That’s it, I quit. This sport is just too gnarly. Over the years I’ve had about six friends get killed flying hang gliders or paragliders. Its just too depressing and heavy. For me, seeing the dark side of flying just takes all the fun out of it.
Flying has been good to me personally. Sure, in the past fifteen years of soaring I’ve had one big crash where I broke both my arms in half. But the rest of the time has been filled with the greatest moments one can imagine: Flying my Falon over the top of Mount Whitney, jumping off the cliffs of Yosemite twenty times, ridge soaring the coastal cliffs of New Zealand, Mexico, and California, etc. All those trips we’ve taken to Baja twice a year have been really fun!! Go Team ODAS (you know who you are)!! I remember the old days, back when I started, how people would do aerobatics, and even loops, when they’d come out to the LZ. Back when Dino was a regular fixture in the club. When we used to race motorcycles in the LZ, and when I accidently set the gezebo on fire, during one of our “Flaming Paper Airplane Races�. Boy, those were good times!!
I’ve been lucky to have been taught by Joe Greblo, and to have learned a conservative style of flying. In fifteen years of soaring, and over 500 hours of air-time, I never moved away from a beginner single-surface glider, to a more difficult to fly double-surface glider. Though I was constantly teased, and told many times in the LZ by beer-soaked pilots that double-surface blade wings are “just as easy to fly as a Falcon�…I always knew they were full of shit. These were often the same people who would tell me that hang gliding was no more dangerous then driving a car. But, in fact, hang gliding is many hundreds of times more dangerous: each year, one in a thousand hang glider pilots dies flying. And that’s in a sport where the average US pilot only flys less then 20 hours a year.
But having seen a pilot die in front of me in Mexico, and hearing about Richard Seymour and Jeff Craig getting killed…its just all too depressing for a sissy like me. Richard and Jeff were both really great guys. So I’ve decided to hang up my hang-strap. For me, its just not fun any more. You’ll still see me in the LZ mooching beers off my pals, but my flying days are over.
I just want to encourage you all to fly safely, be careful, and error on the side of caution.
Gayle Ellett
....
That's It I Quit...
Moderator: Chip
Re: That's It I Quit...
Hi Gayle,Gayle Ellett wrote:........You’ll still see me in the LZ mooching beers off my pals, but my flying days are over...........
How about driving retrieve for those of us who are learning to fly XC? With your knowledge and experience I'll bet you'd make a great XC driver. I'd rather see you 12,000' below me on a rural highway giving chase and then celebrate 100+ miles out.
FYI - I came back to the sport in April after being away for 26 years and was thinking that the safety record is now 'All That' and in no time it's 1973-1982 all over again, except that it isn't. Statistically, disasters and other random pehenomena tend to occur in clumps rather being evenly spread out over time. This has been the clump from Hades and I hope that's it for decades to come.
Cheers,
Jonathan
-
Gayle Ellett
- Posts: 8
- Joined: Mon Sep 01, 2008 9:51 am
That's It I Quit... more thoughts from a big sissy...
Hi Guys, As a former “Safety Director� of the SHGA Club (and a highly opinionated know-it-all), I thought I’d share more of my rambling thoughts about safety.
I think there are two main compenents to flying safely.
On the one hand…there is the “physical environment�: the LZ, the Take-Off area, and the mountains and powerlines in between. Maybe the wash could be re-graded and widened, etc. But probably the physical environment is about as safe as we can legally make it.
On the other hand…we have the “pilot� part of the equation. And I believe that very little can be done here too, because people rarely change! But I do think some aspects are worth talking about, even if no one really listens.
One thing a pilot can do to improve their safety is to fly an easier glider. Yes,,,people will tease you mercilessly and call you a fagot. I know this first hand, and it stinks. But you’ll be safer. I say this because it's the hot-shot “expert� Hang IVs that do nearly all the crashing, not the students who have basically no experience. To grossly paraphrase a line from the movie “Repo Man�…�The more you fly, the stupider you get�!! And in hang gliding this seems to be true. The next time you’re drinking beer in the LZ watching folks land…you’ll see that nearly all of the wacks, broken downtubes and crashes occur on the grassy Hang IV part of the LZ…NOT where the inexperienced students land down in the wash!! Why is this? Is it really true that the more you fly, the dumber you get? Yes, I think so. I think the number-one factor here is the glider style the pilot chooses to fly: Most Hang IVs are flying gliders beyond their skill level (even thought they have a lot of skill), whereas the students are forced to fly beginner gliders. There is something very wrong with the decisions that Hang IVs are making…if the students do a better job of landing then us hot-shots/super-pilots!! I believe that if you break a down tube once a year, or even once every few years, that you are not skilled enough to be doing what you’re doing safely! Landings that end up with a bent down tube are CRASHES, not “rough landings�, as many people like to call them. They are crashes. If you’ve slammed your glider so hard into the ground that it can’t be flown again without structural repairs…that’s called a “crash�. If you landed an airplane, and sheared a wheel off, everyone would call that a crash and you’d be correctly labeled as an incompetent menace. Landings that occasionally result in a bent downtube are the type of landing (crashing) that can end up breaking your arm or killing you. I say if you’ve bent a downtube in the last year or two…you need to quickly get much much better at landing, or get an easier glider…or at least stop telling your friends and family that you are doing everything you can to fly safely, because you’d be lying. So I strongly encourage people to step down one level in the gliders they fly. But are people willing to do this? Yes…some have already.
