[Quote From]

Bob, what don't you understand. Your proposal is all supposition. Hawks do NOT have insurance. Moot point. Why keep bombarding us with unactionable supposition?

Apparently very few, if anyone at the SHGA, is interested in your causes, judging by the lack of favorable responses to your comments and the political thread and ignore button you instigated.

The lion's share of the SHGA membership is happy and content with our club just the way it is!

Because of all this, the details in your comment above are all moot points, thus no darn reason to read or respond here.

The main problem is you don't/can't realize and/or accept any of this and go away.

What is this condition called?

[Quote From]

You made 27% of all posts on http://www.torreyhawksforum.org/search. ... uthor=bobk

I don't think it was created to smear you. What happened?

[Bob Kuczewski]

You made 27% of all posts on http://www.torreyhawksforum.org/search. ... uthor=bobk

I don't think it was created to smear you. What happened?

OP, you seem to have either a reading comprehension deficit or an honesty deficit:

"torreyhawksforum was created by someone else and later used to smear us"

"I don't think it was created to smear you"

Did you not read and comprehend the "later used to smear us" part or are you being intentionally dishonest?

Reading comprehension problems are common with class clowns because they spend all their time trying to come up with clever one-liners to entertain their peers rather than working to improve their actual mental skills. Responsible peers will avoid feeding this deficit by ignoring the class clown's off topic and generally illogical remarks.

Seriously OP, if you want to have a rational discussion, I very much welcome it. If you're going to play games, then you're going to get the treatment you deserve. You seem like an intelligent young man, and I think you have more to offer than these consistently off-topic "troll bait" posts.

Bob, what don't you understand. Your proposal is all supposition. Hawks do NOT have insurance. Moot point. Why keep bombarding us with unactionable supposition?

Change takes time. At first a new idea seems foreign and uncomfortable. But with some thought, new ideas - especially if they turn out to be good ideas - can become mainstream thought. If that should happen, then we will find ourselves with enough people to obtain insurance or make use of Recreational Land Use statutes.

The Rio Grande Soaring Association has been around for decades (maybe as old or older than the SHGA?). They are now a USHPA Chapter and a US Hawks Chapter. The same is true of the Shasta Sky Sailors and the Austin Free Flight Association. They are all either current or former USHPA Chapters as well as US Hawks Chapters. Indeed, the much newer clubs (Torrey Hawks, Tooele Hawks, and Southwest Texas Hang Gliders) have also been both USHPA Chapters and US Hawks Chapters. So there's no requirement for the US Hawks to provide insurance in order for Chapters to be both USHPA Chapters and US Hawks Chapters. Why do you want to force a false dichotomy?

Apparently very few, if anyone at the SHGA, is interested in your causes, judging by the lack of favorable responses to your comments and the political thread and ignore button you instigated.

The lion's share of the SHGA membership is happy and content with our club just the way it is!

Change takes time. That's what discussion is about. Topics like this spread information and get people thinking about other possibilities. That's why free speech is important - yours as well as mine.

Because of all this, the details in your comment above are all moot points, thus no darn reason to read or respond here.

You're welcome to stop reading and responding whenever you like. Chip was kind enough to create an ignore button for you, and he's suggested that you can use it. But it's clear that you're not trying to keep yourself from reading what I write. You want to keep everyone else from reading what I write.

The main problem is you don't/can't realize and/or accept any of this and go away.

What is this condition called?

Determination.

[Quote From]

Bob, it appears to be a frozen in time phpbb that consists of 27% your unedited postings. Did I at least get that right?

[Bob Kuczewski]

Bob, it appears to be a frozen in time phpbb that consists of 27% your unedited postings. Did I at least get that right?

No and No.

First, it's not "frozen". Jack Axaopoulos (aka: "sg") can change it whenever he wants ... and he has.

Second, my posts are not "unedited". Jack has gone back and edited my posts to say things I didn't say.

So you're mistaken on both counts.


For those who don't know the story, we founded the Torrey Hawks in April of 2007 with 5 pilots. I registered the domain name TorreyHawks.org later that summer (I think it was August of 2007). It was just a web site without a forum. At that time I had no experience running a forum.

