[magentabluesky]

Frank and Rick are going to be hold outs on their list of secret sites.

Back in the Standard Days, we flew four sites in one day.

We started out driving to Lake Elsinore in the morning, then went to Little Mountain, then Blue, and finally back home to Fairview Park.

The picture in my Avtar is the Eipper Standard at Fairview Park.

[Rick Masters]

Frank and Rick are going to be hold outs on their list of secret sites.

Like I said, I drove from the Owens down to San Diego for an interview. It was the Spring of 1983, I think. Stopped by Torrey and flew it once on the second glider the USHPA president Steve Hawxhurst loaned me. The first glider he loaned me had a dent in the leading edge I could lay my thumb in. I still remember the strange look when I got down on my knees and crawled all over the floor, checking the tubing. (Like: "Gee, we offer the guy a free horse and he's counting the teeth!")
    I may have saved some dumb, trusting, visiting pilot's life...
    But I wasn't thinking about him. I was thinking about me. The same way you should always be thinking about you.
    When it comes to hang gliders, I don't believe anybody about anything.
    I had just watched George Worthington die in September. http://ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=2833&sid=0d404d84ba95fe0fbc6d6c2fdd37808f
    With Joey Carmosino, I had tried to bring him back to life. Steve had scattered his ashes at Torrey.
    George always said he'd fly anything that somebody else had just flown.
    Then he flew the Wanderer when Mark Smith gave it to him.
    So, not good enough. Not anymore.

    Pork wire-launched me on a 209 Raven in an unfamiliar harness at a cliff I'd never flown. Big deal. I flew this way. I flew that way. Nowhere to go! I got real high and real bored and dropped back over Flight Realities and burned in to the parking lot.
    "Why'd you land way back there?" a pilot asked me.
    "That's how I land in rotors," I replied. "So, why don't you go up and fly the Owens Valley?"
    "No, way, man," he replied. "I might miss a good day here." A strange and pathetic creature indeed, to my eye.
    So I went home to fly. To the only place worth flying.
    There are at least 50 decent lauch sites in the Owens. Some are better than others. One is better than all of them.
    Yeah, I've flown a lot of sites. But in my opinion, it is better to master one spectacular site completely than to try to fly a whole bunch of different places. You accumulate more airtime that way. Gliding is about airtime, not runtime.
    Runtime is dangerous.

[Frank Colver]

It's funny, I flew many hours of RC soaring at the Fairview site but never launched a hang glider there, even though it was almost in my back yard. I always figured that a cop would show up as soon as I set up and I didn't want the hassle.

I need to work on my list. I only flew a few of the high mountain sites, like Rick I liked mastering a few good sites and I didn't want to travel far. It will take some thinking to remember the smaller hills I flew from.

BTW - Little Norco is still there just like it was. I think it is part of a Riverside nature preserve. I would love to see a few local individuals join together to start working on the city to open it again to hang gliding. It was a good training site and we sure need those, now that most of the early day training sites are gone.

Frank

[magentabluesky]

The Costa Mesa Police did show up at Fairview. The first two times they just wanted to watch. The Costa Mesa Police Helicopter top landed, shut completely down. We thought surely we were busted, but to our surprise they said they were pilots and love aviation and just wanted to watch us fly.

About late 1976 early 77 the police showed up and said it was state property and the state was worried about liability so we could not fly there anymore.

The good old days.

[magentabluesky]

This was a Bob and Chris Wills Training Hill next to LaPaz Road in Laguna Hills (cross street now Gallup Cir)

[Frank Colver]

Before they flew there I had flown RC gliders there but I never went back there to fly after I started HG.

FC