Safety against commercial pressure?

On Wednesday, June 13, 2018 at 7:54:59 PM UTC-7, Bruce Hoult wrote:

Rides on unsoarable, overcast, stable days? Sure.
Rides on high wind, turbulent days? No way!

People seem to tolerate bumps on the first 500' of the climbout and last 500' of the landing if there is an hour of smooth zooming along the ridges in between. Especially if you warn them in advance and tell them it's only going to be for a minute. But not extended periods of getting banged about.

My busiest rides days (I am back to being private owner pilot now) were the days "red flag warnings for high winds and high profile vehicles". The place I flew from is just a few miles west of a mountain range and we can only takeoff to the west due to rope break options and several other factors. I have flown rides with 26 knot quartering downwind takeoffs. Do that ten times a day for a few weekends and it is not really a factor, other than it is still not fun. Plus we have the dirty air from the mountains behind use. At least no one falls a sleep on tow. Never had a passenger complain nor get sick, many were thrill seekers who would scream in joy at each bump. We had a ride, not flown by me, where there was a rope break and the pilot thought the best place to land was ahead with slight right turn into field. That ride (two people) waited for the 2-32 to be recovered via aero tow from field and took the full 5k ride. That ride pilot flew the tow out of the field and flew his passengers. How about stopping the BS on this thread and appreciating the hard work of these unsung pilots. I am so sorry we lost one I know how hard they work.