[TadEareckson]

OK, I read all 15 pages, and I have no idea why Davis would have locked that topic.

C'mon, Bob. Everybody and his dog knows EXACTLY why Davis locked it.

Sorry. It's been a little dead around here, and I'm doing my best to encourage some discussion.

Don't apologize. Keep it up, I'm in my element.

I didn't see any explanation, and I didn't really see anything that justified the ban.

Oh, I think even Davis was smart enough to figure out that when I said "stupid Nazi scum" I wasn't referring just to Butch Pritchett.

[Bob Kuczewski]

OK, I read all 15 pages, and I have no idea why Davis would have locked that topic.

C'mon, Bob. Everybody and his dog knows EXACTLY why Davis locked it.

Maybe I wasn't clear. I was trying to say that I saw no justifiable reason for locking it. I'm sure there are plenty of unjustifiable reasons (personal agendas) for locking it.

[TadEareckson]

Mike,

I am sure I must now hold the record for the most polite, innocent, concerned and wholly on topic poster ever to have been blocked from the Oz Report.

Doesn't that make you feel a bit stupid and dirty now? I always felt that way after trying to remain civil with these guys.

Was this really just for commercial reasons (I had no idea of any of this) or was it because I was hitting a nerve?

Yes.

It would have been nice to have had the opportunity to sum up and the right of reply.

You can reply here all you want. Let's hear it here where it won't get deleted and might do some good.

Bob,

You should see them doing loops!!

Yeah, great. But did you know they also fly PARAGLIDERS? And they go into schools and tell OUR CHILDREN that paragliding is normal behavior, just the way some people are, different lifestyle, perfectly acceptable. They're RECRUITING them. Take the blinders off - get real.

It's called Planet California which is inhabited by many strange creatures, but the foot-launch flying there is spectacular.

Yeah, and having had USHGA headquartered in places like California and Colorado probably hasn't done a helluva lot to help our understanding of towing. Next time let's move it east one more state and see what happens.

Still want the details off your friend's crash.

I've got an engineering degree (aeronautical), and I'm sure I could understand it well enough.

Donnell's got a PhD in physics - which is a lot more relevant than the aeronautical engineering degree - and he doesn't understand it.

Dennis wrote a 374 page book on the subject and he doesn't understand it.

Brian Pattenden, Bill Brooks, Howard Edwards, and Mike Lake mostly understood it thirty years ago.

Yeah, I'm sure you could understand it well enough. And you will. But so can a ten-year-old kid if it's explained properly. And you wouldn't be able to understand it much better than the kid. Kinda like the way the kid will be able hold Boris Spassky to draws in tic-tac-toe from now until hell freezes over.

What scares me is the high degree of dependence on the judgement and character of other people.

That's what scares the crap out of me. That's why I got tired of flying at Ridgely 'cause the crew over there doesn't have any.

That's the real weak link - people.

Sorta depends upon how you define the elements of the equation. In the purest sense - yes.

But for most flyers - it's the equipment. And yeah, the people have control of and responsibility for the equipment if you wanna stay pure.

And, ignoring purity for the moment, the release is virtually always the weakest link in the multiple failures that result in serious crashes.

And the next weakest link is the weak link. And THE weak link is whatever blows first between you and what's pulling you - most often your weak link, the tug's weak link, or the towline. And the control of the latter two of those is pretty much out of your hands.

And the next weakest link is Head Trauma Rooney...

Whatever's going on back there, I can fix it by giving you the rope.

It's more of this crappy argument that being on tow is somehow safer than being off tow.

I've heard it a million times before from comp pilots insisting on towing with even doubled up weaklinks (some want no weaklink). I tell them the same thing I'm telling you... suck it up. You're not the only one on the line. I didn't ask to be a test pilot. I can live with your inconvenience.

And yes, get behind me with a "strong link" and I will not tow you.

A few years ago, I started refusing to tow people with home made gear.

...the distillation of 30 years of pilot controlled aviation. And - assuming you've been able to smuggle your strong link and homemade gear through security at the flight line - while it's the one that's probably least likely to kill you on any given flight - it's also the one that can't be fixed without a regulatory system with some teeth in it.

I would trust my life to many people in this sport, but there are also people in the sport who I don't trust at all. It's hard to tell them apart when you first meet them ... and that can be fatal.

Some day I'm going to write a field guide of tells. I'll probably irreversibly alienate somewhere between ninety-nine and a hundred percent of my newfound friends and derail the discussion but I'll give you some clues to identify people who really don't understand what they're doing...

2:1 (Hewett) bridle
brake lever on downtube
130 pound Greenspot weak link
Bailey release
two foot secondary / one point bridle
hook knife
backwards carabiner
backup loop
Aussie Methodists
hang checkers
Head Trauma Rooney and anybody who's ever signed him off on anything
the mention of "weak link" in the same paragraph with "lockout", "control", "position", "skill level", and/or "safety"
mention of the word "reach" - especially in conjunction with an adjective

I doubt that the Wright brothers were scumbag atheists. I see them as careful engineers...

Two terms for the same thing. The less sure you are that you've achieved perfection the better your likelihood of achieving it.

Sam Kellner - 2010/03/27

I flew with Dr. Hewett recently and he still recommends/uses the linknife religiously.

Forever stuck in 1996. And there was better stuff out there in 1974.

And the real contribution of Wilbur and Orville was the physics - their plane kinda sucked. But the physics was rock solid from then until now and the engineers took it and ran with it - especially a few years later when they picked teams to go up and shoot at each other.

Our towing equipment and safety suck 'cause the physics foundation is nonexistent.

But again, I haven't even tried towing...

Yes you have. First time you went off the training hill and every flight since.

