Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2024 i Cross Country

Free flying drops you into the middle of things very quickly. One day I was wondering how many logs I had for the fire, the next I was landing between the sunbathers on a beach in the Canary Islands. The contrast could not have been more stark: winter flying breaks, even short ones, are well worth it. It meant when the first day of the season came along back at home I was ready to go, my thermal senses primed and on point. Or so I liked to think, as I strode forwards to the windy launch and got ready to fly. In the air even the buzzards seemed to be stretching their wings in the climbs, flying little acro demos with wingtip collapses and stalls. Near the ground, crows…

World Cup Switzerland Welcome to Chrigel territory. This highly anticipated World Cup will see pilots racing in Interlaken and Grindelwald, “one of the best flying areas in the world for competitions”. Expect sensationally scenic flying among some of Switzerland’s finest scenery. 4-11 May, pwca.org Bornes to Fly The hike-and-fly season starts in May and the Bornes to Fly in the Annecy, France region is an early highlight. It is the first event of the French Hike-and-Fly Championships calendar, which will see six weekend comps May to September. 18-20 May, bornestofly.fr FAI PG Europeans Spain is hosting the 17th European Paragliding Championships in Pegalajar, in the south of the country. 130 pilots are signed up for the two-week competition. The comp will be live-streamed – find it through our website at…

Get ready for a new “official” international FAI hike-and-fly league – and an FAI Hike-and-Fly World Championships. Following unanimous support at the recent CIVL annual meeting in February a new discipline of hike-and-fly has been adopted by CIVL. It means there are now four official CIVL disciplines within paragliding: cross country, accuracy, acro and hike-and-fly. The decision came after a year-long working group was set up in early 2023 to work out how an international hike-and-fly league and competitions could work. Members of that group of about 18 included pilots like Ali Andrews (UK), Kinga Masztalerz (NZ), Eli Egger (AT) and Gavin McClurg (USA), all established and active hike-and-fly competition pilots. Under the leadership of French pilot Thomas Senac they spent the year looking at how existing hike-and-fly competitions work,…

Where there is not even a hillock in sight a winch is the only way for paragliders to get airborne. All that is needed is a long open space roughly in the direction of the current wind. “Towing opens up a completely new range of flying areas,” says Michael Gebert, a guide with the Swiss company Fly With Andy organising trips to fly from tow in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and the Balkans. “And it’s a super-safe kind of flying,” he adds. Flying from tow is a perfect way to explore the flatlands, in the Americas but also in Europe. Even with hills around, an additional advantage of using a winch is that you launch from the flat, avoiding the compression that often happens on a hill launch. In strong winds…

There is a lot of ice in Antarctica and it will take a long time to melt. This is partly because the Southern Ocean lacks land masses to form gyres in ocean currents and circulate heat from warmer waters. Two landmasses in particular extend their mountainous ramparts into the roaring forties: Patagonia and New Zealand. Both have been used in the Perlan high-altitude sailplane soaring project as they are good candidates for strong atmospheric waves that a modified glider can ride up into the stratosphere. These are phenomena of a different scale, but on occasion the winds back off and we can also fly paragliders. Both places with their maritime climates have higher precipitation than in the Alps, with more glaciation than belies their altitude or latitude. This means that…

Pegalajar in Spain is the venue for the FAI European Paragliding Championships from 21 May to 1 June. A small town in the province of Jaén in Andalucia, the region is much less well-known than its famous neighbours of Granada and Córdoba and the heavily-touristed costas to the south. What it lacks in tourists and people however, it makes up for in olives and olive oil. The province is the largest producer of olive oil in the world, and produces almost half of Spain’s total olive oil output. This in turn is a massive 20% of global supply; there’s a reason Jaén has been dubbed the World Capital of Olive Oil. As the locals like to tell you, the province produces more olive oil than the whole of Italy. Olive…

“Three, two, one, see ya!” I shout as I pull the quick-release. I drop from the tandem and into freefall over the lake. This is as planned. The thin lines of my glider snap out of the D-bag above me and suddenly my right brake handle is snatched out of my hand. This is no longer as planned. Looking up as I fall, my beloved paraglider is stretched out like a ball of washing and my right brake handle is already thirty metres above me. It is my birthday, and my friends have jokingly told me that they’ve packed a special surprise into the D-bag. This surprise is not the surprise that I wanted. I am falling and my glider is disintegrating. What series of life choices have led me…

