You are NEVER hooked in.

General discussion about the sport of hang gliding
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=26007
THE CODE AMONGST ALL PILOTS
Pete R (pecofly) - 2012/05/04 23:20:48 UTC
Penticton, British Columbia

"THE CODE AMONGST ALL PILOTS"

Hard to know what the distraction for Jon was...
Who the hell cares? Distractions are an inevitable component of prepping to launch. The problem wasn't a distraction - the problem was that he NEVER executed the procedure which protects against distraction.
...but with any tandems I have ever done, my procedure was always to hook passenger in first with my harness hooked in as well beside him, or her, then I could give them a hang check and visually inspect for myself that all was done properly, plus I could check the height of my passenger in accordance with myself.

Then I would have my passenger and or helper hold the wing whilst I hooked myself in.

In both cases, I would do a verbal explaining to my passenger that I was hooking them first, to the main strap then the safety.
How many times did your main fail?
We would then both do a hang check together at this point and if all was well, we would proceed to launch.
Irrelevant. Boooooring.
I would never count on anyone to do the hookin for me.
And it's a no brainer that nobody ever counted on you to make sure a hook-in check was done the instant prior to launch.
I was always grateful for anyone asking me if I wanted another hang check.
Fuck people who ask if you want another hang check. One of them is dangerous enough as it is.
The problem the way I'm seeing it here other than the obvious failure to hook her in, is the lack of anyone else watching to notice this deficiency.
That's not where people need to be watching - asshole.
It has always been in the past, encumbent on all other pilots in the vicinity to take it upon themselves to be extra vigilant in making sure that the launching pilot was good to go.
WHEN? Five minutes before he goes or five seconds before he goes?
Someone always stepped up to help.
Yeah, I can damn near always count on some moron behind the ramp asking me if I've had a hang check and/or offering to assist me with one.
Now, with PG and HG launching from the same ramp, I am noticing a reluctance by either sports to help out.
Good. Maybe I can fly there without having to listen to morons asking me if I've had a hang check and/or offering to assist me with one.
We all need to make sure that every launching pilot has one person at least asking the pilot if all checks have been done and also doing a visual themselves.
IT DOESN'T MATTER IF ALL CHECKS AND A VISUAL HAVE BEEN DONE. SHIT HAPPENS BETWEEN THE BACK OF THE RAMP AND THE FRONT OF THE RAMP.
IMHO
Fuck your goddam idiot humble OPINION.
The bottom line is that we all need to look out for each other.
Behind the ramp five minutes before launch or at the front of the ramp five seconds before launch?
I once launched without getting into my legstraps.
Which means you don't do hook-in checks. Big surprise.
My buddy Pedro couldn't figure out why I was doing a wheel landing.
Maybe he thought you were trying to minimize the likelihood of breaking an arm or dislocating a shoulder.

No. He was your buddy so that thought would never have occurred to him.

And, of course, he would be completely unable to conceive of the concept of preflight procedures catching all possible critical issues so the idea of you having missed your leg loops wouldn't have occured to him either.
He has always since then, always asked me and I him if we are all done up.
And then everybody can relax and get on with the serious business of picking a good soaring cycle.
Leg straps, chest buckles hooked in and hang checks!!!
And no hook-in checks - EVER.
It's gotta be "THE CODE AMONGST ALL PILOTS"
It pretty much is. Get fucked.
Manta_Dreaming - 2012/05/04 23:37:23 UTC

If you had done a proper hook-in check prior to launch, you would have also realized this at that time.
Neither that idiot nor any of the ones with whom he flies has ever heard of a hook-in check - proper or im - in his entire life before.
I also try to look after my other pilots on launch just as I would if they were divers about to go into the water. However it is never a substitute for the pilot or diver being responsible for themselves in the first place.

Mountains always have the right of way.

If you've never forgotten anything in your life, you don't need to do a hook-in check.
Good job.
Davis Straub - 2012/05/04 23:46:23 UTC
Quest Air, Gorveland, Florida

During the Rob Kells Meet I was checking pilots about to be hooked up.
There were no pilots at the Rob Kells meet.
I asked a pilot if he had hooked up his leg straps. He said yes.

I could see the leg straps hanging out from his harness. I pointed this out. It was also the case that he had not strapped in his chest buckle. No buckles were snapped shut. He had already zipped up his harness and was ready to launch or so he thought.
Christopher LeFay - 2012/05/05 07:13:57 UTC

Three thumbs up.
Hey Christopher...

1. People who die 'cause of leg loops fall out of their harnesses right or shortly after foot launching.

2. This guy's dolly launching so the leg loops don't matter AT ALL until he lands - IF THEN.

3. Leg loops tend not to be big fucking deals at landing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_oF-BSqnEs


...even if you ARE stupid enough to rotate to vertical before you get into ground effect and go down to trim (also at Florida Ridge, by the way). There are no incidents involving leg loopless people falling out of their harnesses at landing.

4. Chest buckles only come into play if the zipper blows out.

5. Even if the zipper blows out and the buckles aren't clipped it's no big fucking deal - you're still in your harness with your arms through the openings.

6. What HAS mangled and killed people launching at aerotow operations is Quallaby, Lookout, and Davis Releases and Davis Links. And you can bet your bottom dollar that he was equipped along those lines when the motherfucker cleared him to get on the cart.

Furthermore...

1. This was the ROB KELLS Memorial Competition.

2. Rob Kells - in his wishy-washy manner which allowed him to be a friend to every pilot he met, including assholes like Rob McKenzie - condemned the idiot hang check and idiot Aussie method and advocated lift and tug.

3. Davis is an asshole Aussie Methodist and deletes posts which support hook-in checks and lift and tug.

4. You piss all over hook-in checks and lift and tug every chance you get.

5. Go fuck yourself.
Kevin Wright - 2012/05/05 00:55:01 UTC
Taos

Hook in is right!

I have a picture, from a tip mounted camera, of me flying at Lakeview. The top of the c of the caribiner is hook ON the hang loop, dead center. It was very crowded on launch and I self launched myself from above launch, with no real hang check other than stepping through and feeling a tug on my harness.

