Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Happy to have you here. I've got a great show for you. Before we get started, just briefly wanted to thank everybody yet again for all your generous donations. This is a listener-supported podcast. We don't have any sponsors. Thank you so much. I've been doing a bit of film tour festivals the last few days here in Ketchum and up in Montana with North of Known. If you want to see a few kind of special clips from North of Known, go to our Patreon page. We've got a new way to support the show where you can kind of set it and forget it. There's all kinds of rewards at various levels, and you can put a cap on it. It's not like if I put out a ton of shows, you've got to pay for every one. But as always, all we ask for is a buck a show, and Patreon is a really cool way, rather than using PayPal every once in a while, to do that.
So go to patreon.com forward slash cloudbasemayhem, or you can find the links on the website, cloudbasemayhem.com, to that Patreon page. And on there, you can see about three minutes of really cool footage that very, very few people have seen. In fact, some of that's not even in the movie. You can go there and check it out and go, whoa, those dudes are nuts. Tom Payne. Spent some time with Tom Payne, a British pilot. Started flying back in the 90s, competed in the X-Alps in 2009, was on the British team, has flown in a ton of PWCs. One of the guys that Bruce and I, when we first started flying a lot in the Alps, guys we would look at all the time for inspiration for big, huge triangles, especially around Annecy.
He created XC Planner, a tool I'm sure many of you use, and if you don't, you should be using, for planning your day and planning triangles and big flights. It shows FAIs and flat triangles, and it's just an amazingly useful tool. In fact, when he created that, that was what got him the job at Google. But yeah, in this episode, we talk about SIV. We talk about... A really harrowing accident that he just had and walked away from. So we get into reserves and probabilities and safety and coming out of the open class, when the open class was banned in 2011, what that meant for him. He's like me, kind of a small guy, and what it means for the ladies, of course. That was a huge bummer for him, but is finding his passion in flying in other avenues.
We also talk about single surface wings. He's having a lot of fun with the new Niviuk P-Tandem, a single surface tandem that weighs like 3.1 kg or something totally ridiculous. So I think you're going to enjoy this talk. I know you're going to enjoy this talk. Without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Tom Payne.
Tom, super excited to have you on the show. You were very instrumental in helping my team out last year, well, a couple years ago now, for the 2021. 2015 X-Alps, and you've been a real kind of mentor and hero to me. I used to, when I first started flying in the Alps, the first time I kind of opened that breadbasket a few years ago with my supporter, Bruce, your flights on X-Contest were a real driver of, oh my God, look what you can do. You know, your huge triangles around Annecy. So I'm excited to talk to you. Thanks for your time, and I understand you just had a pretty nice weekend out touring around Zurich.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, a day ski touring and a day paragliding in Engelberg, taking friends on the tandem in glorious conditions.
And I understand you were, let's get right into these sequel surface wings. I understand you were out on Niviuk's new P tandem. It's like three point something kgs. How do you find that wing?
It's awesome. Yeah, I've gone half and half with a friend, and we only got it about a month ago, but it just opens up so many possibilities. Yeah, three point three for the wing, two undergrounds for two F-light harnesses, a pair of soft spreaders in there, and you're still under three point six kilos. It fits in a small rucksack, and as a result, we're just taking it everywhere, basically. We went out a couple of weekends ago, took it touring. Snow cover was pretty thin, so we skinned up the tops, skied down while there was still snow. When the snow ran out, jumped on the tandem and flew down.
Unbelievable. I mean, it's incredible to think that that was quite impressive. It was a little bit lighter than my X-Alps kit in 2015. I flew the Ice Peak 7. At the last minute, I made a change to the 7 because I wanted a little bit more performance, which was just a standard. It wasn't a lightweight wing, but it's amazing that a tandem can be so light. Have you had much experience with the solo gliders as well? Have you done any XC flying?
Yeah, I've had the Ozone XX-Lite, the 14-square-meter version, for two or three years now and had just loads of adventures on it. I mean, this thing is, with the harness, comes down to 1.2 kilograms of all you need to fly. So I've done everything from running up the local mountain and flying with it, with soaring, taking it to the dunes in Portugal, a thermal did a few times. It's just an amazing wing. It's a bit special, though.
Yeah, and would you use it to fly like proper XC or no? Is that not really… No, to be honest. Okay.
The original XX-Lite is very light, but it's very slow. Okay. Although the normal glide is okay-ish, I don't know, sort of six-ish, seven-ish, something like that. As soon as it gets turbulent, it just, I wouldn't say literally falls out of the sky, but you get a really poor glide. And it's a very high workload. It's always moving around. It's much scarier to fly initially than even a sort of competition two-liner. The thing is just moving all the time and feels really nervous. And you get used to it, but it's still, you know, it's not a relaxing wing to fly in.
Not something you'd go on an eight-hour cross-the-Alps adventure. No, no. Okay, gotcha. I've flown the Skin P just a little bit, and a couple of the days were pretty rowdy, and I would concur with your thoughts there. I thought, wow, this is really active. It never did anything. You know, nothing ever went bad, but I just thought, oh, it just seems so handkerchief-y.
Yeah, yeah. And I think the second generation, the Skin and the UFO are much better and much more complete wings than the original XX-Lite, even though they're a bit heavier.
Right, right. Yeah, pretty phenomenal wings. Let's get people just completely wrapped into this talk. You just had a really wild incident, a little acro incident. Can you expand on that?
