[Frank Colver]

Please see the BLOG section of this forum for all new posts to the "Basic Trainer" thread.

Frank

[Craig Muhonen]

Hello Frank, your concept and design work on a "training" glider will probably do more to advance young people into "hang gliding" than anything I've seen, in my limited time as a ushawk. I have a question about your new glider. I remember when I first learned to fly, surf, skateboard, and ski, going "straight off" was fine at first, but I couldn't wait to learn how to "carve" a turn. I have seen in the various training videos, that, the take off, then glide, then landing, is practiced over and over (as of course it should). When do "students" get the confidence to "turn" the glider and then land? And since "base to final" is so critical, how do you build a glider, and teach what "stall spin" is all about. Can you build a glider that 'compensates' for a young pilots inherent want to increase AOA? And without a rudder, how do you teach a 'coordinated turn'? My dad said " a nose heavy airplane is hard to fly, a tail heavy airplane....flies once". Your idea to have a perfectly balanced glider for your new pilots comes from your confidence and experience. It will pay great dividends. TTYL
Craig

[Bob Kuczewski]

This video has inspired me from the day that Bill posted it on January 14th, 2019 (a few pages back). I have typed in a few quotes from this video before, but I recently found that YouTube makes transcripts available as well. Here it is YouTube's transcript with some capitalization and punctuation added by me:

One way of conceptualizing yourself is that you're one Speck of dust among 7 billion, and when you conceptualize yourself that way you might think "well what difference does it make what I say or do?"   And that's actually quite convenient for you because if it doesn't matter what you say or do then you don't have any responsibility and you can do whatever you want. The price you pay for that is a bit of nihilism, but if you don't have to shoulder any responsibility that's a small price to pay.

Another (that's the underground motivation for nihilism), but the other way of looking at it, and this is actually the accurate way of looking at it, is that you're in a network. You're a node in a network, and so you can do a little bit of arithmetic very rapidly and just figure out how powerful you are. You know a thousand people. You're going to know more than that over the course of your life, but let's say a thousand for the sake of argument for now. They know a thousand people. That means that you're one person away from a million people, and two persons away from a billion people. And you're the center of that Network. And now the way networks work is that information propagates in a network manner. So don't underestimate the power of your speech.

Now you know Western culture is phallogocentric. Let's say it okay, so we'll say "Yeah that's just fine", that's exactly what it is. It's predicated on the idea of the logos, that the logos is the sacred element of Western culture. And what does that mean? It means that your capacity for speech is divine. It's the thing that generates order from chaos and then sometimes times turns pathological order into chaos when it has to.

Don't underestimate the power of truth there's nothing more powerful. Now in order to speak what you might regard as the truth you have to let go of the outcome. You have to think "all right I'm going to say what I think, stupid as I am, biased as I am, ignorant as I am, I'm going to state what I think as clearly as I can, and I'm going to live with the consequences no matter what they are". Now the reason you think that, that's an element of Faith. The idea is that nothing brings a better world into being than the stated truth.

Now you might have to pay a price for that, but that's fine. You're going to pay a price for every bloody thing you do and everything you don't do. You don't get to choose to not pay a price. You get to choose which poison you're going to take. That's it. So if you're going to stand up for something, stand up for your truth. It'll, it'll shape you because people will respond and object and tell you why you're a fool and biased and why you're ignorant. And then, if you listen to them, you'll be just that much less like that the next time you say something. And if you do that for 5 years, you'll be so damn tough and articulate and able to communicate and withstand pressure that you won't even recognize yourself. And then you'll be a force to contend with.

And you don't get to wait until, because I get letters like Gad Saad gets all the time too, from faculty members in particular, and they say "well you know when I get tenure". It's like then they think "well when I'm an associate professor" and then they think "well when I'm a full Professor". It's like if you're a professor already you're like the most protected person in the history of the planet. You know and and you you need well okay.

But what one of the things that that indicates is that it's almost impossible to provide people with enough protection so that they feel safe to speak. Okay, so we'll address that directly. It is not safe to speak. And it never will be. But the the thing you got to keep in mind is that it's even less safe not to speak! Right? It's a balance of risks. It's like you want to, you want to pay the price for being who you are and stating your mode of being in the world? Or do you want to pay the price for being a bloody serf? One that's enslaved him or herself? Well that's a major price man. That thing unfolds over decades and you'll just be a miserable worm at the end of about 20 years of that. Right? No self-respect, no power, no ability to voice your opinions, nothing left but resentment because everyone's against you because, of course, you've never stood up for yourself.

