On Sunday, September 13, 2020 at 2:34:22 AM UTC-7, David Shelton wrote:
There's an FCC exemption in place for members of the US Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association. This allows paragliders to use designated frequencies without an FCC license. I fly paragliders with a Yaesu FT-270 and it works just as well as my aviation handheld. Overall, my experience has been that HAM radios work very well with the paragliding community, and they rarely have any need to communicate with GA traffic.

Paragliding is budget-oriented and radio use would be far less common if they had to shell out $200-$300 for aviation handheld radios. Thanks to the availability of affordable HAM radios ($30 BaoFeng radios are super popular), nearly all paragliders are radio equipped.

In practice, paragliders often trample on non-approved frequencies and exhibit poor radio ettiquette. That's always going to be the case unless we eliminate Part 103 and require them to become private pilots. Overall, it's probably a very good thing that paragliders aren't communicating on GA frequencies.

Johnston most likely had a canopy deflation, got entangled in it, and went down in a clump, unable to deploy his reserve. In this situation, he would have been totally preoccupied with freeing himself and not communicating. And he would have been killed instantly by the impact, so no need for communication then, either. I am referring to a survivable crash landing where he could, at least, communicate to rescuers. These guys don't seem to consider the consequences and the effort that will be expended trying to locate them. I have even had this conversation with other glider pilots. They just don't care.

Tom