You clipped in, picked up the glider, and used your legs to develop forward thrust. When the glider lifted off your shoulders the thrust was being applied through the rope coming off your harness, through the carabiner, and through the rope on the glider to the hang point at its keel.

If you understand that you instantly understand that Donnell's "center of mass" Skyting hypothesis upon which hang glider towing is based worldwide is bulls***.

The glider couldn't care less about "the center of mass of the hang glider-pilot system". There is no glider/pilot system. There's a kite with a string coming off its trim point and all the kite knows or cares about is the pounds and direction of the pull.

Pull the same trick on flat sand with a ten mile per hour smooth headwind to make it easy. You can put your hands in your pockets for a bit - the glider's pitch and yaw stable and, even though roll un, it's likely to stay level for a while. Let's assume that it will. You can run a ten, twenty, whatever foot line between your carabiner and the hang strap and the glider will react to the thrust exactly the same. Couldn't care less how far away your center of mass is.

Remove the rope from between your carabiner and the hang strap and hook back in normally. Start running. The faster you run the more thrust you will transmit to the hang point.

If you don't torque the nose down the glider will lift. The more it lifts the less traction you will have, the less you will be able to generate thrust, and the less the glider will lift.

If you do torque the nose down you'll have plenty of traction and will be able to develop plenty of thrust but the glider won't lift.

Catch-22.

Lightbulb!

Take the rope, tie one end to your harness and the other to a piece of driftwood. Get a couple of bored surfers to grab the stick and run. When the glider lifts itself and you they can still generate thrust and transmit it through you to the hang point.

Lose the rope again and run with the glider.

If a wing lifts you'll hafta push the control frame in the opposite direction. This will increase the tension on the bracing wire going to the high wing and decrease the tension on the bracing wire going to the low wing. The glider will return to level.

If you fail to make the correction soon enough or get hit by air nasty enough the glider will roll to the point at which it's physically impossible for you to bring it back to level and you will experience a ground loop and possibly bend a downtube.

If you experience the same problem ten feet in the air on the end of the rope the ground loop is referred to as a lockout and you may possibly break your neck - whether or not the surfers let go of the rope or it pops. This is why you need both hands on the control bar the entire time you're on the rope.

And you really wanna use a good rope with no weak spots 'cause when those guys are pulling you the glider's gonna be pitched up. And if the rope pops you're gonna stall.

All this stuff is pretty self-evident, obvious, common sense to the ten-year-old kid with the kite a hundred yards down the beach. He only starts getting incredibly and irreversibly stupid twelve years later when he starts his aerotow instruction and reads Towing Aloft.

Look at how I was banned from hanggliding.org.

I watched some of that HGAA action with mild interest. I knew from Day One that if Jack were anywhere within a thousand miles of it I wanted no part.

I tried to understand and fairly evaluate all the vote controversy stuff but just got a headache so gave up and went with...

Jack's a stupid total asshole and I've always liked Scott and Bob. Saved a lot of hours and eyestrain.

There were a few good men who spoke out, but when Jack went ballistic, even they fell silent.

I get a lot of private correspondence during my firefights from people thanking me for what I'm doing but asking me to keep things in confidence. They're - very justifiably - scared of being kicked off of fora and - more importantly - thrown out of flight parks and blacklisted. I can understand that. And I pulled way too many punches for way too long and maybe a few people have died as a consequence.

But that's how your opponents will want to portray you ... so others will dismiss you.

When you've got correspondence from the Tow Committee Chairman asking for help in revising the SOPs it makes it a little tough to do that.

I believe everyone should be able to offer their opinions - valid or not. The crucible of debate and review will separate fact from fiction. It's the Scientific Method.

It's against federal law to teach intelligent design "theory" in public school biology classrooms. Likewise we don't don't want Holocaust deniers teaching history, Fred Flintstone advertising Winston cigarettes - the way he did when I was a kid, or tobacco executives questioning the link to lung cancer in a lot of venues.

I've been been watching people offering their opinions in this sport for over thirty years and fiction winning over fact every time cause it boils down to a democracy of pilots. And pilots are all so full of testosterone that they don't have any room left for brains. They can't and don't recognize the Scientific Method even after they themselves have been beaten to near lifeless pulps and had half a dozen close friends killed by it.

Back around Thanksgiving Zack C and I established Kite Strings:

http://kitestrings.prophpbb.com/

with the hope that it would evolve into what US Hawks was - unbeknownst to us - already doing. There's a very long list of people who will forever be prebanned from that forum - idiots, liars, saboteurs, serial killers... Hence we've only got 2.01 members but it's still a thousand times higher quality and more valuable than Jack and Davis combined.

Offhand I can't think of a single thing in hang gliding on which an OPINION should be offered - with the possible exception of sail colors. You don't pour opinions into the Scientific Method and get facts out the other end. You pour in data, formulae, and questions. We don't need to be - make that keep - reinventing Newtonian physics for hang gliding.

Dennis Pagen - 1997/01

Fourth the weak link was way too strong.

That's an opinion Dennis. And it's wrong 'cause you have no idea what a weak link is. And it's also totally irrelevant 'cause it was the one at the tug end that blew. And they stayed alive until just after it blew.

...and sixth, the release at the tug end may have malfunctioned.

That's also an opinion. The FACT is that the release DID mal - read not - function. And nobody's addressing that issue. Just like nobody addressed it when Chris Bulger was killed eleven years prior.

We're trying to establish the procedures and some of the equipment necessary to run an airline and there are a lot of issues beyond the scope of people who's only qualifications may be that they can get a plane off and back on a runway in one piece a few - or a few thousand - times. They may be very well qualified to operate a control system, but that doesn't mean they're the least bit qualified to understand or design it.