Yeah, I should have died, basically. Wow. I was
just a
very lucky person. I mean, a complete pilot error on my part. I'd taken out the acro wing for the first time in a year and went straight to trying some helis, messed up an exit, so I didn't let it fly. I held it in stall and had the classic pilot-induced cascade with, you know, riser twists and falling past wing and this sort of thing. I thought, no worries. Once you see the wing down and twisted, right, time for reserve. Chuck the reserve and straight into the main wing. I thought, oh, no worries. I've got my acro on this. I've got a second reserve. So I fumbled that out now. It's sort of spinning down towards the ground, basically dropped it, and that, straight into the wing as well. And that's it. Aye, aye, aye. So –
Both of them were wrapped, just all wrapped up into what you had.
Yeah, they got about halfway up the lines. The wing was still fully inflated, but now with four riser twists, and both reserves just sort of stuck against the lines just by the forward motion of the wing.
So not deployed at all. They weren't – No, no. They weren't doing a little bit of – Hanging around or getting some air or they're nothing. Just unrolled into your wing, basically. Yeah.
Yeah. You know, maybe a couple square meters from each of them, just slowing down the rotation a bit. And, you know, with four twists and in the risers, the brakes were completely locked. I was pretty much out of options. So I just got to watch the world get closer and wait for everything to go black, basically.
Was there – were there any thoughts of, you know, when it was coming down where – you know, you're a really serious pilot and have had a ton of experience where they're – you know, were you thinking like, God, can I pull it back in and re – you know, did you have that kind of time? Or was it just, yeah, this is – I'm screwed?
You know, I tried what I could. I tried tugging at the lines to try and get the reserves out. That was obviously not going to happen. The brakes were completely locked. The twists was – enough of them I couldn't reach above them to get the brake lines directly. So I ran out of options. That's how I felt.
Okay. Keep going.
Well, that's it. I thought, I'm not ready to go yet. I still want to see my friends and family. And up comes the ground. And it's just amazing. I expect to be, you know, never walk again. And I have this spiral. When I'm spiraling down, I hit – I'm super lucky. I hit a gently sloping grassy bit in the landing field. Going downslope and pretty much not quite parallel to the slope, but a nice gentle angle. My harness takes a lot of the impact. Good back protector in there. And that's it. And I'm out of the way. Yeah. I stood up, obviously a little bit in shock. But, you know, a slight sprain on the left shin and, I don't know, maybe a bit of ache on the right shoulder. But nothing else.
I just cannot believe it. My friends would see me pile in, come running over. And they said I stood up within a couple. Seconds of hitting made a big, long sound.
Whoa. I'm sure part of that's your fitness and like me being a little small wombat. No, it's pure luck. It's pure luck, mate. Whoa. So, the reason I knew about this accident is you wrote Russ and I after our talk where, you know, he admittedly made the mistake of saying that, you know, carrying two reserves doubles your chances. Yeah. And you being a, you know, a numbers guy and work for Google and you study this kind of stuff, you pointed out very rightly that that is not the case. Can you describe why it isn't, why we don't double our chances?
Yeah. It's basically because you only have to use your second one if your first one doesn't work. So, if your first one works reliably, say it works 95 % of the time, then only 5 % of the time we actually need that second reserve. So, it increases your chances. And if that one also works 95%, then it increases your chances overall from about 95 % to 99.5 % chance. Does
that make sense? Of course.
Yeah. But
you pointed out that the first time you're not going to get 95 % typically. That's not what people, that's not how it works out.
Yeah. So, bizarrely, the less reliable your reserve systems, the better it is to have more of them. But if you've got it. It's more important to make sure your first reserve works than it is to carry a second reserve. Just on the maths of the probabilities. Okay. And of course, I know if you're in a situation like I was in where, I mean, helicopters are awful if you think about it. Because you've got the glider spinning and you've got very low airspeed and stuff's twisting around. So, it's a good situation to get into a mess. And it's exactly the same way that your first reserve can fail by going into the wing. If you're still in that situation, there's a good chance. Once the second reserve will do just the same.
I think this is why the acro kids have now had their base reserve system. So, they can just completely disconnect from the wing. But they also have to have a normal PDA or square parachute for when they're a bit tangled up in the wing and the base system can't work.
So, what, you know, you bounced, you walked away. What will you change now, if anything?
It was a stupid overconfidence error on my part. Although I'd done an FSAV course recently, it wasn't on this particular wing. And I progressed too quickly and I was very lucky to escape. So, what I'll change, I want to go back and do helicopters on this wing. But I'm going to go out and do a shed load of full stalls first. We take on an FSAV course and really make sure I cover the basics, basic skills before progressing. So, I progressed too fast.
And what, would you change anything about your gear in other disciplines? You know. XC. Do you carry two reserves?
I have a couple of harnesses. I've got a lightweight pod, which I use day-to-day with a single reserve. And I've got a competition pod with two reserves. Bizarrely, I've thrown both of those, actually. Yeah. At the British Open in San Andre last year, I was racing my Enzo II along a mountain called the Coupe. And I had a big collapse, only about 100 meters above the deck. And just thought, I do not have time to fix this. So, I threw the reserve. I threw the reserve immediately. That one worked. And then I looked at where I was going to land. It was a fairly steep cliff. And I thought, maybe I'll throw the second one as well. So, I checked the second one as well, which also worked. And I came down very gently, which was very nice.
And you were just 100 meters off the deck when you flew the first one? Wow, that's fast. Yeah. It was pretty quick. And the landing was benign?
Yeah, it came down a steep slope with trees. Okay. So. And with all the sail of two reserves and the main wing above me, there was a lot of stuff slowing me down. So, I slowed down about, I don't know, five or six meters. And I could unclip from the harness and step onto the ground.
What would you credit your recognition of that blow-up and immediate throw to? If you've listened to the show a little bit, you probably heard about me talk about the accidents we had at Nationals last year. Last year in the Sierras, we had two guys, pretty much identical, very, very bad injuries. And they were both, in a sense, different days, but in a sense, similar in that, you know, you can always look at these things with 20-20 hindsight. But we believe, the consensus is they both would have been fine had they thrown. But because it's competition, maybe, that's one maybe thing that was going through their heads.
And the other thing is just, you know, what we do, we can get this. We've been here before. We can recover this. Anyway, they tried to recover it too long, pounded, didn't throw. So, you made a decision there that a lot of people don't make. You know, they try to recover it. And you just said, no, I don't have this. And you threw. What do you credit that to?
Bizarrely, it was a collapse earlier in the flight. I'd had a big collapse and maybe a small crash. And I'd noticed that it had taken a bit of time to get out. And so, it was very clear when I had this really big one low down that there was no way I had the height to recover it in time. It might have been possible to do so, but ultimately, this is why we carry the safety gear. This is why we've got it. It's to make sure we walk away from these things. So, it's what the reserve is for. And I can cope with having a poor result in the task.
Smart.
Smart. I like it. Back to the incident with the heli. I was doing a bunch of training last year with Cody Mittanck down in the desert. And we were training over the dirt, you know, towing up over the dirt. So, we were, you know, very aware of that risk. And he really stuck into my head, which is something that I had never heard before or practiced, which was to really make sure you're in a deep stall or a tailspin. Before you throw. So, he has this whole thing where, you know how we constantly, every time we flight, we do that reach for the reserve handle just to muscle memory. Well, his is, you know, grabbing that other toggle, you know, so both toggles are in one hand.
You just get it down to your belly button safely in a, you know, a tailslide is much easier to obviously maintain than a deep stall. Before you throw to lessen the chance of throwing the reserve into your wing. Now, obviously, when you're wrapped up as you were in a heli, that becomes really hard because your brakes are locked. But, you know, in retrospect, could you have reached up, stalled your wing? I'm assuming you were kind of in an auto rotate or something situation, just wildly out of control. But are there other means, especially in acro, where you maybe have some more time? Have you thought through any of that? I'm just curious because I know you're really. Analytical.
Yes, very much so. I mean, I very much could have prevented the situation occurring by giving correct inputs. Sure. I'm really sure I know exactly what happened. I enter a helicopter. It's the second helicopter of this flight. It starts to go off axis. I decided to exit the helicopter by putting hands up where I really, I should have done a stall exit. Area number one, the wing dives forward. I'm looking at the wing and these acro wings, of course, trimmed to stay inflated. When you're doing maneuvers like helicopters, I see the wing fully inflated. So I put my hands back down again, thinking to damp the dive from the stall. But really, the wing is not properly flying and I am now holding it basically a deep stall position, but with the thing twisting and slightly thrashing around and very.
So I should have a done a stall exit, which is a much safer exit from a helicopter and rebuild from that. And B, I could have acted much quicker to stop the situation. Developing.
Okay. Okay. Tom, you, you have been at this game a long time and catch us up with, give us the short version of your history and what brought you to where you are. And I'd love to hear also what brought you to the X-Alps in 2009.
Yeah. So I started flying in 95, 96, did my club pilot to Northern paragliding in Yorkshire Dales in the UK. Uh, flew in the UK, got my pilot rating a couple of years after that. It was keen, but UK weather isn't great. And it was only when I moved to the Alps in 2003. So I really got to do a lot, a lot of flying and really start building the mountain flying career.
Give me some, give me an age here.
Uh, in range. I was being 28 at the time. Okay. And, uh, and there 2003, of course, was the first year of the X-Alps. I was in Chamonix that summer, eagerly watching it. Uh, I mean, this, the systems were pretty basic there. I remember there was only. 15 people. So in the race, the live tracking done by SMS and updated maybe once a minute, or is this what these things slowly crawled across the, uh, across the Google earth. And I mean, it was very interesting talking to people who competed in that race. You know, that first time they would take a look heading out with, um, sleeping bags in the rucksacks. Um, some people have full weight equipment cause they thought the advantage of, um, performance in the air would be greater than. Um, The cost and carrying that the race has changed massively since, but it was amazing to see.
And of course they came through Chamonix cycles for that. Um, I got really into the fantastic cross country flying and the Annecy region. I was living in Schaumburg and then Geneva, and I had a very good local club. We were very, uh, with some very good pilots who, uh, showed me how to fly cross country. And from that, from, um, cross country, I then got into the competition scene, uh, initially friend. Then the competition is the ozone Sharpa open went for a few years, uh, then the British opens and eventually PWC. And then around 2011, I was really starting to get good and starting to get good results in these high level competitions. The open class ban came in. That was a huge, huge setback for me. Um, I spent some years fighting that, trying to get open class back and, um, have
explained a little bit, uh, stick on that for a bit. Explain a little bit. Why that was such a blow. And so I think a lot of listeners don't understand why that would be.
Yeah. So it was such a blow because it just decimated the competition scene. And so many ways there was, it was so exciting to, uh, to watch all the, the new glider developments. Uh, there were all of the heroes would turn up for the, um, the big competitions. It was incredibly inspiring to fly along, uh, aside these people and see these things happening. I was at one of the last open class PWCs in lens. In Austria. And there were rumors that gin had turned up with a 1.5 liner.
Awesome. And yeah, you're just, you're just aware of all this technology and development happening around you. And of course, all this filters down to recreational wings. You know, you get ENAs with sharp nose profiles and rigid bits in the leading edge and all sorts now. And because all the, um, the test pilots are there with a new prototype. This, you've got these very, very top level of pilots from all different manufacturers. It's really exciting.
And you know, in the stroke of a pen, so the L removed all that and we're back to E and D and the test pilots don't turn up anymore. You only get naked. If I certified wings, it's only economical to certify the medium size typically. So for two years, there was no wing for me to fly. I could be competitive with if you wanted to win. You had the only one wing to be on was. Um, actually the Enzo and the later ice peak six. Um, and you can't compete against an Enzo. If all you've got is a small mantra for, and it will classic E and D. Sure. Yeah. So both the, the character of the competitions changed and there's just, you know, at that level, small differences in glide performance really matter.
And there's just no point turning up if you can't get a competitive wing. Hmm.
And so where does it sit with you now at this? The CCC class?
It's, it's, it's, uh, it's really, I mean, the new CCC class is really, um, E and D for extra small people and then open class more or less for, for everyone else.
Yeah. So it's kind of removed us little guys from the scene. Hasn't it? Well, you're full of muscle mate. Yeah. Yeah. What did Ed call me? Big guns. McClurg or something. Yeah. Exactly.
You carry your carry that weight around the X-Alps course as well, but you're still, you're still competing. Very rarely. I mean, I'll do a couple of, uh, competitions this year. I'm going along to the Navator open in Macedonia. Well, I'll give some talks on competition flying. You know, when I was doing a lot, I, uh, I recorded and, and, uh, wrote articles on a lot of techniques and stuff. I learned and I'll be sharing some of that. Hmm. And I'll probably go to one of the British opens as well, but now competing for fun to see my friends, not, not gunning for first place. I
was going to say, you know, one of the notes I made before talking to you is, and I was going to say, you know, was it, was the X-Alps in 2009, kind of the peak of your career. It doesn't sound like that at all. It sounds like it was more, it was more of the peak was happening until the open class got banned.
Exactly. It was 2010 that year. I was getting podium finishes in cat twos. I was starting to get top 10 finishes in individual PWCs. I was winning. I ran my first international competition, uh, several task wins. And I flew a lot that year. I mean, I was on the ozone on 10. I think I did 30 tasks that year. Wow. And it's really something that responds well to practice. And I was getting a lot of practice.
And tell me a little bit about, because I know now you're, you work for Google and I'd love to hear that story of how you got that job because that ties into paragliding, which I really like. And it's a, it's a tool that. Most all of us use now. Uh, thank you for that. And we'll talk about XC planner. Um, but back then, how, what was your work play? How, how was that all meshing? Because I think one of the, one of the questions we get a lot is, you know, how do I, how do I fly a lot and live
a live in the right place? So moving to the Alps makes a massive difference when it's on your doorstep, you can go after work, you can go every weekend pluses. The infrastructure is, is excellent forecast. Weather forecasts are very good. There's lots of different sheltered places to go on the less good days. So just living close to reliable flying is probably number one. I took a job at 80 % time. So every weekend was a three day weekend actually was flexible. So I could just go on the good days. And that made a massive difference.
Be in the right place.
Yeah. Yeah. And be keen. I mean, one of the. Great things at this time. And I was, this is also when I was cracking out the big triangles in the Alps is because I wanted to do well in competitions, I would go out on the less good days, you know, when days you're not going to break your personal best and still go flying. And I see it as training for competitions. Of course, if the competitions that trains you speed in terms of average speed around the course, which you need to have, if you want to do the really big flights. So there's very much a virtuous circle there and it's, and it's not. Being keen, going out as often as you can. And bizarrely, I find it's often on the work, the bad weather days or the ones that don't look great. They have some of the most memorable experiences. You end up flying over cloud or working your way through sort of the shadow, shadowy valleys, but finding a way through or connecting different types of lift and wave lift and dynamic and all sorts.
It's when it gets really interesting.
Yeah. So it sounds like take advantage of, uh, of every moment.
Yeah, exactly. Be keen, be hungry and the rest will follow.
And so, um, let's rewind the clock 2009 X-Alps. Uh, I know that this is something you watch with a great amount of passion. Um, and, uh, but your, your experience was a rough go.
Yeah, it was a number of factors, uh, conspired there. Um, I conspired, I should say. Um, but basically we had pretty brutal weather. The conditions, it was for several days, just strong southwesterly winds. Um, some people flew, um, but didn't get very far. Uh, I just hiked and my last four days was just hiking along tarmac roads. It was Kregel's first year. He was way ahead. Um, um, Alex Hoffer had won it twice previously, uh, struggled to get to Monaco within the two day time limit of Kregel's arrival. And for the rest of us still stuck in the middle of the Alps. No chance of making Monaco, uh, no real opportunity for flying and certainly not any safe flying.
Uh, it was just brutal.
And you, uh, talked about the, you, you, you didn't train right or something.
Yeah, I did a lot of running, which is not what you need. I was very fast on the ground, uh, as fit. Um, but as I'd focused on running, typically doing, you know, three or four, 20, 30 K runs. Um, a week, uh, getting quite quick, I was doing 16 kilometers an hour, average speeds, which is reasonable, but I didn't do the long hikes that you need to get all the, the connective tissue, uh, in your legs strong. And that's what actually really got me in the race as well. I got, uh, arthritis, basic inflammation, my ankle. I can't remember what happened to my knees, but it would remember them hurting a lot, a lot, a lot. The race doctor of course is around. He gave me a nice cortisone injection.
Which meant I could continue, uh, continue racing and continue thrashing your
body. Yeah. Yeah. I've been really surprised with, uh, you know, I've, I've learned a lot because I've, I've never been a runner. I have very bold legs as you probably remember, and, and, and, and terrible joints from years and years of ski racing. But, um, working with Ben, it's been really interesting to understand. He's done a lot of these kind of like death races and. And ultra-athons and that's not what the X-Alps is. I think a lot of people do think that those are the guys that, that can really excel, but that's, that's not the case. It's really, it's, it's the, it's the pack, even though it's not that heavy, but you know, you've got your back weight, you've got a ton of vertical. And then, like you said, it's, it's taken care of the connective tissues and, and, uh, yeah, it's, it's more, it's, it's more climbing.
