A New Flight Pattern : Plagued by Poor Image, Pilots of Hang Gliders Launch Good-Will Campaign to Soar in Esteem

The daring young men in their flying machines were too daring by half, and their fans were a pain in the posies.

It was back in the 1970s and early 1980s, a time the veterans now recall as “the bad old days,” in Sylmar, where high-altitude hang gliding was born.

The men and women who pioneered a new sport, launching themselves from San Gabriel Mountain ridges to ride the wind under triangular kites, sometimes fell out of the sky onto residents’ roofs or crashed through fences into yards. One kite-rider infuriated the Federal Aviation Administration by soaring insouciantly through the landing-traffic pattern over Van Nuys Airport.

Death, Injuries, Litter

Four fell to their deaths in the space of a few years in the late 1970s, and dozens were injured.

For more than 10 years, the spectators they attracted generated litter and other nuisances, from trampling flowers to urinating on lawns. In 1983, homeowners around the gliders’ landing zone in the Pacoima Wash area appealed to the city government to chase them away.

So who would have guessed that barely three years later, the hang gliders and the people of the foothills where they land would patch up their quarrel and live happily ever after?

But they are.

Today, even some of their most vocal former foes describe the hang gliders as a welcome addition to the neighborhood, giving Sylmar a picturesque distinction, something to point out to visitors and provide a colorful free show for residents.

“We like the hang gliders,” said Susan Kacy, leader of a 1983 homeowners’ revolt against the kite pilots.

“We don’t have any problems with them at all anymore. One of the things I like about my house now is watching the hang gliders.”

“The hang gliders have become an asset, an attraction of Sylmar,” said Dean Cohen, president of the Sylmar Civic Assn. “It’s spectacular to watch these colorful gliders come down out of the sky on a sunny day.

“You can’t satisfy 100% of the people, so I suppose there must be somebody out there who is opposed to them, but, by and large, the community is very much in favor of them now.”

The mass change of heart was the result of a determined drive by hang-glider pilots not to lose the right to fly over Sylmar, which is the equivalent to them of St. Andrews to golfers and Wimbledon to tennis players.

“Sylmar is world-famous as the home of hang gliding,” said Joe Greblo, one of the founders of the Sylmar Hang Gliding Assn. and co-owner of Windsports, a Van Nuys firm that sells hang gliders and gives flying lessons. “Thousands of people come from all over the world just to say they’ve flown at Sylmar.”

He said modern hang gliding began at Dockweiler State Beach in Venice in the late 1960s, and as early as 1970 there were flights in Sylmar, which is where high-altitude flying began.

Commonly used launch sites in the San Gabriels are from 1,400 to 2,200 feet above the landing ground in Sylmar, and a descent can take from 10 minutes to five hours, but usually lasts 60 to 90 minutes. By 1973, the first U. S. Nationals competition for hang-glider pilots was held in Sylmar.

The high-altitude flights that began there led to dramatic changes in the nature of the sport. Hang-glider pilots, who originally floated a few feet off the ground from oceanfront bluffs to a landing on the beach sand, now routinely fly to 5,000 or 10,000 feet or higher, carried aloft by thermals--upwellings of warm air. Cross-country flights of 50 to 100 miles have become common. The altitude record for a hang glider is now over 21,000 feet, and the distance record for a straight-line flight is 221 miles.

To preserve their flying grounds in Sylmar, hang-glider pilots organized and mounted a public relations blitz--imposing rules on fellow pilots and spectators alike, befriending the annoyed homeowners and working to acquire some political clout of their own. To all appearances, they succeeded.

Residents had complained to the late Los Angeles City Councilman Howard Finn that hang gliders swooped low over their yards, invading privacy and sometimes crashing into their property. They said spectators created traffic hazards and parking problems, leaving debris that ranged from soft-drink cans to dirty diapers on their lawns.

“It was kind of a crude, adventurous sport in the old days,” Greblo agreed. “People were landing in parks and yards, just anywhere. There were accidents and fatalities that gave it a bad reputation, a deserved reputation at the time.”

48 Deaths in 1977

A national record of 48 hang-glider deaths occurred in 1977, Greblo said, spurring calls for laws to control the sport, then unregulated. In Los Angeles, the city Recreation and Parks Department barred hang-glider landings in parks except at approved sites, and no sites were approved.

In 1978, the United States Hang Glider Assn. and glider manufacturers organized to improve the sport’s safety record. “We realized red lights and sirens weren’t the best public relations for us,” Greblo said.

By 1983, pilots who used Sylmar were faced with the prospect of a city ban to meet the homeowners’ complaints. “They told us the community was up in arms and something had to be done,” said Greblo.

A group of 73 pilots met in a garage and formed the Sylmar Hang Gliding Assn., which now has about 150 members.

Launch Sites Restricted

One of the group’s first moves was to impose flight controls, restricting use of some launch sites to pilots with proven, certified, skill levels as a safety measure. Non-member pilots were told to check in with the club to have their qualifications examined.

After the imposition of similar pilot-skill standards nationwide, as well as of stricter construction standards for gliders, Greblo said, “There have been less than six deaths a year, nationally, for the last three years.”

