Hello, this is Aron – I’m certain most of you do not know me yet. I was introduced to a few members of CHGPA at Woodstock - Mark C. and Tom M. two years ago on New Years Day.; From Hyner Club interactions I know Bacil D., Bob Buchanan, John Middleton, and Charlie Fager. I came there to Woodstock as an H2 in 2019 New Years Day on a road trip with Rob Skinner and Eric Kriner - I didn’t end up flying that day at Woodstock because when Mark C. took me over to see the bailout field the bailout LZ owner threw us out and threatened to have us arrested!!! I didn’t want to chance not making it to the main LZ in my slow glider and then end up in that dreaded bailout field and have to spend the night in jail!!! I do appreciate the kindness and friendliness you showed me as an H2 wanting, and yearning to attempt flying Woodstock…truth is I was not really ready yet to fly there with my level of skill, and with my glider type.
Hyner is my home base for flying HG and I live in the Williamsport PA area. Elmira NY is my home away from home, I'm always going there for the love of flying and the vibrant club activity in the region. I would never have known about Harris Hill or Free Spirit Flyers if it had not been for two people who steered me there. First was Bill Vickery...Bill was at Hyner and I was there just watching and setting up a glider for practice setting it up in the LZ. I could not fly Hyner yet as an H2 because my landing approaches were scary, and I was scared of landing at Hyner due to the tree lined old LZ. My foot launches were not good either. (I had mostly done scooter towing, very little foot launching, and got my AT and H2 at Quest in Groveland FL) Bill informed me about Harris Hill and said that I should go there to practice. Eric Kriner also talked to me about going to Harris Hill. So eventually I reached out and joined up with that club. That was a turning point in my Free Flight flying. The next big turning point for me as an H2 was going on road trips with a some guys you might know (Rob Skinner and Eric Kriner)... and next as a newly minted H3 going on a road trip to GA/TN with some other pilots you might know (Tom Allen and Bob Buchanan...AKA Bunkhouse Bob from Hyner Club & CHGPA). Getting out and doing more flying at new sites is really helpful to progressing in the sport.
Now I’m back in the CHGPA officially but still not really knowing how the club operates and communicates. I sense that the CHGPA is a vibrant club to be a part of and I’m happy to be finding the time to fly more and get down there to fly with you. Woodstock and the Pulpit are on my list for new home away from home locations.
I’ve been talking with Matt Ingram about this little project we are working on… Along these lines I want to share some more ideas with you:
Do you want more flying opportunities in 2021? Do you want more club members? Are you retired from flying and want to stay involved, help out, see flying and read flight reports? We are working on a project that will probably interest you. I’m sharing this basic email with Capitol HG PG Club, Hyner Club, Free Spirit Flyers, Southern Tier Sky Surfers and Rochester Area Flyers - From south to north this is my personal core flying region. In 2021 I’ll probably add several more 30 day club memberships for a road trip with flying friends.
We started with an idea for a road trip to fly more in 2021 and beyond with our wings. The concept grew into collaboration between several pilots which eventually led to the creation of this website http://www.soaringroadtrip.com. We invite you to use the weather alerts and post flying intentions on here that go beyond your club’s boundaries. Doing so opens up the opportunity for H1/H2 and P1/P2 to LEARN as well as all of us pilots to get out spread your wings and fly more. For me personally I set up a separate email account dedicated to flying opportunities so I get all these alerts in one spot. I have so many flying alerts popping up in my inbox this week that I could check out flying 5 or 6 sites that are potentially flyable this week! If I hone in on one opportunity I’ll post my flying intentions, so will several other pilots who are using this website. The rule is to CC (Carbon Copy) the site’s owner club via Google group or their forum as well and join that club if you want to fly there if you are not already a member.
