Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Got a great show for you today, but before we get into it, quite a few housekeeping items. All of these are important, so stick with us here for a few minutes. The first, you may have heard in the last couple shows, we've launched a new way to support the show. This is a listener-supported podcast. We're not getting anything from sponsors, because that's how I want to do it. But we've got a new way to support us called Patreon. If you go to patreon.com forward slash cloudbasemayhem, or you can find those links all over the website, cloudbasemayhem.com, there's a really cool way to support the show where you kind of set it and forget it. And we've also got on there, only for Patreon members, some bonus material from time to time.
And I've just uploaded about a 10-minute story from Larry Tudor back in episode 29. We talked with Larry for a couple hours. That has been by far our most popular show to date. We signed off after a couple hours, which I shouldn't have done. He was just rolling in so many good stories. But anyway, signed off. Luckily, I kept recording, because he immediately started recounting what I'm calling the magic bus tour. All these pilots got on a bus way back when, a bunch of hang gliders back in Bir in India. And they all promptly took off. Took some acid, and then the transmission ran out on the bus, and that's all I'm going to give you. Head on over to patreon.com forward slash cloudbasemayhem if you need a really, really good guffaw in your life today.
It is absolutely hysterical. I've been promising I'm going to drop that into a show. I've finally done that. Go over, check it out. It's awesome. Another thing we talked about a lot in the last couple shows is reserve throws. And I mentioned that Cody Mittanck had been teaching me. Last year when I was training with him down in the desert about putting your wing into a solid tail slide, or at least a deep stall, but tail slide's quite a bit easier, with both hands, you know, grabbing both brake toggles before you throw your reserve. A really great story in the last episode with Tom Payne about him getting into a helico situation that goes bad, and he throws both of his reserves right into his wing. Sounds crazy, but it's actually not that uncommon, and in his own words, he should have died.
Luckily, he got out of that without any injury, but it was a good reinforcement that, yes, ideally, that is the way you want to throw your reserve, but there are a lot of things that are difficult about that. When I put that out on the website, or sorry, when I put that out on the show, it started a conversation on paragliding forums. Some of you may have seen that. I asked Christina in this show, this show is with Christina Cole, who just won the World Acro. She's our new acro. World Acro champion. She won it this year in Annecy. I asked her about that, so we go into it a little bit in this show, but obviously, that's ideally. If you're in some kind of horrific situation, especially if you've got a multiple riser twist situation, obviously, you can't pull your brakes down into a tail slide or a deep stall, and so that's not going to work.
Potentially, Christina says you can reach up above and pull the brake lines down. With one hand, that would be an incredibly acrobatic maneuver. Not saying it can't be done. It probably can, but anyway, this is obviously an ideal situation. The best way to throw so your wing doesn't auto restart or start violently whipping when you go to throw and throw your reserve right directly into your wing. If you practice tail slide, they're not very hard, and if you can hold that with one hand, all the better, and then you're in a nice stable situation to then throw. The obvious question then is why throw if you're in a stable situation? Well, then the answer to that, of course, is if you've got a massive unrecoverable cravat or you've done some acro full stalls, you've got some kind of situation in your wing that you can't resolve, and you're running out of time, so there you go.
Next thing I wanted to talk about is insurance. USHPA just came. The last issue just came out with an article for me about insurance, which is absolutely incorrect. I've contacted the magazine to put that correction in the next one. As far as I know correctly, the post that I've put on my blog, cloudbasedmayhem.com, about insurance is totally updated, and it's totally correct right now. But in the article, I mentioned that the GeoSAR insurance offered through Spot and DeLorme doesn't work. Which is true. There's a paragliding and hang gliding exception. But I recommend using the MediVac, Geo's MediVac insurance. But that also doesn't cover paragliding and hang gliding.
So the only one I know of is through Seven Corners, their Dog Tag Extreme policy, and also there's another one through World Nomads, although I'm hearing that the World Nomads coverage is quite a bit inferior. So rather than go into all that now, because this is really just specific information - tie to the World Nomads thing, I want to talk a little bit about insurance. to us and canadian pilots and not everybody else who's listening right now sorry about that for you folks but uh go to my website cloudbasedmayhem.com put in a search term insurance and you'll see that uh you'll see that article i've also made some updates on my facebook page so you can go into that film tour i'm going on a little mini film tour with north unknown next week starting at vimp vancouver international mountain film festival saturday the 18th and then i'm going to be heading south with a date pretty much every day you can find all this on the website cloudbasedmayhem.com and you can also find it on my facebook page and on the cloud based mayhem page but i'll be in seattle over at the north bend theater on the 19th i'll be in portland at the 20th we're still working on a venue for bend ashland area on the 21st we'll be in palo alto at the stanford campus on the 22nd we'll be down at we're still looking for a venue for san luis obispo on the 23rd we're going to be at santa barbara at the sandbox being hosted by patagonia on the 24th and then we're working on a venue in san diego for the 25th so i will be at all of those shows the film's about an hour and it documents it's a red bull media house film that documents dave turner and i's full traverse unsupported traverse of the alaskan range it's been winning tons of awards lately it premiered at bamf in november very very few people have seen it i hope you'll come out and uh check it out uh tickets
funds from the tickets are a portion of them are going to go to the foundation for free flight and the rest will cover venue expenses and the rest of that will go to my xops campaign so hope to see you out there it'll be a lot of fun i'll have a ton of sponsor swag that'd be a good time finally uh this show christina kolb i was contacted by a few different people who said i really had to talk to christina she won the world championships in acro this year and was 12th overall and a massive achievement uh this girl gal is just super obsessed with paragliding loves it and was but was just down in chile and brazil and was uh witnessed to quite a few accidents so as a common theme like we get into the show here as we often do like we talk a lot about safety and progression and training and what you can do to prevent these kinds of accidents some of them are in some ways kind of mindless uh very very preventable um we talk about a lot of things that we've talked about in other episodes but it's always great to get it from a female perspective not least to which we talk about the importance of SIV who it's right for who it's potentially wrong for uh the importance of ground handling uh why acro pilots are so much better than cross country pilots on the ground and that's just because they practice uh no great um
no great mystery there so uh i know you're going to enjoy this episode christina was over in austria we had a little bit of trouble with the sound in the first few minutes but i don't even think you'll notice that quickly goes away so uh without further ado please enjoy this conversation with christina kolb and i hope to see you on the road next week uh with north unknown cheers
christina is so great to have you on the show uh we've been trying to do this for gosh i think we're getting into the months not even weeks anymore but um thank you so much it can always be tricky to uh line up when we're in completely different time zones so why don't we start off with that where are you and and what are you doing these days uh
hi gavin nice to finally be able to talk to you so yeah that was quite a hard one um right at the moment i'm in austria i've decided to break of a journey uh in south america flying project in brazil which was like turning pretty weird at the moment so i decided to do it in austria and i'm in austria and i'm in austria and i'm in austria and i'm in austria so i decided to go back home and to spend the winter snowboarding and relaxing which has been great so far yeah
a flying a flying project that went weird uh in brazil that sounds like a great place to start what happened in brazil well
actually a lot happened before we ever got to brazil so by the time we were actually there i just wanted to go back home and to hide in a hole and to never come back out again uh yeah it was a lot of stuff happening we uh had a car in chile which had broken down in the meantime we had bought it like a year ago so that was a big factor there was like nothing i could do about it i'm not good at mechanics and there was this car hanging out we couldn't move to brazil which is where we wanted to go uh there were a lot of accidents in chile this year the weather was a bit different and the accidents were pretty bad and horrible i spent a lot of time at the hospital accompanying friends i didn't really feel like flying felt like flying anymore there was a lot of stuff happening like kind of things where you just don't want to go out anymore in the end and by the time we actually got to brazil without the car by bus my macbook had stolen on the bus and i was just ready to like run back home and hide wow
gosh i mean there's some stuff we're gonna have to talk about there uh what what was the plan and uh what was what were you guys hoping for in brazil and now so who's we you keep saying we all
right i'm usually traveling with my partner boyfriend alan um he's a very good pilot too very passionate so we're usually traveling and flying together uh so that's we yeah so we were planning on going to brazil and doing a little project with the president of the female flying movement there i guess the female paragliding movement and which is called say say go out and fly and uh it's pretty nice in brazil actually there are 600 lady pilots so we're flying more or less frequently i guess so which is a lot i didn't know about that and uh these ladies my friends wrote their próprios in brazil the one woman and the other one me we defense board was using my name on her to think of uh the virtual pilot school which a pilot sister was doing of a female pilot yeah we were on FR and that was a team loop um we were doing that again in brazil it was murder so by the time we actually got out of the building and like the team would have been a littlepeso let me
know if you realize what you're talking about
or where's your head now with flying after the accidents in Chile and getting your Mac stolen and, yeah, just taking the winter off?
