Hi there, everybody. Welcome to a very special episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. This is an Ask Me Anything show, which we usually release as a bonus, but there were so many good questions and so much great information that I just don't want it to, I wanted to get it out there. So we're going to release this as a regular show. And I got a lot of help for this one. I was just recently down in Argentina for the World Cup. And I sat down with Max Jean-Pierre because we had some harness questions that were way beyond my knowledge. and he's a designer for Cortel, a legendary pilot, been in the game a very, very long time, done a lot of comp flying, so he had some great answers there, stuff that I didn't know about, about harness design, which I think you'll find really valuable. We talk a lot about wing design and trying to make comp flying fair for smaller pilots.
We've known for many, many, many years that bigger wings are just faster and they glide better, And so reached out to Bruce Goldsmith with Bruce Goldsmith Designs, who's also been on the podcast in the past, to dive into all of that. He just had a great article, which just came out in the last issue, Cross Country, about his weightless comps and how they're trying to solve this problem. But he wrote about it originally back in 2003. So this is obviously something we're still dealing with. Fascinating subject. And we also, I also went out to Bruce for a bunch of questions that came in from a couple of friends of mine, Aaron Beck and Matt and Blake Pelton down in Utah about porosity tests and fabrics and lines and dirt and care and trimming and all that also was beyond my knowledge.
So, uh, Bruce really filled in that gap, uh, really well, uh, reached out to Revis who was down at the world cup as well for some weather questions from a couple of pretty newer pilots who are trying to get some out in Mongolia who are stationed out there. And, uh, they're trying to figure out how to find good weather and use it to their advantage. So they're not just taking sledders, but getting into their first real thermal flying. And so that was pretty fascinating gear and progression, uh, from James, a friend of mine. And when you should move up to the next wings, this is a subject that comes up a lot on the mayhem, but I take on that one when you should move up and when you—when you should—when you're ready to move up and a lot more. So, this one's super dense. There's a lot of great information from a lot of different folks, some great questions. Uh, hang in there; I think you're gonna really enjoy it.
First up, a little bit of housekeeping before we get to the show: I saw a huge bump in Global Rescue signups after I've been kind of pushing the insurance side of things, and we've had some—some pretty bad accidents in the sport and people having to come up with sometimes six figures to get folks home. So, thank you for paying attention to that. If you're still—if you're traveling this winter, I've really updated the article I put up on the website. If you just go to cloudbasemayhem.com and put in the search term "insurance," that should have you covered. So, insurance for comps, if you're going to fly for comps, and insurance for travel, medical, repatriation, injury—it's all there, and it's pretty dense. It's everything you need, you know, from what happens if you press your SOS on your in-reach or your spot and getting home and not footing the bill for it.
So very, very, very important if you are traveling to go fly in gliding, paragliding. Otherwise, if you're participating in this sport, don't think it's not going to happen to you. Don't let this fall on your family or your friends. So check that out. Again, cloudbasemam.com and put in the search term insurance. You'll see the insurance. It's, you know, something like, uh, insurance already covered. And read that article and has all the links, and it'll take you to the right places and get you to the right spot. If you have any questions on that, or any updates, as always, feel free to reach out to me. And the other bit of housekeeping I'm putting in the front end of this show is a lot of feet—a lot of people are still having trouble with creating their account, as you know, becoming a subscriber, so you have access to all the bonus content we're going to be putting out.
Miles, my editor, has been super busy the last few months, so we haven't been able to get to the promised bonus content with the third installment of the X-Alps interviews I did after the race. And then, uh, I did a recording a few weeks back down at the Red Rocks flying with Ken Georgison—I never say his name, right—on Winglistics, which was terrific. So both those will be coming out before Christmas, so I want to make sure you all have, have access to that. If you're a subscriber in, you know, I, through Patreon, if you're a financial subscriber or supporter of the show, you automatically have an account and you should be all set up. If you don't, if you haven't figured that out, then send me an email and I'll make sure you do. But you are all subscribers just by being listeners. If you get the newsletter, if you've bought a t-shirt or a hat through the store, if you have had any kind of email with me, than I have tried to set everybody up.