In the spring of 2008, Jack Axaopoulos (aka: "sg") offered to create a forum for our club. I thought that was very nice of him and I accepted. I had hoped that it would also be under the TorreyHawks.org domain name, but Jack insisted on creating it under a domain name that he registered and owned (torreyhawksforum.org).

I trusted Jack Axaopoulos (aka: "sg"), and things were fine for a while until I began an effort to start an alternative national association. Jack certainly hated USHPA at that time (I think they had a "lead generation" business deal that went sour), and he was all for creating a new association (the HGAA) that he would control. But as that association grew, Jack began to realize that it would severely cut into his monopoly on hanggliding.org ... and he would NOT have absolute control of it. We were forming a Board of Directors instead. That's when he undermined the HGAA, banned founding members, and made up stories about "voter fraud". That's also when he locked down torreyhawksforum.org and began changing people's posts on that forum ... where they couldn't even post themselves. That's what you see now at that site.

Torrey Hawks Board members have made numerous requests of Jack Axaopoulos (aka: "sg") for our data and even to purchase the domain name. Jack Axaopoulos (aka: "sg") has refused.

Just to bring it home, it would be as if whoever had registered "shga.com" decided that they didn't like the SHGA anymore and completely hijacked your web site and changed what people had written to suit himself. That's what Jack Axaopoulos (aka: "sg") has done on torreyhawksforum.org and he's done similar things on hanggliding.org. That's why a number of people that I know will not post on hanggliding.org at all.

Jack Axaopoulos (aka: "sg") has also rigged hanggliding.org so that any posts with links to TorreyHawks.org or USHawks.org get automatically translated to something like "loserville.org". Try it sometime to see how far Jack Axaopoulos (aka: "sg") has gone to suppress the Torrey Hawks and US Hawks. Try entering those URLs in a post and see how they are automatically changed.

You can read about all of this at these links:

  - Jack Axaopoulos Locks and Defaces Torrey Hawks Forum
  - hanggliding.org tanslates uskawks to losreville.org
  - Jack Axaopoulos Meltdown
  - What happened to the HGAA?
  - Ban from hanggliding.org
  - Banning - Commentary

You can find even more by searching US Hawks for Axaopoulos.

OP, thanks for the opportunity to set the record straight for Sylmar readers. If you do your research, you might end up changing your own mind about our efforts as well.

By the way, since this discussion happens to be in the "Ban Bob" topic, I'd like to offer a few comments on the knee-jerk impulse to ban people who say things that others don't like.

The hang gliding community is tiny enough even with everyone participating. The slicing and dicing of our community by all these little fiefdoms which ban one person/group or another isn't helping our growth.

The US Hawks has only banned one person, and that was based on a public safety concern. Furthermore, we integrate all of our club forums in one place so we can bring pilots together. It's really great when I see pilots from one club helping pilots in another club on our forum.

It is a crime that USHPA will not host a public pilot's forum as almost every club in the country has done. They won't do it for the same reason they won't publish their votes. They fear criticism and they can't stand up to the actions they have taken. Instead, they send Mark Forbes out to be the "spokesmouth" for USHPA. And even then, he will only post in places where the moderator gives him protection from criticism. It's shameful, and that's part of why USHPA has become uninsurable.

I want to thank the Sylmar club for resisting the "Ban Bob" hysteria. I know that my posts and topics are often not popular, and I think your implementation of a "Politics of flying" forum and an "Ignore" button provides a good solution for everyone. Kudos to the club and the team who make it happen.

Also, with regard to the proliferation of "Hot" topics, I just took a snapshot of the top 10 topics in the politics section. Here's the list, followed by the author of the topic in red:

USHPA vs ushawks (sic) at the SHGA - by barton
High Time Bob Banned From This Forum- Board Action Requested - by jimshaw
BobK Positive affirmations at SD city council dhmartens
Calling USHPA's Bluff - by Bob Kuczewski
Calling Bobk’s Bluff - by barton
how to lose friends and alienate people - by OP
[TIL] About Tad Eareckson - by OP
Bobk Gag order and Ushpa RRG in California - by dhmartens
EMERGENCY SERVICES Meeting - Pls come Sat 3/19/16 10AM-12 - by DanF
Danger D protest Miami Steamroller Obama Posters Guantanamo - by dhmartens

You'll notice that while I've responded to many topics, I've only actually started one of them. Yet Barton and OP (who've each started more of these topics than I have) are the ones complaining the loudest? Sheeh.

