2011/02/03 23:15:33 UTC
another one bites the dust
It's been a while - and one more guy has been snuffed in a stupid shoddy towing operation using stupid shoddy aerotow equipment.2010/09/16
I'll get back to this later, most likely, but it might be a while.
If you go to:
http://www.energykitesystems.net/Lift/hgh/TadEareckson/index.html
you can pull up the ATGuidelines document I wrote upon the request of the Towing Committee Chairman (Gregg Ludwig) that the useless goddam Towing Committee was gonna review and adopt at the 2009/03/27-28 Tow BOD meeting in Colorado Springs.
Within that document are release specification requirements which would have prevented that fatality.
When I started flying Ridgely when it opened in 1999 I had releases AND weak links on BOTH sides of the tow ring - and got a bunch of smart-ass comments about it.
You can read my letter to the editor in the 1997/02 issue of Hang Gliding in which I advise releases AND weak links on BOTH sides of the tow ring.
You can look at photos of my secondary / one point release assembly and see that that fatality WOULD NOT have happened - even to people too stupid to use a tow ring.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aerotowrelease/?details=1
And now the assholes on the Oz Report (Gerry mostly excluded) are talking about all the issues that THEY worked out years ago which were actually worked out by other people - like Mike Lake (Pudpud) - decades before most of THEY had ever heard of hang gliding.
Mike was the first person to develop surface tow equipment which allowed a glider to climb without interference with the basetube from launch to top-out - circa 1982. The Lake Bridle was the predecessor of the Koch two stage release - the "chest crusher" that Shithead Rooney never tires of denigrating - which is probably the safest surface tow release ever to go up on a glider - and none of those useless douchebags are worthy of licking dog shit off of the bottoms of Mike's shoes.
And NOW they're talking about how there may be nothing too terribly dangerous about putting releases AND weak links on BOTH sides of the tow ring.
Treating scum like Davis and Jim and other Cult Members In Good Standing with respect is a time proven way to get people killed - no ifs, ands, or buts. They need to get their asses sued out of existence - they don't need to be dictating standards and procedures.
Beginning when we last spoke, I got on the Houston club's wire and - for a period of two months before they voted two to one to ban me - tore them to SHREDS.
Favorite quote: "Your posts are destroying our club."
Just by typing stuff nobody's gotta read from twelve hundred miles away. These are the bozos who tow launched Martin Apopot unhooked twelve and a half months ago. And they had another unhooked training hill launch go out on video WHILE they were voting. Life just doesn't get much better than that.
So the result of that little diversion was:
http://kitestrings.prophpbb.com/
I've known how to bulletproof myself from failing to hook in since the fall of 1980 but I never knew how to express it well enough to annihilate all the hang checker and Aussie morons. I'd try, you'd shoot me down, I'd get a little better, you'd shoot me down again, et cetera. Because you kept challenging me I got better at expressing it and making the argument than anybody else in the world.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hhpa/message/11361
Question
That "The gun is always loaded." analogy is as bulletproof as the mind-set and launch procedure themselves. It gets through to the people you want to keep in the gene pool and doesn't to the Marc Finks and Martin Apopots. Is that a great dynamic or what!Zack C - 2010/10/15 13:25:50 UTC
Speaking of which, while I can fault Tad's approach, I can't fault his logic, nor have I seen anyone here try to refute it. You may not like the messenger, but that is no reason to reject the message.
So thanks for challenging me.
You don't understand towing, you're using dangerous equipment, and you've made the kind of dangerous statements about towing out on the wire that get people killed. Thanks largely to Donnell, there are maybe about ten people worldwide in hang and para gliding who know what a weak link is - and I'm probably the best in the world for explaining it.
Remember Bill Bennett? Do you understand why he got killed in that tandem tow crash a decade and a half ago? VERY few people do. Took me about a decade.
Kite Strings right now is about 2.6 people - Zack, me, and parts of a couple of others - only one of whom has, to date, posted (once). You need to understand towing, we need people who can think, read, write, challenge, learn. You're welcome any time - the vast majority of hang gliding people never will be. Hope to see you there.
Best wishes,
Tad