I don't want to put anything behind a paywall. Hopefully, someday, if you're in a position where you can financially support us, you'll do so. But in the meantime, I want to make this bonus content available for everybody. So whether you support us at a buck a show, which is all we've ever asked for, or something else, you are a subscriber, you will be one for life. And if you don't have an account, or if you haven't figured all that out, just reach out to me via email through the website, and I'll get you all set up. And then hopefully someday you're making enough money where you can send us a buck show. That would be great. Helps cover all of our costs and I appreciate it. So with that said, please enjoy this great Ask Me Anything show. Again, we got some fantastic questions. There's a lot here for every level of pilot. Enjoy.
Okay, first question in this Ask Me Anything show came from my friend James about when are you ready to jump up to more advanced gear? He was talking about wings, but I think this certainly fits for everything. This is a topic that we've talked a lot about on the show and is something that I see way too many people doing too often is moving up to hotter wings before they are ready. So the question is, I heard you mention on several occasions that you observe pilots progressing too fast, perhaps even hopping onto gear well beyond their skill set. Making the jump from sea gliders to two-liners had me raising my eyebrows the first time I got into high wind on the mountain and he got plucked. I've since remedied my own shortcomings by spending some solid time on a nice grassy training hill, and I'm doing very well on the new kit.
With all that said, I've heard you mention yourself progressing very quickly. The question is, how does one know when it's time to push into higher performance gear before actually doing it? How did you gauge it yourself? There has to be some level of end of the unknown-ness involved or we'd all be still on school gliders. So just as an amusing start to this whole conversation, I'll give you the quick rundown on what I did, which is not recommended. ended, uh, but in 2012, I'd gotten off the boat late in 2011, and, uh, took, I started taking on paragliding really seriously, so that spring, spent a bunch of time in Turkey with Jockey, uh, training acro. He was doing SIV courses out there, but I was training acro because I'd done a lot of SIV at that point, and, you know, had reasonable amount of hours, but certainly no expert in anything, and I was flying for the most part for XC.
I was flying the Niviac Arctic Three, I believe, at the time, maybe it was two three, and so did these courses with him, and then started training really a lot with Bruce and my support in the first couple X-Alps in Europe that year, so I was flying a lot, flying a lot in the Alps, and was perfectly happy on the Arctic, which is an enc, and then that July, I did my first comp out in Chelan. It was the Chelan Open, and, uh, that, that went pretty well, and I really enjoyed it. Went back to Europe to train, well, to fly the rest of the summer and then got a wild card for the PWC in Sun Valley where I now live and that's where I was moving. So a friend of mine that was running that comp knew I was moving out here and he had some wild card spots and gave me one.
And that was kind of early. The comp was mid-August. That was early August when I found out about this and I just panicked. Oh my God, I've never even flown a d, let alone a comp wing, so I contacted Niviuk and they were kind enough to—they had an Ice Peak, was one of the Superfinal Ice Peaks from that year, uh, that was when the Ice Peak Six came out, and they shipped me one, and I went and I flew the Ice Peak Six. So this is, you know, by today's standards, a pretty tame, uh, comp wing, but it was, it was the comp wing back in those days, and so I, uh, I, and like I said, I'd never flown a d, so the day before the comp I had my first flight here with and eight scales and flew the Ice P Six for the first time ever. And then I flew it in the world cup. And, uh, so that was uber exciting to fly a compliment, my first two liner in sun Valley, which is pretty powered up and it all went fine.
And that was, it was fantastic, but that was certainly, uh, what James is talking about. That was kind of a major jump and again, Not something I would recommend, but the answer to the question is, I have always compared this with kayaking. You know, you're not really ready to jump up to a class four river until you're just hitting every eddy and basically class three is becoming boring. You know, you're, you're just owning a class three river, then you're ready to push into, you know, lower level class four stuff. Same thing with class five, so once you're nailing every eddy in class four and you're not, you know, you're not spending much upside down and you're not coming out of your boat and you're not pulling your skirt and you're ready, probably, for a class five if you know you want it and you feel really ready.
But basically, you're pushing the boat and your paddle skills and everything to the absolute limit at the level you're at, and then you're ready to come up. I think the same thing applies in paragliding when you're using the full range of your speed bar, uh, if you're understanding how to fly the seas, if you're, you're on a three liner and you're either on a B or C wing and you're really, you're using it to its maximum potential, what it was built for. And you feel like you just got it. Uh, I, you know, my base minimum, I always feel like is at least a hundred hours a year. You know, if you're getting the hours, you're doing a yearly SIV, you've done a ton of stalls, um, that doesn't even make your heart rate go up and you're really using the full range of the wing. Uh, so you're not, you know, know quarter bar and kind of getting scared, but you're using the full range of the bar, and you know you're doing a lot of ground handling, and you're nailing your launches and landings, and you're not getting plucked, and you're not blowing either, then you're ready probably to step up.
And a lot of it's just, do you want to, you know, do you, and ask yourself, and be honest with yourself, do you need that extra performance? Do you want it? Do you want the less passive safety, and do you want the extra performance? So there's more to it than that, but I think that's a pretty good way to approach that. The problem I see, and I really saw it last year a lot in comps, is people are not getting the hours and they go to comps and they get dusted and they don't get the glides and they just blame it 100 % on the wing. And that's certainly a better, higher aspect wing is going to make a difference, absolutely. But there's way more things you can do. You know, we see this all the time with the huge triangles that are being flown in the Alps every summer on guys, by guys like Bernie Pestle on ENBs that are doing monster flights on ENB wings.
So there's a lot of other things you should, you can, and should be doing to increase your performance, performance, uh, before you step up. Last year at the Monarca, Josh Cone, and one of our best comp pilots ever here in the United States, uh, decided he wasn't really getting the hours. I mean, this guy's done a lot of comps since he was 16 back in the mid 90s, and he's won nationals, and he's done, he's won tasks at PWCs, and he's won, he won PWC. So he, uh, he decided He just wasn't getting the hours, just had a little baby and stepped down to, I think it was, it was an Omega X out, so, uh, you know, an end, but far below the performance of Enzo's and, uh, and Evoxes and, you know, the CCC gliders.
And we had a really hard time shaking him all week, so, uh, you know, he was right there; he would, he could be a little bit behind on every glide, and then he was right there with every climb and making better decisions than, you know, most of the pilots that were on the CCC gliders. So there you go, next one, got a really good question about harness design and stability. So I didn't know the answer to this, and the answer is really fascinating. One of the guys racing down at the World Cup is Max Jean-Pierre, my partner at Quartel and been a long time designer there and very long time pilot and bivy pilot and comp pilot and really understands flying and really understands harnesses.
So here is the answer to these great harness questions, both when it comes to stability and what harness manufacturers are trying to accomplish when they have to kind of hit the sweet spot between stability and instability for when you're climbing and gliding, and also when you should think about, or when you're potentially ready to go from a seat harness to a pod harness, and the advantage and disadvantage and risks inherent therein. Enjoy.
Designer, increasing the stability of the harness.
Actually, for paragliding, we need two different things for harness. We need it to be stable in a certain case and unstable in another one, and we have to deal with these two factors which are opposite, and we have to find the balance according to the people which is going to use this harness. So, for beginner harness, obviously we need a really stable harness for giving him confidence for his first flight, and the more you get advanced in your piloting skills, the more unstable, somehow, the more unstable you need your harness to be because you need to—it's necessary to get a more lively, more dynamic harness when you start summering, because weight shifting is one of the key for summering.
You, if you just done by pulling the brake handle, you won't achieve a really efficient turn, and you won't be really efficient in wide thermal. So it's always a matter of compromise and it's easier to understand if we go to the extreme. For example in competition
that's for sure we go we need a really stable harness because one of the key of the performance is gliding and for gliding you need your aircraft, by aircraft I mean canopy plus harness, to be stable. I mean to be really,
to have a compact
feeling for the pilot because the glider is something which is really big, The span is more than 10 meters, and when you fly in lively air, if not turbulent, your both wingtips do not always encounter the same turbulences and anything. So, and everybody who fly paragliding, you can know this feeling; you have your two wingtips moving and transmitting some roll movement to the pilot, and you need it. You need your harness to be stable because you try to glide straight; your glider has an ability for sniffing, for finding the right path in the air mass.
and we want the glider to do this job and with the two unstable harness all this roll movement on the roll axis obviously.
All this roll movement, if you have a too unstable harness, will be amplified by the pilot, or they will be totally lost because the pilot will try to counter-steer to control all the movement, and for for the best glide, we need to let the harness do its job without interference coming from the pilot. A too unstable one, an inactive pilot will amplify the movement and obviously you will start flying, you will start making turns and lose energy because your glider will start moving and all this movement is a loss of energy so at the end it's a loss in altitude and
the pilot controlling too much this movement by counter steering, all this movement will lose this sniffing ability that the glider has naturally, so yeah, and after a glide you need to catch a thermal, and for something you need a harness which is dynamic enough for being performance, and those two Two different moments of your flight need opposite quality of the harness. In glide, in straight flight, you need a stable one for efficiency, and in thermal you need a lively, dynamic harness.