Yeah, I want people to be able to state their understandings of issues - right or wrong - and discuss everything until everybody's on the same page. But that page has gotta be the same one that Wilbur and Orville came up with over a century ago and that's only gonna happen if we have qualified benevolent dictators at the top.

On MODERATED discussion when a quarter of the group is of the opinion that two plus two equals four and the rest insist that it's eight, two plus two ends up equaling seven.

And with Davis or Jack it's twelve and everybody else can go f*ck themselves.

As for Sam, I think you may have him wrong (or I may have misinterpreted your statement). I think Sam is a good and conscientious man, and I would respectfully ask you to reconsider your judgement of him.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=592

I've spent a noticeable chunk of my life studying towing and developing the safest, cleanest, most efficient equipment anywhere and the flight parks, Head Trauma, Davis, and Jack are dedicated to making sure that nothing better gets into circulation. People who send people up with dangerous junk and denigrate and suppress information about safer equipment get people killed.

Shane Smith would not have been killed on my equipment. Jim Gaar, Jason, Butch, Steve, and Sam lined up with Davis to make sure that the Phoenix group was less likely to hear about better ways of doing things and made themselves small parts of the big element in this sport which got that guy killed.

I know how I feel even when for just not saying enough before somebody gets killed.

I know how Davis feels after somebody dies on the kind of equipment he sells and endorses. "Hey, it's starting to happen. Any chance we can get the runway cleared - TODAY?"

So I'd like to hear how Sam feels about helping Davis do to me what he just did again to Mike and make that fatality more likely to happen. Both Mike and I called this one upon watching that idiot video and discussion at:

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=16384

One can't turn the clock back but one can make an effort along the lines of damage control.

This is capitalism. Rather than "death to tyrants", let's just work to gain most of their market share.

We need to start/keep siphoning off the best and the brightest from Davis and Jack. Wire a friend. I've got a lot of people in mind.

So if you've got some nuts and bolts towing information to share, I'd really appreciate it.

I wrote some really excellent AT SOPs that I spent months writing and tweaking for USHGA. They decided they'd rather spend tens of thousands of dollars on hit men rather that even look at them. They're all yours.

Even if it's controversial, that's fine.

Ya notice there hasn't been any CONTROVERSY about towing sailplanes in the past ninety years? Ever wonder what our problem is? Physics and the nuts and bolts of aviation shouldn't be controversial.

It's good to finally converse with you.

Ditto.

Will dump this much and continue catching up.

[TadEareckson]

Tad was kicked off the site long ago.

Kinda like Byron De La Beckwith saying Medgar Evers was assassinated a long time ago.

Maybe she didn't know that you had been banned!!

Helen is hiflioz at the org. South Australia. We're friends. Whenever one of these flare-ups hits a forum we're talking to each other privately.

She comes from one of the best schools - Dynamic Flight, she's smart, and we were on the same page on lot of stuff to begin with. She knows what it's like to be on the back end of a line with her life dependent upon a weak link holding. I've brought her a little farther onto the Dark Side and I'd get her the rest of the way if she'd just FOLLOW THROUGH ON OUR DISCUSSIONS (ya hear that Helen?). We could use her over here.

She wrote this:

http://www.xmission.com/~red/Letter.htm
LETTER TO A NEW FEMALE HANG GLIDER PILOT

And I keep trying to tell her that our instruction and equipment standards are so poor that I wouldn't advise anybody to take up hang gliding in this country who isn't already a Hang Four. The odds of getting hurt or killed are just way too high.

I'd like to see an objective analysis of the various types of towing and releases. It might even include a table of systems and their attributes (both positive and negative). Maybe we could work something like that up here. What do you think Tad?

Chuck Burgoon - 1992/09

I'm continually amazed by the "reinvention of the wheel" and "forgotten knowledge" in this sport.

I do R&D for a living, and think that it is tragic that so much time, money, and resources have been expended to acquire empirical information that goes unused, undocumented or unaccounted for. It's agonizing to watch people struggle through the same learning curve, being unable or unwilling to tap into the wealth of existing knowledge.

Current USHGA emphasis, along with efforts to compile and homogenize towing technology in general, will hopefully accelerate the evolution of this launch alternative, rather than prolong it.

His comment was that while it might be good for USHPA to make recommendations in this area, there is still plenty of room for innovation. For that reason, he doesn't think USHPA should mandate any kind of obligatory system that would stifle that innovation - whether Mr. Eareckson's or any other.

Nah, I think if we did something like that we'd stifle the kind of stunning innovation we've be seeing over the course of the past thirty years.

NASA can but little golf carts on Mars and drive them around for a half dozen years doing geology experiments all by themselves and after thirty years of modern hang glider towing we still can't figure out how to let go of one end of a string without killing ourselves. This is absolute insanity.

Yeah, I can tell people what's safe, good enough just about all the time, and no freakin' way. But people can do that pretty well themselves just by ignoring what the person selling it is saying and thinking about it for ten or fifteen seconds - like nobody bothered to do before or after the Brad Anderson and Eric Aasletten fatalities.

(Anybody have a contact for Chuck? He was in my first instructor certification clinic in '82.)

In my opinion, people should be able to discuss and argue any topic for as long as they like. I haven't noticed any dip in the world's supply of unused bytes, and I think a discussion like that was valuable. It should have been allowed to continue. Even if some people were tired of it, that doesn't mean that everyone was.

In wasn't locked down 'cause anybody was tired of it - it was locked down 'cause it was staring to get really interesting. Eight hundred extra hits to date.

OK, I'm caught up now. You have my permission to continue the discussion.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Now I'm not able to keep up!!!

