http://ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2434
Rethinking towing
Rick Masters - 2016/08/21 16:49:45 UTC
Towing adds additional risk to hang gliding.
Of course it does.
Whereas there are no risks whatsoever that can be associated with any elements of mountain launches: unimproved launches - slots - cliffs - ramps - crews - trees - boulders - katabatic flows - rotors - freight train thermals - first landing option a thousand feet down and a mile out...
Fatal HG crash in Tres Pinos CA 4-3-2016
Page 14
2016/08/18 22:08:22 UTC
Reading posts of instructors on hanggliding.org turns my stomach when they place blame on a novice.
- There's very little that DOESN'T turn my stomach on The Jack Show.
- You won't acknowledge the existence of Kite Strings 'cause you know that we can and frequently will tear your stupid balls off and shove them down your stupid throat. And that holds true for the rest of this shit-hole of a sport. If what we're saying over here were the slightest bit illegitimate a legitimate mainstream would be quoting and dismembering it all the fuckin' time. And that's NEVER happened in the course of our nine year history.
- There's extremely little one is exercising in the way of pilot skill in any flavor of towing down in the kill zone. You're coming off a cart or a dolly already proned out with both hands on the control bar just holding the pitch at around trim and preventing - as opposed to initiating and coordinating - turns. And if these are students this is being done in smooth air. Compare/Contrast free flight foot launching and foot landing. If instructors are dumping on the victim here they're also the ones covering all the free flight issues - with the possible exception of foot launching - exactly the same as the hill, dune, beach guys. So what's that tell us about the sport at large?
It is the responsibility of instructors to protect novices.
That's not what the u$hPa waiver says.
Novices should never be put in situations where they can kill themselves in a moment of fear or confusion.
- Since the sport is fundamentally aeronautically incompetent it's virtually always in fear and/or confusion mode.
- Remember...
http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=795
AL's Flight At Packsaddle 10-04-11
Al Hernandez - 2011/10/07 07:32:23 UTC
...
The thought of a high flight was kind of a shock, since I haven't flown altitude since last year, so, fear and confusion was doing the Macarena in my head.
...
I flew the HG, but didn't know how to land a hang glider or I forgot about landing and busted my left leg.
...
I didn't sleep that night, trying to remember how to turn a glider, the inputs, plus I had not flown in a month or better... I tossed and turned in my bed that night, this will be my last day on Earth.
...
I was feeling anxiety, not so much of flying the glider, but the turns, the turns, this is what I was worried about this was the part that was going to kill me... I have had payout winch tows, scooter tows, flying straight patters and I do fine with this kind of flying, but a mountain...
...
The Drive up the hill was killing me, as we were going up the rocky road to the top of Pac. I felt like I was going to puke. My turn was up the sand of time for me was running low, time to nut up, or shut up. Jeff had a big smile on his face watching me change colors from Brown to White...
...
I had not launched yet, because I was having an anxiety attack at the time...
That's all free flight - and I don't recall you participating in or commenting on that discussion.
Hang gliding instruction has lost its way and now threatens the future of the sport.
Tell me when its way changed. Hang gliding instruction was bullshit on Day One and it's been fairly steadily rolling south ever since.
There was never some magic point that hang gliding evolved to where towing became a necessary part.
- A rather odd statement given that originally hang gliding was 100.00 percent towing.
- Good freakin' luck in Texas - douchebag. Although in your particular case you'd have gotten exactly the same airtime there as you have in California over the course of the past quarter century.
- Seems to be a necessary part now - asshole. The sport's currently spiraling towards extinction and the manufacturers are more aware of that fact than anyone else. Wills Wing Demo Days sites I've been able to find so far...
Fifteen sites or operations:
Morningside, Ellenville, Ridgely, Manquin, Currituck, Kitty Hawk, Henson, Lockout, Quest, Wallaby, Wharton, Phoenix, AJX, Tres Pinos, Ed Levin, Funston
- Seven tow only: Ridgely, Manquin, Currituck, Quest, Wallaby, Wharton, Phoenix
- Four towing and slope options: Morningside, Lockout, Tres Pinos, Ed Levin
- Two slope no-breakdown turnaround: Kitty Hawk, AJX
- One top landable: Funston
- Two mountain or escarpment ramp only: Ellenville, Henson
That's probably a pretty good representation of where and how gliders are being most frequently and effectively flown - populated regions, heavy towing bias, low pain turnaround between flights. The Owens Valley bullshit isn't sustainable and never was - 'specially after aerotowing rendered it totally obsolete for high mileage XC.
It has always been optional.
Name something in hang gliding that ISN'T optional. Flames racing up the mountain's slopes from all directions but that never seems to happen in real life.
