Jacks Update

[XCanytime]

From Shawn MacDuff: The newish landowner at Jacks (launch) recently contacted Dennis Pagen and told him that he is nervous about liability with us launching off his property. I was able to speak to him the other night and told him about the waiver we use at our other sites which include state and national parks and never had a problem. I sent him a copy of our current waiver for review and also informed him that each USHPA pilot is insured. He seemed to be OK with that and it doesn’t appear we need to go further and have the site insured at this time.



Therefore, we are encouraging all HG/PG pilots who use Jack’s launch to be a current USHPA member and sign the Hyner waiver which can be found at our website, www.hynerclub.com.



Dave “Spoons” Haughwout is usually at Jacks on good days and will handle the paper work for any visiting pilots. Please bring a signed waiver to Jacks rather than wait for Dave to hunt you down or in case Dave is already in the air. Or better yet, mail the waiver to the address at the bottom of the form since Dave likes to launch early.



The landowner is currently looking to sell his 30 acres at the right price and was open to the idea of selling us just the launch area in order to keep Jacks open so we’ll keep on pursuing that option.

[Matthew]

Huh?


Please provide more info. Isn't Jack's launch on state property? It's a parking area on a state road.

Matthew

[XCanytime]

I guess that the information provided by Shawn indicates that the property line is the guardrail, and once the pilot steps over the guardrail they are on the landowner's property, and thereby launching off of the landowner's property. Contact Shawn MacDuff for more information. Bacil

[hang_pilot]

Hey, Shawn-

Thanks for keeping up relations with the landowner. Of course, signing a waiver to please him is not a hassle. ~Daniel

[hang_pilot]

Duhh, I see now that Bacil posted on behalf of Shawn. So, Bacil, next time you speak to Shawn, please let him know we appreciate his efforts and that we're cool with the waiver.

~Daniel

[pink_albatross]

In Pennsylvania the recreational land use law is in effect. Please point this out to any potential land owners.
Basically they are not liable for any injury received on their property due to letting people use it for recreational purposes, as long as they are not taking any entrance fees for the pursuit of said recreational land uses (i.e. Emma Jane would not be covered, but she's in Maryland anyway).

For exhaustive information, including recent court challenges under this law see the PDF at http://www.dcnr.state.pa.us/brc/RUWLA%2 ... alFpdf.pdf
These deal with swimming pools, for example.
Generally rural, large properties are made pretty bombproof under this law.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. Read the PDF for yourself or better yet, print it out and show it to any Pennsylvania landowner who seems jittery about letting us use their property for liability purposes.
-- ellis

[Danny Brotto]

Maryland has a similar law even specifically calling out hang gliding and other forms of aircraft (so I guess paragliding would also fall under the law.)

https://americanwhitewater.org/resource ... tatute.htm

So HR LZ is covered since the traditional donation has never been an imposed fee.

Danny Brotto

[Danny Brotto]

... of course, this does not mean that someone would not try to sue and end up costing someone legal fees (even if it it thown out of court.) That's what the USHGPA liability program is also about, payout for legal defense of landowners.

Danny Brotto

[XCanytime]

Further info from Shawn MacDuff:

Regarding where the landowner’s property begins at the end of the state owned parking lot, I did suggest to the landowner that technically, we might be on the right-of-way of Jack’s Mtn Road. However, we do stand on his land when we cut his trees down in order have a safe launch slot so I didn’t want to get in a territory fight with him. He and his wife enjoy watching us fly (they live at the bottom of the mountain) so I thought we are getting away cheap with only a signed waiver and left it at that.