I remember feeling a clunk sometime after takeoff. It was the carabiner dropping INTO the hang loop! It could of gone the other way and I would of fallen like this poor woman, I wonder if that is what happened to her...
Nope. He didn't hook her in, he didn't preflight the (lack of) connection, and he never does hook-in checks.
I was terrified when I saw the photo and I'm not sure where it is, but I am sure the angels were watching my dumb ass that day! I don't believe I ever told anyone about that mistake until now...
1. Jon opened his mouth and swallowed a card in an insane attempt to conceal evidence in a fatal incident, you kept yours shut and concealed evidence of an incident which, for the purpose of the exercise, was fatal.

2. If Lenami HAD died as a consequence of a partial hook-in (the way Lynn Smith did at Lookout on 1991/05/17) your silence would've been a contributing factor.

3. A hang check would not necessarily have revealed this issue.

4. The mandatory visual preflight inspection - which you skipped - would have.

5. You DID a hang check - after launch. It didn't reveal the problem until after a bit of time had elapsed.

6. Better late than never - you get points for reporting this now.
May she rest in peace.
She's not resting - she's dead.
Mike Bomstad - 2012/05/04 03:14:38 UTC
Spokane

Great catch.
Complacency is a terrible thing.
http://www.paraglidingforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=28697
Weak links why do we use them. in paragliding.
Mike Bomstad - 2009/12/12 06:46:44 UTC

I know Tad causes some to think, but all the "your going to die...." gets old.
Fuck you, Mike.
Christopher LeFay - 2012/05/05 07:24:54 UTC
If you had done a proper hook-in check prior to launch, you would have also realized this at that time..
Yes - if he had remembered, he wouldn't have forgotten, he would have known. So? This gets back to the "always remember" strategy- which works perfectly... except when it does not. Remembering isn't a plan - its a hope. It can be part of a strategy - but as the sum total, is subject to failure.
Get fucked, Christopher. HE DIDN'T FORGET TO DO IT. He, like you, is a total asshole who's decided that he's NEVER gonna do it 'cause he MIGHT FORGET sometime. How do people as stupid as you ever even manage to get into the gene pool in the first place?
Manta_Dreaming - 2012/05/05 08:34:28 UTC

Which is why pilots need to develop safety procedures and good habits - just like always buckling your seatbelt before driving. These things should become muscle memory, ingrained behavior, just as flying and landing a glider should be.
Bulls-eye.
Glenn Zapien - 2012/05/05 08:58:13 UTC

Hopefully the instructor makes sure that is ingrained from early on, and perpetuated for building of said procedures.
1. So why are NONE OF THE FUCKING INSTRUCTORS doing this?

2. What do you mean "HOPEFULLY"? It's a goddam USHGA *REQUIREMENT*. If the goddam instructor isn't doing it revoke his goddam certification - and pilot rating.

3. It doesn't need to be ingrained FROM EARLY ON. You need to scare the crap out of the student with some fatality reports and YouTube videos before he gets ANYWHERE NEAR a glider and get him doing hook-in checks From Day 1, Flight 1 and EVERY time thereafter.
And myself personally, I tend to look over every glider ready to launch just in case, and have made that a habit some time ago. I think it is a good habit to have.
When do you look?
Christopher LeFay - 2012/05/05 11:05:59 UTC

I'm all for reflexive, ingrained safeguards.
No you're not. You're all for coming up with hypothetical reasons why reflexive, ingrained safeguards might not work on the odd occasion and rejecting them because they might not work on the odd occasion.
Perhaps muscle memory and habit have a very low failure rate - with individual variance.
Ever hear of anybody forgetting what to do with the bar in response to a stall?
Perhaps that rate is as low as 1% of pilots...
What do you mean AS LOW as one percent, asshole? The failure rate for yours truly was ZERO percent over a quarter century's span of foot launching - same as the number of times I pushed the bar out in response to a stall.
...or one occurrence per 3000 hours of flight.
This doesn't have shit do do with HOURS of FLIGHT. This is about NUMBERS of FOOT LAUNCHES.
Maybe.
Fuck you.
Maybe that rate is insignificant.
Let's say it's five percent. You've gotta line up a one in twenty chance of failing to do the hook-in check with a one in a thousand chance of being about to run off the ramp unhooked. Chances are pretty good that everybody leaves Woodside smelling like roses.
Maybe circumstances will contrive to sharply display the fallibility of that system - because it can fail, because it is employed by people.
Mental diarrhea. Just fuckin' DO IT.
I greatly irritate my wife by refusing to start the car until everyone is belted in; every once in a great while, I find myself without a belt - you know, just moving the car some short distance, driving around the block late at night looking for a parking spot, parking after unloading gliders - whatever. It happens.
Big fuckin' deal.

1. When was the last time you heard about somebody getting scratched because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt just moving the car some short distance, driving around the block late at night looking for a parking spot, parking after unloading gliders, whatever?

2. Compare that to the probabilities of somebody:

- standing on the sidewalk at noon waiting for a bus getting creamed by some asshole behind the wheel of an SUV sending a text message.

- breaking an arm or dislocating a shoulder attempting a totally unnecessary standup landing at the Happy Acres putting green.

- falling to her death from a tandem glider 'cause the shithead responsible for the flight had a cesspool's worth of idiot reasons to skip hook-in checks.
I remember to take my keys with me whenever I leave the house - except for when I don't (twice in four years).
So? You HAD a spare stashed in the dirt in the flower pot out back, didn't you?
Now I hang them on the door knob - so that I can't open the door without touching the keys; I haven't needed a locksmith since.
Fascinating. Tell me how something like that can work in hang gliding.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13132
Unhooked Death Again - Change our Methods Now?
JBBenson - 2009/01/25 16:27:19 UTC

I get what Tad is saying, but it took some translation:
HANG-CHECK is part of the preflight, to verify that all the harness lines etc. are straight
HOOK-IN-CHECK is to verify connection to the glider five seconds before takeoff
They are separate actions, neither interchangeable nor meant to replace one another. They are not two ways to do the same thing.
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27571
Tandem vs Solo hook-in procedure.
JBBenson - 2012/05/04 22:30:05 UTC

HANG-CHECK is part of the preflight, to verify that all the harness lines etc. are straight
HOOK-IN-CHECK is to verify connection to the glider five seconds before takeoff
They are separate actions, neither interchangeable nor meant to replace one another. They are not two ways to do the same thing.
Just saying.
I guess if Jesse credited Tad for this one then Davis would delete the post.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27542
Is the issue of safety coming to a head?
Linerider - 2012/05/05 12:34:48 UTC

Should you be tracking accidents?!?

