Back to the daredevil vs non- daredevil in paragliding.
Rick you say that they are all daredevils and I say that some are but most are not.
Most people flying paragliders are people just like me who saw it being done and wanted to experience the human dream of flying. In my case I had already done some years of hang gliding but thought paragliding looked like another simple form of flight, slower and less cumbersome than hang gliding. So I signed up for a 2 day PG school that was highly recommended.
Most PG flyers wanted to fly the very human "dream" and were given one choice by the people they asked - paragliders. The inherent dangers in the design were either not mentioned at all or were down played. The latter is what my instructor did and she later died alone, on a mountainside above Santa Barbara.
Most PG flyers were not adrenaline junkies looking for new thrills when they were given the one choice, paragliders, in their inquiry, as a way to fly the dream. My least favorite HG flights were the ones where something happened to cause an adrenaline rush and I sought to learn how to avoid that in the future.
In my case, due to my knowledge of aircraft and flying, I realized on the first day of instruction what was wrong with this concept of human flight and I didn't stay for the second day of lessons. A lot of the people who start flying paragliders do not have this knowledge advantage when they learn to fly this very easy to fly device. I am convinced that more of the PG pilots will turn to HG as knowledge increases. Jim Fenison has started seeing this in the PNW.
One "eye opener" to me, on the PG training hill that day was when a PG pilot showed up later in the day, who the instructors all knew. They asked him where he had been and he said it looked like great conditions over the mountains so he went there and flew first. Those mountains had been showing very vigorous cumulus buildups all morning that I, a hang glider pilot, had been noticing. I didn't hear even one of the school instructors or any experienced PG pilot say to him that he shouldn't have been flying in those conditions.
We both agree that paragliding should be left to the daredevil "stuntmen" but we disagree that most PG flyers don't fall into that category. And there are a lot of PG pilots who choose to only fly the coastal breezes, to decrease (but not eliminate) the danger. But there are also a lot of others who aren't looking for adrenaline who fly inland sites and under thermal conditions who just don't know any better, because they don't understand the limitations of their flying device. Ask Bob Kuczewski about Horse Canyon back in his PG days.
I will agree that any PG pilot who has experienced multiple rescue parachute incidences and still flies a PG under similar conditions is an adrenaline junkie, thrill seeker, and will most likely die if his actions continue (law of averages).
I will keep saying it: USHPA has a responsibility to stop ignoring the "elephant in the room" and be honest with the public about the basic aerodynamic design limitations in soaring parachutes and how those limitations relate to safety under varying atmospheric conditions.
We definitely need a national organization dedicated to the very different hang glider design and the flying of those, as we know it today. A "one organization fits all free flight" just doesn't work well for the HG community.
See you & Sophie on the Owens next week,
Frank
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by magentabluesky » Fri Jul 13, 2018 1:06 pm 