Tad, you're very prolific, and you make lots of good points. I'm not surprised that anyone who disagrees with you would want to ban you ... rather than actually debate you. That's the price of being too competent.

I'm really glad that you're a friend of Helen (hiflioz). I've never met her, but she came to my rescue one time when I was under attack. I don't recall all the details, but she really spoke eloquently and fairly. She's had my respect ever since. It would sure be great to have her grace the pages of the US Hawks forum. You can pass that on as a personal invitation ... and warm welcome.

I believe I read her Letter on xmission.com (I have a lot of respect for Red as well), and I really enjoyed it. She's an excellent writer as well as a level-headed person. By the way, Red has also joined us here on US Hawks, and I'm happy to have him.

Tad, I'm going to pass along an unsolicited observation that a friend once gave me. I was beating my head against the Torrey Pines Soaring Council, and the RC clubs were surprisingly uncooperative (considering that they themselves had been banned by Jebb). I was talking to one of my RC friends, and I was asking him why their club leaders were so opposed to the Hawks being part of the Council. My friend said (in these exact words) "They fear you Bob". This was unbelievable to me, because I don't see myself as someone to be feared. In fact, I don't mean any malice toward anyone. But somehow my ability to doggedly pursue what I believed seemed to cause fear in otherwise normal people.

So what's the lesson? I think most people are somewhat insecure about what they really know. They're also generally lazy (an energy conservation trait which has surely earned its keep in the human gene pool). So they're insecure about what they know, and they're too lazy to know more ("Ouch, your loooong posts make my head hurt"). The result ends up creating a desire to escape, and the inability to escape creates fear. I think that's at the heart of my own difficulties in some arenas, and it might be yours as well.

Now what's the solution? That's a much harder problem. Complex subjects require long and complex discussions. After all, we're typically trying to take a very high dimensional subject and convert it into a linear stream of tokens and still preserve the richness of the high dimensional relationships. That's not going to happen in the cute "one liners" that make up 90% of forum conversations. So it's an uphill battle. But the one thing that can help is to remember that most pilots just want to fly and have fun. Remember that's where they are, and that's why they come to forums. That's cool, and that has to be respected ... because it's their choice. It's their choice to be casual about the sport just as it may be your (and my) choice to be non-casual and analytical ... and tireless. In their defense, life is short. So who's to say who is right?

Anyway, I'm sorry to preach. I'm probably preaching to myself more than you anyway, but you seemed to be a good excuse for the monologue.

Thanks for joining us. I look forward to the discussions ... if I can keep up!!


P.S. I joined the kitestrings forum, and I'm happy to cross link them as an "Affiliate" as I have with Joe Faust's HGAUSA on our US Hawks front page. Please pass that along to Zach, and maybe we can do a little cross-promoting.

[TadEareckson]

I'm not surprised that anyone who disagrees with you would want to ban you ... rather than actually debate you. That's the price of being too competent.

In aviation that sure beats the hell out of not being competent enough.

I'm really glad that you're a friend of Helen (hiflioz). I've never met her, but she came to my rescue one time when I was under attack.

Got a link?

I don't recall all the details, but she really spoke eloquently and fairly. She's had my respect ever since.

She's an author and journalist. We're oozing in people who can fly but so hurting for people who can read, write, think, and question. I knew I had pinged in on a rare intelligent life form during one of our first exchanges.

By the way, Red has also joined us here on US Hawks, and I'm happy to have him.

Yeah, Red and I have had some back channel communications before too. Good person to have.

In fact, I don't mean any malice toward anyone.

You must be a way better person than I am. On the highways I see a lot of people who need to be treated with malice. We've got guys with red and blue lights on the tops of their cars and guns inside who are trained to treat people with malice when other avenues don't work. We'd kill a lot more people if we didn't. We've got nothing like it in hang gliding - as long as we stay out of controlled airspace. And we get A LOT of people killed because we wrote our own rules and don't even enforce the few good ones we have.

I think most people are somewhat insecure about what they really know.

I dunno. Most of the problems that I see are the results of people massively secure about what they know 'cause that was what they were first taught, everybody else is doing it, and everybody else is teaching it.

The result ends up creating a desire to escape, and the inability to escape creates fear. I think that's at the heart of my own difficulties in some arenas, and it might be yours as well.

Maybe it's a difficulty, maybe it's an asset. If I had sold as many of those Six-Ways-To-Kill-Yourself Releases as Davis has I'd be scared shitless that somebody like me was gonna be able to produce bench test data and bring the jury's attention to all the sabotaged and locked down threads and banned participants.

That's not going to happen in the cute "one liners" that make up 90% of forum conversations.

Sam Kellner - 2010/03/28

Yeah, I don't even read all of those long winded "explanations".

But the one thing that can help is to remember that most pilots just want to fly and have fun. Remember that's where they are, and that's why they come to forums. That's cool, and that has to be respected ... because it's their choice. It's their choice to be casual about the sport just as it may be your (and my) choice to be non-casual and analytical ... and tireless. In their defense, life is short. So who's to say who is right?

John Woiwode - 2005/08/31

The docs have all said in one form or another that by all reason I shouldn't have made it. Broken back, shattered pelvis, lower legs both shattered, closed head injury that affected mental acuity as well as both eyes and ears, internal organ damage, right arm and both knee soft tissue injuries, in and out of a coma for sixteen days. The first night I entered the Trauma Unit, after I'd received 18 units of blood, my body electrolytes would not stabilize and they gave me twelve hours to live.

Doug Koch - 2007/10/18

He signaled the drive to start the tow, became airborne and again went into a left turn. The driver saw this and released pressure on the rig. The pilot got the glider leveled off and released the tow line. He started to come in to land and at about twenty to thirty feet suddenly dropped from the glider. As he was in a semi-prone attitude he came down at an angle of a few degrees and impacted the ground on both feet and then fell forward on his face.

