Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I had a really fun one for you today with Tom Pagini. He's a legendary pilot and has been in aviation his entire life. He started hang gliding in 1969. You know that, right? As a young pup, he was the youngest person to compete in the first U.S. Nationals in 73 out in California. And the youngest person to ever compete in the first Worlds in COSEN in 1975. So we, of course, dive into all his history there and his background in designing wings and the first Kestrel on two surface and a lot of names and just a ton of really fun history here.
He's recently, in the last few years, gotten into paragliding. He's as passionate today as he's ever been, he says. And this was just a ball. I got interested in Tom and talking to Tom and a lot of the others, Roy Haggard and John Heine and a bunch of other shows we're going to have shortly because Hugh Miller at XCMAG reached out a couple months ago and suggested we start doing shows on the, you know, on the legends and getting people from each of the various decades on the show. And so we're kicking it off with Tom because his his quote that Hugh Miller. Shared with me was in comparison, the rest of my life has been a disappointment, and I thought, oh, man, that is awesome. So and he also he also put me on to the Big Blue Sky, which guides a lot of this talk.
The Big Blue Sky is a wonderful film with amazing archive footage of the beginnings of hang gliding. And Tom is in that quite a bit, along with all the other legends. And then as they start to learn how to not just take little quick glides. Down. Little hills, they start learning how to thermal and get up tall, and then that's when the carnage hits and it's it's all pretty fascinating stuff. But Tom has been, like I said, in aviation his entire life. He's worked in the ultralight industry for a long time, but still a very passionate pilot today, lives out in the northeast and he's chasing it pretty hard. So enjoy this talk with a very interesting, fascinating individual who's been doing it an awfully long time.
Cheers,
Tom, welcome to the mayhem. I really appreciate you reaching out and forcing this little bit to happen, because I was I was trying to get out to to talk to Roy and John and and those guys out in California. But we'll just we'll do it piece by piece. I've just really enjoyed your all the things you sent to me yesterday. Your your C.V. and bio, which are incredibly intimidating to tell you the truth. You've done a lot, but we have to start at the beginning, which is a long time back. 1969, 13 years old is when you got into this game.
Well, hi, Gavin. It's when we first started. Yes, I had started an aviation club in eighth grade with my metal shop teacher, Mr. Baldwin. We were going to build a Volks plane, and he got us involved with the EAA, the Experimental Aircraft Association. And we did go to some of their local meetings in people's basements and things. But it was still kind of out of reach for, you know, someone that age. And in the back of Sport Aviation magazine, there was a little tiny ad in, you know, right at the classifieds, practically in the back, for Batwing planes. And
it was Jim Foreman from Amarillo, Texas, and they were five bucks. And so we sent away for that. Wow, look at that thing.
And it was actually a set of plans from Richard Miller's Bamboo Butterflies, what he called it, which was a very early use of a regalo wing. And he was a very real minimalist person. And so it was made out of bamboo. And. And polyethylene plastic with a numerical material, fiberglass tape, because it just became popular at that time. So it was literally, you know, they were literally and people did this quite a bit around the United States and the world built the first real hang ladders to, you know, popular hang ladders out of bamboo and plastic.
I love, you know, you're not the first person I've spoken with, you know, Miguel down in Mexico. Who's been. Who's been running the, the, the Monarca for forever, invited Bravo. He comes from a big family of aviation. You guys all talk about this, these plans, this $5 plan, you know, and it was, it was happening in Europe. It was happening in Mexico. It's just really cool that there was this kind of shared. I'm sure you guys didn't even know of other communities. Right. I mean, in the beginning it, right. It was, but it was kind of happening. There was just, you know, all these people around the world that were, that wanted to be birds. So it didn't start with DaVinci, did it?
No, it didn't. And, and actually, you know, hang gliding goes back to Otto Lilienthal, of course, the inventor of flight. He didn't invent the airplane, but he invented flight in my book. But I consider Richard Miller to be, you know, the patron saint guru of, of modern free flight, if you will. Because some of the things he did were, were right at the core of everything that kind of came out of it. And it did for, did for me, you know, personally.
And that was, and that was his interpretation of Regalo's designs. Was that, was that why or?
Yes. And so there's someone prior to that, Barry Palmer. Yeah. That had flown up in Northern California, even
my list here,
even, even earlier on, you know, and had some fantastic flights from some of the hills up in Northern California where they have no trees and things like that. And, you know, going way up on the hill and, you know, like three minute flights and, and way higher than, you know, he cared to fall. That was the rule back in the, don't fly higher than you care to fall was the original rule of hang gliding.
And, but Richard Miller, he kind of pushed the concept of self-flight and Joe Faust kind of picked up that torch later. But, but he was, he was also the editor of a soaring magazine and a writer. And I wrote about this on Facebook recently. If you haven't read, it's kind of a kooky book without visible means of support is a book by Richard Miller that you can still find on eBay. And it's worth seeing. And he's got his Regalo on the cover, I think. And it's, it's Photoshop. Well, it wasn't Photoshop back then, but it was graphically put. His, Regalo wings put on the cover.
And it's, I think it's a shot from the Vasa Coupe during the twenties, the early glider flights they had there on the cover.
You know, that, that film that you, well, Hugh put me on to, but you, you and I discussed it in the emails leading up to this, the, the big blue sky, which is just phenomenal. There's so much cool footage that, you know, from the original footage of the, the comps you guys were going to early on and the, this, the, the stoke. What, what, when you say Miller's original Regalo design, is this the kind of Sweeney biplane type of thing? I think a Regalo is more of the parachute.
No, it was literally, it was literally a Regalo biplane, except it, instead of a set of wires and a King post or aluminum tubes, he built the compression and lift structure out of a Warren truss of, of bamboo. I'll send you a picture after this. But yeah, and we've, we've built one. So
similar to what Sweeney was, was flying in his, in the, in the. No, no, Sweeney,
Terry Sweeney, another, we'll get back to more. He's going to come up over and over again. If we talk about the old days for me, but he built what was called the Chinook biplane. And, and just after Otto Lilienthal had been doing his flying in the Berlin area.
