However ... there is another aspect of this topic that does deserve some attention. That aspect is the national landscape of hang gliding associations and organizations. It is those associations and organizations that have either intentionally or negligently fractured the sport of hang gliding. Before I get into details, let me start with a
famous quote by Rick Masters posted here on U.S. Hawks on March 21st, 2015:
People talk about the sport of hang gliding dying. It's not dying. It's being murdered. By the U$hPA.
So let me start with USHPA...
Thanks for including the famous "Hang Gliding is Dying" graphic (
available here) into your video:
- USHPA_Membership_by_wing_type.png (87.18 KiB) Viewed 848 times
That graphic (and the notion that "hang gliding is dying") has been used by USHPA as justification to support the sport of paragliding over hang gliding as the route to their survival. That's been one part of the problem. But that's just the start.
Several of us founded the Torrey Hawks Hang Gliding Club to support hang gliding at Torrey Pines, and we subsequently became a USHPA chapter. When I was Regional Director, we applied for site insurance at Torrey Pines on March 31, 2009. Here's the
receipt from USHPA:
- Site_Insurance_Receipt_2009c.png (8.14 KiB) Viewed 848 times
When I purchased that site insurance, the USHPA employee took the money with no questions asked. But USHPA refused to grant it. Eventually they tried to send my money back, but I refused to accept or cash their check. They still owe us that site insurance to this day. Here's proof that the check was never cashed:
- DOC041811_Returned_Checkc.png (17.54 KiB) Viewed 848 times
You can find all of that documentation
here on U.S. Hawks. Why wouldn't USHPA support a hang gliding club at Torrey Pines? Because the site was being operated as a primarily paragliding business site bringing USHPA lots of money and new paragliding members. Hang gliding was just in the way. I urged USHPA to support the addition of the Torrey Hawks to the Torrey Pines Soaring Council where there were no hang gliding representatives. As Regional Director, I actually got a vote passed by the Board to do just that. But USHPA never carried it out. In fact, they eventually refused to renew the Torrey Hawks as a USHPA Chapter with no concrete reason given.
Also when I was Regional Director, I recognized that one of the problems was that USHPA Directors were not accountable to their constituents because there was no record of how Directors voted on USHPA issues. So I drafted and proposed what I called the
Accountability Amendment. USHPA's president refused to even allow it to be voted on. Here's my simple proposed amendment that wasn't allowed at the USHPA meeting:
In a message to Dave Wills on September 4, 2009, Bob Kuczewski wrote:[Article VIII, Section 13.] Conduct of Meetings:
All meetings (including Board of Director Meetings, Committee Meetings, General Membership Meetings, and others) shall be governed by Robert's Rules of Order, Revised unless otherwise provided for in these By-Laws or listed specifically below:
(a) In accordance with one of the practices discussed in Robert's Rules of Order Revised, a Roll Call vote (Yeas and Nays) shall be taken if requested by any Director. The names and votes of all Directors during any such Roll Call vote shall be included in the minutes of the meeting for distribution to the general membership.
All it said was that the vote on an issue should be recorded at the request of any Director. It was perfectly reasonable. But USHPA wouldn't even allow the motion to be discussed or voted on.
You mentioned in your video that hang gliding clubs don't interact:
Eric at 8:50 wrote:I've seen hang gliding clubs located 70 miles apart schedule conflicting events at their airfields on the same day.
These airfields don't talk to each other? Nobody bothered to make a phone call?
That's a really really GREAT observation! Have you noticed that U.S. Hawks has an entire forum devoted to Chapters? Here it is:
We've supported Chapter subforums integrated into our site since the very beginning in 2010. Each Chapter subforum is governed by each club, and I take direction from their officers on how to manage their subforum. That brings people together in one place to see what other chapters are doing and to support them in things like fund raising events and letter writing campaigns. Do you think USHPA would have taken a clue from that? No. USHPA doesn't even have a pilot forum where members can communicate. In fact, USHPA became so opposed to the open U.S. Hawks model, that they used my creation of the U.S. Hawks as
grounds for expulsion:
USHPA wrote:The behavior upon which the board has determined that you should be expelled from the association falls into the following categories:
1. Creation of at least two national hang gliding organizations with the stated purpose of competing with USHPA, one of which you currently control
Of course, there have been other hang gliding "forums" such as hanggliding.org and ozreport.com. But both of those routinely slice and dice our community by excommunicating anyone they don't like. No one knows how many people have been banned from those sites, but you can find a number of known examples here:
And local clubs are further either banning pilots for speaking (Crestline banned me for suggesting that Pilots be "Owners not Donors" of USHPA) or destroying their history (Sylmar has deleted all of their history up to this year).
So, with all of that said, let me say that I applaud your optimism, but we need to take concrete steps if we really want to save the sport of hang gliding. Your web site has been a tremendous effort, and I'd like the U.S. Hawks to support it any way we can. But there are other things that must be done that are not so fun. Part of that is spreading the word that there is at least one alternative to USHPA. The U.S. Hawks (unlike USHPA) is dedicated to promoting, protecting, and serving the sport of recreational hang gliding (it's right there in our logo). So anything you can do to help us grow would be a big help. And along those lines, I thank you for listing us and our chapters on your web site.
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by Eric Muss-Barnes » Thu Dec 19, 2024 2:23 pm 
