37. The Groundhandling Podcast - Groundhandling Podcast

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud Base Mayhem. Got a great show for you today that I'm really excited to share with you. Compliments of Nik Hawks, who interviewed me a few episodes ago on his own podcast, the Paleo Treats podcast. Nik Hawks is a former Navy badass and has done the Leadville 100, hiked Mount Whitney in his sandals, sailed a sailboat from California through the Panama Canal up to the Caribbean. And he's done all kinds of really cool stuff, classic adventure and interviews adventures on his own show. So I invite you to go check that out. But about a year ago, he saw the Rockies Traverse, the project I did across the Canadian Rockies with Will Gadd. Got super inspired to learn how to fly.

Total newbie, but he keeps hearing on this podcast all about ground handling. And so he's taking it really seriously and decided to jump in with both feet. I think in this show we learned that he's about 98 minutes. He's into his own career, but he's tackling ground handling and wanted to understand why it seems like the new level of learning. People just think of ground handling as getting the wing up overhead and getting off the hill. And that is definitely not what we're talking about with ground handling. That's the very, very first baby step. So a lot of our listeners have also been asking about ground handling and can I expand on it? And Nick thought it'd be really cool to do a show dedicated 100 % to the art of ground handling. So that's what we've done. Here, before we get into the show, I wanted to remind all you in the UK that I'm going to be over there the second weekend of April for a short film tour.

Compliments to Cross Country Magazine and Ed Ewing and Hugh Miller and all their hard work. Thanks, guys. We're also doing a couple of shows that weekend. I think the 8th and 9th up in the Lakes District at Jocky Sanderson Flight Park. So that'll be really cool. I'll be there to show the film, but also talk about bivvy flying and ex-Alps and food and expedition packing and gear and doing some flying with all of you. So I hope you'll come and join us. I think the Saturday's sold out, but we've still got some spots available on Sunday. You can find out about all that on the website, cloudbasemayhem.com. And on the social medias, you'll find that on my Facebook page and Cross Country's Facebook page and all that. So without further ado, let's get into this show. We turned the tables around a little bit on this one.

Nick was really more interviewing me, finding out about SIV. And ground handling and just safe practices that I firmly believe, and a lot of other good pilots do as well, that you can learn a lot more from a couple hours of ground handling than you can from a couple hours in the air. In fact, that's an absolute. So this is a part of the sport that really saves us, makes us a lot more safe. And hopefully this will clarify some of the muddled waters about ground handling. So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with my good friend, Nick.

Nik Hawks, it is really cool to have you. We're going to spin the dial here a little bit, and you're going to talk to me. But the last time we chatted in length was on your podcast, which is awesome, Paleo Treats Podcast, which I invite our listeners to go check out. Nick talks to adventurers that are doing really, really cool stuff. And it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with paleo, although you guys make some awesome treats that I super dig. I actually ate the whole box. You sent me in about two days. That stuff is amazing. But we're going to have a really cool chat about ground handling. And you came to me with this idea, which I'm really excited to do. But the last time we chatted, which wasn't too long ago, you hadn't even flown yet.

And now I understand you've got the sky cracked pretty bad. And so why don't you catch us up with what you're doing and how you got into flying and where you're at now.

Cool. Thanks. Thanks for having me on the show. Super excited. I think like the rest of the paragliding community, I'm just really grateful that you're putting so much information out there and sharing these conversations. And that's what podcasting, I think, is all about. So kick it off with a thanks. I got into paragliding actually from watching the movie with you and Will Gadd. I had a buddy up in Salt Lake City who was into it, but I'd always thought it was just kind of stupid and boring, to be honest with you. And then I saw that movie and all of a sudden the potential and the opportunity was laid out in front of me. And I said like, that's what I'm doing. I had been doing a little bit of ultra running before then, and it's super nice to be in the mountains and getting that viewpoint. But I'd always had that dream of instead of running along the trail, gliding along just above it.

And paragliding seemed to be the way to do that. So that's how I got into it. Saw the movie, kind of looked around, met this really wonderful lady and instructor, and she made it super easy for me to get into flying. So started doing it. And yeah. It's funny. Most of your guests are 1,000-hour, 10,000-hour pilots. I'm about a 98-minute pilot right now.

Awesome. Now you say that probably a little bit in jest, but you sent me this list of the stuff you're doing on the ground, which is just wicked exceptional. So I think you're way ahead of the game. And one of the really common themes that you've heard me talk about with the guests. A lot is ground handling, and I really like that you've pointed it out as like, oh, wow, this must be really important. So it sounds like you're spending a lot of time on the ground, and hats off for that. But how's that going?

So spending time on the ground, to me, is kind of a byproduct of the situation that I've got where the instructor I've got isn't in the same state as me. And so when we get together, we get to fly. And the rest of the time for right now, I'm mostly ground handling. In fact, I learned the usual kind of fear-based lesson the other day that it's not a good idea to fly early, which it seems like that's a part of almost every pilot's progression. And I'm glad it happened and that I got down safe, but it was certainly terrifying. But, yeah, I mean, kind of getting stuck into this idea of ground handling is hearing you talk about it over and over, hearing almost every pilot who comes on talk about it. And I started to wonder, you know, what does good ground handling mean? And so we've got that one link to, I think, Olivier Fritz and Annecy doing amazing stuff with kiting.

And I looked at that and realized, like, oh, that's what good ground handling is. It's more than getting the kite up over your head. But I thought it'd be super cool to ask you a bunch of questions as a really good pilot and see your thoughts on ground handling. And hopefully we get to share that with the rest of the PG clan.

Yeah. In fact, those of you listening, I'll have these links. Some of the videos we're going to reference here, including the one from Olivier and Annecy in the show notes, they are just amazing. And this video is next level. And I have to admit that my ground handling is definitely not at that level. So, yeah, I'm stoked to answer your questions. But those of you listening, make sure to go check out the show notes and spend some time watching that. They're incredibly valuable and will give you something to shoot for. There's a couple there. They're really terrific. But, yeah, no, well done pointing those out.

So, starting off, Kevin, I mean, we kind of have the very beginner is building a wall and then getting it overhead. And that seems to be ground handling for a lot of people. And then you've got the – at the other end of the spectrum, you've got this video that will get up there. What do you think of as the progression between that beginning level and that advanced level? Have you thought it out? Like, do you always get dragged when you're ground handling? Are you getting dragged all the time? Or is that something that eventually totally goes away? Or is it much more weather dependent? Or kind of how do you think of that progression in your own mind?

Yeah, I mean, I think that I was really fortunate when I learned it. And, you know, so much of this depends on where you are. You know, I don't want to call these guys out because they're my tribe. And it's also one of the places that I spend a lot of time learning. But we have a site up in Issaquah up in Washington that, you know, they're – the pilots there are famous for having terrifically bad ground handling skills because it's a mountain site and it's not really a place that if there's wind, you can't really fly. So you don't get much ground handling experience on the mountain. So unless you're going somewhere else to ground handle, you know, I think ground handling for that kind of pilot in that location is exactly what you just said.

You build a wall, you pull over your head. If you get lucky, you get off the hill. That, to me, is the most basic, basic, basic level. That's not ground handling. That's going flying if you're lucky. And I think the reason that ground handling is so incredibly critical is that everything that happens that could potentially happen that's bad in the air, you know, you can mimic on the ground. And so when it happens in the air, it becomes totally benign if you have those skills. And, you know, 100 out of 100 accidents happen. And with contact in the ground. So, you know, you're not going to get hurt in the air. You're going to get hurt. Well, you could potentially get a line around a helmet or a GoPro, God forbid, and snap a knack or something.

But or if an acro, you know, I have like I dislocated my shoulder one time. But I mean, the serious stuff, of course, happens on the ground. And 99 out of 100 of those happens when you're launching a landing. So it's very rare, even from like a reserve toss or something. So, you know, I think that it. Whereas if you compare pilots in out at Tiger with pilots that spend a lot of time, say, at the point in Utah, where it's very windy almost all the time and you're really ridge soaring, it's a very different kind of flying. Those guys get really good at ground handling really fast. You know, you can take a six month pilot from from the point and and put them against a 10 year pilot at Tiger and their ground handling skills.

Are a hundred times better. So they're not at the level of Olivier Fritz in the video that we're going to put in the show notes. But, you know, they they can, you know, just they're dragging all over the place on their feet. They're dancing underneath their wing. They're using their C's or they're out of four liner, their D's or the two liner. They're using their B's. If it's windy, they're never tapping their brakes. You know, they're they're just really solid skills that I would call. Foundational skills, you know, they're last night I had a film showing up in up in San Francisco. And one of the guys that I was talking to after the show has just had an accident and he was asking you what I thought about SIV.

And, you know, to me, if you're going to go paragliding and especially if you're going to go cross country, SIV is one of these things that's not a one and done. You know, this is part of your yearly training that you have to do over and over again. So, you know, I think a ratio is ten to one in terms of ground handling versus flying. I mean, I think it's just a it's a really requisite skill. I've maybe given you a little bit more than your question there. But, yeah, the the answer, the short answer is, is that once you get good at it, there should never be any dragging. There should never be anything. It should you should always look elegant on launch. You know, Chrigel looks elegant when it's blown flat. You know, he still makes it look easy.

Right. So just on a on a numbers scale, kind of kite to flight is is ten to one.

Do you think that changes as you go up? Do you feel now is as an expert pilot that you need to and do ground handle at that level? Or do you feel it as you get up to beyond whatever the numbers are, five hundred or a thousand or ten thousand hours that that ratio can change and still be pretty safe?

No. I think that I think that very, very few pilots do. And I'm one of them. And that's totally wrong. I think that that ratio should stay like that for your entire career. You know, the by far the best pilots. And and, you know, when you when you watch acro pilots, they they play all the time on the ground because they're waiting for the conditions to get right. But it's also they turn it into a game, you know. And it's super fun. And it's incredibly good exercise. You know, flying is not much exercise. But when you're ground handling, you're you know, your heart rates up. It's aerobic. It can be anaerobic. And if you bring some friends into the mix and you're tapping each other's wings and, you know, the first time I really saw how fun it could be, I was very new pilot.

I was playing with Enloe O 'Connor and his son. His son's 10 years old and he's just a ground handling Jedi. And, you know, so we would I would just chase him around in the air. We would just hop land over and over and over and over again. And then when we would top land, he would kind of dance over underneath his wing. He would just reach out, just grab something on my wing just to, you know, to make it do some kind of nasty collapse just so I could, you know, try to recover it. You know, I think that that kind of you have to look at it as training and you have to look at it as, you know, this this kind of training is going to save my life. You know, I've been in places like beer in India. Where? You know, you have a you have a small launch and sometimes hundreds of pilots on launch.

And, you know, there's only a couple of little places to get off. It's often no wind. You know, so people are doing forwards, which tends to get, you know, again, this is just a forward should never be nerve wracking for a pilot. But but typically people don't do enough ground handling or they start really getting used to reverses. They like looking at their wing and they they lose that skill of a forward launch. And I have to admit, I did, too. And so when I went into the last X-Alps, knowing I was going to be doing tons of sledders and and forward launches and launches that were blowing over the back. So I had to run really fast. You know, I made that part of my training regimen. And for sure, it made me a safer, better pilot. You know, and so I think back to beer, you can go there pretty much every day during the season and see two or three accidents from people blowing launches.

And it's just in my mind. It's completely unnecessary. They shouldn't be up there until they're down in the paddock down low. And they've done, you know, 50 to one hours or something, you know, before. You know, it just shouldn't be. These are just to me. They're senseless and totally preventable accidents. So, yeah, to answer your question, if you know my my urge would be and this is to myself as well, would be that you never you never minimize that practice, that that just becomes part of your. You know, flying ritual. So, yeah, I would encourage everybody to spend way more time on the ground. A very funny thing is something I've talked about on the podcast in the past is my first Superfinal down in Columbia in 2012.

And they got to talk about this on the last show, actually, with Christina. But, you know, it's the air tends to be pretty still on launch or even slightly over the back. You know, you've got all these total air jet eyes, you know, with with comp wings. And, you know, it's. It's comical in a way. And it's also kind of like it's it's it's ridiculous to see how many pilots that are, you know, at a World Cup. You know, these are the best of the best in terms of cross country flying are really bad on the ground. And I think that that's it. Just there's a direct connection. There's a direct line between that and accidents, even at that level. You know, I think that, you know, if you're if you're bad on the ground.

I you know, you might still you're probably you could be a fairly good cross country pilot, but you could be a lot better.

Yeah, that's the question that comes up for me is, is you have guys who are phenomenally good in the air who are pretty crappy on the ground. And and I wonder just kind of looking at the reality of it is that it sounds like it's a good idea to ground handle. But how much better do you get if you ground handle a bunch, if you're already really good in the air? I mean, I think this is the hard question. Because I don't know if there's a huge. Well, yeah, I mean, it's. Yeah, I think.

Yeah, I think that's it's a great question. And I think it's a really obvious, you know, I think that's where people get caught. You know, wait a minute. This guy's, you know, just amazing. But, you know, you can barely get off the deck sometimes when it's cross or it's over the back or whatever. And the the reason that that's you know, that that's not so obvious is because when you're flying. You have, you know, you're you've got a pressurized wing, number one. And the pendulum effect takes a lot of things out of the wing. You know, a lot of the bad stuff that could happen doesn't happen because you're hanging down underneath it. And, you know, you're then you're acquiring all these skills that come from hours and hours in the air.

You know how to spot thermals, where to go, how to use rotor, how to fly lee side, how to fly windward side, you know, time of the day, angle of the sun. All the things that we use. You're flying the lower third of the sky, the middle third, the top third, all these things that we learn. But when it comes to something quick and catastrophic or potentially catastrophic. If you have those hours and hours and hours on the ground, those potentially catastrophic things are totally benign. They just very, very rarely ever happen to somebody that's great on the ground because it's totally impossible. You know, those little things that you feel and those tiny, tiny, tiny sensitivities that you build up from all that time on the ground.

When you're looking at your wing and you're spinning it around and you understand the flow and the dynamics of the air and how that affects your wing. It just it it it ties directly into safety in the air. So the other side of it is is, I think, obvious. But, you know, when. Accidents happen on the ground and I'm talking about taking off or landing, then that's just purely ground handling. So these are kind of two different things. But, you know, if you're if you're say if you say you want to get into Volpiv and you want to, you know, you want to kind of sky camp and do some of the stuff that I do a lot of. You know, there's there's a couple of skills there that are really requisite.

You know, one is top landing, which is probably one. If not the most. Dangerous thing that I think that that we do in our sport because you're landing typically at a time of the day when it's still pretty powered up. And let's just face it, top landing is tricky. And and then the other thing is, you know, you're you're not flying from known sites where you've got reliable weather reports and other people standing around. And, you know, you don't have all this media and you don't have this local knowledge and it's not your site. You know, you're flying and landing and flying and landing in places that. Maybe no one has ever flown or landed in. And so then you're using just all the skill that you've built up. And again, you know, it's a very fine line between snapping an ankle and just dancing around and being safe.

You know, and and that's just purely ground handling. That's not luck. You know, it's not it's not just I just don't think that there should be. You know, if you're a pilot and you're having, you know, more. More than a couple a year of those like, whoa, that was close. Then you're not ground handling enough. It's just it's, you know, let's face it. This is a dangerous sport. And you can just radically minimize those risks if you if you make this part of your skill set.

Okay. So coming from an an athlete background, I feel like if I've ever been a professional athlete, but certainly participated. You do almost every time is warm up. Is there a warm up that you do ground handling when you get up? You know, if you're going to go fly for a day or it's a fun flight or not a fun flight or whatever it is. Do you anything other than racing kind of get up like, all right, I'm going to build a wall. I'm going to knock out my reverse. I'm going to bring it back down. I'm going to do the Cobra launch. You're going to bring it up. Spin it left 180, spin it right 180. Like, do you have a system that you go through or have you heard of anyone having a system like that where they just have their 10 minute kind of kiting warm up before they go? And then the second part of that question is if you have that and you're doing that every time, is it really necessary once you get good to have that same 10 to one kite to flight ratio?

You know that

another great question. I don't know of anybody that does that except in places like the point, you know, where you're really more or like Tori or you're really, really more ridge soaring. Typically when you're, when you're mountain flying, your window can be, especially in the Rockies. Yeah. Your window can be really, really narrow. And when you're flying, you know, midday, like say, you know, Sun Valley where I fly, you're, you don't, you would never want to kite or spend any time on the ground doing any kind of exercises like that. Because, you know, we're often flying when there's pretty strong dust devils coming through and, you know, you want to get up and away. And so the answer to your question is, is totally dependent on where you are.

You know, if you're in Annecy. On a, you know, half a mile piece of carpet and there's nobody else around, like they would never, you know, in that video, he's obviously gotten the, okay. And there's nobody around to be able to do that. But, you know, typically there's a hundred people standing there waiting to get off the hill and there's, there's tons of tandems going and you would never be allowed to do that. You know, you're, you're expected to have all your stuff ready. Your lines are clean. You're ready to go. You've got everything buckled up. You're, you know, you've done your four main checks and, and you're, you're off the hill. So. Yeah, it completely depends on where you are. I see the two as very different disciplines. You know, one is you're going up the hill to go on a cross country flight and you're, you're very much, you need to be thinking about on launch.

