Ditto!!

It looks like we were both writing at the same time. When I posted my message, I got a warning that there had been an intervening post (yours Scott). The forum does that to give people a chance to revise their posts based on what's been posted since they started writing.

Scott, I really think you should start your own US Hawks Chapter. I've been to your town, and I hope to return again (maybe in warmer weather and circumstances). I'd be happy to join. Maybe we could scout out new sites together. But more than finding flying sites, a hang gliding club is about bringing pilots together - whether they can fly or not. Start one and see what happens. Starting the Torrey Hawks was one of the best things I've ever done. It has rewarded myself and our members a thousand times. Give it a shot!!

Let me make the same suggestion for you Rick. If you've got a group of flying friends that have lost touch, round them up and start a club based on that friendship. It doesn't even have to have a geographic basis. You could start the "Epic Flyers Hang Gliding Club" for hang gliding pilots - coast to coast - who've experienced the kinds of extreme flying that you've known in your time. Build it and they will come.

It's 1971 all over again ... with much better equipment!!

Bob

Hang Gliding Magazine, January 1984, inside front cover

Wow, what a list of founding members!!!
That reads like the "Who's who" of hang gliding.

How about the "XC Masters Hang Gliding Club"?

Or maybe the "Masters of Hang Gliding Club"?

I think we brought in about 450 members that first year, mostly advanced XC pilots, a lot of them from other countries.

After my bid for Hang Gliding magazine editor (sponsored by Bettina Gray) was turned down by the USHGA BOD, I was surprised and pleased that editor Gil Dodgen gave us the inside front cover to start the XCPA. (You may not be so lucky ). We had a conflict about focus at that time. The USHGA felt it needed to present a face of calm, responsible, training-oriented flashy copy while I saw hang gliding as the ultimate adventure, an historic moment in aviation as we pushed at the edges of the envelope in Owens Valley and other mountain sites. I viewed flying at the sand dunes and hill sites and Torrey Pines itself only as training for the Big Air inland. It was the same attitude toward free-flight that had been held by George Worthington, the sailplane pilot who broke all the world records on his Mitchell Wing. But USHGA wanted to present the kind of flying done at Torrey as the public impression of hang gliding. They seemed to think the XC pilots were the fringe element, somewhat dangerous and crazy, even though all the new double-surface gliders were being designed with our type of flying in mind. They felt it was better for the sport to attract people who wanted to float around in the same place and exclaim, "Look, Mom! I can fly!" rather than "OMG, I fell up and I can't get down - I'm gonna die!" In terms of marketing, the USHGA argument may have made more sense although, even today, I'm not sure. The call to adventure draws young men like nothing else.

Anyway, the ad worked, we formed the XCPA board of directors and they said, "You're doing a great job, Rick. None of us live there so just keep it up."

By way of confession, that tends to be the kind of flying that I do as well. I've done a lot of "coastal" mountain flying (like Sylmar, Crestline, and Horse Canyon), but not the real "big air" that you've known.

So what happened to the XCPA? I did a Google search on "XCPA" as well as "Cross Country Pilot's Association" and didn't find anything that looked relevant in the first few pages.

I know there are still a lot of XC pilots out there. Has the XCPA been replaced with something else that serves the same need?

We met the demands of the USFS at Horseshoe in 1984 and 1985 by putting in porta-potties and signage, managing the crowds of hang glider pilots, insuring the site for public liability, and fixing up a huge clubhouse with glider storage, showers, magazine publishing and a gigantic map wall.



I wanted to keep the XC-Classic contests that had driven the evolution of the double surface hang gliders going after Don Partridge and Tom Kreyche folded up the Owens Valley Hang Gliding Center in 1983. With their blessing, we staged the 1984 contest off Mazourka Peak with Mike King as meet director, using complex sailplane contest rules. Don flew over the peak in his Mitchell Wing A10 at launch start. I think that was my proudest moment in the sport - to show the icon of XC that his contest would continue. (A few months later he got killed in a two-place Mitchell). Larry Tudor won that event with John Pendry placing second. Pete Brock told me it was the best contest he'd seen up to that time.



In 1985, as meet director, I held the Don Partridge Memorial Open from Gunter and Mazourka, then the George Worthington Memorial Classic from Cerro Gordo and Horseshoe Meadows. This was all open distance with one point scored per Great Circle Distance mile. Rick Rawlings won that one, including one flight of 186.5 miles or so.

As 1986 approached, the demands of terrestrial life were catching up with me. I offered the USHGA our headquarters but they weren't interested. In fairness, there was little work in the area and housing was difficult. So I folded up the XCPA in 1986, left the sport (intact) and hit the road to feed my family.

Rick, it is a great privilege to have you posting here at the US Hawks.

I hope you will continue to share this kind of history with our members, and I encourage you to start a topic (or maybe a bunch of topics) in the history section. Also, if you wanted to resurrect the XCPA as a Chapter, it would be an honor to host your forum here at the US Hawks. You could use it as a place to bring together the history of that association and possibly give it new life.