[Quote From]

These images contains the watermark "FAKE", but the versions OP posted to the Sylmar forum and on imgur.com do not. Those versions appear as if they were real snapshots of the US Hawks and Sylmar sites. But if you look closely, you'll see post titles on the first one that were never made by any of our members. Yet they appear to have been made by Sam, Rick, Bill, Doug, Howie, and myself. You'll see similar forged content on the Sylmar version.

It's easy to make one of those fake websites. Just move the text around in 15 seconds. It appears the torrey hawks forum is once a real working bbs. Did he really change your posts? Was the story about you hiring a lawyer to write weird letters true?

example of easy to make fake website.

xRptoQo_fake.jpg (154.97 KiB) Viewed 6149 times

another:

DJSlCSG_fake.jpg (175.47 KiB) Viewed 6148 times

While the posts indicate that they are fake, the images themselves at these links do not:

     http://i.imgur.com/xRptoQo.jpg
     http://i.imgur.com/DJSlCSG.jpg
     http://i.imgur.com/LtOdOit.jpg
     http://i.imgur.com/93R4Sa3.jpg

[Bob Kuczewski]

It's easy to make one of those fake websites. Just move the text around in 15 seconds.

Yes, it's almost as easy as just telling a regular old lie. That's why courts generally require testimony to introduce evidence:

- "Yes, your honor. I took that picture on July 4th, 2010."
- "I took the blood sample to the lab where I handed it to the coroner who will testify next."
- "That is a copy of the forum that I personally saved on a backup CD ROM."

Such testimony is often part of the "chain of custody" for introducing evidence. I can provide that chain of custody along with many other witnesses to the vandalization of the torreyhawksforum. Can you do that with your fake pictures?

There's a saying that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. If you were to assert those pictures as real, you might convince some people, but those who knew the facts would then know you to be a liar. Some people take that gamble in the short run, but it usually catches up with them in the long run.

Take Barton's lie for example. He's said (on this forum) that he saw me flying north of bathtub rock. He might fool some people, but he certainly can't fool me. I may have been "on the fence" about whether he's a liar or not in the past, but his recent retelling of that lie on this forum has removed all of my doubt. There are other people who were at Torrey that day who will also know that he is lying. There are still others who may not have been there, but know that I've been a safe and careful pilot. They don't know that Barton is lying, but they've got a pretty good idea that he is. And then there are people who might weigh the evidence. There's no doubt that the Torrey concessionaire would love to have a reason to throw me out. If he had any prayer of making that charge stick, he'd have done so. So even the circumstantial evidence that I wasn't thrown out tends to indicate that Barton is lying. But some people will be fooled just the same.

There was a time when a man's word was an important and valuable thing. Unfortunately, that's less true today. But it still matters in some circles, and I believe that honesty is one of the most important qualities in a human being. I have high respect for those who exhibit honesty, and I have no respect for those who don't.

It appears the torrey hawks forum is once a real working bbs. Did he really change your posts?

Yes he did.

Was the story about you hiring a lawyer to write weird letters true?

I don't know that story. I have hired lawyers to write letters, but I would not consider them "weird" letters. Tell me the story you've heard and I'll be happy to reply.

With regard to your posted images above, I would appreciate if you would either remove them from the web or put a caption explaining them as false on the originals that you've posted at http://i.imgur.com/xRptoQo.jpg. While the context of the images is clear here in this forum, it might not be to someone who might find them outside of this forum.

Thanks.

[Quote From]

Is this fake? http://www.hanggliding.org/weblog_entry.php?e=466

[Bob Kuczewski]

Is this fake? http://www.hanggliding.org/weblog_entry.php?e=466

Here's what I found at that link:

Bob Kuczewski
Rights Asserted and Established at Torrey Pines Gliderport
Sat Dec 20, 2008 10:44 pm
[ Mood: Happy ]

Today, December 20th, 2008, David Beardslee and I entered the Torrey Pines Gliderport and asserted our right to be on that property and to fly. We brought a camera crew and witnesses, and we followed all proper procedures (including signing in and paying). We were not challenged by any staff members at that site.