You need to be thinking about, you know, have I got my food accessible? Are my instruments ready to go? Nate scales calls it, you know, no school boy errors. You know, if you're in a competition or. You're going for a big day. You know, if you show up and you've forgotten your helmet, for example, or you've forgotten your shoes or you don't have enough, you don't have enough food or you don't have enough water. You're, you're already putting huge odds against yourself. You know, like those are the kinds of things where you want to go. Yeah. Maybe today's not my day, you know? So by the time you're up at launch, you're, you're solid and you can really see the difference in the great pilots and the not so great pilots out on launch. Because they're just incredibly confident and they're wicked organized and they just unpack and everything gets laid out and they go and they look great doing it.

And so to get to that point though, you know, they have spent well, hopefully the best ones have spent a lot of time on the ground. So I, I view the two as different. And I think where, where people mess up is they hear about ground handling and they do a lot of it in the beginning. And then, you know, they start flying and they love the flying. And they leave the ground handling behind, but you have to take the bad days and go, that's, those are the days to go ground handle. However, the difference is if you're, you know, you it's, it can be pretty dangerous to ground handle where there's compression or where there's thermals, you know? Sure. I would just say it's, it's, you know, you, you want to ground handle in a, you know, in a field in a soccer field, you know, it's, it's okay to do it in some place where there's rotor.

In fact, it's great. Because that mimics what you're going to be dealing with in the real world. But, you know, you don't want to get plucked because then you could potentially, of course, you know, get hurt. So you want to do it in, in places that are, you know, friendly to ground handling, you know, stormy and, and gusty is fine. You know, there's, there's, you know, these, these great stories about when Chrigel trains for the X-Alps, he'll go up in some kind of valley where there's tons of snow. And, and see how much wind he can handle. And there's rumors that he, you know, ground handles in like 60 K on a regular wing. There's always that guy that we support. Right. Which is considerably over the trim speed of a wing, you know, but, but he's also, but he's doing it. He's picking a place that he can get plucked.

He's picking a place that's got a lot of powder snow and he can, he could mess up. Can't imagine Chrigel ever messing up at anything, but you know, he's picking a place that, you know, if he gets plucked or something, it's safe. So first, you know, make sure it's a safe place. It's a safe place to do it. The other thing too, is, you know, for pilots in the US and Canada, if you're flying in the Rockies or this kind of thing, you know, a lot of the places that we have to go flying are really hard on your wing. You know, there's tons of little rocks or there's sagebrush or there's small trees. I mean, it's, these are not the grass covered hills like they have in the Alps. So, you know, in the interest of protecting what is quite an expensive piece of equipment, you know, you also don't really want to be ground handling and cacking. You know, you want to ground handle in places that are really kind to your wing.

Like even sand, sand just destroys wings. So it's totally okay, completely okay to ground handle with, you know, a wing that's, you know, you're not planning on flying like a smaller wing or even a speed wing. I mean, any kind of ground handling is good ground handling. It doesn't necessarily need to be the wing you fly with. You of course need to ground handle with the wing you fly with too. But, you know, beat something else up. Don't, don't take your brand new, you know. Porsche out and rally it through the forest.

Kevin, are there kind of ground handling skills that you think of? Because this is one of the things that I kept missing when I was listening is people would say like, oh, that guy's a good ground handler. But what does that mean? You know, if I say you're a good runner, it's like, oh, you can run a sub five minute mile. Like that's a ripping runner. But with the ground handling, it doesn't seem very often that I get to hear about specific skills. So is that something you can talk about? Like everyone should be able to spin their wing 360 under control or everyone should be able to, whatever it is, fly it backward, fly it forward. Are there things that you think about in that sense?

Yeah, absolutely. So one is you want to be able to handle your, handle your wing in a lot of wind and, and, and definitely a lot of, you know, kind of unstable wind. So what that means is being able to kite with, you know, being able to bring it up when, when one side's completely collapsed. And just, and just having the other A and being really flexible with your hands. And what I mean by that is, you know, being able to steer the wing on the ground, just using your C's, just using your B's, you know, no brakes at all. Using no hands, just dancing underneath it with your feet, you know, doing all your steering with weight shift. You should be able to ground handle on your back. So, you know, remove your feet out of the equation totally.

You should be able to ground handle with your feet. With a big portion of the wing collapsed, both sides. You should be able to ground handle with pulling one tip almost all the way down to the ground and especially in higher winds. And this is super fun. You know, just letting the wing completely tow you, but not letting it get out of control. You want to be able to helico it with ease. You want to be able to fly it backwards, just using the brakes or the D's or C's, depending on what kind of wing you've got. I mean, basically you want to, you want to imagine that. That if somebody's watching you, it looks like you're just wicked in control. You want to be like the video and the work we've gotten the show notes with Olivier. You want to just be just totally comfortable and have it, you know, have it down.

And so I think all those and, and much more. I think people also worry about, you know, like, oh, I don't want to be embarrassed. You know, I think that that comes up a lot. And so. You know, and that, and I totally get that, but, you know, so go practice it when there's nobody else around, but that should never be holding you back. You know, there's, there's so many people that are sitting around on launch that are, you know, that are nervous about how they look where you're already behind eight ball. That's what you're thinking. You know, you want to have that in your head that even if you're low hours, you want to have in your head that the worst thing is that you're is to be really nervous on launch. And to have your head. Flooded with all this, like, Ooh, I don't know.

I don't know. You know, your, your mental capacity then is, is already so sapped that when you get out into the air, your chance of bombing out are, are much, much higher than the guy or the gal that just comes to launch and just has it. You know, and they, and they know they've got it and they're not, they're not thinking about that. They're, they're, they're a few hours down the road already. They're, they've got, they've got all their way points and their GPS. They're thinking about, you know, how big can they go? They're assessing the sky. You know, they're, they're not thinking about getting off the hill. I promise you.

It's totally awesome. I, I get it. And I think, uh, does everyone goes through this progression where you have to have a lot of that, uh, muscle memory in order to, to free up your actual brain to do the thinking that matters. Right.

Yeah, exactly. And it's just, I think that, that there's, there's no, uh, you know, the only recipe there is, is training, you know, there's no real shortcut there. I think just it's for some reason, uh, I think it's widely viewed is, is like this kind of necessary evil and, uh, that's wrong. It really isn't. Number one, it's really fun and it's great exercise. And I, you know, it's often just, it's, it's also just no stress fun, you know, that if you're doing it in a good place, you're not going to get hurt. And let's face it, flying can often be really stressful. So. Just, it's just the easiest way and the best way that there's, there's that in SIV really, but it's the best way I would say much better than SIV, uh, to just get good fast.

You know, you, you will be become a radically better pilot. If you, if you spend a lot of time on the ground, this is not out of skill that this is not riding your bike. Um, this is not a skill that you just rip for the first two years of your career. And you come back to five years. And you haven't been doing much and you're going to be as good as you were. You're going to be terrible. Right. It just doesn't, it does. It's a skill that for some reason, I'm sure there are exceptions to this with certain people, but this is not a skill that hangs in your repertoire.

Yeah. And so it needs to be hammered. Okay. Hammered over and over. I'm going to have one more ground handling question. And then I think we can, we probably hammered this enough. We can move on to some more beginner flying stuff. But, uh, the last ground handling stuff is. Do you think there's any. Any value in having a separate wing just for ground handling and you, you answered it a little bit before, but I've seen like wings that are specific to ground handling. Do you feel like a new pilot should consider that, uh, maybe, maybe not a critical part of their gear, but something really important or essential or.

Yeah, I don't, you know, it's nice to have, I don't think it's essential as long as you can ground handle in a place that's not going to trash your wing. Um, I would say for sure you need one if you, you know, if you don't have nice grassy soccer fields or something. Sure. Um, you know, if you're, if you're ground handling in the desert and the sand, uh, you know, then yeah, it's, it's pretty essential to get another wing just because, you know, your porosity is going to go through the roof really fast. If you're, you know, if you're ground handling Monterey on the beach, uh, you know, or doing the peel or something, that's, you know, that's a different, that's a different wing for sure. Uh, so, you know, sand is just the worst enemy. Uh, if you're near the ocean, salt is terrible. Uh, you know, water's off the date of saltwater, especially. Yeah. It's really bad. Uh, so yeah, if you, you, it's, it's great to have another wing if you can.

Yeah. You can often just pick up, uh, somebody else's old ragged out wing just with the full knowledge that this is, you know, going to behave quite a bit differently than the wing that you fly. So, you know, you've got to get practice on the wing that you fly to, but you know, that typically that's, you know, that's not the one you want to just trash. You know, if you spend a week out at, uh, if you spend a week out at the park. At some point in Utah with your brand new wing, it is not going to look very new after that week. Um, so, you know, it's, it's still, you know, most, most of the guys out there are, you know, you're, you're just red soaring. So that's, you know, that's totally fine to ground handle that wing to death and then go flying, you know, but it's, it's typically not the one that there's not a lot of people out there on their Enzo twos.