Octave Chinook was a, a civil engineer in the United States that actually influenced the Wright brothers to use a box, kind of a box kite structure, you know, vertical, vertical tubes and X bracing for the structure. And he did some very interesting flights out on the dunes of Lake Michigan. And he was before the, the Wright brothers and after a Lilienthal, but both Lilienthal and Chinook influenced the Wright brothers.
We're so spoiled these days. I mean, when I watch the, the big blue sky and just the happiness and joy of a three to 22nd flight and the work that must've been involved in getting it back up the hill and all the people and this kind of thing. I mean, we wouldn't walk out the door to do that these days, you know? No. It's incredible. If
you take it out of context. You know, the first few flights that I tried to do were very parachutal, you know, as you go kind of we, and you're, you're scared and you don't run hard enough. Even Terry talks about that in his, in his first flight. But yeah, I remember the first time that in the white kite that I sent you a picture of a hang tube Brujallo got up on a hill big enough. The wind was finally right. I finally had the nerve to do it accelerated enough to really get the thing on, you know, on plane. And, and gliding and going, whoa, when, you know, we landed, cause there was no one there telling you what to expect. There was nobody knew what to expect. No, you know, I didn't know whether I was gonna fly and land in the run out and we're on, we're on a steep ski slope hill with no run out, you know, at the bottom version.
I didn't know if I was gonna fly off into the wires at the bottom or the trees after the ski hut or, and, and just the whole experience. Yeah. It was, you know, transformational. It was transcendent, really, if you, if you look back at it. Oh,
I imagine. I mean, it, it's kind of wild to think too, my, my neighbor and mentor forever, Nate Scales, you know, he competed in the X-Alps in 2007, but his first flight here was 89, 90, I want to say on a paraglider. So he, he had, he had done some hang gliding, but his first paragliding, he walked into a ski shop and there was a guy in the ski shop said, Hey, anybody here want to go paragliding? I just got one. And, you know, and so Nate said, yeah, I want to do that. And he took them out to the hill and they hiked up and, and Nate flew off and, and he came down to the LZ, you know, the bottom of the hill. And, and, uh, and the guy said, okay, well now you, you know, as much as I do, he was the instructor, but it's just, you know, here, have a go, see what happens.
And that was, you know, 20 something years after you guys got into it. You know? It was amazing. And that obviously, you know, at this point, Larry's flying a couple hundred miles. You guys are all been telling me you knew a lot about flight at that point, but it's amazing that, you know, the one that it kind of went through the same trajectory with paragliding early on. Nobody really knew anything.
One of the things that helped me very early on was that I had been flying models all my life. Yeah. And, uh, I started flying you control models with my dad when I was about six, you know, the ones you fly around in a circle with a little two stroke motor on it. A little glow plug engine. And then we graduated into RC radio control, very early RC stuff. Uh, for some reason we were both really interested in gliders. So I started flying RC gliders very early on. And, uh, and so that, that really helped me a lot later. Not much later, maybe a year or so later in life, uh, starting to fly hang gliders. I knew about wind installs and reflex weight balance.
And this is a common thing I've heard. Uh, I don't have any background with RC, but there, uh, a lot of the really good pilots I've had on the show over the years got their start in RC. There must be a lot of knowledge buried in there and intrinsically to just understand what air is doing. I mean, I always think about that with kayaking, then the transfer over to flying, sailing, kite surfing, that you're using these invisible elements that help you understand Lee and Eddie. And yes, exactly.
But you were talking with Calef Latourney on a really good, and Bob, what a well-spoken guy he is. But anyway, uh, I had always tried to explain to people, particularly early on, I was this little kid, you know, and everybody else I was flying with was older than me. And, um, I tried to explain to them, yeah, don't, don't fly back there. You have to imagine it. Like you ever see whitewater? Whitewater? It's whitewater air back there. You know, you don't want any part of that. So, so yeah, the visualization is the same. Well, it's the same. The visualization, the fluid dynamics. We're all viscously involved, you know, one way or another.
I'm interested, you know, in, in the big blue sky and watching all you guys and all that original footage and, and the, you know, there's this whole, the whole segment of the film early on is, is these little quick, you know, learning how to deal with wind. Yeah. Yeah. You're barely getting off the ground and you're having these little flights and it seemed from the film, things start progressing pretty quickly, but in your, you know, in 1969, when you're doing that in 1970 and 71, before you go to your first nationals event, when you're 17, was it on your radar already that, oh, once we make these better, we're going to be going thousands of feet off the ground because of the RC or what was that? Was that in anybody's mind yet that we're going to be flying?
Big distances or was that still, that hadn't formulated?
No. It was, it was so fantastic to think of that. It had, I was still waiting, you know, for quite a while to get my first soaring flight in at all. And it was slopes wearing on, on a dune out of Cape Cod.
So, no, I had, I had no idea in the, in the concept of people going up on the top of, you know, giant mountains and flying off hadn't. Huh. Bill Liskum did a great job on that film. Amazing. Put it, well, putting it into historical context too was really good instead of it just being all about the flying. I thought he really set the stage for what was going on at the time.
And, and do I also have it right that, and, and if I'm jumping ahead, just make, just keep pulling me back. But do I also have it right that it seemed like at least the way the film was, was structured. And those of you who are listening. You haven't seen this, just Google it. It's the big blue sky. It is unbelievable. It's awesome. But there's, you know, it seemed like when flight remained, you know, close to the ground and, you know, maybe a little bit of soaring, but mostly just these little quick flights. It was, I mean, it looked still kind of hairy, but it seemed like the carnage, there wasn't that much carnage. It wasn't until they started going up and started using thermals. And then it seemed like it. It went through this really horrible period.
Was that, is that right? No, that's correct. Yeah. That's
really correct. Okay. In fact, we went for a long time without any, anyone buying it.
And Lloyd Leitcher, who started Yushka at the time, which is now Yushpa. Yeah. And originally it was a Southern California hang gliding association. It was SEHGA. That's when I joined.
