Jose I think your suggestion is one of the most rational ones I have seen.
I'm all for getting together with BAPA to try to find a way to respect the
old school boundaries. An just so we're clear, the no PG fly zone is from
the south edge of the south bowl northward. Forgive my ignorance, but who
should I be talking to?
For those who may not know, last year a group of biwingual pilots approached
the FF at a club meeting about opening up Funston for some paragliding
activities. Dave R, Damien, Jose were part of that group. I have a great
respect for them for their efforts to try to approach the FF to work things
out in this manner. We had a lengthy discussion, but in the end the concept
was voted down.
Again, the reasons we cited were primarily safety issues, but they also
include the issue of paragliding preventing hang gliders from flying.
Your argument that the paragliders were flying when no HG pilots were in the
air - well, let's look at these pictures:
www.custompowersolar.com/para_with_hg_funston(and this is by no means all that I have)
And what about the pilot that deliberately flew in the middle of the Air
Races in the bowl immediately to the south of launch, forcing us to stop the
Air Races? How many witnesses do you think we have for that?
Let me try to explain it in another way.
When conditions are light, when the conditions are the type when a PG could
be flying Funston, if a PG is in the air, most pilots would NOT want to
launch, not because they don't want to, but they don't want to get waked or
driven to the beach. Because they won't be able to fly and get around the PG
SAFELY. So a PG is effectively stopping hg pilots from flying AT ALL. Do you
think this is fair?
When a PG flies into our no PG fly zone with HG already in the air, they are
forcing the HG pilots to go around them (not always possible), or land to
get out of the way. Especially in the south bowl, which tends to be
marginal, how is this fair? What gives PG the right to take away our right
to fly?
Over the last 37 years of the Fellow Feathers, we have poured thousands of
man-hours of time and tens of thousands of $ into maintaining and improving
Fort Funston. Just this year we've put over $5000 in improvements and
maintenance & over 150 man-hours on the wood chips. Look at the launch and
LZ wood chips project. The new drinking fountain. All the repairs to weather
instruments, web site and new camera views. We pay $2700 to the GGNRA every
year. I personally went out and bought another valve for the drinking
fountain and replaced it just to keep the dog walkers happy.
If push comes to shove, who do you think the GGNRA will side with? The guys
who pour their hearts out and $ to improve the parks or the guys who just
want to crash it?
Part of my reason for pushing to stop these incursions now is to try to
prevent what could be a disastrous situation, where some hg pilot gets
entangled in a pg and they both auger in. I'm sure none of us want to see
this happen.
Let's be clear about this - it's a few PG pilots that are creating this
conflict, by trying to take away rights of HG pilots to fly Funston safely,
by flying in the Funston no fly PG zone. It's only reasonable that we take
steps to preserve our right to fly and right to fly safely.
Jose, I really appreciate your efforts to establish rational dialog. If you
or other PG pilots can come up with reasonable ideas on how to deal with
this issue, please let me know. Get me a contact number, and I'll give him a
call.