![]() But as I explain in the book it seems that all the conditions (for success] were favorable.” For that reason no photographs document his claim. “In those days, if you were thinking about flying anything, you were considered a little crazy.” He kept it to himself for fear of ridicule, Fogel speculates. “In fact, he was the first American to fly, period, here in San Diego, in 1883.” But he isn’t famous because he was secretive about it, Fogel contends. Montgomery as the first American to fly a glider. Long before that was possible, however, there were the motorless-flight pioneers.įogel names San Diegan John J. It’s the most compact aircraft ever imagined.” “You can hike anywhere, open it up, jump off a cliff, and go soaring. “The entire aircraft actually fits inside a backpack,” Fogel says of paragliders. Drawing on research and interviews with aging aviators, he begins the book with 19th-century hang-gliding, covers gliders and sailplanes, and concludes with today’s paragliders - the “collapsible” aircraft. Robinson, who went on to set records and win national soaring championships, is among the local heroes that Fogel chronicles in Wind and Wings: The History of Soaring in San Diego. For a high-school kid that takes a little courage, and there was a whole group of them.” They soared back and forth along the cliff. With a long rope attached to a car, they ran a glider down the beach, and released it. “As a student at San Diego High School in the early 1930s, Robinson was one of a group of teenagers who took their gliders to Black’s Beach, before any nude sunbathers were there. “If anyone might be considered the Tiger Woods of soaring, it would be John Robinson,” says local-aviation historian Gary B. Montgomery was the first American to fly, period, here in San Diego, in 1883.”
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