Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i Cross Country

Nothing happens in flying in big leaps. We might think some big leap in performance has taken place, but when we dig into it we find a different story. And so it is with Tom de Dorlodot and Horacio Llorens’s incredible flying in the K2/Baltoro region of Pakistan this season. As you can read, as you probably saw in clips and soundbites on social media, and as we will hopefully be able to watch on film later this year, they again moved the bar of what is possible in flying in the big mountains. They flew around and through these mountains – literally the biggest in the world – and came back with a story that saw them soaring one 8,000m giant before gliding to another and then another. Imagine…

Luc Armant won the FAI European Paragliding Championships in August, taking gold just three points ahead of French teammate Maxime Pinot who took silver. Honorin Hamard (FR, Ozone Zeno 2) was third. It was the second major title in a year for Luc, who won the Paragliding World Cup Superfinal back in August 2021. Méryl Delferrière won the women’s class and finished seventh overall. Luc, who is a designer for Ozone, was flying his Ozone Enzo 3 and Submarine harness and clinched the competition on the final day. He crossed the line just 96 seconds ahead of Maxime, which meant he beat Maxime by 15 points and 11 places on Task 6, giving him the overall win by the slimmest margin. Afterwards he said: “This European Championship has been the…

After a video of a paraglider pilot flying with his vulture went viral online, eco-tourism guide Israel Mendes became Insta-famous and was featured on TV across the world. In the video, while flying over Ceará, the magical Brazilian state where world records are broken, the bird lands on Israel’s harness as Bob Marley plays. Urú is Israel’s best friend. He told Brazilian journalist and pilot Ricardo Ferraz how they met. How did Urú first come into your life? As I was looking for a gliding eagle to accompany me on my adventures through the Brazilian skies, I was already taking a falconry course. But then a wildlife organisation contacted me, saying a baby vulture had been found near garbage cans in a park, critically injured. I offered to look after…

HOWDY! Gavin McClurg on the unstoppable rise of hike-and-fly racing p36 THE WEATHER Honza Rejmanek explains why the UK experienced 10,000ft cloudbase p40 HOT, DRY SUMMER Heatwaves, heat domes and high pressure systems. It’s been hot out there p42 PARAMOTORING Jeff Goin on why finding a good coach can make all the difference p44…

Huge swing up and over the top, heart rate rises, then peaks like a needle on the red line, as the glider begins to collapse and the flailing body falls straight into the sail. Wind noise. Cloying, flapping fabric. Multiple lines tangling and tugging. Grabbing desperately for the handle, the bag comes free and stays shut. The ground is getting bigger and the flapping body/sail combination is picking up speed… Enough. I swipe up and the video stops. The minute-long horror show has been everywhere for the last few days. I saw it on my Insta first and scrolled past without a second thought – “Acro dude, doing acro things on film.” Then, when my daughter posted a link to the family chat group, I realised it had gone semi-mainstream.…

Have you ever noticed that some people get collapses more often than others? It prompts the question: how do we fly in a way to keep the wing open in turbulence? And how can we know we’ve mastered it? Of course, even highly skilled pilots suffer turbulence-induced wing maladies. Some risk is unavoidable, but they take far fewer collapses than less-skilled pilots in the same conditions. Find yourself a good coach – and listen Whenever possible, start with a good coach. Not all skilled pilots are good coaches. Years ago, while paragliding with an exceptional pilot/instructor friend, I watched him do something cool. He launched from the hill in a strong wind while reverse kiting. He was flying with his body backwards. It wasn’t just a gimmick, either – that…

Why is the new Iota called the Iota DLS (Durable Lightweight Structure) and not simply the Iota 3? “A lot of people are calling it the Iota 3 DLS," says Advance’s Valéry Chapuis. "It’s the third Iota, yes, but we wanted to focus on our new design and concept of creating durable and lightweight wings. We wanted this concept in the name of the product!” That settled, on with the review. The original Iota was released in 2015 and was big news at the time because Advance don’t often launch new models. Compared with some manufacturers their range is quite reserved: only eight models on their website at the time of writing, compared with 21 for Ozone and 15 for Gin, for example. While they do have a dedicated hike-and-fly…