Those two parameters which are opposite, finally the designer will choose the gliding.
most of the designers had to make a really stable harness because we were losing much more with an unstable harness doing straight flights than the lack of climbing ability. And that's why we had to develop this system on the Cannibal Race 2, which allows you to have a really stable harness in straight flight and unlock its ability for someone. And there is another reason why you, because in paragliding, performance comes for sure from the glider and all these mechanical parameters, but one of the parameters is pilot, obviously.
And by having also a stable harness for long flight, you also save the the pilot energy, and after some hours, all the energy you could save during the flight thanks to a stable harness during this long transition will also be a criteria of performance, because if you're less tired, you take better decision, and a good decision can make a huge difference at the end of the flight. It's a matter of, so it's performance criteria and also a safety one for the same reason, obviously. Making a good choice can prevent you from going in the wrong pace or taking some risk, so next
Question down at in Argentina, I spent some time with Patty Latona, great pilot from Mexico, who is I don't know how much she weighs, but she's very small, and she's been flying comps for a long time and has been on the World Cup for a long time, and she's—she's had some huge flights out of Patu down the Sertão in Brazil this year. so super accomplished pilot. But like, all small pilots on the World Cup is incredibly frustrated because flying an excess wing or smaller wings, you are crippled by performance on many, many different levels. So she wanted me to bring this up on the podcast. We talked about it a little bit with Isabella Messenger a couple years ago and it's a real problem. It's not fair and weight matters.
So I went out, Bruce Goldsmith, the designer for BGD, to ask him this question. Well,
the question is, um, about weight on paragliders, especially in competition, and, uh, this is a subject I've been going on about for maybe 20 years now, and, uh, there's little no doubt at all that weight does affect performance on paragliders quite a lot. Um, it's actually not all one-sided. Um, weight, or being Being heavyweight, is an advantage for glide and speed and flying fast, and flying light is an advantage in very, very weak conditions. But unfortunately, competition has changed formats over the last few years to become more about racing faster in strong conditions. So this has completely pushed out all the lightweight pilots from competition.
When I used to fly competitions, there was a kind of balance between weak conditions and strong conditions, conditions, but now it's really gone very strongly on the side of flying in strong racing conditions all the time. I don't know if you agree with that, Gavin. No,
Absolutely, I mean, I, I'm excited to be talking about this and it's just so timely because your article just came out and, uh, you sent me a bunch of notes from your 2003 article and it was interesting to hear you say that, you know, very little has changed. Uh, I mean, obviously gliders have changed a ton, but the advantages are all still there for the... I mean, this is something we talk about at every single competition, but I really feel... for, you know, I had this great podcast with Isabella Messenger a couple years back and, and, uh, she was asked, you know, we were talking about this, this weight issue, and I was saying, well, yeah, and I'm really small, and she goes, "Come on, okay, how much do you weigh?" Yeah, you know, 78 kgs, and I'm kind of built like a wombat, you know? She said, "Yeah, okay, so I'm 50 kgs and, uh, you..." I mean, part of it's just, it's so hard to even get an extra small wing from most of the manufacturers.
So I just really feel for the people that are light and these girls that are just, they're going to every comp and where you see how good they are is when the conditions are really light and they might, at the Worlds, Petra was the only one that got the goal. It was a struggly, hard, super windy day against the wind, and she was – obviously, these girls are really good, and they just – they don't get – it's not fair.
Yeah. I mean the problem I think goes a lot deeper than we realize because when people – I mean people like to do what they excel at and what they do well in. So if you're a load of people and you start doing competitions, then the heavy guys are going to start winning and the light ones are not. And so the heavy guys carry on flying, carry on flying competitions, and you get in the end just a whole load of heavy guys all flying competitions. And the light people are just filtered out right from the very first competition they do. And so I think that's why there's really not so much pressure to do something about that because already 50 percent of the pilots have already been cut out and they've just given up.
Yeah, yeah. And Tom Payne talked about that. once they banned the open, he just was totally disinterested open class. Cause the, you know, that at least gave, uh, the lighter folks a chance in terms of, you know, flying protos and, you know, different types of stuff. But, but let, let's, let's stay on the subject here. I loved your article because you tapped kind of the main reasons there are the differences, but I thought we'd just take a deeper dive on some of the things you mentioned, like certification and safety and And the percent, I think, what are the advantages? How much is it?