This is going to be a great tool to fly more. Personally I get so many flying alerts now that if I want to drive 4 hours anywhere in a radius from home there are usually 5 or 6 sites I could fly during any typical week. If I only wanted to fly once a week there is usually at least one (likely more) site that is flyable every week within a 2 hour drive of my home base. Hyner which is an hour from me and typically has a good day every week or two. The Flying Alerts tool opens up so many flying options with a minimal amount of work for the average pilot.
I’ve been learning to fly HG for about 6.5 yrs. Romano Almonte started learning about the same time I did. We have been sharing H2 grief stories and flying joys back and forth for about 2 years as we have been trying to progress in the sport to become H3s. The same for Randy Weiss, we have been talking with each other about how to progress in the sport… and we have been talking with more advanced H3, H4, H5 pilots as well. Chris Toomey is a pilot from the NY Finger Lakes region and wants to fly more sites himself plus he has a marketing mindset on getting more potential pilots involved also. Steve VanEerden as a club officer and PG pilot shared his perspectives over time about regional flying and has shared ideas with the group on developing http://www.soaringroadtrip.com. Several pilots are offering ideas on the project and sites to add to the flying sites web page.
When I lost my first HG instructor due to the insurance crisis about 5 yrs ago, I was desperate to keep going as an H2 so I began traveling all over the east coast to different flight parks and finding good instructors and picked up so much good help out there…but I had to drive a long way to do that! Anyone starting to fly, say 7 years ago to now, has probably experienced a lot of what I experienced. It took dogged determination to become a Free Flight pilot and making the time to chase the dream and the weather. It doesn’t need to be this hard for new and potential pilots, we as a Free Flight community need to make it easier to become a pilot.
For me personally some seasoned pilots really helped me a bunch, making introductions and sharing ideas to go to other clubs and flying sites as an H2 has helped me immensely. Pilot talks and flying rehashes over post flying beers and campfires helped as well.
We discovered is that it is really important to fly more often so your skills can continue advancing. When you’re learning, currency in flying is king! You keep building on what you just learned. It gives a newer pilot confidence to fly more sites because each different site you fly challenges you in a different way, the pilots and instructors you meet can give you invaluable insights in just a few words sometimes that changes your methods and makes you instantly a better pilot than before the advice.
We think growing the sport that is currently declining is going to take some extreme measures, changing some mindsets, developing some outside the box thinking and innovation. Romano and I had been independently thinking about this idea “Where can I fly today?” concept for weekends and days off work so you had a shot at getting a flight in every now and then. Then we got more serious building weather tools, and making better use of weather tools already out there. I programmed the Windy app email alerts on my smartphone for all the sites I knew of near me. How seriously I took this was evident to anyone riding in my car-on my HG car dashboard I had a list of flying sites on a paper taped up by the radio that listed the site and the wind direction needed to fly that site. Romano, a genius with web development and computer programming, took a different approach to web crawl the various weather sites for info that would yield flying site weather and wind directions that line up with the launches he knew of. One thing Randy Weiss and I worked on together early on was the idea of a flying road trip in 2021 then we tried to make a template of what info we would want from flying clubs along our anticipated route – we found that if the template contained photos and any available YouTube videos of people flying the site -that would really help us figure out how that site is to be flown, how to set up a landing approach there, etc. Steve VanEerden shared perspectives about PG and also ideas about keeping private club data out of the public domain. So we started putting the pieces together into a package that we could live with and use as pilots. We got together with other Free Flight pilots and brainstormed more ideas and got feedback and started building http://www.soaringroadtrip.com as a tool for pilots built by pilots.