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, even. Take a decent, uh, ultra marathon. So for example, the longest I did was one called the CCC in Chamonix, which was a hundred kilometers, 6,000 meters of ascent, and you do it in, I did 20 hours. I mean, that's, that's not even one day of the X-Alps. The X-Alps lasts 10 to 12 days typically. Yeah. And racing at a sustainable pace is one of the very key things that you have to do if you're going to survive the race.
Right. Yeah. And I think that's the key is that it's that sustainable pace, you know, the. Yeah. That a lot of the guys that go out, we saw it last time, didn't we? The guys that ran early a lot, they, they all folded, you know, they, it just, that, that's not very sustainable to do that. Toma can do it, but yeah, yeah. XC planner. Well, I want to talk about XC planner. I want to talk about X contest as well. Uh, and I, I don't know if you were involved with, with X contest, but, um, what, before, before talking to you, I reached out to Bruce who has been. Following you and follow your triangles and, you know, he's an X contest addict and I think he won a chocolate bar, at least two or three years in a row, just chasing those hundred K flights.
That was his big thing. He just loved that. And, and he wanted to get your thoughts on, you know, is, is X con obviously it's an amazing resource. Um, but is it good or is it evil?
Uh, it's all good. I think. Well,
the reason I'm smiling while I'm asking you this is. You know, that I think that it's great. It's an amazing resource, but it also, you know, and this is coming from him as a chocolate bar addict and they don't, they don't have the chocolate bar anymore, but, you know, I think it, it was really, it certainly did for him and me, uh, encouraged us to get into this big time numbers chasing thing. Yeah. Which I think can, well, not think that that is dangerous. Uh, yes, that's true.
And I, I've certainly suffered from that at times. So next contest, your top six flights count. And if you're being competitive in that, if the day comes along and you're not going to beat your sixth best flight, why leave the house? If you get too focused and wrapped up in the numbers and you really, I certainly went through a phase where I was just focused on the numbers and I kind of forgot about the pleasure of flying.
So tell me about that transition. When, when was that? And, uh, and how did you, how, how did you recognize it? How did you change it at
the time? I was, um, so this is when I'm flying in the, the French helps and I was competing in the CFD confederate distance, the French XC league. And there it's just your top three flights that counts. It's basically, there's a few sites in France where it's very easy to fly 200 kilometers or more. And in both X contests and the CFD at the time, people were just doing the same flight three times, not doing anything new, just up and bang up and down the long Ridge. And that is, was very saddening to see because you've got these great pilots capable of so much more, and they're just out there chasing the numbers. And I saw it happening in myself as well, that I was, but I, to avoid that, I wanted to all my flights to be different at the time.
So still got the distances, but different triangles, different out and returns. And that's how I kept myself sane. I think you're,
you're working pretty full time for Google. Now they're in Surrey. Not anymore.
Actually. Oh, really?
Yeah. What? Ah, this sounds like a story. Let's hear it. What happened?
Yeah. Yeah. The, um, the job was not as described, uh, sold as software development and a role called SRE. But really the team I was in is very operational and sort of day to day, um, sort of responding if stuff goes wrong, but not very creative role. I raised this in my manager and long story short is basically exploded. So, uh, anger. I then. I was offered to change teams, but, uh, forced to sign a PIP in the process, performance improvement plan. And I went to this new team for three months. Uh, things seem to go very well, but it was my old manager. He was no, I was no longer working with who got to decide whether the PIP passed or failed. And he decided it failed. Wow. Geez.
Holy cow. So what's, what's next then?
Oh, it's awesome actually. So I had a summer off loads of flying around Europe. And I'm now. Working at another company, uh, just around the corner, 10 minutes walk away, a smaller company. There's much more freedom. You have much more impact on the code and just much, much happier.
Fantastic. Well, that sounds great. Congratulations. And, and, uh, but XC planner, uh, this was, you know, this is the kind of stuff that you really forget part of the term that you geek out on. You like making this kind of stuff for those of you listeners who don't know about XC planner. This is the tool to use when you're planning your flights. Uh, we just, I just had a talk with Hugh Miller on the last show and, and he was talking about how his own personal flying got so much better when he started realizing that it wasn't just a matter of launching and putting a day together. It's so much in, in advance. It's, it's all the planning in advance. And, and for my own, I can speak to this in my own flying, you know, I, my, my own personal flights got so much bigger and better.
It
was, it was a lot longer
when Bruce started using, you know, XC planner and also X contest to, you know, look at a, at a, at a day and say, this is what we can do with the day. If it goes bad, if it goes good, if it goes really good, you know, so we'd have these different plans in mind before we ever stepped off the hill. And I think that's, you know, kind of why contests are so good for accelerating progression. But can you talk a little bit about some of that stuff? I'd like to hear about how you thread your own gift of analysis and technology and working for things like Google and do your own flying. I've talked about this a lot in previous episodes, but when we were hiking down off the second waypoint in Ashau, third waypoint in 2015, I was walking down with Stanislav and Michael Vichy, and I'm blown away with how many engineers fly.
It just seems to really attract that kind of mind, which I don't have, by
the way. Yeah, well, it's a really technical sport, paragliding. The amount of gear, understanding a bit about how winds fly, ground speed, air speed, effective wing loading, just the sheer amounts of pre-flight checks you've got to do. It's a really, really technical sport, and I think it naturally appeals to those sort of geeky types. Not obviously just to those geeky types, but it does have special appeal there. And for me, it's very much a passion, both paragliding and computing, so things like XC Planner are a natural outcome from that. In XC Planner itself, it actually came from a couple of different threads. First one was that I really wanted to fly 100K, and at the time, I'd got into cross country flying.
