Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2021 i Cross Country

I grew up in Norilsk, Siberia. It’s north of the Arctic Circle. It’s a mining town and you can only get there by plane. There’s nothing around for 1,000km. In winter the wind often hits 160km/h. It is polar day, polar night, Aurora Borealis, bears, reindeers, wolves, snow in July. It’s like another planet. I worked in the mine for seven years. Nickel and copper ore. The mine is three times longer than the Moscow subway and multi-level, starting from -300m to -1,150m. The work is dangerous and almost every month people are seriously injured or killed. There are landslides, water bursts, explosions. Work doesn’t stop for a second. One shift stops, another comes on. Norilsk is at the foot of the Putorana Plateau. It’s one of the most unique…

I’ve been involved in the development of flying machines since 1987, starting with hang gliders, then paragliders and more recently kites. During this time there have been dozens of independent companies working in parallel to improve our flying machines. At first the drive behind the motivation was simply to get into the air safely. Rogallo’s creation of the flex wing came at a time when others were working on rigid wings, which were more complex, expensive, and fragile but glided better. But the simplicity of the Rogallo won out with companies all over the world working hard to develop and evolve the design to solve the issues of safety and performance. Once getting airborne safely was accomplished then performance and competition became the driving force behind the development. Research and…

I had a close call while soaring back in the very early days of my flying career. I was climbing up the upwind side of a rock face in southern France and chose to do full circles as soon as I cleared the peak. However, the lift I had wasn‘t thermic but purely dynamic, and as soon as I had done the first full circle I was hopelessly pinned behind the crest, going backwards even on speed bar. So I chose to try to run away with a tailwind and overfly the rotor, except my altitude was insufficient for such a manoeuvre. It turned into a full-blown SIV course going down through the rotor, and if the mountain hadn‘t been as steep on the downwind side as it was upwind…

Track painting, what does that even mean? Track painting is about drawing virtual pictures into the landscape. You do it while flying by recording your route with a GPS and choosing the flight route so that you create a picture or pattern when the GPS track is viewed afterwards. Basically this works for paragliders as well as for paramotors. However, since paramotor pilots can freely choose their route regardless of thermals or lift, the possibilities for track painting are much greater. How to start? You just need your flying equipment, a GPS device like your smartphone and some open airspace to start track painting. Of course, you can try to spontaneously fly a track in the air and imagine how it will look later, but it’s much easier if you…

Rudy Gotes Flying since he was 11 and multiple Mexican champion, Rudy lives and flies in Valle de Bravo. He’s the new MD Steve Pearson A partner in Wills Wing sine 1977 he is charge of production and engineering Jessica Koerner Flying since 2015 and based in San Francisco where she is currently the President of the Fellow Feathers Hang Gliding Club Filippo Oppici Six-time team gold-medal winner at the FAI Hang Gliding World Championships Leonidas Guadarrama Entrepreneur in Mexico and local hang gliding pilot in Valle de Bravo Wills Wing say they will be taking orders for new gliders by the end of the year. More info at willswing.com…

Where is it? Belluno is a town and province in the Veneto region of northern Italy, about 100km north of Venice. Belluno is the capital of the local region, with 36,000 people Getting there: International visitors can fly to Venice Marco Polo airport. From there the bus to Belluno takes 1hr50 and costs €9. Going by train takes three hours. Driving is around an hour Hike and fly: The hike to the summit of Col Nudo (2,471m) is not for the faint hearted. It involves 1,400m of ascent through strenuous terrain. A bivouac hut is available. Climbing Monte Vallaza (2,167m) is also a big day, with 1,400m elevation gain. XC: Belluno is just 30km from Feltre and the topdrivable world championship site of Monte Avena. Guiding: Felix and Reinhard Vollmert…

FREEWAY 3 Dudek say their new beginner and intermediate acro wing is capable of all acro manoeuvres including tumbling. It combines a modest aspect ratio of 5.20 with a small canopy surface (18, 20 and 22m² for all-up weights from 58kg to 120kg) to create a dynamic but forgiving wing. Mesh on some of the cell openings helps maintain canopy pressure during manoeuvres. The Freeway 3 has trimmer risers and size-adjustable brake handles. Because it is made in their own factory in Poland, Dudek say they have excellent quality assurance procedures in place. dudek.eu APCO F3 BI Apco are about to launch a new trike wing: the F3 Bi is a high-performance reflex wing, designed to carry loads up to 450kg. They say it has a very wide speed range,…

