bungee.netHang 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
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