Innholdsfortegnelse for March / April 2024 i Cross Country

25 YEARS AGO XC61: “Beach, sun, loud music, tanned legs,” wrote Bruce Goldsmith in March 1999. He’d been flying hang gliders at a competition in Rio de Janeiro, where “the skyscrapers were the turnpoints” and there was $20,000 prize money up for grabs. Flying in Brazil, Bruce wrote, reached the public like nowhere else. “Flying is strongly influenced by the memory of Pepe Lopez. Pepe was a superstar in Brazil and became hang gliding world champion in 1983. He was also a world champion surfer and horse rider and was just launching a career as a pop star when he was tragically killed landing amongst rocks at a notorious Shima Seiki competition in Japan. Pepe was so well known they held a minute’s silence for him at football matches when…

In recent years a small but passionate group of alpinist-pilots have been using lightweight performance wings to access otherwise far-away terrain. This adds a number of complexities to both sports. Set-up After many forays using string harnesses to fly in thermals with my skis either on my pack or feet I have concluded that a very lightweight pod harness is a better solution. Flying is more comfortable, you have a reserve mounted in a decent way and you have protection. Harnesses have not been designed to have skis mounted to them, so by doing so you are adding complexity to your set-up that could prove very dangerous. It’s important to think about what could happen in the event of something going wrong. I like to mount my skis on my…

There are around 1,400 glaciers in Switzerland, mainly in the Pennine and Bernese Alps. The Jungfrau-Aletsch protected area in southwestern Switzerland includes the north walls of the famous Jungfrau (4,158m) and Eiger (3,967m), and the lesser-known but higher, and more remote, Finsteraarhorn (4,274m). This is the most glaciated part of the Alps and is home to the largest glacier in the country: the Grand Aletsch in the Bernese Alps. At 24km it takes the crown for the longest glacier in the European Alps. As everyone knows, glaciers around the world are shrinking – and nowhere faster or more visibly than in Switzerland. According to Switzerland’s Glacier Monitoring Service (Glamos) the mighty Aletsch has retreated 3.5km since measurements started in 1881. In recent years that pace of change has accelerated, and…

What was Jimmy like? Jimmy was a brilliant friend. With the exception of my father he was the man who influenced me the most. He encouraged me to just go for it. We laughed so much. He was the most determined person I ever met. When did you meet? I was a trainee instructor in Fife, Scotland. Jimmy roared into the car park at Falkland Hill one morning in his growly Ford Capri Ghia, bounced out, bounded up the hill and then ran like a mad bear on every launch. He was keen to learn. After that he gave me a lift to the hill most days. How did he get into flying? Jimmy was scared of heights and his girlfriend, Tammy, thought it would help by arranging for a…

Melanie Weber has been flying for eight years, and is a regular hike-and-fly, paramotor and XC pilot. An engineer by profession, for this issue she headed to Lake Idro in Italy to learn some new safety training techniques with Austria’s Heli Schrempf. Sceptical at first, she is now a convert. See p44 Henry George is a paraglider pilot, runner and ski tourer whose passion for the mountains developed while he was living in the Dolomites. A professional photographer, this issue he focused his lens on somewhere closer to home: the sites of his native South Wales. See p74 Jorge Atramiz is a regular contributor who is a master of the art of soulful storytelling through words and pictures. As equally at home on the surf beach as in the high mountains, this issue…

The winter edition of the EigerTour in Switzerland mixes skimo (ski-mountaineering) and paragliding and, in the words of organiser Michu Witschi, “makes it possible to train multi-day cardio activity, glider-handling and tactical procedures even in winter.” In other words, gets you outdoors into the mountains for some fun and fresh air in the snow. This year 22 skimo-pilots took part, making 11 teams from six countries (pilots must take part with a buddy for safety reasons). They had three days of action over the weekend of 12-14 January, over a 90km course-line that included 9,000m of ascent. Day one saw them set off from Andermatt with a goal of reaching Disentis via a turnpoint. A strong inversion kept thermal activity to a minimum, so the most efficient line was a…

I can feel sweat pooled against the harness in the small of my back. A prickly, dusty heat smothers my face, misting my sunglasses and making my eyes sting as the sunscreen runs. All visible landscape is burnt, withered and brown. Close, dense, low, stifling. I can pick out each detail of the ramshackle farm we circle over – the writing font on the discarded fertiliser bags, the make of the busted tractor and the bloodshot whites of the eyes on the barking dog. We are no longer descending. Wheeling and swaying together, wingtips never far apart, we drift like desiccated sycamore seeds over the farm, along the back paddock and towards the tree line. I have multiple points of focus: Gav’s ascent relative to mine, the vario, the air,…

