 | auf der flugbahn mit der paragräfin 1 a different angle of a paragliding*girl*....freaks flock together...freaks fly together. |
 | Hang Gliding Santa Barbara Summer 1974 In April 1974 I chose Santa Barbara California as the location to establish my hang gliding school and store. At the time of the decision I had never been to Santa Barbara, except once as a small child to visit the Santa Barbara Mission with my mother, and chose Santa Barbara because the map indicated that there was a certain minimum population as represented by a yellow area. I had no idea where I would teach or that any of the mountains could be accessed. After committing to Free Flight Systems, Inc. that I would become a dealer for their products I visited Santa Barbara and by exceptional luck almost immediately found the Santa Barbara training hill, known as the Mesa, that Jim Woods (Free Flight of Ventura) had told me about. Having found a place to conduct training I rented a small office nearby and began looking for publicity to promote my business. One of the first and best bits of free publicity was getting the attention of the local TV station, KEYT. This footage was broadcast on the sports portion of the news in July or August of 1974. Seen flying in the film are; Dave Saffold flying a seated 16' all white glider constructed by Dave himself, Dick Saffold, flying my 18' Free Flight, bearing the words "Free Flight" in large letters, that I used for training, and myself in the bright orange shirt flying a blue and white Free Flight 17' Dealer Glider. The launch site is what the locals then called variously the Rock or Mind Rock and is on Gibralter road about 700' above the landing zone. Dave can be seen launching smoothly with a keel assist from his brother and then maintaining his altitude in a nice soaring pass. His flying style was far beyond me at that time (and probably still is) and I manage to complete the plummet in about a minute and completely overfly the preferred LZ into the brush. Dick is much more accurate in his landing if not elegant! Dick and Dave were excited at the prospect of a real hang gliding store and school coming to Santa Barbara when I first arrived, and they provided me with a great deal of assistance in those critical first few weeks. I think they were also eager to keep me from doing too much damage as it was apparent to them that I had both little experience and an over abundance of cockiness. David helped me teach in those first weeks and had enormous energy and passion for keeping the students safe. I understood little about how these wings flew and David realized that the way Free Flight recommended that the gliders should be rigged provided inadequate reflex for pitch stability. David repeatedly went behind my back altering customer gliders to correct for this deficiency against my repeated admonishment not to change the gliders that I had delivered to my customers, gliders I had assembled and rigged according to the manufacturers instructions. I have no doubt that David's actions saved some lives. David also was, more than anyone else I ever flew with, the single person who I regard as my mentor in those days. At only 16 years old David made an enormous contribution to safety in that formative period. Also seen at launch is my father, Robert de Russy and one of my earliest students, Richard Montanaro. Ken de Russy |
 | High Above - Der Film Inhalt: Der bemitleidenswerte, schwerverletzte Dirk schwärmt aus der Warte seines Krankenbettes vom Motorschirmfliegen. Untermalt werden seine dokumentarischen Worte und Erklärungen von mitreissenden Bildern, die die Schönheit und Faszination dieser Art der Fliegerei verstehen lassen. Doch ist die Sache wirklich so gefährlich, wie der Zuschauer ahnt? Produktion und Regie: Till Middelhauve, Roland Schütz Musik: Cubiq (www.cubiq.de.vu ) © Sommer 2003 |
 | TV News Piece Ken de Russy Teaches Paragliding 1992 I operated my hang gliding and later hang gliding and paragliding business in Santa Barbara California for just a hair over 24 years. Early on I recognized that the cost of advertising and promotion was beyond my budget so I developed a keen sense of how to get free publicity. As Santa Barbara was just far enough from LA to be just beyond the range of LA based broadcast channels, a local station, KEYT, was the primary broadcast media for local news. KCOY in Santa Maria and KSBY in San Luis Obispo both maintained bureaus in Santa Barbara and also served the Santa Barbara TV audience. Because they served comparatively small markets they were very receptive to stories that would have been more easily overlooked in a major market like LA. I eventually came to discover manipulating the local channels to send out camera crews was fairly easy. I courted all the media and had quite good success obtaining publicity that I could never have afforded to buy. In this piece the reporter was one that had previously done a three segment series on hang gliding centered on me and my school. He already knew the backstory and and knew how productive it was to work with me. He had flown in the hang gliding series and his coverage had been in contention for a national award so it was easy to get him out to cover paragliding. Although this news story was shot early on in my paragliding teaching experience, it reflects the results that I found I could reliably produce with someone on their first day of paragliding instruction. For nearly all the years I taught paragliding, the first day worked like this. I met the students at 10:00AM and briefed them on the waiver and its meaning, the flight plan and the spoken instructions they would hear on the radio and what each command required them to do. By 11:00 I placed the canopy on the ground at the launch position and in perfect shape to be pulled up. I then placed the harness on them and placed the front risers and brake handles in their hands. With some additional spoken instruction they would make their very first attempt to handle the canopy in any way. With only rare exceptions, they pulled the canopy overhead and continued into a launch run and into a properly executed and successful launch with no physical intervention from me. The flight from the top of the Mesa produced a one minute flight at the minimum as the landing field was a full 200 feet below launch. The edge of the landing plateau (beyond which were power lines and high speed traffic) was barely within gliding distance so a standard approach was required to avoid flying off the property. Normally a first day student could easily make five to seven such flights on the first day. The conditions often provided extended flights that, in one case, made a ten minute soaring "First" flight possible. Keep in mind that this occurred on the FIRST flight which came about following the VERY FIRST TIME THE STUDENT ATTEMPTED TO INFLATE THE WING! This reporter, like all reporters, had a finite time to devote to the taping of the story, and as he had only one camera operated by one cameraman, he made one flight "filmed" from the bottom and a second one shot from the top. These were the only flights he had time for and he had no prior experience or opportunity to handle the wing as described above. The two flights were edited together to produce the effect of two cameras taping the same flight. I describe this in some detail to emphasize why I was so addicted to teaching paragliding. There was never any point during the many years I taught people to hang glide that I could produce even the smallest fraction of results that I achieved nearly every day while giving paragliding lessons. Overwhelming joy and a sense of exceptional accomplishment on the part of the students was routinely expressed to me by nearly every student. Only rarely did that occur on the first day with any of my hang gliding students. There was several years during which I tried to teach both but by far and away most prospective students that had the opportunity to see students of both classes in the process of learning, would choose paragliding over hang gliding. Initially in that period I tried to push some toward hang gliding but it was apparent that many resented not being directed to paragliding. It had become progressively more difficult to sign up and keep hang gliding students even before paragliding arrived on the scene. Once there was regular paragliding activity on the hill it was painful to see to the far better results of the paragliding students while the hang gliding students struggled for the smallest achievements. I felt that I had betrayed the trust my customers placed in me. They expected me to facilitate their dream of flight and counted on me as a professional to give them the best recommendation. |
 | The art of parapente Parapente aan de Belgische kust... Pauwels Stefaan en Gaetan Smedts |
 | Naked Paraglider---Art------in the night-------------------- no joke - pure seriousness Paraglider art of the other kind Parawaiting Art skater a8skater Flying skill at night with a naked paraglider pilot, light plays with long time exposure dacksteiner hang a8 skating skateboarder downhill germany |
 | Mike "Crash" Murphy - Creative Landing Here is yet another creative landing from Mike. |
 | Fatal Accident - accident - acidente fatal - piloto morre! Pilot die! Pilot sterben! пилот умра! экспериментальных умереть! pilot morir! pilote mourir! pilota morire! |
 | Vertu Signature S Vertu Signature S ad |
 | Obama Girl vs McCain Girl Olympics Part 1 Obama Girl and McCain Girl face off in the first round of the Candidate Girl Olympic Games. There is suspicion of cheating. |
| Oceanfrontier Hideaway | |
| Sheraton Suites Philadelphia Airport | |
| The Boulders Resort and Golden Door Spa | |
| Coral Beach Club |
العربية
中国
Français
Deutsch
Ελληνική
हिन्दी
Italiano
日本語
Português
Русский
Español