The more we thought back to our own experiences we thought we could weave in some benefits for the sport by trying to alleviate some grief we personally experienced in hooking up with this sport! We want to get more people engaged. Our goal is to get H1/H2 and P1/P2 pilots more flying opportunities…that is key! There are so many H1/H2 and P1/P2 people out there that don’t fly enough so they are sitting on the sidelines…basically orphaned once they quit going to their training facility that is too far away from home and getting frustrated (been there done that!). We need to get those folks out there flying more often. The beaming H1/H2 and P1/P2 pilots are the best chance of the sport’s growth and survival. Their newness and enthusiasm can drive growth IF, IF, IF we get them engaged and keep them engaged! These H2 and P2 pilots need to go fly club sites, they need to know where the sites are and learn to engage with the clubs to fly the sites even if it means driving further to fly to open up more flyable days on their days off work or school. They also need to know where the training hills are. They need to know where the next step up for them to go fly a club site that is H2/P2 friendly might be. In addition to knowing where the H2 and P2 friendly sites are, they need to know where the USHPA Observers are that can help them! Also a key piece of information is the launch direction, wind directions and speeds that work at the sites…which is really key for all of us Free Flight pilots at any stage of our flying careers.
The other HUGE opportunity is to reach out to the public and implant Free Flight as something that an average human CAN fly with the eagles with the training and the right equipment. It is a totally doable life goal and really not that expensive to get into! This website is in the public domain and once we implement search engine optimization it will be readily findable.
You might ask - what if people find out about our flying sites? What about bandit flyers? We thought through that area and had internal arguments (i.e. discussions : ) ) as a development team. We got partway through inputting flying sites and went back to the drawing board to cut our flying site template back to the bare minimum to discourage bandit flying, and instead send potential flyers to the club’s website. We know some clubs have those concerns stronger than others. We looked at the pros and cons. As pilots we want to make flying more sites EASY and finding and engaging with the clubs EASIER! Also we want the public to get to know about Free Flight opportunities and get to know us as pilots, and if there is interest, join us as pilots. We believe that in this information age you basically can’t keep sites secret anymore…between FaceBook, Google, YouTube, Ayvri, Track logs, etc you can’t really keep sites undiscovered any longer, so our best chance of driving potential bandit flyers back to clubs is make it easy for them to engage and join clubs. If you go on Google maps you can find a lot of hang gliding sites that many pilots or clubs think are a secret…they are not. We feel that it is in the best interest of the Free Flight flying community to facilitate flying more sites and steer the conversation about flying club sites, plus steer the public in the right direction through proactive information about Free Flight. We want to drive potential pilots and existing pilots to the clubs and make it easy to get connected. Also in our research we found some clubs that have really easy online payment and online signature methods for waivers, plus 30 day memberships for traveling flyers…that is really great! The easier we make it to do the right thing the less bandit flying we’ll have. One of our biggest challenges as clubs is to convey sensitive site information to would be flyers. We see that many clubs insist on having "Designated Local Pilots" involved on every flying day to control the situation and make the key landowner contacts on private land before flying…that works well! We hope that clubs use our website http://www.soaringroadtrip.com and see how neighboring clubs are handing these sensitive issues. We know how hard it is to keep sites open and to keep land owners happy. We want all pilots to be better informed when they go fly new sites and to connect with the locals and join the clubs and do the right thing for our flying sites.
I didn’t decide to try Free Flight until I was almost 42 yrs old (wishing I started in my teens or 20s). When I look around at 48 yrs old and I’m one of the youngest pilots out there, I see the problem on the horizon. Who is going to climb these mountains, cut these launches, do the other maintenance, mentor new pilots, take on landowner relations, and become USHPA observers in years to come? What does this picture look like 10 years from now? Scary if we don’t do something NOW!
We need innovation in marketing the sport. This next year there is an opportunity to innovate in marketing. Building on what the Virginia Tech Hang Gliding Club did, we have an idea to get clubs more members and get more new students entering the flight schools. We applaud what the Virginia Tech Hang Gliding Club did!
In 2021 an initiative we could do is to create a template for a bulletin board flyer that clubs can use, drop their logo and contact info on and print them out for outreach to universities, sporting goods stores with bulletin boards, ski shops, bike shops etc. basically wherever you can find adventurous people. Some universities may have digital bulletin boards if we share the information electronically they could post it on their electronic bulletin boards.
