[Free]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tribal-skies-20120203,0,177178,full.story

Competition paraglider wings, designed for maximum speed and range, do not reinflate so easily. Two pilots were killed on the same day at the paragliding World Championships in Spain last July after their wings collapsed, and three others saved their lives only by opening reserve chutes.

"If I thought there was any chance my aircraft was going to spontaneously stop being an aircraft in flight, I would not get on it," said Rick Masters, a onetime hang glider who, after watching two paragliders plummet to their deaths, created a website devoted to the study of fatal paragliding accidents. Combing the Web for news accounts, he's up to 873 since 2002.

When he posted his findings on a paragliding forum, he was called a "fool," a "screwball" and a "psychopath." One angry paraglider wrote: "You are an old fart who used to fly and enjoy himself. Now you see 'your' sport threatened by these upstart paraglider pilots."

Masters, 61, lives in California's Owens Valley, home to some of the best thermal soaring in the world. He said he understands the response: Paragliders are "not going to let anyone take away their toys." He felt the same way about hang gliding — which, he concedes, is also plenty dangerous.

But he swears he didn't quit out of fear. Instead, he said, after about a decade of flying, he found himself soaring one day at 17,000 feet. He looked down at the ground and thought, "I'm bored. I gotta do something else, maybe build a house."

For others, the magic of flight doesn't wear off so easily.

Eighty-three-year-old Dodson was a pioneer when he started hang gliding almost 40 years ago. He tried paragliding, but on one of his maiden flights he went into an unexpected spiral dive after launching from 3,500-foot Kagel Mountain, about 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. "If I'd hit the side of the hill then, I would've been mush," he said.

In his late 60s at the time, he decided to stick with the wing he knew. He doesn't fly as often as he'd like these days because of back and respiratory trouble. So he gets his fix accompanying fellow members of what he calls the "Sylmar Senile Senior Soaring Society" to the top of the mountain in a 1988 Dodge van with 381,000 miles on it.

His last flight was on his birthday in October. "I got pretty winded getting into the harness, and winded again walking over to the launch," he said, standing at the edge of the cliff with the San Fernando Valley spread out more than a thousand feet below and the downtown skyline peeking over ridges to the south.

"But once I was in the air, and the weight was gone, I could do it," he said. "I was fine."

jack.dolan@latimes.com

Great article. Rick's website: http://www.cometclones.com/mythology2011.htm
comes up third page, google search of "paraglide and collapse".

[Rick Masters]

Try dead paraglider pilots

Try Paragliding Forum deaths

Try paragliding fatalities

Try paragliders killed

Try Paragliding Forum fatalities

Try dead paragliders

Try paraglider dead

Try paraglider dead man

Try paraglider dead man's curve

Try Paragliding Forum clowns

Try paragliding denial

[Rick Masters]

Reverberations of Mythology 2012 Rick Masters

Feb 5 - California's Sacramento Bee has published Jack Dolan's article verbatim under the heading "Cruising the Skies, Cursing Each Other". While sensational titles are often the work of clueless editors, the most significant point remains the nearly 900 unreported paragliding deaths since 2002.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/05/424060 ... -each.html

Feb 3 - To my surprise, crime writer Jack Dolan got his superb article "Riding the Wings of Change" on the front page of California's Los Angeles Times. For the first time in a newspaper, the fatality numbers are given for paragliding:

"If I thought there was any chance my aircraft was going to spontaneously stop being an aircraft in flight, I would not get on it," said Rick Masters, a onetime hang glider who, after watching two paragliders plummet to their deaths, created a website devoted to the study of fatal paragliding accidents. Combing the Web for news accounts, he's up to 873 since 2002."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... full.story

A typical response to my quote comes from PG Forum: "Amazing, did a paraglider pilot perhaps take away Rick Masters girl or something in the past? A little extreme to have that much hate towards paragliders. Do people really need to badmouth such sports in the press... really. Its not helping anyone." This comment follows the deletion of another pilot's question asking if the reported fatality number is accurate.

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=45061

[Free]

Mythology of the Airframe http://www.cometclones.com/mythology2012.htm is now on the second page of google just behind all the videos of collapsing paragliders.

I'm sure your hits and hate mail are up accordingly.

Sad to say, denial, cognitive dissonance or whatever you want to call it is widespread for many issues.
Hang gliding has always prospered on escapism and with the easier investment of PG, the easier escapism, lending itself to easier denial.

"It will never happen to me .. why are you harshing my buzz, bro?"

Escapism and denial.. favorite pastimes of our collapsing realities.

[Free]

Report:
Paragliding People Cause Loss of Site

Thu Feb 09, 2012 12:11 pm
Post subject: Daydreams no more #1

Been lurking awhile,thought I'd pass this on: much to my (and others) dismay Daydreams, Lake Tahoe has been closed by the forest service. We have paragliding to thank for this, causing erosion at the site in forest sensitive area.

Hanglider people use the low site on the established trail, parapeople made there own site, cut brush and small trees, and were warned repeatedly. The clincher was the guy from so lake doing commercial tandems which is against their regs. To top it off he pissed off the head of the forest service by arguing so they decided to close, permanently, the site.... as B. Cuddy, former region 2 director told me-$5000 fine and confiscation of equipment. Whats next...Slide?