Mm-hmm.
He, he actually loved. He left the, he was the director of the soaring association and he felt he wanted to bring hang gliding into the soaring association because he felt there was so much knowledge in there that he could, they could, not him, could, you know, give to the hang gliding community to try to help us get through that first part. There was a lot of learning, but, but also since it was totally unregulated, people were doing whatever they wanted to. Yeah. And there's no one there. No, no clubs. No structure, no Yushpa, you know, para ratings, no, no nothing. So you could just buy one of these things in a kit, bolt it together, go wherever you want. I'm going up on that biggest mountain and I don't care what the wind does.
You know, it was everything was just, just predicated on balls and wits maybe lack of.
Yeah. Wow. Was there a, I'm always reminded that, you know, sailplanes. Yeah. Been around for a while at this stage, you know, they'd been doing cross country for a bunch of years was, was, uh, was there much crossover and reaching out to that community? Was there much, uh, I mean, I want a subject that's come up again and again is why don't we treat our sports hang gliding and paragliding more like sailplanes? Why, why don't we learn from them because they've done it longer? You know, they, they treat it more like commercial aviation. Yeah. Checklists and it's, it's more, I wouldn't say regulated, but I would say more, uh, you're
following a set of rules more stringently. It's not so rules based. Yeah.
Uh, the, the, you know, all the free flight could still benefit greatly from a little bit more of that. I wish I had a wrist checklist, you know, before I took off or, or on my knee or something.
Yeah. You
know, it would be, although I kind of like not having that. And I really don't like using radios, you know, um, but it's all part of it.
I think of my own kind of trajectory in, in flying. And one of the things I was so impressed in reading your, your bio and your resume and what you've done is you, you know, you started flying hang gliders at 13. You go out, you're the youngest participant ever in the first U S nationals out in California. And you're 17. How the hell did you survive? And at that age? I mean, if I had gotten into this sport when I was that age and that stupid, uh, you know, I mean, I was, I was a ski racer growing up and all I wanted was just speed. I didn't care whatsoever about my body. I was, I was unbreakable. I was invincible. I was, you know, you're, you're young. How did you survive?
I think there's two, two things. First of all, I whaled myself a bunch when I was a little kid, I would always, you know, move real fast and then fall over a rail. Or something and break my, break my arm. So I got a little bit out of that, out of my system. And secondly, my dad chuckled about it. Dad and I, my father, uh, Jim, uh, we would call when you really smash a, uh, RC, it re-kitted itself. It turned back into a kit, you know, and so I rebuild it. I saw a bunch of that and I wanted no part of it. Hmm. I just knew. You had the
respect for
it. You had the respect for
it even early on. Yes.
Yes. I was a scaredy cat and it didn't stop me from doing it, but it really gave me a pause and it's still a problem. I have this these days, even, you know, to this day and then being a test pilot pretty much all my life, the combination of the two.
Yeah. We will. Well, we got a lot to talk about in terms of your ultralight and business and, and, you know, aviation endeavors after hang gliding and that kind of thing. But I, I know you've, you've, you've maintained hang gliding throughout your career and, and most, and more recently in paragliding, but I, I'd love to hear about this trip to Kosan, your first worlds. Uh, I think you were also the youngest at the worlds, right?
Yes. That's an amazing part of the world. It's an amazing person, part of the world. And to go there, you had asked me a question, first of all, how did I, how did I live through all this stuff too? I want to say that right from the beginning, there are some. Some really nice, uh, older folks that kind of took me under their wing. Um, uh, we started a company at, at sky sports. Um, there was, uh, a man named Dan pointer who, who had written the parachute manual, uh, Ted strong, who was very big in sport of skydiving and the development of it. Um, Mike Markowski, who's a very early, uh, hang gliding, uh, persona and designer. And then, uh, and then again, there's a guy named Ed Vickery and Ed Vickery is the man who ended up taking over sky sports.
And I went and worked with him. Uh, he was the first one to take a, uh, a Papillon, which was a, the, uh, parasailing thing and jump it, you know, that had a glide ratio and stuff. And he, he saw the, uh, the possibilities and development of, uh, hang gliding and really wanted to go all in on it. And he kind of took me under his wing too. And sponsored me originally, I be, you know, became the test pilot, then the designer for the company. And, and he paid for me to go out to, uh, the Annie green Springs nationals, which was the first nationals out at Sylmar. And then he also paid for me to go to, uh, the first world championships in cousin. And, uh, so I, I went over there on my own, back my glider up, took it to Logan airport in Boston over to the.
The freight terminal then went over, got on an airplane by myself and, and, uh, flew to Europe with, uh, you know, we had, um, travel agents back then that would organize a lot of things, but got out of the plane, you know, picked up my glider. Huh? How am I going to get it to the train? You know, carried my glider to the train, got it on a train, got it on a bus.
And this is, this is 76, right? 74. 74. 1974. Yeah. What, what did your, what does your flight deck look like at the world in 74?
Well, um, back there was a man named, uh, Mr. Culver, Matt Culver's dad. I forget his first name. Sorry. I think he was number one, by the way. Wow. USHJ or Southern California hang gliding association. Number one. And, uh, and
you're, what did you, you sent me your number? Well, you're 200 something.
Two, two 62. You
can call me
Bill Lisscombe, the, the, you know, the man who made Big Blue Sky, his, his number's lower. Wow. So I always had to buy the
first beer. I'm 85179. I don't have much to brag about. That's amazing too.
Um, so anyway, he, he made, uh, one of the first commercially available hang gliding, um, variometers. And that was the flight deck. Wow. The Willis guys, um, originally Bob Wills and Chris Wills, they used instruments too. And Pat Canary, who was a very early, uh, very advanced hang glider pilot, had a ball, little ball, very the company, Ball Aerospace, may started with, uh, with variometers for sailplanes and things, and they had those too, so
Your dad kind of got you into aviation, or you guys were flying RCS together stuff? What is he thinking at this point? You're getting on a plane by yourself to go to coast, and is he thinking, "Jesus, what did I do here?" or is he psyched?
