Skywings news stories are available for the following publication years:
If you're looking for news stories published before January 2016, please visit the Skywings News Archive.
Skywings news stories published in all non archived years are displayed below.
News stories published in the years listed above can also be searched by post date or headline (title).
To search by post date, please enter the month and year numerically as mm-yyyy (eg. 03-2016).
There are 424 news stories for all non archived years in our database.
Displaying page 52 out of 53
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The Department for Transport is consulting on proposals to increase the fines for pilots infringing the Rules of the Air.
For offences relating to communicating with ATC, flight plans and position-reporting the DfT seeks to increase the maximum fine in England and Wales from £2,500 to unlimited. In Scotland and Northern Ireland the maximum fines would increase to £5,000.
The consultation closes on April 22nd; for further details and how to respond please visit the UK government website.
Posted: 9 April 2016
By: Paul Dancey
New recruit to the Nova Junior Pilots team is Mentor 4 pilot John Ashman, 15-year old son of three-times hang gliding XC League winner Chris Ashman.
John, flying since 2014, trained with Steve Hudson's Derbyshire Flying Centre and won the Derbyshire club's Best Newcomer award last year in his first post-CP season. Nine years after he last flew a hang glider, Chris Ashman was also signed off last year as a paragliding CP; John's big brother Joe is also paragliding.
Posted: 13 March 2016
By: Paul Dancey
On January 3rd Austria's Anton Raumauf claimed a new world height gain record of 4,359m aboard an Atos at Burgsdorf, Namibia, outstripping Rainer Scholl's 1985 mark of 3,820m.
For comparison, note that the current Class 1 world record of 4,343m, was set by Larry Tudor in the Owens Valley in 1985. The daddy is still Robbie Whittall's 4,526m by paraglider, also set in Namibia, in 1993!
Posted: 13 March 2016
By: Paul Dancey
Some may recall the story of a paramotor pilot who ignored Temporary Restricted Airspace to land at the Glastonbury Festival.
On January 27th at Weston-Super-Mare Magistrates Court, David Hoare, 59, was convicted of breaching the TRA, fined £400 and ordered to pay costs of £160. Mr Hoare, of Somerton in Somerset, flew over the festival's Healing Fields before landing at the site: he was apprehended by security personnel.
He had been convicted of an identical offence in 2011 and fined £250 with costs of £100; he is said to be well known in the Wessex area for attention-seeking flying. David Hoare is not a BHPA member.
Posted: 13 March 2016
By: Paul Dancey
Faced with savage rises in insurance premiums and eventually the loss of all insurance cover, late last year the USHPA concluded that self-insurance was the only viable way to continue flying.
To cover the projected costs of their proposed Risk Retention Group the Association needed to raise $2m by March 1st. On February 1st we learnt that they had attained that goal ahead of time. This was achieved by some astonishing individual and collective actions: donations from members, individual members auctioning stuff, an anonymous $25k matching grant, over $70k raised by Wyoming's Jackson Hole club, many fund-matching challenges from other clubs and an anonymous $100k challenge grant donation right at the start of the campaign.
The $2 million target was the minimum necessary; fundraising is to continue to make the RRG stronger. Congratulations to the USHPA, its clubs and individual members; US free fliers are about to create a more sustainable future for those who come after - it's an historic moment! To learn more or to contribute go to the USHPA website.
Posted: 13 March 2016
By: Paul Dancey
Sport England has commissioned Brightpurpose Consulting to carry out an independent evaluation of Club Matters, their 'one stop-shop' for support for sports clubs in England. Sport in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales come under Sport Norther Ireland, Sportscotland, and Sport Wales respectively.
The overall purpose of the Sport England evaluation is to understand the impact of Club Matters on the development and sustainability of English sports clubs, and to gather learning that will help inform its future development.
Brightpurpose have designed an online survey for sports clubs to find out what types of clubs are using Club Matters, why and how. They also want to know whether club volunteers have heard of Club Matters and more generally what support they need for their club.
Sport England are anxious to reach as many English sports clubs as possible and have therefore asked the BHPA to help publicise this survey. The suvey is straightforward and will take less than 10 minutes to complete on-line using the following link:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Club_Matters
For further information about this survey, or about Club Matters more generally, then please contact Richard Davis-Boreham at Sport England.
Posted: 9 March 2016
By: Paul Dancey
A safety warning has been released regarding the AustrialAlpin Cobra harness buckle that is widely used on hang glider, paraglider and paramotor harness types from many different manufacturers.
Some buckles have been identified in which the the rivets have not been closed; the release clips may detach with potentially very serious consequences. All pilots should examine the buckles on their harnesses at the first opportunity.
If these are of the of the AustrialAlpin Cobra type please download the safety notice from our importers and manufacturers safety notices page for further details.
Posted: 14 February 2016
By: Paul Dancey
The launch of January's online version of Skywings magazine appears to have gone well. We've received a number of likes on Facebook and, once issues with members using older unsupported software were ironed out, no negative feedback. If the online version proves to be a popular option it will eventually reflect the online media world in appearance and functionality. But that's a long-term goal; for the present we are simply providing an online version of the printed magazine.
The February 2016 issue of Skywings is available to view online or download on the Skywings Magazine page of this website. Please enter the username and password published in the printed version of the February issue when requested. After six months this issue will be freely available with no password required.
The printed version of Skywings remains unchanged. Publishing an online version simply represents a modest experiment to evaluate the demand for an electronic version, and should also help us to get a better idea of the difficulties in delivering that.
On some devices, you may find that the best option is to either select single page spread when viewing online, or download the pdf file for viewing offline. This will enable you to make best use of your device's available screen width, and may help reduce the need to zoom in and out to increase text size.
Posted: 2 February 2016
By: Paul Dancey
last updated: 2 July 2025
Displaying page 52 out of 53
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