I read recently that the French competition ace Honorin Hamard has been on the podium in slightly over 40% of the races he has competed in. This is an astonishing (immortal?) statistic. Honorin, like Chrigel Maurer, operates at a level most of us will never come close to. Race-to-goal competitions are typically seven-day affairs in which, at the World Cup level, the difference between a task win and 30th place can be under two minutes. At the end of the week you might have less than 20 points separating first place and 10th. That’s equivalent to maybe two minutes combined between the winner and 10th place over seven days while flying 750km or more of cross country! I’d hazard an educated guess that the difference in technical skills among the…

MELANIE WEBER Experience: two SIV courses, flying eight years Glider: Advance Epsilon DLS (EN B) Harness: Advance Weightless On the first evening we got a full theory session. We spent time in the simulator looking at how we control our brakes, how close to the risers our hands should be, to keep the lever and the effort as low as possible. Heli checked our harness settings and explained the advantages and disadvantages of today’s harnesses, in particular. We talked about motor skills, about tilting the hips and following the movement of the glider with the body. When he started talking about side collapses my inner voice was immediately saying: “You can’t do that! Your bodyweight must be on the open side, not the collapsed side.” Then when he said I…

Ask most pilots in the UK and they’ve almost certainly heard about, if not flown part of the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park. With the right wind strength, you can enjoy the benefit of a huge number of take-off sites. From the large alpine style ridges of Fan Hir in the west, to the rolling hills of the Black Mountains in the east, this Welsh national park is a truly special place to fly and boasts an abundance of opportunities if you know where to look. To understand just how special this place is, we need to dive into the landscapes of my back yard and discover why, over the course of a season, it can be a haven for free flight despite the challenging weather we often have…

OZONE ALTA The Alta is a brand new product in Ozone’s glider line-up. It’s a lightweight EN-A, and Ozone claim its performance is “equal to gliders in the category above”. It combines technology from Ozone’s Red Bull X-Alps wings, and “all of the features that have made our beginner wings so famously safe”. They say, “it is the most powerful and versatile EN-A wing we have ever flown”. It comes in sizes XS (22m2 flat area for 55-75kg all up) to XL (31m2 for 110-130kg all up), and is made from Dominico N20D and N10D cloths. The middle size weighs 4kg. flyozone.com BGD MAGIC 2 BGD have released a new version of their EN-A Magic. It sits above the Adam 2, and is designed to take pilots beyond school flying…

SUPER FINAL 2024 The Paragliding World Cup Super Final is being held over two weeks in Baixo Guandu, Brazil. This mega site is super consistent and the competition will attract some of the best pilots in the sport. 5-16 March, pwca.events AEROS WINTER RACE Now in its 12th year and with a full pilot list, the Aeros Winter Race is one of the first hang gliding competitions of the Euro calendar. The location is Vipava, Slovenia which typically offers some becautiful flying conditions at this time of year. 19-24 March, airtribune.com/awr2024/info MONTEGRAPPA The famous Montegrappa Cup in Italy marks the start of the XC competition season in the European Alps. Based in the hills around Bassano the comp always attracts the crowds and this year is no different, with 150…

Tilen Ceglar won the first Kenya Paragliding Open in January. Held in Naivasha, about 100km northwest of Nairobi, the competition saw six tasks. While the first two were cut short and barely scored, Task 3 (51.2km) was when conditions came good. Tilen won that task, putting him in a good position for the rest of the competition. Tasks of 65km, 75km, 51km, 41km, 40km and 54km were set over the week, with tasks 3,4 and 6 seeing the best conditions. Italy’s Michele Boschi (Niviuk Icepeak X-One) came second, with Michel Macquet (FR, Ozone Enzo 3) in third. Only three women took part, meaning no women’s podium, although Yvonne Dathe (DE, Ozone Zeno 2) came 14th overall. A total of 55 pilots took part in what was a test event for…

In my last article (XC246) I wrote about infinity tumbling on a motor, what it’s like and how one would achieve it. Well, for those who are not fixated on the spinning world of acro but prefer scenic cross-country flight, there is a debate about the necessity of doing an SIV course. An SIV course is designed to simulate situations you may encounter in flight, from thermic collapses to over-braking spins. It is a course developed due to the number of paraglider pilots facing undesirable situations in flight. “But I’m a paramotor pilot and don’t fly in thermic conditions”, I hear you say. This is where the debate kicks off. Before I get to the pros and cons, I should say I may have a biased opinion towards this subject…

Airspace on Paragliding Map Paragliding Map have added a new airspace feature. They say it makes planning your next XC easy, even for beginners. Airspace is displayed for over 60 countries in colour-coded zones – from green: “flyable” to red: “do not fly”. paraglidingmap.com Thermals on Aero XC The latest update of the Aero XC Weather app for pilots introduces a new thermal feature. Thermal activity and cloud heights are displayed against altitude, and the app has a database of thousands of launch sites and airfields worldwide. aeroxc.com Sky’s acro handles Sky Paragliders say that after being repeatedly asked to make acro handles, they have obliged! The handles have been approved by top acro pilots Luke de Weert and Vincent Tornare. sky-cz.com Airborne photo book Portuguese pilot Pedro Ferrão Patricio’s…