Zebra (medicine)
And...Zebra is the American medical slang for arriving at an exotic medical diagnosis when a more commonplace explanation is more likely. It is shorthand for the aphorism coined in the late 1940s by Dr. Theodore Woodward, professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who instructed his medical interns: "When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses not zebras". Since horses are common in Maryland while zebras are relatively rare, logically one could confidently guess that an animal making hoofbeats is probably a horse. By 1960, the aphorism was widely known in medical circles.
08-19
http://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5277/30076449505_1f6ed2f804_o.png
...it's REALLY hard to go wrong identifying, with no further information made available, ANY serious paragliding crash as the consequence of a collapse.
In hang gliding... broken arm - imperfectly timed flare. Next.
That was a thermal turbulence induced collapse.
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25656
The young girl who died hang gliding solo
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=49837Jim Rooney - 2012/03/06 18:34:14 UTC
ND's onto it.
No one ever wants to wait for the accident investigation... they want to know "NOW DAMNIT!" and there's always a lot of self-serving arguments surrounding it.
And it's always the same.
The same damn arguments get drug up every time. And they're all just as pointless every time.
We have a system in place.
It works.
Let it work.
Our procedures are well established at this point in time and there are no gaping hidden holes that need to be addressed immediately.
RR asked what the status was.
ND's provided the answer (thank you).
Please take a deep breath. And wait.
Accident investigations involving fatalities take a long time. And by long, I mean they can take years.
(yes, years, I'm not kidding)
The sky is not falling.
Jim Rooney tandem paraglider incident in New Zealand
Maybe after the CAA investigation. Maybe. Near a year and a third now.Jim Rooney - 2016/10/01 05:55:48 UTC
Up from surgery... Plates on L2 while it heals, will come out after. Feeling good.
I won't comment on my crash just yet. Maybe after the CAA investigation.
Just posting here too let people know that I'm doing well.
Wow. In just three weeks the CAA was able to determine that James (Jim) Rooney took off without attaching himself and held onto the glider for about fifty meters before hitting power lines. Guess he wasn't in much shape to take advantage of the video card swallowing option as the smoke was clearing. But now, less than a month shy of a dozen years after the incident, we still haven't heard anything about any of the new hang-gliding industry standards that the CAA had implemented to deal with this totally unprecedented failure mode.The Press - 2006/03/15
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) is urgently pushing for new hang-gliding industry standards after learning a hang-gliding pilot who suffered serious injuries in a crash three weeks ago had not clipped himself on to the glider.
Extreme Air tandem gliding pilot James (Jim) Rooney safely clipped his passenger into the glider before departing from the Coronet Peak launch site, near Queenstown, CAA sports and recreation manager Rex Kenny said yesterday.
However, he took off without attaching himself.
In a video, he was seen to hold on to the glider for about fifty meters before hitting power lines.
Rooney and the passenger fell about fifteen meters to the ground.
The reason you have ACTUAL investigations by RESPONSIBLE authorities is to identify actual issues to prevent deadly reruns. And if accident investigations that involve fatalities take YEARS (yes, years, I'm not kidding) then we're undoubtedly flying around for YEARS just rolling dice with our lives - plus the lives of any tandem thrill riders we may happen to have flying around with us.
But back in the real, Rooney-free world there are virtually always people around who know perfectly well what the problems are while the glider's still thirty or more feet shy of impact and the reports can be prepared after no more than an hour on the laptop.
These fake investigations that the glider organizations and aviation regulatory agencies pretend to conduct exist only for the purpose of safely outlasting the public's three day attention spans. This vile little parasite got collapsed too low to be able to recover or get an emergency chute safely deployed and there wasn't a goddam thing he could do about it or anybody else would've been able to under similar circumstances.
But nobody can say that 'cause there's all this paragliding, recreation, tourism industry shit going on in which continued existences are dependent upon paragliders being perfectly safe aircraft on which no one should have the slightest hesitation about sending his twelve year old kid for a ride.
Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney in particular can't afford to breathe a single word on the incident 'cause he got kicked out of The worlds largest hang gliding community for telling all us stupid muppets how perfectly safe paragliders were. So either he was totally:
- clueless or lying about that issue; or
- incompetent in crashing a tandem ride on a perfectly safe aircraft in an ideal tandem thrill riding environment in ideal tandem thrill riding conditions.
Catch-22. Lose/Lose. Finally realized he'd painted himself into too many corners to be able to comment on any shadow of any circumstance relevant to this major mainstream news event.
And he can't ever work in The Industry again 'cause if he crashes and burns a third chick tandem thrill ride the public and plaintiff's attorneys are gonna have fuckin' FIELD DAYS with his background.
