I'm so sorry to have to report this, but the experimental and homebuilt soaring world has lost one of our most beloved members and innovators. Les King has passed away about a week ago after a long battle with illness.
Les had suffered a stroke during the Experimental Soaring Association's Fall 2015 event in Tehachapi, CA. which was why he had been unable to attend. Les' participation in the event was always a highlight, where he served as a hilarious auctioneer selling off donated goods for the benefit of ESA. At other times he made technical presentations on various concepts and possibilities. Les was one of the most clever and innovative engineers in the group.
Les served his country as a military pilot in the 1960's flying the AD "Skyraider" off the USS Intrepid. He later operated a hang glider school and taught hundreds of new pilots to fly. Les designed and built a prototype of an ultra-simple minimalist primary glider called the Primer, made from sheet styrofoam and plastic, and demonstrated it during one of the SHA/ESA Tehachapi meetings.
Always the innovator himself, he designed and developed a method of combining vacuforming and traditional molded composites to create a higher production rate for kevlar and fiberglass safety helmets, using a rubber membrane. He designed and developed a vacuformed plastic hard hat for construction workers in the shape of a traditional American "cowboy hat". Les had designed an innovative low technology portable wind turbine power generator that would deliver 75% of the efficiency of traditional "propeller style" wind turbines at only 1/10 of the manufacturing cost.
Importantly, Les was always supportive and helpful to any other inventors, dreamers and innovators in aviation.
Please live every day to the fullest, fly as often as you can, and cherish the friendships we make in our strange world of aviation.
Les had suffered a stroke during the Experimental Soaring Association's Fall 2015 event in Tehachapi, CA. which was why he had been unable to attend. Les' participation in the event was always a highlight, where he served as a hilarious auctioneer selling off donated goods for the benefit of ESA. At other times he made technical presentations on various concepts and possibilities. Les was one of the most clever and innovative engineers in the group.
Les served his country as a military pilot in the 1960's flying the AD "Skyraider" off the USS Intrepid. He later operated a hang glider school and taught hundreds of new pilots to fly. Les designed and built a prototype of an ultra-simple minimalist primary glider called the Primer, made from sheet styrofoam and plastic, and demonstrated it during one of the SHA/ESA Tehachapi meetings.
Always the innovator himself, he designed and developed a method of combining vacuforming and traditional molded composites to create a higher production rate for kevlar and fiberglass safety helmets, using a rubber membrane. He designed and developed a vacuformed plastic hard hat for construction workers in the shape of a traditional American "cowboy hat". Les had designed an innovative low technology portable wind turbine power generator that would deliver 75% of the efficiency of traditional "propeller style" wind turbines at only 1/10 of the manufacturing cost.
Importantly, Les was always supportive and helpful to any other inventors, dreamers and innovators in aviation.
Please live every day to the fullest, fly as often as you can, and cherish the friendships we make in our strange world of aviation.
