Taking Flight to the Public

Cragin Shelton
March was public relations month for the Capital Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association. Two events gave us the chance to bring the best face of free flight to the public. The first was a moderate regional event. The next was a massive activity with national exposure.

Vienna Wireless Society Winterfest

We opened up with a display at the Vienna Wireless Society Winterfest hamfest. On Sunday, March 3, the amateur radio club held its annual electronics swap and sales meet at the Northern Virginia Community College Annandale campus. Jim Richey, a member of the hamfest program committee, knew about hang glider pilots' use of ham radio. Jim invited us to provide a promotional display, hoping to add some color to the day. He also wanted to highlight a ham use many of their members were not aware of.

Cragin Shelton set up in the lobby of the community center about 7:30 a.m. with posters, photos, maps, magazines, handouts and flyers. Ralph Sickinger arrived shortly after 8:00 with notebook computer in tow. Dan Tomlinson pulled himself out of a sickbed to drop off a television and VCR. Dan took his flu home, leaving Craig and Ralph to spread the good word about our sport. An earlier plan to set up a glider was thwarted by rain threat and uncertainty over space. The location was perfect, directly opposite the registration table.

Bright glider photos and the continuously running Learn to Fly video from USHGA attracted plenty of attention. One visitor saw the signs and exclaimed, "Oh, y'all are them paraglider fellas that use ham radios illegally." "Not at all!" we responded, and we showed him on one poster the list of 60 CHGPA members with our amateur radio call signs. This highlighted one of our major reasons for being there: to publicize that we do, in fact, take an active role in promoting ham radio, encouraging and assisting our members to become licensed ham operators.

Which, in turn, leads to how Ralph spent his day at the Winterfest. He had his notebook computer running the Technician License practice test software he had written only a few months earlier. The program garnered a lot of interest among the hams, and Ralph found himself discussing and demonstrating it all day. One visitor, Toby, told us he was a co-worker of Dave Proctor's and he had watched flying at the Pulpit and even enjoyed a tandem hang gliding lesson at Highland Aerosports. Toby was very interested in using the program as part of the regular exam preparation classes offered by his ham club in Frederick. Ralph arranged to get the latest version of the program to Toby. Ralph's program is available for download online at http://sickinger.net/ham.

A common question was, "Where do you fly?" Our display included state highway maps with flying sites listed and marked across Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The lists even gave the preferred wind directions for each site, to help the hams find us on flying days.

The hamfest wound down mid-afternoon. Our purpose was not so much to recruit new potential pilots, as to educate the amateur radio community on our association with them, and thank them for the support they give us. We felt that we had met our goals, especially when a ham from eastern Maryland asked if we might be able to give a similar demonstration at his club's hamfest in June on the Eastern Shore. Jim Richey suggested we bring the posters and video to a regular meeting of Vienna Wireless, so the many club members who had been tied up running the show could see our presentation. Finally, there is a good chance they will ask us to return next year - and we will be sure to set up a glider next year.


Smithsonian Kite Festival

The hamfest was a relatively small venue, with a few hundred visitors. However, On Saturday, March 23rd, we were able to show off hang gliding to thousands of folks at the annual Smithsonian Kite Festival. For the third year in a row we set up two gliders on the Washington Monument grounds, at the edge of the kite competition field. With Joe Gregor in training for a March 24 marathon, Brian Vant-Hull had taken the job of club coordinator for the event this year. He and Chris McKee arrived early in the morning to set up gliders, tables, and handouts. Due to confusion over location at the festival there was no electrical power, so they were unable to set up the VCR for hang gliding videos.

Other club members trickled in as the day progressed. Joe and Janet Gregor were able to spend most of the day at the festival, and Mark and Sheila Gardner brought future pilot and hang driver Bridget down, all bundled against the wind in her stroller. Mike Balk was accompanied by Julia, who became one of the most enthusiastic hosts at the display. Joe Brauch added to the staff, as did Craig Shelton. Ralph Sickinger brought a fresh supply of his custom flyers on local hang gliding. Mark Cavanaugh arrived all sleek and helmeted for his bicycle ride from home.

The attendance at the festival was visibly down from previous years. We assume that it was a combination of a cold and windy forecast for the day, along with tourist and kite club uncertainty about spending a day in D.C. post 9/11. Even with the smaller crowds, CHGPA members stayed busy talking with visitors all day. We gave out our entire supply of Hang Gliding magazines, all but ten Paragliding Magazines, and all 300 of Ralph's flyers. Under rules of the festival we had to be careful to avoid soliciting, either for club membership or for the local flight schools. Even so, as we educated visitors about the sports of hang gliding and paragliding we were able to provide contact information about both CHGPA and Maryland Hang Gliding Association, as well as all four regional schools.

Our gliders were popular backdrops for photographs. The most notable was a young lady, maybe five years old, costumed as small green decorated Christmas tree. Her mom photographed her standing under Brian's glider, white flying helmet slung jauntily under one arm.

Even though the crowds were smaller this year, our glider display staff was nearly overwhelmed. We could have used several more club members, especially paraglider pilots, to hand out our giveaways and answer questions. We all spent the entire day talking with visitors. Many expressed an apparent real interest in trying out the sport, often looking at a spouse or SO ("significant other", for those of you who have not kept up with modern Newspeak) for encouragement, as we related the wonders of free flight. We had quite a few inquiries about paragliding, and the differences between the two types of flight. The many hang glider pilots present did our best to describe both activities, and we would refer to Mike Balk as our only biwingual pilot present, even though his P2 rating is fairly dormant. One skydiver talked about his sport of controlled falling and we did our best to convince him it is lot more fun to stay up there floating around.

Just as at the hamfest, "Where do you fly?" was a recurring question. We used the maps marked with flying sites over three states to good effect. Many of the visitors said they would try to find us out in the mountains some weekend. We found a good answer to safety questions, by explaining that with modern gliders, training methods, and USHGA ratings, hang gliding for participants at all skill levels has a better safety record than self-declared expert winter skiers on black diamond (expert) slopes. This is a modification of the statistics reported by USHGA, but seemed to strike the right level of understanding among the questioners. One of our goals at this festival was letting the general public know that the crazy and dangerous reputation as an extreme sport that hang gliding earned in its formative years thirty years ago has been replaced by its status as a legitimate adventure sport today.

As in past years, all pilots who took part were very pleased with the day. We are not sure if we sparked any new students into the sport, but we think s few seeds of interest were sewn. Joe Gregor tells us that the Smithsonian Kite Festival staff has been pleased with our participation each year. We should look for increased visibility for our sport at the festival in coming years.