And the winner is… The Coupe Icare Film Festival, now in its 39th edition, is the freeflight world’s equivalent of the Oscars. FIRST PRIZE: ICARE D’OR The Endless Chain, 54min, by Benjamin Jordan Ben Jordan attempts to overfly the Endless Chain at the heart of the Canadian Rockies by undertaking a mammoth unsupported 1,200 km vol-biv. Undoubtedly an impressive feat of resilience. Amazingly filmed considering he is a one-man band. Gruelling, impressive and beautiful. theendlesschain.com PUBLIC CHOICE Fly Spiti, 54min, by Benoit Delfosse Tom de Dorlodot and Horacio Llorens head to Spiti in the Himalaya in this Red Bull film. Flying here in crazy weather conditions is reserved for the best pilots only. That’s impressive, and although the storyline is a bit thin the friendship between the pilots is genuine…

Bruno Lavit is a French photographer based in Grenoble who loves action sports and landscape equally. As a hiker and trail-runner he has covered races like the Echappée Belle (“one of the hardest ones”). He’s been an official photographer for the Coupe Icare since 2013 – see p62 Burkhard Martens has been flying since he was 17, his whole adult life “inseparable” from paragliding. A school owner for years, he wrote the bestseller Thermal Flying in 2005. Translated into nine languages, it has recently been significantly updated in English. He goes back to basics – see Soaring, p34 Serge Shakuto is an action-sports photographer from Russia. Based in Moscow he photographs everything from surfing to skydiving to paragliding. This issue he photographed and interviewed his friend Egor Posokhin, Russia’s new…

Canungra is a small town nestled in the foothills of the Scenic Rim area, southeast Queensland. One pub, a campground, supermarket and a dozen cafes serve 1,200 locals and thousands of tourists every year. It is also home to the Canungra Hang Gliding Club and is arguably the best and most consistent flying arena in Australia. In the sub-tropical climate flying takes place all year round. XContest has 21 flights over 50km from a Canungra site one day in July this year (the middle of our winter). In spring and summer it goes off – think taking off at 7.30am and landing 300km later at sunset. The sites There are two main sites, plus a couple of lessvisited sites. Beechmont faces southeast into the prevailing easterly flow which blows for…

First, 1971–75: Development of hang gliders on a commercial scale as interest grew around the world Second, 1974–76: Increased nose angle, deflexors Third, 1977-79: Multiple deflexors Fourth, 1978–80: Enclosed keel and tip rods. The pilot flew in a prone position. The Atlas from La Mouette had all of the safety elements that can still be found today. Fifth, 1980–97: Developments included pre-formed battens, a floating cross bar and cross bar enclosed in double surface. Hang glider performance then increased rapidly. Sixth, 1997 to present: Topless (without kingpost). In the late 1990s the use of strong carbon fibre crossbars allowed the kingpost on top of the wing to be more removed, further increasing performance by reducing drag.…

Can you remember the day you woke up and realised that ‘reality’ had set in and that it felt like there were fewer hours in the day compared to the number of things you were responsible for? I can. Don’t worry if you can’t, if it hasn’t happened yet it will. What is important is that you have a goal or desire and likely less than optimal time to prepare for said goal. Enter the concept of manufacturing time. And more than that, manufacturing quality time. So here is the plot: You have had some fitness or athletic success sometime in your youth or adult life. You were a wrecking ball and the world was made of glass. And then you woke up one day and the world was the…

The site: “It’s always flyable in Valle de Bravo.” Locals say it’s flyable 350 days a year in Valle, and it is certainly one of the most consistent flying sites in the world. Just two hours from Mexico City airport, the small town of Valle de Bravo is a picturesque lakeside retreat. El Penon, the main launch, is a 40-minute drive from town. It’s a world class site which has hosted numerous international competitions over 30 years. Best time: Nov-March sees light winds and perfect blue skies. October and November are mellow, December through to February is perfect (and peak season), March getting stronger, April super strong. May to September is rainy season in Mexico but still flyable between showers. Flying conditions: Pumping mountain thermals, plateau flying, flatlands and convergence.…

