spydermike wrote:Based on this thread, I don't really understand your approach to bringing new people into the sport. You state you have some ideas, maybe you could elucidate them. If you already have, will you steer me toward the threads/posts where it is defined?
Hey Mike, are you still with us? I've espoused ideas here before under the moniker FreeUSHGA before I changed the name to Free. Also before that at the old USHGA yahoo list.
The idea was to provide the tug and a possible tug pilot for nomadic instructors seasonally after the Florida parks hibernate in the summer months. Infrastructure for instructors.
About April it's over down there and just starting up in the mid-west. Instructors without jobs for the summer.
That's how Cowboy-Up came to be. They had their own tug and struck out in April or so to create a new gig. Jackson Hole seemed like a good place to set up a boutique shop catering to the money class.
Now it has revamped near Houston for a somewhat different clientele, I suppose.
Combine my idea with crowd source funding for a central hub training system for entry level training via static tow. Where I had in mind to do this, flatland, would entail some man made training hills. Plenty dirt for this.
So to sum this up quickly without all the details that would need to be worked out, one millionaire benefactor could pull this off. I don't believe Davis or Blindrodie are gonna step up, so like Cowboy Up asked for donations from pilots, instructor salaries and infrastructure would be funded by pilots that want to help new pilots come into the sport.
Static/scooter tow and wheels on gliders to teach flying like sailplanes. A lot of take off and landings at a cost sensitive price for the basics that would encourage participants that can't do the boutique thing.
I had a couple instructors lined up about 15 years ago but the deal got sabotaged before it happened. Before Cowboy Up happened.
It's probably too late now... now that the world is going to end in 12 years or less.
Anybody else could do this and it will take someone else to do it other than me.
Build it and If the price is right, they will come.
I see billboards across the interstates taunting all those people that say they always wanted to try hang gliding.
Some training could be free. As in FreeUSHGA.
A free flight park for instructors who earn a salary. Free training for those that can't afford the Disney Parks. The bulk will pay a fair price.
All can move up to pricier training if they care to... or they might just stay home with their own scooter tow and develop in a different direction than the money boys in their aerodynamic costumes.
Train a few hundred or a thousand and out of those maybe one will be the one to reinvent/save the sport.