The impact broke both legs at the ankles and drove his shin bones out the bottom of his feet six inches.

Hang Diver - 2008/05/19

A few years back a friend who had good landing skills missed ONE. Stuck his speed bar in the dirt and whacked hard. He swung through the control bar and hit the top of his helmet on the keel buckling his neck. He was a quadriplegic for eight months before committing suicide. Would wheels have worked? YES - no debate by those who were there and witnessed the accident.

Mark Johnson - 2008/08/31

Then all hell broke loose. "He's unhooked, s***..." Guys yelling at him over the radio to throw his chute, "Kunio don't think, throw your chute throw your chute". We all watch in horror not believing this was happening. Kunio was hanging on to the downtubes flying away from the mountain.

He managed to climb up into the control frame and get his feet on the base bar. A sigh of relief came over me. I have seen guys fly from there before. I was hopeful, but Kunio was all over the place flying out of control, severe PIO from side to side. By now he was farther away and flying wildly making it harder to see what he was doing, getting closer to the ground. I can't imagine what was going through his mind.

He then separated from his glider. I don't know if as he let go with one hand to throw his chute and the G force threw him out or maybe he was holding on and got thrown out, but he was falling and his chute was trying to open seconds before he hit. Had it been enough to slow him down? From above it looked like maybe it caught a tree, maybe it caught him. I was so hopeful, but in my heart I felt the worst.

How much "fun" do the rest of us hafta have to justify just running out and jumping on very dangerous toys without having to sit through boring long winded explanations of how a lot of a**holes got things wrong when they decided to reinvent aviation from scratch just 'cause our birds used a different control system?

Do they have the right to make irresponsible choices, play the personal freedom card, and pretend that it doesn't doesn't affect friends and family and the quality of the rest of their lives? Did the guy who quaded himself because we require standup landings but not wheels have parents?

Scott Wilkinson - 2005/10/04

Daniel, Linda and I all left yesterday, and are back in Richmond now after a long drive home. I wanted to fly in Tennessee, and hoped after a day of reflection and the passage of time I'd be in a better frame of mind. It never happened. Night before last, I awoke in my hammock in the middle of the night, and in the dark silence could only think of Bill. His fatal launch just kept rolling over and over in my head like a cursed video.

Daniel thought he might be able to fly too, but like me, he realized it was impossible.

Who picks up the tab for trying to put what was left of John's body back together because he didn't have a freaking clue what he was doing when he hooked up behind that truck? Who loses out in a world of finite medical resources.

Everybody wants to go out and play and nobody wants to take the time and effort to learn how to do it right and fix a dangerous, broken, irresponsible, corrupt system first. I feel pretty comfortable making calls on who's right and who isn't.

Anyway, I'm sorry to preach. I'm probably preaching to myself more than you anyway, but you seemed to be a good excuse for the monologue.

Monologues are cool. Beat the hell out of total silence.

Thanks for joining us. I look forward to the discussions ... if I can keep up!!

We need to keep up for however long it takes. We need to reach resolutions.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Got a link?

One of the annoying things about being banned (which I suspect you've noticed) is that I can't use the search features of forums to find posts. I did a little looking, but I didn't find it.

Thanks for joining us. I look forward to the discussions ... if I can keep up!!

We need to keep up for however long it takes. We need to reach resolutions.

Agreed. But in addition to resolutions (which sound final) we also need to establish mechanisms for ongoing review and ongoing fairness to our pilots. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. We have to watch 'em ... like a hawk.

[TadEareckson]

One of the annoying things about being banned (which I suspect you've noticed) is that I can't use the search features of forums to find posts.

Yes. I've noticed. Fits in well with the Oz Report CULTure of information suppression. Maybe Helen can find it.

But in addition to resolutions (which sound final)...

I'm mostly a nuts and bolts guy. In a lot of aviation there is ONE right answer, best response for any given set of circumstances.

No matter what you're flying the response to a stall is going to be the same. If you take a lesson in a Cessna tomorrow your instructor is gonna tell you the same thing an instructor would've said a hundred years ago.

Your goal is to see crashes. Do you let people land normally in the primary or do you put a Frisbee in the middle of the field and hold a spot landing contest?

A pilot who rolls his glider into a typical primary LZ is about thirty times less likely to snap an arm in half than someone who tries to whipstall his glider with his hands on the downtubes at just the right instant to stop dead on his feet. Greg DeWolf, John Simon, Lauren Tjaden, and Shannon Moon come to mind - at AIRPORTS fer chrisake.

Safe, smooth landing, on feet, into wind.

I've watched the action at LZs for enough decades to know that, broadly speaking, there's no such thing as a safe smooth landing on one's feet. This was pushed into our rating requirements with heavy closed door influence from Alcoa.

And that segues rather smoothly into this issue...

Tom Peghiny, Manned Kiting - 1974

Never take your hands off the bar.

Gregg B. McNamee - 1996/12

To actuate the primary release the pilot does not have to give up any control of the glider. (Common sense tells us that the last thing we want to do in an emergency situation is give up control of the glider in order to terminate the tow.)

If your system requires you to take your hand off the control bar to actuate the release it is not suitable.

British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association Technical Manual - 2003/04

On tow the Pilot in Command must have his hand actually on the release at all times. 'Near' the release is not close enough! When you have two hands completely full of locked-out glider, taking one off to go looking for the release guarantees that your situation is going to get worse before it gets better.

