PG pilot describes take-over of Chilean HG organization by PG
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If more people are preferring PG over HG, there is nothing wrong in acknowledging that with the question "why are more people preferring paragliding?", regardless of your personal opinion or some technical analysis you'd like to add to that. Trying to "pose an HG-favourable" question and answer just to offset what is happening out there is a protectionist measure. What is the purpose, attempt to influence the public to choose a declining sport just because it's older? Nostalgia? Political correctness? You could always have a "Why do I stick to Hang Gliding?" question, but don't forget that you are a minority and it doesn't look like it's going to revert.
Associations are democratic and therefore in theory are representative of their members. If the majority of their members are paraglider pilots, this will be reflected in their policies and programmes. The fact you consider one safer, cooler or more respectable is besides the point.
I saw it happen: the free-flight association founded by HG pilots only, managed to secure sites, government benefits and a relationship with the communities quite successfully. Time went by, they accepted paragliding pilots (that were leaving the skydiving associations behind) and a few years later were outvoted 3 to 1 by the newcomers. The old hangies were pissed off, resigned and left and are now in small groups of 5 or 6 popping up at some sites that are mostly set up for paragliding (no ramps, crammed landing spots, etc. By not accepting change it was their loss.
Unfortunately paraglider pilots are more diverse and have several different and incompatible objectives and profiles, so the association lost organizational capacity to the point that it barely exists anymore…so the HG pilots leaving ended up being our loss too.
It would have been so much easier to embrace change instead of attempting to fight it.
At first paragliders were a part of the skydiving federation, and no more than 10 pilots (this was mid-late 80's). The free flight association were about 50 hang gliding pilots. Then paragliders increased to about 20 and had little in common with skydivers and kept running into hang gliding pilots, and several hang gliding pilots took up paragliding, most of them dropping hang gliding, so they joined the association that ended up about 70% HG and 30% PG for several years. As new PG pilots appeared and HG pilots disappeared, eventually those numbers reversed (this was roughly when I joined), and one day when elections came a group of PG pilots were voted into the board (HGs outvoted). They changed the logo to include a paraglider and changed the license system to make it more PG friendly. Several HG pilots thought this was outrageous and left, but a few remained, and each sport had its own rep in the board. However as most of the members were PG pilots (about 90% after some shuffle) most decisions were made to the benefit of this sport and not HGs, so the few HG pilots that remained became unbearable and were moaning and ranting, and eventually left. So the free flight association went from 100% HG to 100% PG in about 5~8 years.
Embracing change would have been: the HG pilots not leaving and supporting their rep on the board to make sure they had their say and their own projects. The HG pilots had loads of connections, experience and wisdom, but they didn't have the energy to maintain their space in adverse conditions nor the open mindedness to realize that paragliding was here to stay (Who moved my cheese?). They behaved as if their leadership was their divine right and of course it wasn't. Everyone's loss.
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... sc&start=0
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