Is it possible to set this forum up such that registration can only be effected after obtaining permission?
There's an 'Account activation' setting under 'User registration settings' in the Administration Control Panel. If you set it to 'By admin', new accounts will be inactive until you activate them. I'm not sure if the new user gets to enter a message for the admin.
Are we having a problem with spam? I haven't seen any, but you may just be too quick for me.
Yeah, it's "By admin" now. We haven't had a real person who's gone on to post anything register since the beginning of February. We're not likely to inconvenience a lot of people for very long.
Very little problem with spam but we've gotten little bursts of activity.
I've done the math and figured that it'll be a lot easier to jump a hoop dealing with a legitimate prospective member a couple times a year if we're lucky than with bogus identities and spam attempts a dozen times a year.
Odds and ends...
- A wee bit before 2012/12/23 01:48:36 UTC this thread scored its five thousandth hit and we've currently got another ten threads into quadruple digits. I note that Davis's
Welcome to, and policies of, the Oz Report discussion group
(which, by the way, is as much a work of fiction as are the Jack and Bob Show mission statements) is only reading 7021 hits at the moment - and that sewer has been running since 2003/03/04.
- We turned two a month ago today.
-- Good news... We're a very visible force on the web.
-- Bad news...
Zack C - 2012/06/02 02:20:45 UTC
I just cannot fathom how our sport can be so screwed up. This stuff is really not that complicated.
The sport is so tightly under the control of pigfuckers like Dr. Trisa Tilletti and Matt Taber that it's pretty much unfixable.
-- Mitigating issue...
Steve Davy - 2012/12/03 03:37:51 UTC
I no longer give a shit about what happens to hang glider people. Run off cliffs without your gliders all you want, assholes.
The assholes who go along with the crap that Davis, Jack, Rooney, Ryan are saying and doing - which is just about everyone in hang gliding - don't deserve to live anyway. I no longer give a shit about what happens to them. In fact, the more they get mangled and killed the more we get listened to. 2012 was a very bad year for them and a very good year for us.
- I try to tune in on 2012/12/18 at about quarter after three Eastern (for me, local) time:
So sorry for the inconvenience, but we're doing some important maintenance. Expected completion time is 4pm EST. Hang in there, we'll be right back!
So sorry for the inconvenience, but we're doing some important maintenance. Expected completion time is 4pm EST. Hang in there, we'll be right back!
So sorry for the inconvenience, but we're doing some important maintenance. Expected completion time is 5:30pm EST. Hang in there, we'll be right back!
So sorry for the inconvenience, but we're doing some important maintenance. Expected completion time is 7pm EST. Hang in there, we'll be right back! (Yes, I know that has been extended. This is a BIG update)
So sorry for the inconvenience, but we're doing some important maintenance. Please bear with us while we make upgrades to the forum.
Back in gear a bit before 21:57:15. Oh well, I really like the new layout.
- I'm gonna hafta do a major overhaul of my photo site:
Flickr screwed me over a bit by knocking my 1024 uploaded resolutions down to 640. (My Konica Minolta DiMage Z6 shoots 2816 by 2112 and, of course, I can slice things together to anything in Photoshop.) For the purposes of this forum that was no BFD prior to the upgrade 'cause an embedded photo over a width of 640 would be displayed truncated.
But now we can do 800 and Flickr will display up to 2048 and makes copies at:
So now I'm planning on uploading at full/original resolution, deleting the low resolution duplicates, and editing posts to take advantage of the new 800 capacity.
That'll break some links in posts from forums I've been kicked out of but, what the fuck, it's not like anybody from those dumps was ever gonna take advantage of them anyway.
Probably lower some of my visibility on image search results for a while too as well but, again, so what.
- All images we have embedded in posts here I save to disk. If they disappear, as several have, I can/will upload them to my Flickr site and edit the link to bring them back up.
- When I find higher resolution images which will be truncated if embedded here they too get uploaded to my Flickr site and I embed the link to the max width capacity copy.
- On my site the only images publicly viewable are my original material but upon request I can send the highest resolution copies of other people's stuff to anyone interested.
- I also make a point of downloading all embedded videos my software is capable of handling so if anyone's interested in something that's been deleted I can send copies of those as well.
- And if anyone knows of a way I can legally upload and make publicly available other people's deleted videos... (Several real treasures have been taken down.)
