New Member of Tree Club

[air_medal]

"I saw WSW all day when I checked in the morning, although I have to admit that I didn’t spend a great deal of time gauging every little deviation from what I believed to be good enough. Anyway, I suggest we stick to the facts rather than jump to conclusions based on forecasts that were deemed too unsafe to give the Pulpit a go by some individuals. Sure, crap day, crap conditions, all of that. But sometimes you just don’t know unless you drive there and yell clear. Up on launch we were all making OTB arrangements, it looked that good. Nobody in our small contingent would have taken issues with any of us volunteering to be the wind dummy and nobody took issues with us driving to the Pulpit."

First off; John, glad that you're okay and from what I can gather recovering remarkably fast. Your the Iron Man, dude.

As one who has paid the dues to join the "looked fine, most others though it looked fine, everyone but myself did fine."-club I would like to make a refinement on Matthew's observation:

There are days that are clearly within the envelope for a hang glider at a certain site. If you limit your flying to those types of conditions, you will fly much less often, but you stand a good chance of going your whole flying career without making extra demands on the medical system. This is how professional aviators do it. Mostly because the cost of mistakes in anything bigger than an ultralight are far too terrible to contemplate.

There are many other days - the majority, in fact - where it it is "doable." If you choose to fly on those days you will build hours much, much faster, and increase your chances of earning hero points to boot. You also significantly increase the chances of building up high medical bills. If you fly in these conditions often enough, you WILL get bit. We cannot quantify this statistically, but there is sufficient anecdotal evidence to make any other conclusion suspect.

Matthew, like any good friend, would advocate you fly so far inside the envelope that there is virtually no chance of getting hurt inside of your natural lifetime. I wouldn't berate him too strongly for that. I don't care about you guys quite as much as Matthew does, so I say it is a personal choice and everyone has the right to risk whatever they are willing to risk, provided they don't perform undue harm upon others in the process.

John, from the sound of it you probably saved another hang glider pilot, just as I may have saved a couple of PG pilots who were suiting up when I launched at Woodstock. So we still get to be heros, saving others from making the mistake we made of launching on a day that, as the final results made clear, probably wasn't a appropriate day to be flying hang gliders if you want to keep doing it for a long, long time to come.

-- Joe "titanium" Gregor

[Joe Schad]

Glad you are going to be ok John. Get well and fly again.

Joe

[Matthew]

I'm not advocating anything about not pushing the envelope-- I've pushed the envelope too many times myself. All I'm saying is to check the weather forecast before you go fly. And if the forecast is for cross winds, plus strong gusty winds, plus a 50 percent chance of thunderstorms, then stay home.

Matthew

[eggzkitz]

Bottom line to me is that everyone is smarter and better off for John's candid summary of what happened. The only silver lining in such an unfortunate mishap is that people live and recover to help everyone else be safer as a result. Speedy recovery John, and glad you are (mostly) OK.

[Gene]

Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

[heaviek]

Gene, you crack me up.

John, heal fast!

Kev