Yeah, we did a detailed analysis of the performance differences just based on weight, surface area, lines, factors like that that you can easily calculate. And we calculated that at trim speed, the heavyweight pilot has a 2 % glide advantage over the lightweight pilot. And so that's talking about the extremes from extra small through to extra large. And for top speed, you're talking about a five percent advantage for the for the heavyweight pilots, so that's huge. You know, that's really huge. Um, and this is interesting, that it ties into what we've been trying in the weightless—that the last weightless competition, we we we tried to do a handicap system, and we gave two and a half percentage points for every 10 kilos, so 0.25 five per kilo, if you like.
So, you know, between a small pilot and large pilot, they could get a 10 advantage. And when we ran the whole competition, and we had a lot of 50 kilo pilots and 110 kilo pilots, we could see that this was just far away from being enough. You know, 10 points, you know, it had to be more like 50 of the points, you know, it was that big. It was really that big. And so now, now I've been really going back and trying to rethink the whole weightless thing because, you know, obviously we can't really give 50 % of the points to the lightweight pilots. But also the lightweight pilots were saying they felt discouraged because they could never lead. Because leading is exciting, you know.
Yeah, I mean, all of us have felt this. If you're dropped off the back at the start, two things happen. One, it's psychologically really tough. And then you start – typically, most pilots will just add mistakes then. You start trying to race too fast, and then you bomb out. But it's just – it's psychologically really discouraging.
Yeah. So what we're going to try and do is a new concept of the next weightless is we want to try and do turn points with different diameters. So we'd have a turn point with a smaller diameter for the heavier pilots and a larger diameter for the lightweight pilots. And then the task setting committee will be able to use those turnpoints when they feel that it's a good idea. So it's going to be a very experimental thing. But what it means is that at every turnpoint, possibly at every turnpoint, the lightweight pilots will get a little boost of maybe 500 meters or up to up to one kilometer.
So this could really make the lightweight pilots lead out, which is what we have been missing at the last two weightless competitions.
Yeah. And does the algorithm need to be quite a bit more complex as well in terms of instead of 2 % for each 10 kg, could it be some kind of maybe sliding scale? I mean, I guess these are all kinds of things you're thinking about. out yeah
Well, the real problem we found is that the small pilots suffer when there's, uh, turbulent air and headwind, strong wind, and, uh, because, you know, there's also very technical reasons for why this is, but you can very easily imagine it: that sure, a small, a small pilot is half the size of a big pilot, and so if you've got a small pilot hitting, you know, a size of turbulence which is, say, you know, 100 cubic meters, for example, then you've got the big pilot hitting the same piece of turbulence, it's only half the size for him. So naturally, it's going to affect him less, it's going to knock him around less, he's not going to get collapses, it's going to pitch his glider less, so it just affects him less, you know, these adverse conditions.
So we really saw that in those, in those difficult headwind conditions and headwind and turbulence, the small pilots just couldn't get, get through, you know, they were just blocked by the, the strong wind and strong turbulence, and so it's very difficult with any scoring system to take that into account because it just depends on the task and the conditions during the time, yeah.
That's where it gets starts getting tricky, and you start imagining all the whining that would be going on at like a PWC level, you know? But I mean, we have to do something. Doesn't mean because it really isn't fair, and it take us through all the things that do affect it. Like, I—I love your your thoughts on, you know, well, not your thoughts, but just the reality of, you know, that most wings are—are you build a wing, uh, from your perspective, you know that it Bruce Goldsmith's designs? You're going to build a wing at, say, the medium size, and then everything else gets scaled on that. But you don't scale at the excess size. A, it's going to be way harder to get it passed, so you've got to slow it down. You got to change it. You've got to make it so it's going to be easier to certify, because otherwise it wouldn't pass like—like a large wing does, but it's also things like the fabric and the lines. Everything gets scaled, but it's not like the fabric gets thinner.
Well, the worst
thing is actually the lines don't get scaled. They get scaled in length, but they don't get scaled in size. In size, right. Because normally you do the load test on the large glider, and then you use the same lines for all the other sizes. So this means that a small pilot has lines which are twice as big as they need to be. Sure, way more drag. So
that causes
a load of extra drag, of course. and this is a massive disadvantage yeah
Take, take us through each of those things that you talk about in in your in your 2003 article, and then as well as this, this most recent one, cross country that just came across my desk this morning, and I, you know, it was the first one I went to. I thought, "Oh, this is great, we got to cover this," yeah.
