CJ has a few questions for us...

Hi, guys! Nick is starting a series of magazine articles about USHPA chapters around the country, and since you guys are the Chapter of the Year, of course you're among the first to be featured (hopefully in the May issue)! I want to gather as much info as I can, in the next week or so, to weave a detail-rich tale of what makes the Hawaii Paragliding Association one of the most active, pilot-centered clubs in the U.S. Input from relatively new pilots or new club members, as well as from club officers, would add depth to the story, so please forward this to anybody you think might like to contribute.

I'm envisioning this article as an interview, or a profile, of your club. The list of questions below is just to make it easy for you to get me the info I need with the least effort on your part – I'm trying to get a feel for the club dynamics and "personality" as well as gather facts. Please answer as many or as few as you feel like, with as much detail as you can muster, and don't be shy about adding info that I haven't thought to ask about!

1) What's your rating, and how long have you been an HPA member? (so I can say things like "experienced pilots agree that..." or "in the view of newer members, the club...")

2) What do you, personally, find is the biggest benefit of being an HPA member?

3) What do you think is the biggest benefit the club provides to its membership as a whole?

4) How about bennies provided by HPA to pilots who are not club members?

5) Talk a bit about your favorite HPA site, or your favorite or most interesting or most educational flight from one of your club sites.

6) What does HPA do to maintain close/positive relationships with landowners?

7a) Does HPA use a mentor program (USHPA's or club-based or informal) to help new pilots?
7) Are you a mentor or a mentee (official or otherwise)? If so, how's that working for you?

8) How many HPA members are there this year? Are you growing, shrinking or holding the status quo in membership in recent years? Any thoughts on why that is?

9) When it's time for work parties – or just plain parties! – or other club events, do a lot of the club's members volunteer during the course of the year, or it it typically the same folks putting in the hours? Whichever, why do you think that is?

10) Is your website a useful tool for you as a pilot and an HPA member? When you visit the site, where do you typically go?

11) If you've been around since the early days, or have read up on the club's history, share some tidbits from the early days of HPA.

12) If there's somebody you think is particularly instrumental in making the club such a powerful force in the paragliding scene in Hawaii, tell me about him or her.

13) Who's got photos, recent and historical?

14) Whatever I forgot to ask about...

Thanks so much for whatever info you can send me (by March 7, please), and for forwarding this to somebody else who might have additional info or a different perspective. With your help, this will be an interesting, very readable profile of a club that everybody, it seems, has heard at least a little about already.

C.J. Sturtevant
georges@nwlink.com