- Tue Feb 14, 2017 1:05 pm
#396000
One of my favorite sites is in Butte, Montana. A cool aspect of the East Ridge is that you park on one side of the continental divide and carry your wing up and over the divide. (It's not a long carry.)
Butte is known for its huge copper mine, being the home town of Rob O'neill, the Seal member who took out Bin laden and its pork chop sandwiches. What many do not know however is that Butte is the home of Evel Knievel.
Every summer there is a three day event, Evel Knievel Days. This draws a huge crowd from the region. Recently I ran into one of the top promoters and he was very interested in incorporating a demo flight of hang gliders into the program.
There is enough interest in the local pilots to pull this off. However, I want to do what we can to make this as interesting to the average visitor as possible. Launch overlooks town and is about 2600 agl. The LZ is on the edge of town, part of a park. There are some events planned for the Park on Friday and Saturday. So, there will be a "crowd" already there.
What the other pilots and I are thinking about is having us do a spot landing contest. I am considering some smoke generators, but need to do research on them. Mainly the fire safety concerns. We plan on having a wing set up with a pilot to answer questions, maybe hand out literature.
This could be a great chance to give hang gliding some positive pr. So, I would appreciate any and all ideas, advice and suggestions that will help to make this as interesting to the general public as we can. Thanks for any help here!
This is a sledder from the East Ridge from my first year of flying.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIMdYZRD6z8&t=155s[/youtube]
Butte is known for its huge copper mine, being the home town of Rob O'neill, the Seal member who took out Bin laden and its pork chop sandwiches. What many do not know however is that Butte is the home of Evel Knievel.
Every summer there is a three day event, Evel Knievel Days. This draws a huge crowd from the region. Recently I ran into one of the top promoters and he was very interested in incorporating a demo flight of hang gliders into the program.
There is enough interest in the local pilots to pull this off. However, I want to do what we can to make this as interesting to the average visitor as possible. Launch overlooks town and is about 2600 agl. The LZ is on the edge of town, part of a park. There are some events planned for the Park on Friday and Saturday. So, there will be a "crowd" already there.
What the other pilots and I are thinking about is having us do a spot landing contest. I am considering some smoke generators, but need to do research on them. Mainly the fire safety concerns. We plan on having a wing set up with a pilot to answer questions, maybe hand out literature.
This could be a great chance to give hang gliding some positive pr. So, I would appreciate any and all ideas, advice and suggestions that will help to make this as interesting to the general public as we can. Thanks for any help here!
This is a sledder from the East Ridge from my first year of flying.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIMdYZRD6z8&t=155s[/youtube]
What a beautiful day! Let's go jump off a mountain!!!
"He did not know he could not fly and so he did" Guy Clark,
"The Cape" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6bZ37nexSY
"He did not know he could not fly and so he did" Guy Clark,
"The Cape" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6bZ37nexSY