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Hello Hawks, since joining not too long ago, I have enjoyed making new acquaintances and also talking to old friends from the early 70's. USHAWKS has afforded me the ability to bring me up to date on hang gliding. I graduated high school in Torrance Ca. 1964. Watched Bill Bennet tow glide in Australia 1968, watched my friend David Cronk (all state pole vaulter) "catch some air" down the sand hills at Torrance 1970, and helped my new friends "catch some big air" in Telluride 1972 and onward. The only big air I caught was hitting a mogul totally wrong.
Humans have an innate 'fear of flying' but "the more you know, the more you'll go". All the 'pilots' that I have known in my life (my dad first in 1947) have had a love of flying, but respected the pilots bible verse " pay attention to details ", and if they did not feel just right, they DID NOT FLY. I helped some hang gliders 'fly' down the mountain in an old international truck. 'Flying rubber' I suppose.
I have seen and read many reports of 'Flying mishaps', and I am always saddened when pilots and others die, and I always try to put myself (as a pilot) in that situation, to try and figure "what I would have done". Now that may seem odd, but that's just how My brain works. There are usually 1 or 2 things that get overlooked (along with wind sheer conditions ) with the pilot or the airplane, that lead to those 4 or 5
seconds of chaos before disaster. "Conformation bias" plays a bigger role than will be admitted, and most pilots will not admit that their 'weather' skills are lacking. Those early pilots in the Owens Valley, were 'good' but they may have escaped death by a whisker.
Even though paragliding 'mishaps' and deaths are more prevalent these days, they are still flown by pilots, who choose their wings, and I personally respect them. Their flying abilities should NEVER be made fun of. Our adrenaline is some times as Brown as theirs. Their familys and paramedics are in mourning and we should pay a little tribute to them. I think that they would do the same for us, because warblers and hawks really are feathered friends.
The USHAWKS mission statement is in essence, "how you gonna act?"
Let us go, and teach others how to go into the wind and be enchanted, for it may be the oldest form of medicine.
My 12 year old grand son wants to fly, so we do hang glider kites and flight simulators. For now he likes being my co pilot, here at 8745. TYFL
Craig Muhonen
