[Rick Masters]

Paragliding    August 5, 2017


A helicopter crew from Tomlin Mountain Rescue prepares a 67-year-old German paragliding victim with multiple fractures and internal injuries for transport.

At least one injured paraglider is rescued daily at Tomlin, Slovenia
By August 5 of the summer flying season, Tomlin Mountain Rescue had made 63 rescues, more than half due to foreign paragliders.

Both seriously injured soaring parachutists who were rescued on Thursday were foreigners - German citizens. The 67-year-old who took off from the Kobala launch at around 14.40 was very badly injured, receiving numerous fractures and internal injuries. Shortly after taking off, due to a change in direction of the wind and consequently air turbulence, the paraglider collapsed. The German was about 30 meters above the slope when he lost control of the paraglider and began to fall into a spiral, then smashed into a steep slope covered with grass and shrubs, about 70 meters below the take-off. He was taken to the Ljubljana Clinical Center with a helicopter.

An hour later, a 63-year-old German also took off from the same takeoff. According to the information provided by the Novo Mesto Police Directorate, a hundred meters above ground he made a sharp turn (360 degrees), which led to the closing of the paraglider and from the height of about five meters, it fell to the grassy field in Tolmin. They suspect that he seriously damaged his backbone. He was also taken to Ljubljana with a helicopter.

"Almost every day we rescue a paraglider," said Miljko Lesjak of Tolmin Mountain Rescue. "But if there is no accident one day, the next day there are two."

Mountain rescue is free in Slovenia.
https://www.dnevnik.si/1042780401

[Rick Masters]

Paraglider joyriding        December 29, 2017


PG fatality #1655                 Natalia demonstrates her final gesture.

Natalia Vargas was a lovely 28-year-old Argentinian medical doctor on vacation home while completing her residency in Germany.
Apparently the commercial operator forgot to fasten her leg straps properly and she fell to her death from 375 feet.
She had unbuckled her harness and committed suicide, the "instructor" told authorities, as they always do,
perhaps unaware that medical doctors rarely choose methods to end their lives which involve absolute terror.

[Rick Masters]

Ski flying

[Rick Masters]

Powered paragliding

This isn't news and it's not interesting.
It does illustrate a modern promotional mania that I don't understand or approve of.
From around 1978 to the advent of FAA Part 103 in 1981, we hang glider pilots in Owens Valley were exceeding 18,000 feet on a regular basis and bragging about it.
Some claimed to have reached 24,000 feet on thermals alone.
That was 40 years ago.
We didn't bother with engines or oxygen.


No, the world doesn't look like this from 18,000 feet.
Not a bit.
It looks like it looks on my avatar (upper left).
I ain't Chuck Yeager. And neither is this clown.
It took no courage to do what he did.
I guess that's what really bugs me...

[Rick Masters]

Paragliding fatalities for 2017

Right now, I have verified 102 paragliding fatalities in 2017.
There were probably a lot more and these will come trickling in as the national hybrid organizations release their numbers.
It's not a "bad" year. It's a normal year. Paraglider enthusiasts expect 100 of their friends to die every year, year after year.
How can that be acceptable? It's sick.
Something I find infuriating is when they say these were "freeflight" deaths rather than break them down into PG and HG fatalities.
It's dishonest and drags in hang gliding to share the horror and blame and unairworthiness of paragliders.
What happens to people on parachutes isn't something hang glider pilots can do much of anything about.
But to stop helping them to destroy hang gliding with their hybrid associations would be a good first step.

In the worst days of hang gliding, we never saw attrition rates like these.
The fact that only a handful of hang glider pilots have ever dared to speak out on this doesn't lead me to think very highly of the group.
Hang gliding needs to find a foothold in the face of the global PG disaster and stand up for itself.
In the US, we need a national hang gliding association with the will to speak out about what is going wrong and how to fix it.

[DaveSchy]

Wow!
1.16% annual membership fatality rate for U$HPA to "insure". Selfie sticks and go pro cameras are probably going to increase the number!
That makes paragliding 1/2 as dangerous as driving in Cairo, Hong Kong, Calcutta (or LA), and that is just unacceptable!

source: http://asirt.org/initiatives/informing- ... statistics
Over 37,000 people die in road crashes each year
An additional 2.35 million are injured or disabled
Over 1,600 children under 15 years of age die each year
Nearly 8,000 people are killed in crashes involving drivers ages 16-20

Road crashes cost the U.S. $230.6 billion per year, or an average of $820 per person

Road crashes are the single greatest annual cause of death of healthy U.S. citizens traveling abroad

[Rick Masters]

I do simple lists.
Some can learn a lot from a good, simple list.
I have seen the silliest people embrace statistics.
They have twisted statistical science into sophistry.
They structure their arguments to meet their agendas.
You can do that with statistics.
Don't try it with a list.
A list is what it is.
Some try to rationalize away a good, simple list with statistics.
They forget that a good, simple list is the foundation of any statistic
and thereby open themselves to ridicule.

ra·tion·al·ize
ˈraSHənlˌīz,ˈraSHnəˌlīz
verb
attempt to explain or justify (one's own or another's behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate.
"she couldn't rationalize her urge to return to the cottage"
synonyms: justify, explain, explain away, account for, defend, vindicate, excuse
"he tried to rationalize his behavior"

[DaveSchy]

I agree, Rick, that's a really sad number for "normal".
I will never forget my Statistics prof at UCSB saying "you can prove any thing with statistics"!
Any type of safe aviation should be at least 100 times safer than driving with all the idiots out there on any road.
People used to ask me if hang glider pilots had a "death wish" and I would always answer that, no, we have a "life wish".
Paragliding makes a completely unacceptable trade off between convenience and safety, your list doesn't lie!
Keep up the effort.

[Frank Colver]

There are certain types of aircraft where the pilot often wears a parachute in case of structural failure or fire. The usual outcome, over many years of flying, is that the pilot never has to use his chute to rescue himself. If he does need to use his chute sometime, then he has a story to tell.

It appears to me that using a rescue parachute is just a normal part of flying paragliders. I can just imagine a paraglider pilot sitting with fellow pilots drinking a beer, after a day of flying, and saying: "Had to use my chute today. Damn, one more thing to pack".

FC

[Rick Masters]

Paragliding


http://video.dailymail.co.uk/video/mol/2016/07/17/7795184707780625097/1024x576_7795184707780625097.mp4