On Sep 17, 8:22*pm, tienshanman tienshanman.
wrote:
I just noticed this article in the NY times:

http://travel.nytimes.com/2009/09/18...8hang.html?hpw

When I saw this *title I thought, great, an article about soaring.
Finally some large scale publicity via a reputable paper. But no, the
article is about hang gliding. Now, I have nothing against hang
gliding. In fact after a long and tumultuous past of flying hang
gliders and paragliders I finally moved over to the dark side and
finished my license for sailplanes just a month ago at the age of 53.
And I am desperately addicted (I wish I had started this a long time
ago). Having now flown the 3 kinds of recreational soaring craft I have
reflected a lot on why soaring seems to be fighting rear guard action. I
saw this HG’ing article in the NYT as just another symptom of why
soaring has been relegated to the most remote crannies of the public
mind and why is has a tenacious future propped up largely by a bunch of
geezers and an uninspiring national support orgn (SSA) which, by the
way, seems of late to focus way too much on the obituary column of the
sport. Depressing. Hang gliding itself suffered a rapid, massive die
off when paragliders appeared. I remember the glory days of hang
gliding while living near the Alps in the mid 80s. HG’s everywhere,
hundreds of them. One day, after about a 5 min briefing, I flew one the
first paragliders that a buddy had bought and barely survived a 3 to 1
glide in terrain following mode down a ravine on a steep mountain in
Austria - I thought, well this sport obviously has no future. Wrong.
Now you go to pretty much any launch site in the Alps and HGs are
outnumbered at least 10/1 by bag wings. So it is quite interesting that
even though it is itself a sport on drip feed mode HG’ing gets its own
article in the NY Times. I can’t remember every having seen an article
about soaring in the NYT. One wonders why. This sport needs some
serious young energy put into it……

--
tienshanman

Times did a great article on soaring two years ago about this time,
featuring our operation(Valley Soaring Club- Middletown NY) which
resulted in people coming from all over the country(literally) to fly
with us. It resulted in more than 300 introductory flights for us and
about a dozen new members. We still get folks dropping in as a result
of that article. Other operations also benefited as I sent folks that
called to closer operations and the SSA where to fly site.
It was featured on the NYT website for quite some time.
Guess you didn't see that one.
It's good to get your local reporter out for a ride. We've also had NY
network TV visit us and feature us. One of the morning networks did a
good story last year.
We get some press but could use more.
UH