It's like, say what you think, carefully. Pay attention to your words. The price is, it's a price you want to pay if you are willing to believe that truth is the cornerstone of society. And in in the most real sense, if you, if you, if you're willing to take that leap then tell the truth and see what happens. And nothing better could possibly happen to you. There'll be ups and downs and there'll be push back and there'll be controversy and all of that. But it doesn't matter. The truth is what makes the world, the truth is what redeems the world from hell. And that's the truth. And we saw plenty of hell over the last hundred years, you know. And we haven't learned a bloody thing from it. It's like wake up tell the truth. Tell the truth, or at least don't lie. That's a start. And, and you, you got to understand that's a risk.

But I will I I have one more brief thing to say about that. Um, so you know I said what I had to say back in September, and I, I, I'm sure that I could have done it better. And many people have told me how I could have done it better, although it didn't mean they would actually do it. But, but, and you know my job was at risk, serious risk for about two months, and it destabilized my family who've been very brave about this. So like thumbs up to them man. They, they've just stood by me. But the op, here's the optimistic news, is the university has left me alone completely. I shook hands with the dean two weeks ago. We're on friendly terms. They don't want this to go any farther than it has already. The students were tremendously welcoming when I came back to teach in January. I haven't had a single negative incident at the University, and I've received thousands of letters from people all over the world, all of which have been in support. I've received two negative letters. That's it. Two.

So the the the people people have an inchoate longing to have the sort of thing that we're talking about articulated. And so don't be thinking you're alone. It's just that people can't talk. They're afraid to talk or they don't know what to say. And and those are real problems. So if you're reasonably articulate, like start talking and sharpen yourself up. I mean the enemy is is a cloud they're a cloud of gnats. They're only courageous in groups. They're only courageous in mobs. If you stand your ground and don't apologize and articulate things properly they'll disperse around you like they're not even there. So most of it's illusion. So don't be... Be afraid. But be afraid of the right thing. And the right thing you should be afraid of is not saying what you say. Because that's the same as not being. And here you are suffering away you might as well be at the same time. At least then there's something to you.

[Craig Muhonen]

Thanks Bob for reposting this, the younger generation has become sadly clueless and JBP talks directly to them.
Some quotes from him i Remember, "Stop talking to people, watch them, they will tell you EVERYTHING about themselves" and "If you can think and speak clearly and write, you are the most dangerous person in the world".

He said, "One way of conceptualizing yourself is that you're one Speck of dust among 7 billion", but I would add, and think about this, "ONE SPECK OF YEAST RAISES A WHOLE LOAF"

This video has inspired me from the day that Bill posted it on January 14th, 2019

Weather you are speaking or singing your vocal chords are not calibrated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QLHMGOEIXE


Speaking of music

3 Doors Down....My Kryptonite. some of the lyrics, the Hang Glider talking to its pilot, "I'll never let you down", "you bumped your head, if not for me you'd be dead".
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I was on gold hill to see John launch, he is a humble man and such a tribute to the sport of Hang Gliding and also speaks to a younger generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkPchORtTdw


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 this video is a perfect model for the presentation of a story.
40,479 views, 6 years ago.  1.27K subscribers. 783 likes.
Read the comments, make one yourself. I know when you watch this, again, you'll get chills, again. That's what good music does to your soul.
here are some;
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" the images that inspired me the most to start flying".
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"ABSOLUTELY AWESOME VIDEO!!!!!! NOW YOU'VE DONE IT !!!!!!!! I'VE OFFICIALLY CAUGHT THE SPRING FLYING BUG!!!!!! PERFECT SOUNDTRACK!!!!!! THOSE OF US THAT FLY HANG GLIDERS ARE SUCH A TINY PERCENTAGE OF THE HUMAN POPULATION. HOW LUCKY ARE WE TO BE BLESSED WITH THIS GIFT OF FLIGHT.!!!! KEEP THE BLUE SIDE UP MY FRIENDS"!!!!!!!
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"Best HG vid of the whole wide world. And so many déjà-vu old stills that are a blast from the past. Thank you, the feelgood meter is at its peak"!
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Editing is most important.
Watch how the music beat is choreographed and timed, to the moving pictures AND the still pictures. Watch for 0:36 ..."Yea".  and 0:38..."can do", and at 0:41 where he rubs his hand on the paraglider, and the stills coming exactly on the beat. The song ends at 3:50 when his foot touches the ground, perfectly timed. 
.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkPchORtTdw