Hi there everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cloud Base 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, if I have 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 legends and getting people from each of the various decades on the show. And so we're kicking it off with Tom because 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, Hugh 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 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. He 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 a little bit to happen, because I was trying to get out to talk to Roy and John 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 CV 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, it's, hi Gavin, it's, it's when we first started. Yes, I had started an aviation club in eighth grade and with my metal shop teacher, Mr.
Baldwin. We were going to build a Vokes plane and he got us involved with the EAA, the Experimental Aircraft Association. And we
did go to some of their local meetings and people's basements and things, but it was still kind of out of reach for, you know, something like that. But it was still kind of out of reach for, you know, something like that. But it was still kind of out of reach for, you know, something like that. But it was still kind of out of reach for, you know, something like that. But it was still kind of out of reach for, you know, something like that. But it was still kind of out of reach for, you know, someone that age. And in the back of a sport aviation magazine, there was a little tiny ad in, you know, right, right at the classifieds, practically in the back for batwing plans. And it was Jim Foreman from Amarillo, Texas, and they were five bucks. And so we sent away for that one. Wow, look at that thing. And, and it was actually a set of plans from Richard Miller's Bamboo Band. Bamboo Band. Bamboo Band. Butterfly is what he called it, which was a very early use of a regalo wing. And he, he was a very, a real minimalist person. And so it was made out of bamboo 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, you're not the first person I've spoken with, you know, Miguel down in Mexico has been running the, the, the Menarca 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. It didn't start with Da Vinci, 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, of everything that kind of came out from 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 that, you know, going way up on the hill and, you know, three minute flights 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. And I 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. 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. He 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. 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 bamboo. I'll send you a picture after this. Yeah. And we, we built one. So similar to what Sweeney was, was flying in his, in the, in the. No, no Sweeney, uh, 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, um, but, uh, he built what was called the Chinook biplane. And, and just after, uh, Otto Lilienthal had been doing his
flying in the Berlin area, uh, Octave Chinook was a, uh, 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 Wright brothers and after Lilienthal, but both Lilienthal and Chanute influenced the Wright brothers. We're so spoiled these days. I mean, when I watch the big blue sky and just the happiness and joy of a three to 20 second flight and the work that must have 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, 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 wee and you're scared and you don't run hard enough. Even Terry talks about that. But yeah, I remember the first time that in the white kite that I sent you a picture of hang to Briallo 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 gliding and going. Whoa. When, you know, we landed because there was no one there telling you what to expect. There was nobody knew what to expect. No. Yeah. I didn't know whether I was going to fly and land in the run out. We were on a steep ski slope hill with no run out, you know, at the bottom. I didn't know if I was going to fly off into
the wires at the bottom or the trees after the ski hut or and just the whole experience. Yeah. It was, you know, transcendent, really, if you look back at it. I mean, it's kind of wild to think to my neighbor and mentor forever, Nate Scales. You know, he competed in the X-Alps in 2007. But his first flight here was in 89, 90, I want to say, on a paraglider. So 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, you know. And so Nate said, yeah, I want to do that. And he took him out to the hill and they hiked up and Nate flew off and he came down to the LZ, you know, the bottom of the hill.
And, and, uh, and the guy said, yeah, I want to do that. And the guy said, okay, well now you, you know, as much as I do, he was, 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. And 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. It 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. I don't have any background with RC, but there are 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.
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's and flow, right? But you were talking with Califf Latourne on a really good, and wow, what a well-spoken guy he is. He is, yeah, very articulate. Um, but anyway, uh, I had always tried to explain to people. Particularly early on. I was this little kid, you know, and, 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 white water, it's white water air back there, you know, you
don't want any part of that kind of, so, so yeah, the visualizations 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 and you're barely getting off the ground and you're having these little flights and 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 it. Once we make these better, we're going to be going thousands of feet off the ground because of the RC or 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 hadn't, 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 the dune out of Cape Cod. Um, 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, um, Bill Liskum did a great job on that film. Amazing. Uh, 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 if I'm jumping ahead, just make them 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. Uh, 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 wasn't that much. The carnage, it wasn't until they started going up and started using thermals. And then it seemed like 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. Um, and Lloyd Leitcher who started, uh, 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, um, uh, he, he actually
left the, he was the, uh, 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 couldn't, 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, and there's no one there, no, no club structure, no Yushpa, you know, pair 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. Everything was just, just predicated on balls.
And wits maybe. Yeah. Or
lack of. Yeah. Wow. Was there a, I'm always reminded that, you know, sailplanes. It's 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 checklist. 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, 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 us 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 wailed myself a bunch when I was a little kid. I would always, you know, like move real fast and then fall over a railing 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.
