It's all downhill from here

A discussion restricted to the topic of hang gliding.
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The Oz Report
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It's all downhill from here

Post by The Oz Report »

<div id="1544101491"><i>Except for that cool video of guy hanging on for dear life</i><br><p><a target="_blank" href="https://trends.google.com/trends/explor ... all&q=hang gliding,paragliding">https://trends.google.com/trends/explor ... all&q=hang gliding,paragliding</a></p><p><img border="0" src="../pub/images/downhill.jpg" width="640" height="339" style="width:auto;height:auto;max-width:100%"></p></div>
Jay Z
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Post by Jay Z »

Yeah, but did you Google "HAND gliding?" How about "hanggliding?"
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CloudHopper
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Post by CloudHopper »

It's also easy to spot that spike in the spring of 2012, just after the Canadian tamdem fatality. There's no noticable spike resulting from Dustin and Jonny's record flights in July of that same year. What does that say about news coverage and our society? Dirty laundary?
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Blue_Seleneth
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Post by Blue_Seleneth »

CloudHopper wrote:It's also easy to spot that spike in the spring of 2012, just after the Canadian tamdem fatality. There's no noticable spike resulting from Dustin and Jonny's record flights in July of that same year. What does that say about news coverage and our society? Dirty laundary?
If it bleeds it leads.
Seamusless
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Post by Seamusless »

The truly interesting take away from this graph is paragliding experiences a gradual yearly spike while hang gliding remains relatively flat lined. I wonder why that is?
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CloudHopper
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Post by CloudHopper »

I don't know why it is, but snow skiing compared to snowboarding appears similar to hang gliding compared to paragliding.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explor ... owboarding
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Ben Reese
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Post by Ben Reese »

If you zoom in on the graph it views by year and every .5 year it spikes.

Skiing and Snow Boarding are winter sports so spike in winter low in summer.
The Southern Hemisphere has less skiing and less land mass. Winter sports
peak in North latitudes during winter.

New players are more drawn to snow boarding until they get injured, or land
flat on their backs and knock the wind out of themselves like I did..
Then they ask themselves..

"Why do I need to learn a new way to slide down the hill when skiing is
more fun than snowboarding anyway?" We were designed to face forwards
and use our legs as shock absorbers. Going sideways down the hill blows
our knees up.. So they quit snow boarding in large numbers giving us the
dips every 6 months...

Same thing with Para Gliding.. No birds fly feet 1st. They all fly head 1st.
More players are drawn to the ease of para flying but instinctively wish
for head 1st flying and lose interest. Or they get scared out of it.
It is also a seasonal sport and sees more players in spring and summer.
Naturally some new pilots will drop out and lose interest , end of season..

Hand gliding/Skiing are mature sports and draw a more equal amount
of new players while losing older players more slowly than the younger sports.

Only a Theory...


B R
Corvus_Corax
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Post by Corvus_Corax »

The truly interesting take away from this graph is paragliding experiences a gradual yearly spike while hang gliding remains relatively flat lined.
If you look closely you'll see that both terms have the same seasonal variation. It's just that paragliding seems to have about 4 times as much interest.
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CloudHopper
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Post by CloudHopper »

Both paragliding and snowboarding have heartbeats, but hang gliding and snow skiing both need intensive care, or at least should remain near an automatic defibrillator at all times.
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