Basically, that was it, yeah. It was weird when I came back home. I thought about flying just from behind my house, a little small flight. My mom was offering to drive me back up there. And, you know, you get these mental images sometimes when you think of something. Well, my mental image was one of a helicopter and somebody just laying on the ground. And I was like, whoa, that's pretty bad. That's not what I want to associate flying with. So I basically, yeah, I'm taking my time off. I started to do some speed riding. I'm snowboarding a lot, which is really nice. And I've flown my new Emily Smile, which is really nice as well. But I'm taking it easy and I'll see what will happen or what will come up. I've got a few ideas and projects in mind. But for now, just letting it flow and see what happens, I guess.
So before we get into your big win last year in Annecy, you became the world champion in acro, which I want to talk about. That sounds awesome. Can you give the listeners that don't know a lot about your history, how did you get into flying? What was the impetus? Bring us up to speed with how you became the world champion.
That could be a long or a short answer.
Yeah, let's go long.
Let's go long, okay. Right. When I was like really young, maybe like eight or nine years, we had a pilot flying from the hill behind my house and he barely took off. He just got his feet off the ground. But I was like, wow, that's what I want to do. And my mom was, yeah, right, exactly. I guess I've been always doing things a bit like out of the extraordinary or being fascinated by it. And when I was like 15 or so, a good friend of mine started flying. He was a very crazy guy, like very crazy. And we were all like, yeah, he's probably not going to survive it. And in the end, he did. He became good and he became a TANF pilot and he started taking friends along. So I was, of course, among the first to do the Q and yeah, exactly, exactly.
And it was really nice. It was exactly what I was always looking for, hoping for. But then I started backpacking all around, like just going back home to work, get some money and go back off again with my backpacking, whatever. So I did that for like two or three times more. And yeah. Then the time came where I was like, okay, now I've got some money and some time. Let's do that paragliding license. And I never got off it again. I was just addicted, I guess, from the first moment. So then was traveling.
Where is home, Christina?
Home is Austria.
But you said somebody, you saw somebody fly out behind your house. So where in Austria?
It's a really small village, close to Switzerland, like 400 inhabitants. I think you wouldn't know it.
Okay. Well, I've flown a lot over there, but maybe the X-Alps route will take us by your place this year.
Ah, we're in the foothills. Okay. But I might come out and see the X-Alps. It's something that I'm starting to get more interested in.
Yeah. You mentioned it, you know, before we started recording, you mentioned that you're quite into hike and fly. I like this. You know, it sounds like you got this kind of immediate passion. Was it, was it, was Acro the first draw? Or, well, anyway, I'm getting ahead of things. Keep, keep, keep taking us through your, your history here a little bit. So you, you got into, you, you, you did some tandems and then you took the lessons and then you never looked back.
Yeah, basically that was it, yeah. So it was all just paragliding and like, it shows the place where I studied for its flying sites when I had to do years abroad because I had a language related studies. I chose them according to the flying sites, spent some time in Argentina, flying, spent some time in Guatemala, flying in Spain, in Granada. Yeah.
You were choosing the places to study around paragliding, which I love. That sounds like a smart thing to do. And then how did the, how did Acro start coming into the fold?
Right. So, so for me, it's always just been flying. Like even if I just had a sledder, I was happy. I just wanted to fly. That was my thing. And I didn't really think about where I wanted to go or that I really wanted to become, become good. I wanted something and, and Acro has been really fascinating to me, but I just didn't have any people around who were flying Acro. So I wasn't the kind of person to go out and just pull on it and try myself. And, and at some point in, in Chile and Iquique, which is a place I've been going back to a lot of times, just because the conditions are pretty steady normally, except for this year and pretty awesome. Uh, I got to know two Acro pilots and they told me about this place called Organia. And so I was like, yeah, why not? I was living in Granada at the time, which, uh, was supposed to be really good for flying as well, but that window was pretty bad, which is why I left for Iquique.
And, uh, yeah, so on my way home from Granada to Austria, I stopped by in Organia and I spent, I planned on just staying there for a few days or something. And yes, ended up spending the whole summer there. I, it was just a place to be. The people were perfect. The people were really, really nice. And we're the reason that I finally like got into this dream of, of doing some Acro and doing some, yeah. Fancy movements in the air and I kept on going back to Organia and that's how it all started. And I never really had that goal. I mean, infinity was of course something that would have been really, really awesome to do, but I was just, yeah, flying along and having so much fun. And one thing led to another and one trick led to another, because once you know that you want to know more and you want to try the next step and that's how it all built up really.
And what was it like? Were you, did you literally. Learn your first Acro over the dirt in Organia, or did you, did you come into Organia with quite a bit of background? Um, tell me about the kind of learning process. Cause I think a lot of people, when they think about learning Acro there, they get quite, uh, I don't know, just worried, hesitant, uh, to learn it over the dirt.
Right. Um, I basically had an atypical learning process, I guess, in Acro. I learned about everything above dirt, um, or above ground. I have my first full stalls, which were. Really horrible and catastrophic and traumatic in a, in a SIV. It was, it was a great experience, but my full stalls were just really, really bad. Like, I guess either you're lucky with the first ones they work out and you'll have a nice and smooth progression or they're really horrible. And you'll have a trauma.
Ah, what happened and where, where were you, who, who was instructing?
Um, well, that's not to make bad publicity. I was just flying for six months and I was in, in Austria at the Aachen say, okay. We're really good. Instructions, but I was just like too eager and like, yeah, I want to do it all. You know, you get this list of SIV stuff that you want to do or tricks or maneuvers or whatever. And, okay. So
you were over the water for the full stalls. I was over the water. Oh, yes, yes. Okay. Gotcha. Proper
SIV, uh, was all good, fortunately, because I was thinking about maybe pulling it above the snow and whatever. And I'm really, really happy that I didn't, I didn't do that. So
that's a
good idea.
And did, did they end in, in throwing a reserve or they were just ugly?
Nope. Okay. They were ugly. Okay. I almost landed in the water, like a few times. It was funny. We were a few girls who all fucked it up at the same time. And our instructor was afterwards like, ah, it seems like you three put your head together and we're like, oh no, never do it again. And actually it took me four years to go back to doing full stalls again. And when I went to Organia, the people were just so nice to pilots there. I was, they basically bared with me for a month of annoying everyone like, oh, so what happens if the full stall goes wrong? And what happens if that happens? And what, but what could happen if, and like, I was. I was literally running after everybody for a month and just bugging them with full-stall quests. And in the end they actually flew out with me to two good friends, Renan and Rafinha flew out with me. We're like, yes, full-stall now. And like pulling besides.
I was like, oh no, okay.
But they got this thing started without them. I think I would have never done that. And actually, so yeah, but the ground flying, um, for me, altitude has always been much more important than water. Uh, a lot of the flying sites. It's above water. I know, um, are very low and I appreciate attitude much more than water. Like, of course, if you throw a rescue, you're happy to be above water, but well, I guess it's also the state of mind that you're in when you're flying above the ground is, is much more concentrated. I've had the experience that people come above a lake and do stuff. They don't have the basics for doing just because they're like, oh, now I've got water. Now I can fly acro, but they don't actually know how to fly better. It's just that. They're like, oh yeah, water, whatever. It doesn't matter if I throw a rescue and yeah, I don't know if that's good state of mind to be in.
So, uh, people who fly above the ground are more concentrated usually, and more conscious of what they're able to do and, and maybe follow the progression a bit more because it's not so nice to throw a rescue above a ground has above water. That's for sure. Yeah. But for me, let's know
that there's some really good stuff there. Um, so for, for people that are. You know, thinking about, you know, one of the things we come back to again and again on the show is, is SIV and, um, the importance of that kind of training and the importance of acro training, even if you're not getting into acro, just how, how important those skills are, um, given, you know, the, the trauma of your first full stalls and how that, because one of the things that jockey said, which I thought was really interesting is that SIV actually isn't for everyone. You know what? What the first SIV really does is, is boost your confidence, you know, that, that this is not something you should be scared of, but he said for some people, it actually is quite traumatic and they can have the experience like you did and not come back to it.
I mean, really the first one, you're not learning that much, you know, it's, it's more just getting over that fear and getting a little more confidence. And then you've got to come back to, you know, I know Andra was saying you, you have to really do. 300 full stalls before you're even really starting, um, which I thought was just terrific. You know, that you really need, you need that muscle memory. You need to just do it over and over and over again. So it becomes like doing a wing over. It's just nothing. You just, you just do it and do it in your sleep. Um, so what would you suggest given what you went through, you know, what would be, what would be the ideal way to go through that kind of training?
Hmm. The ideal way. I think it depends on a person. Like everybody's got different goals. And I think it's a good idea to know what you want to know what, where you want to go with that first SIV. Of course, goals change afterwards, but for example, I've been doing like every, everything that I dare to pull by myself above ground. Like I'd done all the, the, the, the collapses, the frontals accelerated, not accelerated, um, everything I dare to do myself. So I knew I wanted to go there in order to do the full stall because I didn't dare doing that above ground by myself. Uh, for calmer pilots, uh, just do the first collapses that they don't dare do at home in a, in an SIV. That's great. And I think if you know what you're going for and why you need those things that you're going to learn, uh, it won't end up being traumatic, traumatic in a sense that you won't do it anymore.
As about the repetitions, like that's yeah. SIV. I mean, even if you do three frontals or something in the first SIV, it doesn't mean that you know how to deal with. Each and every one that will come up in your life.
Well, you've, you've trust your wing, isn't it? Well, no, it's true. Isn't it? I mean, I think what it does in the beginning is it, it teaches you that you shouldn't be so afraid of your wing, right? I mean, you know, it's like, whoa, I'm still alive. This is still okay. This little collapse is more benign than I thought it would be.
Basically. Well, it can also be worse, but it shows you how it is to have troubles in the air and to give you time to get used to, to this and to know. Oh, I. Have that much time to react. And I have time to think, what do I have to do now? Because not every collapse, not every full stop, not every incident is the same, right? So you basically learn how to mentally deal with it. Yeah. And then after having done your first, whatever, 10, five, something collapses, full stalls, whatever it is, you're learning in an SIV. You can, or cannot, according to what your instructor says, go home and practice it and do the 300 or however many takes you to really know what, what you're doing. So SIV is great, but it doesn't mean that you're doing an SIV and then you know everything and you never have to do one again.
Of course not.
Sure. Sure. And so now we're back in Organia and you're, you're, you've spent the season there. Did it click at some point? Like, Hey, I could, I could compete. I could, uh, you know, but at that first season, were you already thinking like, oh, maybe I could win a world championship or take me back to that timeline? Well,
the dream came up like, oh, what? Would be nice. One day champion would be really nice. A feather in the cap. Right. But, uh, uh, yeah, no, the competitions were never to go. The goal, there wasn't a goal. It was just having so much fun flying and so much fun learning this stuff. And now seeing that, like I've come as far as I've wanted to come for now, I guess there's slowly coming up the possibility of going on with twisted stuff and all that. Now I'm seeing that the way was much more important than actually being here or was much more. Fun, like the most fun I was having when I was learning those things and not now that I'm flying in pretty proper and whatever. So, so yeah, comps were not a goal. The goal was just to continue doing what I love, which was flying in any way and comps are stressful.
And for me, uh, it, yeah, it was always something like whenever I'm ready to do a comp and like not be really stressed out and put myself under pressure, but just do it because it's fun. And I know, I know how to do it. And see what comes out. That's the time I might go and try it. Yeah.
And when, when was then, when was your first comp?
That was, uh, maybe two or three years ago.
Oh, okay. Uh,
2014 or something. I tried once one, it was really, really bad. I had actually one run. We had horrible weather. That's the thing in actual competitions. You often have horrible weather in cross
country too. Same, right? So,
yeah. So you just have to. You have to kind of whatever, throw yourself out in really bad conditions sometimes, uh, fortunate always. And, uh, if you're unlucky and you're having a bad run or like, yeah, the level of the girls to the guys, not the same, you might only actually have the chance to do one run, which is what happened to me. And after one run, we were cut, which means like in the beginning, you're maybe 30 something pilots. And when the time gets short for the last day or for the last two days, only 25 pilots, 25 best will go on. And yeah, I wasn't in those. And I had to drive. I had
to drive
home after five days of rain with one run and like being last or something, I was never again, competition. That's so screwed up. I'll never do that again. But then you went, but then you
went back to it.
Yeah. Last summer people, I don't know. Yeah. I was like, basically, um, let's give it another try this year. And if nothing comes out, well, I've tried it. At least I've been thinking about it too much for not trying it. At least.
And what are you curious to know? It sounds like you're traveling. You're traveling a lot with your partner, your boyfriend, who's, who's also a pilot or is he also a professional pilot is, is he making his money from paragliding or, and you, and you are too, is this how you're earning a living or is this a pastime? He
is a, uh, paragliding instructors, SIV instructor and tenant pilot. So he, he earns his money by paragliding, but not by being a professional pilot. I get my material sponsored, but for now I'm, I'm basically working as a translator and sometimes as a paragliding instructor and a tenant pilot.
Tell me about instructing. What, what do you teach, uh, you know, total newbies or are you taking them on a cross country? Are you guiding or what, what, where do you, where do you fit into the fold there with instruction?
Mostly total newbies. Sometimes I'm working as a starter for SIVs, but I, I love the newbies because they actually are, they still believe what you're telling them, which is quite nice as soon as, as they're a bit progress. Usually people, you know, when. And they kind of need you, but they don't want to need you. So they're like, oh, I didn't hear you there. Sorry. Yeah. Right.
Um, yeah, I like newbies. They're usually quite grateful and it's nice to see progress. You know, it's nice to see them actually trying the stuff you're telling them and it works and, and yeah, they don't come up, uh, telling, you know, it's, I did that because of, nah, nah, nah, because of what happened to me back then in, nah, nah, nah. And telling you half an hour, like arguing with you about why they didn't do what you actually told them to do. I like the newbies.
Um, okay. So as a, as a pilot now, and the pilot who's won the world championships and also as an instructor, one of the questions I always ask is what's the best advice you've ever received, but I want to ask you the opposite. What's the worst.
Well, uh, the worst advice, I actually didn't have any idea about it until now, but now something just popped up in my head when I was in Guatemala and there was this guy who was like. Hell, this is really weird.
This is the worst. I'm going to say it again. I'm going to say it again because that's, that's the worst. The worst thing I've ever had was when we were in the air, so it was so weird. Um,
it was just, it was, it was, uh,
we'd be in the air,
it was
just, it was, it was just going up
and,
and, and it's, it
was, I feel like,
it was,
you know, it was a lot of, I mean, I've been in this thing for the last three years. And I can only
tell you from experience, but
to be honest, like I, I can, I'm
not giving
you a
lot of advice. and that's the way you have to do it if you want to be a real pilot i think those were usually pretty bad pretty bad tips or whatever or things that worked for that special flying site but that wouldn't work anywhere else and that just left little margin for alternatives or alternative thinking and i think that's a pretty bad way of looking at it because it fixes things right ah
okay oh i like it that's good yeah interesting so so too much reliance well i you know for me and one of the reasons i was kind of laughing as you were saying that is i think i got really lucky with surrounding myself with with good mentors early on and um you know like when i go to beer uh for example in india the first couple times i flew there in 2009 when i was really just starting to learn how to fly bigger cross country i learned very early on that i had to really you know consciously ignore what was going on you know
consciously ignore what was going on
at launch you know like if you if you get tied up in a place like beer where you've got a couple hundred people got a whole lot of people that you know shouldn't even be flying and it's you know it's kind of a zoo and a disaster and if you start watching you know like i watched this guy one time take off spin the wrong way pull the wrong brake spin right back into the hill and break his leg you know if you you know horrible stuff like that and it happens all the time there and oh yeah oh yeah and so if you if you pay any attention to that so i i'm the kind of i'm the guy on launch launch that just goes i i get i get ready i get set and i go and i and i don't you know i just don't ever you know i'll jump in front of people i'll be really not rude but you know i just i don't like to just stand and wait and wait and wait and watch and i don't know i just i just ignore that so that's my advice is to ignore all that i think
absolutely you have to have to kind of your own bubble right where you're like concentrating your stuff and you don't see and hear all that stuff because if you see somebody having an accident just before you take off i think that doesn't put you in a good headspace right yeah
exactly exactly i think uh Mads Syndergaard we had him on the show a while back and he's written a book about this but he talks about priming you know and he talks about priming your head for for success and that's very much a part of it you know if there's somebody sitting next to you on the way up to launch talking about an accident that's a good time to put your headphones on absolutely
absolutely yes
oh yes well i mean it's really mean but i think that's all it's the difference if you're sitting in organia which is a place where there are a lot of acro pilots or if you're sitting in a place which is a typical cross country hunt whatever acro pilots tend to do a lot of ground handling which just makes them good at taking off it's just a fact and and whenever there's cross country competition at an acro site we actually always have to fight like oh those acros are flying in front of the takeoff na na na and the acros are like oh but you cross country guys don't know how to take off and it's like very satirical but actually there's a grain of truth in it so so i would sit in organia for two hours talking to acro pilots because i know i won't see any anything horrible like that like normally you know there's always space marching for error but yeah the typical i guess if you're at a cross country competition or something i've been to some of those like very typical places and that's yeah that's the place where i look the other side as well i guess yeah
so i had i was actually gonna i was planning on starting this this podcast off you know before we even bring it in with you uh mentioning there's a uh i've been talking about in the last couple episodes we had Tom Payne on the last show and he recently had a really scary incident where he had a helico go bad through his reserve through his reserve right into his wing uh through a second reserve through a second reserve directly into his wing we were talking about probabilities and uh one versus two reserves and and how and and it's actually after talking to him uh you know realizing and hearing other stories that it's actually not that uncommon and you know if you're in a really bad situation where there's uh you know like a uh auto restart and the wings you know anyway you're just you're out of control and and you in some ways kind of get unlucky but one of the things i was i learned from cody i was doing some some acro training with him over the dirt uh last winter was he was he's always talking about you know having your wing in a solid tail slide or deep stall before you throw you know so with one hand pulling both toggles down and and then throwing your reserve and this was something that he's practiced and trained and was was talking to me a lot about so i i mentioned that on the show and it started a topic on the paragliding forum where people are confused about that because how would you get your your wing into that kind of configuration if you're in multiple twists you know because you can't pull your brakes down then is this yes and
like to get your acro perspective on that what what do you what do you guys practice and train for throwing or do you do you do that first do you do that and then two if you you know do you reach above and pull the brakes down and then throw or or do you just throw yeah
right well so first of all i'm pretty bad at that i haven't done any training on my rescue until i actually needed it which is pretty bad and not advisable at all but well it was just never the time i was always at the lakes when it was too cold so i needed my rescue like three times in my life and it was always in a constellation where i didn't really have much room for reaching up and and pulling the deep stall if you manage to it's definitely a good idea like i had to throw a rescue twice when i was going into into auto rotation i don't know if i personally would have to force to pull my wing into a deep stall at point because if i could do something then it would be to stop the wing from auto rotation and if that that doesn't work anymore well if you have to force to do that it's for sure a good thing because that auto rotation will probably might probably eat your rescue definitely um if you're twisted i don't see how you could manage unless you really reach up high if you can reach it at high and wrap those those whole whatever c lines or d lines or whatever you get b lines uh around your hands if you're strong enough to do that yeah go for it whatever you can do to to calm down your wing and to give you some space in order to throw out the rescue into free space as we call it for it to open freely yeah do it whatever but every constellation is different so if you have the time if you know how high you are when you throw and you have the time to just analyze it quickly a few milliseconds or one second or whatever to analyze what's happening it will save you a lot of that head headache afterwards right you will you you have to take the time to see where you can throw your rescue
what are
the things that you guys are talking about a lot in organia like when you're on on launch and um you know what are the what are the what are the most common sources of misery uh that happened you know with the in the acro scene because i'm i'm just i'm not in it i don't know a lot about it i just know that like you said the acro pilots are so much better on the ground uh and of course with wing control in the air it's you know but i imagine there's still are there maneuvers that you guys worry are there some that that worry you a lot more than others uh
yeah but it all depends on the level really right like a beginner might be worried about his first set or the first full stalls which is always a big uh a big topic or whatever the top might be worried about not getting their twisted infinite straight into whatever into axis long enough for the points to count in a competition like it really depends on the level safety is always an issue especially if something has happened that was not nice and to talk about how that could have been avoided um proper like flying the tricks properly uh is an issue which is more like interesting from a technical point of view but i think safety is a big issue as well yeah um
