USHGA Paragliding Vol12/Iss4 April 2001 by US Hang Gliding & Paragliding Association

PARAGLIDING• APRIL 2001

CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS

CALENDAR OF EVENTS

U~DATE

PARAGLIDING INTERVIEWS: STEVE MAYER by Lori Schwilling, photos by Beth Lockhart

STOLEN WINGS

NEVER SAY DIE (NSD) FREESTYLE HARNESS REVIEW by Kelly Kella1; photos by Steve Roti

SUJlVMNG A NEAR-FATAL ACCIDENT by Mallory Lynch, side-bar by Jim Little, MD COVER- Dixon White flying a Windtech Quarx (Brett Zaenglein, also in a Quarx, in the background) at Airplay in Washington State. Photo© 2001 by Phil Schofield See story on page 24.

APRIL

2001

2000 U.S. PARAGUDINiG ACCIDENT SUMMARY by Paul Klemond

D1SCI...All\1ER OF WARRANTIES IN PUBI.ICATIQNS: 1J1e,:mater::i.al p~esentcd here is publishl':cl ~ pan c1f an information dis-

se111inatioo service for USHGA members. The USfJGA makes no w,armntle~ or representations .'ind assumes nd U:i6ilily conctming the validity of any :idvic<:;, <>pinion ot r<.:cony:nendation expre~ecl in (.he 111:1:terial. All ini:foifduals

UNOFFICIAL STATE X-C DISTANCE RECORDS

by Steve Roti

Gil Dodgen, Managing Editor/Editor-in-Chief Steve Roti, Contributing Editor Dave Pounds, A1t Director Will Gadd, Dennis Pagen Staff Writers Jayne Depanfilis, CEO, jayne@ushga.org Jeff Elgart, Advertising, jeff@ushga.org Joanne Peterson, Member Services, joanne@ushga.org Sandra Hewitt, Member Services, sandra@ushga.org Natalie Hinsley, Member Services, natalie@ushga.org

ONLINE ACCIDENT/INCIDENT REPORT FORM

USHGA Committee: David Glover, President, david@davidglover.com Mark Ferguson, Vice President, mark@ballvarios.com Russ Locke, Secretary,russ/ocke@juno.com Bill Bolosky, Treasurer, bolosky@microsoft.com REGION 1: Mark Forbes. REGION 2: Jamie Shelden, Ray Leonard, Scott Casparian. REGION 3: David Jebb, John Greynald, Gregg Lawless. REGION 4: Mark Ferguson, Jim Zeiset. REGION 5: Frank Gillette. REGION 6: Jeff Sinason. REGION 7: Bill Bryden. REGION 8: Doug Sharpe. REGION 9: Randy Leggett, Geoff Mumford, Felipe Amunategui. REGION 10: David Glover, Matt Taber. REGION 11: Kent Robinson. REGION 12: Paul Voight. DIRECTORS AT LARGE: Jan Johnson, Dennis Pagen, Russ Locke, Steve l<roop, Aaron Swepston. HONORARY DIRECTORS: Geoff Mumford, J.C. Brown, John Borton, Paul Riker!, Ed Pitman, G.W. Meadows, Bob Hannah, John Harris, Larry Sanderson (SSA), Dave Broyles, Gene Matthews, Ken Brown, Rob Kells, Liz Sharp, Dan Johnson. EXOFFICIO DIRECTORS: Art Greenfield (NAA). The United States Hang Gliding Association Inc. is an air sports organization affiliated with the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) which is the official representative of the Feder;ition Aeronautique Internationale (FAI), of the world governing body for sport aviation. The NAA, which represents the U.S. at FA! meetings, has delegated to the USHGA supervision of FAl-related paragliding activities such as record attempts and competition sanctions.

PARAGLIDING magazine is published for paragliding sport enthusiasts to create further interest in the sport, and to provide an educational forum to advance paragliding methods and safety. Contributions are welcome. Anyone is invited to contribute articles, photos and illustrations concerning paragliding activities. If the material is to be returned, a stamped, self-addressed return envelope must be enclosed. Notification must be made of submission to other paragliding publications. PARAGLIDING magazine reserves the right to edit contributions where necessary. The Association and publication do not assume responsibility for the material or opinions of contributors. PARAGLIDING editorial offices: 31441 Santa Margarita Pkwy., Suite A-256, Rancho Santa Margarita, CA 92688, phone (949) 8887363, fax (949) 888-7464, e-mail: GilDodgen@aol.com. The USHGA is a member-controlled sport organization dedicated to the exploration and promotion of all facets of unpowered ultralight flight, and to the education, training and safety of its membership. Membership is open to anyone interested in this realm of flight. Dues for full membership are $59.00 per year (of which $15 goes to the publication of Paragliding), ($70 non-U.S.); subscription rates only are $35.00 ($46 non-U.S.). Changes of address should be sent six weeks in advance, including name, USHGA number, previous and new address, and a mailing label from a recent issue.

Dear Editor, The new and improved online accident/incident report form is now available on the USHGA website at http://www.ushga.org/ emailacc.asp. The form is easy to use. Just click on radio buttons and checkboxes and type information into the appropriate fields, then click on the submit button at the bottom of the form. Hang gliding reports are e-mailed directly to Bill Bryden, and paragliding reports are e-mailed to Pere Reagan and Jim Little. Jim came on board at the beginning of 2001 when Paul Klemond retired from paragliding accident analysis work. Please let the pilots in your Region know that the online accident/incident report form is on the USHGA website, and encourage them to use it whenever possible because it's quicker and easier than rhe paper form for the person filing the report as well as for the person reading the report. The easiest way to find the online accident/incident report form is to go to the USHGA home page and click on the button labeled "Forms." That takes you to the USHGA Forms page where the online accident/incident report form is listed under the heading "Safety and Tandem." Steve Rori Portland, OR

ACTIVE FLYING Dear Editor, The debate about active flying when

wings and things go bad in the air versus allowing rhe glider to self-recover doesn't seem near resolution. At the very least the views from respected pilots such as Chris Santacroce and Dixon White provide great food for thought. I have to say that I found it amusing that Dixon supported the active-flying argument with Rob Whittal's rule of thumb that it takes 500 hours before "developing a real integration" with the wing (Richard Thompson, "Two Cents Worth," December, 2000). I understand that Rob Whittal's proposed response for when things go really wrong is to throw your hands up, your head back, and yell, "I trust Robbie!" Anecdotes aside, we all agree with Mr. White: get the ground handling right and you'll be a better pilot in the air. Know the wing in light conditions before seeking the big air. But the message came across that, unless you're a professional pilot or can otherwise fly five days a week, stick to the sled rides. The right message has to be some combination of proper pilot input and letting the wing do what it's designed to do (fly). That's why I found it strikingly curious that Mr. Thompson's letter was followed up by a response from Dixon and nothing from Chris Santacroce. A perfect opportunity for another respected opinion missed. Was Chris given the opportunity and declined? If so, please ask again. Phil Smith Girdwood, Alaska

I'll ask Chris about this. - Ed

PARAGLIDING (ISSN 1089-1 tl46) is published monthly by the United States Hang Gliding Association, Inc., 219 W. Colorado Ave., Suite 104, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 (719) 632-8300. FAX (719) 632-6417. PERIODICAL POSTAGE is paid at Colorado Springs, CO and at additional mailing offices.

POSTMASTER: SEND CHANGE OF ADDRESS TO: PARAGLIDING, P.O. BOX 1330, Colorado Springs, CO 80901-1330.

APRIL

2001

VOLUME

12,

ISSUE

PARAGLIDING

PRICE

QTLTotal WeigbJ TOTAL

USHGA 2001 HANG GLIDING CALENDAR-We have a few left. *CLEARANCE* (reg. 10.95). 1/b $5.00

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ONS *THE ART OF PARAGLIDING by Dennis Pagen *NEW*. Covers ALL aspects. 274 pgs.. ..2/b *TOWING ALOFT by Dennis Pagen/Bill Bryden. Covers ALL aspects of towing. 372 pgs ... .... 3/b PARAGLIDING-THE COMPLETE GUIDE by Noel Whittall. Comprehensive, color. 200 pgs .. .... 2/b UNDERSTANDING THE SKY by D. Pagen. THE most complete book on micrometerology .... ... 2lb PARAGLIDING-A PILOT'S TRAINING MANUAL by M.Meier/Wills Wing. Covers all aspects .... 2/b ACCESS & THE GENERAL AVIATION AIRPORT ENVIRONMENT by B. Moorman. ..2/b A RISK MGMT MANUAL by M. Robertson. Includes Charts/Reliability. Become a better pilotl .. 1lb ....... 2oz FLIGHT LOG BOOK The Official USHGA flight log book. 40 pages. Log those flights! CERTIFICATION BOOKLETS Document your skill level sign-offs. Specify PG or HG. ..2oz

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EOS *BALI HIGH An exotic PG adventure on the island of Bali, Indonesia. (38 min).. ...... 1/b *WEATHER TO FLY Dixon White educates us on this very important subject. (50 min) .......... 1/b *TURNING POINT PG & HG Tame the elusive alpine thermal. Beautiful Euro footage.(24 min) 11b *STARTING PARAGLIDING Covers the basics of your first flights. (30min).. ...... 1/b MASTERS AT CLOUDBASE A paragliding music video, set to hard hitting music. (20 min) ....... 1/b FLY HARD Rob Whittal & C. Santacroce paraglide the westcoast. Rock soundtrack. (36 min) ... 1/b PG: THE MOVIE Owen's Valley world competition. Hot action, rockin' soundtrack. (40 min) ...... 1/b CLOUDBASE PARAGLIDING Great intro. video. Meet the hot pilots, fly the hot sites. (36 min) .1lb All our videos are in USNVHS NTSC format only.

WINDSOK™ 1.5 oz. ripstop nylon, 5'4" long w/11" throat. Pink/yellow or pink/white (circle one) .. 2lb $39.95 ZING WING Flying toy. Launch it skyward and watch is soar.. .................................. ... Boz $ 2.50 WINDSEEKER Hang glider flying model. It loops & soars. Lots of fun to fly, you'll want two ..... Boz $ 3.00 LICENSE PLATE FRAME Chrome plated. I'd Rather Be Paragliding. ..1lb $ 6.50 PAYMENT must be included with your order. NON-USA orders must be in U.S. FUNDS drawn on a U.S. BANK! SUBTOTAL WEIGHT (for shipping) _ _

SHIPPING (USA) Under 16oz 1 LB ....... ... 2 LBS ......... 3-4 LBS ...... 5-6 LBS ......

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SUBTOTAL

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Colorado residents add 3% tax $_ _ _ __ Shipping (see chart) $_ _ _ __

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Send to:

United States Hang Gliding Assn., PO Box 1330, Colorado Springs CO 80901-1330 (719) 632-8300 1-800-616-6888 www.ushga.org fax (719) 632-6417 email: ushga@ushga.org

SURE

CHECK OUT OUR AWESOME APPAREL AT WWW.USHGA.ORG

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Calendar of events items WILL NOT be listed if only tentative. Please include exact information (event, date, contact name and phone number). Items should be received no later than six weeks prior to the event. We request two months lead time for regional and national meets.

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http://www.cloudbase.org/ChelanComps and contact: Russ Gelfan, (206)367-8963, russlfboe@home.com.

COMPETITION

JULY 28-29: Ojai Comp. Duration event on the 28th, taking off from the Chief and landing in downtown Ojai. Race to goal with curnpoints on the 29th, also from the Chief, landing in Ojai. Contact: Claude at info@flyojai.com.

UNTIL NOV. 15: 2001 Region 9 Regionals and Region 9 Yearlong X-C Contest. The

FUN FLYING

Regionals totals three weekend flights in Region 9 from March 17-May 28. The Almost Yearlong Contest acknowledges a contestant's longest flight on any day between March 15 and November 15. Classes for Rookies, Sixty Miles, Open, Rigid and Paragliders. En tty fees $10 and $5 respectively. Contact: Pete Lehmann, lplehmann@aol.com. (412) 661-3474, 5811 Elgin Sc., Pittsburgh, PA 15206. JULY 3-8: 2001 U.S. Paragliding Nationals and Pre-PWC. Join the country's best pilots at the premier competition site in the U.S. Register and book accommodations as soon as possible, as enrries are limited to I 00, and Chelan is very busy on the Fourth of July weekend. Contact: josh_cohn@honnail.com, www.chelanpg.8k.com. JULY 5-10: 2001 Red Bull Wings Over Aspen, A,pen, CO The format for chis year's event has changed. The Paragliding Cross Country will be replaced with Paragliding Aerobatics. The competition will feature three disciplines: Paragliding Aerobatics, Hang Gliding Aerobatics and Hang Gliding Speed Run. 15 pilots in each discipline will compete for a $36,000 prize purse. For more information or if you are a top pilot and would like to compete contact: Ochar Lawrence at fly@redbullwings.com or visit wv,w. redbullwings.com. JULY 9-14: Chelan X-C C!C1Ssic. Since 1979, one of the nation's top events of the summer at Chelan, WA. Hang glider and paraglider pilots come from all over the world to fly this exciting choose-your-task competition straight-line, our-and-return or triangle. Check out

MAY 5-6: Umpteenth Annual Mi!!er Canyon F!y-ln, sponsored by the Southern Arizona Hang Gliding Assn. at the Miller Canyon flying site in the magnificent Huachuca Mountains near Sierra Vista, AZ. Fun contest, trophies and great camping. Add another T-shirt to your collection. Big desert thermals so mountain experience is required. HG and PG Nearby launches for all wind directions. Enny fee only $10. Contact: Morey Brown (520) 760-2884, MoreyOOO@aol.com. MAY 5-6: 15th Annut1l Stewart Smith Memorit1l Fly-In, Moore Mountain, NC (Perry Lowe Orchard). HG and PG. Enny $45. Duration, spot-landing and X-C competition, prizes, chicken dinner and worldfamous dart tournament. Contact: David Smith (828) 758-7590 or Chris Bowles (828) 632-6000. MAY 26-28: Stt1rthist!e AnnutZ! Fly-In, Woodrat Mm., southern Oregon. Fun flying, barbecue, tests of flying skills. Contact: www.RYHGA.org/Srarthisrle200 l .htm, President@RYHCA.org, (541) 482-5117.

CLINICS/MEETINGS/TOURS CHELAN BUTTE SUMMER 2001: Tandem X-C flights, private/group guiding, personalized X-C instruction. The eastern Washington flatlands have consistently provided pilots with their personal best X-C flights. Beginners to experts can benefit from Chelan's average of five X-C-able days per week in June/July/August. Conract: Mark Telep, Suns ports Paragiding, (541 )490-8197.

THROUGH APRIL: Airplay "beginner class" openings startingJanua1y 6 in Flagstaff, Arizona and weekly through April. Classes arc available daily, but we do restrict class sizes. Be sure to book early. Contact: di:xon@paraglide.com, (520) 526-4579. THROUGH MAY: SunSports Paragliding Clinics. APRIL 28-29: Them1al & X-C Clinic in Hood River, Oregon with Mark Telep (Washington State PG X-C record holder of 120 miles) and Rick Higgins (Oregon State PG X-C record holder of 83 miles) Contact: Rick Higgins, (541) 387-2112, or SunSportsPG@aol.com, or Mark Telep, (541) 386-2692, or thatspec@hormail.com. MAY 12-13: Saftty & Active Piloting Clinic in Hood River, Oregon. Contact info above. MAY 2627: Thermal & X-C Clinic in Hood River, Oregon. Contact info above. THROUGH OCT.: Two-crm Fly Paragliding Clinics/Competitions, Point of che Mountain and Utah mountain sites. APRIL 27-30: Instructor Training. MAY 5-6: Instructor Recertification. MAY 11-15: X-C training course with Todd Bibler, Bill Belcourt (held U.S. and North American X-C records), Dale Covington and Ken Hudonjorgensen (held Utah X-C records), and Mary Anne Karren (U.S. Team member). MAY 19-20: Tandem 1/ 6· /Jl. MAY 25-27: Thermal Clinic. JUNE 9-10: Mountain Flying Clinic. JULY 20-22: Thermal Clinic. AUG 10-12: Maneuvers Saftty Clinic, with Chris Santacroce. AUG 14-16: Maneuvers Saftty Clinic. AUG 17-19: Maneuvers Saftty Clinic. SEPT 1-8: Snowbird X-C Competition. SEPT 29-30: Mountain Flying. OCT 5-8: Instructor Training. OCT. 20-21: Instructor Recertification. OCT 27-28: Tandem fl 6· //1. Contact: Two-can Fly Paragliding, 474 East Tonya Drive, Sandy, UT 84070 (801) 572-3414 (ph/fax), khudonj<!7Juswest.net, www.twocanfly.com. APRIL 14-15: Paragliding safety clinic in Hood River, Oregon. Contact: Rick Higgins, rsunsporrs@aol.com, (541) 387-2112 for details. APRIL 20-22: Tandem 1 Course, Point of the Mountain, UT. Join Super Fly, Tandem Administrator Chris Santacroce, and T3 instructor Jeff Farrell for a three-day course

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PARAGLIDING

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designed to provide you with all the information and instruction you will need to obtain your Tandem I rating. Cost $350. APRIL 28-29: Tandem 2-3 Clinic, Point of the Mountain, UT. Cost $350. MAY 11-13: X-C Towing Clinic, Boulder, CO, by Parasoft Paragliding and Super Fly, Inc. P3 minimum, towing instruction, X-C techniques. Contact: Granger Bani<.,, parsoft@csd.net, (303) 4942820. MAY 18-20: Pilot Tune-up Weekend, Point of the Mountain, Utah, Join Super Fly, Inc., Chris Santacroce, Jeffrey Farrell and U.S. Team pilots for a weekend of perfecting your flying technique. Ground handling, ridge soaring, thermaling and beginning X.-C covered. Transportation provided. $300. MAY 24-28: Super Fly Demo Days, Point of the Mountain, UT. JUNE 22-24: Pilot Tune-up Weekend, Point of the Mountain, Utah. $300. JULY 13-15: Pilot Tune-up Weekend, Point of the Mountain, Utah. $300. JULY 25-AUG. 3: Europe Tour, Switzerland and France. SEPT. 20-30: Oludeniz, Turkey Tour. Maneuvers clinic and X-C clinic. For all of rhe above contact: Super Fly, Inc., (801) 255-9595, info@4superfly .corn.