Hi guys,

I logged on to your forum to see what kind of conversation is happening in your community in regards to the horrific accident here in British Columbia last Saturday. It's quite insightful actually - and mostly disturbing.

Who am I? I live very close to Agassiz where Lenami Godinez-Avila lost her life. I flew with Jon Orders last year - and crashed off the takeoff. I don't think I'll have the stomach to try again - even though it was a lifelong dream of mine to try your amazing sport. I learned today that Jon Orders crashed with another passenger last year. And then last weekend - the worst thing possible happened.

I read a bunch of posts and "Redsector" - you have got it right. What you have to say absolutely rang true for me - there is a disgraceful lack of due diligence in the sport around safety and there is a TON of ego - as evidenced by much of the other posts and refusals by members and pilots to take responsibility and overhaul standards and regulations regarding safety in hang gliding.

I can tell you that examining at what's going on from the outside looking in: your boys' club needs to take a long hard look at what's occurring in regards to safety protocols and procedures. From what I can see, associations like the West Coast Soaring Club here in BC are quite incapable of providing adequate oversight for themselves and it looks like you're going to need an outside agency insist that your pilots raise the bar for safety.

I think it is shameful that any hang gliding pilot or organization would even question the need to do so - given a tragedy like the one that has occurred here in Canada this week.

I hope commercial hang gliding is shut down here in British Columbia by this time next week and is only permitted to resume once a full and thorough inquest into the circumstances of Ms. Godinez-Avila's death is completed.

Little did I know it last August, but I was lucky to walk away alive that day. I feel very so sorry for Ms Godinez-Avila's family. I think her death could have been prevented if there had been proper safety protocol in place and oversight by the body that should have looked into the previous and recent accident record of Mr. Orders.

I just think the whole thing is so sad. It is your duty - everybody in the flying community and on this forum - to do what you can to make sure it doesn't ever happen again.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=26007
THE CODE AMONGST ALL PILOTS
JJ Coté - 2012/05/06 03:05:08 UTC
Lunenburg, Massachusetts

Based on the anecdotes that I have heard...
When something gets written down it stops being an anecdote and starts being USABLE DATA.
...I suspect that in the majority of failure-to-hook-in accidents, the pilot was hooked in at some point prior to the ill-fated launch.
Al Mulazzi
Robert Sage
Richard Thomson
Hans Heumannn
Klaus Crummenauer
Zuglian Walter
Ray Galan
Leon Williams
Jerome DuPrey
Bob Dunn
John Shook
John Preston
Eric Oppie
Richard Zadorozny
Eleni Zeri
Bill Priday
Kunio Yoshimura
Lenami Godinez-Avila

All of the above where killed and none of the above were hooked in at any time prior to launch.
I've lost track of how many of these stories include the words "he backed off of launch and unhooked" (including the one that I witnessed).
If you've lost track you should be REAL careful about drawing conclusions from anything.
In my opinion...
Three words to which it's a real safe bet to respond with "Go fuck yourself" without having to read further.
...unhooking has got to be one of the most dangerous things one can do, inviting a disaster. You have the memory in your head of having hooked in, but you are not hooked in.
Go fuck yourself.

- Anybody who relies on memory in any form at the edge of the ramp is a major detriment to the gene pool.

- THE most dangerous thing you can do in hang gliding is to approach the front of the ramp under the assumption you're hooked in - regardless of whether you are or aren't.
No matter how many checks you've done before that point, they all go out the window once you open up that carabiner.
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25550
Failure to hook in.
Christian Williams - 2011/10/25 03:59:58 UTC

What's more, I believe that all hooked-in checks prior to the last one before takeoff are a waste of time, not to say dangerous, because they build a sense of security which should not be built more than one instant before commitment to flight.
One of my instructors told me that he would never under any circumstances unhook a 'biner with his helmet on (and putting on his helmet was the last thing he always did when getting ready). That way if he was ever unhooked, he would have his bare head as a reminder that he had to do all of the checks over again.
Just ONE of your instructors was a total moron?
My approach is to never unhook my harness from the glider unless I am in an LZ from where it's not possible to launch (in that case I might unhook before moving my glider to the edge of the field, depending on conditions and circumstances).
And to ALWAYS rely on your preflight procedures to ensure that you're gonna be hooked in at the front of the ramp and NEVER use a hook-in check.
I really think...
No you don't. There isn't an Aussie Methodist on the planet who REALLY thinks. You NEVER find anything resembling thinking inside of a religious cult.
...that in most cases, it's not "failure to hook in", but "failure to hook back in".
Who gives a rat's ass what you "really think"?
- Looking at the fatals I get a ratio of two unhookers to nine no hookers.
- And then there's a sprinkling of leg loop missers and hang checks and the Aussie Method don't automatically catch leg loops.
Don't give that scenario a chance to arise.
Fuck you. The way a person WITH a brain prevents ugly scenarios is to make sure that his gear is properly assembled behind the ramp and check that he's connected at the front of the ramp within two seconds of launch EVER TIME.

When you figure out how to comply with the conditions of you're rating you can start telling us about your opinions and what you "really think". Until then shut the hell up.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/hang-glider-tragedy-tourist-plunges-death-16276783?tab=9482931&section=1206828
Martin Palmaz - 2012/05/04
Executive Director, USHPA

I don't want to speculate at what happened in Canada, but I can certainly say that, uh, in the US this has never happened.
Oh no - perish the thought that we should SPECULATE.

Glider takes off with two people and harnesses, lands with one person and harness, pilot removes card from camera and swallows it. Probably has something to do with sunspots.

And this has NEVER happened in the US.
Hang Gliding - 1977/10

During the Nationals two people forgot to hook up before flying. I was one of them. The one thing which made my failure to hook-up totally inexcusable is that I had a passenger with me.

My passenger and I had prepared to take off four times, including a static check the first time. Each time the wind died I unhooked while Cindy remained attached the glider. The last time we moved into position. I made sure she was hooked in, then I sat down next to her. We waited about five minutes, until the wind blew up the hill. We picked the glider up and I felt the tension of the harness, only it was the tension from her harness I felt, not mine. The take off run went great and airspeed picked up rapidly. By the time I realized something was wrong, Cindy was flying off a nine hundred foot hill on her first solo flight. As I watched in horror, she made a porpoising flight, a 180 degree turn, and then made a safe landing. She suffered a few scratches and the glider was undamaged.

I want to apologize to the people of Heavener, and everybody involved with the meet for almost leaving a horrible scar on the Nationals. I especially want to apologize to Cindy for taking her life into my hands and then committing such a careless error.