christina i want to rewind a little bit again to the all these accidents you just saw back in in in chile you know now that you've had some time to process it i imagine and uh agonize over it i'm sure what what are you know if you could have rewound the clock and told those pilots that got hurt what would you tell them i
think i'd tell them to heed basic advice that you actually get while you're still in flying school and that's still valid on the first day we had a crash between a hang glider and a paraglider and that just means that you haven't been watching i mean that's something totally avoidable that's something when i make a curve i i watch what's behind me right if i'm crashing into somebody or something like this it's very basic but if there are still crashes like that it might mean that we still have to remind people of hitting basic stuff i don't know there was an accident there were more accidents in rotors and chile looks easy and cross country flying there is easy but rotors are still rotors anywhere on the world and you have to take certain precautions while you're flying through them stuff like that or when you're flying i mean very basic stuff i'm yeah i guess it's it's time to repeat them because i've seen too many things happen like that when you're crossing the town make sure that you're high enough because if you're not high enough you're standing somewhere between an electric line and a roof it's just like that i mean shouldn't be having to say that but it's yeah it happened so yeah might as well repeat it um i don't know not trying stubby touches or ground spirals while the air is really bumpy i mean it's really obvious but we have accidents
every year in chile and it's it's horrible so yeah getting to know your wing taking off ground handling lots of lots of ground handling just to take that stress of uh of a takeoff that you don't actually know how to handle and yeah i see many pilots who just kind of throw themselves out and then they're happy in the air and happy camper and they're able to fly for hours but every takeoff just puts so much stress onto them because they've never really gone out with their wing and ground handled um basic stuff very basic stuff
that's a great reminder to kind of just continually return back to those you know the abcs of flying isn't it i mean i think that we always need to keep them close yeah yeah i was uh blown away my first uh Superfinal and i i had just started competing that year so i hadn't been to many comps it was down in columbia and uh the launch there is very easy but it's it's often either dead air or just slightly over the back you know so everybody's doing these running forwards on comp wings which can be pretty amusing um and uh but i was surprised you know like that you just you would never see uh some of the techniques you see there and that's at a Superfinal these are the best cross country pilots in the world and you see uh you see some pretty horrific techniques um and just blown long yeah just blown launch after blown launch after blown launch which you would just never see in the acro world at all and i was just i was really it really enforced in me like dude you got to spend time ground handling you like because you don't want to look like these guys
it's embarrassing i
think it happens a lot with people who are going up like to top-notch wings and they're like no no now i'm flying a good wing like that i can't go back to doing ground handy like a beginner it must be a little bit more difficult to do that something like that i think yeah a very bad idea you're like well i'm not a good cross country pilot or a proven one or whatever but uh if i fly an enzo i want to know how to stall it because i'm flying that machine and i want to have it in all the configurations above water so i know what happens uh before i take it into some lee side in some competition stress pressure yeah situation no
absolutely i mean i think i i think one of the things that i've heard you know i asked you at one point what's the worst advice you you've ever heard this isn't advice but the one of the things that i've heard a lot of that's that's just wrong is oh well you know like they might be a really really bad at launching um but they're a quote-unquote air jedi in the air you know just an amazing and i i i take issue with that if you're not solid on the ground you're also not solid in the air because everything that's happening on the ground um is happens in the air and and you have to be able to feel it then you know you're not looking at the wing and so it's if you're not an air jedi on the ground you're not that good in the air either you know don't wouldn't you agree with that i mean i
do up to a certain point like the pendulum effect takes a lot of stress away you have to like beat a pendulum on the ground with your feet right you have to walk to what's happening in the air automatically but absolutely if you don't know how to feel your wing on the ground like it's probably going to be the same in the air and it's just not complete i mean takeoff and start of paragliding so so you might as well learn how to do it perfectly right uh
there you go so to be uh you know to summarize to be a complete pilot you need to have those skills really down i mean that's that's where 99 of the accidents happen isn't it so okay listeners listen up go out and ground handle more i mean that this is something we talk about on a lot of shows here but yeah if this is the first show you're listening to with christina here then that's the message that's the takeaway go ground handle
absolutely absolutely well it just takes so much stress away really because i i'm seeing that with my students those are you know they're really good at ground handling after the beginner's hill and they're really confident at taking off and they're stressed about the flight and the better they become the less they'll go out ground handling the more they'll go out flying the worse they get at taking off and in the end they're just really really stressed out when they have to take off and it goes more or less whatever it works out more or less and they're like oh finally now i can start flying but they're so stressed out by their takeoff which they don't know if they're gonna manage or not without an accident so they can't really concentrate on having a nice flight battery sure
yeah it's over before they're even in the air isn't it
exactly like how can you want to be making 200ks if you if you don't know if you survive the takeoff right yeah
yeah yeah i mean i think the proof is in the pudding you know when you look at when you look at the videos of Chrigel taken off and just horrific conditions over and over and over again and you can just tell that i mean that's why he's able to go out is he's he's he he keeps focusing on the basics which is just so important yeah
yeah oh and maybe a thing for acro beginners or in general like one important thing i think is as well to know who is flying out there not to be a victim of the lemming effect if you say that in english yeah like yeah that's really really bad that happens so much and i see it so many times and a lot of accidents could have been prevented just like yeah but not doing because it's flyable because somebody's flying there already and the other guy will be thinking oh if somebody else takes off i can still continue flying or inaccuracy it a lot like oh if that guy flies close to the mountain and doesn't respect his box i might just do the same but that guy might be whatever francois rogowski or like the world champion so he might know what he's doing and you're not so yeah use your own brain and and just stick to those safety advice things because they they're there for a reason right
exactly and i think that's one of the most impressive advice i ever got was you know that that you one of the most valuable things to know and flying is when not to fly
oh yes absolutely oh yes that's
the one that's the one that gets people and you see somebody that's you know that might be out on a terrible day that's flying they might be way better than you are or just a lot more dumb
right exactly you
don't know which yeah
so let's let's talk about your win uh you you had this comp uh you you kind of came back to competition after having the terrible first one uh i guess this was last last year and then so take me up to the to the big win and anisee and what that what those runs looked like do you guys go into those with um this is exactly what i'm going to do or is there quite a bit of freestyle depending on how things are exiting and entering and uh
right so the comp and anisee was a little bit different from the world cups i've been to so far because the world cups are like three or four days and you usually have a lot of more altitude because the sites uh yeah there are different sites with more altitude so you kind of have to plan your run that's something you want to talk about afterwards uh in anisee uh we had a lot less altitude and well we had at the two or three competitions i've been to before and we had like seven or eight days seven days i think of of um eight runs plus two training days so it's a lot longer than than what we had until now which is really interesting because in a normal competition you might get as a girl at least one two uh maximum three runs i guess so with the tricks you have you can put you can do something nice and then you don't need more tricks because then the comp is over and anisee we kind of had to plan and save up our tricks to have something by the end of the week i think like one common mistake that people are making when they go to the first acro at least is just going like yeah i know how to do that let's just do it and and fly and have fun and then they're surprised when they're uh like towards the last places which is exactly what happened to me i was really frustrated which and this happens if you don't actually plan your run and by yeah having bad results you actually learn that you kind of have to think about what you're going to do and you have to plan a run for low altitude for high altitude and kind of have alternatives of what you can do if something goes wrong with the connection to the run and turns out differently than what you want to the more you've thought about it the less surprised you'll be while you're flying and the better points you can get because if you're planning you can actually i mean there is this a rank a rating system and the better you plan them the more points you will get if you're just flying whatever you know how to do you might miss those points for your next run and might not get enough points for this run because you haven't done the right trick at the right time so yeah read the regulations and playing your run i've learned is part of flying a competition so in nsc it was really interesting because the altitude is quite low and we had or i at least i had two runs ready in my mind for every time i flew out one for low altitude one for high altitude plus minus one trick or two tricks even that i could add or deduct and still get the points i need and whatever in case the altitude was lower or higher so it was a lot of planning actually which was surprising to me acro camps comes are a lot of planning if you want to be uh among the the first places i guess give