Right. Makes sense. Makes sense. Shifting into some beginner flying questions. Is, uh, I hear you talk a lot about the breakdowns for hours, but it seems like there's a big jump. You're either kind of a, a 50 hour pilot or you're a 500 hour pilot and you know, under 50 is your beginner and then 50 to 500 is intermediate and beyond that, or at some point beyond that you, you become expert or at least better. Is there any more of a breakdown that you think of in your own mind? If someone walks up and says they've got 2000 or 4,000, is there kind of classes that you, you put them in or, or. Yeah. Yeah.

I, you know, I, okay. So no, number one, uh, if someone comes up and tells me they're a P3 or P4, I could care less, you know, number one, our rating system, I don't think is relevant really at all. I mean, it's, it's kind of a guideline, but you know, when I got that North American foot launch record, I was a P3, you know, it was just, I, I didn't, I had way, I don't know how many hours, 2000 hours or something. I mean, I just didn't, I didn't take that seriously. Right. And I, and I still don't, I mean, I, I like, I'm not, I'm not putting it down, but you know, you can get a P4 and have a hundred hours, I think, you know, it just doesn't. So that's not relevant. Okay. And then, and, and the other thing is too, that, you know, hours are a really slippery sand that, you know, that, uh, someone can be a pilot in Pacifica or Tori and have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours, rid soaring.

And they don't know the first thing about going cross country. You know, they've, they've never flown in rotor. They've never thrown flown in very strong thermals. So, uh, I think, I think we have to think about it more. Well, I'll keep going with this too. I think that, um, you know, you can have somebody who's, you know, really getting after it pretty aggressive and, you know, well into the intermediate stage at say 75, a hundred hours. 50 is super beginning. A hundred is still beginner. We're not really touching intermediate at any hour level until you're well over a hundred for absolutely for sure. But, you know, another, another variable is that a hundred hours that you've gotten in five years, or is that a hundred hours you've gotten in three months?

You know, how current are you? So every individual is completely different. What I like maybe better is, uh, the stages that. You know, there, there are probably many more of these, but you kind of have beginner and then intermediate. And we often talk about intermediate syndrome. Uh, and that's just most simply put is overconfidence. And then, then you have the halo expert end of things, uh, where you've, you've made it through the intermediate syndrome and that's great. Uh, and then, then you're, you know, now you're talking, you, you've gotten three to 400 hours a year for. Four or five years at least. Um, and you're also pretty aggressive.

Uh, you've done the training, you've done the ground handling, you've done SIV. In other words, you're getting pretty good. And, uh, and then, then you've got this, like, I'm so good. I can't get hurt. And that, that is also very dangerous. So, uh, uh, the reason we bring these up on the show over and over again, you know, when you're a beginner, you don't really know what to be scared of. And then when you're an intermediate, you think you're, you know, you think you're better than you are. And so that, that overconfidence. Can really lead to disaster. And these are, these are the, these are the kind of folks who, uh, you know, may not understand what's going on in the day. They may, you know, oh, you know, I've gotten pretty good at ground handling. Uh, that guy's flying and, but they don't know that that guy is, you know, say an X helps pilot or something. And then they fly and then they get hurt, you know, because they're in conditions that are way over their head.

You know, one thing that happens a lot to folks is they're in the air and they don't recognize. Soon enough that the air or the weather has changed and they don't have to get down skills, you know, so they've got to suffer through some kind of terrible, uh, terrible, uh, valley wind or, you know, something has gone bad. And, you know, there's nothing more terrifying than being in the air than you want when you want to be on the ground. So, yeah, I don't really think about so much about hours because I think it can be pretty misleading. I think it just really depends on, you know, what kind of frame of mind are you in. Today, because that's another thing that invites people is they, you know, uh, they might be, they may have just had a small accident or seen somebody else and they're flying scared.

And, uh, you know, that can really, you know, it's like putting your, your one arm behind your, your, your back, but, but it's your brain, you know, your, your, your final less capacity. And so that can be dangerous. You know, there's days where you have it and there's days that when you don't, uh, one of the recent guests I had on Tom Petty. Uh, he talked about, well, I think the one, one of the most valuable lessons he ever learned was when not to fly. I love that.

Yeah. And it's, it's funny. I mean, we're going to hit it a little bit later with one of the questions is, but a lot of these things as, as terrible as it is, you just, for me, and I think probably for a lot of paragliding pilots, because my guess is that most paragliding pilots are really driven by, um, by feeling by that kinesthetic sense is, is you have to feel it in order to learn it. You can read it in a book. A hundred percent. A hundred times. And God knows I love reading, but man, the other day I, I launched and I looked back at that whole progression and there was four separate points where it was like, Nick, you knew not to launch. You know, if you had written down what you were doing, it would've been like, nope, that's a no go. Nope. That's a no go. But you know, you don't get there until you, you tune into that feeling portion. So that's, that's kind of the, the hours piece and it just, it's super dependent.

And I think that's, yeah, that makes sense to me. If you were to think, looking back on not just your career, but looking at, uh, or thinking about the people you've talked to now where you've got more of an in-depth conversation than, than maybe a less curious person would, is there a progression that you would, you would want to lay out for a pilot past flight school? Right? So you go to flight school, you get your P2 or, you know, maybe you get your P3 if you, if you're at it for a while. Like what, what would you say to make the, you know? The perfect pilot or, or at least the really safe pilot, what would happen over the first, say three years if they're flying, I don't know, 10 hours a month or whatever it is. Um, what would you, what would you kind of recommend or prescribe?

Cool. A whole bunch of things. Um,

so first I think, and this is a common one that comes up because I asked this question with a few of our guests and, and a really common answer, which I totally agree with is if you can live in the right place.

Uh, what I mean by

that is, you know, it's, it's, you have to get time. And so the more time you can get, if you live in a place where you can't fly that much, then ground handle, that's the easy one. But, you know, if you can be in a place that's, uh, that has a community of pilots, uh, and it, that you can fly on a pretty regular basis, there's, there's just nothing better than time. Surround yourself with the pilots, the pilot or pilots that you love. The pilots that you want to become. So I think this one's super important. You know, if you, if you, if you want to fly a lot, hang out with people that want to fly a lot because, and, and hang out with pilots that are better than you are, if you can, because they're going to teach you.

And, and there's, there's nothing competitive about paragliding really. I mean, there is a little bit in competitions or in, but even in competitions, you know, everybody has been through the ringer at some point. Um, we all see way too many accidents. And so we don't want to ever see any more. And so, you know, you can ask anybody, you know, you just, you want to be, I guess I want to encourage people to be the most, the softest, most malleable sponges they possibly can, you know, so really soak it up. And remember that there's, if you can't fly, there's so many other things you can do. Uh, you know, get used to checking. Your gear all the time, you know, or your pens in your, in your reserve. Uh, there are any fray in your lines.

Is there, you know, check, check everything and check it and check it, you know, get really good about, you know, making sure your, your four point check your chin strap and your harness straps and your shoes are tied. You know, these kinds of just your, the basics, you know, if you create really good habits there, that's going to go a really long ways. And then there's amazing resources. Uh, there's this podcast, but, uh, Yeah. You know, there's, there's great books, you know, thermal flying by Burkhard Martens. You need to read that and then read it 10 more times. You know, there's just, there's fantastic, uh, Dennis Pagan stuff. Um, Mads Syndergaard there there's, there's, uh, Kelly Farina, who I had on the show a while back. Um, his book is terrific, you know, so, you know, in the winter or when you can't fly, you know, just.

Learn, you know, learn as much as you possibly can. The thing that typically gets people is weather. And so that's, you need to understand Medio. If any of you are out there, you're listeners and you're thinking about getting into flying. If you're a whitewater kayaker, if you're a kite surfer, if you're a sailor, you're going to, you, you have a huge edge up. You know, you're going to be, there's a really weird tie between kayaking, whitewater kayaking and, and paragliding guys and girls that whitewater kayak that get into paragliding get good really fast. And that's because. You know, water dynamics are the same as air dynamics. And so they, they just intrinsically understand how air moves, even though air is invisible. And so they understand that.

And then kayaking is kind of freaky. And so I think it, it fits that kind of fear profile that, or risk profile that helps, you know, that helps you to become good pretty fast. But back to your, back to the, your progression, there there's nothing that can replace time. I wouldn't jump into an SIV. You know, you want to have, you know, 50 hours under your belt, maybe 75 hours under your belt, but definitely want to do SIV, you know, before you really start popping into any kind of real cross country. You know, and your first SIV is, is, is just that it's your first SIV. You are not that good after you come out of an SIV. You know, Andre Pershasko, one of our guests was an acro guy.