Canada. Commences in Vancouver, and ends in Calgary. Fly !psuit, Mt. Currie, Blackcomb/Whistler, Black Tusk, The Chief, West Lion, Mt. Mackenzie, Mt. Cheam, Mt. Slesee, Grouse Mountain, Mt. Mercer, Mt. Elk, Bridal Falls, Woodside, Anarchist, Blue Grouse, Coopers, King Eddie, Mara Lcke, Mt. 7, Mt. Swansea. Contact: www.iparaglide.com. MAY 11-13: Parasoft Paragliding School Tow Cross-Country Clinic. Chris Santacroce and Granger Banks will again coach pilots through the easiest way to go X--C - the flatlands. Last year they coached David Taylor on 36-mile flight into Wyoming, a 31-mile improvement over his previous best. Each day they will call a 5-20 mile X-C task, and with three tow rigs and several chase vehicles the group will head off over the flatlands of northeast Colorado with abundant landing fields. X-C strategies will be taught by Granger and Chris each morning at a complimentary breakfast. Chris will have the latest Gin, Pirebird and Ozone gliders to demo. Details at http://parasofi:.boulder.net/X CClin ic.h tml. MAY 25-27: International Great Lakes

APRIL 28-29: Thermal/cross-country clinic in Hood River, Oregon. Contact: Rick Higgins, rsunsports@aol.com, (541) 387-2112 for details. APRIL 28-MAY 13: Fly Hard, central west U.S. 16-day "Fly Hard" adventure tour through California, Nevada and Utah. Commences in San Francisco, CA and ends in Salt Lake City, UT. Meet up with top U.S. aerobatic pilots Anne and Enleau O'Connor. Fly at the Dumps, Ed Levin, Herd Peak, Mt. Shasta, Desert Peak, Point of the Mountain, Olympus, Snowbird. MAY 19-JUNE 3: Fly Hard, northwestern U.S. 16-day "Fly Hard" adventure tour through Washington, Oregon and Idaho. Circuit tour commences and ends in Seatcle, WA. Fly Tiger Mountain, Dog Mountain, Silver Star, Snaggletooth, Dalles Mountain Ranch, Peterson's Butte, Ecola State Park, Oceanside, Cape Lookout, Hoover Ridge, Pine Mountain, Bachelor Mountain, Black Butte, Grizzly, Mt. Harrison, Water Canyon Flight Park, Cougar Ridge, King Mounrain, Big Southern Butte, Cliffside, Lake Chelan, Baker Lake. AUG. 18-SEPT. 2: Fly Hard, beautiful British Columbia. 16-day "Fly Hard" tour through British Columbia (BC)

APRIL 2001

Parachute Safety Seminar and Demo Days. Wills Wing hang glider demos for qualified acrotow pilots, with the Draachen Fliegen Soaring Club at Cloud 9 Field, Michigan. Includes Rob Kell's informative and practical parachute safety seminar for both PG and HG pilots, including practice deployment from a simulator and a repack. Parachute seminar fee is $30, pre-registration required. Call or e-mail Cloud 9 Sport Aviation for more information and registration: Cloud9sa@aol.com, (517) 223-8683. MAY 25-28: Memorial Day Demo Days. Demo gliders, harnesses, helmets, varios and more. Industry experts will give product talb and safety lectures. Pre-registration $45 with T-shirt by May 15, $45 without T-shirt at the event. This year we arc going to try for an "old-man's reunion," arc collecting vintage paraglider equipment, and hope to have many of the sport's founders. For more info or to register contact: Cloud 9 Soaring Center (80 I) 576-6460, info@paragliders.com, or mail registration to Cloud 9, 12665 S. Minuteman Dr. #1, Draper, CT 84020.

pack design with a rernoveable frame that transfers the weight to your hips. The suspension system frame can still be carried in almost every modern harness. II) I R '\I' BAG Protect your paraglider from damaging dirt and harmful UV damage. Our Dirt Bag is an innovative backpack that unzips on each corner to become a tarp.

TRUE COMFORT All of our paragliding packs have multiple suspension adjustment points to fine-tune the fit. Also included are comfortable padded foam shoulder straps and hip belts -- just like hiking and climbing packs.

INNOVATIVE We have analyzed each feature and every function to make sure the packs are practical without excessive "bells and whistles." True innovation is in the details. MATll!RBA.11.S Each Critter backpack is built to the highest standards with carefully selected materials including Cordura, large YKK zippers and military spec webbing. We take the extra time to tape and double stitch every seam for added durablity.

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2002 USHGA PARAGLIDING CALENDAR PHOTOS SOLICITED

"\Tes, rhe USHGA wi ll be producing a .l paragliding calendar for rhe year 2002 (we mean ir rhis rime!), and our esreemed Calendar Phoro Selecrion Comminee is ready, wirh lighr rabies and lupes in hand, ro see your besr shors: launching, landing, soaring, rhermaling high, saving low, parawairing and LZ hangi ng our - we wam ro see rhem all! Slides (transparencies, chromes, ere.) work besr fo r rhe highesr quality reproducrion possible. Imagine your wing bein g admired aro und rh e wo rld . If your beloved imagery is chosen, you will be rhe envy of your club and will h ave esrablished your masrery of rhe fine arr of paragliding phorography. THE DEADLINE IS MAY 3 1, so don'r wasre rime! Send ro: USHGA Calendar, Arm: Jeff Elgart, P.O. Box 1330, Colorado Springs, CO 80901. Your photography will be rreared wirh rhe urmosr of respecr and rerurned afrer rhe selecrion process. Quesrions? Call or e-mai l Jeff Elgarr ar (719) 632-8300 , jeff@ushga.org.

SUPER FLY UPDATE Genie 2 Harness in Gl iders and Super Fly, Inc. are pleased ro bring rhe Genie 2 harness ro Norrh America - sleek, aerodynamic, simple and comforrable - a harness rhar perfecrly reflecrs Gin design aesrherics. Wherher your flighr is a long crossco umry over rhe deserr or an early-morning fly-down from a snow-covered moumain, rhis harness will give you maximum pleasure wirh minim um fuss. The rescue conrainer is oprionally mounred under the seat or in from of rhe pilot. Supplied with dorsal and lateral protecrion , this is one of rhe mosr well-rhought-our and comfortable harnesses on rhe marker. Ir is available in sizes medium and large.

Gin Boomerang he new Gin Boomerang is here, fu lly revised for 200 1 and beyond. The new Boomerang feat ures smoorher and bener-

T 8

coordinared handling, improved glide ratio in uansirions, fasrer climb rare in weak thermals, easier launch , rapid and progressive reinflarion characrerisrics, higher resisrance ro deflarion, fasrer and smoorher accelerarion and higher maximum speed. The new Boomerang has received Afnor cerrificarion in rhe competition category.

Ozone Atom zone Gliders and Super Fly, Inc. are proud to debur the new DHV 1 glider, the bombproof Atom. Ir is a wing for pilots who require . . maximum secunry and much more. Tradjrionally, emry-level wings have been dull and lifeless, bur rhe Atom is far from rhis. Ozone has produced a wing rhar is really great fun ro fly yet as safe as you can get. The Arom is a wellrounded glider that can be used by a school for rraining or flown cross-coumry, depending on the aspirations of rhe pilot. Ir offers a combinarion of solidiry, long, progressive brake travel and grear coordination. Ir is Ozone's belief rhar handling is very important and we rhink rhis will ser rhe Arom aparr from all others. We have worked hard ro give this emry-level glider life and character, which make ir a joy to fl y.

Proton GT his is rhe new high-performance wing ro replace rhe very successful Proron. The main design goal was ro ereare a wing rhar performs well wirh berrer handling and a more solid feel, much like rhe Octane. We achieved rhe performance increase wirh a new parrially closed leading edge - 10 ceLls fully closed and 20 parrially closed. This has produced a berter sink rare and a small improvemenr in glide rhroughout the speed range. The shape has undergone a big

change; ir now has a similar shape ro rhe Ocrane bur wirh a higher aspect ratio. The handling is light, responsive and very coordinared. The final resulr is a wing that is safe and solid bur wirh lots of characrer. The Proron GT has jusr been certified DHV 2-3 with a rop speed of 56 km/hr. For more in form arion on any of rh ese new producrs conracr: Super Fly, (801) 255-9595, info@4superfl y.com, www.4s uperfly.com.

THIRD ALPINE "CHALLENGE VOL AND SKI"

or mosr pilors, winte r means purring rheir favorire roy in rhe closer un ti l rhe warmer season arrives. Nor so in Europe, where rhree years ago rhey decided to introduce a new fun competition called paraskjing. From mid-January ro mid-March the "Challenge Vol er Skj" rakes place, organized by Parapente, one of the leading paragliding magazines in France. T here is a competition ar a different skj resorr each weekend for a total of eight Saturdays and Sundays, six in rhe French Alps and rwo in Swirzerland . This new comperirion format is anracring more pilors and specrarors every year, and rhis year more than 120 comperirors showed up ar some of rhe events. Workjng wirh rhe skj resom an d local clubs, Parapente magazine has pu t together a well-organ ized circuit sp onsored by the FFVL (Federation Ftarn;:ajse de Vol Libre), Sup'fur (harnesses), Evian (water), Lazer (helmets), Renault (cars and rrucks) , Nova (paraglide rs), Dynasta r (skjs), Perzl (climbin g gear) and ma ny

P A R AG LIDING

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Experience the world-wide benchmark in performance and security with Swing paraglider s . The best selling Arcus, f eaturing two new color patterns fo r 2 001. can take you from t h e train ing h ill to advanced soaring wit h an unprecedented level of confidence. The brand-new Mistral 2 t akes perform ance to a new level ln a DHV 1-2 canopy, and offers a perfect mov e-up g lid er for experienced Arcus pilots . Swing Paragliders equal Performance, Quality, and Safety, without compromise .

It takes m o re than just a great wing t o complete your p aragliding experience. and we've got you covered there as well. The Magic 2000 Harness gives you safety and comfort at a great price. Add even more value to your harn ess w ith one o f ou r new light Annular Reserve parachutes o r step up to the renown ed quality of the Free Flight LARA series. For protection of your most important asset, the Charley Insider Helmet offers a superb c ombinat io n of cra ftsma nsh ip and price. Light w e ig h t comfort and stunning colors give y o u safety with style.

To help you navigate through a s k y of choices w e've a lso assembled the best combination of f lig h t instruments available . Wills Wing distributes the complete line of Brauniger Varios, offering a range of flight instruments from the simple elegance of the helmet mounted Sonic to the ful l featu red Comp GPS. A world lead er in flight instruments, Brauniger off ers d ependable quality and superb value. Wills Wing also offers two lines of wrist mounted instruments; the Suunto Vector, Altimax, and X l ander series o f wrist computers, and t h e Avocet Vertech Pilot wrist mounted altimeter I watch .

• Only Wills W ing can offer you the total paragliding experie n ce of world c lass products coupled with almost three decades of delivering the quality, service. and value. that pilots around the world have come to depend on .

G uellty A ircraft F or E x c e p ti on a l Peop le 500 West Blue r idge Ave. O r ange, CA 92865 PH: 714.998.6359 FAX : 714.998.0647 www.willswing.com

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local manufacturers and shops at each resort. Anyone can enter. The requirements are to know how to ski and paraglide (a P2 Beginner/Intermediate rating is adequate), and to belong to a club or paragliding organization. The entry fee is only about $40, and you get a goody bag (competition number, T-shirt, hat, coupons for the local stores, and an info map of the resort) and a two-day ski-lift pass for the entire area. The idea is to hit as many as six targets placed at various levels on the mountain while buzzing down the slopes. They are composed of either 10-foot circles painted on the snow or vertically planted, flexible slalom ski poles. Each hit gives the pilot points, and there are two runs per pilot per day. The same comp is repeated each weekend at a different ski resort. Trophy cups are awarded at the end of the day to the competitor with the most points, and various prizes are awarded to others - fleece, vario holders, GPS holders, Sup'Air harnesses and clothing, sleds, snow shovels, local cheeses (I ate my prize). There are two categories, one for the ladies and one for the men. At the end of the Challenge in March two pilots become number one for the season until next year. There are 24 photos of the Challenge Vol et Ski that can be seen on the Sup'Air USA website at www.supair-usa.com.

ered aviation available today," is the message of the latest video from Paul Hamilton and Adventure Productions. It was created to introduce ultralight flying fundamentals and how modern technologies and enhanced training techniques have made learning co fly easier than ever before. Starting Powered Paragliding, Freedom to Fly is educational, featuring the fundamentals of the sport, and entertaining, with stunning visuals and a great stereo soundtrack. It will answer all of your questions about learning to fly an ultralight powered paraglider. The video's inspiring imagery was filmed in New Mexico, Florida, Canada, France and Italy. "This program can also be used to present the positive aspects of ultralight flying, the basics, and show what to expect in a modern training program," says Paul Hamilton. "lt is a great tool for schools to use in recruiting more students and to incorporate into their lesson package. The video will help instructors save time and be more effective in the overall training process, and help students learn faster with all the basics presented." Many industry leaders participated in the production, including Eric Dufour of Paratour, Michelle Daniele of American - submitted by Philippe Renaudin Flyer, Don Reinhart of Personal Flight, Scott Alan of Paraborne, and Bill Walsh of NEW RELEASE - START- Powered Paragliding Sports. Each conING POWERED PARAGLIDING, tributed to the quality and depth of the FREEDOM FLY information provided. ealize your dream of flying with the The video is available for $36.95 plus $4 .I\.simplest and lightest form of powshipping (USA/ Canada/ Mexico, $10 shipping to all other countries), from Paul ~· Hamilton, Adventure FLIGHT DESIGN Productions, 6553 Stone Valley Drive, A7vt Good Shape, trade-in, purple $1,399. Reno NV 89523 A7vt Perfect Shape, demo, pup le $1,499. A7vt Brand New! Special! $2,449. USA. For more S3vt Demo. Looks like NEW! $1,399. information visit the S3vt BRAND NEW! $1,899. Adventure Sxvt Perfect demo. $2,299. Productions website at www.adventurep. New UVEX SALE--Only $215. com.

NEW GLIDERS FROM WINDTECH

he Coral has now passed DHV 1 accelerated in all three sizes. It is a glider that offers maximum security with the Windtech-renowned, direct, precise handling. Hook-in weights are: Small, 60-80 kg; Medium, 80-100 kg; Large, 90-115 kg. The Serak offers high performance, beautiful handling and speed in a DHV 1-2 wing (pending) that was only found before on higher-rated gliders. All sizes are pending certification at press time. The Tucan has a completely new profile, new planform and a complex diagonal V-rib design. It is a high-performance tandem with maximum safety, pitch stability for ease of handling, and high energy retention to help the pilot in any situation. It is DHV 1-2 with trimmers and 2: 1 purchase B-line handles that enable a safe, rapid descent rate for total security. The weight range is 140-220 kg. Contact: www.windtech.es .

PARAGLIDING

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RELEASE, WAIVER AND ASSUMPTION Of RISK AGREEMENT

In consideration of the benefits to be derived from membership in the USHGA, (Pilot; and the parent or legal guardian of Pilotif Pilotis a minor, for themselves, their personal representatives, heirs, executors, next of kin, spouses, minor children and assigns, do agree as follows: A. DEFINITIONS The following definitions apply to terms used in this Agreement I. "PARTICIPATION IN THE SPORT means launching (and/or assisting another in launching), flying (whether as pilot in command or otherwise) and/or landing (including, but not limited to, crashing) a hang glider or paraglider. 2. "SPORTS INJURIES' means personal injury, bodily injury, death, property damage and/or any other personal or financial injury sustained by Pilotas a result of Pilot's PARTICIPATION IN THE SPORTand/or as a result of the administration of any USHGA programs (for example: the Pilot Proficiency System). If Pilotis under 18 years of age, the term" SPORTS INJURIES"means personal injury, bodily injury, death, property damage and/or any other personal or financial injury sustained by Pilot as well as personal injury, bodily injury, death, property damage and/or any other personal or financial injury sustained by Pilot's parents or legal guardians, as a result of Pilot's PARTICIPATION IN THE SPORTand/or as a result of the administration of any USHGA programs. 3. "REI.EASED PARTIES' means the following, including their owners, officers, directors, agents, spouses, employees, officials (elected or otherwise), members, independent contractors, sub-contractors, lessors and lessees: a) The United States Hang Gliding Association, a California Non-profit Corporation (USHGA); b) Each of the person(s) sponsoring and/or participating in the administration of Pi/ot~proficiency rating(s); c) Each of the hang gliding and/or paragliding organizations which are chapters of the USHGA; d) The United States Of America and each of the city(ies), town(s), county(ies), State(s) and/or other political subdivisions or governmental agencies within whose jurisdictions Pi/otlaunches, flies and/or lands; e) Each of the property owners on or over whose property Pilotmay launch, fly and/or land; D All persons involved, in any manner, in the sports of hang gliding and/or paragliding at the site(s) where Pilot PARTICIPATES IN THE SPORT. "All persons involved" include, but are not limited to, spectators, hang glider and/or paraglider pilots, assistants, drivers, instructors, observers, and owners of hang gliding and/or paragliding equipment; and g) All other persons lawfully present at the site(s) during Pilot's PARTICIPATION IN THE SPORT. B. I FOREVER RELEASE AND DISCHARGE the REI.EASED PARTIESfrom any and all liabilities, claims, demands, or causes of action that I may hereafter have for SPORTS INJURIES, however caused, even if caused by the negligence (whether active or passive) of any of the REI.EASED PARTIES, to the fullest extent allowed by law. (. I WILL NOT SUE OR MAKE A CLAIM against any of the RELEASED PARTIESfor loss or damage on account of SPORTS INJURIES. If Iviolate this agreement by filing such a suit or making such a claim, Iwill pay all attorneys' fees and costs of the RELEASED PARTIES. D. I AGREE THAT this AGREEMENT shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of California. All disputes and matters whatsoever arising under, in connection with or incident to this Agreement shall be litigated, if at all, in and before a Court located in the State of California, U.S.A. to the exclusion of the Courts of any other State or Country. E. SEVERABUUTY. If any part, article, paragraph, sentence or clause of this Agreement is not enforceable, the affected provision shall be curtailed and limited only to the extent necessary to bring it within the requirements of the law, and the remainder of the Agreement shall continue in full force and effect. f. I REPRESENT THAT Pilot is at least 18 years of age, or, that I am the parent or legal guardian of Pilot and am making this agreement on behalf of myself and Pilot If I am the parent or legal guardian of Pilot, I AGREE TO INDEMNIFY AND REIMBURSE the RELEASED PARTIES for their defense and indemnity from any claim or liability in the event that Pilot suffers SPORTS INJURIES as a result of Pilot's PARTICIPATION IN THE SPORT, even if caused in whole or in part by the negligence (whether active or passive) of any of the RELEASED PARTIES. m

G. I VOLUNTARILY ASSUME All RISKS, KNOWN AND UNKNOWN, OF SPORTS INJURIES, HOWEVER CAUSED, EVEN IF CAUSED IN WHOLE OR IN PART BY THE ACTION, INACTION, OR NEGLIGENCE Of THE RELEASED PARTIES, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT ALLOWED BY LAW. I have read, understand, and agree to the above RELEASE, WAIVER AND ASSUMPTION OF RISK AGREEMENT. Adult Pilot's Signature

Oate

fijnature ofPilot's Parent or Leta! Guardian ifl'l7ot under /8 yearr ofa1e.

Oate

MMR 12-97

• partially closed leading edge with an open section in the center. This creates a cleaner profile and more defined leading edge shape, says Bruce. The glider is now available through Airwave's North American Importer, Air California Adventure, Inc., 2800 Torrey Pines Scenic Drive, San Diego, CA 92037, (858) 452-9858, aircal@ix.netcom.com.

light Design announces the release of their new entry-level DHV 1 paraglider, the Boxtair. The Boxtair is available in four sizes and is certified DHV 1 in three of these sizes. Although designed as a beginner glider perfect for learning to fly, the Boxtair also has superb performance Lncluding an excellent DHV measured speed of 51 km/hour. Combine this great speed, an amazing glide and low sink with all the inherent stability of a DHV l glider and you have a terrific glider. The Boxtair has 44 cells, an aspect ratio of 5.1:1 flat and 3.9:l projected, and is available now for an introducrory price starting at $2,480. Call (206) 320-9010 or e-mail napi@fun2fly.com for additional information or the name of your nearest dealer.

flllEW AIRWAVIE MAGIC (' ince rejoining Airwave in May, Bruce 1,)Goldsmith has been working hard on developing a totally new performance design. Taking its name from the legendary Airwave hang gliders of the l 980's, the Magic features new technical innovations in the sail. The most obvious is a

APRIL

2001

M2 HARNESS irplay is now the North American distributor for the M2 harness line. These full-featured, full-protection harnesses are the latest designs in the industry. Four sizes are available from small to extra-large, and they come in red/black and blue/black. Features include flush-fit, side-mounted reserve, plenty of storage space, full foam back protection, integrated speed bar, and "easy-in" seat. The harness is very comfortable in either the normal upright position or the laid-back,

sleek position. The price is $695. Contact: www.paraglide.com, dixon@ paraglide.com, (520) 526-4579.

COmPILOT OXYGEN SYSTEM

ountain High E & S Co. has recently introduced the Co-Pilot, an affordable, hand-held oxygen system designed for supplemental breathing at high altitudes. This system is especially useful for pilots who only occasionally fly at altitudes requiring oxygen and thus do not need a full-featured oxygen system for their aircraft. Unlike similar systems, the Co-Pilot's oxygen regulator has an on/off and volume control knob that is adjustable from off to two liters/min. The face mask is removable and can be replaced with an Oxymizer conserving cannula for continuous "hands off" use for durations over 30 minutes at 15,000 feet per cylinder. At a glance, the built-in pressure gauge allows the user to see how much oxygen is available at all times. The Co-Pilot system can be shut off and stored with a cylinder installed for over a year without any noticeable leakage. The basic Co-Pilot kit at $150 (USO), comes with a regulator with gauge, face mask, two 18-liter, non-refillable replacement cylinders, and instruction manual. Options include additional cylinders, Oxymizer cannula and holsterpack which can be ordered at any time. For more information or to order, contact Mountain High, 1-800-468-8185, sales@mountainhighoxygen.com. •

The BOXTAIR is the Id test entry level glider ,md 1s dvailable NOWI Wit/1 a top speed of 51 km//1, the BOXTAIR is the fastest DHV l glider· ever certified so you get amd2ing security and incredible performance in one. Combine this with tt1e quality matendls and craftsmanship, you·ve come to expect from Flight Design. and the BOXT AIR 1s your best first choice/

PARAGLIDING INTERVIEWS

by Lori Schwilling, photos by Beth Lockhart

Steve Mayer is a 32-year-old paragliding instructor and owner of Cloud 9 Soaring Center in Sandy, Utah. LS: What was life b(foreflying? SM: Dreaming about flying. I always wanted to go into the Air Force. When I was five I used to sneak up on the roof and jump off. Then I would be lying in the bushes all beat up wondering why I did it.

LS: How did paragliding become a reality? SM: I flew Cessnas in high school but bad eyesight forced me to abandon my dreams of becoming a fighter pilot. I saw sailplanes a few times while climbing outside of Boulder when I lived there in college. I thought that looked like fun. I can't remember if I saw paragliding for the first time in Aspen, Colorado or at Schweitzer outside of Sandpoint, Idaho. T took a photo of the guy I saw flying at Schweitzer and talked ro him a little. Years later he came up to me at The Point to ask about a brush-up lesson. After college I moved to Salt Lake City to pursue the professional ski-bum lifestyle. I was on the road, living in my car, when I drove past the Point going into town. The Soaring Center was right there off the freeway so I stopped in and met Dave Sharp and Chris Santacroce. LS: When did you start flying? SM: I started flying in 1993. I wanted to do tandems with friends, and at the time

you had to be an instructor to get your T-3 so I became an instructor and realized that this was my life's calling. I've had the opportunity to fly tandem in more than 15 different countries and countless states. When I first moved into the Soaring Center I found the old waivers from when I started ro fly. I started flying at the same time Will Gadd did. When he moved to town we just had to go flying, so we flew 300 out of the next 365 days. We were out there pretty much every day regardless of the weather. LS: What was your first wing? SM: When I first started flying I bought the dirtiest, oldest wing I could find. I think I paid a grand for it. LS: Who was your first instructor? SM: Chris ended up being my first instructor. He signed off on my initial ratings. Ken Hudonjorgensen mentored me and we did a lot of mountain flying together. I flew with Ken through my advanced ratings and apprenticeship.

LS: Where is your favorite place to fly? SM: I have a few. My favorite site is Snowbird, Utah. Ken and I worked together to get the site open. In the beginning it was my own private place. I also love the

convenience of fl ying over the ocean at Torrey Pines, landing and ordering a cheeseburger, launching again and coming back for it in 10 minutes - and, of course, rhe South Side at Point of the Mountain because it's so easy. There are massive amounts of airtime to be had rhere. Ir's possible to fly a few hours and still be in the office by nine with a huge grin on yo ur face.

LS: So how do you like instructing? SM: I never thought I would be a teacher. I don't regret it for one minute. Watching my students fly is like beginning all over again. Ir's the excitement I don't get any more from flying.

SM: I never really was a comp pilot. I did local comps around Utah and did well. Then I went to the '95 Nationals at Chelan, Washington and got my butt kicked. Anyone who has seen the video from the event knows what I am talking about. I was on a UP Karana FR. Everyone kept asking me what the hell I was doing on that wing, at Chelan, in July, with only two years of mostly "Point" ridge soaring. I had my longest flight, 69 miles, on the practice day, then I tossed my reserve, which I had just purchased, on one of the first days of the event. I have been avoiding comp flying ever since. I am just too competitive and paragliding is not a good place for that kind of attitude . I came from ski and bicycle racing where crashes hurt, bur not quire as bad.

first, comp pilot later?

LS: Is this a natural move for many pilot or

SM: All of the above. Everyone says,

is the norm the other way around: instructor

"What a cool job!" Think about it: up at

SM: Looking at most good U.S. competitors, with the exception of Scotty Marion (who lived in a car in my driveway while he was learning to fly), not many of them also instruct. Teaching is a full-time job for all of the larger schools and there is not time to leave and go compete. We have students come from around the world, and I can't just say, "Sorry, we are off this week." Teaching definitely is nor good for flying. Just ask anyone in Salt Lake City about the last rime they saw me at a mounram site.

LS: Is instructing an enticing career, a financial coup, the epitome ofcool, or the means to a way oflife?

LS: What prompted your move from competition flying to instruction?

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co sell SOL and gee ouc of Sale Lake Ciry. I said sure. Next thing you know, I am in imernacional business with Brazil.

LS: Why SOU SM: SOL has a great line of accessories and the wings were produced under license from Nova with the SOL name. It seemed easy for me; Nova was a good name, so SOL should do well. I didn't know how difficult it was to marker a brand, handle shipping, dealer relacions, warrancee work, repair work, and run a school all by myself. We still work with SOL. The guys in Brazil are awesome. Now I am just doing accessories. Ic is coo competitive for wing sales in the U.S. Lase year we worked a bic with Edel and some others. We are scicking co the idea chat guys like Superfly are doing it betcer than . . . anyone 111 promocmg wmgs, so we are supporting chem in their efforcs while we work on che smaller icems like helmets, harnesses and accessories.

LS: Was the decision to buy the Soaring Center a difficult one?

sunrise, wacch everyone fly rill noon, go co che shop, calk abouc flying, back ac che hill ac 4:00 PM rill dark (9:00 PM in che summer), eac dinner, gee co sleep by 11:00 PM 'fT J ky c 1 1 r . t 1 am uc . .)even aays a weeK tor n111e monchs is noc good for che daring life. Financial coup? Yes, I have been able co make a good living doing chis - noc much job securiry or reciremem benefics, but I love it. Cool? Yes, it is a cool way to make a living. I love celling people I am a paragliding instructor. le is definitely a way of life, only chose in che indusuy realize how hard we work, how stressful it is, and what a reward it is co gee 50 Christmas cards from clienrs saying thanks for changing their lives. I keep them all!

my business background cook over and I figured I could do ic bigger and betcer. I scarred slow, made some miscakes along che way, but figured ic ouc soon enough. Ic is noc rocker science. Ir jusc cakes some business skills and an understanding of how easy ic is co gee free marketing from che media. During my firsc year che school was small. In year cwo, Cloud 9 was che third largest school in the country. In year three, che second largesc. During my fourth year, lase year, we were the largesc paragliding school according to che number of P2 's signed off. This year I am sure we are up there near che cop wich Dixon.

LS: And why did you begin importing gliders?

LS: Why did you start your own school? SM: I did my appremiceship under one of the greacesc inscructors and pilots ever, Ken Hudonjorgensen. Once I got my rating,

SM: I have no idea. I goc a call from Oliver, the imporcer for SOL, who was a buddy of mine. He said he got accepted co Wharcon Business School, had cwo weeks

SM: Yes. This is the one-year mark, and it has been anocher up-and-down road. The Comfons wamed our and I needed co move che business our of my house and had bigger plans for the sport. In one monch I wenc from working our of my basement to an office ac a climbing gym, then into the new Cloud 9 Soaring Cemer. We srarced a cop-notch hang gliding school, hired Bill "Bad Bones" Anderson co handle our nacional repair cemer and dealer relations, and got longtime paraglider guru Jay Jamison co be our shop manager. Dexcer Clearwacer and the yo ung gun, Mark Davis, rounded out the instruccors on the paragliding side. The Soaring Cencer is not the ideal locacion or shop size, but ic had been around forever. Many cop pilots have worked there or owned it or learned from the shop. It is where I scopped by one day in Occober of 1993 and liscened while Dave Sharp cried co talk me inco hang gliding, but Chris Santacroce ultimately got me into paragliding. I smile every time either of chem walks imo che shop.

LS: After running the show on your own, is it difficult relinquishing control to other PARAGLIDING

instructors? SM: It was and is very hard. I have my way of doing things and that is not necessarily rhe best way. All three of us teach a bit differently, and I chink some students like chat and others get confused. This year both my guys have taught me new and different things about flying. LS: How many years did it take to save the Point ofthe Mountain? SM: It's not done yet. My project was the South Side. In the beginning I got a call from a great friend of our sport, Al Schelinburg of Geneva Rock. They are the company that owned the land the South Side is on. To make a long story short, rwo years of work with many different government and private companies secured our spot on the South Side. Geneva is the hero. They worked really hard and made financial and time sacrifices to see chis thing through. We are still working on the North Side landing zone. Ir is currently slated for commercial development. LS: What is your.history with the Utah Hang and Paragliding Association (UHPGA)? SM: Our local club is great. We have monthly meetings about the placement of the outhouse and other important issues. I took my rum as president in 1998 and began work on the South Side. In 1999 I wanted to continue the work so I was elected vice president, but the president moved away so I was stuck/blessed with it again. Now I sray as involved as I can. The monthly meeting is at the shop so my main connection now is cleaning up after the pizza/beer parcy/meering each month. LS: Over the past few years offlying what has made you laugh the most? SM: Besides watching pilots get dragged across rhe top of the Sourh Side? I can't chink of anything else. Oh, this is not flying-related bur most people visiting the Point know my dog Timber. Well, he has a few unique tricks, one being char he can open car doors. He also likes to roll around in the mud puddle that used to form in the South Side parking area. At one point some campers placed a stake

APRIL

2001

with a paper place sign and affectionately named it "Lake Timber." When Timber first learned he could open car doors he found a nice new Saturn and opened the door after coming out of the lake. He was sitting in the front seat dripping with mud, the door had blown shut, and he was eating a sandwich they had on the dash. LS: Accidents happen, do we dare talk about them? SM: Yes, we have to. Ir is part of the sport and ultimately what makes thi s a not-so-

good business for long-term sanicy. Liability concerns have led some businessminded people, the ones who can and will make our sport grow, run from the industry.

LS: Is it the sport 01" just Life itselfthat is inherently dangerous? SM: Boch. Life is dangerous, and yes, paragliding is dangerous . People get hurt and killed every year and I now know it is important for everyone in rhe sport to recognize and understand chis. As wings gee safer and easier to fly, more "mainstream"

LS: What gear are you most excited about? SM: I love che new DHV 1-2 wings. My Electron does everything and more chan my closet full of older DHV 3 wings, and it is a bomber! I can't believe how stable it is and the level of performance ic has. Any top pilot who has nor flown a 1-2 wing needs w get on one and see how fun they are. I also really like the airbag harnesses. Our site is a ridge site and we are not all that high. I have seen a few people bounce and those with the airbags have come out al1ead! LS: What is your vision for Cloud 9? SM: I always have plans, but for now it is one step at a rime. It is a changing industry, and now thac I am deeply seated in it I have looked around and think I have a pretry good idea that you have w roll with it and not make roo many plans. My newest passion is kite surfing. We sell a ron of kite gear and we will now be importing and distributing kite surfing kites and boards. Now I have to take trips to places like Hawaii and Brazil and the Gorge w test new gear! Above my computer is a list of goals for a spom hero of mine who appeared in Rocky Mountain Sports and Fitness. The number-one goal is yellow and faded from years of being taped to the desk. It says, "Two Words: WORLD DOMINATION." Whac better goal! The author, Will Gadd, and I became good friends and roommates years and years later. LS: What is your take on the future ofthe sports ofparagliding and hang gliding?

people are amacred w our sporr. People look ar hang gliding and say, "Thar's crazy, no way, bur paragliding, sure." This is wrong. We need w educate everyone that it can be dangerous. Inrermediare syndrome is coming on sooner for pilots now. The wings make it easier w do wingovers and entry-level aerobatics, and wirh more good pilots rhere are more "heroes" that newer pilots wam w emulare. LS: What do you feel draws people to the sports offree flight?

SM: Birds and clouds. LS: What is yourfavorite wing right now? SM: I have a few personal wings. I use the SOL Jumbo for candem, an Edel 8000 wich a Thin Red Line for hiking and rravel, and my "play wing" is an Ozone Electron. I was inviced w join Team Kavu chis pasc year. They have been a greac supporter of paragliding, making fun cloching char is good for flying and advertising paragliding in cheir catalogues.

SM: Growth, I hope. That really is my vision for Cloud 9. We are working on a sice guide now which will help che spore appeal co more and more if they can see chac chere are thousands of sices in che U.S. Someday I hope ro travel to smaller schools and work wich chem to become larger schools, kind of like franchise ouc our method of teaching and promoting che sporr. Hang gliding was precry dead in Ucah; ic wasn't seeing a loc of growth until we scarced our school. All ic took was a good school and now we have almost as many new hang students as paragliding scudems, and a loc of us are now biwi ngual. (Well , I'm working on ic!) •

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( SD) Freestyle. arness Review by Kelly Kellar, photos by Steve Roti

I would like to begin by stating I am a purely recreational pilot, not at all any kind of big X-C comp guy or aerobatics pilot - just a pure, fun-flying kinda guy. The NSD Freestyle Harness was designed by two double World Champions, Rob Whittall and john Pendry. That says a whole lot in itself.

s I pulled the new Never Say Die (NSD) Freestyle harness out of the box and sat it on the floor, I was immediately surprised that it now comes in black and gray. I have to admit, being born and raised in the USA, that the original models in red, white and blue kinda put me off a bit because of the Eve! Knievel/Elvis Presley/Tommy Hilfiger look. The NSD Freestyle harness sports a very sleek, fast, aerodynamic look. Nevertheless, it does have plenty of back protection, a dense foam that I feel may be the way to go over the squishy foam that's largely being used today. The sleek look is maintained by a long, thin, dual-zippered back storage compartment topped by a neoprene reserve container that sits higher on the shoulders than any other top-mounted reserve parachute system I have ever seen in paragliding. The backup parachute system has a dual handle in case the first one becomes dislodged, which is highly unlikely - one handle on your shoulder strap, one handle high up on the right shoulder blade that extends up to an easy grasp with either hand. The company claims that the reserve placement on this harness, along with the short handle-to-deployment-bag strap, allows deployments up to one second faster, and after doing a few simulated reserve tosses I am inclined to agree with them. To augment the aerodynamic look of the NSD Freestyle, the main storage compartment is under the front of the seat. This area is behind your thighs and does not take away from the back protection at all. Again, this is a dual-zipper storage compartment; just roll up your gear bag and easily stow it away with no hassles. This storage unit has two plastic clip straps to hold your gear bag in a tight roll. One of the things I dislike about many harnesses is that you have to spend all the time in the world folding your gear bag just right to get it to fit, or the harness has some immensely large storage space that is, well, silly looking to say the least. Overall, the NSD is very stylish and streamlined, complimented by its black and

Top-mounted reserve and reserve handle placement.

PARAGLIDING

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The NSD Freestyle harness has two large side pockets that are set well forward for easy in-flight access, and the pockets are flush to the sides of the harness and not added on to the outside. The harness has very low hang points while you're on the ground, and a chest strap almost at the waistline. The sliding shoulder straps automatically allow the hang points to transition to the ideal position no matter what phase of launch or flight you're in, and are highly reminiscent of the High Adventure and Edel Balance sliding shoulder straps. This harness can be flown reclined or upright and is easily adjusted in flight to suit your fancy, bur it is primarily designed to be flown in a semi-reclined body position. The low chest strap and hang points allow you to lean well forward with your arms back on your launch run, getting all your energy into driving forward without pulling on excessive brakes, unlike common chest strap high-hang-point models that tend to defeat this purpose. The chest strap, or on this harness, waist strap, is marked with a red stitch to show the optimal adjustment for full-on security. At this point the ABS cross-bracing comes into play, and this seemed to work great for launching and kiting. In the air I found that I like to loosen it up a bit to gain more feeling from the wing and get better weight-shifting turns. The NSD Freestyle takes this even further with an innova-

APRIL

2001

tive pivoting seat plate and unique leg strap positioning which is from the back of the hip to inseam. Pulling the leg straps taut on this harness pulls the seat board to your bum. All together this allows for perfect transitioning from running to flying with no work to get seated; no extra steps or tricks are needed to get back in your harness. The NSD Freestyle eliminates that whole scenario - just sit back and fly. Under the pivoting seat plate you will find an easy-to-use Velcro adjustment. You will want to try several positions here to find what works best for you and your flying posture style. I like my knees up so I move these straps closer to my knees. The seat plate adjusts the position of the sliding shoulder-toseat plate, cross-bracing placement and leg straps all in one. The adjustment is slight and tested in the full range - no worries there. In addition, there is a red stitch to make it easy for you to keep it all perfectly centered. The next prominent feature of the NSD harness is the load-spreader bars. The main function of the load-spreader bars is to add comfort to the harness by distributing the pressure of the main hang straps around the lower mass of the harness. More excitingly, it allows you to adjust the pivot point by moving the main hang straps about three centimeters on the load-spreader bars. Even though this is slight, it seems to be enough to notice quite a difference. The owner's manual says: Continued on page 40.

•

A variant of this is article originally appeared in the Smithsonian Institutions Air & Space magazine, creating tremendous publicity for the sport ofparagliding. Tom Harpole is a professional journalist and this was his 15th piece for A&S. They often send him on assignments that include stray areas ofaviation such as skydiving, helicopter logging, smokejumping, etc. After having made 261 jumps over the last 10 years Tom has eschewed skydiving and become obsessed with paragliding. - Ed

''I

could huck a one-armed monkey with fleas off a 2,000-foot hill in a paraglider and it would get him to the ground in one piece," Dixon White tells a group of aspirams gathered on rhe groomed slopes of his ''Airplay Flight Park" near Cashmere, Washington, a private, 2,200-acre paragliding Mecca that looks like a series of golf course fairways superimposed on treeless foothills of the Cascades. ''A lot of instructors are doing that, then they bark a few suggestions into your radio and get you

safely to the ground, bur that's not paragliding. Thar's not what we're doing here. " Dixon White has flown more than 6,300 times withom injury. He has supervised more than 19,000 srudem flights that have, with the exception of three minor injuries, never hurt anyone. But humans can die trying to fl y this way and when he imroduces rookies ro the sport he gets to the worst news within minutes of beginning his oriemation talk. The single fatality at his school, back in 1993, was a proud

young skydiver headed for the Navy SEALS who, on his third day of flying, disregarded White's instructions and attempted a series of maneuvers that resulted in him becoming wrapped in his glider in less than two seconds and falling 100 feer. White composes himself and explains ro the half dozen students: "He hamhanded a high turn and immediately compounded that mistake by looping his wing under himself. You must gently and thoughtfully manage rl1e energy of a paraglider. " He continues, "Ir happened so

PARAGLIDING

fast there was no way to respond in rime. It was che biggest emotional setback ever, for my wife and me," he says mournfully. He rakes his hand through his wavy brown hair, looking, at age 44, like a leading man , like a yo ung Alex Baldwin. His hand pushes his head back and he looks up and says: "Watch this sky, everybody. Cumulus being born . Hero air. " About a mile above us rwo of his instructors, Ryan Swan, a world-class extreme skier, and Bren Zaenglein, the U.S. National Sporr Class champion

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2001

paraglider pilot, are rwisring up a thermal at 1,600 feet per minute. Thar's fasrer than commercial jets climb our where noise abatement procedures are in effect. The pair of gliders look as slender and agile as nighthawk wings against a popcorn cumulus sky. Thar they are rising dramatically as they "work the thermal," is obvious when White gives dimension ro what his cohorts are doing. Thermals act like campfire smoke, they aren't really columns or pipes. They drift and change shape. They can be as wide as a football field , "big and boary"

or "wing-rocking bullets," as he says. "When Brett and Ryan bounce a bit, they're moving through the edge, trying figure out the size and shape of the thermal and stay in it up to cloud base where they lose their lift," White explains. "Raptors have those finger-like feathers at their wingtips so chat they can be more sensitive about finding the rough edges of thermals and shearing into chem. We feel rhe edges of thermals with the tips of our gliders and turn into chem and try to stay in chem. You folks will do chis in a year or rwo if you stick with this," White says as gently as your favorite grammar school reacher. "Birds can flap their wings. Big advantage," he says jealously. "You'll fly in chose conditions someday, bur only after you learn to model the weather, integrate with your gliders and chink intuitively as birds. I want to teach you to see what you need to see to fly like birds." White's radio spits out Swan's voice: "Ir's gening prerry sporty," he says, an anempt at undaunted understatement. But the combination of freezing temperatures up there, che turbulence, and the tiny speaker renders his voice puny. Zaenglein, speaking to Swan adds, "Pretty spicy.. .Whoa. Falling out the backside. Don't come over here ." Whites eyes are skyward appraising his prodigies. "Pretty textured air, real active stuff. Those guys are so cool, " he says. "Those are my rwo best boys," he says with his chin jutting up. "On a good day, with a little luck, they might our-fly me." Ir ain't bragging, they say, when it's true. The many stamps Dixon White has left upon the sport of paragliding were acknowledged by his peers who voted him rhe United Stares Hang Gliding Association "Instructor of the Year" in 1999. Ir was the first rime the ti de was awarded. More than 140 letters poured into the USHGA headquarters citing such Dixon White contributions as interrvvining weather awareness and safety into a fundamental and systematic series of habits that instructors must imbue in their students. White's insistence on learning to understand weather begins with second-day students, who must arrive at the airpark with weather data that they are caught to acquire and interpret. Marry DeVietti, White's head instructor, was Instructor of the Year in 2000, and rhe same sentiments about his safety record

and the prolific number of students he has trained are distinguishing the school as the best in the L'.S. We watch the wings spiral higher until they are no bigger than pastel roenail clippings on blue linoleum. "How's it now?" White queries into the radio. "Can't talk, gonna die," Zaenglein says. 'J</hite laughs and we know he wants to be up there with them. He shrugs and grins and turns his attention back to the gaggle of fledglings he is training and to his apprentice instructors, Denise Reed, the 1999 Alaska Women's Boxing champ, and her pal Doug Stroop, chemists who abandoned careers in the oil industry to fly paragliders. The sport is replete with adherents who have abandoned careers, left lovers, divorced, sold off belongings, and altered all routines to pursue this form of flight. There are approximately 4,000 USHGA registered

paraglider pilots in the U.S. and 300,000 worldwide, and every one of them has seemingly neglected someone or something to partake of the sky. Reed and Stroop traveled from Alaska, on a winter's vacation, to begin paragliding with White and then went home and started making plans to quit their jobs, lay aside the boxing gloves, and go paragliding full time. Up in Whisper Valley, the beginner's slope, Reed and Stroop help students spread their wings on the ground at different points across the 400-foot-wide upper valley. White runs, literally runs back and forth instructing apprentices and students. Individually, with White at their side, they raise their wings into a gentle upslope breeze, and bring them overhead and set them back down. Within an hour or so, one by one, with White running downslope and helping them launch their wings, they begin making 200-yard flights that

look like moon-walking, taking 50-foot hops or skipping on tip toes for a hundred yards. This takes a splendid few hours that extend into the evening when long shadows cool the valley and stop the thermals. "Feel the catabatic flow," White announces like a ringmaster to students spread out over half a football field. "That downslope wind that just started is cool air wanting to puddle up low. We're done flying." White incessantly teaches people to read the atmosphere, the micrometeorology of mountains, valleys, coastlines, and the desert. Standing in a restaurant parking lot, or gazing out the post office window, he draws all eyes to the sky. The life that White strives for, up in that exquisite world of weather, has come along a circuitous route. He worked part-time as a ski instructor through his twenties, then he left a seven-year career in the circus as a tightwire walker, juggler, and unicyclist. "I was stagnating in the circus," he says, apparently unaware of the precociousness of that statement. "I wasn't exactly Johnny Carson material," he says, laughing. He then started an appliance store in Arizona and was earning $120,000 per year when, in 1990, he discovered paragliding and became obsessed. His wife Debra, whom he describes as a friend, saint, accomplished carpenter, and equestrienne, agreed that they should sell their $350,000 home, horses, and business so that White could figure out how to make a career of paragliding. They moved into a doublewide trailer with toddlers Arizona and Holly. The next year White earned $27,000 teaching humans to fly. White set up shop in a garage selling the arcane accouterments of paragliding. Eight years later he runs two schools, working winters near Flagstaff and summers in Cashmere. He sells equipment to current and former students but relies on the kindness of wealthy pilots/patrons to keep the whole deal afloat. A cheerful coterie of Microsoft millionaires, all Airplay alumni, fly with him and help keep the operation coasting, including Jabe Blumenthal, the man who owns the Hay Canyon Flight Park. "If you want to make a million teaching paragliding, you better start with two million," White claims. Blumenthal had been paragliding for several years in Europe and the U.S. when he accompanied White on a paragliding tour of Mexico. He bought the Hay PARAGLIDING

Canyon site because it had some of the best terrain, especially for beginning pilots, and summer flying weather, anywhere near Seattle. "I wanted to put together the best flying school possible. Dixon struck me as the best instructor I'd ever run into. He's intense, too much so for some people. But he is the best," Blumenthal says. The school is a three-hour drive from the Seattle area, and for that reason White charges $800 to instruct pilots to the novice level, which requires 30 or so flights using the school's equipment, while instructors in the Seattle suburbs get $1,200. White teaches around 60 students per year. On the first day of a lesson with White, usually held around the ranch house picnic tables, he advises students that he doesn't want them referring anyone to him for lessons who doesn't have the money to buy equipment and the heart to sustain this sport. "Send me people who have always wanted to fly, who dream about it and talk about it and who you think can become completely preoccupied with it. Don't send me any Mountain Dewers. I'm not here to give joy rides. They'll find instructors who do." His disdain for all but a handful of his fellow instructors, to whom he will refer students, is a topic he weighs in on without compunction. "There are some very incompetent instructors who treat students as though a few injuries are acceptable," he pauses. "It's ironic," he says and gets sidetracked. "Get hurt pole vaulting or snowboarding and that's an acceptable injury. But get hurt trying to fly and everyone condemns such blatant foolishness," he reels himself back to the issue at hand. "No injury is ever acceptable. The only acceptable goal is zero injuries." Many of White's students are current or former aviators; the list includes Bill Holsgrove, a DC-10 captain for Hawaiian Airlines, and several other commercial airline pilots. Joe Rumble, a 73-year-old former smokejumper has flown with White 102 times since 1998. ''I've been around aviation all my life. I tried to get a pilot's license in the I 940's but got shorrstopped." Rumble says. 'Then, at age 70 I got started with Dixon. Man, it means a lot to fly." Marty DeVietti is an instrument-rated fixed wing pilot with a bachelor's degree in Aviation Technology. A plethora of former general aviation pilots

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2001

who quit flying because of the expense have schooled with White and De Vietti. But the sport also appeals to those who dislike small planes, like White. "My dad and mom were both fixed wing pilots. Mom gave it up when she had me. My dad would take me up and tell me to keep on a bearing and altitude, and then he'd lean back and read a magazine. I'd be scared, then bored. I hated the smell, the radios, the equipment-intensive environment. I don't like being a passenger." Even hang gliding left White feeling indifferent. "I had a tandem hang glider flight once and didn't think much ofit. They require assembly, they rattle, and they make me feel like a passenger. In a paraglider I'm a piece of the aircraft. Knees in the breeze, managing the energy of all that sailcloth. It is the most fun you can have with your clothes on," he says and tries a giggle that doesn't quite fly. He occasionally tries to atone for his safety and weather oratory with a sort of acute jocularity that comes across as zany and endearing. But he rarely digresses. "I do everything l can to keep people listening to me. Listen up," he elbows me playfully, "I try to alter my voice, my delivery, change pace, anything to keep people with me. This stuff is all so extremely critical." Managing students' emotions, White says, is the toughest part of his job. But he is no pussyfooter. A broadly grinning, kind of hip 22-year-old river guide, Matt Gerdes, who is having a great second-day lesson stands harnessed to his grounded glider, fussing with the sets of risers, the webbing straps where the dozens oflines to the wing are gathered in his hands. White walks over to help him launch. He surreptitiously throws a tangle into Gerdes's lines. "You look ready," White needles him, "Go ahead." Gerdes pulls the glider into the air but aborts the launch of the asymmetrical wing. It rises up on one tip like a rampant caterpillar 30 feet tall, folds itself over like a fortune cookie, and rolls up into a bird's nest of risers and lines. "Good for you," White encourages him, "Launches are optional, landings are mandatory. Don't ever lee anyone cell you when you are ready to fly. You are a pilot in command of your aircraft. Preflight ched(list, dude." Gerdes looks crestfallen at the mess of fabric and lines and White gives him a hint that he should start the untangling with his A-risers, and walks away.

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about an overweight student, whom he reluctantly allowed to take lessons. That afternoon the big man bellyflopped a couple of times and began blaming his awkwardness on his glider's performance. Swan and Zaenglein had watched incredulously as White ran downslope with the man on a launch and hung ro the bottom of his harness as the guy got airborne for the first time. A gust carried them 12 feet in ro the air, whereupon White let go, tumbled and popped up, still loping downhill and shouting directions ro the big man trying to fly the huge wing. White tells us he heard him "verbally stressing" in the air when his wing dipped slightly ro "Too happy roo soon," he tells me. "He was getting complacent." White surveys the hillside and approaches an ex-marine who wears black pants tucked into black boors and a T-shirt about tequila, who in rwo days has had eight short flights and a couple of sublime four-minute glides. "How's it going? " White effuses. "Lousy launch," the leatherneck sulks, seeking commiseration. White faces him and starts in loudly: "You've just had rwo days of great weather and some beautiful flights. Lose the attitude. In face," he says, pumping himself up a bit, "I can't stand listening to negative crap up here. Bad attitudes anticipate failure and cause accidents. One more complaint and you don't get invited back. " This "straighten up and fly right" tirade silences the ocher aeronauts on the slope like a lull in the wind. The chastened student stands ar parade rest. White says quietly, "Please get after some ground handling and kiting. Look at what fun everyone else is having. " He watches a more advanced pilot screw up a launch, mishandling his glider, and he bites his rongue and turns to me and says, "At some point I have to stand back and let them learn from blowing it. " Then he jogs over ro help rhe young pilot he sabotaged sore our his wing. Thar night over ice cream with his apprentice instructors White agonizes

one side. "I don't think I can let him come back," he looks solemnly at the apprentices. "His weight isn't rhe problem. If he told me he loves this and said some things about how fun it is I'd stick with him, but he's doing it for reasons that I can't understand, " he admits. "Understanding the emotional wellbeing of your students is as tricky and critical as understanding the weather. Protect them. Everything we do as insrrucrors must be above reproach," he preaches. White regards himself as an "anal retentive task master" trying ro sort out a world rhat is inherently chaotic. The crazy thing abour paragliding is that it cakes place in an element that is invisible. Bur White, who speaks passable French and plays classical piano, knows the value of achieving complex tasks incrementally. "We begin with the simplest little downhill flights , barely off the ground. Then we get them started on sled rides, gliding down our 800-foor-tall hill into Spirit Canyon. " To begin explaining the great river of air, talking fluid mechanics helps White reach people how to model rhe weather that makes it all possible. "Ninety percent of what people in this sport need to know is weather, five percent is equipment and five percent is skill," White insists. Students are told on day one to show up the next morning with weather informa-

tion - the winds aloft and temperatures, knowing where the jet scream and isobars are, all of which can be obtained by calling 800 WX BRIEF or tapping into his website, paraglide.com. He gives students succinct criteria for deciding to fly or not, after making initial inquiries in the morning. Beginners can forget about it when there are more than rwo isobars within 300 miles. If the jet stream is within 100 miles the base winds will be too high for safe flights. If the barometric pressure has dropped, unsettled weather is on the way. White and DeVietti spend an hour or so helping beginning students interpret this data first thing in the morning to decide whether or not paragliding will be possible that day. "Knowing what the weather is doing gives pilots the patience ro wait for safe conditions. Maybe to watch thermals triggering all morning until you feel comfortable with what's happening. " If the initial weather predictions for the day are propitious, then paraglider p ilots must observe the conditions at the launch site and not fly if cumulus clouds are taller than they are wide, or there is a multilayered sky with clouds moving in different directions, or if wind gusts exceed five miles per hour in five seconds, all signs that the air is too turbulent for safe flights . But if the signs are encouraging, students must start learning how to see and use the thermals that create lifting air. To understand the characteristics of thermals wicking up hillsides, imagine inverting the landscape by using your hand. Your palm is the earth's crust, the top of your hand the surface. Invert your hand with the mountains of your knuckles and the valleys and ridges of your fingers upside down. Pour water in your palm and it drains down berween your fingers and wicks to

PARAGLIDING

-. -. the points of your knuckles before it releas- · es into the air. The landscapes paraglider pilots seek have terrain you can run down that lies above places where thermals puddle on the ground and then release and run up hills. White uses another fluid image to explain how thermals bloop up into the atmosphere. Slightly overfill a glass of water and surface tension allows it to bubble up over the top of the vessel. That tension is a fragile agreement between molecular attraction, barometric pressure, and gravity to maintain its integrity, and it breaks easily. Once the sun starts warming the ground, surface bubbles of warm air form and they eventually exceed their inherent ability to swell, then they burst and rise. They may also be released mechanically by something as small as a rabbit running through them. Those cumulus changelings that live and die in 20 minutes define the altitude at which the thermals slow down and blossom. These releases of energy that make sustained paragliding possible are endlessly fascinating to White, who stands toward the top of Whisper Valley at the Hay Canyon flight park and watches cycles of warm air releasing uphill while showing his students how to observe the tall wheat grasses along the edge of the mowed fairway below as they begin shimmering in a breeze. The shimmer ascends the tilted valley like a "wave" through a college stadium. The air huffs and sighs and the grasses hiss, and White says, "Let's watch a few more triggers, they're coming about 12 minutes apart, and see if we can decide what we might do with them." While we wait he tells us about flying cross-country and how a string of young cumulus clouds can provide a path for miles, and how cultivated farm ground can generate huge lift, and how he always hopes to see a tractor with a plume of dust rising actively in its wake, showing how the machine is entering warm air puddles and triggering the swirling dust and debris that vividly demonstrate rising air. Dust devils are another sign of dramatically lifting air, he explains, usually seen on days when high barometric pressure delays the release of building puddles of warm air until they can punch out through it, seeking equilibrium, showing us how nature abhors a vacuum. A lot of time spent in the sport is what's known as para-waiting, the idyllic

pastime of sitting atop a promontory and watching the clouds, birds, and the sky, making paragliding talk. Instructor Dave Wheeler, a lanky, expatriate Welshman, who White says progressed faster in the sport than anyone he's seen, sits wi.th a couple of students talking about how 'to decide what the weather is offering. Wheeler, a computer genius who knows as much, or more, about micrometeorology as White, advises his students to observe what other pilots are doing at launch sites and warns them to be aware of guys with high "GBR's," or gonad-to-brain ratios. "Use'm like dandelion fluff, watch what happens to them and use that as part of your model for flying that day," he says plainly. "Watch the birds," White adds softly. "Look for dust devils. Try to time the lulls between the cycles," he croons to his students who are watching, enchanted as children, the micrometeorology of a mountain slope. With two such cerebral mentors as Dixon White and Dave Wheeler confidently explaining exactly what the weather around us is doing, flying down this valley seems a childlike and wholly noble thing to do. Human flight seems a logical and safe aspiration. White has made innovations in the sport that have codified safe habits and made reading the weather a cogent, attainable skill. Paragliding began in the late l 960's when European mountain climbers flew the new rectangular sport parachutes from summits as a way of getting down quickly. They would lay a sport chute behind themselves and start running downhill; if it inflated and flew successfully then it was a relatively safe and much faster way down. Thirty years later, when White joined the sport as a master pilot and instructor, he began changing it fundamentally, starting with the act of getting off the ground safely. Launching a paraglider according to White's preferred reverse method reminds me of nothing so much as handling draft horse teams as I did in Oregon forests 25 years ago. Giving a team the giddy up with your back to them would make no more sense than launching a paraglider that is behind your back. ''Any instructor who do~sn't teach reverse launches is behind the curve," White says unabashedly. You stand there holding lines in both hands, facing the wing that is laid out in a 30-foot horseshoe shape on the ground.

The lines in your hands give you information as you step back, pull lightly, and raise a little wall of sailcloth into the wind. The open cells on the leading edge begin to inflate and climb up in front of you, and tug at your arms and the harness points at your hips. You twist in the harness and head downslope. Your arms control the paraglider as a pair of wings, allowing each side to ascend or descend. The feeling in the lines can be that of a team of greenbroke coach horses, each wanting to dash off in a different direction, or it can feel like a docile hitch of Percherons gathering their shoulders into the harness and pulling you ineluctably up a mountain road. Successfully steering the wing is a matter of your sensitivity and skill at feeling subtle sideslips, forward and backward surges, and managing the horsepower up there at the end of the lines. The horse analogy is apt even when the wing is inflated and energetically lifting you skyward. Horsepower is an exact measure of moving weight over time. Lower a 220pound weight down a 150-foot-deep well and then raise it to the surface in one minute and you have exerted 33,000 foot pounds per minute, or one horsepower. White, who weighs around 200 pounds geared up, often ascends at 2,200 feet per minute which pencils out to 440,000 foot pounds or roughly 13 horses and a pony pulling a human closer to the heavens every minute. Ghost riders in the sky, as we say. As the midday sun bakes a south-facing slope in White's flight park he sits, sweating from a dozen sprints up and down the hill with his hands on novice's harnesses and brake lines. ''A lot of my friends who used to instruct beginners have quit. They can't take this running down the hill. Heck, I still feel like I have to run back up to the next student who is waiting to give it a go. I believe the next phenomenal pilot, like Ryan, or Brett, or Dave, will show up here wanting to fly. " He's watching the tilted slopes for riffles in the wheat grass and sage, signs of thermals releasing. "This is closer to what surfers do than aviators," he says, "waiting, watching, gauging. Wanting a ride." H~ considers that momentarily and says, "It's also like scuba diving, where you put people in an element where they have no reference points. There's nothing they've done before that transfers. People who try this have never done anything remotely like it

PARAGLIDING

-... in their life." humans under polychrome crescents within White lays his hand on a patch of dun shouting distance of each other at 11,000 soil between bristly stalks of mowed bunch feet. Then White and Wheeler and the grass and asks his students to do so. Feel apprentices from Alaska descend to continthat," he says. "It's way warmer than your ue schooling the dazzled students. body temperature." The ground temperaBrett Zaenglein and Ryan Swan, it ture, he finds with his wristwatch therturned out, linked together a progression mometer, is 114 degrees. "The whole valley of thermals and glides that took them 35 is cooking up bubbles of warm air," he miles over the easternmost jags of the smiles. The thermals that had been releasNorth Cascades range at altitudes above ing roughly every 15 minutes for the last 13,700 feet. They landed at the ski area on couple of hours are whooshing up hill Steven's Pass and hitchhiked home. "You more often and much more forcefully. The can't just extract what you want from the air will be too sporty now for beginners, weather, but sometimes you get more than White explains, and he loads everyone back you hoped for, " Swan says. in his big white Ford one-ton crew cab and That evening in Dixon's office they heads down the hill with the truck's dust downloaded a GPS Swan carried and it plume whipping back upslope and raising a superimposed their path on a topographidust devil, a propitious sign, he points out, cal map, lending a believable omnisciency that will make for some challenging flying · to their flights over 12,900-foot peaks. At that will keep him from getting grumpy if one point, Zaenglein was 4,000 feet above he can catch this midday weather. Swan and watched him gliding ever closer He drops the students off at the picnic to the timbered slopes below searching tables under the big maples at the ranch unsuccessfully for a thermal. "I was kicking house and points at the timbered, rocky treetops, stuck in a shaded mountainside throat that defines Hay Canyon opposite and sinking," Swan says. "Thought I'd get dined." Swan had visions of getting hung us, and says to keep an eye on the sky. He explains to us that he, Brett, Ryan, Dave, up in a tree, tearing his $3,600 Windtech Doug and Denise will drive back up and paraglider, perhaps falling a hundred feet then hike another 600 vertical feet to the out of the tree, and still being 15 _miles top of the mountain and launch. from the nearest road. He saw railroad Half an hour later, from the picnic tracks that he could try to reach, but the tables, we see them cutting "S" curves up width of the right of way looked narrower there, searching around for thermals. They than his wing. "I flew in the shade, lower rise and then glide down close to the ridges and lower, and finally got around a corner that finger into Hay Canyon, and rise again of this ridge, and there was some sunshine and fly on a triangular path that describes a and a rocky slope heating up and I worked mile on a side for an hour and a half - six that back up." White, noticing that Swan

APRIL

2001

seems truly shaken, jacks him up a bit, "Today you were in no-man's land. You did something no one else has ever done. Just be very, very satisfied." During the week that I studied paraglider flight and weather with Dixon White the human genome mapping was completed. He rhapsodized one evening, while balanced on the tightwire he has set up outside the ranch house, about how someday humans would fly without fabric wings, presumably through some genetic manipulation he hopes to see in his lifetime. It was hard to listen to such an uncharacteristically wacky discourse, but up on his tightwire he looked more relaxed than I'd seen him. I asked him if he believed that there is a risk-taking gene, expecting him to launch a lecture on how safe this sport could be with a thorough knowledge of weather and equipment and the appropriate attitudes, etc. "Of course there is," he surprised me, "that's a definite gene, a necessary gene. Human society didn't evolve without risk takers." White once walked 1,000 feet up the cable that suspends chairlift #1 at Aspen, Colorado. I got a little snotty and asked him if that was an example of a risk that moved society forward. He looked down at me patiently; he'd been balanced on the cable for more than half an hour while Phil Schofield, the photographer, had shot two rolls of film. He replied: "We're explorers. We are testing the outer reaches. Good explorers aren't adrenaline junkies. They prepare themselves as fully as they can, and then head out there."•

Surviving a Near-Fatal

ACCIDENT by Mallory Lynch y wife almost died from a paragliding accident. Two things almost killed her: first, the mistake of not hooking her leg straps before launching, and second, a delay and lack of medical care. This is written in hopes that it will serve to facilitate medical care to another who is injured. Perhaps it will serve to help all of us be a bit more ready when we are called to the task of aiding in an emergency. As a hang/paragliding and sailplane pilot, I have devoted years to learning how to fly. l have attended clinics, learned aerobatics, and flown in competitions. In all of this, however, I was taught almost nothing about handling emergencies related to flying accidents and injuries. Although I have been involved in the rescue of others, all of my training came from other sports or activities such as SCUBA diving, lifeguard and instructor training, the military, Red Cross classes, and so on. Even then, I was taught the simple procedure of airway obstruction clearing, stopping bleeding, and keeping the heart beating. Once this was done, I was taught to call an ambulance or deliver the injured person to the hospital where the paramedics, doctors and other expens would take over. I have long since come to realize the fallacy of such thinking. My wife was and probably is, if she ever flies again, a good pilot. She is, however, fairl y new in the sport and has much to learn. She too anended classes and clinics. She has had other mishaps, and in all of her recoveries she has shown the clarity and reflexive response required to turn the our-

come to her favor. I believe char in this case she saved her own life. After talking with many of the people near her during rhe time of the accident, and after reviewing a video of her accident until each frame is etched in my brain, I have learned a lot about what happened. I do not know to chis day, nor does my wife, why she broke her launch routine chat day, nor why she didn't request a buddy check, nor why others standing around didn't take notice. And she did nor do her second check just before launching, which I have watched her do so many times. As one of my sailplane buddies told me, "It is not the single mistake that causes an accident, bur the compounding of the first mistake through further omissions and errors." She did launch without her leg straps being fastened. In the video, they dangle clearly and ominously. As she rums to launch after a reversal, the leg straps swing around her legs and harness. One watches the video and wants to scream our, "Don't launch! Abort! "

RULE NUMBER ONE Remember chat launching and landing is probably the most dangerous part of flying, and any break or distraction in the routine can be fatal. Have a written or numbered routine that does nor vary and use it. If you vary, or not, a buddy check could save your life. Ask for one. Be kind and alert enough to offer one or watch others during their setup procedure and do one visually for them. Don't compound the mistakes into an accident. She did launch , and immediately was in

trouble . Her wing was fully inflated and she was leaning forward on her run. The harness was lifted above her waist and she tried to slip free at that point, but was caught by the chest straps. Her right hand, now unable to grab the brake handle, reached over to the left, shifting her weight and body to the left, causing a left mm in the glider. That reaction saved her life. If she had flown straight our and then fallen, she would have died witho ut question. As she mrned reward the left, others saw her simation and someone yelled confi.rmingly, "Turn left! " At that point she had done all she could and was hanging totally suspended from her harness. Her arms were now straight above her, grasping the left riser, and she was in a tight, sp iral-like turn. The glider remained full , and she remained totally suspended and exposed to the side of the mountain, which she hit at great speed. Luckily, the turn in the glider and in her body caused some of the impact to be less direct on the chest and face. She then lost consciousness, slipped out of the harness, and rolled part way down the mountain. Someone ran to the car to call an ambulance while others ran to help her. People surrounded her and one pilot declared chat he was a trained EMT and was to be considered in charge. Nevertheless, he seemed so distraught that others became concerned, including my wife who had regained consciousness. Eventually even she had to calm him repeatedly by reassuring him chat she would be okay. (I later heard, and I hope this is not true, that this person had been seen drinking alcohol earlier.) Adding to this chaos, a friend and fellow pilot who was watching all this while flying above, focused on getting down to be of help and injured himself while trying to top-land. All hell was breaking loose.

RULE NUMBER TWO Don't assume that because someone says

PARAGLIDING

they are trained and cries co cake charge chat they are necessarily the besr person for the job at hand. Observe how people are responding co the situation. Everyone is on adrenaline ar the least, and staying clearminded is one of the most important factors. Do the same for yourself: stop, chink, and then act. The ambulance driver, totally unfamiliar with the backroads to the flying sire, was now lose. By the time he arrived, an hour had passed.

RULE NUMBER THREE Don't assume char because yo u have called an ambulance char yo u can leave rhe phone. Seay close, give chem yo ur number, call again, and keep crack of rhe ambulance. My wife was eventually taken to the hospital, along wirh the ocher pilot who broke his ankle and another friend who thankfully insisted on sraying with chem. Afrer a couple hours, during which rhey did a brain and neck CAT scan, she was told rhar she was basically okay (after hitting a rocky mountain wall ar 30 miles per hour, face first, with no harness prorecrion , and with no way to even get her arms or legs in from of her to soften the impact). She asked rhe doctor if maybe they should cake some picrures of painful spots in the hip, pubic area and shoulder. Afrer physically probing the areas and asking abour the level of pain, rhe doctor felt sure nothing was broken , chat she would just be very sore for a few days. Ir was reported to ocher pilots at char time chat she was not injured severely and was ready co be released. Everyone was relieved. During chis rime I had been notified of her accident. I was actually in a sailplan e, flying in a comest, in anorher srare. Some 40 miles from the comest center airport I heard my cell phone ringing (I carry ir in my emergency bag for X-C retrieval) . Upon answering I was cold she had been

APRIL 2001

hurr in a paragliding accident, was conscious and on h er way co the hospital. W ith chat I flew the mosr focused and besr flight of my life co gee back, land safely and call the hospital. My wife, almost coo reassuringly, cold me chat she was co be released and chat I did not need co come home and miss the rest of my comest. She sounded confused. I asked co talk co the emergency doctor and informed her chat my wife was prone to shock and that she needed co be watched carefully. I was dismissed as a nervous husband who was our of town. They had decided co release her. Luckily, she fainted crying co give a urine sample just before leaving, and they decided co keep her overnight for observation. Thar allowed me rime co ger back.

RULE NUMBER FOUR Never leave yo ur loved one alone in rhe care of others who do nor know him or her, and who do nor know about the types of injuries pilots might suffer. This is especially important wirh high-impact accidents, as the body scops very suddenly bur rhe internal organs do nor. Hurled forward within the body cavities designed co protect chem, they may rear and rupture. Bruising and swelling occurs, and systems may shut down completely. Most frighteningly, chis is nor easily derecred, and the patient may die in minutes or days lacer. Upon my arrival at the hospital I found my wife in a private room wirh basically lirde if any care. She was nor clear in her chinking or communication, and ir was evident co me that she was in shock. I asked her if she had had any food or water, and she said not much si nce her accident, and I asked why. She said char she faimed from rhe pain when she cried co urinate, so she didn't want co rake any water. She had also experienced nausea and lightheadedness and had been concerned that pain medications would worsen the symptoms. She had years ago suffered a more minor

accident and her breaching had stopped, requiring resuscitation to bring her back. She feared passing our alone and in the hospital. She had been given one ibuprofen after admission co the hospital. Consequenrly, she was deh ydrated and in extreme pain. The most important rule of all: When yo ur loved one is in danger, this rule supercedes all ochers. Do whatever you have to do to get appropriate and immediate care. Lisren to your loved one, to understand what he or she may or may nor need, but remember chat trauma also affects one's ability to think clearly. The injured person, not wanting to be a burden or having underlying fears , may nor want to admit the seriousness of the I11Jury or pam. I was sleep-deprived, upset char they had simply ignored my concerns and her injuries, and was very aware char my wife's life might well be in danger. Everyone seemingly had made a diagnosis and had closed their minds and attention to detail. I started asking questions of the nurses. I had chem call rhe doctors involved. I called rhem myself and asked further questions. They finally started a catheter and considered other rests. I asked co see the rest results and wenr imo the rooms to listen as they did more CAT scans. I asked more questions. I refused co be ignored or created as irrelevant in the decision-making process. I wanted co know with each step what was being done or not done, and why. Finally, perhaps more to shut me up than anything else, they called in someone from rhe "trauma team. " He spent 15 minutes talking to my wife, looked briefly at the scans, and immediately sent her to ICU. She was placed on a monitor, given IV's, created for pain, and readied for possible emergency heart surgery. He apologized to both of us for the lack of proper care thus far, and cold me char not only could I be with her at any rime, but all the time.

swelling, bruised ribs and lungs, much of her body bruised and swollen, and she was beginning to systemically shut down from the overall trauma. Remember, she had almost been released and sent home the day before. Everyone had been told she was okay, so they assumed she was. For months now I have watched her struggle through recovery, physically and emotionally. I observed her fear spread from flying to just being in a car. I sat with her depression, doubt and sense of immortality. I woke her from the nightmares when she moaned and screamed. I helped her from the wheelchair, eventually to a

walker, a cane, and then aided her steps on a short walk as she held onto my arm. We most often kept to ourselves, in her desire to not be around others, to not have to continue reliving the memories of her experience. She was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Accidents Happen, So Why Aren't More Pilots Prepared?

are several things .that pilots .and bystanders can do to assist the victim after an accident. Call for help sooner rather than later. It is easier to cancel help that wasµt needed than it is to regret that they weren't called earlier. I always carry a cell phone with. a fully charged battery in my harness when I fly. Even a delay of minute.s calling for help can make the difference.between life and death or serious disability. Have accurate directions to the accident site. GPS coordinates can be great.for this. Make sure the dispatcher has the phone nmnber of someone at the scene in case additiqnal directions are needed. Have someone go to the nearest major roadway to lead the res.cue crews to the victim. Most rescue helicopters also have multi,.band radi:os ca,pable of trapsmittingon the twotmeterband, so it is a gpod iclea to give the di~patcher the freqµency being ~sed on the $.cene. The. go~l.Qf the "{l;<?ldeJl hoi:1l' .is ro h1~ve the victim ofa serious acciden:t .at a major trauh1a center within on~hour.·.Each·hospital en1er.gen.cy toom carries, a de.signatiqn for what services they can provicle. Level 1 trauma center..s are locat.ed in major metropo!iran areas and have s1..1rgeo11s and anesthesiologists in hospital· 24 hours .a· day. Studies have.consistently shown that victims of tra1..1ma do better if t:hey are transported to a weih-eqt1ipped and staffed trauma center. wlth a high volume of experience. Smaller level 2 a1:1d .3 traumacenters canyaryhig~lyin the resqurces they have. $qn1.e leveL2 (,!enter~ rnayJ;;¢able han&e n1osttra',tµ1a c;i\se~, bur qi.est; level .3 ~<i>$pi~ t~s \¥Ont ~ive th~ physicia~~ qr §!qtt~p~ent nec.~.sary. I.n s:a~~where avtctim is a.long wayfiqq,. .i l¢Vef1 ce1,1ter, vic:tims will often be tak~1:1 tQ ll level 2 Of 3 centerfor. rapicl

RULE NUMBER FIVE

Do not assume that because someone can still move and talk that they are not seriously injured. At the very least, keep observing them, checking in with them, and watching for any changes. Get them to a trauma specialist who will know how to deal with the pain, shock and internal damage. These are the hidden causes of many deaths. When done, the trauma doctor found that my wife had a broken scapula, a broken pelvis and pubis, a torn vein in her heart (the concern was that she had torn the aorta), a blocked bladder from

by Jim Little, MD

A lthough many pilots have witnessed 1"1.accidents, few have a clear idea of the physical and emotional stress involved in recovering from a serious injury. Accidents are inevitable in this sport and it is incumbent on all pilots to spend some time preparing for them. It is ironic that most pilots spend hundreds of dollars on safety equipment like reserve parachutes, back protectors and helmets, but may neglect other essential preparations. I'm amazed to meet pilots who have no health insurance. They will go out and spend thousands of dollars on the latest DHV 2-3 wing and not give a second thqught to what will happen if they get in a serious accident. Even a relatively minor fracture can require a surgical pin or plate to repair, which may cost upwards of $10,000. If you don't have health insurance thro1..1gh your employer, you should buy a basic major medical plan. If you are healthy and don't have any medical problems, you can save money by getting a plan with a high annual deductible (like $2,500 or $5,000). Make sure the plan doesn't include any provisions that would exclude coverage for paragliding or hang gliding. Consider getting a "membership'' in your local air ambulance company. For $40-$60 most air ambulance companies will waive the transportation costs if you need emergency transportation. Often, our flying sites are remote and helicopters will be the only rapid option for trans~ portation to a hospital. The costs of an air 34

ambulance transport can easily run $4,000$8,000. Many air ambulance services have reciprocal agreements with other air ambulance companies so the costs will be covered if you are injured while traveling. All pilots should consider getting some medical trajning. Probably the most comprehensive class is a wilderness firsNesponder course. Check with a local outdoor store or college to see if one is offered in your area. www.wildmed.com also has a schedule and information about courses. First aid courses taught by the American Red Cross are also good, although they tend to emphasize medicalcqnditJo.nsand injuries more commordn ap urban envi-: ronment. Several of theinstruet;ors and people with med~cal trai1,1i4gin.0.ttrdub have also sponsored free fir~t aid c0urses.• I carry a small first.aid kit in my harµess that includes several.rolls of'he.avy~d1..1ty first aid tape (useful for constructing splints if necessary), 4x4 ga.1..lZe bandages, a c:ompact pocket mask for doing n101..1th-to~ mouth, and a space blanket to provide warmth and shelter to. an injurecl pilot. Since I'm a doctor, I also carry a more extensive kit in my car thatincl1..1des IV fluids, bandaging materials, splints and ai~ay supplies. If you have appropriate medical training, you might consid~r "1.oingthe same thing. Inexpensive and compact kits are also available from www,adventµrem.ed,. icalkits;com ot your.local oittdqor store. Despite the best preparations, pi:oper use of safety equipment, and,~,tive pilq.t~ ing, accidents a.re bound tQ happen. Th,ere

RULE NUMBER SIX

Do not assume that someone who almost dies is going to "just get over it." It may take many months to heal, to even discuss what they experienced. They may at first, as a result of a need to sort it out, discuss it repeatedly, and then may shut down com-

PARAGLIDING

pletely. Again, everyone may assume the injured person is fine, because we want to believe it is over. It is usually not that easy. Learn about PTSD and the symptoms, and be supportive during the recovery. It is a long and difficult process for everyone involved. The recovery is usually in small steps, some of which trigger setbacks and powerful emotional experiences. Do not hesitate to seek support and even professional intervention. This weekend we drove to the top of the mountain with friends and stood where she had launched and crashed. She stayed for some time, but did not want to watch

anyone launch, especially in the cold, light and switching winter breeze that offered more risk than airtime to all those who craved a "fix" after so long without a flight. We left, to walk and talk about her recovery and courage, and that someday she might want to fly again, starting somewhere very safe and warm, maybe even in sail planes.

stabilization, and then transported to a level 1 trauma center for ongoing care. The paramedics or EMT's who respond to the scene make the initial determination where to transport a patient. Most air ambulance services can only be activated by police or fire personnel. If the injuries appear severe, it may help to suggest to the dispatcher that the helicopter should be activated before ground crews arrive. If there is a trained medical person on the scene, describing the injuries may be adequate. If not, the phrase ''massive deceleration injuries" has been suggested as a useful catch phrase for hastening the response. Remember our goal of getting the victim to the hospital in less than one hour! If an air ambulance is en route, any pilots in the air must land immediately to allow the helicopter to approach safely. It is critical that the doctors and nurses who are caring for the patient at the hospital get an accurate mental image of the forces involved in the accident. Many doctors have probably gone parasailing at the beach on vacation and may picture it as a peaceful, gentle sport. A trauma surgeon who is very experienced at predicting injuries based on the speed and type of motor vehicle accident may not be able to anticipate the injuries resulting from a paragliding accident. Witnesses need some way to relay to the medics and doctors the severity of the forces involved. One rough analogy would be a free fall from a height of 30-40 feet. Keep in mind, though, that a spin or forward movement is often accelerating pilots when they impact the ground, so the forces involved may be substantially higher. Try to keep the victim calm and

relaxed. One rescuer should kneel at the victim's head and place two hands on either side of their head or helmet to keep the head and neck from moving. This rescuer must be able to remain calm and reassure the victim. It doesn't matter what you talk about; in fact, often it is best to talk about something to take their mind off the accident. A victim who is speaking clearly has an open airway and is conscious, which is important information about their condition! Don't move the victim or remove the helmet unless it is absolutely necessary to open their airway, stop major bleeding, or perform CPR. It is beyond the scope of this article to teach first aid. But there are several clues that can suggest major injuries, which should be promptly evaluated in a hospital. These include loss of consciousness, confusion, loss of memory, difficulty with breathing, coughing or vomiting blood, pain in the neck or back, loss of sensation or movement in any extremity, abdominal pain, or an obvious angulated fracture of the upper arm (humerus) or lower leg (femur). Having the knowledge, skills and equipment to respond to an accident can make it less traumatic for both the victim and the rescuers. The person you end up helping may be your friends, family members, or yourself.

APRIL

2001

RULE NUMBER SEVEN

Never underestimate the human spirit and the great passion for flight. 11111

Jim Little is a P3 pilot and family physician in Portland, Oregon. He is certified in Advanced Trauma Life Support and has also worked as an emergency medical technician. 11111

2000 U.S. Paragliding Accident Summary by Paul Klemond (paul@kurious.org)

ere is the annual summary of paragliding accidents reported to the USHGA that occurred in the U.S. last year (2000). The purpose of this summary is to share both factual information and my interpretations to help pilots improve their decisionmaking, thereby preventing future accidents. USHGA received 43 reports of accidents that occurred last year. This is a typical number of reports, and I estimate that only one in four accidents are reported. To obtain a form for reporting an accident that you experienced or witnessed, visit the USHGA website atwww.ushga.org or call (719) 6328300. PHASE OF FLIGHT Landing accidents continued to decline last year, while in-flight accidents were up dramatically. A lot of in-flight accidents involved losing control of the glider while either thermaling or inducing maneuvers or aerobatics without instructional supervision. Here is a breakdown showing the phases of flight and their relative likelihood of resulting in an accident: Phase Kiting Launching In~Flight Landing

2000

1999

1998

2% 20% 52% 25%

8% 27% 27% 39%

6% 23% 26% 45%

In the above table, kiting means the pilot is clipped in, does not intend to leave the ground, and is lifted or dragged by the wind. Launching accidents include any accidents in which the pilot intentionally initiates a launch but has an accident before stabilizing in flight. Relevant factors often include marginal conditions in which flight should not have been attempted, the pilot using his or her hands to get settled in the harness instead of piloting, and incorrect pilot input to prevent loss of control. Marginal conditions are often but not always detectable on launch, and were a factor in at least 20% (one out of every five) reported incidents. In-flight accidents occur after the pilot has launched successfully, did not intend to

land, but lost control of the paraglider during flight. Common factors include turbulenceinduced collapses and aerobatics or maneuvers such as B-line stalls. Landing accidents occur after the pilot has decided to land. The most common factors in landing accidents last year were hazardous terrain obstacles, turbulence in the landing zone, and poor flight planning resulting in a forced landing in an unsafe area. NATURE OF INJURIES Here is a breakdown showing the nature of injuries sustained in reported accidents:

2000 Injury Back Ankle Foot Pelvis Knee

Arm

1999

1998

Qty% Qty o/o Qty% 12 38% 12 29% 5 23% 7 22% 7 17% 4 18% 5 16% 7 17% 5 23% 4 13% 3 7% 3 14% 4 10% 2 9% 2 6% 2 6% 5 23% 3 7%

Note that in some accidents the pilot sustained more than one of these types of injury. Back and pelvis continue to be among the most common and most severe injuries reported. Several non-injury incident reports indicated that foam back-protectors helped avoid serious back and/or pelvis injuries. Ankle, foot and knee injuries remain common. Several such reports indicate that overweight pilots and tandem passengers may be at greater risk for ankle injuries during launching, landing and landing following a reserve deployment. QUALIFICATIONS OF INJURED PILOTS Pilots of all skill levels Rating are injured in accidents that are reported every No Rating year. Here is last year's Beginner (Pl) breal<down by rating: Novice (P2) A startling number Intermediate (P3) of reports last year Advanced (P4) involved "self-trained" Ma$ter (P5) pilots with no ratings.

All of these victims were men who obtained equipment and chose to avoid instruction. Most if not all were approached by USHGA members and advised to seek instruction before their accidents. While paragliding is legal without any training or ratings, the accident rates prove that instruction from qualified USHGA instructors improves safety and reduces the likelihood of accidents. If you have the nerve, it may help to approach a "self-trained" pilot and advise them of their increased risk of injury. FATALITIES We were very fortunate to have had only one fatality again last Year # of Fatalities season: 2000 1 The one fatality 1999 1 last year 4 1998 involved a 4 1997 novice pilot 4 1996 "scratching" for thermals at a low altitude (~ 150 feet) on the lee-side of a ridge. Turbulence collapsed 50% of the wing leading to a loss of control and impact with the ridge. FACTORS (CAUSES) Many accidents are attributable not to one specific cause but to a number of contributing factors. Here is a summary of factors involved in the accidents reported in 2000. It is difficult to identify all relevant factors for most accidents, therefore the numbers below should be viewed as minimums: TANDEM ACCIDENTS Four tandem accidents were reported in 2000 versus eight in 1999 and four in 1998. There were no tandem-related fatalities. One tandem accident did require deployment of the reserve parachute. INSTRUCTORS Instructors as a group continued to show strong improvement in accident reporting in 1999. This is especially important since few students are familiar enough with the

Inc. 16% 9% 25% 23% 23% 7%

1998

1999

2000 Pop.

723 659 338

Inc. 6% 17% 29%

11% 11% 3%

Pop.

Inc.

Pop.

NIA 5% 39% 27% 25% 4%

PARAGLIDING

Factor

2000

Cases 16 14 8 8

% 47% 41% 24% 24% 21% 18% 12% 9% 9% 6%

1999

1998

Cases % 12 25% 12 25%

Cases % 6 19% 4 13%

gram for everyone.

PLEASE REPORT YOUR ACCIDENT If you have or witness a paragliding accident, or even 6 13% 2 6% just an "incident" that others 10 21% 7 5 16% could learn from, please take 2 6 4% 8 26% a few minutes and report it 4 to USHGA. You can get a 11 23% 2 6% 3 report form from any 0% 0 I 3% 3 instructor or from USHGA 4% 2 2 3 10% (l-719-632-8300), or you 4 8% 2 6% 3 10% can use the Web at 2 6% wvvw.ushga.org. USHGA 2 6% will give you a $5 merchan2 6% dise coupon for each report Illegal- No Visibility 2 6% you submit. All reports are 1 4% Tangled Lines 3% 2 3% anonymous. There are no 0 0% 6% 2 6% Dragged 3 risks or consequences for submitting a report. Paul Klemond has been the volunteer chair of USHGA to even know that accidents should the USHGA Paragliding Accident Committee be reported, much less how to report them. for three years. He can be reached by e-mail at Just a reminder to instructors: IP paul@kurious.org. Starting this year (2001), Administrators do not have access to accident Dr. Jim Little will be taking over this role. His reports, so please report your accidents to help us identify ways to improve the instructor pro- e-mail address is littlej@ohsu.edu. Ill Collapse Strong Thermals Equipment Mainr./Prep. Flight Plan Failure Marginal Conditions Instruction 360 Close to Terrain Ridge Soaring Mid-Air Collision Aerobatics CompWlng Leg Straps Unbuckled Maneuvers - Induced Trim Tabs I speedbar

PILOTING TIPS Many ideas, tips and tidbits ofadvice flow throughout the paragliding community. Some are obviously useful and some we question or disregard. Here are some that you can bank on, because each ofthese is a lesson learned.from more than one actual accident lastyear.

• Foam back protectors are saving butts, and vertebrae and physical therapy bills too. They don't prevent all back injuries but they do prevent some. .. Dead radio batteries really do contribute to injuries by failing to help prevent accidents with timely, critical advice. • Good hang glider pilots don't automatically know how to paraglide. Swallow your pride and go get some lessons. • Wingovers at high altitude risk a reserve ride. Low wingovers risk fractures, paralysis and death. Everyone who does this thinks he's a good enough pilot. " Don't count on 911 in rural areas. Learn the phone number and/or radio frequency for the med-evac rescue squad nearest to the flying site before you fly. • Sooner or later your wing will show you some very unfamiliar, possibly violent

APRIL

2001

behavior, and it could injure or kill you. I strongly encourage attending qualified instructors' maneuvers clinics. (Other respectable opinions discourage this. You decide.) • When you need to find a thermal you can get away with ridge soaring and doing 360's close to the terrain (say, less than 300 feet.) When you get the thermal, it's thrilling and cool and seemed necessary, but sooner or later this behavior really will probably injure or kill you. Stay away from the terrain while you hunt for lift. Low is for landing, not scratching. • You're more likely to think more clearly and make better contingency plans and decisions right now when things are fine. " Keep striving to better understand what people mean by the words "active piloting."

Oregon XC distance record of 83 miles set by Rick Higgins on an APCO Allegra!

Unofficial State Cross-Country istance Records by Steve Roti

This is the fifth year Ive updated the paragliding state distance record list, and this year I've got five new straight-distance records to report: Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming. olorado: Jeff Cristol's 120-miler from Gold Hill, Telluride smashed the five-year-old record of 8 5 miles set by Peter Kloepfer from Lookout Mountain. Jeff spent eight hours in the air, longer than any other flight on the list. He flew from Telluride over the Wilson Range to Mesa Verde National Park, then the Ute Indian Reservation, then past the Four Corners National Monument to land on a mesa

above Round Rock and Rock Point, Arizona. Equally as impressive as the flight is the fact that he accomplished this on an Advance Epsilon III, which is an AFNOR Standard and DHV 2-rated glider. Idaho: Honza Rejmanek's 101-miler from King Mountain broke the old record, a 69.1-mile, three-way tie between Jeff Ames, Bernard Winkelman and Othar Lawrence that was set during the U.S.

National Championships at King Mountain in 1997. Honza launched at 1:00 PM and landed at 6:35 PM at the south end of the city of Salmon. Winds were light and south-southwest. His maximum altitude was 15,600'. The last 25 miles were flown in residual lift under cloud cover, and the last seven miles were pure glide with less than five-mile visibility due to forest fire smoke in the area. The old record was set on 8/22/97 and the

UNOFFICIAL STATE CROSS-COUNTRY DISTANCE RECORDS -

STRAIGHT DISTANCE

Pilot

Du 1:

Takeoff Site

Date

Wing

Jeff Bennett

2hr35

Cobb Mountain, AK

5129/96

UP Vision

Brandt May

111.1

4hr

Merriam Crater, AZ

6/13/99

Advance Omega

Tony

139

223.8

7hr

Pine Mtn., CA

8/27199

Firebird Flame

Jeff Cristo!

120

193.1

8hr

Telluride, CO

?l??/00

Advance Epsilon III

54.7

3hr15

Makapuu Light., HI

1/11/99

Ventus

101

162.5

5hr35

King Mtn., ID

8/23/00

Edel Sector

85.3

3hr35

Spring Hill, MN

6/15/97

Edel Saber

Peter Swanson

54.7

3hr30

Morrell Lookout, MT

8/12/97

Edel Sector

Maze

43.6

70.2

3hr16

Del. Water Gap, NJ

4/11/98

Edel Saber

Will Gadd/T

179.9

289.6

6hr

Hobbs, NM

5/30/98

Firebird Cult

Honza Rejmonek

77.3

6hr18

Slide Mrn., NV

7/16/95

Edel Rainbow

Chirles Warren

54.1

87.1

3hr24

Hammondsport, NY

5/17/98

Edel Saber

83.6

134.5

4hr03

Black Cap, OR

7/01/00

Apco

Jim Maze

66.2

106.6

4hr20

Kirk Ridge, PA

5/16/99

Advance Sigma 4

Bill Belcourt

154.1

248

5hr55

Snowbird, UT

9/15/00

Ozone Proton

Mark

120

193.5

6hr15

Chelan Butte, WA

8/02/97

Jon Hunt

130.4

5hr30

Afton, WY

7/14/00

Target

IT indicates a tow~faunched flight .........................

PARAGLIDING

new record on 8/23/00. Looks like the latter part of August is the right time to be at King. Oregon: Rick Higgins broke his old record flying again from the Black Cap launch in Lakeview. In July of 1997 he flew 75.4 miles north and in July of 2000 he flew 83.6 miles north. It looks like Rick has that route along Highway 395 figured out. He flew from Black Cap to Tague's Butte and Abert Rim, where he got to 13,700'. That was enough altitude to glide the length of Abert Lake, then he climbed out again from 200' AGL and eventually landed near Iron Mountain and Big Stick Road. (I wonder if that name comes from Teddy Roosevelt's old saying, "Walk softly and carry a .... ") Rick did all this on an APCO Allegra which is an AFNOR Standard and DHV 1-2 wing, proving once again that you don't need to be flying a hot glider to make good cross-country flights. Utah: Bill Belcourt went big in Utah, setting a new record of 154.1 miles from Snowbird. Not only was the launch site the same as that for the old record (a twoway, 90-mile tie between Bill and Todd Bibler), but the date (9/15) was exactly the same. In addition to Bill's big flight that day, Todd flew 150.4 miles, Dale Covington flew l 00 miles and Bo Criss flew 72 miles. All four of them got high, APRIL

2001

in the 15,000' to 18,000' range. Bill's comment when he sent me the flight report was, "You should come down for this next year; it's really good." You heard it here, Snowbird is the place to be in mid-September. Uyoming: In Wyoming Jon Hunt flew 81 miles from Afton on July 14 to break his own 77-mile record. He flew five and a half hours and reported "the temperature at nearly 18,000' was -11 degrees C -- brrrrr." Jon's flight took him over five different mountain ranges before he landed on top ofTogwotee Pass (elevation 9,580') near the highway going to Dubois. Jon was flying his Pro-Design Target again, presumably the same one he used to set the previous record in 1999. If he keeps doing flights like this he's going to wear that one out and need a new glider soon. [f your flight should be listed here and it's not, it's only because I wasn't aware of it. Send me information about flights that should be on the list and I'll update it periodically. You can e-mail cross-country flight reports to me at sroti@qwest.net, or send them by U.S. mail to P.O. Box 8989, Portland, OR 97207, or phone them in to (503) 284-0998. Be sure to include your name, miles flown, duration, takeoff site, flight date, and make/model of glider. II

Continued from page 23. "Having rhe pivor point in exacdy rhe righr place produces a well-balanced harness char makes rurning easier and better coordinared, and also allows oprimization of body posirion when accelerated, head neither too low nor high." Afrer flying with ir for several days I am convinced thar this is absolurely true. The pivor point adjustment affects rhe roll srabiliry of rhe harness. The furrher forward you move rhe hang straps on rhe load-spreader bar rhe more roll stable it becomes, and the further back, the pivot point becomes closer to your hips, making it more weight shift sensitive and dynamic. The three-pulley-per-side accelerator sysrem is fully integrated, and when rhe speed bar is fully extended the middle pulley under the seat is pulled upward , flattening out your body position to make you even more drag resistant. The NSD Freesryle harness is lightweight and has a small pack volume, which is great with no sacrifice of back protection. I feel it can be flown with ease by anyone in any conditions they might fly in. As with most harnesses built today it is equipped with the Safe-T-System in case you launch with your leg straps undone - heaven forbid! However, it does not have hip protection. After two days of flying the NSD Freesryle and a nonstop, two-hour kiting session, I went home and threw my custombuilt harness in the crash. I feel chat the NSD 1s a true step above anything I have seen on the market. The bottom line here is chis: Are my launches and landings smoother? Yes! Am I weight-shifting better and more effectively? Yes! Am I feeling more and responding better? Yes! And most important of all, Am I having more fun flying with this harness? Absolutely! There is a lot of ralk going on about becoming one with your glider, and I would like to suggest that this is a very comfonable harness that will allow you to do exactly rhac. In closing, here is whar

Front view ofharness, storage compartment under seat.

Orhar Lawrence has to say abour his NSD Freesryle harness: "I chose rhe NSD Harness because I need somerhing I can fly for hours on end on a nice X-C, bur ar rhe end of char X-C I need to be able to rhrow down wirh so me fun cricks. This harness has rhe srab ili ry and comfon I demand for chermaling, while reraining incredibly responsive weight shift necessary for aerobarics. This harness keeps rhe pilor in the perfect body posirion, a semi-reclined posrure, allowing the pilot to have good awareness of his glider and surro undings. All around ir's rhe best harness I've had." •

PARAGLIDING

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PARAGLIDING ADVISORY: Used paragliders should always be thoroughly inspected before flying for the first rime. If in doubt, many paragliding businesses will be happy ro give an objective opinion on the condition of equipment you bring them to inspect. BUYERS SHOULD SELECT EQUIPMENT THAT IS APPROPRIATE FOR THEIR SKILL LEVEL OR RATING. NEW PILOTS SHOULD SEEK PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTION FROM A USHGA CERTIFIED INSTRUCTOR. PARAGLIDERS ADVANCE OMEGA IV 28 -- Good condition, blue/white, 170-230lbs $900. Joel (760) 753-7499, susanitadelrio@yahoo.com ADVANCE SIGMA 4 26M Immaculate! Blue/white. ONLY ten flights/5 hours. Retails for $3,600, asking only $1,600! Spring is near; buy it before I fly it! (303) 638-4052, devietti@hotmail.com APCO FIESTA - DHV I $1,999. Apco Allegra DHV 1-2 $2,800. Apco Simba DHV 2 $2,900. SupAir harness $425. Flytec 4005 vario $399. Hanwag boots $225. (541) 387-2112, Rick Higgins, SunSportsPG@aol.com, Mark Telep, rhatspec@hormail.com AIRWAVE XXX - Competition rated, large, 95120kg all up, blue, 2 years old but good condition with only 30 hours, because of change in UK comp rules $450. Enquires to ansbkhan@yahoo.com

EDEL ATLAS - Large, excellent, yellow, 20 hours $1,750. SupAir harness $300. Reserve $400. ADI radio $200. Helmet, large $ 1 50. (516) 431-5453, vincc_donohue@yahoo.com 1:'IREBIRD BOOSTER - Large, 80-105kgs., DHV 2, excellent shape $2,350. (406) 439-2239. Details at http://hometown.aol.com/hiplainz (click on "Equipment Specials and Used Gear".) GIN BOLERO - XL, 105- l 25kgs., DHV 1. Beautiful condition $1,750. (!l06) 439-2239. Details at http://hometown.aol.com/hiplainz (click on "Equipment Specials and Used Gear"). NOVA XACT 25 - Perfect condition, 10 hours, has nor been flown since recent annual inspection $2,000 OBO. Larry (650) 948-2100. OZONE PROTON - DHV 2-3, medium, 80-105kg all up, safe performance wing, good condition, white/blue. $1,200 OBO. I am over the weight range, therefore am moving onro a larger wing- (978) 3686246, davidm@iwinclsurf_com PRO DESIGN EOLE 31 - 28 flights, green top/white bottom, 80-100kg. Supair Profeel Cygnus harness with detachable airbag; ventral packer w/High Energy chute; Sol large helmet; Pro Design rucksack. A complete beginner/intermediate package $2,400. (650) 373-2849, George.Sllter@flysfo.com, San Francisco.

US VOILES WILLIWAW- Large, 92-115kgs., AFNOR Standard. Well cared for and in good condition, recent inspection $800. (406) 439-2239. Details at http://hometown.aol.com/hiplainz (click on "Equipment Specials and Used Gear"). POWERED PARAGLIDERS ADVENTURE Fl - Excellent condition, 1996. electric start, Apco Perf 1 canopy 1 hour, Perf 2 canopy 30 hours, tnedium harness, 1 hour airtime on motor $5,000 OBO. (719) 687-5139, mountainsky l@juno.com ADVENTURE F3 1998 15 hours, total package ready to fly $4,800 OBO. (518) 745-5841. NEW "FLY" TRIKE - With harness, "Francie" wings size large, 2 hours, engine not included $1,600. lotnia@core.com EMERGENCY PARACHUTES CANOPY REPAIRS - 30 years experience, factory quality repairs, 3 FM Master Parachute Riggers. l800-526-2822, gear@paraequip.com HARNESSES BRAND NEW EDEL - $250 OBO. AT harness, great shape, w/chute $450 OBO. (505) 286-3871, flysharp l@aol.com

r------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------,

I I 1

I I

USHGA CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ORDER FORM 50 cents per word, $5.00 minimum Boldface or caps: $1.00 per word. (Does not include first few words which are automatically caps.) Special layouts or tabs: $25 per column inch. (phone numbers: 2 words, P.O. Box: 1 word, E-mail or Web address: 3 words) photos: $25.00, line art logos: $15.00 (1.75" maximum) DEADLINE: 20th of the month, six weeks before the cover date of the issue in which you want your ad to appear (i.e., September 20 for the Nov. issue). Prepayment required unless account established. No cancellations or refunds allowed on any advertising after deadline. Ad insertions FAXed or made by telephone must be charged to a credit card. Please enter my classified ad as follows:

Number of months:___________ SECTION

: : : 1

O Paragliders

O Towing

O Emergency Parachutes O Parts & Accessories iJ Business &Employment 0 Miscellaneous O Powered Paragliders O Videos

O Schools & Dealers O Ultralights O Publications &Organizations O Wanted O Harnesses

Begin with _

issue and run for _ _ __

consecutive issue(s). My J check, 0 money order is enclosed in the amount of$ NAME: ADDRESS: CITY: _____ Number of words: _ _ _ _ _ _ @$.50 =______ Number of words: _______ @$1.00 =____

I I I

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ STATE:

PHONE: USHGA, P.0 Box 1330, Colorado Springs, CO 80901 (719) 632-8300 fax (719) 632-6417

I I I

I I I I I

I I I

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PARAGLIDING

SCHOOLS & DEALERS ARIZONA DIXON'S AIRPLAY PARAGLIDING - Dixon White: USHGA's Instructor of the Year! Airplay: Top ranked school f,ir years and featured in the best selling videos "Srarting Paragliding", "Weather to Fly" and the "Art of Kiting". Perfect beginner training areas at both our Arizona and Washington locations. /\rizona\ "best" beginner season is September through May. Washington is "best" between May and September. At both locations drive-up to .'360 degree treeless and rockless launches. Land in wide open fields, enjoy many flights each day! Limited access to the !'light Parks reduce traffic and crowding. Excellent individualized instruction with state-of-the-art lesson plans and equipment. Comprehensive ground schooling with an emphasis on micrometcorology. Crea new/used inventory, specializing in Windtech Paragliding Cear and M2 Harnesses, repair center, and superb customer service. In ARIZONA or WASI-ll\JCTON appointments arc required. 1'0 Box 2626 Flagstaff'. AZ 8600.i. (520) 526-4 579 www.paraglide.com or dixon@lparaglidc.com CALIFORNIA AIRJUNKIES PARAGLIDING - Join KEI\' BAIER for your "Pursuit of Paragliding Excellence" in the land of year-round, excellent paragliding: Southern California and the Baja. Courses f'or Novice, IncermcdiaLe, Advanced and Instrucror raring\. Powered paragliding, soaring and maneuvers clinics, guided tours, tandem and rowing instruction and special events. USHGA certified. Handling the latest equipment. Call (760) 753-2664 for information.

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MAUI WOW WEE - Proflyght Hawaii, first school in Hawaii, located on Maui, is now under new ownership. The best just got better. When it gets cold in the north, Maui is the place to fly, explore, relax and/ or learn to fly. Team Proflyght sports an incredible training facility, wonderful year-round weather, 1,000' training slope, 100' to 7'000 vertical decenrs off Haleakala Crarcr (10,023'). Toll Free 877-GO-FLYWWW.PARAGLIDEHAWAJI.COM

PARACI.IDINC AND HANC CI.IDING certified instruction, tandem flight instruction, sales, service, repairs, parachute repacks, motorized pg/hg instruction and .site tours. Southern California Importer i'or PARATFCH, AIRWAVE and EDEi .. Visa and MasterCard accepted. Call (858) 452-9858 or wll free at 1-877-FI.Y-TFAM. Check us out at and order on-linear http://www.llytorrey.com COLORADO

COLORADO'S PREMIER PARAGLIDING SCHOOL Over 30 years of combined paragliding experience COLORADO'S PREMIER PARAGLIDING SCHOOL - We focus on teaching comprehensive ies.'IOt1.\ to make you a safer, confident and co1npetenr pilot. Offering almost every equipment brand. Denver aru (lO.l) 579-9971, rmparagliding.com

ERS - Put your knees in our breeze and soar our 4 50' sand dunes. FULL-TIME SHOP. Cerri/Jed instruction, beginner to advanced, foot launch and row. Sales, service, accessories for ALL major brands. VISA/MASTERCARD. 1509 E 8th, Traverse City Ml 49684. Offering POWERED PARAGLIDING lessons & dealer for the Explorer & used units. Call Bill at (231) 922-2844, rchangglider<1iljuno.com. Visit our paragliding school in Jackson, Wyoming. Call Tr,tcie at (307) 739-8620.

HIGH l'I.AINS PARAGI.IDING - Spring has sprung and the flying party has begun! Call us about the DHV 1-2 Carbon, Nova's new "free ride" wing. Mark rook it X/C in Nepal, and can tell you all about it. High Plains also sells Sup'Air, Advance, Flyrec, Apco, Renschler and more. Sec them all on our web site (http://hometown.aol.com/hiplainz) or call us at (406) 439-2239. FLY ABOVE ALL - Experience year-round paragliding instruction in beautiful Santa Barbara, CA 1 Our friendly, experienced sraff offers hands-on, personali,.ed, radio-controlled lessons. Enjoy soaring the best training hill in the Western US and when you land, shuttles will wl1isk you back to the top for your next scenic flight. USHCA certified, solo, tandem and powered paragliding instruction, equipment sales and tandem flights. Visit our Website ar www.flyaboveall.com or call at (805) 965-373.l. HICH ADVENTURE - Paragliding, hang gliding ;}Choo!. Equipment, sales, ;}ervicc at world famous Marshal Peale USHG/\ tandem instructor: Rob McKenzie. By appointment year round (909) 8838488, www.flyrandem.com

APRIL

2001

HAWAII'S PARAGLIDING AND KITE SURFING shop is now open. Come fly where the sun always shines and the wind always blows with USHGA TANDEM INSTRUCTOR PETE MICHELMORE and MARC "NALU" HILL and PWC'S PETER BRINKEBY (Edel) in beautifi_tl Kailua, Hawaii. Fly the famous MAKAPUU sea cliffs, 80km out and return flights are possible at 3,000ft rnsl and land on WHITE SAND BEACHES. Our complete PARAGLIDING and KITE SURFING shor, is located just one block from the Kailua beach. Look us up on the weh ,lt www.paradiseparagliding.com or www.gravirysports.org. Start your HAWAIIAN EXTREME VACATION NOW! Call (808) 261-SURF.

ADVENTURE SPORTS - Sierra soaring at its best. Tours and tandems available. Instruction from certified USI-IGA instructors with 25 years experience. Sales, service and instruction by appointment Carson City/Lake Tahoe NV. (775) 883-7070 lmp://homc.pyramid.net/,tdvspts

AIH. SPORTS USA - Lessons, service, equipment. Paragliding, hang gliding, powered paragliding, trikes. Phone (718) 777-7000, WWW.FLYFORFUN.NET

NORTH CAROLINA

OREGON

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OVER THE HILL PARAGLIDING/PPG: Now celebrating IO years in business. Oregon/SW Washington Sales/Service/beginner/advanced Instruction/Tandem. FREE guide service/advice. We have ANY brand related to PG /PPG at the BEST prices. THERE IS NO SALES TAX in Oregon. 22865 S.E. Yellowhammer, Gresham OR 97080 (503) 667-4557 email: orhpara@spiritone.com

web: overthehillparagliding.com

FIRST CLASS PARAGLIDING - ln beautiful Jackson Hole. Ten flying sites including the Aerial Tram (4, 1.39 vertical feet). Awesome flying for pilots of all ability levels. Enjoy early morning sled rides, mid-day cross-country flights, and incredible evening glass-off soaring. Instruction-Tandem flights-TowingKite Surfing-Sales-Service. Scott Harris (307) 690TRAM (8726), Torn Barrlett (.107) 690-4948, www.jacksonholeparagliding.com PARTS & ACCESSORIES

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FLIGHT CONNECTIONS, INC. PTT II

FLIGHT CONNECTIONS, INC. (.(

TEXAS HILi. COUNTRY PARAGLIDING INC: - Learn complete pilot skills. Personalized USHGA certified training, ridge soaring, foot & tow launching in central Texas. MOTORIZED PARAGLIDING INSTRUCTION & EQUIPMENT AVAILABLE. (915) 3791185. 1475 CR 220, Tow TX 78672. KITE ENTERPRISES - Foot launch, payout winch tow and powered paraglider instruction too. Training, sales, rentals and repair. Edel, Airwave, Wills Wing, UP and DK Whisper. Dallas, Fort Worth and north Texas area. 211 Ellis, Allen TX 75002. (972) 390-9090 nights, weekends. www.kite-enterprises.com UTAH CLOUD 9 SOARING CENTER - The nation's largest paragliding shop and school. Open for LESSONS, REPAIRS, SALES year round. Next to world famous Point of rhe Mountain. www.paragliders.com. 1-888-944-54.33 or stop by at l 2665 S. Minuteman Drive #1, Draper UT 94020.

• New and Improved • Water/Dust Resistant Push Button • Field Replaceable Finger Switch • Heavier Gauge Wire/Improved Plugs • Increased Strain Relief at ALL Joints Price $119.95. Extra finger switch $19.95 w/purchase. Dealer inquiries welcome. Call (913) 268-7946. MC/Visa. Visit our website at www.f1ightconn.com

HAVE EXTRA EQUIPMENT - That you don't Classified advertising: new know what do with. Advertise in the Paragliding classifieds, $.50 per word, $'i minimum. Call USHGA life for your equipment for details (719) 632-8300, ushga@ushga.org m fax your ad with a Visa/MC, fax (71 'J) 632-6417. and cash in your pocket. Our advertisers appreciate your support and patronage. What a deal! Tell them you saw their ad in Paragliding.

PARAGLIDING

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PUBLICATIONS & ORGANIZATIONS

IS IT SOARABLE? - Be sure with a USHCA Windsok. Made of I. 5 oz. ripstop nylon, UV treated, 5'4" long w/11" throat. Available colors fluorescent pink/yellow or fluorescent pink/white. $39.95 (+$4.75 S/H). Send to USHGA Windsok, P.O. Box 1330, Colorado Springs, CO 8090 l-U30, (719) 632-8300, fax (71 'J) G32-6.!; 17. VISA/MC accepted.

THE ART OF PARAGLIDING - By Dennis Pagen. HOT OFF THE PRESS!!! Step by step training, ground handling, soaring, avoiding dangers, and much much more. 274 pages, 248 illustrations. The mosr complete manual about paragliding on the market. $34.95 +$5.50 s/h. USHCA, PO Box 1330, Colorado Springs CO 80901. (719) 632-8300, fax your MC/Visa to (719) 632-6417, www.ushga.org, ushga@ushga.org

VIDEOS

BALI HIGH, by Sea to Sky Productions. An exotic paragliding adventure on the island of Bali, Indonesia. Great /lying footage. 38 min $29.95. WEATHER TO FLY, by Adventure Productions. A much needed instructional/educarional video on micrometeorology. Dixon White, Master pilot and USHGA Examiner, takes you through a simple stepby-step process showing where to acquire weather d,tta and how to interpret it. For pilots of any aircraft. Learn about regional & local influences and how to determine winds aloft and stability. "Weather To fly" is an over-all view packed with useful details and includes great cloud footage. A straight-forward presentation that is easy to follow. 50 min. $39.95. TURNING POINT - IN ALPINE THERMALLING, by Dennis Trott/Alpine Flying Centre. 50% HG, 50% PG. Discover techniques to tame rhe elusive alpine thermal. Beautiful footage set againsr Europe's n1ost dramatic mountains. Also features comments from top pilots & great animation. 24 1nin

MINI VARIO - World's smallest, simple;r vario 1 Clips to helmet or chinstrap. 200 hours on batteries, 018,000 ft., fast response and 2 year warranty. Crear for hang gliding too. ONLY $169. Mallettcc, PO Box 15756, Santa Ana CA, 92735. (714) 966-1240, www.mallettec.com MC/Visa accepted. UVEX helmets arc the best and .ire now on sale for only $215, you save up to $110 1 Check out http://wwwJun2fly.com/ncws.htm or call 206-32090 IO for more info.

PARAGLIDING: THE COMPLETE GUIDE - By Noel Whittall. Over I 00 color photographs & illustrations, 200 pages, $26.95 +$4.75 s/h. USHGA, PO Box 1330, Colorado Springs CO 80901. (719) 632-8300, fax your MC/Visa to (719) 632-6417, www.ushga.org, ushga@ushga.org SOARINC - Monthly magazine of- The Soaring Society of America, Inc. Covers all aspects of soaring flight. hill membership $55. Info. kit with sample copy $3. SSA, P.O. Box 2100, Hobbs, NM 88241. (505) 3')2-1177

$35.95. STARTING PARAGLIDING by Adventure Productions. Covers basic preparations, weather, proper attitude, ground handling & those first exciting launches. 30 min $29.95. FLY HARD: Viking Films newest release. Rob Whittall, Chris Santacroce & a vintage Buick convertible full of paraglidcrs. Outrageous flying at several west coast flying sites. Meer HC acrobatics champion Mitch McAlcer along the way. Excellenr rock soundtrack, professionally filmed & edited, 35 minutes $35.95. PARAGLIDE: THE MOVIE by Viking 1-'ilrns. Rockn-roll world class competition at Owens Valley. Professionally filmed & edited, 35 minutes $35.95. Call or fax USHGA (7 I 9) 632-8.300, fax (719) 6326417, please add +$4 domestic s/h (+$5 for two or more videos). Grear to impress your friends or for those socked-in days. MISCELLANEOUS

TOWING SPECTRA 12 - Braided tow line $0.18 per foot Minimum 1,200 feet. (702) 260-7950, www.virtualhosts. ner/h,rng.htm GREAT WINDMFTFR' GREAT PRICE! -

The

.Skymate accurately provides current, maximum and

average windspeed over 5, 10, or 1.3 seconds. It will also gauge the cnrrcnt temperature & wind-chill. A convenient pocket-knifC design, accuracy, features, and

price make this the best value in handheld windmeters! Order at www.flyabovcall.com or call (805) 965-3733.

APRIL

2001

FLICHT GUIDANCE AND XC - In the Sierra Nevada, Spain: Horizonte Vertical, www.granadainfo.com/hv I, h v@granadai nfo. com, TeliFax: 011 34 958763408

FAX your classified ad, membership renewal or merchandise order: (719) 632-6417. We gladly accept VISA and MasterCard. 45

~-~ i"l,ql'I-G-1..101r,G "l' e

Pin2gau Austria 1999

$25.00 for each photo. LINEART & PHOTO SIZE NO LARGER THAN 1.75" X2.25". Please underline words to be in bold print. Special layouts of cabs are $25.00 per column inch. AD DEADLINES: April 20th is the deadline for the June issue. Please make checks payable to USHGA. Send to: PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE, Classified Advertising, P.O. Box 1330, Colorado Springs, CO 80901-1330 (719) 632-8300 or fax (719) 632-6417, email jeff@ushga.org with your Visa or MasterCard. STOLEN WINGS & THINGS

1999 WORLD TEAM T-SHIRTS~ We still have a few left. Commemorating the world championships held at Piingau, Austria. Soon to become collectors items' Sizes medium & large, ONLY $10 (in the USA). Proceeds benefit the US Paragliding World Team! Send your $IO ro: USHC roundation, c/o PC World Team '99 T Shirt, PO Box 1330, Colorado Springs C:080901-1350. 1-800-616-6888. VIDEOS, BOOKS & APPAREL~ Call USHGA for your Merchandise order form (719) 632-8300, fox (719) 632-6417. email: ushg,a~"ushga.org, www.ushga.org DON'T LEAVE YOUR GROUND-BOUND EQUIPMENT SITTING IN THE GARAGE. SELL IT IN THE CLASSIFIEDS. CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING RATES The rate for classi11cd advertising is $. 50 per word (or group of characters) and $1.00 per word for bold or all ClfJS. Phone number=2 words, PO Box=2 words, weight range i.e. 137-185lbs=2 words, web site or email address=3 words. MINIMUM AD CHARGE $5.00. A fee of $15.00 is charged for each line art logo and

GIN BOLERO ~ XL Stolen in the MEDl-'ORDWHITE CITY, OR area in August, 2000. Fuchsia color, has damage in center/leading edge, and/or patch, generally in poor shape. Also: XL Pro-Design "Jam" harness, med. High Energy Quantum reserve, Charley "[nsider" helmet XL white, Flyrec 40 IO vario, Alinco DJ-191 2-Meter radio. Contact Kevin l.ee (541) 9551737, thermalcrackcr@bigfoor.com

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS Adventure Productions ........................... 21 Aerolight USA ........................................ 21 Apco ............................................ 35,37,39 Critter Mountain Wear ............................ 7 Dawn Treader ....................................... .41 Flight Design ............................... 10, 13,21 Flytec ..................................................... 17 Hall Brothers ......................................... 21 Mojo's Gear ........................................... 16 Paraborne .............................................. .47

"AMERICAN FLAG" PARAGLIDER ~ Lost by red-X, identical to the one Scott Alan is flying in the inside back cover Paraborne display ad. (407) 9359912, scott@paraborne.com FLIGHT DESIGN S2VT - Two paragliders lose by the US postal service, shipped from CALIFORNIA lo HA WAll parcel post on August 19th, 1999. One large w/purple top, one medium w/orangc top. Lois Hulmes (530) 542-4937.

SkyCo .................................................... 16 Sport Aviation Publications ................... .41 Sup'Air. ................................................. .41 Super Fly, Inc ........................ 2,Back Cover Thermal Tracker .................................... 27 Torrey Pines Gliderport ......................... 17

STOLEN WINGS are listed as a service to USHCA members. There is no charge for this service and lost and found wings or equipment may be called in (71 'J) 632-8300, faxed in (719) 632-6417, or emailed ushga@lushga.org for inclusion in Paragliding & Hang Gliding magazine. Please call to cancel the listing when gliders are recovered. Periodically, chis listing will be purged.

USHGA ......................................... 5, 11,31 Wills Wing ............................................... 9

PARAGLIDING

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