Richard Louis Boone

Just heard about Richard...I first met Richard while working together as engineers at Hexcel in Casa Grande, AZ. It took me a while to learn to work with Richard. We were diametric opposites. He an impulsive, creative, and high energy innovator who I often thought didn't think things through completely...I a cautious, conservative, and calculating engineer in his first assignment as a manager. No doubt he thought me an anchor to progress frequently. We slowly came to understand each...

I was a team pilot for Bill Bennett Delta Wing Kites and Gliders, from 1976-1979 and a test pilot for all of Richard's new designs. He was a gifted designer and I very much enjoyed knowing him and traveling with him on occasion during those years. We had a memorable trip to Cypress Gardens, Florida for a tow Kite championships. He taught me to launch off the beach being towed by a ski boat. What a rush! So sorry to hear this news. He was a great designer and I am sorry he has passed.

Richard was an outstanding person.. I knew and met him back in the 9o's at an Aerospace co. in Bellingham Washington. we all worked together at the plant. One particular time I remember is whem=n we were doing a test flight on a new "wing feature". Richard gave me the camera and said, " Ok, when I say go, start filming. I asked, "what if one of the wing attachments fails?" He replies, "Keep filming" . So I did, and one at a time they came off in flight, Richard just made it all work. ...

I just found out today that Dick had passed. I was the head sailmaker at Delta Wing from 1974 and worked daily with Dick from the first Phoenix gliders through the Mariah. I was with him at all the tests, evaluating and photographing the sails and still have hundreds of slides. We had great conversations from serious design discussions to just laughing about life. We would team up to squeeze higher wages out of Bill Bennett, no easy task. I left in 77 or 78 to start eckles design...

I first met Richard in 1976 through hang gliding. We reconnected from time to time in the intervening years, most recently during several recent trips to Kitty Hawk. Richard was in so many ways the embodiment of passion and creativity which never diminished throughout his life. His contributions to hang gliding in the early years were among the most notable of any but he will certainly be remembered even more for the quality of the friendship and character that he shared with so many of us....

After all these years I still have a letter from Richard on the Delta Wing letter head where I contacted him in the '70's with some questions. My longest soaring flight is still on his remarkable design, the 205 Dream!

I met and became freinds whith Dick back in the seventys, I will miss him

An amazing innovator. All of my graduate hang gliding students learned about this unique human being and I was a big fan of his "topless" hang gliders years before topless became the norm for high performance in our sport. Some of my fondest memories are sitting with Dick on the side of a hill, watching the wind and listening to him babble on technology and aerodynamics and pretending I understood everything he was trying to explain to me. A rare individual that I am a better person for...