My 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. I just knew 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 know you've, you've, you've maintained hang gliding throughout your career and, and most, and more recently in paragliding, but I'd love to hear about this trip to COSEN. Your first worlds. I think you were also the youngest at the worlds, right? Yes. That's an amazing part of the world. It's an amazing 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 really nice older folks that kind of took me under their wing. We started a company at, at Sky Sports. There was a man named Dan Pointer. Who, who had written the parachute manual, Ted Strong, who was very big in sport of skydiving, the development of it. Mike Markowski, who's a very early hang gliding persona and designer. And then,
and then 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. He was the first one to take
a Papillon, which was a, the parasailing. And then I went and worked with him for a couple of years. And I went and worked with him for a couple of years. And then I went and worked with him for a couple of years. And then I went and worked with him for a couple of years. And he, he saw the possibilities and development of 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, you know, became the test pilot, then the designer for the company. And, and he paid for me to go out to the Annie Green Springs Nationals, which was the first nationals out at Sylmar. And then he also paid for me to go to the first world championship. And so I went over there on my own, packed my glider up, took it to Logan Airport in Boston,
over to the freight terminal. Then went over, got on an airplane by myself and flew to Europe with, you know, we had travel agents back then that would organize a lot of things. Got out of the plane, picked up my glider. How am I going to get it to the train? You know, carried my
glider to the
train, got it. Got it on a train, got it on a bus. And this is, this is 76, right? 74. 74. 1974, yeah. What, what is your, what is your flight deck look like at the world in 74? Well, back, there was a man named Irv, Mr. Culver, Matt Culver's dad. I forget his first name. Sorry. I think he was USHPA number one, by the way. Wow. Or USHGA or Southern California Hang Gliding Association. Number one. And, uh. And you're, what is your, you sent me your number. Well, you're 200 something. Two, 262. Bill Liskum, the, the, you know, the man who made Big Blue Sky, his, his number's lower. So I always have to buy the first beer. Wow. I'm 85179.
That's, 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 Will Skies. Um, originally Bob Wills and Chris Wills, they used instruments too. And Pat Connery, 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 and 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? No. Both my parents, 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
to our 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 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 don't tow behind a car it doesn't look that doesn't look smart okay that was about it no they let me go and
in fact they signed the letter to you know from
my mom which bill talks about in the movie was actually to the high school to let me go to the first national championships 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 well 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 how 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 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 they're they're nautically you know hang gliding talked about nose angle and the original regalas were 80 degrees and the sky sports gliders are 90 degrees so i said why flew around so i went out to 130 degrees we had truncated cut 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 liners and everything um shaped aluminum ribs uh a keel
pocket was shaped
on it was actually quite advanced for the time um and it was right up there with with the as a prototype was rather crude because i was building them ourselves um 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 meister shop dock and fliegen 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 uh 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 show you can you can input proverse you 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 know just a 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 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 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 named 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 pagini 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 uh 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 to school for engineering no i went right out of high school right into sky sports
at age 18 my dad wanted me to go to uh engineering school and i had several offers um you know to go as well along 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 hang gliders 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 or you're not doing what you want to do if you 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 um mike markowski ed vickery mike markowski was an aeronautical engineer yeah i first worked with him 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 um 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 but one advantage um uh 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 till you know just recently the hands-on stuff helps a lot too and then was it was it 76 then when you guys started making turning circles and getting tall
no um at the first national hang gliding championships i 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 places back here you know six eight hundred foot hills and i went right from there to to silmar and at that time certain people um were big enough gliders had flown enough you know bob wills and his gang in particular um and pat canary i mentioned him before and several others were already taking off from the lower hill at somewhere and going up and going to the back so that's 73 wow yeah i'm sure they're those are the first people really doing it and then also during the uh anne green springs national championships uh taras kasiniak who was in in the movie he was a very early uh 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 uh anthony matthews thing yeah icarus one and the icarus two the icarus and then the icarus five yeah okay was a super rigid wing that he built um 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 um wearing
jod purrs and world war one type flying goggles and a leather helmet and he just looked so cool he took off in his set his icarus five up and just went just dotted out completely and left us mortals behind and everybody's 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 in the landing area too so he was way ahead wow but but we were and i came back from that contest and the second flight you wanted me to tell some stories you said yes please we went flew off of uh 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 that's well in new england big wave flying right that's where they fly yes exactly they were flying and they were flying and they have wave camps yeah right you know it's the biggest mountain in the world in new england if you will and so we went up there and uh a whole bunch of us and the weather was right we were invited to to come up and um the way you would get up the front side they fly the back side now but we flew the front side and on west west side and uh landed in the parking lot and
the way
you got up mount washington at that time was a cog railway that was power by a coal steam train and uh a couple people had flown off it was dead dead air up there which is highly unusual and uh we were flying like i said the west side and i my glider from this is 74 my glider from the lillienthal event in may of 1974 hadn't gotten back from