It takes two hands to fly a freaking hang glider. It took two hands in 1974, 1996, and 2003. It takes two hands in 2011. It'll take two hands in 2050. No halfway sane person with with an IQ of five or better is gonna argue against that point. But in 1981 Donnell said it just took one and we've had a long procession of Malcolms, Matts, Dennis Pagens, Bill Brydens, Steve Wendts, Tracys, Adam Elchins, and Davises telling everybody it just takes one ever since - and tens of thousands of people believing them.

And I have little doubt that - just as Alcoa was able to insert the "safe, smooth landing on feet" language into our pilot proficiency rating requirements - Malcolm was behind the "easy reach" specification in the aerotowing SOPs. Easy reach. Right. Like five is a safe limit on the number of rounds a junior high student is allowed to have loaded in his assault rifle during algebra class.

A pilot who doesn't properly secure his parachute in its container is much better off not having a parachute. Similarly you will crash and kill a lot more gliders using weak links under 1.0 Gs than you will using weak links over 1.3 Gs or no weak links at all.

Pilots who are taught to assume that they're NOT connected to their gliders two seconds from launch do not run off mountains without them. I challenge anyone to name ONE that fits the category from anywhere at any time. (I actually know of ONE - but it was of no consequence.)

Pilots who are taught to always follow a certain procedure or set of procedures so that they can assume they ARE connected to their gliders two seconds from launch run off mountains without them all the time. I've PERSONALLY known at least eight I can think of off the top of my head, one of whom was half killed and another of whom was fully killed.

...we also need to establish mechanisms for ongoing review...

All that stuff outlined above is obvious to anyone who can open his eyes enough to recognize a naked emperor. It's been undergoing reviews for thirty or forty years and it doesn't need ongoing reviews any more than Cessna flying or sailplane releases and weak links do. Freakin' two plus freakin' two has equaled freakin' four for a very long time and probably will next month as well. The fairest thing we can do for our pilots is pass the resolution regardless of the fact that sixty percent of the pilots think it equals freakin' seven.

...and ongoing fairness to our pilots.

No rules, standards, regulation, enforcement - no fairness.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

And the price of freedom in hang gliding is wings falling off, full luff dives, launch dollies snapping off wheels caught in armadillo burrows, 130 pound Greenspot, whipstalls following weak link failures, tugs giving gliders towlines, velcroed-on release levers, slam-in lockouts, gliderless plunges from launch ramps, Matt, Davis, Jim Rooney, private control of public airports, dislocated shoulders, broken and crippled arms, amputations, paralysis, brain damage, and death.

We don't have or want freedom in hang gliding. Freedom leads to...

Uncertified gliders.
People buying gliders on eBay, tying ropes from trailer hitches to basetubes and yelling, "Let 'er rip!!!"
Observers telling people, "You are not hooked in until after the hang check."
Instructors warning students about how vulnerable to stalls they become when turning from upwind to down.
Somebody with an afternoon or two at a fifty foot hill being on a ramp at fifteen gusting to twenty-five.
Releases that spin away from us when we finally get to them.
Releases that won't work 'cause there's too much PRESSURE on them.
Weak links blowing at signigicantly higher frequencies than parachute deployments.
Tug drivers who say, "Whatever's going on back there, I can fix it by giving you the rope."
People entering thermals clockwise when they're already full of gliders going counter.

We want pilots trained by competent instructors to tight consistent standards who pilots who load test their flying wires during preflight, never assume that they or any of their friends are hooked in, understand that it takes two hands to fly a glider, would rather belly in than break an arm trying to land on their feet, attach more importance to conserving runway than hitting spots, know the difference between PRESSURE and TENSION and angle of attack and pitch attitude, can tell you how many pounds of tension are being transmitted by the tug to the glider, and can express weak links in terms of Gs.

We want to follow strict sane rules developed to keep us from being punished by Mother Nature when we violate her nonnegotiable rules so we can get to (five hundred feet shy of) cloudbase, hang out there all afternoon with our friends, then land and get stoned, and come back next weekend with at least the same number of friends and do it again.

And when we have good strict rules and standards and follow them we get more airtime and live longer. And when we don't and let Ridgely and Davis run the shows we stand in line all afternoon watching weak links blow and gliders lock out and crash.

We have to watch 'em ... like a hawk.

Technically, the US Hawks logo bird isn't a hawk - it's a buzzard.

[Bob Kuczewski]

Hi Tad,

It's a fact that everyone who's been killed while hang gliding would not have been killed while hang gliding ... if they weren't hang gliding.

We may just have a fundamental disagreement here. I don't believe we should be building a "nanny state" where one group imposes their view of what is safe for everyone else. None of us are so omniscient that we can decide once and for all the best way to do anything. In fact, that's almost what you're fighting. You feel you've built a better mousetrap, but you built it after the establishment decided that what they already had was good enough. The only way we can get improvement over what we have is to allow people to experiment with new ideas. You may be a testament to that philosophy yourself.

So I would advocate for an organization that makes recommendations for safe flying but does not impose mandates for people who use the sky.

We have to watch 'em ... like a hawk.

Technically, the US Hawks logo bird isn't a hawk - it's a buzzard.

I actually purchased the right to use that image from a photographer who has it listed as a red tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). It has all the markings of a red-tail including the dark shoulders and classic red-orange tail. Here's a photo from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-tailed_Hawk):

wikipedia_220px-Red-tailed_hawk_in_flight.jpg (6.5 KiB) Viewed 6891 times

Not that we need another argument, but what makes you think our bird isn't a red-tailed hawk?

[TadEareckson]

It's a fact that everyone who's been killed while hang gliding would not have been killed while hang gliding ... if they weren't hang gliding.

No. That doesn't take into account your Bill Pridays and Kunio Yoshimuras. And they're pretty big chunks of the equation.