MASALA 4 Skywalk’s Masala 4 is designed for beginners and “pilots who value simple, lightweight and compact equipment”. One of the lightest, smallest-packing wings in their range, Skywalk say it is the perfect companion for travelling and hike-and-fly. Clearly arranged risers have colour-coded seams to highlight twists, making pre-flight checks easier. It is certified EN A in standard and extended weight ranges – flying in the extended section means more dynamic handling. The Masala 4 is available in five sizes for 55-120kg all up, and four colour combinations. skywalk.info SUPAIR EONA 4 Supair have used winglets on their new EN-A school glider to improve spiral stability, designer Pierre-Yves Alloix said. A new reinforcing strip between the B and C lines acts as an additional row of lines, giving better sail…

Niviuk used the Stubai Cup to launch their new type of slimline back protection. Called Orikami it’s been developed by Niviuk’s team of in-house designers and is already in use in Niviuk’s new Drifter 2 paragliding harness. Niviuk say they developed Orikami as an alternative to “existing protector materials” – which is code for Koroyd, the low-profile (slim), plastic, honeycomb back protection used in harnesses for everything from speed-riding to competition flying. “Specifically designed” for high-performance harnesses, Niviuk say the benefits of Orikami are that it is thin – just 5.5cm thick in the Drifter 2 – and designed to take multiple impacts. The material recovers its shape and characteristics after each impact and is good for at least six impacts, according to Niviuk’s Guillem Batlle, a trained aerospace engineer…

The Bonanza 3 from Gin Gliders is a two-line EN-C. It’s pitched as a “pure XC” wing and is aimed at sports class cross-country pilots. I got to fly one towards the end of last season, and had been racing alongside them in the Sports-class Racing Series all summer. Unlike some manufacturers that have created a high aspect two-line EN-C and slotted it in above their existing ⅔ or three-line EN-C wings, Gin have gone for a more moderate aspect ratio and have replaced the previous version of the Bonanza with this one. The Bonanza 3 is also the first lower-category glider in the Gin range to sport their Wave Leading Edge Technology, which is “inspired by the tubercles on a humpback whale”. So, how does this wing feel in…

Jérôme Maupoint is back this issue with a photo essay on his year exploring some of the lesser-known spots of Europe with his glider. A long-time resident of honeypot Annecy, Jérôme likes to escape the crowds and find his own way on the paths less travelled. Follow him along it, p62 Tom Payne has worn many hats in paragliding over the years, including X-Alps athlete, supporter, reporter and tech advisor to numerous teams. A resident of Switzerland, where he currently works for Flarm, he continues to find ways to amuse and entertain himself in the air – see p74 Baptiste Lambert is from a flying family, with both parents and his grandfather pilots before him. He first flew tandem aged five, and went solo when he “reached 25kg”. A former maths teacher he…

25 YEARS AGO XC62 (Apr/May 1999): Betrand Piccard and Brian Jones had just successfully circumnavigated the globe in the Breitling Orbiter 3, a 55m tall balloon. Having launched from Chateau-d’Oex in Switzerland on 1 March 1999 they spent the next three weeks travelling east. Jones said the scariest moment was becoming stuck over the Pacific: “It dawned on me what mortality was.” The pair landed in the Egyptian desert after 19 days, 21 hr and 55 mins. During the flight they’d flown up to 11,737m and lived in an enclosed gondola about the size of a large double bed. At one point they thought they would not have enough fuel to complete the voyage, “But it was almost as if something was helping us. I thought, watching the instruments, suddenly…

I heard an interview with a Formula 1 driver and he said the day he starts to be scared is the day he will retire. This made me think, because as a professional pilot I do experience fear. And I believe I feel more afraid now than I did 10 years ago. So, I don’t think fear would make me stop my flying career, but it did make me ask: why is an F1 driver not scared to go more than 200mph in the streets of Monaco while I can experience fear on a regular basis while flying? I believe the answer comes because of the unknown. An F1 driver will work on the simulator until he can drive the track with his eyes closed. He doesn’t have many unknowns. So…

More visualisations: earth.gov/ghgcenter…

Last year Baptiste Lambert set a new FAI Triangle paragliding world record, flying an amazing 350.53km FAI Triangle in 10h 51mins, at an average speed of 32.83km/h. In an online Cross Country Subscribers’ Masterclass in March he talked us through this incredible flight, reviewing it, as he said, in-depth for the first time himself. Over the next few pages we share some of what he told us about flying efficiently – and fast. You don’t always need perfect weather Baptiste and seven friends launched from the Col d’Izoard, an XC hotspot recently popularised as a launchpad for the new gold standard in Alpine flying: a 300km FAI triangle. But at launch the crew found conditions were not perfect – in fact there was a strong wind from the wrong way.…