me an example of of your the the best run or your last run my
best run was actually my last run which was i think because we had so many days of comps and i basically do all the tricks that i know how to do uh without twisted basically do all the tricks to both sides which is something not everybody does and i basically practice all of them all the time because i don't do twisted stuff so it doesn't take so much time off my time to do the twisted stuff so i had a tumble to to cork to the other side to twister to
to uh let me think what was that to misty to misty to dynamic full stall wow that
sounds beautiful i'm just imagining it all in my head that's that's fantastic
and it
worked out
perfectly because actually the last day i had the pressure off because we were two girls having a close run uh nicole schmidt she's a very good pilot from germany and we were basically always fighting for zero points something points during the whole comp and the second last day we both screwed it up a bit um but she a bit more than i and she was just out of the the last cut and i was still inside which meant that i was basically i had female title and i didn't have to very worry about like losing against her anymore so the run was very relaxed and smooth and and actually had altitude for once so it was very nice and uh i think the guys they were getting tired as much as anybody but they still had the pressure and they are training a lot of twisted stuff at a high level which means they're taking that that takes time off from them from doing the the basic tricks that yeah that they don't practice so much anymore so i had those basic tricks and they didn't i still was like 12th or something but that was pretty nice there was one one place behind oracio lawrence which was for me like really great yeah so the guys were getting towards their worst days and i was getting towards my best days and yeah nice 12th place and the last run was was really good for me i think and
you won the women's
exactly yeah
congratulations thanks so what happens now what where do you what when you when you got done with that comp um you know are you thinking okay more more of these or okay i won the the worlds now i'm gonna do something else
if
i continue to fly competitions it will definitely be in the same way that i've done so far like flying for fun and no pressure at all because as soon as i put pressure in there i notice that i do stupid things that things become dangerous and that i'm just not flying as good anymore or as relaxed anymore so i definitely want to do a little bit of more more cross country flying i might even do uh one or two cross country comps but for the reason of learning if all the good comp uh cross pilots say that you learn a lot in cross country comps i'm going to do a little bit more cross country comps i mean why shouldn't it be true so i think that's the reason for me to to do a little bit of that to do more cross country and know a little bit more get a bit more experience and to be finally able to do um i think bivaking bivak flights by my own i think that's something i i want to get more into and acro will will always i mean it's just so much fun it's too much fun to to let it go so definitely continue with acro flying and i'm starting slowly to think that uh trying more with the maneuvers might be something that could be fun yes you
know i know that's it's impossible to predict this but uh when you kind of look back at the history of acro there's probably been quite a few times where people thought okay there will be no more tricks that's there there can't possibly be something else but is there are there something is there something completely new that no one's ever seen on the horizon
not that i know of i mean there is fun stuff like um what's the name of the american acro pilot that you hadn't shown lately uh max marion i mean he has done some very fun stuff like the flips in infinite and something something like that that was yeah yeah i was like wait what
he's he's flipping he's flipping in his harness during an infinite i thought wow that's pretty neat it's
hurting your shoulders yeah
right oh the wonders of you youth i love it
right yeah i don't know in the end you only have two breaks and there are only so many points and and and strength levels that you can pull them with right so i don't know uh but yeah as you said we have thought a lot or they have thought a lot of times there's no more space for new stuff and there's always been something so far so it's exciting to see what will come up next right yeah
and tell me about acro wings uh this is another thing i don't know a lot about you know with sharp nose technology and you know the what ozone came up with in 2009 uh will just radically change the sport of paragliding in cross country has the same thing happened in with acro wings i
think i'm too new new into Vancouver for actually talking about i've been flying acro for like four years or so well i guess one thing was that the doing infinites became a lot safer from what they were tell me and another thing is uh that wings basically do as far as which is something not all wings did safely before so basically now criteria for wings is as well they they're able to do as far as without you falling to the wing i guess yeah i'm more the kind of pilot that takes a ready wing that i know that it works and i'm having fun with it i'm not a lot into construction to be honest yeah and
you said you're flying the emily yeah
exactly yeah
it's a pretty wing back to instructing i just wanted to ask a couple more things about uh you know that that process when you you're teaching these new students um does it take you back to when you were first learning like when you think back to your uh 50 hour self is there advice or uh that you either got and didn't follow or advice that you wish you would have gotten when you when you look back to your your first year i think
you got a lot of good advice and one of those pieces of advice was to listen to everybody but to use your own brain while processing what you're hearing and i think that's a piece of advice advice i'd give on like everybody you know the typical you're coming to take off and everybody knows everything um there is some truth in those things not a lot of it is like it's better to let it ride straight out of your head again but i still go up to pilots when i'm at a new spot and ask them hey what about the weather hey what about this what about that because they know and it's useful and i still take gladly take advice from people no matter what like technique wise landing wise whatever weather wise um yeah and i have had the i have had the basis of of learning and that's what i always tell my students like you're learning the basics here which means that you're able to use your own brain afterwards listen to people but like yeah use your brain to know if that's a useful piece of advice or not but get it and don't become arrogant and think you know it all i think that's like one of the biggest mistakes after one year of flying or so when nothing has happened to you people or or well i was like that i'd become invincible you know hmm
nothing has happened and whatever all those things that accident accidents and people um all those things that people have been telling me about accidents it can't happen to me because nothing has happened so far and that's a really dangerous point i think like one year or so after having started to fly so staying humble and still taking advice and still trying things out for yourself is something very useful and i think something else which is useful is just knowing why you fly like in a in a sense of taking it slow i've seen a lot of people who are going very very fast because they want to become champion or they want to do comes in after one year of having started to fly or or they see people flying in organia they want to do infinity in one month or something like that and i think that leads to a lot of behavior that isn't useful for flying usually those people scare themselves and don't continue or have bad accidents or some of them become really really good as well like everybody's got a different path to
follow and so i think that's a really good point and i think that's a really good point but i
think it's very useful to know why you're flying and why you're flying not where you want to go because that can change but a lot of people have these goals and i have the impression that they don't even appreciate flying as such because they're like oh i want to do infinite and i want to do comps and you're like yeah but for now you're just you've been flying for three months and are you actually enjoying it or i mean we
had a really interesting discussion in the last show with Tom Payne uh with about a
year ago and i think that's a really good point