I used to say such a thing could never happen to me, but now I know it can happen to anybody. So everybody please be careful.

Name withheld by request
Doug Hildreth - 1990/03

The other significant increase is in failure to hook in. Typically there are about the same number of non-hook-ins in the questionnaire group, so that it is safe to say that there were at least ten failures to hook in this year. It has occurred in the tandem sector too, both pilot and passenger.
Our procedures and training programs are so excellent on THIS side of the border that the idea of a foot launch tandem passenger getting dropped a thousand feet to his or her death is scarcely imaginable. And even if that WERE to happen all of our people are MUCH too noble to pull the card out of the camera and swallow it.

So everybody come on down and fly with us. Don't worry about a thing - you'll be just fine.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Tad Eareckson »

Tad Eareckson - 2009/09/15 19:08

Nick Greece
editor@ushpa.aero

fthi article submission

Hi Nick,

I've submitted an article - fthi.pdf - for the magazine. It's a bit long, five versus three thousand words, but it addresses a deadly issue that we should have eliminated three decades ago and may be an important step in saving some ink down the road.

(The "hand glider" reference is deliberate.)

I'll await your comments.

Thanks,

Tad Eareckson
Formerly 32674
FTHI Revisited

Failure To Hook In

Ever since the day someone realized that a carabiner would be a quick and easy way to connect and disconnect a harness to a hang glider we have had the potential to send glider and pilot off of cliffs on quite different paths. For over a third of a century we have very effectively exploited this potential with the results being that the pilot's path almost always ensures that he finishes second best.

Leg Loops

In order to have a good shot at landing with and in control of one's glider, it's a good idea to have at least one leg through a loop.

Leg loops, relative to the connection itself, are a good news / bad news issue.

The good news... A pilot who misses the leg loops often still has his arm pits going for him and is often able to kick into the harness boot, prone out, and proceed in normal enough fashion.

The bad news... A pilot who gets spit out of the harness immediately leaves his parachute - which may otherwise open above him if he has enough air below him or serve as chest padding if he doesn't - behind.


Partial Hook-In

The phenomenon of a carabiner with its nose resting on the middle of the suspension webbing with its partially closed spring loaded gate holding things together is rare but potentially more deadly than that of one left dangling. The former can escape detection during a cursory check and can allow one to get well clear of launch before there is an abrupt indication of a problem, whereas the latter may still give the pilot an opportunity to abort.

The First Great Disaster -
Assume You're Hooked In On Launch

In the Beginning there was the Assumption. The strategy was to set and suit up and run off the cliff with total confidence in one's reliability in flawlessly executing tasks, following procedure sequences, and blocking out distractions. It worked so well that it remains a common practice to this very day.


The Second Great Disaster -
Hang From Your Suspension Then Assume You're Hooked In On Launch

The next well intentioned but deadly strategy devised to deal with the issue was the hang check. Prior to each flight the harnessed and connected pilot, almost always with the aid of an assistant at the front holding the nose down or at the rear holding the keel up, suspends his full weight in the harness. This ensures that, AT THE TIME OF ITS PERFORMANCE, the pilot is connected to SOMETHING which will - assuming he's hit his leg loops - at least temporarily support him at up to 1 G of acceleration.

The hang check is, of course, necessary for verification of basetube clearance on a new glider/harness combination - ONCE - but some of the more astute early observers soon noted that it was somewhere between fairly and worse than useless as a strategy to keep oneself alive. They realized that it entailed an inherent delay and thus a reliance upon a human's notoriously fallible memory of an action. A lemming has an infinitely better instinct for self preservation than does a hang glider pilot on the verge of stepping off a cliff with a MEMORY having done a hang check fifteen seconds prior.

The Solution (Mostly) -
NEVER ASSUME YOU'RE HOOKED IN ON LAUNCH

By at least the late Seventies the independent thinkers had figured out how to completely eliminate the delay and confirm the existence of some sort of connection and leg loops engagement all with the same stone. All that was required was that AT THE INSTANT of one's decision to launch, one lifted the glider until it stopped rising and felt the tugs on the leg loops which were the elements which limited the connected glider's upward travel.

Interestingly, this resistance check is done by EVERYBODY anyway. It's just that it is done by the vast majority of people just after they leave the ramp, rather than immediately prior to the rest of the launch sequence.

Problem almost completely solved. There remained a level of vulnerability with respect to partial hook-in and other areas of creativity and sloppiness but it drove a stake through the heart of the overwhelmingly more dangerous killer of simply being mistaken about one's on/off status - the garden variety failure to hook in accident. People who incorporated this practice immediately vanished from the annual tragedy summaries. It was such a blindingly obvious and stunningly effective solution that it only took USHGA several years and the odd needless death here and there to incorporate it - or a reasonable facsimile - into all of its pilot rating requirements.


The Fumbles

But as much as hang glider pilots profess devotion to the K.I.S.S. principle, they universally ADORE complexity. Can't get enough of it in their kites, harnesses, instruments on the plus side and, on the minus, required actions in critical phases of their flavor of aviation - preflight, launch, release, landing.

So when USHGA made the relevant changes to the Pilot Proficiency System and announced them, articulated the intent, and suggested four options for compliant procedures in the 1981/05 edition of Hang Gliding magazine it made a few catastrophic mistakes.

The stated goal was that the practice MUST be made subconscious but the suggested methods ALL included complexities which made this difficult or impossible to achieve. They at least were a move in the right direction, starting and ending with the pilot on his feet. But the objective was to remedy the big killer of one falsely believing himself to be connected at launch and the effectiveness of these checks was watered down by gearing them for the job of preflight inspection.

THREE of the methods end with the glider still parked on the ramp and still in need of lifting and trimming.

ALL of the methods require turning and looking.

Another deadly mistake USHGA made was the actual wording of the revised requirement.

"With each flight, demonstrates method of establishing that pilot is hooked in just prior to launch."

"Yeah, I've ALWAYS done - and taught - that. I ALWAYS do a hang check just prior to launch. I do it just off the back of the ramp, wait for the glider in front of me to launch, pick up, move to launch position, park while I catch my breath and brief the crew, pick up again, trim, wait for a good cycle, get a couple of neutrals from my wires, check traffic, and shove off. What could possibly go wrong with that approach!"