- At his request I changed the username of "Nobody" to "Steve Davy" at 2012/12/20 05:59:56 UTC. He's our second most active member in terms of number of posts. The name change, of course, is retroactive to everything he's done since registering on 2011/07/18. May cause a bit of confusion for an uninitiated reader, I may go back and do a little editing to make things clear.
- Steve's also the foremost reporter of stupid stuff in my posts that needs correcting. If anyone else sees anything wrong I'm always real happy to hear about it, no matter how minor an issue.
- Kite Strings mission revision... The best we can do is get through to a few individuals capable of rational independent thinking. Hang Twos are probably our best bet. Most Hang Fours have been steeped in the crap for so long that any intelligence they may have had to begin with has been rotted out beyond any hope of recovery. And the ones that understand what's being done to hang gliding but aren't doing anything in the way of speaking out against it can go fuck themselves.
I've uploaded full resolution copies of everything, recorded numbers of hits, deleted all the existing low resolution junk, and edited (hopefully) all Kite Strings links accordingly. All the embedded photos should now display at an 800 pixel width and if one goes to the accompanying link they're viewable and downloadable at 2048 - which isn't too far below the 2816 that comes out of my camera.
My balloon drop equipment photos were amongst my earliest efforts with the camera and Photoshop and my skills in the latter at the time totally sucked. I gave those their first reworkings in seven years and replaced the gray background color with blue. So they're all looking a lot better now - especially if you're looking at something in high resolution and blowing it up.
May have taken something of a bath with respect to Google image search results but am still plenty visible enough to get people started.
Flickr geek stuff for anyone who's interested...
I established my free Flickr site 2006/02/15. At that time it seemed that - regardless of what one uploaded - 1024 was the largest dimension that would be displayed. So I figured I'd save them some bandwidth and shrink everything down to 1024 prior to uploading.
Then a couple of April Fool's Days ago I discovered that 1024 was no longer accessible and 640 was the best resolution I or anybody else could view - a 1024 isn't redrawn to 800. Flickr had decided that it needed to encourage people to become paying customers so being able to view the original upload size had become a privilege accorded only to the uploader with a credit card on file. If I had uploaded at 2816 I'd have been able to see a JPEG of that size and everybody else would have been able to see any resolution from 2048 on down. (As if I needed any more proof that no good deed goes unpunished.)
Also now...
If a free account holder has more than two hundred photos at his site the ones with the earliest upload dates start disappearing from view. They can be brought up using the specific URL and it's supposed to appear in a post in which it's embedded but I found that not to be the case as I exceeded the limit while uploading full resolution copies without deleting old low resolution uploads.
Interestingly... I found that after I deleted an old low resolution photo it would still show in a post for a while through an embedded link. Try to open the image in a new window though and... nothing there.
Flickr has a promotion going on now whereby you can opt in for free for three months worth of the equivalent of a paid account - including virtually unlimited uploads and the "privileges" of having all of the photos in your over two hundred collection accessible on an unrestricted basis and your original upload resolution available. (The idea here - obviously - is that you'll go nuts and get hooked. I have very definite plans not to do that.) I clicked.
Then - after I'd already done a sickening amount of uploading high resolution photos, deleting the old low resolution copies, and editing links - I noticed a new button:
Replace this photo
I tried it and it DID allow me to replace the photo and keep the URL but it didn't redraw the photo into the spread of available resolutions - including 800. So I said fuckit and kept on uploading, deleting, and editing.
Note that while photos can be arranged in any order one wishes in a "set" they appear in the main collection in order of upload date - from most recent to earliest. The good news there is that the upload date can be edited to anything anyone wants between one's join date and now. So I've edited all the upload dates to make all the photos in the collection appear in a logical order. Major pain in the ass but it works.
Good news everybody! Tad saved 100% of his athletic supporter costs by switching to eunuch.
Kite Strings is a testicles free zone.
- Testosterone poisoning, along and/or in combination with incompetence, ignorance, stupidity, is one of the biggest killers in aviation in general and hang gliding in particular.
- There's a well documented inverse relationship between the size of testicles and the size and functionality of the brain.
- Anybody who does anything in aviation that requires testicles has fucked up and won't last very long repeating any such feats (the bold pilots / old pilots thing).
- Examples of strategies requiring large testicles / small brains...