And he can't ever fly solo recreational hang gliders recreationally again for the same reasons he could virtually never fly them before - 'cause he:
- would run the risk of:
-- getting his butt kicked by some Hang Two muppet any time he chose to go up in real world conditions
-- having his throat slit by any one of the thousands of recreational pilots he abused and degraded in the reign of terror he perpetrated in his tug pilot era
- rendered himself over-the-top toxic to the u$hPa Ponzi scheme when he started believing all the superlative crap he manufactured about himself during episodes of extreme unchecked megalomania
And Highland Aerosports needed ONE tug driver to stay alive into the 2016 season. It and Mid Atlantic hang glider aerotowing went permanently extinct either because:
- he had better things to do (taking cute chicks for tandem paraglider thrill rides off of Coronet Peak in Queenstown)
- Highland Aerosports would no longer tolerate the monstrosity they'd created
My money's on the latter and that fits into the big picture pattern. But either way he will NEVER be forgiven - even by the mainstream garden variety douchebags of this sport - for that level of annihilation of flying opportunities.
Kinda funny the way both Yours Truly and Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney, extreme polar opposites in the sport, both abruptly, completely, permanently ceased to exist in mainstream hang gliding - for extreme polar opposite reasons. Well actually Yours Truly still has something of a footprint - but just about everybody in the mainstream has learned to not acknowledge it.
2013/02/02 at Quest. Not the end of the use of the Standard Aerotow Weak Link - as per early indications. But for all practical purposes the ends of Industry statements on the purposes of aerotow weak links and the reputations of untold hundreds of Infallible Weak Link advocates, experts, enforcers.
2016/09/29 at Coronet Peak. Rooney's total history - the kind of history that suddenly nobody seems to be able to remember.
And I've just noticed, realized... pretty much the end of hang gliding experts. Nobody even knows who Pagen is anymore. Rooney was deified by the masses and backed by u$hPa, started buying into his own scam, painted himself into scores of corners, became a massive global embarrassment. Boychick's making a rather pathetic stab at it but has zilch in the way of substance and lacks anything close to the necessary critical mass.
Also when u$hPa realized it couldn't be in the safety business and needed instead to go full steam ahead into the risk management business aeronautical competence - both legitimate and counterfeit - went totally out the window. And flyers with aspirations of becoming pilots tend not to get very hyped up about risk management strategies. They want nuts and bolts procedures and equipment that they can learn, incorporate, implement. (They mostly want total shit nuts and bolts procedures and equipment - but that's entirely beside the point.)
You'll notice everyone and his dog endorses the excellent article by Mike Meier, "Why Can't We Get a Handle On This Safety Thing?" but nobody ever quotes anything from it - because there's nothing in it of any actual substance to quote.
Ditto for...
...the excellent book, Towing Aloft, by Dennis Pagen and Bill Bryden - another product of 1998 (celebrating its twentieth birthday this month and massively and universally discredited).u$hPa - 2015/05/11
Jean Dry Lakebed Accident Report and Analysis
You are encouraged to re-read the excellent article by Mike Meier, "Why Can't We Get a Handle On This Safety Thing?" (http://www.willswing.com/why-cant-we-get-a-handle-on-this-safety-thing/). Although published in 1998, the risk mitigation analyses and approaches in the article are timeless and still applicable. Additionally, the technical information in "Towing Aloft" by Dennis Pagen and Bill Bryden is an excellent and complete reference on towing equipment and procedures.
Rich Hass
President
Martin Palmaz
Executive Director
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24846
Is this a joke ?
Really Paul? To the point that you'll kill two highly qualified professional pilots after another several years of perfecting aerotowing in conditions that aren't even slightly rattling the tugs?Paul Tjaden - 2011/07/30 15:33:54 UTC
Quest Air has been involved in perfecting aerotowing for nearly 20 years.
And if Quest and (the now extinct) Cloud 9 have been doing all this excellent perfecting of aerotowing then the technical information in "Towing Aloft" by Dennis Pagen and Bill Bryden CAN'T POSSIBLY BE an excellent and complete reference on towing equipment and procedures and those claiming otherwise are LIARS who can't be trusted on ANYTHING of importance or substance.
Got that, people of varying ages? u$hPa's official position on hang glider - not to mention paraglider and ultralight sailplane - towing procedures and technology is that well before publication date, over twenty years ago, every aspect of every flavor was as good as it could possibly get over as many corners of the planet as anyone cares to name. If it's not in the excellent book, Towing Aloft, by Dennis Pagen and Bill Bryden it needs to be treated like plutonium.
Funny that it tells you to only get equipment from reputable Industry sources like Quest Air and Lockout Mountain Flight Park who are claiming to be perpetually perfecting aerotowing and developing newer and more superior aerotow releases every eighteen months.
And not one single individual outside of Kite Strings has ever taken the slightest issue with that totally certifiable bullshit signed by two top u$hPa operatives who have ZERO qualifications I know about to comment on ANY towing issues.
We've got a sport built on a foundation of total shit and guess what happens - even if you do occasionally throw in the odd legitimate construction element every now and then - as you keep building it higher and higher each year.