And, of course if that interpretation of "just prior" is valid, what could be the possible harm in extending it to two or three or six gliders back in line? Might as well make some use of the time being eaten up by the usual chronic potatoes.

"With all flights, after gaining footing at launch position and within three seconds of launch, the pilot must tension his suspension to the point at which resistance is felt at the leg loops."

Perhaps something like that would be an effective antidote to our self destructive creativity.

The Third Great Disaster -
Enter Your Harness ONLY When It Is Secured To Your Glider Then Assume You're Hooked In On Launch

And then in the mid Eighties the Aussie Method reared its ugly head and was released on the rest of the planet as revenge for rabbits and cane toads. As it is nowhere properly defined or encoded into regulations - including those of the national organization of its home country - all that can be said with some degree of certainty is that it requires that the harness be secured to the glider before the pilot suits up in it, the concept being that if the pilot is in his harness he is, by definition, safely secured to the glider (and, of course, has hit his leg loops).

Upon first hearing of it many pilots, yours truly amongst them, vowed to never even consider using it, as getting into the harness was enough of a royal pain in the ass as it was. Time went by and few of us eventually gave it a shot and were amazed to find that it was actually a lot EASIER to get in with it partially raised and supported by the glider.

And it was a great way to preflight the glider/harness combination and connection - pretty much takes the partial hook-in issue right out of the equation.

And its popularity spread.

So what's wrong with the Aussie Method?

There are many very legitimate reasons for not using it, some related to convenience, others to safety. And any time you have a significant conflict between convenience and procedure or safety tradeoffs you've got serious built in problems.

Schools running large classes have large incentives for having a student suited up and adjusted in a harness for the duration of the class. Time is money for all parties involved and typically everyone wants to get in as many flights as possible without adding extra demands to an already physically taxing session. Fatigue is not without its safety downsides.

Speaking as a former dune goon I would be sorely tempted to give a Dennis Hopper salute to anyone who insisted that I unsuit between each of a series of fifteen four or five pass flights.

To properly adhere to the Aussie Method a practitioner must exit the harness to deal with any problem - such as a misrouted suspension line or a basetube clearance problem that might be remedied with a wrap of the hang strap or a clip into the next rung of a ladder suspension - that cannot be handled while connected. This approach discounts the factor that the more times a person has to perform a complex task, the more opportunities he has to screw it up. Twice as many suit-ups, twice as many opportunities to miss the leg loops.

(One wonders if there is an analogous Aussie glider setup and preflight procedure. To be morally consistent the discovery of the absence of a safety ring securing the speed nut on a downtube/basetube junction bolt at the end of the preflight inspection should necessitate the glider being broken down and bagged so that the whole process can be repeated from Square One - properly this time.)

Being connected to an intact glider almost always increases one's odds of survival aloft but, on the average, decreases them on the ground. There have been people on ramps who would have given the farm to be detached from the glider at a particular moment. There can be situations in which the safety margin for all involved, pilot and crew, goes up if the glider and suited up pilot arrive at the ramp separately and the exposure time is minimized.

But the biggie here is that the strategy of the Aussie approach is to maintain the discipline to the point that at the edge of the cliff the harnessed pilot can ASSUME and has his brain hard wired to believe he is secured to the glider under which he is standing because there are simply no other conceivable explanations for that set of conditions.

One of the problems with this is that it's a communist sort of approach. It operates on the principle that people are responsible, disciplined, focused, and noble - the way we lazy, lying, airheaded scumbags like to believe and portray ourselves to be. If we're given enough of an incentive to cheat, we will.

No True Aussier will EVER launch unhooked. If a proponent does then he obviously wasn't a True Aussier. Kinda like that riddled corpse over there with the Sacred Shirt obviously wasn't a True Believer because if he had been the bullets of the Infidels wouldn't have penetrated it.

And, of course, the Aussie Corollary is that one must NEVER perform a hook-in check "just prior to launch" as this is a sure sign of weakness and doubt and will reveal him to be an Infidel and thus deserving of immediate death by stoning.


The Gun Is ALWAYS Loaded

The hang check and Aussie Method are PREFLIGHT PROCEDURES.

The hang check is a mostly worse than useless preflight procedure because it rarely tells the pilot anything more and often less than a walk through will and imbues him with a false sense of security.

The Aussie Method is a very good - but critically limited - setup and preflight procedure.

Both of these approaches are EXTREMELY dangerous when misused as confirmation that a pilot standing on the edge of a cliff is connected to his glider because both rely on memory and assumptions.

Unloaded guns and loaded gliders kill people all the time because the status of both is based upon memory and assumptions.

Launching a glider off of anything from a cliff to a dry lake bed and lots of stuff in between can get your life suddenly permanently altered or ended if your glider isn't securely loaded with you as effectively as the gun that is presumed not to be loaded with a round.

Stepping off the cliff with the glider is totally analogous to pointing a fully functional and recently loaded and unsafetied nine millimeter at the side of your head and pulling the trigger. It's dangerous no matter what. So you do everything you can to make it as safe as possible. You clear the chamber, dump everything out of the clip, secure the rounds separately, and make sure the safeties are on and functioning. But IMMEDIATELY before you put the muzzle to your temple you aim it at the ground and pull the trigger - just to make sure. An extra step with a negligible cost.

If you delay two seconds before going back to the temple you again aim at the ground and squeeze.

You Are NEVER Hooked In

The less confidence in your connection status at any given instant prior to moving a foot you have the less will be the likelihood that you will be dangling from the basetube a few seconds later.

You launch with the assumption that you are not hooked in but with the knowledge that you've done everything possible to undermine the validity of that assumption.


Friends

Friends don't let friends violate critical safety procedures.

Anyone who's got some stupid reason for eschewing the final check or tells you that the trigger pull at the back of the ramp thirty seconds ago was good enough is not your friend.

If you see someone squeeze the trigger with the gun at his head without trying to kill an earthworm within the previous couple of seconds and do and say nothing, you are not his friend.

If you didn't learn this procedure in your firearms safety course then your instructor is not your friend and needs to have his license suspended or revoked.

A person who sees someone pointing a big gun at another person's head in addition to his own without doing the two second squeeze test and takes no action to have the permit suspended immediately is the friend of neither.

Memories Of Events And Assumptions Versus Motor Skills

Decisions based on memories of events and assumptions are very prone to error. Many pilots realize they hadn't actually strapped down their gliders only when they accelerate past 55 miles per hour. That's why it's a real good idea to raise a windshield wiper any time an unsecured glider is resting on the racks - even for "just a moment" while...