I was doing 30Ks, 40Ks, 50Ks, that sort of thing. And it was John Chambers who explained it to me. He said, The difference between a 50K flight and a 100K flight is planning, and it's true. If you have an idea of where you're going, you're going to make decisions much, much faster. You're going to try, and if you have some sort of goal, you're going to try and achieve that goal. You can also abandon it if the conditions aren't good or safety reasons or whatever, but just the very fact of having a goal draws you forward.
This is also something that I think comes from if you get into competition flying. On an XC flight, it's just a free XC flight. You can pretty much quit when you want. You might want to go somewhere, but if conditions aren't good, you'll turn around and go somewhere else where it's hard to get there because there's a headwind or something like that. You can turn around. But with competition flying, whether it's defined cylinders and defined routes of where you have to go if you want to score points, it encourages you to try things and really sometimes bang your head against a headwind and still get to the turn point. And from that, you learn a whole new load, new skills, your speed increases, and you become a better pilot because of it.
But things you need to know when you're planning your flight, XC Planner includes the skyways from a guy called Mickey Van Carnel, which is all the track logs from X Contest and loads of other XC leagues, which you can overlay into the website and you can see exactly where people fly. You can see the auto routes of the sky. You can see where people cross valleys or which sites they use, how they get around. You can see around airspace, all of these things. And so if you start your flight with all that knowledge and that sort of belief that it's possible because you've seen other people can do it, it's really empowering.
Given all that and your kind of background and analysis and your passion for the X-Alps, I'd love to hear – and also you supported John in 2011 and then again I think in kind of a different role in 2013. Is that right?
That's right. In 2011, I was just the weather guy at the end of the phone. But in 2013, I was co-supporting John with John's Dad, which was an absolutely fantastic experience. It was two weeks. We functioned brilliantly as a team. We shared the roles really well and we had a fantastic result with John coming in fourth and landing on the raft in Monaco, which was just a dream come true.
I'd like to hear your – that is a dream. That's awesome. And I loved his book. I'd like to hear your thoughts on what makes that team. Because you've watched this race a lot and you've seen kind of all the madness and what works and what doesn't. Obviously, there's some obvious things, but I bet you've got some unobvious things.
Yeah. I mean, it's really hard for the supporters in X-Alps. They're up longer than the athletes because you're generally up half an hour, 45 minutes before the day starts to prepare food. You're, of course, chasing and supporting during the day. And you're doing all the tidy-up stuff once the athlete's gone to bed at 11 p.m. or 11.30. So your days are really long and it's a huge amount of work. I have absolutely no idea how Alex Raymond, who supported me in 2009, was able to do it because it was a full-time job for two of us, John Zad and myself. I think what really worked with this 2013 race was that we all shared a common goal.
And I actually had a mantra that I would say when – if things were ever stressful or if there was any argument or anything like that, I would say, how can I get John safely and quickly to Monaco? And that becomes – that's just – when there's an argument, that's the answer to the question. And you just focus on that.
One of the questions we asked you was – when we came to you for advice, what are some of the big things? And you said, you
know what? You said,
you know, have something in plan for conflict resolution. Yeah. And I was – we didn't really have any conflict, but I liked – we talked about that afterwards a lot. And I think what was so critical for us was, one, that Ben had been in the Army. And, you know, so he's just – he doesn't take things personally. And, two, as we just thought, okay, we have to respond to everything with humor. And it really worked. But that was – I think that was really good advice when I heard – you know, when I talked to a lot of the groups after the race, it sounded like conflict was a major player and not always good.
It's incredibly stressful. I mean I had conflicts in my sport in 2009. And I've seen teams completely split apart. You know, Toma Kokanier, I think 2000 – well, at least once or twice. You know, his – I think his first supporter has stormed off and they've got a different one instead. Terrible. And if you want to win the race or even just do well, you just can't have that. You need to have everyone working together, pulling together. I have to say, egos aside, yeah.
What do you see this year with Chrigel losing Thomas?
He's still Chrigel. I
was going to say,
does it change anything?
I mean, the – Clearly, I mean, they're a fantastic team and work exceptionally well together. But Chrigel prepares everything in detail. He's not just amazing on the day. He's almost a full-time ex-Alps pilot in the preparation as well. So I've no doubt that he will be as good in 2017 as he was in all his previous years that he's won. So I would not underestimate him in the slightest. Yeah.
No, I don't think – Yeah. I certainly am not. And I hope – No one else has either. Yeah.
I think his – with his new supporter, they did the ex-Pyrenees last year. And I think Chrigel did it in three or four days. Yeah. It's like seven, three days or
something. It was just incredible. Yeah. God, he's so fast. You wanted to talk about SIV. SIV, yes. Let's talk about SIV.
Yeah. It's fantastic. If you haven't done an SIV course, do one. I credit SIV with saving my life. A previous incident. When I was a much less experienced pilot back in 2006, 2007. I was flying deep in the Swiss Alps, a place called Sasse FAI on a blue sky day in the winter. And we hit mountain wave, which is really a vicious rotor. And I'm flying in my lightweight kit, no reserve parachute. And I'm over this dry glacier just full of crevasses. And my wing is spinning and twisted. And I have a full twist. And, you know. No real options to get out. But because I've done the SIV course. And I think this is what you really get most out of an SIV course.
It's not the mechanisms of the individual maneuvers themselves. But the clarity to understand all the situation you're in. Not panic. And fix things. So because of that SIV course, I could work out how to steer my wing out of the spiral spin it was in. Despite the twists. And come out. And then get it down safely to the ground. So even though I'd been flying. 20 years or so now. I still do SIV courses regularly. I did one this year. A fantastic one with Toby Colombey. Passion paragliding in Turkey for a week. I also tried to do a weekend with Flyo in Annecy. I just do them.