Now, both my parents, I look, I grew up in a very open, um, household. We had people coming in and out all the time. It was a big old house. I have two sisters and a brother. Jamie were the jets, Jamie, Ellen, Tom, Susan. I don't know if that was on purpose, but we had, uh, we always had people sleeping over and next door neighbor's kids would come to the house. We had, uh, exchange
Students, you know, from Africa and South America, live at our house, so they were very, very open to it. And, uh, the only thing that my dad wanted is he didn't want me to tow behind a car because he was on the side, he was reading the, uh, Ground Skimmer magazine. It was called at the time, now it's USHPA Pilot, but and he had read about the accidents there. He goes, "Yeah, don't, don't tow behind a car. It doesn't look, that doesn't look smart." Hey, that was about it. No, they let me go in effect.
signed the letter to, you know, from my mom, which Bill talks about in the... in the movie, was actually to the high school to let me go to the first national championships, and they let me out of school to go do that, and they were very supportive, the teachers I had, because I was a terrible student. I was very focused on flying stuff and
Uh, it at this point, you're going over to the world's, okay? First, first, how many people were in that? That event was that? That was the first worlds, correct? Yes, it was. Yeah, how many people were in that event? And they were very many people are in that one, probably a couple hundred. And what would a task be like in the 74 worlds? What would, what were you guys trying to do?
duration and target landing, okay?
So it's kind of accuracy and how, how long you could stay up? Yeah, how'd you do? And it was
around, you had to go around some pylons too, but that was basically it, and
You brought over a kind of a new wing, a peregrine. Tell me about that. We
made a big jump right from, uh, regalo type wings with a dickinson control bar, so I can be accurate. Now, that's a thing going on in hang gliding—who invented the hang ladder? So I did both parts right, but we had had access to early, uh, NASA wind tunnel reports, and so did Roy Haggard, by the way. He picked up on it, too. There are NASA notes you could buy with the wind tunnel testing that they did to various, various, you know, wing shapes, and so I designed up a hundred. We didn't go by sweep angle, which is the proper way to determine it aeronautically; you know, hang gliding talked about nose angle, and the original regalos were 80 degrees and the Sky Sports gliders were 90 degrees.
So I said, "Why fool around?" So I went out to 130 degrees. We had truncated off wing tips, winglets on the on the tips, and they weren't rudders. We knew about winglets because we had read the NASA report on Whitcomb winglets that they use nowadays on airliners and everything.
shaped aluminum ribs. A keel pocket was shaped on it; was actually quite advanced for the time.
and it was right up there with with the as a prototype was rather crude, because I was building them ourselves
but you know, conceptually, it was really advanced and
Was that a big eye-opener for the Europeans when they saw it? Was that, you know, did that design start taking off? Okay,
No, no, it didn't influence—I don't think it influenced design, but it was so different. And I was really kind of a freaky little kid with my hair down to my shoulders and, uh, and I was still, you know, young and skinny. And I got there; Ed sent me over about a week early, so I was there before anybody with the U.S. team or, you know, group got there. So, uh, it was—they got a lot of attention, let's put it that way. And there's a very nice movie about, uh, about Kirsten, the first world champ, they called it, you know. And and and the people in Kirsten who organized the event, uh, wanted to become the sanctioning body for the world, and I don't think that went anywhere, but at one time they thought they're gonna
and it's a fabulous place to fly, yeah.
It's fabulous. Are you—you sent me these awesome pictures, which will be in the show notes for the—for the podcast when we put it up. But, uh, are you guys still flying in swing seats at this point? Are you prone, uh—
I was flying prone, but we did both okay. And, uh, and I enjoyed both. In fact, I thought I could actually fly better seated because I was more oriented, I despite the fact that when you're prone, you can swing your body and torque the glider to, you know, kind of sort of adverse shell. You can, you can input proverse y'all with with the inertia of your body, so
I, you know, from time to time, I go out and fly speed wings, or you know, single surface wings, that kind of thing. And I've flown single surface wings when it's—when it's a little bit rowdy—and I'm, and I'm just, I've just got a hammock harness, you, web webbing harness. There's no, there's no padding, there's no safety. Or I mean, if you're going, you're going in hard. You guys flew everything like that back in the day. There was no reserves, there was no, you know, there's no security in a sense, uh, was when I, when I fly that, even on, even on a pretty nice day, I just feel so naked and exposed. And just, is that because of my training? And I have that history of, you know, having a pad under my butt and some, you know, in a reserve on somewhere?
Or is that just, uh, were you guys all feeling that way? Were you always just feeling, "Oh my god, this is, I'm so naked here"? Um...
Pretty early on, I... I wanted someone to develop, um, a helmet for your butt. Yeah, and and people actually did get spinal injuries flying seated, like, you know, a takeoff that didn't happen, right? Right, sure. So it was a thing. Yeah, yeah, is
This, when is the holy cow, this is really dangerous. When did that start? When did the carnage? What year, approximately, were you guys starting to see? Wow, this is, uh, this is a little out of control, uh.
probably 76
Okay, that's when the Hang Glider Manufacturers Association was started. I mean, in fact, Bill was... come, name comes up again. Yeah, um, he was the original secretary of the uh USHPA, but um, Mike Meyer from uh Wills Wing, um, Gary Valley, Tom, and a man named Tom Price, the fella that's in Big Blue Sky uh with the test rig. There was a van where we were doing testing on top. He's also the guy that said, "Yeah, I was this Northrop trained aeronautical engineer and these punks, you know, Haggard and Beginning, you know, we're doing all this stuff." Uh, he was really, he personally, in fact, Tom Price was probably the, the impetus behind getting it together because there's no structural testing prior to that that I know of, really.
It's certainly no uh aerodynamic testing, and so those people were giants in the creation of, of any kind of safety in the sport as
people
I just mentioned you, you
Keep talking about, you know, you're kind of a punk kid, but were you—are you a trained engineer, or you went school for engineering? No.
