US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

The day after Christmas was booming at Torrey!!

Here's the wind speed and direction for the day:



We had about a dozen Torrey Hawks members at the Gliderport and most had great flights. I flew for 3 hours and 5 minutes, and I've included some of my photos below:

This is the "long view" of the Torrey Pines ridge from high above "Horizons":



John Heiney and his student shared a fantastic tandem flight:




Floyd flew his Goat far and high:




This is the first whale I've ever seen from the air:






There were lots of Torrey Hawks in the sky:







And a couple of new Torrey Hawks on the ground ...



The scenery was fantastic from Scripps Pier up to Bathtub Rock ... and everywhere in between:






What a fantastic day!!

BobK,

Again, Great Job :!:

Those are great pics. Looks like you got enough altitude to view the marine life.

Thanks for your efforts to preserve/promote hang gliding at Torrey. It's been a battle for a long time. Not always for the same reasons, TPGP has been threatened.

It's looking up and my optimism grows as I read that more HG and cross-over pilots that have plenty of pg hours there, are expecting to fly Torrey and be treated equally.

There are a lot of days that are only PG flyable, but that's no reason to discriminate so harshly.

Bob, the fruits of your efforts are showing, many are benefitting, more are realizing it and some are even giving you due credit, where it is doing a lot of good, ie. on .org. Eventhough you were Reg3 Director for a short while, your efforts and dedication have far exceeded other RD, to support HG.

Location: Chattaroy, WA -USA
Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2012 4:19 am Post subject: #5
I take it that you either blew it or some combo of blew it, too north, lull ...... nice video though! Looked like the para number was a bit low. What were conditions during your flight? Yeah - saw BobK at the end. Sport 2 175 - USHPA#16529

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Read more: http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.ph ... z2GLqkF8Qe

NME posted his video of his flight that day which includes you, old familiar face he says, and Chatteroy man, again mentions BobK, without any censorship from that moderator Should I say, thanks SG.

Moreso, let me say thanks, Bob Kuczewski

I pulled this sticker out of the red van, an antique reminder from early efforts to preserve HG at Torrey.

Thanks to BobK,
Sam
#16016

You may not know it, but Sam was one of the REAL original pilots here at Torrey. He was here back in the days when hang gliding was just getting started. So I'm just carrying on a long tradition of trying to save that amazing site for the hang glider pilots who come after us.

By the way, the spring flying season is coming up, so I'm hoping Dave Beardslee will be attending more of our fly-ins when the winds get consistently better. I think you'd really enjoy another tandem flight with him on a day like the one pictured here. Keep it in mind!!

majiemae wrote:WOW

What an amazing batch of photos!

Sam, how old is that bumper sticker? Maybe someone should have some more made - you know, to keep the effort going that Bob has worked so hard to restart.

Margie

Hi Margie,

Yes, great pictures.
The bumper sticker is from 1976. My old time friend and mentor, Bill "Pork" Roecker, had those made up. I think his ushga #is 550? He still lives in San Diego, does more fishing than flying these days.

There have been earlier efforts that support HG at Torrey when things hit a bump in the road, but, IMO Bob's efforts have been and continue to exceed all others, that I know of.

What I don't understand is, who/RD dropped the ball and let things get so far unballanced in the other direction. It has really taken a huge effort, not giving up,
to start things turning around heading in the right direction.

Anyhow, it does me a lot of good to see posts like Bob's TorreyReport.

That's Pork's van with the Wills, WW
That's my red '66 Chevy and glider

Thanks for all your supporting efforts, Margie.

,
Sam

I love seeing those old pictures Sam!!!!

Please post them whenever you can. That's part of the history that I hope we can preserve here.

As for how it got so bad, I think that really goes back to David Jebb. He was there for 10 years, and he created a gang-like culture. I think he saw how strong the gangs were from his police work and he instilled those same kinds of "us versus them" and "insider versus outsider" mentalities in the people he recruited - both as instructors and as pilots. That's why it's such a mess and that's why it's been so hard to fix.

Actually, Margie witnessed some of it at its worst. I think she was there the day that Dave Beardslee and I walked into the office to defy David Jebb's unjustified bans. We didn't know what to expect, and she was there to document it. I'm sure she can tell you about the tension in the air on that day.

So it is much better now. Jebb turned the place over to Robin Marien who was one of his cronies. But Robin doesn't carry as much clout with the local Police as Jebb did. When Jebb told the police to remove someone, they obeyed. But Robin's called the police twice to have me removed (both in 2012) and both times the police interviewed everyone and came to the conclusion that there was nothing to justify removing me from a San Diego City Park. Robin looked like an idiot for calling them so he started making all kinds of ridiculous claims that I was "stalking him". The police said they didn't see any evidence of that either, and they let me stay. Those were huge victories for our rights to use our City Park.