I don't believe we should be building a "nanny state" where one group imposes their view of what is safe for everyone else.

We HAVE, always HAVE HAD, and always WILL HAVE an entity which with an iron fist imposes its view of what is and isn't safe for everyone. It's called Newtonian physics. Nobody's view, approach, opinion, or argument is ever gonna trump that.

The tiny majority of us in hang gliding who understand it need to establish regulations, procedures, and training which comply with its dictates to protect people - like me, Chris Bulger, Eric Aasletten, Bill Bennett, Mike Del Signore, Rob Richardson, Debbie Young, Holly Korzilius, John Woiwode, Jeremiah Thompson, Nuno Fontes, and Carlos Weill - from people who don't - like Donnell Hewett, Mike Robertson, Ricky Duncan, Jerry Forburger, Dave Farkas, Corey Burk, Dennis Pagen, Bill Bryden, Steve Wendt, Peter Birren, Arlan Birkett, Bobby Bailey, Adam Elchin, Sunny Venesky, Zach Woodall, Jim Rooney, Paul and Lauren Tjaden, Matt Taber, Malcolm Jones, Tracy Tillman, Steve Younger, Paul and Ryan Voight, Davis Straub, and Jack Axaopoulus.

Aviation cannot by controlled by a democracy of pilots reaching happy mediums based upon the averages of their opinions. It's gotta be controlled by a meritocracy of physicists. And that group has gotta be able to impose its views on the rabble of idiots that constitute the overwhelming majority of people who fly these things.

And just to be clear... I've got absolutely no problem with a Dan Racanelli commencing a loop at two hundred feet and pulling out under the bridge at Hyner. But I've got a huge problem with a John Seward doing it. I've also got a huge problem with a George Worthington going up in a glider that hasn't been properly load tested on the ground or a Red advising people to disregard the single most important step in the Wills Wing U2 preflight procedure as defined in the owner's manual.

None of us are so omniscient that we can decide once and for all the best way to do anything.

Yes, some of us are. There's a best way to recover from a stall. And it's never gonna involve pushing out and highsiding it. And if you take a flock of halfway competent Hang Threes and videotape them recovering from the same stall they're gonna be pretty hard to tell apart.

In real aviation the manufacturer specifies THE proper weak link for the sailplane to be towed by the nose. And it's gonna be in the 1.3 to 1.4 G range. In all of hang gliding the number of people who know what a weak link is doesn't crack double digits and outside of those seven or eight individuals nobody's ever even heard of a G.

You feel you've built a better mousetrap...

I freakin' KNOW I've built the best mousetrap and everybody with half or more of his cranial cavity occupied with something better than air or sludge who's ever looked at it knows I've built the best mousetrap. And I can give you bench test numbers which PROVE I've built the best mousetrap.

JohnG - 2009/04/13

Rick,

Not being constructive? There is one person who has put more thought and time into releases than anyone. That person is Tad. He explains the pros and cons to every release out there. I gave you the link to more release information than the average person could ever digest, and I didn't get a thank you. Just you bitching that we aren't being constructive. What more could you want? He has created something that is a solution, but no one is using it... apparently you aren't interested either. So what gives??? What do you want us to tell you? Your concerns echo Tad's concerns, so why not use his system? Every other system out there has known flaws.

I didn't even know that discussion was going on.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=11497

It had 6950 hits when Jack locked it down cause I started winning and he started losing. Check out how many it's got now.

But this isn't about the freakin' mousetrap. This is about minimum standards for ANY mousetrap.

...but you built it after the establishment decided that what they already had was good enough.

bulls***. The establishment wrote regulations specifying minimum standards which - even as hopelessly vague as they were and are - made absolutely no pretense of an attempt to adhere to them, threw together whatever off-the-shelf crap it could get it's hands on, threw it into the air with absolutely no bench testing whatsoever, and figured out that the kill rate was acceptable and that it was always gonna be able to write off a fatality as pilot error.

Doug Hildreth - 1991/06
USHGA Accident Review Committee Chairman

Good launch, but at about fifty feet the glider nosed up, stalled, and the pilot released by letting go of the basetube with right hand. Glider did a wingover to the left and crashed into a field next to the tow road.

This scenario has been reported numerous times. Obviously, the primary problem is the lack of pilot skill and experience in avoiding low-level, post-launch, nose-high stalls. The emphasis by countless reporters that the pilot lets go of the glider with his right hand to activate the release seems to indicate that we need a better hands-on way to release.

I know, I know, "If they would just do it right. Our current system is really okay." I'm just telling you what's going on in the real world. They are not doing it right and it's up to us to fix the problem.

Luen Miller - 1996/10
USHGA Accident Review Committee Chairman

We have two more fatalities because of a glider that couldn't be released from tow. Again, the fatalities occurred in a training situation in which a student should reasonably not be expected to do everything perfectly.

I am strongly recommending formal review and analysis of releases and weak link designs for all methods of towing by the Towing Committee, and that recommendations on adoption or improvements be generated.

I believe that from preflight through release we should have more standardized procedures in towing.

Bill Bryden - 2004/04/01
USHGA Accident Review Committee Chairman

Some aerotow releases, including a few models from prominent schools, have had problems releasing under high tensions. You must VERIFY through tests that a release will work for the tensions that could possibly be encountered. You better figure at least 300 pounds to be modestly confident.