california yet and uh so i borrowed my friend 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 i 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 was a thermal which i doubt or it was the trigger for a thermal yeah 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 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 and 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
article and uh who's got who's the guy does the artwork in USHPA magazine oh those cartoons like well dennis does uh does he did the drawings no um it was he did an article with and he 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 uh fantastic have you been a part of that whole dave martin sorry the artist is dave martin boomer and vario or something like that this is have you 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 some of that crew well you mean um andre kuznetsov from yes yeah i call him a cosmonaut yeah kuznetsov means iron worker in russian
by the way
um yeah he and max kuturo yep part of the russian mafia of paragliding back here no i haven't done that yet you got it but i was there i think i was there that day cool yeah well we'll get in we'll get into your paragliding in the a lot of wins
start racking up in these years what do you what have you got 30 something comp wins
so where's 36 36 was comps you know you go off to the worlds was this just a i gotta do more of this were you kind of hooked right off the bat in the beginning there were contests that were more like beings really right you know 36 wins in some professional but mostly not you know mostly not we had contests at middlestown at ski areas middlestown and cranmore and other uh but i also you know participated in some world some national championships in other countries as well the masters was was the biggest one but i had a big advantage first of all i had 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 because they've never done never been up here so far and landed 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 you're you're in the top three when you're uh when you're sitting around and with a new group of people and they they ask you about you know flying in the 70s 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 and 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 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 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 we're up flying on a hill and we're up flying on a hill and we're up flying on a hill and we're up 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 it's a pretty amazing community but one of the reasons we're talking is that hugh miller and xc mag 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 gonna 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 a 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 zero interest in that yeah we're just
like chalk and cheese as far as that that that but you know 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 creating
the hang
system which you know is the
basis of the licensing and all of it in fact i was i was in the position when the faa was looking at regulating uh sport pilot when that started um they said well what about hang gliding well nope wait a second i was on the the committee you know the aviation rules advisory committee uh 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 they're good said 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 d dhv probably did have it um for tandem tandem hang gliding harnesses and they said no you got to have that if you're going to take the you know unwitting public up in the air but i digress um the thing with paragliding now it reminds me an awful lot of hang gliding in the beginning that everybody gets together in the lc 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 the way the sport went? It just less and less people doing it all the time? It didn't. I went away from hang gliding, getting into the ultralight business, and then eventually the
light sport aircraft aviation business. So it wasn't in comparison. 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're bound to get famous, right? Let's talk about that carnage a little bit. He does a really good job in the film of talking about that. There were some names, Anthony Matthews. There were some other names in the film, of course, the Wills brothers, that I think were a big hit to the community, not just here in the States, but the world. This was happening all over.
There's the same stories in Europe and in Australia and everywhere that hang gliding is happening. Was
there a point
where, for you personally, it was
just, okay, this is too much? Did it drive you away from it at any point, or was it just part of what you had to put up with? It never pushed me away to the point where I was going to stop. But it bothered me.
It bothered me
greatly. Bob Wills was like Zeus
to us mortals. He embodied it. He's this big guy and really strong and intuitive and likable and nice. And good. And the best, by far. So, yeah, 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 the movie is that the sport was getting a bad reputation. Rightfully deserved because aviation, like I said, aviation itself is exciting enough on its own without equipment failure. That was my vote for how great the HGMA was. Yeah. 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, no one gets in. They free flight and is told that it's safe. I think I think newbies and novice pilots are certainly not completely aware because they're
not around the
carnage. So certainly you guys were. But so I think there is some, you know, kind of willful, willful ignorance. But, yeah, just comment on that. Was it? Well, that's a quote from Ken DeRusso. And I never thought it was safe. What could you possibly think is safe about doing that? OK, so you guys, those of you who are in it, we're not thinking, man, if you want to be safe, don't get out of bed. Nothing safe. Taking a shower isn't safe. You know, flying an airliner is safe. Driving to the driving to the airport is not safe. Riding a bicycle isn't safe. Life is not 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. 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 that what I heard a lot when I was getting into the sport is, you know, or when I'd see when I come across hang gliders, that kind of thing. You know, their whole thing with all well, those things collapse and in our, you know, in our fear of hearing gliders is, yeah, you're going really fast and you need a big place to land, you know, so there's these
two kind of
competing, you know, 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 something you can just have in a small backpack and walk up the hill, but they do
collapse, they
are, you know, for for hangies. 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? Jeff Nicolay, who has been a constant theme 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 hills in New
England. Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real
trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as
long as you have, was there some
real trepidation getting into
paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty
excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some
real trepidation
getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have,
was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty,
pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who
has been in the
sport as long as you have, was there some
real trepidation getting into paragliding
or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited?
Jeff Nicolay, who has been in the sport as long as you have, was there
some real trepidation getting into paragliding or were you pretty, pretty excited? your support and we'll see you on the next show. Thank
you.