I should also say that it's been a community effort as well. Jebb was very good at dividing and conquering. But the existence of the Torrey Hawks has made a huge difference because it brought lots of pilots together. Now when Robin or one of his henchmen starts picking on someone, we have other pilots who will step in and speak up. It's made a huge difference, and that's another reason why I'm such a big fan of local clubs like yours Sam. I think hang glider pilots are a pretty independent breed of human, and we don't tend to "flock" together like some of the "herd" animals in other sports. That's good in a lot of ways, but it makes it easier for a Robin or a Jebb to isolate us one by one. Having even a loose club can turn that around.

So I can't say "THANK YOU" often enough to every member who signed up for the Torrey Hawks to help us protect hang gliding at that site.

bobk wrote:I love seeing those old pictures Sam!!!!

Please post them whenever you can. That's part of the history that I hope we can preserve here.

Can you believe that this world war II, radar site used to sit on the edge of the cliff, ~150 ft South of launch, as I recall.

All that I ever saw functioning was the little air speed prop on top of the mast. Never saw any dish rotate. I think it was in-op.

We could all tell if it was soarable by the wind direction and how fast the prop was spinning.

Bobk...those pics...outrageous.

Sam... was that your Owl? Was that '76? Seems to me the Owl came a bit later (though things changed fast back then).

Always wondered how those handled and performed. Pretty radical high aspect sail cut - single surface,trunc tips. Thought it looked like it might be a little "spinny".

Of course "Pork" was legendary!

Merlin wrote:Bobk...those pics...outrageous.

Thanks. If you liked them on the web, you'd have loved them in person!!!   
Let me know if you're ever in town ... and would like to borrow a Falcon.   

SamKellner wrote:BobK,

NME posted his video of his flight that day which includes you, old familiar face he says, and Chatteroy man, again mentions BobK, without any censorship from that moderator Should I say, thanks SG.

SG allowed them to post "bobk", but that's not much of a crack in his "iron curtain". If they tried to post a link to either the US Hawks or the Torrey Hawks web sites, then Jack's software would have automatically turned those links into links to loserville.org or loserslivehere.org. Just try it and see how Jack's software changes your own words ... automatically!!

You see, Jack knows that Google and other search engines rank sites based on which other sites link to them. Since hanggliding.org is the "world's largest hang gliding site", any links from there to the US Hawks would improve the US Hawks' Google rankings (as they should). But Jack is doing everything he can to kill the Torrey Hawks and the US Hawks. That's why he took the time to write the software that changes every single link that anyone posts so that there are no links from hanggliding.org posts to any of our sites. It takes a really sick person to be that vindictive.

Jack Axaopoulos (sg) has allowed those posts for one reason only - he fears that enforcing his threat to ban people for using my name would cause more of an uprising than he can deal with. So he's letting it slide because he doesn't want to drive more people to the US Hawks. He also knows that the use of "bobk" does very little to break his monopoly since it doesn't give anyone any information about how to contact "bobk" or the US Hawks. The big stakes are in the Google rankings, and that's where Jack's monopoly is crushing us. The Google software figures that if a hang gliding web site isn't important enough to be linked to by hanggliding.org, then it isn't important enough to be on the first page of hang gliding searches. So no matter how much good hang gliding information appears on our site, we'll still remain obscure to anyone searching for hang gliding information.

Welcome to the world of Search Engine Warfare.   

Merlin, Hawks,

Yes, I think I got the Owl in '77 or '78. After the Seagull 3, it was my second glider, and 3rd glider. I crashed the first one while home in Tx, on leave/vacation, but not due to a spin. I flew one first at the Bean Patch. Talk about PIO, well it was like, Wang, Wang, flare. Then went to Little Black.

Being a Wills distributer, Pork always warned me that the Owl would spin. However, I never experienced anything like that. I could wallow around in the lighest of lift, at Torrey, and manage to swoop up and get back on the top edge, usually between the RC mound and the North face. Of course, I carried up plenty of times also, and preferred the North point trail.

Bob,

Yes, I have experienced the automated .org software changes. In addition to that, while writing a PM on .org , even before sending, I saw "BobK" change. That really was like censorship/big brother.
Regardless, there seems to be some progress, IMO. Hopefully it will continue. Great to see the new Hawks pics at Torrey. Seems many/more are catching on that BobK is the Torrey HG connection.
Again only IMO, but there seems to be a trend/spike in number of PG crossover pilots, that already have considerable hours at Torrey, yet cannot fly HG there.

One of the propaganda tactics that ushpa used to sway the membership to accept PG, was that PGers would transition into HG. It's taken a while/few years, and lots of reserve deployments, not to mention the deaths at high profile events, but this might actually be coming true, contributing to a trend.

Happy and Prosperous New Year to everyone

,
Sam