Maybe eight to ten years ago I got several comments from people saying a popular aerotow release (with a bicycle type brake lever) would fail to release at higher tensions. I called and talked to the producer sharing the people's experiences and concerns. I inquired to what tension their releases were tested to but he refused to say, just aggressively stated they never had any problems with their releases, they were fine, goodbye, click. Another person tested one and found it started getting really hard to actuate in the range of only 80-100 pounds as I vaguely recall. I noticed they did modify their design but I don't know if they ever really did any engineering tests on it. You should test the release yourself or have someone you trust do it. There is only one aerotow release manufacturer whose product I'd have reasonable confidence in without verifying it myself, the Wallaby release is not it.

Gregg Ludwig - 2010/10/27
USHGA Towing Committee Chairman

(re: Lemmy Lopez - 2010/10/13)

It is always so easy to just blame the dead pilot...call it pilot error. End of story.

The only way we can get improvement over what we have is to allow people to experiment with new ideas.

bulls***. We don't need to EXPERIMENT with new ideas. We finished experimenting ten years ago. We know how to do this, we've done it, but the flight parks control the runways and they won't let any new ideas get into the air. And any person who tries to push the idea won't ever again get into the air either. And anybody who publicly supports anybody pushing getting safe equipment into the air also won't ever again get into the air either. That's how come I get a lot of correspondence thanking me for what I'm doing but asking me to keep their notes in confidence.

And where on Earth are you getting the idea that setting and enforcing sane standards will suddenly staunch the biblical flood of innovation we've been seeing ever since twenty years ago when some idiot welded a bicycle brake lever to a spinnaker shackle and put a bent pin in a scrap of tubing from the crash bin? Everybody's always been free to experiment but only four people actually have and only three of those have had enough brains not to make something even crappier than the junk we were handed to begin with.

The only way we can get improvement over what we have is to enforce the EXISTING USHGA regulations and get all the Wallaby and Bailey garbage out of the air. But USHGA's never gonna let that happen 'cause USHGA IS the established commercial interests and the incompetent jerks at the FAA don't give a rat's a** how many people we kill 'cause they're too busy going ballistic about some little kid flawlessly relaying directions to planes coming in and out of JFK.

You may be a testament to that philosophy yourself.

No. I'm not. I'm a testament to the sort of person who gives enough of a s*** about his own safety and enough more of a s*** about the safety of other people using his equipment to design to far exceed minimum standards and test the hell out of it BEFORE it goes up.

For the traditional approach...

http://ozreport.com/goodies.php
http://www.skydogsports.com/release/

Try to find ONE WORD in either of those about load capacity.

As an aeronautical engineer does the SteevRelease scare you half as shitless as it scares me and Joe Street? As if the bent pin weren't insane enough.

So I would advocate for an organization that makes recommendations for safe flying but does not impose mandates for people who use the sky.

We don't make "RECOMMENDATIONS" for the gliders we put into the air. We have strict enforced standards.

We don't have "RECOMMENDATIONS" for qualifying pilots for various proficiency levels. We have standards that can get tickets revoked if they're falsified.

The United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, Inc.
Standard Operating Procedure
12. Rating System
02. Pilot Proficiency System
10. Hang Gliding Aerotow Ratings
-B. Aero Vehicle Requirements

06. A release must be placed at the hang glider end of the tow line within easy reach of the pilot. This release shall be operational with zero tow line force up to twice the rated breaking strength of the weak link.

That's not a "RECOMMENDATION". That's a regulation that we imposed on ourselves for the FAA to allow us the privilege of conducting AT operations. And the reason we've got Wallaby, Quest, Lookout, and Bailey crap in the air and nothing better is 'cause it's NEVER been enforced.

And, by the way... If you're really all that anti "nanny state" you probably oughta back my revision 'cause it's a whole lot less restrictive than what's in place now.

The existing regulation could require a two point release to be operable under more than thirteen hundred pounds of towline tension. I'm gonna let you off at 678 'cause that's plenty and we can do it with an off-the-shelf two and a half dollar M111S parachute pin.

Or would you like to go down to 270 so Davis can keep selling bent pins and...

Rob Kells - 1985/09

On July 17 you and I lost one of the most gifted pilots who has ever been in the sport of hang gliding. Chris Bulger started flying at age thirteen, and had racked up thousands of hours in hang gliders, hundreds in trikes and many in airplanes. The guy was a pilot's pilot: one of the world's best, and as the saying goes, he could have flown a picnic table.

The cable was routed to a foot peddle at the nose of the trike. The trike inspection revealed that the pin was bent above the bottom bolt making release from the trike end impossible, and the cable was broken away from the foot pedal, indicating that Chris was trying hard to pin John off but was unable to.

...we can kill another gifted young pilot in the name of the reality, responsibility, and morality reality free personal freedom that's what we have now and is the whole reason I'm in this conversation in the first place?

So I would advocate for an organization that makes recommendations for safe flying but does not impose mandates for people who use the sky.

Would you wanna get on a passenger jet on which maximum allowed duty time, blood alcohol level, airworthiness standards, instrumentation, transponders, communication equipment, and maintenance schedules were just recommendations that the pilot could disregard at his discretion? Is there anyone besides Davis, Jack, and Jim Rooney you'd like to see boarding into first class?

Would you like to see uncertified gliders made widely available to Hang Twos and flown in competition?

I actually purchased the right to use that image from a photographer who has it listed as a red tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis).

Not that we need another argument, but what makes you think our bird isn't a red-tailed hawk?

I didn't say that. I said:

Technically, the US Hawks logo bird isn't a hawk - it's a buzzard.

Google: |Buteo| and |"true hawks"|. And, just for kicks... |"Buteo buteo"|.

Ya know what's really weird about this conversation...

You've got a bleeding heart, green-to-the-gills, bird watching tree hugger arguing in favor of aeronautical engineering standards against an aeronautical engineer totally opposing them. Where's Monty Python's Flying Circus when you really need them? ("This bloke won't haggle.")