Poor weather meant the annual Stubai Cup in Austria in March saw fewer visitors than normal this year, but pilots who did attend still managed to get in a few test flights of new gliders and had plenty of time to check out the gear stands of around 30 manufacturers. The festival/testival is a key moment in the free-flight calendar, and is often used by manufacturers to present their new products for the year ahead. We did an in-depth write-up online of everything we saw, so do check that out for a full round-up. Despite the forecast, Friday morning in fact turned out to be surprisingly good for testing wings, with nil-wind on take-off and easy launch and landing conditions – plus hardly any queues as pilots had stayed away.…

What’s your earliest flying memory? The first thermal. It was winter, and beautiful. All the mountains were covered in snow. All the frustrations of walking up and down the training hill evaporated. What got you hooked? Watching two X-Alps pilots below me in Grindelwald. They slid out of the low clouds, climbed up to me and silently glided away. Do you have a favourite flying site? Annecy. A morning hike-and-fly, a coffee at Talloires landing field, back up for a midday XC, then an evening hike-and-fly from La Tournette, ending for a beer at Doussard. Tell us about a really special moment After work last Friday, me and a friend hiked up to the Tanzbodeli to camp out. We complicated things by doing a short flight into a valley to…

French pilots Honorin Hamard and Méryl Delferrière won the 13th Paragliding World Cup Superfinal 2023 that finished in Baixo Guandu, Brazil on 16 March. Hono (Ozone Enzo 3 / Submarine) became one of only four pilots to have won the PWC season or Superfinal more than once, and Méryl (Niviuk Icepeak X-One / Submarine) became one of an elite group of four to have won both an FAI World Championship title and a Superfinal title in the same season. (Pierre Remy, Petra Slivova and Seiko Fukuoka Naville being the others.) The two-week long compeition saw some wet weather, which made for difficult conditions on launch with the wind often coming over the back. This made getting in the air and in position ready for the start particularly tricky, but in…

I have been flying 50 years. I started aged 14, in sailplanes. But at 19 I switched to hang gliding. My first hang glider was a La Mouette Atlas – we went to Castellucio in Italy to learn. After training as a gardener I moved to the Black Forest, southern Germany, because I wanted to finish my licence. I did my B licence, and then flew only hang gliders until 1994. In 1994 we went to Monaco and taught ourselves how to fly paragliders. We were hang glider pilots, it was easy! My first paraglider was a Nova Phocus, a DHV ½. It was much too large! On my first thermal flight with it I thought, “I am the highest!” and was so happy. Then I realised there was no…

I read Heli Schrempf’s article on SIV in the last issue with interest (Go With the Flow, XC248). If you spend long enough teaching SIV and really thinking about the pilot, in the end, instructors from different countries that have never met will boil down the pilot skills needed to the same things. It seems we are at that point with SIV, as a lot of what Heli said is how we teach here at Flyeo in Annecy, France. How the body is placed in the harness can block or aid the movement of your arms; putting your hands right up to the pulleys is as important as how much brake action you use; rules all in line with the Flyeo fundamentals that we’ve taught for the last decade. The…

Avid PWC fans might have noticed a surprising omission from this year’s Superfinal in Brazil – Chrigel Maurer. The Red Bull X-Alps legend had to skip the event as he was recovering from the effects of Lyme disease; he’s also skipping the X-Pyr later this year because of it. With spring here in Europe and North America, and tick season soon upon us, Dr Matt Wilkes takes a look at Lyme disease and hears more from Chrigel about his experience and recovery. What is Lyme disease? Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne infection in the United States and Europe. It’s named after the town of Lyme, Connecticut, where it was first characterised after an outbreak of joint inflammation in children. The disease is caused by Borrelia bacteria carried by…

When the paramotor comes to mind you probably don’t relate it to the advanced technology that features in the latest action films. Manufacturers work endlessly to improve reliability, ergonomics, fuel economy and while looking at the latest electronic fuel injection engine from Vittorazi, it’s obvious the paramotor industry is moving in the right direction. With all these developments though, the basis of the paramotor has been the same since its conception with the crude description being an engine-powered fan you strap to your back. Well, that is before Allan Hewitt got involved. With engineering brilliance, the jet paramotor is born, and what a thing of beauty it is! The man Allan Hewitt has a wide range of accolades that come from a very long skydiving career. A career that started…

Winglets are the new fashion of 2024. At least six manufacturers are using them now, often on more than one model. At last year’s Stubai Cup, Ozone presented their new EN-C two-liner Photon – with winglets! Ozone also put them on their new EN-A Moxie. Many were surprised or even shocked. For a long time winglets were the domain of Advance and often seen as a marketing tool, although the claim has always been that they reduce drag. But suddenly they’ve gone mainstream – what happened? “Ozone broke the taboo last year,” said Mac Para’s Petr Recek. “The fact that a large brand used them led many others to experiment with winglets too.” That includes Mac Para who just released the Verve, their first EN-C two-liner and their first model…