It has generally been regarded as a choice for advanced pilots.
- By the Board of Directors of the World Hang Gliding Opinions Clearing Association. Who the fuck are you to pronounce what anything in hang gliding has generally been regarded as? And you don't even make any distinction between glider-only and pilot-and-glider bridle connection.
- In hang gliding:
-- tension is generally regarded as pressure
-- a weak link is generally regarded as the focal point of a safe towing system
-- a hang check in the setup are is generally regarded as bulletproof assurance that one will be connected to one's glider as he runs off the ramp
-- Jim Rooney was generally regarded as having a keen intellect and the world's foremost authority on every aspect of the sport
-- it's a pretty good bet that worldwide the vast majority of legitimate beginning students start their training via tow
- Bull fucking shit. In the current u$hPa rating system with respect to Special Skills... Surface, Platform, Aero are Two and Assisted Wind Cliff is Three level. And I've never heard anybody take much in the way of issue with that structuring - 'specially you.
It only became popular when instructors and flight parks realized they could make a ton of money doing it.
Commercial flight parks? Name some commercial flight parks that were originally slope launch and later incorporated towing. Lockout Mountain Flight Park would qualify and maybe Kitty Hawk Kites with a big asterisk. The later started out mostly as a solo tourist ride factory on the dunes and much later got towing going at Currituck - 43 miles up the road. Morningside was originally slope and later was taken over by Kitty Hawk and began incorporating Dragonfly AT. But good freakin' luck with the vast majority of them which are AT flatland.
Furthermore... These operations make the money they can on tandem thrill rides thinly disguised as instruction in which the "student" never gets a hand anywhere near the control bar and the incident rate is pretty much nonexistent.
Baltimore/Washington area hang gliding got rolling in the Seventies and Eighties. People learned at area hills or down at Kitty Hawk and most of the airtime was racked up at High Rock, McConnellsburg, Woodstock. Ridgely opened up 1999 Memorial Day Weekend at a point when I pretty much totally burned out on the ridges and all the bullshit involved in flying them. People flocked there in droves. Set up next to your car, tow up to workable altitude for fifteen bucks, pin off, spend hours playing around with cloudbase, land next to your car. Explain that.
Consequential launch incidents save one were EXCLUSIVELY the results of Standard Aerotow Weak Links increasing the safety of the towing operation but there were no injuries associated with. The exception was John Claytor 2014/06/02 on total shit equipment when the douchebags were pushing their luck with crosswind at their annual pecker measuring contest. Neck, career ender.
It's sooooooo convenient.
Oh yeah?
http://www.chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2467
weak links
Jim Rooney - 2007/07/22 22:30:28 UTC
Hahahahahahahahaha
Oh that's just rich!
Riiiiiight... it's my attention span at issue here....
and I'm the one that's arrogant!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA
No, I'm not being nice. No, I do not feel the need to be nice. You're trying to convince people to be less safe. I don't want to be on the other end of the rope when someone listening to this drivel smashes in.
I've heard it a million times before from comp pilots insisting on towing with even doubled up weaklinks (some want no weaklink). I tell them the same thing I'm telling you... suck it up. You're not the only one on the line. I didn't ask to be a test pilot. I can live with your inconvenience.
Please tell me again what's wrong with the wheel? Why you keep trying to reinvent it?
Yes, please fall back on the "I'm just saying they could be stronger" bull when you've made it quite clear that anything lower than cable (1200lb) is acceptable.
The simple fact is that you're not improving the system.
You're trying to make it more convenient and trying to convince yourself that you should be towing with a stronger weaklink.
Enjoy your delusion.
It SHOULD...
Dr. Trisa Tilletti - 2012/06
Trisa 1: You and I have flown sailplanes for almost as long as we have flown hang gliders. We own two sailplanes and have two airplanes that we use for towing full-size sailplanes. In all the time that we have flown and towed sailplanes, we have not experienced or even seen a sailplane weak link break.
Trisa 2: It's not that it doesn't happen, but it is a rare occurrence. Russell Brown, a founder of Quest Air in Florida and a well-known Dragonfly tug pilot, is also a sailplane pilot, tug pilot, and A&P mechanic for a large commercial sailplane towing operation in Florida. He told us that, like us, he has never seen a sailplane weak link break, either.
...be. And now that I think about it... Towing sailplanes can be no more dangerous than towing hang gliders in your particular book so if towing's the only way they can get up and they're NEVER breaking weak links...