-- skipping preflight sidewire load tests because of one's parachute deployment skills
-- skipping hook-in checks on launch ramps because of one's bulletproof preflight routines, laser like focus, infallible memory, and ability to climb into the control frame
-- flying sans wheels and/or landing in narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place because one has perfected his standup spot landings
-- towing with three quarter G weak links because of one's top notch stall recovery abilities
-- towing from the shoulders only because pros have no need of the speed range required by amateurs and free flyers
-- mounting release actuators within easy reach because of one's superb one handed flying skills and ability to use the Rooney Link as an instant hands free release
-- flying with bent pin releases because real men have no problem whatsoever pulling barrels with over triple the force of which straight pin eunuchs are capable
-- flying long thin secondary bridles minus secondary weak links because of one's hook knife skills
-- flying Lockout Mountain Flight Park Releases because of one's ability to avoid high tension situations and keep the glider within the Cone of Safety
-- finalling with hands in arm break position because bellying in is for pansies
-- flying hang gliders because risk is part of the attraction
If you have testicles leave them in the bin at the door - along with your airtime, rating card, competition standings, and bible - and pick them up on the way out.
If you can't bear being separated from your testicles, airtime, rating card, competition standings, and bible for the duration of a discussion, there are plenty of other hang gliding forums that'll welcome you, and herds of others just like you, with open arms and provide you with plenty of opportunities to use them - right up until the point at which you get smashed up, crippled, or killed doing what you love.
Your site was recommended by one of your existing members. I like what I see here. Many of my views and concerns are shared here. I truly enjoyed what Tad Eareckson had to say about aerotowing. Thanks for letting me join in.
I wouldn't say that too loudly at many other forums if I were you but... Thanks.
Sorry it took so long to get your first post approved but I didn't notice the flag...
...until just a bit ago.
Thanks much for registering and welcome aboard. Hang gliding is in desperate need of people who have and voice concerns about the way things are being done - but be advised that this won't help you win any popularity contests.
I’m fairly new to the sport, though I actually started in the 70’s flying a used Seagull II. A non-instructor friend taught me how to almost fly. My training consisted of some training hills, consisting of some “under construction” Georgia Hwy embankments. Flew Raccoon Mountain Tennessee and managed not to kill myself. I gave hang gliding up until 2011. Better equipment and training changed my attitude. If I could have gotten quality training when I first started I’d never had quit.
That being said, I had a stop and think moment when the young man was killed recently in Florida, while aerotowing. You’re aware of this I’m sure. This hit home because I’d recently started my aerotow training at another location. I thought if this young instructor failed to recover from whatever caused his loss of control, then what chance would a student have given the same circumstances?
I'm rated for foot launch only at this time and love it. I don’t fear aerotowing but I believe in my heart that something is wrong with its training mythology and sometimes just total BS from the lessons and especially from the training book that was recommended I buy. You have spoken of this very book yourself. It’s a total waste of good money. It at best would only allow me to pass the required test for an aerotow rating.
I’ll stop here before I start pointing fingers. I don’t see myself experienced enough yet for debate but from the student side of things I feel a little uneasy.
It’s a pleasure to be here. I have already learned some valuable things.
I'm fairly new to the sport, though I actually started in the 70's flying a used Seagull II.
I started at Kitty Hawk Kites on a long Easter weekend (04/02-07) in 1980 and came back for a short instructor stint that fall. A Seahawk 180 was the second glider I flew (after the Eaglet 191 trainer) and the first thing on which I managed sustained soaring - 1980/10/28.
A non-instructor friend taught me how to almost fly.
That's probably a real advantage over having a USHGA instructor teach you how to completely fly. That's THE major cause of fatalities in this sport.
My training consisted of some training hills, consisting of some "under construction" Georgia Hwy embankments.
All dunes. It was great 'cause you could try all kinds of shit, make serious mistakes, crash real hard, and never get hurt.
Flew Raccoon Mountain Tennessee and managed not to kill myself.
I ATTEMPTED to fly it once. I wind dummied for the first round of the 1988 (04/16) Nationals. Those bastards watched me try to get off the Springer Launch in a tailwind, stall off the lip, and crash below and then relocated to Lookout. There were color photos of me and my Comet 165 wreckage plastered all over the Chattanooga Times.
I gave hang gliding up until 2011.
I had it given up for me after the 2008 season.
Better equipment and training changed my attitude.
The gliders got better - a lot of the towing equipment and training has gotten distinctly and much worse.