If you’re a pilot and use social media, you’ve likely seen the video No Time to Die by acro pilot Kevin Philipp, which went viral in early August. If you haven’t seen it, the video shows Kevin mis-time a brake input during a manoeuvre, an error that sends him into the wing. What follows is a series of heart-stopping events throughout the roughly minute-long video. We breathlessly watch him burn through over 300m (1,000ft) as he tosses two reserves over the first 40 seconds. Spoiler alert: the second reserve opens, and Kevin lands fairly uneventfully. I talked to Kevin to discuss how the whole thing went down from his perspective. I hoped to get a glimpse into his mental state throughout the event and learn what it takes to fight…

Niko Assael grew up in St Hilaire du Touvet, the site of the famous Coupe Icare, and spent many school hours staring out of its large bay window watching the paragliders. As soon as he could, he was flying. A photographer, he pays a personal tribute to the Dune du Pilat, which was badly hit by wildfire this year, p64 Liz Dengler is back with another insightful Head Game interview, this time with Kevin Philipp who survived a low double reserve throw in Organya. Liz, an editor and former Antarctic geologist, went beyond the gasps of social media to find out exactly what was going on inside his head. See p90 ‘WE PASSED 25 DUST DEVILS AS WE PASSED BY LAGUNA SALADA, MANY SMALL BUT A FEW WERE HUGE’ Rio Hardy, p58…

Alex Ploner won the European Hang Gliding Championships in July. He beat his longtime rival, Italian teammate and friend Christian Ciech into second, and Germany’s Primoz Gricar into third. The competiton was held in Siglio in the Apennine mountains, central Italy, and saw amazing conditions with nine tasks flown – from 91km to 201.6km. All up, a total of 1,300km was flown during the two weeks, with some tasks seeing pilots still coming into goal after nearly seven hours in the air and land-by times of 8.30pm. Alex was flying his Icaro 2000 Laminar. Alex, congratulations. How many times is that now? Thank you! I have won the European title three times, and also been hang gliding world champion three times. I have won the Class 5 (rigids) world championships…

The hot and dry conditions across Europe have seen records broken and very high cloudbases, from soaring over Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn to 4,900m in Piedrahita and 3,000m in the UK. But the dry conditions also meant drought, and in many places uncontrolled fires. Antoine Laurens sent us these shots from his home site in Millau in the south of France, taken on 8 August. They show a wildfire with smoke rising to form a pyro-cumulus cloud. It burned for a week and around 4,000 people were evacuated from six hamlets. No casualties were reported. Antoine, a pro tandem pilot, continued flying for the week, taking note of Notams, emergency services and where they were and weren’t allowed to go. At one point though, they got a visit from…

While learning to fly many of us were taught to keep our hands at ear-height. If you wanted to make the glider fly at its minimum sink rate, 30 to 50% brake or hands at karabiner-height was recommended. Many of us fly that way now because we have always done so. However, in our book Paragliding: The Beginner’s Guide we make a point of explaining that for most modern gliders, it is best to keep your hands higher. We say to keep a small amount of pressure on the brakes to let you feel the movements of the glider, but to take care not to brake the glider because minimum sink is achieved without any brake applied. The apparent contradiction between the two ways of flying understandably confused some of…

The south of the UK saw 10,000ft base on Sunday 14 August 2022, which last occurred in 1976! What changed to create 10,000ft high base and cumulus clouds on Sunday, 14 August? There were no fronts passing, and the high pressure just sat on top of the UK – until it started to drop just a bit. To have cloudbase at 10,000ft or 3,000m over land that lies close to sea level, in a country that is an island north of 50-degrees latitude, several factors must conspire. The first is that the air needs to be quite dry. A good back-of-the-envelope calculation for estimating cloudbase is 125m for every degree Celsius difference between surface temperature and surface dewpoint temperature. Therefore, if convective cloudbase is at 3,000m above the surface then…

The Coupe Icare is back this year, complete with fancy-dress, a giant free-flight expo and the biggest film festival in the sport. Here’s a rundown of this famous festival in numbers. 49 This will be the 49th Coupe Icare festival since it was founded in 1974. Started by a group of friends, it has grown to be the most important free-flight festival in the sport. 6 This year the festival will last for six days, from 20-25 September (Tuesday to Sunday). It has expanded from its original four-day programme to give more time and space to the film festival, and to let pilots have more time to fly on Tuesday and Wednesday. 150 Exhibitors attending in the vast expo, which covers 5,000m2 indoors and 10,000m2 outdoors. 90,000 The number of…