Just say "OK" and I will do it immediately. I will also broadcast an announcement to all of our members to help bootstrap it.

Thanks again for your lifetime of contributions to the sport of hang gliding.

Actually, I thought I was done with hang gliding after 1986. Then around 2007, I took a look at the sport out of nostalgia and discovered to my horror that paragliding had taken over the USHGA. After a 20-year absence of any activity within the sport, I discovered the disturbing injury and death rate of this new paradigm. Although I felt a bit like Rumplestiltskin awakening after a long sleep, I felt obligated to speak out. I saw my fellow sportsmen simmering like frogs in soon-to-be boiling water with paragliding turning up the heat a little each year, making the change in the sport incremental with hardly anyone else noticing what was wrong or speaking out. But from my perspective, my long absence was but an instant, with the memories fresh and clear. I saw the dramatic change and I didn't like it at all. We had worked so hard and for so long to lower the death rate to that of sail planes or even lower. Everywhere I looked, paragliders were falling out of the sky. Surrounding these accidents was a concerted effort at obfuscation: blaming the helpless falling human rather than the fatally-flawed paraglider. I published the website Mythology of the Airframe to make my views known. This brought out a lot of outrage from some astoundingly ignorant people. (Just Google "Rick Masters paragliding"). Today I have verified nearly 1290 paragliding fatalities and many, many times more broken backs. These all occurred since I last flew a hang glider.

Obviously, hang gliding has lost its way. Parachutists have a bloodier, more fatalistic mindset than hang glider pilots. Parachutists also have their own parachuting organization. Therefore I was completely stunned to see that hang glider pilots had turned over their national organization to them. That was a huge mistake.

Hang gliding needs its own representative organization and the good sense to keep it. Hopefully the US Hawks can fill that need.

I don't know know if someone who's flown at your level can ever be done with hang gliding. I certainly haven't come anywhere near your level of involvement in the sport, and I know the sport will be with me the rest of my life.


I took my first HG lessons in 1978, but didn't "get back" to it until 2004. I might have been a statistic if I hadn't taken that long break to return to a sport that's now much safer due to the efforts of so many many people like yourself. I suspect that many of those improvements were a direct consequence of someone else paying for it with their life. On almost every flight I find myself thinking about how wonderful it is to fly and how grateful I am to the men and women who worked so hard and sacrificed so much to bring us the sport we have today.


That last sentence encapsulates my goal for the US Hawks. USHPA might be able to serve that purpose if they were to undergo a fairly substantial restructuring and partitioning to ensure that each sport had its own equal representation regardless of the numbers. But that's not likely to happen. The paragliders have indeed taken over USHPA, and they give no indication that they want to make things fair for hang glider pilots. My many years of exposure to Rich Hass confirms that.

It's certainly sad to look back, but that's not where the future lies. It lies ahead. The future is in our hands to be built the way we want it. The 13 Colonies needed to start anew to build what became the greatest country in the world. PADI had to break away from NAUI to form the largest SCUBA organization in the world. Children must leave their parents to build their own lives. The pattern is universal. There comes a time when a fresh start is needed. Now is that time.

I won't twist your arm too much longer, but I think it would be a wonderful endeavor to resurrect the XCPA. But you have to let me know if you'd like to give it a try. I'll help any way I can.

The effort would be better spent building the US Hawks. Let the XCPA be a lesson.

-- I built the XCPA in a vacuum. All the members came from somewhere else. When they finally showed up, they were there to fly. There was no one I could delegate duties to. When I left, the XCPA fell apart. But in a city, you should be able to find people who will participate. Just make sure they are worthy of the challenge.

-- I built the XCPA quickly without much planning. The USFS said they were going to close Horseshoe because of sanitation and congestion issues. They came to me because I had been a USFS engineer and was a HG pilot. They put me on the spot and I answered. I used the USHGA to attract members. You'll need an email list. The chapters are a great strategy.

-- I built the XCPA with a sensible fee structure. I calculated the needed expenses and divided by the projected membership to arrive at dues. Our costs were headquarters, utilities, office, and insurance. No one was paid. It was a club. Everyone pitched in at morning or poor flying days. Look at the XCPA headquarters. They did that! Townspeople, too.

-- I was a true believer. So are you. That's what it takes to start up. The real work begins with the formation of the BOD. Identify your key issues and keep it simple. Make sure your BOD members are on the same page.

-- Perks are important but make sure they are provided by the members and not by you. Soaring camps with shared retrieval are a no-brainer.

-- Don't go ahead with the BOD until your members can fly without U$hPA certification. Have a site or two for your activities where public liability insurance is not required. Even if they're far away, each chapter needs one. In time, governments will recognize US Hawks certification. They are not supposed to play favorites.

-- Be hang glider pilots.