If I could have gotten quality training when I first started I'd never had quit.
I know a lot of people who got horribly smashed up and killed by some of that quality training from the period you missed. And you're in a lot better shape now than they are.
That being said, I had a stop and think moment...
Be careful with that thinking thing. It can get you in a lot of trouble with the people with whom you hafta deal in hang gliding.
...when the young man was killed recently in Florida, while aerotowing.
He didn't get killed aerotowing. He got killed right after he STOPPED aerotowing.
This hit home because I'd recently started my aerotow training at another location.
I'm quite familiar with that "other" location - and the serial killing motherfucker who runs it.
I thought if this young instructor failed to recover from whatever caused his loss of control...
Catastrophic power failure on takeoff. Increases the safety of the towing operation. PERIOD.
...then what chance would a student have given the same circumstances?
Exactly the same - no better or worse. A Hang Four can't stuff the bar any faster or farther back than a Hang Two - and acceleration due to the force of gravity is 32 feet per second squared for everyone.
I'm rated for foot launch only at this time and love it.
As fucked up as aerotowing is, foot launch is still a lot more dangerous.
I don't fear aerotowing...
If your training had been worth shit you would.
...but I believe in my heart that something is wrong with its training mythology...
Precisely. The training mythology is entirely geared to get you to not fear aerotowing. See how effective it is?
...and sometimes just total BS from the lessons and especially from the training book that was recommended I buy.
- Sometimes?
- "Buy" being the operative word here.
- Go to sailplane texts. The FAA's "Glider Flying Handbook":
If you read or are told something that conflicts with information from conventional aviation it's wrong. Start understanding that hang gliders are just a flavor of sailplane with a different control system - and start treating them as such to the maximum extent possible.
It at best would only allow me to pass the required test for an aerotow rating.
It's an infomercial for The Industry. It's geared to sell the product, convince everybody that it's perfectly safe to go up with junk equipment behind crappy drivers, and give the front end people get-out-of-jail-free cards for whatever they do that kills the guy on - or recently off - the string.
I'll stop here before I start pointing fingers.
You can leave that to me. I've got nothing to lose.
I don't see myself experienced enough yet for debate...
You don't need to be. The foundation of this forum is that there's nothing very important in this game that can't be thoroughly, and often instinctively, understood by a ten year old kite flyer and that experience is of virtually no value - beyond the muscle memory crap you need to get the glider pointed in the direction you're trying to make it go.
This is a pretty good but milder approximation of what happened to Zack Marzec:
Vehicle tow during exhibition. Rope broke at 100'. Dived in.
Today the hang gliding industry and its shills all say:
Paul Tjaden - 2013/02/03
We will post more about the accident on the Quest FB page in the coming days. For now I will say that it appears to have been a fluke accident.
Davis Straub - 2013/02/09 17:45:21 UTC
I have no idea of the circumstances he faced.
Brad Gryder - 2013/02/21 23:25:31 UTC
It's sad that Zach's gone.
Some (perhaps well-intended?) pilots seem to be promoting the old, tired, "better" weak links and "hands on bar" release ideas.
Sorry, but that's not the best answer. We don't live in a perfect world of quantum knowns and 100% reliabilities.
William Olive - 2013/02/27 20:55:06 UTC
Like the rest of us, you have no idea what really happened on that tow.
We probably never will know.
Jim Rooney - 2013/03/05 19:42:58 UTC
Wow...
So you know what happened then?
OMG... thank you for your expert accident analysis. You better fly down to FL and let them know. I'm sure they'll be very thankful to have such a crack expert mind on the case analyzing an accident that you know nothing about. Far better data than the people that were actually there. In short... get fucked.
...but from the student side of things I feel a little uneasy.
Good. From that starting point it'll be pretty easy to scare you shitless. And being scared shitless is the best foundation you can have to stay safe and have a long, fun, rewarding, low cost career in hang gliding - or any other flavor of aviation in which you feel like engaging.
It's a pleasure to be here.
It's an absolute joy to have you here. The kind of people appropriate for this group are about one in a thousand in hang gliding.
I have already learned some valuable things.
Good. If any of them save you a broken arm then however many tens of thousands of hours I've poured into this project will have been worth it.
A few thoughts at this point in our history on what Kite Strings is.
It's not really what I initially envisioned and hoped for when Zack set things up. It's more of a monologue than a discussion group.
The reasons for this are that...
