January 1992, Melbourne, Australia

After a competition in Victoria, I paid a visit to the meet director who ran a small parachute factory in Melbourne. I discovered his complete year-on-year collection of the Parachute Manual, and I leafed through them, hungry for more information. The 1972 edition carried a description of "slope soaring", described as a method of testing parachutes after a repair. In the courtyard of the factory, I laid the book on the ground and photographed the pages. It served as proof that foot-launching had started as early as 1970! The black and white photographs show an astonishingly shaped wing. This was David Barish’s Sailwing machine, but I would only learn this fact eight years later. I would long regret my blatant lack of curiosity as to who the pilot was. Like me, no-one would push the investigation further.