I flew my paraglider (sorry, it was the best choice for the conditions) for about a 10 minute flight. I ended up sinking to the beach with about 4 to 6 other PG pilots and hiked back to the top. I also called in to report the beach landing. Dave Beardslee set up his hang glider, but the conditions were too light for him to fly.

We had several moderately long conversations with several members of the staff, and they never challenged our right to fly at the site or asked us to leave. Since Dave Beardslee was unable to fly, he requested a return of his $7.50 day use fee. It was returned.

So why the big change?

I think the Regional Director election was certainly a contributing factor, and I thank everyone who voted for me. But equally important were two letters sent by my lawyer on December 17th. One of the letters was for me, and the other for David Beardslee. Here's what my letter said:

On December 17th, 2008, Bob Kuczewski's lawyer wrote:
Dear Mr. Jebb:

This office represents Bob Kuczewski in his legal affairs.

Mr. Kuczewski has informed me that you are currently prohibiting him from being on the Torrey Pines Gliderport property and from participating in the recreational and flight activities at that City of San Diego owned park. He has also informed me that you have refused numerous requests for a written statement justifying this action.

I have examined your lease, and I believe that your actions against my client are in violation of several sections. For example, section 1.10 (Public Use) states:

"The general public shall not be wholly or permanently excluded from any portion of the premises. Flight Director/LESSEE may develop reasonable restrictions for the facility use provided they are consistent with the rights of the general public and are designed to allow Flight Director/LESSEE to use the premises for the purposes specified herein."

This section clearly indicates that the premises are to be available to the general public. Nothing in the lease allows you to bar people from this publicly owned land. In order to do so, you would have to go through a process available either through the court system or through the City of San Diego once policies are adopted that allow it. As of now, no such policies exist.

This is a city park on part of which the City of San Diego has given you the right to operate a concession. Ownership of that concession, however, does not give you the right of exclusion.

Given this, I have advised Mr. Kuczewski that he is free to use the Torrey Pines Gliderport as would any other member of the general public. Until you can demonstrate that you have the right to exclude him you may not do so. If you attempt to, we will file suit and establish his right in this regard in a court of law.

The letter was sent by courier, and Dave Beardslee and I also carried copies with us that we presented at the counter when we signed in. As I said, we were not challenged.

This is a huge step forward and it sets a precedent that members of the public cannot be excluded from that site without some form of due process. That's good for David Beardslee, it's good for Bob Kuczewski, and it's good for every member of the public and every pilot in our Region who visits the Torrey Pines Gliderport. Smile

Bob Kuczewski
President - Torrey Hawks Hang Gliding Club
Future Region 3 Director

Thanks for directing me to that post. I believe it is accurate. For anyone who doesn't know the history, David Jebb banned David Beardslee from Torrey for life (I think that was 2006). John Heiney asked me to help out, and so I began to get publicly involved in calling for reforms and formed the Torrey Hawks in 2007.. Jebb then banned me for a year in the spring of 2008. I ran against him and defeated him in December of 2008. Shortly after the election, I hired a lawyer (through a friend) to write letters to Jebb for both myself and Dave Beardslee. As described above, the letters were delivered by courier, and we showed up a day or so later with another copy in our hands. We asserted our right to fly and were not challenged.

We can both go there to this day and fly. The only problem for me is their requirement of USHPA membership. But I'm working on that.

Was that the "weird letter" that you mentioned? What did you think was "weird" about it?

OP, I am again asking you to modify those pictures where they reside so they cannot be used to defame myself, the US Hawks, the Sylmar Hang Gliding Association, or any of the names shown in your picture. Your modification should clearly state that they are not accurate depictions of the US Hawks web site or the SHGA web site.

I am also asking you to change your post that suggests that I've threatened Sherri Lightner or her family.

I really dislike having to involve lawyers, but your slanderous posts are forcing my hand. Once the call is placed, it gets more difficult and costly to reverse it.

I can be patient, but I won't wait forever.

[Quote From]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell