Executive Director Article: Winter 2024

50 Years of Training / Then and Now

Martin Palmaz, Executive Director

December 18 marked USHPA’s 50th year as the national association. The most important accomplishment since our inception was the creation of a comprehensive training program that dramatically improved pilot safety and eventually led to the creation of FAR 103. The education program has always been at the core of USHPA’s mission and continues to be the foundation for access to free flight.

At present, USHPA has 17 standing and ad hoc committees. Throughout our history, the Training and Certification (previously Safety and Training) committee has consistently had the largest agenda, attendance, and participation. That is even more true after we added the independent curriculum for speedflying to our catalog in 2022 and created more collaborative work online.

Over the years, the committee and its volunteer members have revised the training materials to keep them current with modern teaching methodologies. Since volunteers have some inherent limitations with other commitments, we’ve decided to dedicate more resources to support this vital evolution of our training programs. In 2024, USHPA will have a new part-time training and certification manager to work with the committee and program manager to create content for these digital resources and support instructors with education and policy.

In 2021, USHPA established an important partnership with glidertraining.org, which provides an immediately available platform for delivering our existing and upcoming training materials. USHPA will develop content for the entire training catalog in hang gliding, paragliding, and speedflying to be hosted on this site. Not only is glidertraining.org easier for our instructors and students to use, but it is provides the online functionality and digital user experience that the next generation of students expect. This online catalog of courses has the added benefit of helping instructors teach more efficiently and builds on a standard foundation of theory and principles.

USHPA is also expanding our internal digital assets (such as digital waivers and online testing) so that more of what instructors, members, and students need to operate and learn is available in a mobile-centric environment.

These and other tools will be coming online throughout this evolution, so keep an eye out for new offerings in our newsletters, social media, and other communication channels.

Thanks for your support over the past 50 years. Here’s to another 50!