I don't actually have the articles in front of me, so I can't remember exactly what I said on each one, but um, well...
I, I can give you kind of the headline. You know, that one of the things you talked about was, you know, certification and safety, so let's brush on that, yeah.
I mean, for certification, the the playing field has leveled a lot more recently over the last few years. Those gliders get safer and easier to get through the certification, so there's less trimming the small gliders to get them through certification. So that means they're less less penalized than they used to be. I mean, it used to be the case that you you couldn't get any small gliders through certification, but now nearly every brand has small gliders that they can get through certification without castrating the gliders too much. And, uh, so that's, uh, that's a positive, a positive thing. And are you,
can I, can I just come in real quickly? Are you, are you as a designer, um, are you making the X S wings really just to fulfill, you know, I mean, I mean, is there any profit in it at that end because there's so few of them being bought or is there enough being bought that it makes sense?
Yeah, I mean, XS and XL wing, we actually sell more XS wings than we do sell XL wings. Oh, okay. Oh, cool. But maybe it's because we don't do competition gliders, so we're not selling these large, large gliders. Sure. But just for intermediate pallets, yeah, we do sell more of the small than the large and more of the extra small than the extra large. But the market, as you say, is very small. For the extra small, for instance, it will be less than 10 % of the market, probably something like 6%, 7%, something like that. So it's pretty small.
Got you. Okay. And
combined with that, it would be the hardest glider to certify, of course.
And it's also quite a bit more difficult to fly still, compared to the larger gliders, correct? Are they more prone to things?
No, I wouldn't say so. Oh, no. With the scale we have now, the extra small glider is absolutely the light to fly. And I've been flying, like on the Q2, I've been flying all of the sizes. And I just love flying them all. You know, I wouldn't say that. I, I don't like the the small sizes. I mean, the large ones definitely glide better, and they have, uh, they're, they're more—sorry, they're less dynamic. The large ones are more dynamic, the small ones. But it's, it's you also have, you know, when I'm flying all the different sizes, you know, I'm obviously overloaded on the small ones and underloaded on the large, so
sure but
I mean, I do fly all the sizes, all five sizes, and uh, yeah, I really, really like the the the small, which is why I'm flying at the moment, 10 kilos over the max weight. I fly super well like that.
Talk about Reynolds.
Well, Reynolds number is one of the basic
characteristics of fluids and depends on the density of the air and the size of the object moving through the air. And there's certain characteristics which are related to this number. And so you know, this directly affects the the size of the gliders and the speed of the gliders. I mean, normally the smaller gliders should be flying slower and the larger gliders should be flying faster to keep the same Reynolds number. So, if you were going to scale them properly for Reynolds number, you would be scaling the gliders like that, um, but we don't; we actually trim them wall to the same speed, so this doesn't really make make so much sense we
Talked a little bit about materials, but the next, uh, in your 2003 article, you went, you went quite heavily into materials, uh, talking about the the the fabric and the lines. Um, do you want to touch on that a little bit as well? Yeah,
The fabric of a glider is the same for all sizes, so this means that the cloth is actually lighter in relation to the glider for a large glider and heavier and stiffer for a small glider, which also affects the certification. When you have lighter cloth, the the reactions are more more soft and more light with less inertia, and when you have heavier cloth, then it's obviously stiffer and worse specification. So yeah, cloth directly affects the the safety of the wing, so yeah, cloth is not scaled. Lines are not scaled, so um yeah, this all works. The disadvantage of the lightweight pilot and
Then one, you talked about pilot drag, and I thought this was kind of interesting. So there's a place where you go, "Oh, okay. Well, the smaller pilot has it, finally has an advantage," but it's not, it's not that scale, once again.
yeah right
It's that's really interesting; it's
Uh, yeah, it's the relationship between the surface area of the pilot compared to his weight, and you know, the surface area is related to the square and the weight is related to the cube, so they're not proportional to each other. And it's the same reason as why a baby gets a cold easier than a large person, you know, 100 kilo person, because they just have so much more surface area compared to their weight. So this is what makes describe
that yeah
So that's why babies get cold, you know? And it's the same reason why small pilots have more drag, because they just have more surface area for the weight. Interesting, an important point. So
You're the weightless comps are an attempt to, uh, hammer this out and make comps more fair. If you figure this, you know, this the scale out and the algorithms out and you and you maybe make it so we've got different turn points, uh, to to match weight, so they don't have, you know, so there isn't this huge psychological advantage as well. Um, do you see this potentially being a solution at like the World Cup level, or would it have to stay in something like the comps that you're doing? I just imagine the the battles that would go on at the World Cup level, but it just it just it isn't fair and it would. I would I would I mean I, you know, I fly the World Cup, I would like it to be more fair.
