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APPLES AND ORANGES
One is accepting parachutes as "gliders." This causes all sorts of problems and works at cross purposes to the goals of hang gliding. A serious issue is that hang glider pilots end up subsidizing liabilities stemming from parachuting incidents, which are much more common than hang gliding incidents.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http ... t_2014.pdf
Another is that potential new hang glider pilots are drawn into parachuting and lost to hang gliding. This is clearly evident by the dwindling numbers of active hang glider pilots. A key element is the dilution of the promotion of hang gliding by the association's magazine, once the world's leading voice for the sport.
Combining parachute and hang glider instruction in schools also draws off potential hang glider pilots who have not yet developed the more serious commitment required for hang gliding.
No associations mix cars and motorcycles, although both travel on roads. No associations mix BMX racing with running, although both travel on paths. No associations mix swimming with canoeing, although both travel on water. Yet the USHPA embraces parachuting and hang gliding.
The primary justification for this marriage is strength in numbers - yet paragliding has constantly eaten away at hang gliding since the beginning. There is no reason that two separate organizations could not work together to pool resources to purchase public liability insurance where needed, but a false argument is presented which forces hang glider pilots to pool everything all the time.
THE BIGGEST DANGER
The biggest danger to hang gliding has always been the propensity of the association to dilute its identity. In the early 1980s, the USHGA was eager to marry hang gliding with motorized ultralights.
I foresaw the ruination of the USHGA if it were to head doiwn this road and wrote the following letter, published in the May 1981 issue of Hang Gliding:
It is now obvious that the honorable task which the USHGA took on several years ago, that of shepherding the ultralight powered aircraft craze through its infancy, has been successfully accomplished. The time is overdue for the representative organization of those who practice the art of hang gliding, the USHGA, to regain its focus and return exclusively to the pursuit of its original purpose. Two powerful factors are working to estrange the USHGA from its defined path. The first is economic. The market potential for small powered aircraft is much greater than for hang gliders. Predictably, the hang gliding industry is rushing to fill this need. Caught up in this rush are a great many of those who are responsible for guiding hang gliding through the years to its present astounding level of accomplishment. Now blind with enthusiasm, they tend to pressure the USHGA down a different road. The second factor has to do with the desires that motivate people to fly. Powered ultralight aircraft provide the pilot with unlimited airtime and unlimited mileage. The majority of pilots have no desire for engineless flight. Even hang glider pilots are turning to powered flight in droves. Screaming through the sky, motors snarling scant inches from their heads, they choose their destinations at will and claim they are hang gliding with engines. Blind with enthusiasm, they would take the USHGA with them. It is indeed a sorry day that I must remind the members and officers of the USHGA, and the staff of its publication, Hang Gliding Magazine, what hang gliding is. Hang gliding is the simplest form of flight. Our wings are light and maneuverable. Micrometeorology holds great meaning to us. We challenge the wind to games of skill. When we win, our rewards are airtime, distance and tremendous exhilaration. We desire the serenity of the sky. We are a breed apart. Get power out of the USHGA or get the USHGA out of hang gliding!
I left the sport in 1987 for a 20-year hiatus, then when I took another look in 2007, I found they had done it again - but this time with parachuting. They had succeeded, and the sport was in trouble.
THE SECRET SOCIETY
Like ultralights, paragliders are more dangerous than hang gliders. Unlike hang gliders, pilot error can only be addressed above what I term the Paragliding Dead Man's Curve. A soaring parachutist drops below effective emergency parachute deployment at landing, at takeoff and during low soaring. Surviving a collapse within the PDMC has to do with luck: whether or not the paraglider, by chance, pops open and recovers before impact. This level of risk is comparable to the divergence problem in hang gliders of the early 1970s, which was aggressively met and solved in a few short years by USHGA actions to protect its membership. But twenty-seven years after being embraced by the USHGA, paragliders are still collapsing and killing their pilots. Why is this tolerated? Simple. The bastard child of the USHGA, the USHPA, is mostly comprised of paraglider pilots who disregard the risk.
Due to liability concerns and paranoia, the quality of accident reporting has diminished within the USHPA. The PDMC problem is not acknowledged.
Take the recent example of Bud Wruck. Wruck was a USHPA paragliding instructor and the owner of Parafreedom Aerosports in Damon, Texas. On July 3, 2014, Wruck, an expert, experienced an asymmetric collapse when "the left half of the paraglider suddenly closed" during his landing approach. Well within the PDMC, he threw his reserve but was too low for it to open. Falling out of the sky, he impacted "violently" on the roof of a building, then rolled off and fell another 20 feet to strike a hard concrete surface.
Yet USHPA member Bud Wruck is not listed among the 2014 USHPA paragliding fatalities. Why? He was in another country. Did that country report his death. No. He was from the U.S.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http ... t_2014.pdf
In the beginning, Robert V. Wills, the first USHGA Accident Committee Chairman, insisted that all hang gliding fatalities worldwide be mentioned in reports.
“We must have your help in recording all prior fatal accidents all over the world," Wills wrote in the January 1975 Ground Skimmer. "We can no longer afford to have people guessing out loud on how many fatalities there have been. If we fail in our responsibility to establish a reliable central data bank on hang glider accidents, we are going to look like a happy-go-lucky band of daredevil adventurers to some politician or judge and you may one day no longer be able to soar free as a bird, regardless of what our true safety record may be.”
By assembling this database, the USHGA quickly became aware of the divergence problem and acted to address it. In a few short years, hang gliders were no longer divergent. Hang gliders were no longer killing their pilots. Now most accidents were due to pilot error and the USHGA worked aggressively to address this problem, bring the fatality rate of hang gliding in the U.S. below that of sailplanes for some years. But with paragliding, the issue of collapse could not be solved. Despite lip service paid to "active piloting," paragliders encountering turbulence at take off, during low soaring or at landing were just as much at risk as ever.
Fewer reported accidents makes the combined sports of paragliding and hang gliding look safer. Just look. Only five hang gliding and paragliding accidents in 2014.
But USHPA knows the worldwide numbers are grim. I know of over 1300 paragliding fatalities since 1986. Hang gliding fatalities don't even come close. But combining the sports makes paragliding look better.
