Flyfunston

HG pilots are not shut down from flying at Funston at this time. We are up for special use permit review, and are under the threat of losing our permit because of some pilots conduct with the public.

We need to ALWAYS be on our best behaviour, we must appreciate the fact that we have an absolute gem of a flying sight, it is irreplaceable, and not one pilot should ever allow his ego to endanger the sight for all the other pilots.

Zero tolerence enforcement of the 25' rule - violate it, get suspended. No excuses.

Zoro tolerence enforcement of public courtesy rules.

Please attend the next meeting, help to resolve this issue.

Tom White

Can someone clarify this?

Is there an outstanding "issue" with a dogwalker, person in the landing area etc? Whos conduct was out of line and what was the complaint?

I cant make the next meeting so can someone elaborate on what the "issue" is??????????

Thanks, Rob

Without going into a lot of detail, one of our pilots dove close to some spectators who were standing on launch watching us fly. The spectators were very startled and felt they might have fallen over the cliff. They filed a complaint with the park police (a Federal agency) who have issued a disorderly conduct citation to the pilot.

The park police/GGNRA view this incident as public endangerment, which is about as serious as it can get. The chief of the law enforcement division recommended that our Special Use Permit should NOT be renewed.

We all need to understand that Fort Funston is open to the public and the Fellow Feathers does not own launch or have the right to prohibit spectators from being in the hang glider area. If a spectators’ presence is causing a safety issue, we need to respectfully inform them of the situation and politely ask them to move to another location.

Hang gliding at Fort Funston is an invaluable privilege, and we absolutely have to be polite, diplomatic, and ambassadors of our sport if we want to continue flying there.

You could not have said it better...

"Hang gliding at Fort Funston is an invaluable privilege, and we absolutely have to be polite, diplomatic, and ambassadors of our sport if we want to continue flying there"

Ive only flown at funston for a few stort years and rarely make it to a club meeting so excuse the next questions if they have been asked before.

1. Has there been a plan or notion of a monitor (someone sitting around and not flying) to say monitor the path from the parking lot to the steps/beach path to inform people standing around (which is what they do when we land) to move away from the landing path when someone comes in? As well as the launch area....

2. Can we border out or rope off, Hell build a 16" high fence to clearly have a safe pedestrian/non pilot walkway?

3. Do you think adding signs all the way down the parking lot/feild line (from the clubhouse to the water fountain) informing people to stay clear might keep more people from walking into the feild or the landing/launch area?
Not to mention, our signs could also be in other languages.. Mandarin, spanish, german etc... tourist from all over the world come to funston to see
me fly, we should consider informing them better?

I guess what Im leaning towards is us as a club could take more responsability and monitor our site? Yosemite and other flying sites have a safty launch guy, why dont we?

Sorry for the long post, this is real important to me, I have another 6-7 thousand hours I need to get in @ funston before I die... I will do anything I can to help make funston a better place to fly..


Rob

It sounds like the latest incident was with spectators on the launch lip, not the path, but I think that path is worth discussing more too.

There are times on many weekdays that there are very few pedestrians on the path, and it's a simple task to check if it's clear before we land there. I think we need to be more responsible about that. It's very rare for a pedestrian to just come sprinting across the path out of nowhere, right into the final path of a glider. They mosey across, stopping a few times, and move on. Pilots often land right on the path, sometimes with a few pedestrians running clear. I don't like the fact that I've done it myself. It's quite possible to be conservative enough about it to steer clear of all pedestrians while landing wherever you want to. If a pilot isn't capable of checking for pedestrians right before beginning landing approach and safely avoiding even the unpredictable pedestrians, he needs to be landing far behind the path.

I don't think it's possible to educate pedestrians any more than it's possible to educate cows.

Dave K.

fakeDecoy wrote:I don't think it's possible to educate pedestrians any more than it's possible to educate cows.

I could make the case that you would have better luck with the cows.