I went right out of high school, right into Sky Sports at AG team. My dad wanted me to go to, uh, engineering school, and I had several offers, um, you know, to go as well along on the way, but I was already doing exactly what I wanted to. I couldn't go there to really take a course on aerodynamics for hanggliders, and I just went. And he had told me, you know, very nicely, hey, if you change your mind, whatever. And you can make it without going to college. I kind of wondered about it myself. It's like four years out of your life where you're not doing what you want to do. You've got to study a bunch of stuff you're not really interested in. Yeah, go for it. He was very cool about it.
So you've just learned it from the trade, just being interested and being.
Well, Mike Markowski, Ed Vickery. Mike Markowski is an aeronautical engineer. Yeah, I first worked with him. And Ed Vickery was a mechanical engineer. I worked under Tom Price, who's an aeronautical engineer. Bob Keeler, who's an aeronautical engineer. Jim Reuter, who's an aeronautical engineer. So I was kind of like an expert tech and a designer.
And then later on in life, you know, I had engineers that were working in the team I was leading. Or I hired some engineers, too. So I was mostly a designer. The one advantage.
Was that I was also the test pilot. So we could cut through the nonsense. I could get the feedback immediately between what we were doing and the product development. And that's carried on until, you know, just recently. The hands-on stuff helps a lot, too. And then
was it 76 then when you guys started turning circles and getting tall?
No. At the first national hang. Hang gliding championships, I had never really, I had never thermaled at all. And had barely gone off, I think I had gone off Pat's Peak in a couple of places back here. You know, six, 800-foot hills. And I went right from there to Sylmar. And at that time, certain people were flipping enough gliders, had flown enough. You know, Bob Wills and his gang in particular. And Pat Connery, I mentioned him before. And several others were already taking off from the lower hill at Sylmar and going up and going to the back.
So that's 73. Wow.
Yeah, I'm sure those are the first people really doing it. And then also, during the Annie Green Springs National Championships, Taras Kseniuk, who was in the movie. He was a very early hero of hang gliding. That'd be another person for you to interview if you really want to get to it. He's interviewed quite a bit when the Anthony Matthews thing. Yeah,
Icarus I and Icarus II.
The Icarus, and then the Icarus V was a super rigid wing that he built.
Most of us are floundering around, you know, like doing a couple circles and thermals and trying to stay up. And he came to the, he came and did a demonstration flight wearing Jodhpurs and World War I type flying goggles. A leather helmet. And he just looked so cool. He took off and set his Icarus V up and just went, just dotted out completely and left us mortals behind. Wow. Everybody standing there with their mouth open and then came and, you know, didn't land on the spot, but darn near landed on the spot. And then he was way ahead. Wow. But we were thermally. And I came back from that
contest. And the second. You wanted me to tell some stories, you said.
Yes, please.
We went, flew off of, we had a group fly in. We were invited to go to Mount Washington, which, you know, everyone in the world supposedly knows that they recorded the highest, you know, wind on earth. And it's the gnarliest mountain, you know, well in New England. That's big
wave flying, right? That's where they fly. Yes, exactly. They have wave camps. Yeah. You
know, it's. The biggest mountain in the world in New England, if you will. And so we went up there and a whole bunch of us and the weather was right. We were invited to come up and the way you would get up the front side, they fly the backside now, but we flew the front side and on the west side and landed in the parking lot. And the way we got up Mount Washington at that time was a cog railway that was. Powered by a coal steam train and a couple
of people had flown off. It was dead, dead air up there, which is highly unusual. And we were flying, like I said, the west side. And I, my glider from, this is 74, my glider from the Lilienthal event in May of 1974 hadn't gotten back from California yet. And so I borrowed my friend, Greg. Greg Rector's my original hang gliding buddy, um, standard sky sports Lark. And I, but I did have my Vario and I brought it with me and I flew off, was gliding down. And, uh, I saw the steam train come up and there's this big plume going up and
I thought that looks like a thermal. So I went and flew over to it and literally it was a thermal either. It created a thermal. It was a thermal, which I doubt, or it was the trigger for a thermal, you know, a big trigger on a, on a pretty stable day. And I did my first real, real, real climb, you know, and, and there were, there were cinders flying around the sail and stuff from the steam train. And I, and I remember seeing back at launch Terry, Terry Sweeney jumping up and down. He was so excited to see it. And my friend. Greg was down in the, down to the LZ with a little monocle watching me go around and around, but it was really the first time anybody had done a thermal climb in a hang glider on the East coast.
So it was, that was just a gas.
That really
happened. There was an article in, uh, in ground skimmer magazine about it. And I have witnesses. I know it sounds crazy, but it really did happen. And the, and the article and, uh, who's the guy, who's the guy does the artwork. And you should have magazine, um, does those cartoons like, well,
Dennis does, uh, does he do, does he do the drawing? Um,
it was, he did an, an article with, uh, had it had me with my chin, you know, prominent in the, in the, um, sorry, I don't remember his name.
So it was called fossil fuel flying. It was the article. That's great. Fantastic.
Have you been a part of that? Dave
Martin. Sorry. The artist is Dave Martin, boomer and Vario or something like that. If
you've been a part, I'm going way forward now, we'll come back. But have you been a part of the whole, you know, flying off the, I don't know if it's Mount Washington or they're doing it, but they're flying to the coast, you know, the cosmonauts and the Caliphs, uh, students and some of that crew.
Well, you mean, um, Andre Kuznetsov from the West?
Yeah. I call him a cosmonaut.
Yeah. Kuznetsov means a iron worker in Russian, by the way. Um, yeah, he and Max Couturo, part of the Russian mafia of paragliding back here. No, I haven't done that yet, but I was there. I think I was there that day. Cool. Yeah. Well, we'll get, we'll
get into your paragliding in the crossover and in a little bit, but, uh, a lot of wins start racking up in these years. What do you, what have you got? 30 something comp wins. 36. 36. Was comps, you know, you go off to the coast. The world's, was this just a, I gotta do more of this? Were you kind of hooked right off the bat?
