By the way, the SHGA site recently became off limits to older browsers:

I am not sure if this is due to the Sylmar web team’s own actions or the actions of their hosting provider. Either way, it’s a shame to see.

Corrections to Doug’s post:

1. There is no civil war at ushawks.org.
2.  Doug is not banned from the U.S. Hawks web site. However, we sustained a crippling denial of service attack from several foreign countries, and many of those country codes are currently blocked. If you use an access path through one of those countries, you may not be able to visit our site at this time. If you are having a problem, please contact me directly (you can send me a personal message on this forum if you don’t have any other means to contact me).
3. Frank Colver is not dead and not covered up. I spoke with him just a few hours ago.
4. There is no need to block BobK from posting on this site, and failing to do so will not cause fences blocking anything. Sylmar has been one of the few clubs that didn’t completely lose their mind over USHPA’s near collapse. But insanity is always just one panic away.

Doug wrote:

OP used to say “If there is no video then it didn’t happen”

I guess that rules out the lives and works of Jesus Christ, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln. But logic wasn’t OP’s strongest trait.

It’s been over a year now since all the posts on this forum were trashed. There were early claims that they would be restored in the “near future”, but that has not happened. I offered to host them on the U.S. Hawks for posterity, but that has been rejected as well.

Using OP’s logic, I guess none of those people or their posts ever existed anyway.

Is it any wonder that the sport of hang gliding is dying?

Doug, for the record, I know of no “Factions of Ushawks are looking at having … Air California Adventure take over the USHPA”.

And even if I did, that would belong in another topic.

As for this topic, I remember when I first read the book “1984” by George Orwell. I was still in high school, and 1984 seemed far in the future to a younger me.

The premise of the book was certainly a terrifying future, but I dismissed it as being impossible because it would require so many people to watch all the cameras and change all the history books and magazines and newspaper articles. Such a “Ministry of Lies” would be far too top-heavy to be sustainable.

Of course, I hadn’t grasped the future power of computers at that young age. We will soon have AI “bots” doing all of those things (monitoring us and changing our history) and much much more.

Sadly, it is already happening here at the SHGA. With a few keystrokes, the entire club history – including the voices of those who are no longer with us – has been taken down – “disappeared”. And the vast majority of this club just pretends it didn’t happen.

The warnings of 1984 will become reality through the apathy of those too lazy to stop it.

So what’s been lost by the current SHGA administration?

You can get a glimpse of it here. That shows the SHGA forum home page as of May 17, 2021 at 5:44pm. At that time the site contained 18,961 posts spread across 4,247 topics with 536 members. Here are the breakdowns by forum section:

General Discussion: 2,076 Topics, 10,367 Posts, Last post by Steve90266 May 02, 2021

Safety and Incidents in flight: 224 Topics, 1,391 Posts, Last post by Vrezh May 13, 2021

TFR’s and NOTAMS: 54 Topics, 96 Posts, Last post by BudRob Oct 22, 2019

Flight Discussion: 389 Topics, 1,611 Posts, Last post by gregangsten May 15, 2021

Events: 384 Topics, 1,842 Posts, Last post by Frederick Feb 10, 2021

Club Projects: 48 Topics, 275 Posts, Last post by Frederick Jun 07, 2019

Weather: 51 Topics, 120 Posts, Last post by AlC Sep 06, 2020

Comp Discussion: 103 Topics, 392 Posts, Last post by Chip Oct 02, 2019

For Sale: 298 Topics, 569 Posts, Last post by remmoore, May 14, 2021

Lost and Found: 190 Topics, 330 Posts, Last post by JD, Feb 27, 2021

Flying Politics: 96 Topics, 1,070 Posts, Last post by Bob Kuczewski, Apr 20, 2021

Flying Videos: 256 Topics, 608 Posts, Last post by JD, May 16, 2021

Non-Flying Videos: 46 Topics, 92 Posts, Last post by jfriesne, Jun 29, 2020

Helpdesk: 18 Topics, 49 Posts, Last post by jdevorak Mon Jun 18, 2018 6:50 pm

Doug wrote:

The US election 11/05/2024 has left Northwing Hang Gliders as a “Big Winner” as their federal tax rate will be cut in half to 15% and all of their competitors will have a tariff of $1,000 per paraglider, $1,000 per Mexican Willswing, Up to $4,000 for a Euro Atos.

That’s an interesting observation Doug. It makes me wonder if we might still have WillsWing here in California if Trump had won the 2020 election. We will never know.

Doug wrote:

Ushawks wants to negotiate for Moyes with AUKUS treaty to keep tariff s low but Willswing could move production to England.

I appreciate your thoughts because it’s possible that the U.S. Hawks Board might endorse treaties to keep glider costs low. However, I don’t think either of us (you or I) are authorized to speak for the U.S. Hawks Board. If anyone wants to know any of the actual U.S. Hawks Board decisions, they are available here:

U.S. Hawks Board Decisions

Thanks.

It’s now September. Has there been any effort or progress made on restoring the old forum content?

I started this topic back in May. It’s now July. Doug is correct. There’s more of Rome’s memory left in the fragments of faceless search engines than in the club that he loved and supported during a good portion of his life.

Who was responsible for sitting by silently while history was erased?