It seems like we should all be in this together. yeah
I mean, I'm I regard the weightless as an experimental competition where we're just playing with ideas, and we're coming up to the third year of the weightless, and this is going going to be the third different set of ideas that we've done to try to compensate for weight. I'll quickly go through the the history, uh, in the first year we had weight classes, so we had up to 80 kilos, then 80 to 100, and then above 100. So we had three classes, and the problem with that is that we ended up with, um, people who were from the class below way flying with 25 kilos of ballast to get up to the top of the 100 kilo class, for example, which is really against the idea, you know. I really, um, don't like, I mean, the idea is to remove the advantage of weight, so if people are carrying tons of weight balanced, you know, this is just not working.
So that was the first year, and, um, so we learned from that. Then the second year, we then had this penalty system with two and a half percentage for every 10 kilos, and obviously, you know, we ran the competition and scored it the and the heavy guys still won the competition, and it was clear that there wasn't enough advantage, and there was also this problem of people being discouraged because they were not leading out, you know, the lightweight pilots could not compete and lead out and have an exciting competition, really. So now in the third year we're trying this new idea of having having the turn points with different radius, and I know that the FAI are looking at the competitions and and how they go and also the PWC, uh, but you know, and until we have a right, you know, a solution that works and everybody's satisfied with it, then nothing's going to happen for sure, I
Love that you're doing it, hats off to you. That's great. I mean, it's a—it's a touchy subject, but it's been around for, for since the beginning, and it seems like it's something we have to solve. I like—I also, I really like that you're—you know, when you have it as the, as the classes say, the under 80 or 80-100 and the over, that's what's always bothered me, even about just the male/female class. I mean, clearly, uh, there are pilots, the World Cup level, that are female that are just awesome, you know? They don't belong in a different category. They just—I would—I would think it'd be more exciting for them to just compete with everybody else, still have the women's class, but if you have a class dependent on weight, I'd rather race everybody and I'd rather them race everybody and get on the podium for flying well.
And if we could balance it all out and make it fair, it would just make racing more thrilling.
Yeah. I mean, you could design out the differences between small and large gliders. For instance, you know, by having thinner lines on the small gliders and thicker lines on the large gliders, but you could also have, you know, higher aspect ratio gliders on the small gliders and lower aspect ratio ones on the large gliders, and you know, many different things you could do to compensate for it. But, but it kind of, you know, defeats the object really, because everybody wants maximum performance, so it's a shame to penalize the top guys by giving them a disadvantage advantage, basically. But, um, that's what the the smaller guys have right now. It's a smaller guy than girls right now, so right
right yeah
That's it's it's a tough, it's a tough one, yeah. It's it's nothing that's going to be easily solved, that's for sure. Next...
Question from my friend Aaron Beck. This is actually a whole series of questions, so I'll let Bruce just take these on, but this is mostly about glider manufacturing and performance and lines and fabric and a lot, lot of other stuff, break feel, so in testing. And so here's Bruce again, well...
I'll go on to the um question from Blake Pelton about porosity, um, first of all, he's asking a question about uh porosity values on the upper and lower surface of a wing not being so super important. I mean, the first thing to say is that it's only the porosity value of the top surface leading edge which is important; obviously, the ribs are full of holes anyway, so they can be completely porous, but actually, the bottom surface can also be completely porous. There was one manufacturer designed a glider with mesh on the bottom surface once, and it flew super well, well, and also nowadays we have single skin gliders which have no bottom surface at all, so you know, porosity on bottom Bottom surface is completely irrelevant.
And, yeah, so it's just the leading edge top surface, which is important. And, yeah, when you're talking about the overall aging of cloth, there are three very important things that need to be considered. First of all is porosity. Second is tear strength. And there's an instrument called a betsometer where you can measure the tear strength. and a lot of most service centers have the betsometer, so they can check the tear strength of the wing, and the third item is elongation or deformation of the sail, and up to now there's no good measure of deformation of the sail, and sometimes gliders stop flying just because the sails move out of shape, so So deformation of the sail is very important, but as I said, nobody's checking it, and there's no good measure of deformation at the moment.