Uh, in the beginning there were contests that were more like BNs really, you know, 36 wins in some professional, but mostly not, you know, mostly not. We had contests at Mittersill, at ski areas, Mittersill and Cranmore and, uh, other, uh, but I also, you know, participate in some world, uh, some national championships. And other countries as well. The masters was, was the biggest one, but I had a big advantage. First of all, I had a better gliders and was professional. Yeah. And then a lot of the people that showed up, they didn't know how to fly. Really? Did not know how to fly. They're, you know, peeing themselves on launch.
Cause they've never done, never been up here so far and landing downwind into the parking areas and into the trees and don't know the first thing about flying. So it wasn't, it wasn't that tough, basically knowing how to fly your, you're in the top three.
When you're, uh, when you're sitting around with a new group of people and they, they ask you about, you know, flying in the seventies, what, what's a, what's a common story? What's one of the ones that kind of pops into your mind that, well, there was this one day.
I was in Africa, South Africa in 1976.
And, uh. We're traveling between, uh, Johannesburg and, uh, Durban. It rained a bunch and we're in this, this, uh, landscape of, of just wildflowers. As far as the eye can see black dirt, you could push your hand down into, I'm sure you've been to places like that around the world too. And we're up flying on a hill soaring and, uh, and, uh, like a golden Eagle came by and started doing loops right near us. Didn't attack us. He was kind of playing. Hmm. Or showing dominance or something, but that's something that sticks out. There's been so much over the times, over the, over the years. And the people is the best part too. Yeah. We're so fortunate with the people that we meet through this, uh, this sport.
A bunch of characters in it. They're fantastic
compared to the, you know, normal earthlings.
Yes. Yeah. That's a pretty amazing community. But one of the reasons we're talking is that Hugh Miller at XCMAG sent me. A quote of yours. Uh, I've got it written down here. I just love this. I'd love for you to just, uh, I know what you know what I'm going to say. Yeah. Yeah. In comparison, the rest of my life has been a disappointment.
Oh, no, that's interesting. That's interesting. I didn't think that's what he said that when he contacted me, it was because in the movie, um, I said it was bound to bring out the curious and the kooky. I didn't invent that. That came from a fire sign theater record. It was a Procter and Bergman. Uh, the com comedy team there on the radio out in California, they had a bunch of stuff like that, but back to that. Well, I
guess at that time I felt that way. I think, um, my life since that point has really improved so much. I have a fabulous, um, life partner and wife. That's just, just her name's Natasha and she's just great.
Is she a pilot? No, no,
zero interest in that. Yeah. We're just like chalk and cheese as far as that, that, that, but, you know, I'll, I'll credit her with saving my life. I'd still be alive, but I wouldn't have a life. There's a difference. The paragliding thing has just been fantastic for me too.
It's been
a rebirth. And even more recently, um, what I, what I found out was I really missed the camaraderie of being in that type of, uh, group. And we had that in hang gliding at the beginning that people were just really artistic and crazy. And wonderful giving and sharing the whole HGMA, the whole industry getting together and solving the problem of stability and structures and safety. And John Lake creating the hang system, which, you know, is the basis of the licensing and all of it. In fact, I was, I was in a position when the FAA was looking at regulating a sport pilot when that started. Um, they said, well, what about hang gliding? Nope.
Wait a second. I was on the. The committee, you know, the aviation rules advisory committee, uh, no, no, no, that's well taken care of. They have the hang rating system. They have the HGMA. They have all this stuff covered. They have insurance. They have all you just leave them alone. They're good. Oh, okay. Next, you know, kind of thing. So I was the, I was the mole for the sport at the right place in Washington at that time. The only thing they did go into, which was really fair is they didn't. There was no. Standard at the time, at least in the United States, the, uh, D D H V probably did have it, but, um, for tandem pair, uh, tandem hang gliding harnesses, they
said, no, you gotta have that. If you're going to take the unwitting public up in the air, but I digress. Um, the thing with paragliding now, it reminds me an awful lot of, uh, hang gliding in the beginning that everybody gets together in the LZ. You know, we share the ride in the, share the ride in the van up, or most often in new England, we all hike up together. And so there's time for the camaraderie and the sharing of all of it. And I miss that. And I really have gotten that back now, which I personally just love. I love all the people that I fly with.
Why did that go away in hang gliding? Was that just because it's just the way the sport went? It just less and less people doing it all the time.
It, it didn't. I went away from. Getting into the ultralight business and, uh, and then eventually the, you know, light sport aircraft aviation business. So I don't, it wasn't in compare, you know, it was a personal statement. I was overrepresented in that movie. Anyways, the only reason that he really chose me for so much of it is that I was a kid at the time. So I remember a lot of it and I'm alive.
You hang out long enough, you know, hang out long enough. You're bound to get famous, right? Right.
Let's talk about that carnage a little bit. It, you know, he does a really good job in the film of, of talking about that. And, you know, there were some, there were some names, Anthony Matthews. There were some other names in the film that, you know, the, of course the Wills brothers, uh, you know, that I think were a big hit to the community, not just here in the States, but the, but the world, but this was happening all over, you know, there's the same stories in Europe and in Australia and everywhere that the hang gliding is happening. It was there. Was there a point where, uh, for you personally, it was just, okay, this is too much. Or did it drive you away from it at any point? Or was it, uh, just, just the, just part of what you had to put up with?
Um,
it never pushed me away to the point where I was going to stop, but it bothered me greatly.
Um, Bob Wills was like Zeus. Yeah. To us mortals. He embodied it, you know, he's this big guy and really strong and intuitive and likable and nice. And good. And the best by far. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, so yeah, you know, of course he bought it under a helicopter doing a Jeep commercial. So you could say, well, I'm not doing that. But another quote of mine in, in the movie is that the sport was getting a bad reputation rightfully deserved. Because aviation, I think I said aviation itself is it's exciting enough on its own without equipment failure. That was my vote for, you know, how great the HGMA was.