Using a hang check and/or the Aussie Method as confirmation of being connected at launch relies on a memory of an event and/or an assumption - and we've seen the results. The no frills lift-and-tuggers learn a hard wired motor skill that becomes an unforgettable component of their launch sequence. Their brains are physically altered. They are no more likely to omit the check than they are to forget to stuff the bar and get to the low side when the bottom drops out or stomp on the clutch pedal when the light turns green. These kinds of actions and reactions are automatic and require neither discipline, focus, nor anyone to think about them or remember how to respond.


Towing

Foot launch towing from flat ground is a lot more dangerous with respect to FTHI incidents than is generally believed.

The pilot hooks onto the tow line and clearly remembers hooking something (quite possible even a carabiner) into something.

There's always more gear around to complicate things and distract.

People tend to have a reflexive response to hold onto the glider when they sense a problem and often find themselves well above a good option level for letting go once they realize that's what they should have done in the first place.

And sometimes people are held by bridle tension in a reasonable approximation of normal position and don't realize they HAVE a problem until after they've topped out and released.

Platforms and dollies make FTHI incidents virtual impossibilities and solve a lot of other launch problems to boot. Use them if at all possible, if not don't fall into the trap of thinking that because the terrain in front of you bears no semblance to the Grand Canyon's North Rim that you can't get killed. Nobody touches the gas until a double lift and tug - the universal ready signal - is executed and observed.

Equal Opportunity

Yeah, I know, smaller folk tend not to match control frame geometry as ideally as larger ones and may have undue difficulty lifting and tugging.

The proper approach would be narrow shoulders option gliders - shorten the basetube, extend the side wires. But failing that...

A bit of breeze will float the glider up, regardless of your size, and do the job for you.

A wire crew can take the place of the breeze.

People have impairments of vision and hearing which may cut their safety margins a bit behind the wheel but we make adjustments and allowances. A pilot can tilt her head back and confirm the presence of a carabiner in the right place by a tap with the helmet or turn her head to see it. She can squat or do a walk through to confirm connection. But the goal is to minimize the delay, effort, and complexity of the check and establish it as a motor skill that is incorporated into the sequence of every launch.

But that action cannot and must not be a hang check.


Chicks And Dudes

I've been watching FTHI incident reports for most of the history of hang gliding and I just can't ever seem to find incidents of chicks being involved in them EXCEPT in cases in which they were untrained tandem passengers AND it was the responsibility of dudes to handle the connections.

Some small portion of this discrepancy can be explained by their much lower proportional representation in the sport.

The rest probably has something to do with some sort of corrosive effect testosterone has on neural pathways.

Lucky break 'cause the folk least likely to be able to do the lift and tug check also seem to be the ones for whom it is least needed.

Experienced Crews

There doesn't seen to be much advantage to having large numbers of talented pilots on crew and/or around launch. High concentrations of sky gods tend to dim the vigilance of and foster complacency within groups. The individuals comprising them fall into the trap of assuming that, with all that expertise around, if anything were seriously wrong somebody else would surely have picked up on it by now.


The Buddy System

The one to one buddy system works great for scuba diving because it's an easy matter for two participants to go over the side at precisely the same instant, stay close for the duration, and physically assist each other should problems arise in their fluid medium.

Hang gliding is just the opposite. Forget about it. From the moment the glider starts moving forward, and occasionally well before, until it is brought or comes to rest, and often long after, it is on its own.

The buddy system can and, occasionally, does work in hang gliding but only very effectively if at least one of the people at launch is somewhat competent and feels some degree of responsibility for the glider moving into position.

After the glider commits buddies generally are of little or no use beyond dialing 911.

No one has ever launched unhooked in the presence of a competent crewman.

Negative Reinforcement

The hang check and Aussie Method are both very dangerous when accepted as clearance to launch.

The hang check is dangerous because it fails to work on frequent occasions. It kills more people than it saves because it confirms that they're hooked in at a time at which it doesn't matter. People tend to be really good at remembering doing the hang check but much less proficient at recalling unhooking shortly thereafter to deal with a radio or camera issue. Even the hang check performed the previous weekend tends to leave the brain signal stuck on green.

The Aussie Method is dangerous because it works really well ALMOST all of the time. It works so well that people can see no value in the lift and tug check whatsoever. (There's no freakin' way that gun could POSSIBLY be loaded at this point! I checked the hell out of it thirty seconds ago. Just to show you how confident I am I'm gonna point it at my head and pull the trigger.)

We pick up the wrong messages from the success stories and discount and/or are completely unable to see the failures.


Gadgets

Much as I love gadgets and respect and admire the gadgeteers who selflessly devote untold time and resources to their development, they tend to introduce problems and dangers of their own. Example: If the absence of an alarm tone is an indication of a dead or missing battery rather than of a completed circuit, a pilot who has come to think of silence as being a green light will be in more danger than the folk without the wires.

Cut out the middleman. Do the check yourself.

The human brain is an electronic device which is easily hard wired for very reliable operation with respect to this issue. And it's got a great dead man switch - if there are no electrons moving the glider doesn't get picked up and moved to launch position.

Vaporware

Inevitably in the aftermath of one of our regularly scheduled plummets someone who has neither come to an understanding of the words "just prior" nor ever set up, ground handled, launched, landed, or tied or broken down in any significant wind will suggest that hang gliders be designed such that they are unmistakably unairworthy until/unless the harness is fully engaged.

Sometimes there are actually very good reasons for hang gliding not evolving down particular evolutionary paths. Those just alluded to barely scratch the surface.


Junk

Backup suspension, locking carabiners, and "safety" links connecting the parachute bridle to the harness suspension (in case the carabiner breaks) are all junk which solve nonexistent problems and add to the complexity and danger of the flying system and procedures and reflect poorly on the competence and intelligence of the pilot. Get rid of them.

Don'ts And Dos

Do not EVER amend/adulterate a final hook-in verification with checks for anything other than on/off connection status. If you suspect you may have missed a critical issue - such as fully engaging the hang strap with the carabiner - drop back into setup/preflight mode for the five seconds it takes to remedy the situation. Then gear back up into bare bones hook-in check / launch mode and go flying.

Do not EVER ask someone if he's HAD a hang check. A person can answer yes mistakenly because he believes he has or correctly because he actually has. His answer will tell you nothing about his connection status or his likelihood of still being alive five minutes after the exchange.