about x contest you know you say that the the guy i fly with and one of my one of my supporters in the X-Alps uh we got really into the chocolate bar for a couple years you know on x contest where every 100k flight uh you know you can have quote unquote a chocolate not a real chocolate but then then they add them all up and at the end of the season you know whoever has the most chocolates and i think he won it two or three years in a row and and we just we talked about which was nice and it was also really fun and it gave you um it it helped it helped make you plan your day which i think is really important and it helped you create tasks and it helped you get the most out of the day but it also um what what we were talking about is is the you know the evil that's the good side and the evil side is that you're chasing numbers and and that can be and that can cloud why we do it can it i mean it it's yeah
exactly it
has to be fun first absolutely
absolutely that's like yeah when the pilots land after 198k and they're really frustrated i mean i can understand that you're pissed because you didn't get to 200 but i mean did you have a nice flight hello yeah exactly that kind of thing i think yeah i think that's really important to not forget that like last year in organia i met a guy who was really nice and he just came from the SIV and he was more towards the beginner level uh safe SIV right and he was like yeah it was nice but i didn't even do full stalls and like really as if it was just shit what he what he'd been doing and i was like well i didn't tell him i was like oh yeah look at that but afterwards i was thinking i mean why would you have to do full stalls i'm sure you learned what you needed to learn otherwise the instructor would have made you do it and and that SIV was there to to show you new stuff and why would you need a full stall at your at your stage of flying did you did you enjoy what you learned i mean i should have told him all those things like this pressure of becoming better and of seeing really good pilots which happens of course in organia and and wanting to
Zhaitang
things like that after a long time and i was like well we know from my acting and acting that it gets the same
and thinking that everything they do is like inferior and you're only really cool if you're among the top i think that's a mistake because it yeah it leads you away from why you're doing this right i think yeah
i i think i think it's uh good to be mindful of how precious each one is in in whatever manner it is it's always precious we're flying it's ridiculous it's just completely ridiculous yeah
that alone is mind-boggling that's why i'm doing it and i think it's good if you know why you're actually doing it
right and that's
also for for when something bad happens to you like coming back to to remembering why you're actually flying are you flying to become the champion or to chase that record or to whatever or are you flying because it's fun or i think that's important to know that's yeah that would be a tip that i'd give a newcomer
fantastic okay one area i'd love to get into because this has been extremely interesting with our our previous female guests i want to ask you some male female stuff
first i'd like to hear about you know how is it tricky to manage a relationship uh that's you know when you're when you're dating somebody that's in the industry that's in the sport that you're in you're going through a lot of this new couple right now so i'm because i think it's you love is that uh challenging is it great actually
i think i'd it would be a real handicap if my boyfriend didn't fly okay if you're flying as much as i do and flying as much as he does i don't know like if you have to fight every weekend about if you're able or allowed to go flying or not that that wouldn't work for me so we don't have any you know discussions about where the next holiday is going to be or what it's going to be about because it's just going to be here is going to be the dolomites or slovenia or whatever right
right it has it's going to be a paragliding trip
absolutely absolutely it can be annoying of course because sometimes you get into whatever competition mode or comparison mode and he's just a much better pilot than i am so he always gets the applause i'd have people come up to me it's like oh i saw your top landing was like oh yeah but your boyfriend he is good like go fuck yourself
i mean that's that's probably uh yeah that's the biggest problems we have in that kind of respect right
it would
be much worse if he didn't fly is
it is it challenging for you at all to get advice from him because he's your boyfriend or is that are you cool with that it's
challenging to get advice from him because we don't talk the same language in paragliding like you know you have people that exactly talk the same way as you feel things or as you lift them and he doesn't love to get it yeah yeah i think that's like i don't know did you experience that when you're getting advice from people or tips yes
totally and you
just can't relate to what they're saying even though they're right
totally i i uh yeah i get that all the time i mean it really we everybody learns in a different way don't we and so yeah
yeah right right
that's really interesting kind of
guy like access and then this acts because the angles and whatnot ever and i'm like oh just tell me how much i have to pull with what time right so of course
i'm not going to be able to do that
yeah so you're more you're more
kinetic and he's more he's he's more kind of an engineer
exactly he's much more technical i'm more like feeling and yeah great at that time i have to pull that much yeah
i'm the same way i'm not a good
cross country pilot i don't think about
i'm the same way i mean i'm more a cross country pilot but yeah i'm the same way i'm not very technical and i was one of the things we talked about is is uh how many engineers are really pulled to paragliding you find a lot
of people who are really good at paragliding and they're
you find a lot i mean real engineers that's their job and it's it's you know they're very technical about it you know like talking to Tom Payne last week that he's he's incredibly analytical and i mean i don't understand i don't understand fabrics or how the things go together you know i mean i i don't it's just not even interesting to me because i don't understand it so it goes it flies i'm in i'm in it sounds good so yeah
we're on the same page there i guess yeah it's great if you can combine those two areas like um that's what i'm trying to do now in order to be able to fly cross country at all because i'm just like yeah yeah great i'm flying like oh you have to think about the shape of that cloud or where the wind is coming from
it's good if you can combine it yeah
yeah sure are there disadvantages to being a female in acro that's
an interesting question like um it was a big advantage for me because i was the only girl in argania for a long time and people have been taking a lot of care of me but wing wise i um i actually had a big issue with my last wing for the last two years because it was exactly the same model from rg produced the same model for two years and i didn't believe that it was due to my size and exactly that wing for a long time until i i just had to believe it um my wing was a 16 emily and with my weight which is like what's my weight like 75 kilos takeoff weight or something with everything it wouldn't do the asfera properly like it would do it but it was a very nasty feeling and i learned the sphera which is basically a trick where from infinite you just basically wait until it comes down from one side or you can steer it with a little brake and putter with your weight and then you just go yeah put your hands up and wait until you see it's it's ready for satin and you pull a set so it's it's extremely easy and i did my first 10 or so on a on an 18 emily and it was perfect and everything worked nice i'm like oh the most or the trick that gives you the most points in a comp and and so easy
from from when i had my 16 onwards i just had massive problems with this there like you had a lot of theoretical sessions with the really good pilots like boraccio or teo or francois and you're like no no it's just a nasty moment that you have to pass through and like okay well if you say so but it was a very nasty moment and i've tried everything basically and this summer i had the bad the worst experience of my paragliding life i fell into my wing because i tried something and i tried it wrong and i was totally desperate because this fucking sphere just wouldn't work and at some point towards the end of the season a friend from new zealand broke he just took my wing and was like well let me see if it's really that horrible and i was hoping that he would say well it's really horrible i'm sorry that's just the wing and he came back he gave me the wing and he was like it's perfectly fine i don't know what you got i'm like no come on don't tell me that and we had a look at the videos and he was doing basically the same thing i did but it just looked perfectly nice and fine and i showed him my video and i was doing the same thing that he would do but it was just horrible absolutely horrible he's like wow okay i understand why you've been crazy for the whole summer and i finally had to believe that the 16 wouldn't work with my weight in a sphere brook had like 20 k's or 30 i don't know more than i and it worked perfectly fine and it was very interesting because 16 is quite a small size but only people who would be heavier would work on those wings like all the good pilots are guys and they force i mean they have like 20 or 30 k's more than me and for them those wings work but for me it wouldn't and i would have had to trim it myself to make it work for my for my weight while with an 18 it was working with my weight so that was very interesting huh
and frustrating yeah no kidding so there so there's not there's not a definitive difference but it seems like there's this problem with certain uh with certain tricks with being white well
