Torrey Pines Soaring Council Membership Application

Jacmac · **Joined:** Fri Oct 08, 2010 4:29 pm **Posts:** 47

I will be submitting an application for membership tonight at the TPSC meeting, which I believe will be added on the agenda as new business for the July meeting. I fully expect the application will be voted down at the meeting in July, however I'm hoping that we can rally some support in that time from Torrey Hawks members, mainly to show the TPSC that the Torrey Hawks are more than Bob's HG club. If the membership application is voted down, our only recourse is to begin getting in touch with San Diego City Parks and Recreation and perhaps city council members to get involved with the oversight of the Torrey Pines Gliderport. My belief is that they would be wise to simply accept us for who we are and work with us rather than force us to attempt to work around them, which is not what I want to do. Unfortunately, the majority of the TPSC members appear to be so loathsome of Bob that they have little or no interest in trying to work with the Torrey Hawks.

Some of the outstanding issues I would like to see raised with the site lessee via the TPSC:

1) Fees for all pilot activities publicly posted to include day use and tandem flights.
2) Revision of the site rules to explicitly state all activities prohibited by the flight director (to avoid the situation where the police were called on Bob)
3) Raise the issue of long landings. I had one last month and it required extreme manuvering to avoid practicing paragliders and spectators.

The text of the application is below:

Quote:

Brian McMahon
President, Torrey Hawks Hang Gliding Club
May 20, 2012

RE: Torrey Pines Soaring Council Membership Application

Byron Lowry, Chairperson
Members
Torrey Pines Soaring Council

Dear Sirs:
As the president of the Torrey Hawks Hang Gliding Club (Torrey Hawks), I am formally requesting voting membership for our club on the Torrey Pines Soaring Council (TPSC) per Article 6, Section 2 of the Torrey Pines Gliderport Historical Society bylaws.

The request for voting membership on the TPSC by the Torrey Hawks was previously made in 2007 by Bob Kuczewski, then president of the Torrey Hawks, but the application was apparently never voted on by the TPSC.

At the TPSC meeting held on March 19th, 2012, an agenda item should have existed regarding our request for membership consideration, which was made at the TPSC meeting held on January 23, 2012. In addition, I had sent emails to several members of the TPSC regarding my position on why the Torrey Hawks should be included as a member on the TPSC. I will restate them here:

• The TPSC exists to consult with and advise the Torrey Pines site lessee/operator, the City of San Diego, and the Regents of the University of California in formulating flight safety regulations and policies. For this reason alone, any club with an interest in the Torrey Pines Glider Port and a reasonable membership population should be represented on the TPSC by a member of the club as designated by its executive leadership.

• The TPSC wields no powers that would or should preclude membership of the Torrey Hawks; in fact, it is more of a forum where all interested parties can discuss matters related to the Torrey Pines site.

• The Torrey Hawks as an interested club in the Torrey Pines Glider Port has no other means for raising issues regarding the site other than attempting to rely on existing TPSC members. That has proven to be futile; the mere consideration of the Torrey Hawks application for membership has been virtually ignored by current and former TPSC members for the past five years.

It has been stated that the Torrey Hawks were already represented by the USHPA member of the council and that we should work through that member. This argument has merit; however the current membership of the TPSC is not represented in this manner, and there is no statement in the bylaws that each parent organization be represented by only one local chapter. The Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) has membership to the TPSC as well as two separate chapters of the AMA (the Torrey Pines Gulls Radio Controlled Soaring Society and the Torrey Pines Scaled Soaring Society). In the same vein, the Torrey Hawks and the San Diego Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association could rightly have membership as chapters of the United States Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association (USHPA), which also has membership on the TPSC. If the TPSC insists that each discipline have one national organization representative and one local chapter representative as TPSC members representing all members of a given discipline, then the bylaws should be amended to reflect such ideology. In addition it would be necessary to eject either the Torrey Pines Gulls chapter of the AMA or the Torrey Pines Scaled Soaring Society chapter of the AMA from membership to the TPSC.

It is not the goal of the Torrey Hawks to induce the TPSC to eject current members. We are merely asking for fairness by being added to the TPSC as a voting member representing over 250 hang glider pilots with an interest in preserving the sport of hang gliding at the Torrey Pines Glider Port.

Sincerely,

Brian McMahon
President, Torrey Hawks Hang Gliding Club

Bob Kuczewski · **Posted:** Mon May 21, 2012 4:44 pm

Well said!!! :clap:

Bob Kuczewski · **Posted:** Mon May 21, 2012 9:59 pm

I attended the Soaring Council meeting this evening, and Brian presented the Council Chairman (Byron Lowry - Sailplane Representative) with the letter above. Byron didn't actually read it aloud to the Council, but said he'd review it before the next meeting.

I mentioned the fact that Robin had called the police (again), and that the police chose not to take any action on his complaint (basically supporting the notion that pilots have a right to be anywhere on the Gliderport property as the lease states). I then asked if the Council would review cases such as these where pilots were being unfairly treated by the concessionaire. I added that I wanted to know if the Council would prefer people to bring these kinds of problems to the Soaring Council or the San Diego City Council.

Dave Metzgar (who represents the SDHGPA - basically the concession's point of view) argued that the Council shouldn't get involved in any disputes and should only recommend rules and not take any part in determining if the rules were indeed broken or what a fair punishment should be for any infractions. In other words, Dave Metzgar wants to give all judicial responsibility to the concession. I pointed out that that's exactly the problem that we had with Jebb who was judge, jury, and executioner.

Fortunately, some of the other Council members took a different view. They ended up expressing that they would be willing to review some cases, but not necessarily all cases. So I asked (to clarify) if that meant that pilots should feel free to bring their complaints to the Council first so that the Council could decide if it was a case that they would be interested in, and that was greeted with general acceptance by the Council (with the possible exception of Dave Metzgar).

Brian McMahon asked about having his request to add the Hawks added to the next Council meeting's agenda, and it *seemed* like it would be taken up at that next meeting in July.

Most of the Council meeting was taken up with discussions about the full scale gliders (who may fly again in 2013) and the RC events. Robin did give a brief report about the fatality, but it was pretty minimal. At one point, I asked when the last sailplane had flown at Torrey. I think the response was in 2009. So it seems somewhat remarkable that the Council contains 2 seats for sailplanes (who haven't had one flight in 3 years) and no seats for the Torrey Hawks (who have members flying almost every week ... if not almost every day). I surely don't want the sailplane folks to lose their seats or their representation, but it seems very hypocritical of them to participate in blocking the Torrey Hawks from being on the Council.

Torrey Pines Soaring Council Membership Application

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