Flytec and Bräuniger have been intertwined for years, but
Fly&Glide just announced that SwissFlytec AG has taken over Bräuniger. The
brains at Bräuniger, Peter Bräuniger and Wolf Willershausen, will nevertheless
continue to develop hard- and software for both brands, which will continue to
be distributed by the two separate dealer networks. So what does this change of
ownership mean to the customer? Probably nothing.
Once there was a person that had a small advertising business who
had a very good working relationship with the owner of a fast food franchise. This franchise owner had a string of forty two stores and was the franchisees
representative on an advertising committee for the national parent organization
which was owned at the time by Pepsico, (can you say “run for the border”). This
owner had enough clout that he was able to get his son a sizable sponsorship to
fund a couple of seasons in the NASCAR Bush Series even though he couldn't race
his way out of a paper bag.
The advertising business owner spent a fair amount of time developing an idea
that would help hang gliding get national TV exposure. The idea was to set up a
racing series that consisted of a three part relay race involving windsurfing,
mountain biking, and hang gliding. The teams would consist of top competitors
from each of the three sports. The teams would be provided with a professional
sponsorship package to present to potential sponsors so that they could find
funding to compete just like auto racing.
The series would consist of six races at three different locations the first
year and if the series was successful it would be expanded nationally in
following years. The three locations would have to be located near lakes and
mountains and these sites were identified and potential courses were laid out. In following years if the program expanded and lakes weren't available the
windsurfing would be substituted with a portable climbing wall.
A prize fund would be provided by the $1,000 entry fee from each team for each
race. The winning team at each race would win $30,000 with prize money paid down
to 20th place. The entry list would be limited to 100 teams. The title sponsor
would provide a prize fund for the series championship with the winners
receiving $150,000 and scaling down from there.
The key to all of this was TV coverage. At the time ESPN was covering downhill
bike racing and wind surfing separately. The whole idea was casually mentioned
to the franchise owner at meeting concerning other advertising and he was very
interested and asked that a complete plan be put in writing and presented. The
idea being that it would be sent up the chain and turned over to the fast food
companies advertising firm and developed into a program that would have major
company sponsorship with a TV series sold to a network. The plan probably had
about a 75-85 percent chance of going through with the franchise owners backing.
The advertising business owner mentioned the idea to the then current president
of the USHGA over dinner. He didn't tell the USHGA president the whole plan but
told him that work was being done on the idea.
A few weeks later while the advertising guy was over at a friend's house working
on a glider he got a call from the USHGA president. He had tracked him down and
the ad guy thought that it was a little strange that the president had spent the
effort to track him down when he could have left a message or called him later
as it was just a casual chat about nothing in particular, until the end of the
call.
Then the President let drop that he'd given the idea to a group that were trying
to get permission for a flying site at a potential ski resort. The local
authorities wanted there to be something besides snow skiing in the winter to
draw tourists. The local hang gliding group wanted something to present to the
developers so the USHGA president had given them the race series idea.
He informed the ad guy that a national beer company had signed a three year deal
for $100,000 per year to sponsor the races. The $100,000 was about five percent
of the budget that was envisioned for the fast food company involvement. At that
point the ad guy dumped the idea and washed his hands of USHGA.
Anybody ever hear of a series like that sponsored by a beer company? Nah, didn't
think so. Names and places withheld.
We took the trailer up to Buellton for Friday and Saturday as there was no place
at the beach in Santa Barbara for us. This is wine country, although is wasn't a
generation ago. When I saw the movie, Sideways, I just found it hard to believe
that they were actually in a wine areas as they weren't in Napa or Sonoma. But,
Italy is hot and dry and they do grow grapes there. And they grow them here
where the marine influences are felt.
Buellton is forty five minutes outside downtown Santa Barbara on highway 101, and in land, where it is
much warmer. It was ninety one degrees when we got here late in the morning on
Friday. Cooled off nicely in the evening though. This is where the warm offshore
winds are coming from. We are just inland of the coastal range.
There is a great bicycling road, Santa Rosa road, which gets little traffic as
it parallels the four lane 246 from Buellton to Lompoc and over from 101 to
highway 1. It rides up the south side of the valley and has a couple of nice
wineries along the way.
Belinda went wine tasting and noticed that one winery touted themselves as "Not
Featured in Sideways." Actually the owners hadn't even seen the movie.
Here is the link to our local club, SBSA:
www.sbsa.info. I happen to be the Prez
this year, for what it's worth (not much, really!). It's good to check out the
East Beach landing rules and Round House rules we have for flying locally. They
are located at
http://sbsa.info/East%20Beach/east_beach_guidelines.html.
It took us a lot of effort to be able to get this LZ approved by the city, so
it's important that all pilots know these guidelines before heading out to the
beach. We also only want more advanced pilots to fly out to the beach, as if you
don't make it, you could be in a world of trouble, flying over the city.
Right now, we don't have a formal site guide posted on the web, as we'd rather
have out-of towners contact local pilots for an intro to the local sites. Many
of our sites are very sensitive, and some of them were shut down at some point,
so while we are very laid back about flying here, we are also quite protective
of our sites. We have contact info posted on the web for out-of-towners to
contact us for local info.
Santa Barbara is a special place to fly, for sure, but also quite challenging. We don't always get very high, thermals tend to be small, and glides between
canyons aren't always easy to make, unless you are on a higher performance
glider.
Many pilots find Parma Park quite intimidating, but once you figure it out, it's
a great place to land. I recommend pilots check it out before landing there,
both upper and lower Parma. We always want visitors to walk it first, so that
they know what they are getting themselves into. It's very easy to land a Falcon
there. An Atos would be more challenging, for sure.
The Canungra results are available via a link from our web site. Weather conditions are reported to be excellent with long tasks. A 200k task is
scheduled today way past Killarney.
Jon Durant on a Moyes Litespeed is in the lead as expected, Rick Duncan is in
2nd place, seven seconds behind on the Airborne C4-13.5 with Scott Barratt in
4th also on the Airborne C4 - 13.5. The guys are pretty excited about the way
the C4-13.5 is handling and the results so far are showing the performance is
good. The C4-13.5 was released for sale last week.
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The Oz Report, a near-daily, world wide hang gliding news ezine, with reports on competitions, pilot rankings, political issues, fly-ins, the latest technology, ultralight sailplanes, reader feedback and anything else from within the global HG community worthy of coverage. Hang gliding, paragliding, hang gliders, paragliders, aerotowing, hang glide, paraglide, platform towing, competitions, fly-ins. Hang gliding and paragliding news from around the world, by Davis Straub.