Another pilot problem I’ve seen is called “denial�. And it is very popular at the Club. A lot of pilots say “I’m safer then that guy who crashed…because I won’t make the dumb mistakes he made, so I am shielded from accidents�. But you know what? That’s the same thing that Richard and Jeff said…and now they’re dead. Do you think they said “I’m gonna fly recklessly today�? No, they were not crazy loopers who were showing off. In fact, it is very interesting to me that nearly all the disasters we see in flying happen during what we would consider as “normal� flights. Folks just flying normally at their regular site. Its strange and quite worrisome. Sure, you’d expect to see people get hurt if they were flying thru the Gavina Bridge tunnel (as Dino has done successfully), or landing on a small island in the river-filled wash (as I did UN-successfully!), or top-landing Kagel (as I’ve done successfully 7 times), or looping their gliders. But often we see people get hurt just doing what they always do…doing what they consider to be normal, safe flight. Obviously, flying hang gliders is not safe. But it is worth it when you get to soar with the eagles. I just think it is important to realize the flying gliders is dangerous. And I think it is important to stop telling people “Its just as safe as driving a car�, because it is many many times more dangerous then driving.
Is the SHGA Board Of Directors going to release their own accident report on these two fatalities, including all the relevant info like: pilot experience, glider type, site conditions, and some recommendations on what we can do to avoid this in the future? I hope so.
Please consider flying safer. Please consider discusing safety issues more often. Please don’t fear the topic of accidents, its almost a forbidden topic in hang gliding, like if we really talked about it, we’d end up quiting and no new folks would ever join our great sport if the knew how gnarly it is. And I do understand that childish view, I’m a big kid myself. But I belive it is important to really look at ourselves and our sport, and see where there might be room for improvements. How many Hang IVs regularly ask an instructor to critique their take-offs and landings? I’ve done this many times, but I’ve rarely seen other “expert pilots� seek out the advice of instructors. That’s probably because they are afraid of hearing back that there is some room for improvement in their flying technique. I’d rather have my feelings hurt, then my body hurt, but that’s just me.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts, and I’m sure that, as always, most of you will totally disagree with me. But that’s OK…I’m used to it.
Some of my friends have mis-read my “I QUIT� letter, and they think I am quiting because I am now too scared of dying to fly. Nope. I’ve always found flying to be scarey, and I’ve always known you could get killed, and I’ve always had kids, and occasionally a wife. Nope. I’m quiting because it is not fun any more. Its just too “heavy�. The thought of my friends laying dead in the LZ takes all the fun out of it. As we stand around the LZ drinking beer, the blood of our friends soaks the grass at our feet. DAMN! I realize that doesn’t bother most of the pilots, but it really bothers me greatly. But hey…I’m a “sensitive artist-type�.
As an aside: When I used to go on flying trips to the Owens Valley, or Mexico, etc, I never brought an extra downtube with me. I figured that if I crashed and broke one, that missing some flying would help punish me into flying better and safer! Fortunately for me, only once in fifteen years of flying and 1,000 flights, did I ever bend a downtube (that was when I decided to top-land the 22, and I crashed really hard and also bent my leading edge). Even when I crashed in the wash, breaking both my arms in half…I didn’t bend a downtube or even damage my glider, I took all the force with my arms! As I said a few days later “A broken arm will heal…but a bent downtube is bent FOREVER!�. Sadly, I think some pilots took my advice to heart! Oh well, that’s one more reason not to listen to me!
What are your thoughts on all of this?
Gayle “Big Sissy� Ellett
PS: Remember: Where ever you go…the ground is hard!
....
I think there are two main compenents to flying safely.
On the one hand…there is the “physical environment�: the LZ, the Take-Off area, and the mountains and powerlines in between. Maybe the wash could be re-graded and widened, etc. But probably the physical environment is about as safe as we can legally make it.
On the other hand…we have the “pilot� part of the equation. And I believe that very little can be done here too, because people rarely change! But I do think some aspects are worth talking about, even if no one really listens.
