[bsquare]

Someone sent me a link to this site. I started reading and had to say whoa! Is this stuff real? Do we have this kind of information on HG somewhere?

http://www.cometclones.com/mythology2011.htm

[Tom]

After reading the comet clones site, you might find this interesting:

http://www.cometcrones.com/

[GuessWho]

You should always go to PGers for the truth about HG pilots.

[J ball]

Holy crap, that dude REALLY doesnt like paragliding..

[Manta_Dreaming]

Well they exclude death by firearm (suicide, murder, military force), so it sounds fairly accurate.

[remmoore]

[knumbknuts]

Ah, Rick Masters.

What a piece of work. He doesn't fly anymore, but he still maintains that site.

Some people have quilting as a hobby. Others collect stamp.

He spends all his spare time telling PG pilots they are going to die in ancient HTML.

[andyh]

I understand that his new hobby is tinfoilhatology

[bsquare]

Hmmm. So there were not 881 paragliding deaths since 2002? There were not 82 paragliding deaths in 2011? Does anyone know what the real number is?

My casual observation over the last couple of years has been that HG death reports run about 6-8 per year. Again this is just from reading the forums on this website and the oz report, but it does seem like a significantly higher number of PG accidents get reported on the OR.

While all, or at least most of the HG fatality accident reports can be attributed to some type of pilot error, and other than aero accidents none seem to be due to failure of the wing.

My perception is that there is an inherent problem with the PG's due to the wing folding up in flight. Is this an incorrect perception? Is the fatality rate of PG's really 10 times that of HG? Just wondering.

[FormerFF]

[jjcote]

[Mavi Gogun]

[jjcote]

[old newbie]

Well in the last few of years hangs in the USA have had the bad fortune of more fatalities then paragliding. Both go up and down but have been fairly close over the years. From my observation paragliding has way more accidents resulting in serious injuries.

Never seen this much carnage at a coastal site with paragliders.
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=25382
What I don't get is if it was that bad why did pilots in the air think their landing was going to be better then those crashing before them? If I look down and see that much carnage I would go land elsewhere.

It is amazing how many bag pilots i know/meet that think hangs are scary and impossible to launch and land. They see season pilots blow launches and landings (or at least make them look dubious) in good conditions. No doubt some of these are pilots that rarely fly anymore and need to practice and learn better methods.

[FormerFF]

[old newbie]

I didn't say or mean to imply there was para bashing.

Collapse is not a wing failure, if they did not collapse things would get real bad. A collapse that is mismanaged or leads to a cravatte or a cascade of events with rapid altitude loss is a failure.

I have never suffered anything beyond a tiny tip tuck on approach. A collapse on approach even a big one will not lead to certain death or injury, sure it could, like I said it is dangerous.

There are other big differences in hang gliding and paragliding, one big one is paraglider pilots don't obsess over hang safety(or claim their aircraft is superior and the only decision that makes sense).

Ram air style of wing? Odd description they are actually starting to make and fly some protos that don't have a bottom surface at all.

Yes paragliders can collapse they are also the only type of aircraft you can reach up grab your risers and collapse 50% of your wing and continue on with your flight as if nothing happened even keeping it in that configuration if you chose.


Steve Forslund

[Paul H]

Actually, some PG pilots claim exactly that. Also, single surface PG's aren't anything new. Some of the original ones, many years ago, were single surface.
When are you going to come fly here again? Maybe we can get you another day at Palomino without the cranking wind so you won't have to have the VG guitar string tight.

[quote="old newbie"]
There are other big differences in hang gliding and paragliding, one big one is paraglider pilots don't obsess over hang safety(or claim their aircraft is superior and the only decision that makes sense).

Ram air style of wing? Odd description they are actually starting to make and fly some protos that don't have a bottom surface at all.


Steve Forslund

[quote="old newbie"]

[Manta_Dreaming]

[old newbie]

Then why don't some of the older bag pilots grouse about hang gliding? Don't buy that argument. Plenty of pilots flying paragliders that are much older then me and I'm 54. It is nice that I see more and more hang pilots that are younger then me. It seemed for a while that all hang pilots were older then me.

Steve

[psuguru]

Every time I pick up my hang glider, I think I might like to try paragliding.
Then I come to my senses.
At Devil's Dyke last summer, I saw the co-proprietor of one of the local PG schools just get away with a collapse and disappearance into the trees at the bottom of the hill. No injuries, no incident report.
Here's the latest incident report of a fatality to a UK paraglider.
http://www.bhpa.co.uk/members/safety/inquiry/index.php?issue=2011_08_28_pg_newgale-beach.pdf

The conclusion in brief is that it was pilot error. The pilot flew a collapsible wing into an area of turbulence that he was warned would collapse the wing. At a height that meant a reserve deployment would be ineffectual.
Rick Masters' interpretation would be that the wing was dangerous because it was collapsible and the PG interpretation would be ....what the BHPA found.

One of the UK sales agents, a long-time HG flier (1973!) has never deployed a reserve from a hang glider but uses his experience of a PG reserve deployment due to a wing collapse in turbulence and it saving his life actually as a sales pitch for the reserve system.

My own attitude to PG flying is that I don't want to do it because of the extra possibility of wing collapse in turbulence, a situation that exists a lot of the time on UK sites.