Yeah. What are your goals now with flying? One of the things I've been thinking about quite a bit is, you know, I'll do the X-Helps again this year, you know, health permitting in 2017. And, you know, and then I'll be 45. Seems kind of ridiculous to keep doing it. You know, so I'm asking myself a lot. What now? Did you go through that? You know, after 2009 or, you know, after the ban of the open class, you know, you're still a young fit guy. Where do you find your passion drawing you now with flight? Because it's obviously still there.
Yeah. Yeah. I hit a real low after the open class ban. And I poured a huge amount of energy trying. Trying to get them unbanned effectively and very much burnt out. And I found myself, you know, I felt for a while I'd done everything in paragliding. I'd flown 200K triangles. I'd done X-Helps. I'd done PLVCs. I'd been on the British team, European championships. So all my goals had been achieved. And I came very, very close to quitting the sport completely.
What's really changed is I've got a good group of friends. Here in Zurich, where I live, who are relatively young pilots flying two to three years or so. And they have a massive passion for flight. And with them, I'm just rediscovering the joy of it. And we have some great adventures. I mean, we've been top landing at mountain huts and staying the night and doing moonlit flights and just simple fly downs. And the sunset after work is just absolutely magic.
So it's... I'm very lucky to... To have the... To fly with this group. And so it's through these young pilots that I've really found my passion.
Oh, wicked. I like that. So will you still be avidly watching the X-Helps this year? Oh, of course.
And what about John? Why is he no longer doing it?
It's a good question. And we've had long discussions about this. So John's come fourth in the X-Helps. And to do better than that. He has a full-time job and a family.
And his... You know, you don't get to see your wife or your kids when you have all that going. So... And to go further, to take it to the level where you'd get on the podium or first place, you need to have almost Chrigel-like levels of amounts of time. In fact, you need to be months to prepare. And John just simply... The risk-reward was too much. So not risk-reward. The amount of investment of time and energy that would take to improve on that result was too much. Too much compromise for to see his two daughters, to see his wife, compromise his career. He
must miss it.
Yeah. I
bet. Yeah, I bet. But going through your Twitter feed, there seemed to be a pretty common theme of, you know, safety.
Talk to me a bit about, you know, you've had these, you know, a couple decades now of flying and being enmeshed at all levels of it from PWC to just hike and flies and midnight runs in the Ex-Alps. I like to bring up just, you know, what you've learned. What's some bad advice out there? What do you see? You know, what are the commonalities that end in tragedy?
Well, having almost had it been a tragedy myself. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. I need a quick moment to think about this. The, I mean, I actually, I always, my goal for every flying day is a very simple one. Make the right decision as to whether to take off or not.
It's a very simple thing to say, but it is going to be easy to push it and take off into bad conditions. Think you'll get away with it. You know, launch. You'll get into crosswinds or rota or whatever. So I very much want to make sure I make the right decision to take off. The right decision might be to fly and have a great day flying, or it might be to leave it in the bag and go do something else. In the air, a lot of accidents I've seen have been due to overreactions by the pilots. And I would include my most recent one in this as well. It was often, you'd often see the case that someone would get into, have a small collapse. They would then overreact. Uh, to that, they end up stalling the wing or similar and basic, their efforts to try and fix the wing just mean it stays worse.
Finally, they flee, they give up trying, they let go of the brakes, they reach for the reserve handle. And just as the reserve is being thrown away, the wing resumes, normal flight, the reserve pops out and they drift nicely down. I've seen that several times.
So that's where, that's where things like SID courses really make a massive, massive difference. But that's safe. Also, the. The gear these days is so good. You know, you can do so much on an ENA or ENB glider, the reserve systems generally work well, back protection systems are pretty damn good. It's, we've got better weather forecasting, just so much more information. Yeah, I think safety is pretty good to be honest.
I liked, I liked Russ's comment about safety and I said, you know, with, with everything getting better, why isn't the sport getting safer? And he said, it's because, you know, obviously it's. It's, it's just allows us, you know, back in the nineties, you didn't fly in very much wind because you couldn't. Yeah. And now these, these wings are so amazing that they allow us to fly in worse stuff. Isn't it? I mean, you know, you think about the ex-ops, you're just pounding into terrible conditions the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you've got wings that you can do it on. Yeah.
There's a lot of external pressure, internal and external pressure to, to fly in those conditions, of course. Sure. Yeah, sure.
Yeah. You're, you're, you're right on that. The edge all the whole time.
Yeah. Yeah. This is the risk homeostasis theory is a good one that basically, you know, you put, they give a cyclist a cycling helmet and they'll just cycle faster to compensate.
And I think the same would be one of the reasons that the open class BAM did not improve safety in any way. In fact, all data I've seen indicates that safety got worse after the open class BAM is there a lot of people who would never fly an open class wing, but would buy an END wing. Even though. Even though it's in practical purposes, just as difficult, uh, to fly. So people stepped up too far and had accidents.
Have you ever had an accident?
Have I? Yeah. I've had several accidents. Yeah. I've landed in trees four, five times at this. Yeah.
Um, is
there, is there, is there a good story embedded in any of the tree landings or, or otherwise?
Well, probably the most public one is actually just before the 2009 X-Alps, I had this, uh, response wing and I'd asked for lightweight risers and I took off from, we were doing a, some photo shoot just before the race, you know, you've been through this, you know, the few days before the race, all the athletes are in, um, Fushilam Zay by just by Red Bull headquarters and you go out and do shoots with the, uh, photographers or the race briefings and whatnot. So we're up on the guys. Iceberg on the north launch. It was very short, narrow, uh, launch. I popped up my wing, looked fine. I took off and flew. And what had happened is on these risers, basically, uh, one of the myons had slid down and it pulled on 10 centimeters of sea, uh, riser on the left-hand side.