you just have to trim the wing yourself like this those wings are trimmed by extremely good pilots right until they work for them and they kind of work more or less well but at a certain level i mean it's no problem for all the other tricks but at a certain level in order to have the perfect trick for your wing and your size and whatnot all your weight you might have to whatever take a few millimeters off one line and add a few millimeters off another or something that's just something that comes up and that's something i don't know anything about and i guess if i got into it i could have fixed that 16 to to be perfect with my weight but yeah i didn't know enough about it
okay okay so it's it probably is fixable uh with some tweaking
exactly as opposed to if you just have to wait the same way as the guys do you just take a wing that works perfectly because they have been trimming it to work exactly you know okay
uh you fell into your wing that would be remiss of me to not rewind to that what happened
yeah getting technical so the sphere as i said you can be in it's basically when you're an infinite and you make it go to one side either by a breaking put or by you wait and basically it's hands up and wait depending on your wing until you see the side you pull it um you can and there's a little wave that you pass it's basically the wing while coming down from vertical infinite to towards like horizontal towards that position it makes a little wavy movement which is not a lot of movement but it's a little bit of movement and it's a little bit of very nice uh when you're the pilot um but in order to make that wave a little smaller you can while the wing is coming down at a certain point pull a little bit of break like minimal like a few millimeters and it will make the wave not as nasty i'm talking what the guys have been telling me because i've never managed with that wing and my size or my weight and so while trying that i actually pulled the break way too much um because yeah i was like on a rodeo so it's very hard to keep to pull a few millimeters and to keep it uh yeah pulled it way too much released it without actually noticing i was ripening back into the axis i was coming back to infinite while it was going down and i reacted completely wrong because i actually didn't yeah i didn't think that my wing would come straight back above my head or i would go straight above the wing yeah fell into it was bad bad reaction yeah whatever
and then what did you have to peel yourself out and throw
well i saw the wing coming towards me and i was like oh man now it's now we've come to that point where i'm gonna kiss the wing and when i realized that it's wrapped around me and that i wouldn't come out of it anymore i just grabbed the the handle with both hands and i just threw it out like i didn't think at all and i was just lucky it just opened otherwise i guess yeah fight as much i would have had to fight as much as i can and see if that rescue opens i was lucky it opened straight away uh
do you fly with a cutaway no
i should though i really should okay
so they so most most of the most of the acro pilots are um
not that i know of i know a few but a lot of them aren't actually but it's a very good idea i think
okay okay so they aren't is there is there a reason they aren't other than just expense or uh
i don't think it's expense we fly with so much expensive equipment i think the 30 bucks for for a cutaway yeah
so why why don't they why isn't everybody very
good question for me personally it's because i'm i've just never gotten around to doing it like i'm thinking oh yeah that's one of those things i really should get and i've never done so which is very stupid all
right it's good to know there's been some there's been do you have a um do you have reserve opinions in terms of you know square round
regalo um
hmm depends on the kind of pilot you are uh if you have a lot of money and you're you don't mind the weight i think the acro base is probably the best option you can get because within two seconds you have a new wing above your head which is basically yeah the thing you want um other than that i don't know for beginners the regalo is probably not the best idea because you have to be active you have to do something in order to make it work for acro pilots training above ground a regalo or i mean if you can't afford the base harness is probably best it seems like the uh square uh square rescue is very good in terms of pendulum stability but there has been a guy testing all of them and he has come up with the results that actually the square one has a little bit of um of forward speed which is something that's not always good if you're training close to a mountain you don't yeah it doesn't matter if you're above a lake but if you're close to the wall it doesn't it's not something you want to have right
right because it could turn downwind exactly
exactly and then have a little bit of speed take you exactly you have the additional speed of the wing and the wind and you can actually come back to what's the mountain very quickly which is not a nice thing but there was only one guy actually pointing that out so it must be something that's not a very present issue on on square rescues i think you have to inform yourself about what you need to do all of the rescues have advantages and disadvantages and then you just have to decide which one you can live with and which one you can't
okay cool well i really appreciate your time so i don't want to take too much more of it and we've already soaked up a whole bunch of your time just trying to track this down haven't we for the last the last couple months um so i just wanted one more question and then we'll end it on that you obviously have a passion for argania but for someone you know that's coming into the sport that wants to learn acro uh where would you send them in the world you've you've sounds like you've flown all over the place is there uh do you have a favorite spot and it doesn't have to be an acro spot do you just have a favorite spot to fly
well for me personally it's argania and it's a kiki right okay for somebody starting out with acro that's those are definitely not the right places to learn anywhere with a with a high mountain a lot of altitude is good a lake is good and the right people around you who will give you the good information because that's a very important factor
yeah tell me about a kiki because i i have been to chile i've done a lot of things in chile i've done a lot of things in chile i've done a lot of sailing down there but i've never done any flying there what's the what's the magic of chile
the magic of the kiki is that it's in the desert and that you actually can fly every day without ever watching a weather report that's really awesome the issue is it's a place that looks very easy but it's got the same dangers as any other place and people might forget because it looks so easy and because there will always be a few very good pilots and it's always the problem if you see very good pilots it looks easy you try it yourself and it doesn't work yeah it's very low for acro you have a place above town which is very low so it's good for training what you already know and you want to perfect uh make perfect and you have to dune which is really really nice to get a lot of altitude but when you're going high it's usually a bit bumpy as well so you have to live with that and it's a great place for for ground handling and for working your technique on the ground which is a very important part of paragliding and it's a very important part of paragliding for me so you can actually only go up if you're able to ground handle your glider up uh to a certain height and from there you can turn around and soar up the rest so it's it's awesome training and you just spend whatever between well as much as you like but you can spend up to seven eight hours a day if you're very motivated you can spend that flying and using uh playing with your wing which of course will make you better
oh it sounds ideal for that kind of thing i love where you can just play with your wing and you can just do whatever you want to do with your wing which of course will make you better oh it sounds ideal for that kind of thing i love where you can just sit on the beach and put you know get your wing over your head and tow you up the up the hill a little bit and launch that's there's no better training than that is there oh
yeah oh yeah and just play around on the ground it's so much fun like when i'm at the dune i usually don't even fly up from just playing on the ground and having fun and dragging my feet through the sand and whatever trying the outside touch or something it's it's just great it gives you such a good feeling for your glider
sounds brilliant fantastic well on that note christina thank you very much uh it was a pleasure talking to you and there's some some fantastic information there and i hope we catch up in in person one of these days and i hope you get some snow over there in austria
that'd be great too yeah thank you gavin it was nice talking to you too and thanks for having me i hope
you enjoyed that it was great to finally track christina down some awesome advice there great things we all need to be reminded of from time to time again as i said at the top of the show i'm going to be doing a little film tour here next week with north unknown down the west coast of canada and the us hope you can come join me you'll find those schedules and venues and dates and everything on the cloudbasedmayhem.com or on my facebook page please if you can support the show you can do that on the website cloudbased mayhem.com you'll find the links for that if you want to do a one-off support all we ask for as always is a buck a show you can do that through paypal or this new way we've got patreon.com forward slash cloudbase mayhem on there you can kind of set it and forget it and if you do you get access to all kinds of great bonus material uh like the magic bus tour from larry tudor which i just uploaded this morning i highly uh i invite you to go in there and check it out i highly suggest you listen to that one it is absolutely hysterical it'll make your day uh that's about it we'll see you on the next show thanks for listening and uh enjoy your day cheers