Icaro Team Jacket Icaro’s new Team Jacket is warmly insulated in the body and arms, with stretchy softshell side panels and long, paragliding-friendly sleeves. It has three external and two internal pockets, and a headphone loop. icaro-paragliders.com Hike-and-fly Mont Blanc Eliya Zemmour, a Chamonix-based pilot, has made a website detailing hike-and-fly tours in the Mont Blanc area. It has excellent maps and bullet-point descriptions, and it’s free to use. hikeandflymb.com XC Pen XC Pen is a tablet / phone stylus, designed for in-air use with gloved hands. The dock has Velcro on two sides, so it sticks to your flight deck horizontally (for launch) or upright (ready to use in flight). Supplied with lanyards. xc-pen.com…

Veso Ovcharov is the winner of the XContest 2021 online XC competition, which closed at the end of September. He topped the overall rankings in paragliding with a total score of 2,788 points. France’s Timo Leonetti was second and Switzerland’s Dominic Rohner was third. The XContest season runs from 1 October to 30 September and more than 20,000 pilots enter their flights. Only a pilot’s top six best flights count towards their overall score. Congratulations to Veso and all the winners of the different categories. Here’s a rundown of who won what in the 2020/21 season. Paragliding Open (EN A-CCC), 19,742 pilots 1. Veso Ovcharov (BG, Ozone Enzo 3): 2,788 2. Timo Leonetti (FR, Gin Leopard and Ozone Enzo 3): 2,652 3. Domini Rohner (CH, Ozone Enzo 3): 2,527 All…

Théo de Blic cleaned up at the Acro World Tour after winning the second leg of the circuit in Albania in September. Théo won the solo category and also the synchro gold medal with synchro partner Horacio Llorens. It is the fourth FAI Acro World Championship title he has won. Because of Covid the Acro World Tour consisted of only two rounds this year. The first was Acromax in Italy in July and the second was the Llogora Air Games in Albania in September. Throughout he was flying the Glitch, the acro wing he developed in partnership with Nova. “It is impossible to talk about my win without talking about Nova,” he said. “When I joined the company in 2019 we did not have a competition acro wing and we…

25 YEARS AGO XC47 (Oct/Nov 1996): “The hang glider pilots at King do not like to launch until you can soar a picnic table,” wrote Othar Lawrence in his write-up of a 100-mile out-and-return in Idaho – a new US PG record. Arriving at 12.30pm he found conditions weren’t quite that strong, “but in my estimation a bed sheet would go straight up to the moon.” Launching his Edel Sector “just before a dust devil tore through” he climbed 5,000ft in “about four minutes”. He could see base “at least at 18,000ft” so “naturally” he headed that way. Hitting the “mother of all thermals at 1,500fpm” he became “cold and dizzy” at 20,000ft. “At this point I decided to go on glide.” After hitting 50 miles, he turned back, eventually…

My son Martin and I did our fourth Alpine vol-biv adventure on a tandem paraglider in August. We started this father-son tradition back in 2017 when he was just eight. Our rules are simple. We have a start launch and a goal and usually about seven days to attempt to reach it. Once we start we only travel by foot and wing. This year the goal was Annecy, France to Zermatt, Switzerland. Unfortunately the weather was not great: we got to the end of the Aravis on the first day, but then only managed two slightly extended sled rides and a whole lot of walking. Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun. The question I want to consider here though is how did the different weather apps match up to…

“I love paragliding, I spend a lot of time paragliding, it’s great, but it doesn’t replace hang gliding for me,” says Steve Pearson, pictured. “There’s something dynamic about the sensation that is really special for hang gliding. It’s unique and can’t be replaced by any other type of aviation that I’ve tried, ultralights, paragliders, anything. I think it’s because it’s so aerodynamic, the pilot is at the centre of the wing, and there’s that little extra bit of speed range. Whatever it is, it’s really special.” If you are a paraglider pilot thinking, “Hmm… I’d like to try,” then go for it, is the message. Rudy Gotes has helped paraglider pilots convert to hang gliding, as well as trained hundreds of hang glider pilots from scratch. “If you have 100…