And this meant the left side of the glider was basically not flying. I try, and because you're now steep launch, you immediately have the trees. There's no way I could immediately land. And. And so I had to try and keep it flying with a lot of weight shift and a tiny bit of brake on the opposite side. I tried to pilot it down to the landing field, but lost control. It went into flat, very flat spin. And I go straight into the trees. And the trees there, they look like normal trees from the top. But really, it's a little conifer on top of a 20-meter trunk with no branches whatsoever. I was very lucky that I was sort of tangled in one tree. And the wing had gone over the tree next to me and obviously just air beneath me.
I phoned up the race organization and said, I've landed in a tree. And I undid my speed bar from the harness so I could tie myself to the tree of the floor.
And I recorded a little video and waited for rescue. And the rescuer came up and he climbed up the tree. I belay him across to the other tree so he can get the wing out. This is the wing. This is two days before the race. We had to cut every single line on the glider to get it out. He then lowered me down, lowered me down. Luckily, I had bought a complete set of spare lines for the glider. And I spent the Saturday morning before the race inside the sports hall in Fuchel, pouring rain outside, relining the glider. And that was the days of four liners, not two liners, so it took quite a long time. And the first time I could actually inflate the glider, was on the takeoff of the Geisberg itself with the race start.
I was very, very happy when it came up.
Do
you think that materially affected how the race went for you? Or once you flew it that first time, it was all good and it was behind you? That week before the race is really stressful.
Absolutely. I was, I think, joint 15th when I did it in 2009. And I definitely feel I could have done better. But at the time, my headspace wasn't very good. I had a number of setbacks in the preparation. And I was certainly not flying confidently. And the X-Alps really, we've talked a little bit about the physical training to do, but the mental side is by far the most important part of it.
Yeah, absolutely. I
mean, Kregel's obviously got a fantastic mental attitude. Take another guy, is it Muller, who almost won in 2007. It's amazing. He can just fly with belief in tough conditions. John is also really very good at this. And one of the reasons I was very happy to see John Chambers compete is that he's really good at keeping his calm and managing risky situations well.
And I just was not in that. Headspace at all. I tend to take the easy option of hiking, which is slow but steady and horribly painful and boring to watch.
Yeah. Ouch. Ouch. Okay. Well, given the four or five, I think you said, three landings and some accidents along the way, you know, looking back at things again with 20-20 hindsight, was there any advice along the way or advice? You either got and didn't follow or wish you would have gotten when you look back to the, you know, when you were learning in the 90s or maybe just getting into XC in 2003 when you moved to Annecy or if there have been some aha moments. That's a couple of different questions.
Yeah. But yeah. I think it's your responsibility all the time. And the pilot is by far the most important factor. If you find yourself blaming your gear or somebody, somebody else for your accidents apart from someone flying straight into you, but you have to take responsibility yourself for everything. By all means, listen to other people and take their stuff into account, but ultimately you are responsible. What was very helpful for me was to have more experienced pilots around to mentor me and learn from them. And that definitely, I don't know how to say if it's kept me out of trouble, but certainly being able to sit down, talk through things, make plans for the day, fly together and at the end of the day analyze the day and learn from everybody's experience.
That's very, very helpful indeed. I had, I had mentioned the mantra earlier of what I use in the ex-houts, but I similarly have some mantras that I say when I'm flying. If I'm stressed, as I said, a lot of accidents are overreactions. I tell myself loose hands and I focus on relaxing my hands. You relax, loosen your hands, your shoulders relax and you're just less likely to give the extreme inputs that these two cascades. If I'm stuck somewhere low down, um, I asked myself who is going up. If you get stuck on a XC flies or in a competition, it's very easy to end up just on a little Ridge. You can stay up, but you're not going anywhere. And by when I say who's going up, I forced myself to look over a much wider area, looking for any oil, collect your classic thermal signs, other gliders, just be much more open to trying to see what all your options are.
Hmm. I
like that.
And sometimes it also happens. You get bored or things don't go so well for whatever reason. And there I tell myself I choose to be here. This is, you might be stuck, soaring that little shady Hill board out of your skull, waiting for sunshine to come out. But really every part of a flight is a unique experience and you'll only be in that position once that's here and now. So seize that opportunity and make the most of it.
I love it. I love it. But on that note, I think that is a, there's a terrific amount of information packed into there. And I think we'll leave it there. That was a terrific. Thanks so much, Tom. I it's always a treat and an honor to, to talk to you. And I'm sure my team will come in and bug you in the spring again, and find out what other treasures you've got hidden away in that mind of yours. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we sign off?
I just say, thanks so much, Kevin. It's been a pleasure. I'm really looking forward to watching you in the ex Alps. I'd love to quiz you about that.
Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, yeah, I'll be over. We've got the van all rented out. It's all ready to go. Uh, be over there. June 1st. I'm coming over a little bit later this year than I did last time. I found last time was just too much, but, um, yeah, we'll, we'll be seeing you soon.
Cheers, mate. All
right. Thanks, Tom. Cheers.
I hope you enjoyed that. A lot of great advice there from a really amazing pilot and a guy that, that thinks about our sport in a pretty unique ways. Advice that we should all be following as always, all we ask for is buck a show. This is a listener supported podcast. You can find ways to contribute if you will, uh, on cloud-based mayhem.com. And like I said, at the top of the show, we've got this new way to contribute where you can kind of set it and forget it through patrion.com. Really cool. If you want to go check that out, it's patrion.com forward slash cloud-based mayhem. Uh, you'll find about three minutes of really cool clips also from the Alaska project, North of, of known that Dave Turner and I did this spring. Thank you so much. And we'll see you on the next one. Cheers.