchair. I sold the hang gliding school and the teaching gliders, sold my personal glider and left the sport. That was in about April of 1978, and I have not flown since.

About two months ago, I was out at Modesto reservoir, and some guys were out there with a hang glider. That is the first time since 1978 that I have touched a hang glider. They offered to let me fly, but I declined because of my back problems, and because I figured it was sort of like offering an alcoholic a drink. I LOVED flying hang gliders, and it was more or less the center of my out-of-school existence, and I was afraid that I could get hooked again. However, I kept thinking about it,and wound up Googling "hang gliders", which is how I found your site.

Feel free to publish any, all or none of this. I do not have plans to do much more about hang gliders because I am afraid of getting slowly "sucked in."