US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

In my recent introduction to paragliding I didn't accomplish everything I had planned, but I did get to learn about a training hill I had never been to before. This was the hill at Elings Park in Santa Barbara. One thing that stood out in my mind was how good this site would be for a vintage hang glider meet. It is high enough and steep enough for the old standard rogollos to get a nice glide down, especially with the ocean breeze coming straight into the hill.

I have mentioned this idea to Rob Sporrer, the owner of Eagle Paragliding School, and he thinks it is a possibility (he mentioned a fund raiser so I don't know what he is thinking there). To do a vintage HG meet there would take a lot of planning and coordination with the fliers and schools that regularly use that site. Plus it is under the control and regulations of the city parks administration. All of the flying use of the site is under their permission and control and a locked gate is controlled by the paraglider schools.

Let's see some input on this suggestion. Especially from local fliers in the SB CA area.

Frank Colver
USHPA # 7

Super idea Frank!!

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help out. Maybe we could announce it in the Torrey Hawks newsletter and mention it to Chris Bolfing who organized the Antique festival at Torrey.

My only concern is the height of the hill at Elings Park (if people are actually going to fly). Do you remember the antique slogan that goes with some of those antique gliders ... "Don't fly higher than you want to fall" ?

For that reason, I think Dockweiler might be a better location, but that would have to be approved through Joe Greblo. It might be worth considering.

But like I said, I think it's a super idea, and I'll be happy to spread the word any way I can for either location. Please keep us posted on this topic, and thanks again for your super effort on the 40th anniversary Otto Meet Marker!!

I went to the meet at Dockweiler in 2000 and could only get a flight of a few feet long on my big FlexiFloater. The gathering was fun but I didn't think the flight was worth it so I didn't do any more and flew Joe's big Condor trainer instead.

I think at Elings Park that we would need to stipulate that any gliders that were going to fly be airworthy by any reasonable judgement. Bamboo held with tape & wire would be out, for flying this hill, for instance. This hill reminds me very much of the hills we all looked for to fly in those early days. Not too small and not too big but you might get 50 feet off the ground in a good early glider.

It remains to be seen as to how much interest there will be in this before any further planning efforts.

This is the text of a reply I e-mailed to two of the flight schools that operate at the hill. There have been some local residents problems involving the Elings Park Foundation, which operates the park.

Text of message to the schools:

So far not much interest shown on US Hawks forum. Considering the sensitive nature of this in the local residential area I'm going to back off, because I think it best to be handled by local area people. Hopefully, if there is interest in a vintage HG meet, someone in the Santa Barbara area will work on it. I'll be glad to assist in any way I can, if that happens.

Frank Colver

Hi Frank,

You can't really gauge the potential response from the US Hawks forum. We're small. We're just getting started. And we've been black-listed by the larger sites (hanggliding.org for example).

So I'm not a big fan of hanggliding.org at this time (just ask if you want more info). But if you want to test the interest in a vintage hang gliding meet, you should probably post a new topic to both hanggliding.org and ozreport.com. They have many times the readership of the US Hawks and that will give you a better sense of potential interest.

Now if you want to help out the US Hawks ... please post to those forums and include a link to ushawks.org (maybe in your signature line). That would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Bob Kuczewski