Ridgely collapsed after the end of the 2015 season and area recreational flying took a devastating hit. And if you go to my old club's home page...
http://chgpa.org
Capital Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49193935417_bcff457440_o.png
The only ways you tell that wasn't a mountain launched flight are the by noting the piece o' crap two point Lockout release festooning the port control tube, bent pin backup release coming off his right shoulder, streaming bridles and by being able to identify RJD on the surface. They've been extinct for over four years now and Capitol still chooses that photo to represent, advertise, remember Mid Atlantic flying. And nobody's paying them or making a dime from it.
The prominent idiot who claims towing is safer than footlaunch leaves me speechless.
How I wish that were true.
You cannot pile on additional layers of risk and complexity to hang gliding (or anything else) and make it safer.
Bull fucking shit.
01-00100
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04-01028
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06-01101
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08-01107
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11-01120
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14-01405
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Complexity's the word stupid useless twats like you use for engineering. The engineering's virtually all on the truck and that makes it possible for the two humans involved to do nothing but drive seated with both hands on the steering wheel and fly prone with both hands on the control bar... Compare/Contrast:
87-60846
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92-61040
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52-12913
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59-13044
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150 percent the number of individuals involved in that one, Rick. Eliminate the u$hPa certified Launch Director and the flight goes off OK.
The historical record makes this obvious. Towing is dangerous. There are additional risks.
- Go fuck yourself.
- Name one.
- And of course none of the risks present at any point in the history of the practice of hang glider towing - Infallible Weak Link, Reliable Release, pro toad bridle, Birrenator, Dragonfly breakaway tow mast protector, Dragonfly based Pilot In Command, polypro towline - could ever addressed and neutralized. So much more fun to sit back, watch people getting needlessly mangled and killed, use them to support your hobby of pissing all over towing while not actually flying yourself or even contributing anything the hang glider free slope launch flying. Just a has-been stupid glider jock.
To some, such as myself, these additional risks are totally unacceptable.
Good. Stay on the ground and far away from the operations. They're plenty enough choked up with human total crud as things are.
Furthermore, towing is kiting, not hang gliding.
- Yeah, like 100.00 percent of sailplaning is done. So there's really no such thing as sailplaning. All they do is kite.
- 2012/07/03 Zapata. Dustin Martin and Jonny Durand fly eleven hours and 475 miles NNW setting a world XC record that will never be broken. But it was just kiting - not actual hang gliding - 'cause they spent three and a half minutes on tow behind Dragonflies to get started.
- Fuck the Owens Valley. It only had significance in the history of the sport before the advent of efficient platform and aero.
I don't recognize kiting as hang gliding.
Cool. I don't recognize you as anything more than a mouth with no brain attached anywhere.
To me, it is foolish and unnecessary and brings unneeded additional casualties to our sport.
And here you are still running your mouth. Where's an unneeded additional casualty to our sport when ya really need one?
Novices are endangered by this tow-centric commercialization of training.
John Seward didn't get endangered by this tow-centric commercialization of training. He got endangered by the only mountain site Texas used to have available for hang gliding. And Scot Trueblood would've been OK if a mountain hadn't gotten into some air he was trying to use.
A genuine national hang gliding association would not play a role in this commercialism.
And you'd be just the person this sport needs to get one of those going. Please let me know as soon as possible when that happens so I can stop holding my breath.
No endorsement. Maybe no comment would be wise.
So you're saying you'd be wiser if you'd shut the fuck up on this issue?
Any towing should be the responsibility of individual chapters.
Yeah. Just like:
http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1081
Platform towing /risk mitigation / accident
Sam Kellner - 2012/06/29 13:59:51 UTC
This topic is generated to better understand safe platform/payout operations.
In accordance with USHPA, the accident report was submitted 6-16, the evening of the accident.
SWTHG forum is moderated. Please stay on topic. Remarks relevant to safety and accuracy in reporting are welcome.
False speculations and suppositions, as showed up soon after 6-16, only reflect, IMO, the insecurity of those individuals makeing them.
Sam Kellner - 2012/07/03 02:25:58 UTC
No, you don't get an accident report.
Why is it unacceptable on a national but OK on a local level? It's just OK to kill pilots locally?
This former USHGA rockstar total douchebag gets a near total free pass from both commercial and recreational surface and aero towing.
Yours Truly:
- learned to fly and racked up virtually all of his flights and airtime up to and through Four level on dunes, bluffs, hills, buttes, mountains, over-the-back
- loved the idea of towing from Day One
- jumped ship to tow-only as soon as the option became viable
- worked his ass off over decades to:
-- optimize and improve existing equipment
-- develop superior equipment
-- have legitimate SOPs complied with
-- debunk lunatic Hewett based towing theory
-- et cetera
And who gets the international coordinated attacks?