I personally had an unusual experience - My club President at Hyner asked me to reach out to an interested person in the Williamsport PA area. I contacted her and talked a bit. What I learned amazed me. She wanted to know about hang gliding and heard there was something going on at Hyner PA, she asked her PA Congress Representative’s office about the State Park and hang gliding, and the Representative’s office put her onto the track of Hyner Club, then Brian Vant-Hull the club president contacted me and pilot Will Perez to follow up with her (We did get her to come to Hyner and see some flying, and she may eventually become a student pilot). That struck me as odd that there is such a lack of general knowledge out there about Free Flight and the local clubs running the sites.
Another experience Rochester Area Flyers (RAF) gave me was to help at a display booth at the Finger Lakes Region Trail Days show. I worked the event with my wife Julie along with a HG pilot Marty, and Karl and Katrin both HG and PG pilots. That was a great experience in public outreach for the sport and the club’s HG school. Another pilot in the RAF Chris Toomey managed to get on a radio program with the host and have an interview about Free Flight… a cool idea.
So these ideas on marketing the sport have been percolating for a while with my various experiences, and several shared experiences with other pilots.
With http://www.soaringroadtrip.com we are seeking to increase public visibility, increase pilot collaboration, drive potential students to flight schools, and get existing pilots more information to drive more club involvement, really promoting more flying regionally. We believe it is a cycle: FLY, PROMOTE FREE FLIGHT, INSPIRE POTENTIAL PILOTS, TEACH, MENTOR…Repeat with a new generation of pilots. We hope this website makes that process flow better!
Another aspect we may add to this website is a place to advertise gear for sale cheap or for donation to new students who are just starting out. A couple years ago I was wanting such a thing to exist for Hang Gliding like a “skate swap” I don’t know if your community ever had such a thing but mine did. The PA Army/National Guard had an outdoor ice skating facility open to the public, every year they held a skate swap where you could unload your old skates that didn’t suit you and find upgrades or ones that fit your size for cheap. Used gear, harnesses, gliders, parts, etc that are suitable for beginners donated or cheap would be awesome to add to this website. I see some clubs and individuals that I’m currently involved with trying to procure cheap but safe beginner gliders and gear to help new students get into the sport – a great move!
Pilots who are advancing naturally want to upgrade their equipment, if we keep feeding new potential pilots into the mix get them hooked, progressing, and then eventually desiring to upgrade their equipment we can help keep our great glider manufacturers and other suppliers in the business.
Now that we are up and running with http://www.soaringroadtrip.com we are using it and sharing it with pilots and clubs so they can benefit. We recognize that the website is not perfect, it is a work in progress and we hope to continue improving it. I wanted to say thanks to the clubs and individuals who have already provided photos and videos and those who are still digging through their archives of photos and videos. We still need more added to the website. Any new flying sites that we add in the future we will be looking for photos and videos.
We are going to go back to planning our two-week 2021 road trip “Eastern Mountains Soaring Road Trip” and contacting clubs over time this spring to get our own club memberships lined up and collect more information for our own uses on the road trip. We know some of the information clubs would not want shared with the general public and we will respect that, and that information will not be put on http://www.soaringroadtrip.com.
Conclusion: There was a lot said here, but to boil it down we wanted to make you aware of http://www.soaringroadtrip.com and the goals we have for it. We want you as a pilots and retired plots to try it out and give us feedback or ideas on how to make it better for suiting pilot needs, ideas on the general public outreach, or anything technical that we might have overlooked in the development, or even the words we chose in the narratives. Ideas welcome!
Thanks for your time and support in advancing Free Flight,
Sincerely,
Aron Lantz
FLY, PROMOTE FREE FLIGHT, INSPIRE POTENTIAL PILOTS, TEACH, MENTOR
Moderator: CHGPA BOD