The FAA, which has been reluctant to become involved in policing unpowered sport flying anyway, so far has contented itself with forbidding flights over congested areas in controlled air space and at night.

The club has no legal authority to enforce its qualifications standards, but it has some control because the club provides the most convenient transportation between the landing field and the launch sites, some of which can be reached only by four-wheel drive vehicles over rugged mountain roads. A ride to the launch site is indispensable for anyone who does not have a friend with a car willing to do shuttle duty.

Takeoffs Can Be Blocked

But the sites also can be reached by other vehicles. Members acknowledge that, if they fail to argue an uncertified pilot out of a flight, some of them are willing to physically block the takeoff.

“You just can’t take off with a man holding onto the rear of your glider,” one member commented.

Other rules required proof of purchase of a $500,000 liability insurance policy--there have been no claims to date--for about $39 a year, and include a ban, at any altitude, on flying above houses.

“Just because we feel safe floating 1,000 feet over somebody’s house doesn’t mean the guy in the swimming pool down there isn’t convinced we’re not going to fall into the pool with him,” Greblo said.

Spectators were asked to keep dogs on leashes, keep car speeds below 25 m.p.h., park on the landing zone and off the street and clean up litter, theirs or anyone else’s, and were told not to annoy neighbors. Yelling and loud radios were banned.

Dust Kept to Minimum

An irrigation system was installed, and grass was cultivated on the landing zone to keep down dust.

“The members of the club put a lot of sweat equity into the place, which is the kind of thing that helped turn the homeowners around,” said William Gomberg, a field deputy for City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, in whose district the landing site is now.

Club members went door-to-door in the neighborhood, asking for complaints and seeking support.

“The results were astonishing,” Greblo said. “There were legitimate complaints, but most of the people were in our favor, 596 to 11. . . . Residents started calling Finn’s office to support us.”

Finn, still the district’s councilman at that time, had begun consideration of a ban on hang-glider landings in the area. Instead, he helped arrange live-and-let-live discussions between the pilots and homeowners, said David May, a former aide to Finn who now works for Councilman Joel Wachs.

“The hang gliders organized their activities better, and they educated the other hang gliders and worked with the neighborhood,” May said. “We found that, once you got the attention of the hang-glider group, they were eager to help solve the problems their presence created, because this site means so much to them.”

Some hang-glider pilots moved to Sylmar. Glider pilot Craig Baker became one of the directors of the Sylmar Civic Assn.

Pilots Join Civic Groups

“They’ve been joining the social and service clubs in Sylmar,” said Jean Booth, past president of the Sylmar Women’s Club and also a director of the civic association.

“They volunteer to do all sorts of things. They helped distribute Christmas baskets to the poor this year for a group of social and service clubs. When one of the foundations gave a Christmas party for spastic children, they had Santa Claus fly into the party on a hang glider. The children were just delighted.”

While soaring toward the landing zone in Sylmar one day last August, she said, “A group of them saw a brush fire starting in the hills, and they flew down and put out the fire before it could spread to any houses. People in the community are aware of these things.”

The result of their campaign was that the sky-riders, targeted outsiders in 1983, were knocking at the door of the establishment by 1986. Far from expelling them, the city instead pressured the owner of their landing site to give it to them, free.

A member who is “experienced in dealing with the city government, who knows how these things work,” was chosen to act as a lobbyist, said Katherine Yardley of Sunland, president of the Sylmar Hang Gliders Assn.

Lobbying the City Council

“We had a very productive relationship with Councilman Finn, and we’re working very closely with Councilman Bernardi,” she said.

Hang-glider pilots had used other landing sites in Sylmar since 1970, but were displaced by development. In 1977, they began landing next to the Pacoima Wash, with the approval of the owner of the undeveloped land.

In 1983, a 460-acre tract, including their landing site, was bought by the Santiago Corp. of Corona, to be developed into a mobile home park.

The city planning commission, in return for granting a permit to build the 800-space mobile home park, required the company to donate about 35 acres to three organizations for community use, said Richard Simonian, president of Santiago Corp.

When the hang gliders heard of this, “We asked them for it and they gave it to us,” Yardley said. The other two organizations specified were: the Sylmar Independent Baseball League, a sports program for children; and Mission College, the homeless northeast Valley community college that wants land for a sports field.

Land Exchange for Permit

“We were required to give up in excess of $2 million worth of land in exchange for the permit,” Simonian said.

The hang-gliding club is in line to receive 4.3 acres, about an eighth of the total, Yardley said, but is faced with a new problem.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which has authority over flood-control work in the wash, has announced intentions to claim a 50-foot wide easement along its west bank, to be enclosed by a chain-link fence topped with concertina wire, she said.

“It would be dangerous for us even to get close to such a thing,” she said, and the easement would cut the club’s land to about 2.8 acres, not enough for a safe landing zone.

The club is looking for ways to preserve the site. It is determined to remain in Sylmar, where hang gliders were once regarded as a nuisance. Now, the Sylmar Chamber of Commerce, in a pamphlet describing the area’s best qualities, notes proudly:

“Sylmar is one of the most perfect places in the United States to hang glide. . . .”