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=25079#ixzz1lv2f1XYO

[Rick Masters]

Was that the launch where you land at King's Beach? The one that got closed? I flew that once, years ago. Not much room for error on the landing approach. What a shame to have that takeoff closed because of paragliders. Hang glider pilots are too timid to recognize that the scorched earth take-offs that paragliders require threaten our sport. I don't mean they are too stupid to recognize it, but it seems to be a form of denial, similar to paraglider pilots not being able to understand the implications of collapse, that causes hangglider pilots to do nothing while paraglider pilots sneak around and gradually raze the earth at every site they are allowed to fly until local outrage from enviromentalists grows to the point that the sites are closed. Today, it is so politically correct for hang glider pilots to look the other way when paragiider pilots rip out bushes and cut down trees from environmentally sensitive areas, that when they are slapped upside the head with a precious site loss they say, "What happened? We didn't do anything!"

If the people who trusted us, who allowed us to fly from their land because we left such little impact, were aware now that the paragliders, with whom we are unreasonably joined at the hip, desire every shrub, every tree to be ripped from its roots in order to have a smooth launch that won't entangle shroud lines or foul their ridiculous canopies when they frequently crash far to either side due to the idiotic way they have to launch, then these land owners would never allow us to use anything that wasn't already only a grassy slope.

In many low-use sites, we hang glider pilots only needed enough clearance for the wings on our shoulders. There was no problem in setting up our gliders in low vegetation. There were even sites with narrow planks we set in place to clear the bushes. Maybe our launch sites looked slightly lower than the surrounding hillsides, but we never created erosion problems, for Christ sake! Many of our sites lasted 30 years without a problem, partly because nobody cared we were there and partly because our launches blended into the surrounding landscape. We bragged, with total conficence, that our sport was among the most natural of all sports and had virtually no impact on the environment. But now the paragliders create these horrendously wide environmental death zones on or near our sites, engendering outrage and genuine sadness and regret from locals who believed us when we honestly promised them, years ago, that we would leave the natural setting undisturbed. We were made liars by the paraglider pilots who believe that every site we fly is a site that also is open to them.

Where is this issue raised? It is a key issue for the sport of hang gliding. But where is it discussed?

If you belong to the USHPA, you enable the destruction of our sport. I don't belong. Listen to me. We have a problem. It is a problem that is not going to go away until we once again have an honest hang gliding organization that does not associate itself with paragliding. An organization that does not permit paraglider pilots, other than by invitation, to fly sites that it controls. It is an either/or situation. If you give up anything but total control, you are going to lose the pristine sites that remain. And you gave that up the moment the USHGA buckled to paragliding. You tell me, how many sites have been lost, so far? You know. Say it. You're not stupid. Stop being patsies.

[Bob Kuczewski]

I believe that we lost our ability to fly to what we called "the point" at Torrey due to paraglider pilots landing and re-launching from the state preserve ... where everyone knew we shouldn't ever touch the ground.

There's more to this story, but I'm trying to keep my blood pressure within reason.

[Free]

Re: Only four reserves thrown on day three Thu, Feb 23 2012, 6:26:57 pm
Jacmac man, please don't bring up the PDMC nonsense. I know you mean well, and I know what you're actually trying to say, but that guy's theories are so unbelievably wrong and inflammatory.

Can I say this enough?
PGs don't just "fall out of the sky".
A "collapse" does not turn a PG into a "meat missile".
A PG that has suffered a "collapse" is still flying. It's got a worse sink rate and has a turn in it. How much of both of these is determined by how big the collapse is. It is still steerable and it is most certainly still flying. Most are quite recoverable and most actually sort themselves out, and very quickly for that matter.

Let's not go down the anecdotal evidence road either please.
I've seen plenty of reserves thrown, both HG and PG, and my flying is almost exclusively inland.
Reserve tosses are not part of normal everyday flying, HG or PG.

Jim Rooney

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26486&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=70

[terryJm]

Great obsevation, RickM, I've been thinking about one of the super light, X-light, whatever they call it, stuffed into my resurve container, then I can get my P-4, and fly a hang glider and a para-chute at the same time. That would be politicaly correct, and double safe, and I don't think they will kick me out of USPA. That way,when they make hang gliding illegale, I'll still be flying a perfectly sound Para-garbage baggie. It can't colapse if it is still folded up in the resurve container. Yes, we should have taken the clue from the Parachute assn. When they would not have this form of base jumping in their organization, We were nieve and ignorant to allow the mass of cheap thrill seekers to take over our sport. How are we to save the priestien, beautiful sport of soaring, --- is it too late?

[Bob Kuczewski]

How are we to save the priestien, beautiful sport of soaring, --- is it too late?

The handwriting is on the wall. As paragliding continues to grow it will become the dominant force inside USHPA. If USHPA were structured to protect the individual sports - regardless of numbers - then that might not be so bad. But there is no hang gliding committee in USHPA, and the Directors are elected based on the combined votes. So as the numbers tilt in favor of paragliding, the hang gliding community will continually lose representation in our own organization. That's why we need a separate organization to represent the sport of hang gliding.

By the way, the framers of the United States Constitution recognized that "tyranny of the majority" is a problem with a majority-rule system. That's why they crafted a Bill of Rights to ensure that our individual rights cannot be infringed despite the whims of any majority. We have no such protections in USHPA. I hope we'll do better in the US Hawks.