And, you know, he was told that he needed to do 300 full stalls before he would even be taken seriously. And I totally agree with that. You know, you, you, you know, SIV is something that you make part of your yearly routine. You know, people will go, well, yeah, but it's kind of expensive. Yeah, but this is your life. So, you know, spend, spend the time. It's like a woofer. You know, you forget, you forget wilderness first response. And that's why you got to go through the, the research all the time. You know, it's, it's the same with SIV. It's, and it's the same with ground handling. You just need to keep revisiting it. You need to keep working on the foundation and keep working on the basics. Because if you're going to fly cross country, you will, I promise you, you will get in a bad situation.

Build up your toolkit because the more you train, the more tools you're going to have in the bag. And the more of that stuff is just going to be benign. And you can land and you can smile and go, yep, I had that move.

Yeah. It reminds me of the, the Jeff Shapiro. Podcast that you had where he talked about doing whatever that corkscrew maneuver was like, thank God I did that a million times. And it was just a natural thing. When you, when you have it, it's, it's nice to pull it out of that tool bag. It's all shiny and sharp and ready to go. Yeah.

I mean, I think that that's, that's, you know, when you, you have to train yourself to be able to think in stressful conditions. And for some people that comes pretty naturally, you know, they don't, they don't wig out, they stay calm and they do it. But for most people, you know, the tendency is to panic. If you panic in a paraglider, that's not going to go very well. And so the only way around that is to train. And that's why, you know, I think the fallacy of SIV, you know, oh, I've done a couple of them. That's probably enough. It's just not, you know, every time you do it, you're going to learn something. Every time you do it, you're going to get more confident. The first time is the only thing that the first one does is, you know, gives you a little bit more trust in your wing.

Cause you're like, wow, I could do some really bad things to this thing. And it's totally fine. That's great because that boosts your confidence. But really all it does is shakes the cobwebs out a little bit and shakes the fear out a little bit. And it gives you, you know, some more confidence, which is great. You need confidence to fly well, but you know, it's not really until you get to the third, fourth, fifth one that you're actually really taking on. You know, you're taking information on board. When you get out of an SIV and you go do a bunch of full stalls on your own without an instructor. That's when you know, you're making progress.

Got it. But that's not a, not a per a prescription to do that after your first one. No,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, definitely not.

Gavin, would you say, so it sounds like the, the kind of the foundational skills of paragliding or first kiting, and then you do your, you know, launches and lands. And then at some point pretty early on your career, you do your first SIV. Would you consider that a foray into acro? Yeah. Would be a foundational skill for an aspiring XC pilot. Absolutely. Just,

yeah, I almost, I almost could just say that and stop. I mean, I'll, I'll say more because it's important, but it's again, you're, you're to have a long career in, in flying, you know, number one, that, that old saying, you know, there are old pilots and they're bold pilots, but there are no old bold pilots. And this is something I fight personally, big time. So I, you know, people that know me know that I, I, I fly tend, I tend to fly on the very risky end of things. And, and that's what allowed me to get good really fast, but it is really dangerous. And that's just my, my personality. So I'm not inviting people to follow that in any way, but I think luckily I got through that intermediate syndrome stage and now I'm trying to be much more mindful of just being smart.

And, and that to me means training. And that to me means acro is totally a piece of that pie. You know, you, you just have to, you should do acro training. And with this caveat, you know, you want to do it in a controlled environment, especially in the beginning, you know, you're not learning it over the dirt. You've got an instructor. They're good. It's a good instructor. And, you know, you don't take it too fast. You know, you, I think the, the one maneuver that gets a lot of people in trouble. Is wing overs, you know, it's one of the most demanding and hardest moves there is. And it's usually the one that people start trying in the beginning. And so, you know, have some respect for that move.

Don't do it low, you know, take your time because there's a lot of things going, you know, in a good wing over where you're, you know, you're basically looping and you're totally completely over the way. Put it upside down in a proper wing over. There's a lot going on there. There's a lot of weights. There's a lot of shift. There's a lot of, you know, break at certain times. And, you know, if you mess it up, it can get pretty ugly. So, so do it smart. That's, that is something you want to take slow. Well, acro training, but you know, absolutely. It's, it's, it's in that tool kit. You know, Pal Takats is one of the XLs pilots. This time he was in it, I think 2009 or so, but he, you know, his thing is acro. He's a professional acro pilot, Red Bull pilot.

And, you know, for him to go to the X-Alps is, is kind of a no brainer. You know, you can just imagine a guy with those kinds of skills. He also flies now very good cross country, but you imagine a guy with those kinds of skills in strong winds and strong rotor. I mean, there's not too many things that are going to put him in a bad place because of his acro training.

Right. So foundational for sure. Let's, let's go a little bit along that feeling line where you're talking about wing overs demanding training. What's your thoughts on, demanding, demanding a good feel for the wing and skip back a little bit earlier in a pilot's progression to use of instruments? I mean, definitely in the States, it's almost like a culture that we love gear and we geek out on technical crap. And the more you can, you know, festoon your body with, with electronics, the better. What are your thoughts on, as a, as a beginning pilot, you know, are there pieces of gear that you should not use until you, say, earn or something like that? them through some amount of hours yeah

i mean you know one one thing about instruments that's that can be really valuable is wind speed uh and so when you start flying cross country you know if you if you don't have anything that's giving you wind speed and direction then that's something that can be a little bit dangerous so i'll put that out there as the one caveat you should fly without a vario on a regular basis and in the beginning there's way too many other things going on and you don't need a vario in fact you shouldn't have a vario and so you know have nothing except your you know a tracking device and if you're in some kind of remote place but way better to develop the feel and way better to not cloud your mind with more unnecessary information you know there's nothing more magical than a vario than catching a catching a thermal and tracking it and coring it and know that you're going up just by looking around you know and watching that horizon disappear in terms of training i think it's really valuable to every year put that thing away stick it back in your bag and just fly by feel i think that we get way too locked into instruments and we lose that you know birds don't have instruments and they do just fine and so i think it's it's uh uh, it's again, I think a lot of people look at flying for fun and I personally, you know, and it absolutely should always be fun.

And if it's not, don't do it because it's too dangerous. So, you know, it should be fun. That's the number one rule, but take every flight as an opportunity to train, take every flight as an opportunity to get better. And if you do it that way, then you're just, you're, you're going to get better much, much faster. And you're gonna, you're going to stack the odds.

Cool. Dig it. I mean, that sounds, sounds pretty awesome and super good. All

that beeping kind of sucks. You know, it's been really funny traveling with North of known. We don't actually explain what the Vario is in the movie, like we did in the Rocky Traverse. And so the pilots all know what's going on, but the audience, one of the questions I'm now leading the talks off with the, Hey, the beeping is Vario and this is what it does. But it's, you know, it, you, when you're watching it, you know, when I'm sitting in the audience and watching it from an imagining, I'm not a pilot, you know, it's pretty distracting. You're, you're in this beautiful place and you've got all this beeping going on. What the hell is all that beeping about? So it's pretty nice to just put that away, you know, and, uh, and just fly by feel.

Got to dub that shit out, man. Come on.

Over and over on the podcast, you know, there's always the point where you talk about mistakes or pilot error. Is there, this is kind of tied in two questions is you've been flying, um, long enough and in big enough conditions to, to have had, you, you should have had a couple, well, not should, um, but it wouldn't be surprising if you'd had a couple of big accidents by now, but you haven't. Is there something that you attribute to that? Is there a, a, a mantra beyond your four point check? Is there something that you say to yourself, like, or, or something that you would recommend to pilots that you feel like, Hey, this series of, of events has kept me safe or this series of actions I take before I fly, it keeps me safe.

Gosh, you know, I, I want to say this with some humility, but I also want to say it with the knowledge that a lot of my mentors and peers, uh, know me very well and they've flown with me and, and I'm not sure I want to say it so they don't disagree as well. No doubt that there's a part of it's maybe 50 to 52 lives that I have. Um, you know, there's, there's no doubt there's been some luck. And there, you know, I did have the little crash on the Rocky traverse, uh, and that was a real eye-opener for me. I mean, I didn't get really hurt, you know, but I, uh, put myself in a terribly dangerous position and, and, and really did. I think, I mean, I think I made some decent decisions to only kind of get hurt instead of really get hurt.

But I'd like to think that, you know, a lot of it is training, you know, taking that side of things pretty seriously. The other side is, is something that has been a common theme in my life in other sports, uh, and the kayaking and the climbing and skiing, um, not really so much the sailing, but I guess to an extent, but I think all those have really given me a very good understanding of how the air works and, but they've also taught me a lot about the value of staying calm. And I have this weird, it's actually a logical thing. It's not something that I control at all, but it was, it was, uh, they did some studies on, on me back when I was kayaking, when I get in that are well, some heart rate monitoring, when I get in really dicey positions, uh, really stressful positions, my heart rate actually drops.