Yeah. There's, there's also an interesting thing in the film that I wrote down here that I wanted to ask you about. The reason a lot of people did it is they thought it was safe. This is interesting to me because, you know, obviously now with the passage of time, you know, you're not going to be able to fly. No one gets in a free flight and is told that it's safe. Uh, I think, I think newbies and novice pilots are certainly not completely aware because they're not around the carnage. So certainly that you guys were, but, so I think there is some, you know, kind of willful, willful ignorance, but, uh, yeah, just comment on that. Was it?
Well, that's a quote from Ken DeRussi. And I never thought it was safe. What could you possibly, well, what could you possibly think is safe about doing that?
Okay. So you guys, those of you who are in it, we're not thinking. If
you want to be safe, don't get out of bed. Nothing's safe. Taking a shower isn't safe. You know, flying an airliner is safe. Driving to the air, driving to the airport is not safe. Riding a bicycle isn't safe. Life is not. It's safe.
And also getting over the fact that everybody goes away. Everybody's on the big list. That's part of freedom. I think from all the nonsense with the cults, I won't go any further.
Fair enough. Uh, Tom, tell me about the, the crossover. So a few years back, you know, I don't know if I have my timing right here, but five or six years back, you start flying paragliders. You know, the, what I heard a lot when I was getting into the sport is, you know, or when I'd see, when I'd come across hang gliders, that kind of thing, you know, their whole thing with, oh, well, those things collapse and, and our, you know, and our fear of hearing gliders is, yeah, but you're going really fast. You need a big place to land, uh, you know, so there's these two kind of competing. Well, I wouldn't want to do that. You know, for paragliders, it's, I don't want to set those up. I want to be able to put it on my back. There's, you know, there's, there's lots of advantages to having. I think something you can just have in a small backpack and walk up the hill, but they do collapse.
They are, uh, you know, for, for hanging, somebody who's been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Uh, Jeff Nicolay, who has been a constant theme, um, in my life since, since high school, I knew him in high school. His daughter, Gigi is a hang glider pilot now and is managing Morningside along with. Mike Holmes up in New Hampshire, which is the best training Hill in new England, or one of the best training in England. Uh, he had gotten into paragliding quite early on and, uh, and he, he had me flying early on and I thought, these are kind of goofy, but they're cool. Um, and in fact, I had my son, Jeff, uh, he'd done a tandem and I had solo flown and stuff.
And so I always thought they were pretty neat. And in fact, Dan pointer, a name that I brought up before, who was writer and did the original pair pair manual, he, he knew of Dave Barish who had done some of the very early, he called it slope soaring. And did you know of him? He was the first person really to, to make a high aspect ratio, uh, cloth wing to fly off of a ski slope. And it was in the cat skills. In the sixties, it was before he didn't have a Jaybird pair of foil, you know, the classic pair of foils design, but Dominique, yeah, it wasn't one of those.
It was kind of a three lobe thing. Look up, look, look it up. I think I remember a picture of that. And actually, uh, Dan pointer had taken me out back right when we were starting with a thing called a full plane, which was a Jaybird. Uh, and he. And it must've weighed, you know, 80 pounds, the whole pack or something. And it didn't really want to glide, but I think Dan pointer might've been the person to say the term pair of gliding. So I've known of the idea for a long time and I've always thought it's, it's really cool. But for me, it was 11 years ago. And, uh, John Gallagher, a local sky God here in new England.
Who's been paragliding forever. Um, and his mentor to a lot of people and a grouchy old man mentor to, uh, to all the people. He was an early hang glider pilot. He switched over very early. Uh, I met him at the hundredth anniversary of soaring. Uh, the Wright brothers went back to Kitty Hawk and, uh, 1911. And they thought gliding was so much fun that it could be a sport. And, and Lillian thought that too. By the way. Um, and, uh, so, uh, John Harris who started Kitty Hawk kites, which is one of the first commercial operations from hang gliding in the United States, if not the world, and also big, big part of forever in RRG, um, had, had an event and he invited a whole bunch of people together.
And I happened to be in the house with Roy Haggard and, and John. John Gallagher and, and myself and several others. And, uh, and so I had told John, okay, flight design, the company that I've worked with and who is our business, you know, we were flight design USA and flight design. The manufacturer of those really cool carbon fiber airplanes. All. So it was a very early brand of, of paragliders. And then they branched into making the first, uh, rigid wing carbon fiber hang glider. Called an Atos. Yeah. Um, well, it's the same company in the same fellow, Matias Betch, who's an early hang glider person from, uh, from, uh, Europe, from Germany.
And, uh, they were manufacturing, um, swing paragliders in Ukraine where the airplanes were manufactured. And I had said one year, we, in the beginning of light sport aircraft, we sold a lot of airplanes. We were selling 60, 70, 80, 90. Airplanes for a few years. Wow. And it was a big business. And, uh, they manufactured the paragliders there. And I had said to one of the managers who was a paraglider pilot, you know, I've always really wanted to, to really get into that. I just never had. And he said, you sold 70 of these things. Hey man, what color would you like? And so they sent me a, uh,
a swing Arcus four. It was really a nice glider. Mm-hmm. And a harness and a reserve. And I took it up to Morningside to take some lessons with Jeff Nicolay and he was, oh, you're, you're a hang glider pilot. You know how to do this already practically. And of course I went forward and wailed myself a few times and I thought, geez, you know, I'm really not even hang gliding enough. If I take this up, I'm not going to be able to be good enough at it to really pursue it. So fast forward to, and this was 2007, so fast forward to, uh, 2011 and, uh, John Gallagher said, you own a whole hang, you own a whole paraglider kit and you don't use it.
I'm at, well, go up to Morningside and take some lessons. And I promise you the next time it's on at Cape Cod, man, I'll throw you off because anyway. And so he did. And, uh, my first. First real flight in a paraglider, I think I flew for two hours or something because it was sort of a long day. First one. You must've been hooked. It's, it's the same, same kind of thing, really, you know, it's just a different vehicle and I can actually think and fly at the same time. So it's always kind of helped, but yes, I did get hooked. And then I thought, well, yeah, these things are dangerous, but I'm just going to fly at the Cape or Mount Tom, maybe when it's glass off. So of course that's a slippery slope. And then I really, and then I really got into it and started making friends and liking it.
