Date: June 13, 2004 06:24 AM

Author: Derek Traynor (derek@removedaddress.com)

Subject: Calculating Airtime
The weather in Scotland tends to be better than the forecasts suggest, and there are certainly more flyable days than you'd think. However...when it comes to Murrays claims of huge airtime, maybe a couple of clips from his website will open your eyes.... "one single 2 .5  hour flight (well the wing was up for all that time) with a mix off feet of the ground flying (longest continuous was 20mins)..."

Now to me, that's a 20 minute flight , not 2.5 hours. Fair bit of ground handling though. And how about "best flight of 10 mins and just under an hour airtime". Oooh, 10 minutes, but 1 hour in the log book? And then there's this little gem. "practice/training flights with a very light and 90* x-wind t/o" So you were on the wrong hill then?

[-] This is a guy who at the start of his BHPA training claimed to have 5000hours ground handling experience. Before even finishing his Elementary course, he tried and failed to convince his instructor to sign him off as "Advanced Pilot" the highest BHPA rating. He then went off to do his own thing in his own little world. It worries many Scottish pilots that this guy is training others. He annoys landowners and pisses off air traffic control. Thankfully, he's an abberation. The rest of us are actually quite nice people. Please don't judge Scottish flying/pilots by what Murray Hay says.

And.....

Date: June 11, 2004 04:13 AM
Author: Dave Massie
Subject: Numeracy on the planet Zog

It's been a difficult trail, but I think I may have solved the secret of Murray's flying. He is undoubtedly a resident of the planet Zog. He is on holiday here, to wind up the natives. Yes, I know, I can sense the disbelief; it doesn't seem likely, but before you dismiss my theory, may I lay a few facts before you?

The planet has a diurnal period of approximately 5 earth hours, divided into 24 Zog hours. Thus a statement of the kind 'I flew 332 hours last year' may thus be translated as 'I flew approx 60 hours last year. Seems so much more likely, in Scotland, doesn't it?

A social nicety should be kept in mind here. It is considered impolite in Zog society to count upwards, especially on the fingers, for reasons lost in the mists of time. Zogians therefore count downwards for small numbers. When they spend their holidays on Earth, they cannot bring themselves to count upwards for small numbers. Thus '1/2 knot' may actually be 5 knots.

What does this tell us? The simple rule is to divide large numbers by 5, and multiply small numbers by 5 to get their Earth equivalents.

May I quote the Zog paragliding holidays web site?(http://www.espclub.org/2004_flying.htm):

"Members flying total hours: D Booth; 21:35hrs. M Hay 1,544.15hrs."

When Murray states 'our members get 100 hours a year', you can see that Earthling Duncan actually gets 20, and Zogian Murray gets about 60. At last, it all makes sense...

  In this case a Brian Steele from Edinburgh who presumably thinks that low flying hours, accidents, injuries & death rates of pilots who have trained to the standards he recommends are not connected with the training they received. The only part of what he says that seems at all reasonable is when he questions the number of hours I log, of course he is used to seeing the low number that those trained like him fly, an example being in early November at a site also flown by BHPA pilots, in a couple of hours on site I got over 1 1/2 airtime while the others (BHPA CP's) when they eventually launched just managed extended top to bottoms, giving less than 10 minutes in the air for probably about half a day on site!

  FAI's which in the UK are usually investigation by the body that did the actual training normally state that "they did not fail to train the pilot properly" etc, it is very difficult to ascertain exactly how many UK trained pilots have died since I started flying but a conservative figure could be about 25 and is likely to be higher, PPC feels that adopting our approach of questioning everything could drastically cut these numbers.

  Further questions which pilots should address revolve around the 'theory' which those like Brian preach along with the use of illegal equipment & practices.

When you read the 'comments' you might want to be aware that BOTH the pilots talked about STARTED their flying with the BHPA..... before deciding to train with me.

If you are serious about learning to safely fly paragliders and avoid the accidents the other 'normal' training keeps producing then I can put you in contact with of the members mentioned and you can find out what they actually think of Sam and his friends not to mention their standard of flying compared to ours!

Date: June 21, 2005 07:42 PM
Author: anon 2


Sorry Hooter, please except my apologies, I should of said that Murray Hay was a small and twisted PG Pilot with only an imaginative mind that is full of colour and "so called the Willy Hunt of Cunning Stunts" that trick no one, other than himself into believeing that the modern world of PG is so incredibly dangerous and that therefore totally wrong in it's approach to the real world of modern PG teaching methods, as that being those current methods which are today being taught world wide and are based on the real and functionally proven safety ideals. and not those strange ideals and crazy methods that come from the so called one man Scottish highland games.

Looks like the stupidity of some of these pilots knows no bounds! I don't normally bother with the 'anons' but this post shows how little regard they have for the safety of new pilots!