Uh, and I think you and I actually talked about this a little bit on your show. Um, you actually, I think I had a name for it, but I can't remember what it's called, but it's, it's, uh, it, I get really calm and really focused. And when, when things get twisted and bad, and I think that that has, I know I can think of several times, uh, at least that in my paragliding career, that that's saved my life. Um, just being able to process and think about options really fast. And, uh, and I guess just have the, have the confidence that I could, you know, get out of it. You know, Will Gadd was, he was constantly calling me the, the eternal optimist. I think that that, uh, that bothered him in a lot of ways because, you know, he's always thinking about what could go wrong and I'm always thinking about how it's going to go right.

So, so far that's played okay for me, but you know, I, I, I'm just, I'm honestly, I'm still really trying to balance that. So I'm not sure I answered your question, but it, for me, it's this, that, that confidence that I got this, I got this, this, uh, which I think has really come in handy, uh, in quite a few places with, with flying. I, I think that that has been more of the reason than the training or the checks or being really super organized. Cause honestly, those, the, especially the organized side of things, that's not my strong point.

Sure. Sure. And I mean, there's a billion dollar industry teaching or, trying to teach confidence to people and obviously it's not working because the industry is still around. So it's, it's, I don't think it's a good question to say like, well, how, how did you get so confident, Gavin? Cause it, it doesn't seem to matter that, you know, what works for one person doesn't work for another. And it's, it's based on life experience, but that, that combination of confidence and training is probably as, as close as anyone will get to having a formula for it.

I definitely, I'm definitely thinking a lot more now. I don't think this is age. I think it's just, I'm just realizing, yeah, well, the last couple of years, well, basically I was, I was hearing, you know, from the guys who I really look up to, you know, Nick Greece and Nate and Matt, these guys that I fly with at home, you know, like, Hey man, take it easy. I was hearing that a little bit too much, you know, and I started really, you know, rather than, you know, going, Oh man, I got it. No, don't worry about it. I was, I was, I took those comments really, really seriously. Like, what are they, what are they seeing in my flying that they don't like? What are they seeing? Am I flying that makes them nervous? And how can I, how can I change that? Jeff and I talked a little bit about that too.

Jeff Shapiro, he was going through kind of similar stuff.

Yeah. Maybe not flying the X-Alps, but then you wouldn't be you. That's the deal. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah. No, I got to do that.

There's only

some things I could do.

Yeah. Yeah. You're put here on the planet to use what you got. That's a, right. That's how it goes. So one of the things I'm hearing a ton on the podcast is you ask the question, Hey, when should people move up on a wing? And basically if I was going to distill it down to one word, it's, you know, after you get to a B never.

And it doesn't matter if it's a really advanced pilot or, I mean, I guess you don't have, you've got me in cedars as your two super beginners.

Can you, can you talk about that a little bit or, and why does so many people completely ignore that advice?

They get wrapped up in this whole thing where they take off on a glide with guys that are on comp wings and they're on a B and they get out glided and it makes them angry, you know, or they, you know, they, they end up on the deck and those guys get out. And so, you know, there's this huge motivation to move up on wings to fly distance, you know, the, the, the higher end wings glide better. And so, you know, your, your, your potential for going far is just, is, is a pretty radically increased by going, you know, B, C, D comp. So that's, that's what motivates people. But to answer your first question, for sure, you shouldn't stop at B if you're, you know, if you have the skills and you have the, you know, the, the mental strength and fortitude and the right kind of, you know, if you're, if you're flying well and you've got the hours, then absolutely you should move up because they're just magnificent pieces of equipment.

You know, the comp gliders and two liners and stuff are just really dreamy to fly. And so I'm not saying, oh, I want to encourage you all to go out on a, on a hotter, hotter wing. You just have to really understand the consequences and the, the, not well, the potential consequences, you know, you have to, you have to have the training. And so I look at it the same as I used to with kayaking. Uh, the, the, I think it's a really good analogy. If you do any, you know, river trips, you know, we used to always talk about it. You don't, you don't paddle class four until you're nailing every single Eddie at class three, you know, you're just dominating. A class three river. That's when you're ready for class four, you know, or four minus or whatever, you know, and, uh, same with kind of climbing, I guess, you know, when you're, when you're just killing it on it, you know, you're killing the 11 C's and 11 D's, then you're ready for 12.

So, you know, so the, the analogy I think is, is very correct when, with paragliding, you know, when you're, when you really feel like your wing is holding you back,

then that's maybe a time to start considering that hours wise, you know, there are Josh Cohn, uh, is just dominates our competition scene in the U S and, you know, I think he said he flies like 75 hours a year, but he's flown so long and fly so much that, you know, this doesn't really apply to him at all. You know, he could fly whatever he wants and just kill it. Um, and he's got the skills and he does a lot of SIV training and macro training and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, really to me, if you're not flying, you know, at least 150 hours a year, that's not, you know, you shouldn't be moving up that, you know, you need to be getting at least that many hours in real hours, not ridge soaring hours to move, you know, to move up to, to a hotter wing.

But just to give you an example, a friend of mine from home, uh, Willie Cannell, you know, this year, I think we all took off from Bali. We were all flying, you know, at least D's and he was flying and a Nova mentor. And I think he went farther than all of us, you know, so it's not, you know, it's, you have to make the wing that you're flying work for you. And I'm going to call Cedar out here. Uh, you know, in the last show, we had him on, he, he talked about a pretty scary incident, uh, that happened at, at Marshall and I didn't call him out in the show, but I, because I didn't, it didn't occur to me at the time, but I thought about it afterwards. You know, if you go back and listen to that one, um, you'll hear him talk about, uh, he was flying with some, some really good pilots, uh, for Marshall one day. They got up and went over the back and to go over the back, you've got to clear these big, you know, high tension power lines.

And so the first time he kind of turned to go and he realized he didn't have enough height, you know, I think he was on the Nivea cook, you know, so kind of a low end B and, uh, and then, so he went back to the, to the house thermal and got up and, uh, and went for it again, but he didn't have enough height. And so he realized he wasn't going to make it over the power lines, turned into the wind, realized there was a lot more wind than he thought, uh, thought. Okay. Well, I'll just top land here in front of these, in these tension lines got a little bit lower. There was even more compression lift on the Hill as there always is and couldn't really top land and got boosted back and went right through the power lines. So the top of his wing hit the top line, his harness hit the bottom line, lost control of the wing, thought he was going to die. Uh, luckily the thing kind of reinflated right before he hit the ground.

I did quite a bit of damage to the wing. Um, but then, but he walked away. So he got super lucky. And so I, so I asked him, in the show, you know, well, Hey, you know, what, what went wrong there? What, what, you know, what happened? And he said, well, part of it was bad luck. And I have to totally disagree with that. You know, he, he has to fly the wing that he has. And, you know, in knowing that that wing doesn't have as good a glide, that means you got to get more hype before you make that move. So I don't think there was much bad luck involved there. You know, I wasn't there. I can't say. Sounds like

there's some pretty good. Good luck involved.

It sounds like there's a lot of good luck involved. Exactly. You know, and I, so I mean, the point of that isn't to call Cedar out, the guy's getting after it. I love it. It's awesome. But it's totally rad, but it's the point is, is I think you need to, you know, one, you know, to avoid those instances, you have to make really good calls on the equipment that you have that wings, not holding him back. You know, it, it just means flying it a little bit different. You know, and, and you're, you're not going to keep up with guys on, on comp wings and that's okay.

So that brings up something. And I mean, this is an engineer question and I don't think you are. I certainly am not an engineer, but God, you had a recent guest on who was saying there, there really wasn't that much performance difference. It was like three or 5 % between a D and a B or it was something where I kind of listened to it. I was like, man, I should have listened to that again. Um, and, and I guess my kind of open question is, is there really a difference if, you know, if there's two identical copies of Gavin, one's flying a B and one's flying a D pretty obviously the D is going to do better, but I was wondering by how much, and how much would Josh Cohn or Chrigel be limited if they, all they could fly was, you know, a higher B, would they start losing competitions?

Yeah. So I, um, percentage, I don't remember that conversation, but, and I am, and I'm the furthest, thing from the wing designer there is like you, I, I am not an engineer. Um, so I can't put it, I can't put a figure on it, but the differences are considerable. Uh, and you know, your, your glide difference is considerable and your speed is considerable. What he might've been talking about is flying downwind. There's, there's very little difference. Uh, when, when we'll get, yeah. And I went across the Canadian Rockies, I was on a D he was on a B, um, you know, there was very rarely, uh, any discernible difference, but that, that was because there was, the wind was typically either, uh, crossed to us or, you know, in our favor blowing us downwind.