And then I bought a, what was it?
Tequila four was my next glider, which is a really nice glider. And then now I'm flying a, uh, I have a Delta for that. I bought used for, uh, it was my glider for a while. And that's my, my beater wing, although it's in very nice shape and an Alpina four.
I'm really into paragliding. Awesome.
And is this. You know, 55 years of aviation, uh, and all the different stops along the way, which we've barely brushed on, uh, have you got any goals? Are there, are there things you want to do with your, your paraglider that maybe you've never, you never did with your, your hang kit?
I'd really like to do some, uh, some triangle flying. It's pretty hard to do. We don't get the stable conditions for it, or at least, you know, low wind conditions here in new England. All that. So you guys are usually
doing one way as you're going downwind.
Yeah, I definitely do. Yeah. And, and, uh, I, I will say that between, um, hang gliding early, the hang gliding stuff, I spent a lot of time sitting out in the field, you know, waiting for other people to come and get you. And so I don't have a lot of tolerance for that.
Um, but I do love the flying. In fact, I recently, you know, we sold our company. Two years ago, a year and a half ago, and, uh, and I, I work as a consultant now for several companies, but, but not a lot, like 10, 20 hours a month, which is perfect. And, uh, and people asked, including, including Natasha said, so what are you going to do when you're retired? So, um, I'm going to go paragliding. No, no, I mean, really, you know, what are you going to do when you're retired? I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't think you're listening. I'm going paragliding. Every time the wind is right somewhere, I'm going there.
And I, and I have since, uh, since I retired and I just love it.
That's awesome. And,
you know, going out on bike riding when it's not good for paragliding. And, uh, I love it. And it makes you feel like a kid again, too. And it's really, uh, motivated me to get in better shape. And I've always kind of put some effort into it anyways. But, uh, I love it.
That's awesome. Yeah. That's really nice to, to see that you've still got all the passion after all this time.
As much, maybe a little more. I don't know. I really love it. Wow. And, and we've toyed with the idea of, uh, moving to Southern Spain.
Um, because Natasha really loves Spain. And, uh, and the flying is great. Yeah. Yeah. All year round. Yeah. A little
more reliable as well than the Northeast, I think.
Northeast isn't that great. It's good, but you have to drive a lot. It's always blowing some way somewhere, but you know. Have you, have you been on the Northeast your whole life?
I, I, well, I was based here my whole life. Um, but I did spend a lot of time in Chattanooga, uh, off season. The train in Chattanooga, if we call it training back then, hanging out flying. Um, and doing development work and then spent a lot of time in, uh, Southern California, doing development work out of Torrey Pines, some with Tom Price at Albatross sales, um, who was the fellow that helped start the HGMA and he was, he was both a Northrop, uh, uh, he was a trained aeronautical engineer and a sail maker, you know, so he was uniquely qualified. I worked with him. He was great.
I'm going to put you on the spot here. Two, two questions, uh, answer them. However you, uh, in whatever order you want, when you think back of all the flying you've done, what's your favorite flight and tell us all about it. And then also what's the craziest thing you've ever seen in flight.
Some of the real memorable stuff from the beginning was being at the, uh, Canadian national championships. Up in the, the Rockies. And, uh, would that have been golden Kokanee Bay, Kootenay Bay, Kootenay Bay up there, that's where they had it and, uh, uh, that was just so different and I got my, got on my little Volkswagen bus, you know, drove to Montreal, took a left turn and ended up out there with my glider on the roof. And then I was, after I won the masters championships in 1977, I was like, I'm going to have to do this again. I had, uh, a student in a dorm, uh, he was flying for the Delta wing kites. And Bill Bennett, rich Piccarelli, who was a very early.
A person in skydiving, base jumping and hang gliding. And. And with Roy Haggard, Bill Bennett, and Rich Piccarelli, they developed the reserve parachute, too, by the way. And we all went to Rio together because we had won and we brought a bunch of gliders. And then we went to Mendoza, Argentina for the Argentine National Championships. And being down there was just really special. And then also after the World Championships, I drove around Europe for six weeks with Mike Harker, who was, I guess, the first TV program that was broadcast, pan-European TV broadcast, was a sports show.
And Mike Harker, one of their first or, you know, one of the first episodes on it, Mike Harker, this young, brave American. American serviceman living in Garmisch flew a hang glider off the Zugspitze, you know, and it was on TV. So he became instantly famous all over Europe. He was a very handsome guy and looked like a model, like, you know, classic Marlboro man model with a period mustache, you know, and he drove an American van. And like I said in the naked pilot interview thing, I rode around with him going back and forth between Austria, Germany. And like Corvara, Italy, and the Dolomites in his van. And we were smuggling T-shirts from Italy through to Germany and gliders from Germany to, you know, Austria and Italy.
And that was awfully special, too. We flew, we were supposedly the first people who flew off from behind Neuschwanstein Castle, too. He was first and I think I was second. And that was real special, too. And that's right. When I saw my first windsurfers out on a lake that was out in front of there, too. Oh, wow. Same trip. But, you know, I don't know. So a whole bunch of stuff. That's all good stuff. My last flight was my favorite, you know.
Just the only one we can remember at this stage with so many. But Tom, thanks so much, man. I appreciate you sharing your, just a fraction of your history. We could talk for hours about more and more of it. Yeah, we'll catch up sometime. We'll catch up and we'll hopefully do some flying together. Maybe you can come out to one of our events out here in Utah this fall and be a part of that community. It's pretty outrageous. I would
love to do that. I would love to do that. I've not got a lot of experience with big air yet. Well, there's no
time like the present, my friend.
Let's do it. And there's good triangles out here. We fly some good triangles. Excellent. Tom, thanks, man. Appreciate it. My pleasure. If
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