Do not EVER ask someone if he NEEDS a hang check. No one ever NEEDS a hang check. The clearance probably hasn't changed since last time and nobody ever died as a result of a twisted or misrouted suspension element. Use the amount of breath you'll save to ask him if he's checked his side wires. A failure in that department IS very likely to kill him. If you want to help, take a real good look at his suspension.

In the unlikely event you notice his connection status is not what it should be DO NOT say anything a about a HANG CHECK. Stand in front of him on the ramp and ask him to lift the glider as high as he can. This will scare the hell out of him and help teach him the proper diagnostic procedure.

Do not just lift and tug prior to your own launches. Make sure all of your fellow pilots lift and tug prior to your THEIR launches.

We all agree that a pilot who launched unhooked on a low shallow training hill was, for the purposes of the exercise, killed. Extend that approach to the pilot who launches on the shallow training hill - or anywhere else - without lifting and tugging immediately prior to moving a foot.

Do not EVER at any time announce to yourself, your crew, or the rocks below that you are "HOOKED IN!" 1) You're not - the gun is always loaded. 2) It causes the personnel in the immediate vicinity to drop their guard. 3) The rocks always take it as a challenge.

If you want to focus people's attention in a manner that will work to enhance your possibilities of staying alive shout "UNHOOKED!" You'll be amazed at how many pairs of eyes will be riveted on your suspension at the critical moment.

Do not EVER engage in discussions, write articles, or organize clinics on how to deal with failure to hook in situations. Five seconds worth of education about performing hook-in checks just prior to launch will always dwarf several hundred hours of teaching people how to hold onto the basetube with one hand while throwing the chute with the other.


Philosophies Of Life

Hang checkers and Aussie Methodists have conviction, discipline, and faith. They all have their acts together to the point that by the time they've completed their preflight procedures and checks and get up on the ramp they are confident that they are properly and safely secured to their gliders - and are almost always right.

Lift and tuggers are careless, soulless atheists who believe in nothing which they're not seeing with their own eyes at any particular instant and are deeply suspicious of that. They are quite sure at all times that - despite whatever care they may or may not have exercised prior to launch - they are NEVER hooked in except MAYBE when they're actually feeling leg loops tension - and are almost always wrong.

If a lift and tugger is wrong, he's wasted all the effort that may have gone into lifting his glider several inches.

If a hang checker or Aussie Methodist is wrong he'll immediately be getting a feel for just how steeply his glider dives while he's hanging from the basetube and thinking about his options.

Distractions

Everybody recognizes that new sites, new toys, competition pressures, interesting conversations, unnerving gusts, Turkey Vultures going up like rockets, friends in need of assistance, and unavoidable disruptions of routine procedures can be deadly distractions. But also...

You're WAY better off launching stoned out of your mind and half drunk in fifteen gusting to thirty with:

- a dry Camelbak;
- a camera pointed straight up at the undersurface;
- a dead vario;
- a radio locked onto the pizza delivery frequency with the volume turned way up;
- the primary suspension a foot too long and twisted and the backup webbing fluttering in the breeze;
- all of your safety rings missing;
- half a dozen untensioned battens;
- a slightly bowed downtube;
- flat tires;
- an unbuckled helmet sitting on the passenger's seat along with the tip fairings;
- the parachute pins out and an active Deer Mouse nest in the container;
- the VG full on;
- the starboard outboard luff line hooked under a batten tip;
- an aluminum carabiner unlocked and backwards;
- a moderate left turn in the glider;
- AND an unzipped and unbuckled harness with suspension webbing twisted, support lines misrouted, a leg loop missed, and a medium sized Timber Rattler in the boot

than you are with everything just hunky-dory and your carabiner dangling behind your knees. With all those downsides someone who's never been anywhere near a hand glider before is still in much better shape than a Hang Five accelerating towards the rocks at 32 feet per second squared.

Once on the ramp DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF. And pretty much everything other than your suspension status is small stuff. If you MUST skip checks prior to getting in the air skip all you want EXCEPT lift and tug.

Launch position is the place at which distractions are most lethal and PREFLIGHT check issues at this point are DISTRACTIONS. The cost benefit ratio graph takes a sharp downturn at the edge of the ramp. Many people have gotten themselves killed worrying about issues which at worst would have been mere annoyances had they gone unremedied.

The best defense against distractions is to minimize the window in which they can wedge themselves in between final verification and launch - and a hang check will never fit that bill and the Aussie Methodists don't make the slightest effort.


Eggs Dispersal

If you can get an Aussie Methodist to break his routine you can kill him fairly easily because his routine is his confirmation that he's connected.

The hang checker is easily dispatched because the distraction/disruption which catalyzes his failure to hook in is quite likely to eliminate his verification as well.

A hook-in checker is a lot harder to take out with one grenade 'cause you've usually gotta hit him at both ends of the ramp.

Cause Of Death

Nobody - in the entire history of hang gliding - ever suffered so much as a scraped elbow because he ran off the ramp without being connected to his glider.

The sole reason that anyone is ever bruised, battered, or crushed while his glider goes on to make a separate and often uneventful landing is because neither he nor anyone in the vicinity of the ramp verified that he was connected immediately prior to his moving a foot.

Running off the ramp without being connected to the glider is just an infrequent but untreatable and often fatal SYMPTOM of an epidemic disease. The DISEASE is running off the ramp without verifying the connection immediately prior. Treat the DISEASE and the SYMPTOM vanishes.

At launch, one doctor in flock of twenty symptom treaters can prevent the next fatality.

One prepares to launch unhooked because he's human. One skips the check and launches - unhooked or solidly connected - because because he's incompetent, irresponsible, and/or negligent.

Somebody launches with his nose a couple of degrees too high - he's busted. People will be lined up halfway around the LZ waiting to tell him about it. The instant people start looking for the overwhelmingly more lethal problem with one or two percent of the zeal with which they scrutinize pitch attitudes...


The Record

While not impossible, it is difficult to to find incidents of hook-in checkers experiencing disturbing surprises. The odds seem to be so much in their favor that I know of no one ever suffering serious consequences.

Aussie Methodists who hit their leg loops have a reasonably good record but those who succumb to temptation and/or break their routines are majorly screwed.

Hang checkers drop like flies.

And one need not consider the Aussie Method versus hang check background of those who fall out of their harnesses for want of leg loops. Both techniques are equally shabby.