- This shit really isn't all that complicated and the people capable of getting it get it fast and there's no need to keep discussing it.
- There aren't that many people in hang gliding capable of getting it. 99 percent of them just want popular authority figures to tell them what to do and what they wanna hear.
Hang gliding - globally - is controlled by commercial interests primarily motivated by pushing product - equipment, tugs, launches, LZs, lessons, rides, tours, comps, rentals, memberships, books, magazines, T-shirts - and shielding itself from criticism, checks, balances, accountability, transparency, liability, prosecution, math, science, history, competence. And that's where it puts its energy, resources, talents and hones its skills. And it just keeps getting better and better at what it does and expanding its envelope.
And from this you can predict - with mathematical certainty - that the scummiest snake oil salesmen in the sport WILL rise to the top, consolidate their control over it, and go nuts pinning medals all over each other's chests.
The good news is that this is something akin to a Ponzi scheme - it's inherently unstable and the bigger it gets the more unstable it becomes. And while you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time you can't fool all of the people all of the time. And when this entity gets as corrupt and bloated as it has people like you are gonna start smelling something really rotten and start looking around.
Kite Strings came into existence - somewhat by accident - because one person knew and another strongly suspected that things were irretrievably rotten and an enclave for people who love hang gliding for what it is or can be - rather than for what it could get them in terms of money and/or power - and want to clean it up, reform it, get it back on track was desperately needed.
So here we are - and there's nothing else like us anywhere.
We're a guerrilla force. We're NOT gonna win the war any time within the next couple of decades but we ARE making ourselves a major pain in the ass, scaring the crap out of people, and getting them to spend some of their resources trying to kill us and damage their communications networks in defending against us.
And the less access and visibility they get the more access and visibility WE get.
We're a gun platform and a weapons cache. When those corrupt incompetent assholes at Quest kill someone with their 130 pound test safety equipment and try to get away with it the tools to cut them to shreds are all stockpiled here - and we've got the people who know how to use them and are more than willing to do so. We may be WAY outnumbered but we've got WAY better assault rifles and are WAY better shots.
So, again, welcome aboard and use us as you like - to enhance your capabilities as a hang glider pilot, help a friend or two, or neutralize some of the cancer that's taken over the sport. But be aware that there's a real opportunity here and now to become a key player and major positive force in the history of aviation.
Every banning that I have experienced has also had an element of cowardice.
Banning opposing opinions is always the law of the lowest common denominator.
Discussions and ideas are limited to the base level intellect of those with the power of the mouse click banning.
The group as a whole suffers those limitations.
Yes, bannings on mainstream and conventional glider forums ARE almost always acts of cowardice on the parts of individuals and organizations who have skeletons to hide, are threatened by competence and minority positions, and/or don't want people rocking their cliquish hypocritical little boats - and are made with the intent of silencing the targets.
That is very demonstrably not the case here.
- The rules/guidelines are spelled out pretty well in the first couple of posts in this topic and anybody interested in an honest rational discussion - who doesn't have a history demonstrating that he is totally incapable of and/or has no interest in doing so - is more than welcome to participate.
- But, contrary to the case in other glider forums...
No posts or links about Bob K, Scott C Wise, Tad Eareckson and related people, or their material. ALL SUCH POSTS WILL BE IMMEDIATELY DELETED. These people are poison to this sport and are permanently banned from this site in every possible way imaginable.
We, the Moderators, feel that weak links are an important topic. In our view Tad Eareckson's posts have discouraged others from taking part in this discussion, so, after several warnings, he has been banned. His most recent post, after this topic was locked, is here:
We are happy to lift the ban if we come to the view that Tad has further positive contributions to make - please contact us by PM or by email if you feel that this is the case.
...the many individuals who would be excluded from and the three I've banned get plenty of airplay on Kite Strings. If you don't believe me then try the following Google searches:
"Bob Kuczewski"
"Sam Kellner" glider
"Orion Price" glider
"Davis Straub"
"Jack Axaopoulos" glider
"Peter Birren" glider
"Cragin Shelton" glider
"Jim Rooney" glider
"Ryan Voight" "hook in"
"Jim Gaar" glider
"Marc Fink" glider
Unfortunately, the primary function of Kite Strings must be to make sure individuals like these have their statements heard by as many glider people as possible and thoroughly addressed. That's our best hope for controlling and reversing the kind of damage they do and/or support.