Um, the times that it becomes really evident is, uh, when you're using speed bar and when you're going into the wind. So, you know, no one is going to win a world cup on a B, uh, against pilots that are on comp wings. That's it's, I mean, there could be weird things happening. You know, and everybody bombs out and that guy stays in the air and, you know, but, uh, but no, you know, just glider and glider, uh, the differences are pretty considerable. There's just this huge drag difference. Uh, and there's, you know, the, the higher endings are much more spanny. That's what makes them more dangerous, but they're, they're just, uh, they're much more efficient through the air.

Okay, cool. Shit. I'll have to listen to that again. I guess I was wrong. Damn.

I mean, those, those percentages might be, that actually might be accurate and it doesn't sound like much, but you know, when it comes to like comps, um, you know, the tiniest differences in, in glide and speed are, are everything, you know, it's, it's why two years ago, everybody is flying the end. So too, because, uh, you know, the Nivea and the gin were less than probably two or 3%, uh, lesser wing. And that's everything. I mean, that, there's no one, no one's flying those wings. Well, a few, but, um, you know, you look at that, you look at the results these days and it's just ozone, ozone, ozone, ozone, ozone, ozone. So, um, and that happens that, that, you know, the other companies will make a great wing, you know, next year potentially, and it'll, it'll all flip flop.

But, uh, yeah, at the comp level people, you know, it's the tiniest difference, uh, makes a huge difference when you're, when you're flying around race course.

Cool. Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, look no further than, uh, NASCAR or IndyCar or F1. I mean, a little difference. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Hundreds of seconds, right? Yeah.

Results. Paragliding in general seems like such a feel sport. Um, it's, it's not really super dependent on, on anything else. It doesn't matter if you're a phenomenal athlete or you're super strong that has no bearing on whether or not you fly well, but it's, it's also this really technical sport, which is kind of the engineering side. So you're marrying basically the, the emotional side to the rational side of your brain. I'm going to ask you a question that I don't think anyone can answer, but I'd like to hear the response is that can we, or can you talk a little bit about how you learn the technique of something when it's almost all feel?

Golly, that is a good question. I'm reminded of a line that Matt Biesner said in 500 vials to nowhere. He'd say, how does a paraglider work? It works by magic. You look at that thing and it can't possibly work. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, it's gotta be magic. Um, yeah, I don't, I don't need, I don't know if I can answer that. It's, it certainly what's really interesting, I think, is that there are a lot of engineers in this sport and they, they have a rationality where I, I find that many of them don't get very excited in the air. And when I'm talking about excited, like they don't get freaked is easy because it's all a matter of working out the mechanics, uh, everything that's happening.

There's a reason, you know, there's an action and a reaction. And, you know, so it's all very logical. I'm the opposite of that. I'm a complete feel guy and a kinetic learner. And, um, but how to go about teaching that? I don't have a clue. And that might be because I, you know, I don't do a lot of instruction. That's a good question. I think maybe for, for somebody smarter than I am.

Sure. I mean, it's like teaching people how to swim. You just kick them in the pool and let them figure it out. Yeah,

exactly. And then there is, there is a ton of technique, but it's, it's not something that's easily transferable, especially because, uh, you're not sitting right there next to them when they're doing it. You know, you're, you're, you're talking to them on the radio and, and, and talking them through it and, you know, talking about weight shift and break pool. And then, you know, there's the obvious stuff like doing too much or too little, uh, you know, like an SIV, the first time people do SIV, they never do it radically enough. You know, I always tell them to go in and they're like, Hey man, just when I, when he tells you to, I'll grab those lines and yank them, you know, go for it. This is your opportunity, but, uh, you know, not just kind of like, Ooh, I don't know, you know, but, uh, yeah, it's, I guess it's back to that whole time thing.

Yeah. Magic's magic. I mean, that's probably the siren call of, of paragliding and these kind of sports that, that combine technique, uh, technical stuff and feel.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So jumping into some, some other stuff, I just had some thoughts. Um, if there was a helmet that you could put on that had a little screen that came down in front of you, like a fighter pilot's helmet had a little heads up display and it would show you through say colors or gradients of colors where the thermals were and the wind was, is that something that you would want to use a bunch or do you, would you not get much enjoyment out of that after the novelty wore off?

God, you know, I think, I think every single one of us has thought about that. And, uh, I hope that Google or I hope no one ever, uh, has thought about that. And, uh, I hope that Google or I hope no one ever makes that. I think it would just rob us of the magic and, uh, it would make, you know, it would make the whole beauty of, and the frustration of paragliding disappear. And, and I think it would, it would match everybody up. It'd be more like basketball and, uh, you know, where all you needed was, was, uh, was the way again, you know, the good equipment and everybody could be potentially not the same, but pretty similar. Yeah. I hope they'd never invent that. I, I, I very much want to remain like a bird and, and, uh, or have the sensation that I'm a bird where it's, you know, where some days you're just on and it's working and it's magic and you feel like you had it, you know, every day can't be like that.

And that's what makes it so amazing. That's the, this is the only sport I've ever undertaken. That's had me so totally wrapped for so long. You know, most sports I get into, I just dive into them cause they fascinate me. And it's, it's awesome. But I get to a certain point where I feel like it's, I've either plateaued or I realized that, I don't know, it just loses its luster. Uh, and paragliding is one of these things where I just know without feeling a shadow of a doubt that I'm never going to get, you know, uh, I'll always be able to get so much better. And I like that. And I think if we had a tool like that, it would just rob it of its essence.

It would allow you to, to retro bolt the sky. There's plenty of people that don't want that. Yeah, totally. Bill Belcourt. I love it. Yep. That's awesome. Um, let's see, there's a, a fella you had on, I think he was a test pilot for, maybe it was Ozone, but he was talking about the, um, the new materials coming in paragliders. I was just thinking kind of the, the next thing is, it seems like right now there's lines that are load lines. Like they're the ones that kind of keep you attached to the wings and there's control lines is I'm imagining a lot of that disappearing. So that's only load lines. And then all the control stuff has worked by like a wifi and you're flying much more of a solid wing and less of an inflated wing. Um, when you, I mean, do you, do you think about wing design and where it's going and what's next and like what you would want in the wing of the future?

I, I don't much because again, my brain just doesn't, you know, I, I, when we were interviewing Bill Belcourt during 500 miles to nowhere, I asked him a similar question, you know, like it is. Yeah. Yeah. Are we there? Is it just going to keep going? And he said, you know, I, I gave up 10 years ago on trying to, uh, anticipate what could potentially happen in the sport. I, you know, I thought we were done with, with advances in the mid nineties and look what's happened. They just keep getting better. It's like, I have no idea how they can get better, but they just keep getting better. And I'm kind of in the same ballpark and Bill is a radically more intelligent guy than I am and understands this stuff, you know, way better than I do. But I have to, I have to park myself in that same court. I just, don't, you know, I'm not, I'm not Luke Armand.

I just don't know. I go fly those things. I don't understand how they work.

You know, I think that, that we are carrying, you know, that our gear for the X-Alps is going to be, you know, six and a half, seven kgs with no food and water. That is amazing. I mean, that's just, that is, that is so awesome that we can, you know, fly a couple hundred miles in one day, potentially on a good day on, on stuff that's, you know, that's that light. It's just phenomenal that, that the wings are, you know, that one of my next shows is going to be a redo with, with Jeff Shapiro, because, you know, he's, he's gotten totally into paragliding the last year. He's just crazy about it. And he's, you know, he's been a hang glider forever. I think he's got close to 10,000 hours or something. And, and he, we just talked today and he's, he's so, he's so, he's so in love with it right now because he can put it on his back and go places, you know, just can't do that with a hang glider.

And so, you know, we're sure they're going to keep getting lighter. You know, Nivea just came out with a tandem single surface tandem. It's like 1.2 kgs and that's just ridiculous. So, you know, I, I think that that side of it for me with my, you know, kind of love of all bib and I can fly is, is really, really cool. But I mean, I just, I don't understand how they're going to keep you at some point, they're going to hit the, you know, at some point it can't keep going. I wouldn't think, but you know, they keep, they, they do. So we'll see. Yeah. I like, I like that. That's a good control idea. That's wild.

Yeah. I mean, at some point we're supposed to sail off the edge of the earth, but still out there on the wine dark sea. The second thing was just look, I mean, I'm in San Diego or the next thing was looking around on the map and seeing that Baja is just this big spine running north to south. I don't know if anyone's flown the length of it and it just seemed like a pretty rad trip. Maybe not as burly as anything else, but there's, there's gotta be something pretty cool in there.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I, I have to say, uh, well, my comment about Alaska is, is, is totally, that's very uncreative, you know? I mean, there, there are a million things to do in this sport and I've got my eye on a ton of them, uh, that your Baha idea is brilliant. Uh, Baha would be so rad. Uh, that would be really neat. And I don't believe anybody has done it. So why not? That'd be terrific. Uh, it'd be really cool in fact, but you know, there are tons and tons and tons of lines all over the world. And the great thing about what happened with wing technology back in 2009 is it, you know, it went from, you know, a hundred mile flight being a pretty big deal to 200 just overnight, it doubled what we could do.