Never Again!
Robert V. Wills - 1976/12

1976/09/21
Al Mulazzi
Talcott Mountain
Avon, Connecticut
UP Dragonfly

Mulazzi, for some reason, failed to hook in his harness when launching and was unable to pull himself up into the control bar because he already had a broken arm. He therefore fell to his death on rocks below.

Obvious pilot inadvertence. Mulazzi was not the first to suffer from this rather basic oversight, but we hope he is the last.

Full Circle

George Whitehill's article in Hang Gliding magazine announcing the rating requirements revision was titled "Just Doing a Hang Check is not Enough" and went on to explain why just doing a hang check is not enough.

For over a decade's span of his reign as Accident Review Committee Chairman, between 1981/04 and 1991/11 Doug Hildreth, operating under the delusion that the flight schools were actually making the slightest effort to implement national policy, made plea after plea to the stone deaf hang gliding community to adhere to USHGA's requirements and lift and tug immediately prior to launch, but the crushed bodies continued stacking up at the usual slow but steady rate.

By the 1994/01 issue Dennis Pagen is writing of his little tumble down the hill and suggesting that people adopt "Pat Denevan's" method of supplementing the sacred hang check with a lift and tug just prior to launch.

By a broken pelvis reported by one of Doug's successors in the 2007/05 issue we have "Lesson learned: HANG CHECK, HANG CHECK, HANG CHECK!"

IT NEVER EVEN HAPPENED! Twenty-six years to the month of the announced Pilot Proficiency System revision and nobody's even heard of our most fundamental safety requirement. So much for self regulation.

Doug was a great Accident Review Committee Chairman but he was never gonna be a match for a huge flock of instructional infrastructure that was gonna go on doing whatever the hell it felt like without ever having to answer to anyone.

Now, after nearly thirty years since the rating requirement revisions the suggestion that they be implemented is typically met with total indifference or, most often, open and intense hostility.

Implementation

Obviously, no amount of logic, reason, or discussion ever has or ever will put the slightest dent in this problem. So what will work?

Whenever I hear of a pilot's flying career being abruptly terminated after launching with his carabiner dangling I know that he didn't do a lift and tug check immediately prior to launch.

The reason he didn't do a lift and tug check immediately prior to that launch is because he never in his shortened life did a lift and tug check immediately prior to any launch.

The reason he never in his shortened life did a lift and tug check immediately prior to any launch was because his instructors signed him off on all of his ratings and let him skip the really vital stuff.

An Instructor who tells a student that a hang check at the back of the ramp is verification that he is connected to the glider should not be a USHPA Instructor.

An Observer who observes a pilot launching without verifying his connection just prior to launch should not be a USHPA Observer.

An instance of a pilot launching without verifying his connection just prior to launch must be regarded as the dangerous violation of protocol it is by anyone aware of it.

A pilot who foot launches without verifying his connection after arriving and standing at launch position within a couple of seconds of launching is not demonstrating the knowledge, skills, experience level, judgment, and level of maturity commensurate with his rating, is not following the most critical safety rule applicable to his flying, and is jeopardizing himself and the site.

That pilot should have his rating suspended and every Instructor and Observer whose signature ever appeared on that pilot's ticket should have to explain how it got there.

And, just to make it interesting, the controllers and owners of public (national, state, and county parks, forests, and lands) and private launch sites should be advised that pilots holding ratings required for flying privileges are probably holding them as a result of having slipped through huge dangerous cracks.

After over three decades worth of doing the same things over and over has produced the same results it may be time to try something different.


Tad Eareckson
Subj: FTHI
Date: 2009/10/13 16:03:35
From: nick.greece@ushpa.aero
To--: TadErcksn@aol.com

Hi there,

Sorry it has taken me a bit to reply. Your ideas are being considered at the committee chair level. I sent your article to Joe Gregor, the safety chair, for comment and he will get back to you shortly.

Thanks and let me know if you have any questions!

Nick
And nothing was ever heard from the fine people at the national organization again.
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Tad Eareckson
Posts: 9161
Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC

Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=25963
Woman killed in B.C. hang gliding fall.
Fred Wilson - 2012/05/06 07:17:10 UTC
Vernon, British Columbia

For those who missed the CTV News Broadcast and video of the memorial service held saturday at Mount Woodside, it can be found here:

http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120505/bc_hang_glider_memorial_120505/20120505/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome

I was touched by how respectful it was.

That delivered a measure of catharsis to me and because of their memorial service I now feel that for the first time that I too can begin the process of moving on from this tragedy.
Yeah Fred, that's something that glider jockeys have always been really good at - moving on from tragedies. And they just keep getting better and better all the time.
I am sure many other distant pilots feel the same way.
Damn near all of them. No-brainer.
I thank the West Coast Soaring Club:

http://www.westcoastsoaringclub.com

one and all for that.

They have shown the world the true perspective of who we are as a people.
Between the plummet, the card swallowing, and response from HPAC about just how stunned they were at the news of an unhooked launch fatality, I think the world got a totally excellent perspective of who we are as a people.
To the WCSC, thank you again for that.
Let me second that. I couldn't possibly thank you enough. And I'm positive that that cathartic service will do wonders for Lenami's friends and family to help them with the process of moving on from this tragedy.

P.S. How's the forecast shaping up for next weekend?
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Tad Eareckson
Posts: 9161
Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC

Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27567
Canadian fatality: What kind of guy swallows a memory card!?
Christian Williams - 2012/05/06 23:46:44 UTC

You guys are nuts. Linerider flew a tandem with the guy who killed the girl. They crashed on takeoff. He's not allowed to post here? He has to get the Internet protocols right or he's a spammer and an asshole? Hang gliding oversight is perfect and nobody from the outside can criticize it?

Give me a break. Never heard such pompous defensive BS in my life, fellow deserves an apology.
Hey Zack or somebody...
How 'bout we get Linerider a link to Kite Strings?
Zack C
Site Admin
Posts: 292
Joined: 2010/11/23 01:31:08 UTC

Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Zack C »

Very busy right now and haven't been keeping up...might be a few days before I get a chance to wade through the drama.
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Tad Eareckson
Posts: 9161
Joined: 2010/11/25 03:48:55 UTC

Re: You are NEVER hooked in.

Post by Tad Eareckson »

He's over on The Davis Show making all the right kinds of noises.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27567
Canadian fatality: What kind of guy swallows a memory card!?

Just a quick PM to let him know that he's not as alone as he might think he is.
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