I learnt to paraglide in 2014 when I was 14 at Samöens in the French Alps, thanks to my uncle and two cousins. Watching them fly made me want to get into the sport. Thanks to them I blossomed in the air. My Uncle Hugues was influential early on. He helped me become an independent pilot. He gave me lots of relevant advice as well as helping me practically to go flying. I’ve always enjoyed sports. I do endurance sports such as hiking and road biking as they allow me to keep the level of fitness I need. I also do strength training to help prevent injuries and to gain a few pounds. The first wing I bought was the BGD Epic, which I found very playful. I had the…

25 YEARS AGO XC53 (October 1997): “I notice that a large chunk of your magazine is devoted to the endless argument over the similarities and differences betweent the two European paragliding certification systems: DHV and AFNOR,” wrote Aron Appleblum, who went on to write 1,200 words on it. For balance the DHV also wrote 1,200 words on the topic. How paragliders should be tested and certified and who should do it was a big topic 25 years ago, and it was to be some time until it settled into how it is today. “Still unresolved is the important question of paraglider flight test standards,” wrote the DHV. “The main reason being the current draft of the future EN-926-2 and the Bauvorschriften differ on nearly every detail.” They concluded: “Harmonisation of…

A couple weeks after this magazine hits your doorstep nearly 100 athletes from all over the world will descend on southern Utah, including Red Bull X-Alps legends Aaron Durogati, Tom de Dorlodot, Patrick Von Känel, and Paul Guschlbauer to battle against their bodies, minds and one another in one of the most stunning landscapes on Earth in a three-day stage hike-and-fly race called the Global Rescue XRedRocks. Since the first Red Bull X-Alps in 2003 took place hike-and-fly, inspired in large part by Chrigel Maurer’s dominance in not just the X-Alps but everything he touches since 2009, has gone stratospheric in popularity. The gear has become absurdly light, gadgets are mouse-sized and weighed in grams, and it seems like just about everyone in paragliding has become addicted to using their…

Summer 2022 saw “wave after wave” of heat ripple through Europe, Asia and North America, according to Nasa. While the UK had its hottest day ever on 19 July as temperatures topped 104°F (40°C), the heat in the USA was pervasive and persistent as atmospheric high-pressure systems established stagnant heat domes, which placed more than 150 million people under heat warnings and advisories. Nearly every region of the continental USA experienced above-average temperatures. Several states saw record-breaking tripledigit highs, some for days on end. The above map shows daily high temperatures on 31 July 2022. Late July saw the heat continuing in the Great Plains and southeast, while rising in the west and northeast. Newark, New Jersey, saw a record-breaking five straight days of tripledigit temperatures. The darkest red areas…

Nova Concertina Bag Light Nova’s new lightweight concertina bag has a mesh panel to hold the leading edge in place, and ventilation netting. Nova say it’s easy to use, and the instructions are printed on it. It is available in three sizes with or without compression straps. The S weighs 328g without. nova.eu Skywalk fastpacking bag Skywalk’s fastpacking bag is a drawstring bag that closes around your wing and harness (which can remain attached), then closes into a neat and compact rucksack shape with carry straps. There is even a handy lift-pass holder. skywalk.info Venus and Monsters Tryfly have some great new T-shirt designs in their online shop. The monster shirt is a cotton/polyester mix and is available in kids’ and adults’ sizes. ‘The Art of paragliding’ is 100% cotton.…

The Eiko 2 is the second iteration of Supair’s light mountain wing, released in March 2022 at the Stubai Cup. Now available in a wider range of sizes to accommodate the needs of more pilots, it is designed with progression in mind with its “adaptability and all-terrain design,” yet maintains its lightweight hike-and-fly character. With the autumnal hike-and-fly season fast approaching for the northern hemisphere, I was sent out to demo one of the new sizes, a 23, in the southern French Alps. The build The Eiko 2 comes in five sizes, from 16m2 to 26m2, with varying certifications depending on weight ranges and flying styles. The 16 and 19 models are designed as hikeand-fly mini-wings aimed at descents in the big mountains. They have EN C and EN B…