And, and so, uh, it just allows us to look at lines in completely new ways and we have barely touched the surface. And I, one of my favorite lines in the Rockies two versus right at the very end, when we'll get those, you know, we can, we can take these gliders and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and fly into a place like this and come out on the other side, you know, where in the world can we, can we do that? And the answer is everywhere, you know? And so I, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're, you know, I don't know, surfing was 30 years ago and it's just, we're at the, we're at the very beginning of what's going to happen. And that's, that's insanely exciting. So

exciting. Yeah. So the next, next thing I've got is I was looking at Baja again. It's like, Oh, is it possible to cross the Cortez sea and not do it in a, like a cheap shit way where you're doing it right at the, the mouth of the old river, you're doing it somewhere down the, by the tip. And I, I really wonder about flying over oceans and water. Cause I mean, they must have, it's not like the air over them is static. It can't all be sinking. There has to be something going on. And if you've, I mean, you've sailed, I've sailed, you know, that there's cumulus out there. So that means that they're thermals. It's gotta be possible.

Not, no, those cumulus are different. Are they? Okay. So yeah, they're, they're, you know, that's, it's, they're not, they're not being formed from, from so much from heat. You know, you really need, you do need dirt to make thermals. It's, and certainly they're not supportable thermals. You know, the only way to really cross any kind of real body of water is with a paramotor. And the problem with that is you're, you know, you're a, you have any kind of motor failure, you're basically dead. You know, there's, there's not really, you know, if you have an, you know, like an easy way to eject before you hit the deck and have some kind of a, you know, you've either got a boat crew following you or something, but, you know, landing in the water with a paramotor is, is pretty much certain death.

That, that's not a good thing. I mean, it's not, it's not nice to go in the water with a, with a 80 pound contraption tied to your back. So that's metal. So as of now, I don't, I mean, maybe I'm just not creative enough, but yeah, I don't see that. I don't see that happening in any kind of a safe way.

Okay. I guess the other part was, was thinking like, is there some way to tow way the way up over, over the tip of Baja and just take off on one big long glide and have some massive paraglider that has huge glide?

Well, you could work, now you could work that out. You know, you could, in fact, Tom Payne has a really cool app where, you know, you can put in all the, your basic variables in this case. Tight distance and assuming it's completely still air or maybe preferably a whole lot of tailwind or something. And it'll just tell you if you're going to make it, you know, it'll tell you, well, basically it'll tell you the glide that you would need to make it. And then, you know, you, then you can interpolate like, okay, well this wing, I get a 12 to one glide, which would be extraordinary. It'd be a really good glide. And, uh, and you know, then, okay, I need 7,000 feet altitude or something. Yeah, that's totally possible. Okay. So yeah, you're, you're, you're more creative than I

am. There's, there's a maybe there. All right. Maybe. Yeah, there's a maybe. And then I was looking at the foot launch distance record. Is that still yours? 200 some odd miles? Yeah, 240. So I was looking at the map again, looking down. Well, I

have to say that the North American foot launch record, the guys down in Brazil have gone way farther.

So I was looking at the map and looking at Antarctica and it's got the, that little arm sticking out going towards South America. And that's of course, down the Roaring Forties where there's tons and tons of wind. And so I was wondering what the, yeah, what it would look like. That would be a project to launch off some part of that mountain chain and just see how far you can ride, ride that wind because it's going 50, 60 miles an hour. Um, and, and see if that would be a, a new place to set the record.

So the

problem with wind, uh, in the mountains is it's insanely dangerous. It's, it's, it's, it's super dangerous and what, you know, the reason those guys are going so far in Brazil is they're flying in quite a bit of wind, but it's totally flat. You know, it's a desert. And so they're not flying in rotor. Um, the really, you know, my flight, uh, the reason I went that far was certainly because of the wind, you know, I was hitting 110, 120 K, uh, downwind and a couple of places in the flight, uh, as long as I was on the windward side of stuff, it was fine. And then as long as I was high, you know, and I was up 16, 18,000, it was, it was smooth and wonderful and just beautiful popping clouds that just happened to be coming in that arena. I mean, I was totally in sync that day with what was going on on the ground.

Um, but when I was low and a couple of times on the lee side, it was full on combat flying and I would never want to do it again. Um, I mean, it was, it was one of those brilliant flights I've ever had in my life, but you know, you play that game a few times, you're going to lose. And so, yeah, there was a lot of it. You know, the problem with the Andes is the wind and they're in the mountains, you know, anything more than 30 K wind is wicked dangerous. Um, it's just not, you know, and, and seven or eight years ago, that was 15 K. That's, I mean, the only reason we can fly in more wind now is because the wings are faster, but I mean, more than that is your, it's literally a flip of the coin and you know, most of the time it's going to come out the wrong side.

So, you know, for, for flying in any kind of real wind, you need to do it in the flats. And so that's why they're going big in Australia. You know, they're in places that they're towing. Brazil's really unique because the reason those guys have the full launch record is because, you know, they're, they're popping off a little tiny hill and, and, and it's really windy. It's kind of sketchy launch and then they fly over the back and then it's basically flat. Um, so they're able to fly in a lot more wind safely. But even then, you know, you get power lines or even small trees or houses and you know, things can be pretty, you gotta be looking ahead. Yeah. Wind is just not fun. You don't think you can get up high enough and get in,

get into a wave where you're just much, much higher than you would be normally and ride that. Okay.

Wave, wave's different. Yeah. I mean, that's how the sailplanes go huge, uh, for sure. And some crazy person might potentially do that, but you know, wave in a paraglider is, uh, people have flown in wave, you know, Will got caught in wave and in Colorado and Hansa got, was in wave in the last X-Alps. I mean, so. It does happen. It can happen. Planning for it can be pretty tricky, but, uh, and I don't really, I mean, Hansa would be the one to ask about that cause his meteorology background, but you know, again, wind, um, paragliders don't do that well in a lot of wind. And so, uh, and from what I understand, wave is not necessarily really friendly. Uh, so I think that, you know, but hang gliders have done it so we can do it, you know?

So yes, I think that, I think the answer, I think. The answer is yes to that, but I'm not, I'm not the best person to ask.

All right. So two out of two out of three are possibility.

Or maybe three out of four. I

can't wait to see what you're going to be doing in a few years. I love it. Yeah.

It's going to be fun. Cool. Well, that Gavin, that's all the, um, all the questions that I had written down, man. Thanks a ton for your time and thanks for making this thing public. I think it's really cool what you're doing.

Thank you, Nick. I appreciate it. Those were great questions. And, uh, yeah, I've got a huge smile on my face thinking about all this stuff. It's madness. That's what it is. It's madness. It's awesome. So thank you. And, uh, and, and let's, let's do it again. See you soon.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe when I actually get to beyond more than an hour, fucking A.

Cool. All right, bud. Talk to you soon. Sounds good. Sounds good, man. Thanks.

I hope you enjoyed that. Uh, it was kind of cool to get back to the beginning and think about all the things we all need to be thinking about a lot more of. I hope you found that really valuable. Thanks to Nick. Thank you for, uh, asking all those great questions. Um, check out the show notes from this show, uh, cloudbasedmayhem.com. Uh, down in the show notes, you'll find the links to the videos we talked about in the show. Uh, compliments to Nick, uh, some really great material there that'll give you a great visual on what, uh, fantastic ground handling should look like. Also go check out his show, uh, at the paleo treats podcast, paleo treats podcast, excuse me. Uh, and check out the stuff that he and his wife are making. They are absolutely amazing. And, uh, I hope you enjoyed that. And, uh, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you enjoyed it. And you, and that's going to be a big part of my fuel for the X-Alps.

As always, all we ask for is a buck a show. If you've got something out of this show or one of the previous episodes, or if you're just finding the podcast, uh, go back and check out some of the incredible material we've gotten from so many great pilots over the last couple of years. Uh, Cody Mittanck, Will Gadd, Jeff Shapiro, uh, so much good material there and a lot of fantastic advice. I've just returned from Salt Lake. We've got some fantastic shows coming up. The Bill Belcourt podcast, which I've been promising, just banged that out today. So that'll be coming up shortly. Sat down with Chris Santacroce with Superfly. I've got a whole bunch of really fantastic shows coming up in the weeks ahead. But yeah, if you want to contribute to the show, this is a listener-supported podcast.

Go to thecloudbasemayhem.com. You'll find all the links there. And we've got a new way for you to support the show through Patreon, patreon.com forward slash cloudbasemayhem. If you go to that page, you'll see some really cool footage that's actually not even in the film from North of Known. You can see that, and you can kind of just set it and forget it. It's like supporting NPR or something where you just make a monthly donation. It doesn't go up from that. Your donations go a long way to making this possible. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, and we'll see you on the next one. Cheers.