One thing a pilot can do to improve their safety is to fly an easier glider. Yes,,,people will tease you mercilessly and call you a fagot. I know this first hand, and it stinks. But you’ll be safer. I say this because it's the hot-shot “expert� Hang IVs that do nearly all the crashing, not the students who have basically no experience. To grossly paraphrase a line from the movie “Repo Man�…�The more you fly, the stupider you get�!! And in hang gliding this seems to be true. The next time you’re drinking beer in the LZ watching folks land…you’ll see that nearly all of the wacks, broken downtubes and crashes occur on the grassy Hang IV part of the LZ…NOT where the inexperienced students land down in the wash!! Why is this? Is it really true that the more you fly, the dumber you get? Yes, I think so. I think the number-one factor here is the glider style the pilot chooses to fly: Most Hang IVs are flying gliders beyond their skill level (even thought they have a lot of skill), whereas the students are forced to fly beginner gliders. There is something very wrong with the decisions that Hang IVs are making…if the students do a better job of landing then us hot-shots/super-pilots!! I believe that if you break a down tube once a year, or even once every few years, that you are not skilled enough to be doing what you’re doing safely! Landings that end up with a bent down tube are CRASHES, not “rough landings�, as many people like to call them. They are crashes. If you’ve slammed your glider so hard into the ground that it can’t be flown again without structural repairs…that’s called a “crash�. If you landed an airplane, and sheared a wheel off, everyone would call that a crash and you’d be correctly labeled as an incompetent menace. Landings that occasionally result in a bent downtube are the type of landing (crashing) that can end up breaking your arm or killing you. I say if you’ve bent a downtube in the last year or two…you need to quickly get much much better at landing, or get an easier glider…or at least stop telling your friends and family that you are doing everything you can to fly safely, because you’d be lying. So I strongly encourage people to step down one level in the gliders they fly. But are people willing to do this? Yes…some have already.
Another pilot problem I’ve seen is called “denial�. And it is very popular at the Club. A lot of pilots say “I’m safer then that guy who crashed…because I won’t make the dumb mistakes he made, so I am shielded from accidents�. But you know what? That’s the same thing that Richard and Jeff said…and now they’re dead. Do you think they said “I’m gonna fly recklessly today�? No, they were not crazy loopers who were showing off. In fact, it is very interesting to me that nearly all the disasters we see in flying happen during what we would consider as “normal� flights. Folks just flying normally at their regular site. Its strange and quite worrisome. Sure, you’d expect to see people get hurt if they were flying thru the Gavina Bridge tunnel (as Dino has done successfully), or landing on a small island in the river-filled wash (as I did UN-successfully!), or top-landing Kagel (as I’ve done successfully 7 times), or looping their gliders. But often we see people get hurt just doing what they always do…doing what they consider to be normal, safe flight. Obviously, flying hang gliders is not safe. But it is worth it when you get to soar with the eagles. I just think it is important to realize the flying gliders is dangerous. And I think it is important to stop telling people “Its just as safe as driving a car�, because it is many many times more dangerous then driving.
Is the SHGA Board Of Directors going to release their own accident report on these two fatalities, including all the relevant info like: pilot experience, glider type, site conditions, and some recommendations on what we can do to avoid this in the future? I hope so.
Please consider flying safer. Please consider discusing safety issues more often. Please don’t fear the topic of accidents, its almost a forbidden topic in hang gliding, like if we really talked about it, we’d end up quiting and no new folks would ever join our great sport if the knew how gnarly it is. And I do understand that childish view, I’m a big kid myself. But I belive it is important to really look at ourselves and our sport, and see where there might be room for improvements. How many Hang IVs regularly ask an instructor to critique their take-offs and landings? I’ve done this many times, but I’ve rarely seen other “expert pilots� seek out the advice of instructors. That’s probably because they are afraid of hearing back that there is some room for improvement in their flying technique. I’d rather have my feelings hurt, then my body hurt, but that’s just me.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts, and I’m sure that, as always, most of you will totally disagree with me. But that’s OK…I’m used to it.
Some of my friends have mis-read my “I QUIT� letter, and they think I am quiting because I am now too scared of dying to fly. Nope. I’ve always found flying to be scarey, and I’ve always known you could get killed, and I’ve always had kids, and occasionally a wife. Nope. I’m quiting because it is not fun any more. Its just too “heavy�. The thought of my friends laying dead in the LZ takes all the fun out of it. As we stand around the LZ drinking beer, the blood of our friends soaks the grass at our feet. DAMN! I realize that doesn’t bother most of the pilots, but it really bothers me greatly. But hey…I’m a “sensitive artist-type�.
As an aside: When I used to go on flying trips to the Owens Valley, or Mexico, etc, I never brought an extra downtube with me. I figured that if I crashed and broke one, that missing some flying would help punish me into flying better and safer! Fortunately for me, only once in fifteen years of flying and 1,000 flights, did I ever bend a downtube (that was when I decided to top-land the 22, and I crashed really hard and also bent my leading edge). Even when I crashed in the wash, breaking both my arms in half…I didn’t bend a downtube or even damage my glider, I took all the force with my arms! As I said a few days later “A broken arm will heal…but a bent downtube is bent FOREVER!�. Sadly, I think some pilots took my advice to heart! Oh well, that’s one more reason not to listen to me!
What are your thoughts on all of this?
Gayle “Big Sissy� Ellett
PS: Remember: Where ever you go…the ground is hard!
....
regrade the wash
Why can't we make some minor modifications to the wash with the small cat/loader we used to link the wash with the grass area? If we could move some of the sand to the rocky areas, we could make the wash much safer.
H4