Sunday 8 June flying/Shenandoah Park permits!

[mcelrah]

Important regulatory info for anyone who flies in Shenandoah National Park:

Ellis, Josef and I carpooled to Dickie's LZ where we met Laszlo and Juanito, who had three tandem students and an assistant in tow. Arriving at the trailhead to launch, we were confronted by two park rangers, including head ranger Dixon Freeland, and were asked to produce our 2008 Shenandoah Park Hang-and Paragliding Permits. Ellis and I were so equipped (took us awhile to remember we had the wallet cards on us), but Juanito, Josef, and Laszlo didn't have them on their persons. (I make no representations about whether or not all three in fact have permits). Moreover, Ranger Freeland suspected that Juanito was conducting commercial activity (giving tandem rides for pay) in the park, which would require a different and even more complex permitting process. Juanito had identified me as CHGPA president and I remembered Dixon Freeland's name and was happy to actually meet him.

There was some confusion about:

(1) whether CHGPA ID is also required in addition to USHGA cards (Dixon accepted the USHPA credentials, but we need to confirm this - maybe send a current roster),
(2) whether we have to have a copy of the LZ landowner's permission on us (we believe the park permit application specifies "on file"; will confirm this also), and
(3) whether UNREMUNERATED tandem operations are implicitly permitted in the general permitting process (perhaps need to make explicit - but not sure it's such a red-hot site for tandem ops anyway).

The up shot was that Juanito and company were sent off with some ruffled feathers and decamped to Woodstock. Ellis, Laszlo, Josef and I proceeded to launch where Pete Shuman, Steve Kinsley, and Joe Schad were set up with hang-gliders. (They launched when we arrived and proceeded to get up about 1500 over.) My surmise is that the young female ranger who encountered the hangies at the trailhead was uncertain about the permitting and called her boss in to clarify things, whereupon the bagwingers arrived and reaped the benefit of all this attention from the authorities.

I went into damage control mode with Dixon Freeland; he seems favorably disposed to us - and paragliding in particular (fruits of Sparky's excellent diplomacy a couple years back), but we do NOT want to be seen to be violating the terms of the permit and especially not to be misrepresenting the nature of our activities. Park Rangers are no longer Smokey the Bear surrogates - they are law enforcement officers with badges, guns and bullet-proof vests in 90 degree heat - not to be messed with.

So let the word go out: be sure you have your permit and have it with you - the authorities can, and on occasion, do check.

I will follow up with Dixon Freeland this week. I broached the possibility of having CHGPA volunteers do some site maintenance according to whatever protocol the park may dictate and he seemed to be open to that discussion. Dixon is in effect our advocate with the Superintendent.

To return to flying reports: we judged the wind at 2 PM to be too strong and cross for safe PG launches at Dickie's and joined Juanito's crowd at Woodstock, where it was also cross and swirly in the slot, but there is a bit more margin for error there. I took the first flight and worked on the south finger for a bit, facing into a pronounced south cross. Juan did his first tandem without incident, having more success on the north finger. Laszlo suffered a number of aborted launches, as did Juan on his second tandem of the day. Josef got off on his second try, then Ellis had a clean launch and showed us that it was smoothing out a bit. Josef and Laszlo scurried back to launch and Laszlo chastised me for not having relaunched in the developing glassoff (I had thought we were going to the swimming hole back in the Fort Valley and maybe for trike rides at Front Royal). I offered to retrieve Ellis, who had landed thinking we were going on to the other activities, but she encouraged me to go ahead and join the others in the air. Juanito's last tandem launch was hairy (there's film): his heavier male passenger sat down in the harness a bit early and they proceeded to rock-skim down into the left corner of the slot (Juan got a big bump on the shin); Juan kept running and his passenger got back up; they finally got flying speed and pulled a huge climbing turn up out of the hole for a magnificent save - I had thought they were going in the trees for sure. After one abort, I too launched and proceeded to climb very slowly up the ridge to join Laszlo and Josef 200 feet over. After a few minutes, I followed Laszlo in a line of lift to 700 over, but noticed that I was making little forward progress. As the sun was approaching the horizon, used about 1/2 speed bar to get down and off the ridge. I'm logging an hour for the combined two flights. - Hugh
mcelrah
skygod/dess

Posts: 1158
Joined: 06 Jan 2005, 23:30

[stevek]

Please don't fly the Park unless you have a permit and have it on you. You are not just risking a ticket. If the rangers conclude people are ignoring the rules, we could easily lose our flying privileges. There are elements in the Park Service today that are adamantly opposed to our being there. Please do not give them ammunition. Please obey the terms of the permit. Commercial tandems are prohibited. Tandems of any sort were certainly not contemplated by the Park Service and are not implicitly permitted. Tandem activity would force them to address the issue (I assure you they would nix it) and likely revisit the entire concept of flying in the park. We do not want that. Our relations with the Park need to be limited to narrow agenda items (i.e. can we trim the vegetation in the slots?).