We have considered trying to perhaps print a dead straight line on the rib above, say, the B tap, and then over the years, look at the deformation of that line to see how far out of line it goes. And perhaps that could be a measure of, uh, of deformation, but, uh, yeah, we haven't actually got around to doing that. Maybe we'll all be doing that one day.
Do you have any kind of rules of thumb on this type of thing when it comes to lightweight, uh, gliders versus standard, you know, when you're using lightweight cloth, is, is it, you know, is, is, is a usable, uh, you know, lifespan of a wing half, or is it 80 hours? Is it 150 hours? Or is it, you know, is it close to the same? I mean, I know I realize things depend on care and a lot of other things. But, you know, are you seeing that, you know, that deformation happen much earlier in lightweight wings?
It depends a huge amount on the structure of the wing. And if you have the same glider with the same structure, but one with lightweight and one non-lightweight, then you might see a difference. But some of the lightweight gliders also have less structure in them as well. Well, to make them light, of course, because they're for hiking up mountains and all the rest of it. And I think if the structure is less complete as well as the cloth being lighter as well, then you are going to see shorter life in the glider. But it depends how extreme lightweight the lightweight glider is. So as I was saying, just the cloth is only one consideration. You know, the structure is probably more important than the cloth. You know, some gliders have very good support inside, whereas other gliders are actually relying on the torsion of the cloth to keep the glider in shape.
And gliders that rely on the torsion of the cloth are the ones that are going to get deformed out of shape with age. whereas you can have another glider with the same cloth, but because the structure is better, the cloth—the glider won't go out of shape and will carry on flying much longer, even though it has the same cloth with the same deformations in it. So it's, yeah, it's not something you can isolate, really, you know, the the cloth from the glider. The same thing goes for porosity as well. So some gliders cannot withstand a low porosity on the leading edge, whereas other gliders can have really porous cloth and have no problem at all. Like a lot of jumping chutes have very porous cloth just because it reduces the opening shot, but they don't have a deep stall problem, even though they're using porous cloth on the top surface.
So again, you know, the porosity depends a lot on the actual design of the wing. It's not just simply a question of. You know, if you have low porosity, your glider is going to be dangerous. It's not as simple as that.
Interesting. That internal construction, his second, his latter part of this question is about rib condition and rib strength.
Mm-hmm. I mean, obviously, if you have three, just to take it simply, you know, if you have four rows of lines, then the load inside the ribs is going to be less than if you have three rows of lines or two rows of lines. because there's just a bigger distance between the lines and so the structure has to do a lot more to keep the glider in shape. And that's talking on a simple level, just in the number of lines. But obviously the design is much more complicated than that and includes the diagonal ribs and the orientation of the cloth within the ribs and within the diagonal ribs and on the top sail. so it's it's um it's a whole package and it makes a huge difference to how the glider ages probably more difference than whether it's lightweight cloth or or heavyweight cloth wow
that's neat the
other thing that's mentioned, mentioned here by one of the listeners, is the
loadings on the lines and how it affects the uh the trim of the glider obviously you know In the question, he's completely right, saying that A-lines are heavier loaded, C-lines are lighter loaded, so the A-lines get longer and the C-lines either stay the same length or even get shorter. But one thing to point out is that, yes, the technique of stretching your lines to make them long again really is not advisable because they'll simply shrink back again quite soon. You're better to actually not stretch the lines and just readjust the lines, even under the light loading that they're under. And then, well, normally you use the standard five kilos to measure the lines and then trim the whole glider with the five kilo lengths being correct and not over stretching the lines.
Bruce, I've been told, is is this just an urban myth or urban legend? I've been told that, you know, when I get a brand new two-liner, uh, you know, to not go throw it all around, you know, to not not do big wing overs, not to do big spirals, or if I do spirals, you know, make sure they're symmetric, you know, do them one way one day, one day the other, just you know, to balance things out because things are stretching differently. Is there truth to that, um?
It's not some, you know, I, I haven't followed that advice, that's for sure. You know, as soon as I get a glider, I often just do spirals immediately just to load it up and gets it more into shape because, because what happens is, you know, when you get a new glider, there is some deformation and it, and it settles in. And what we try and do at BGD is that once the glider is settled in, then the lengths of the lines should be the same as the lengths in the manual, and that's also the same as the lengths of the certification, certification. So what I'm saying is that when you get a new glider, the lines are not the lengths that are in the manual and not the lengths that are certified; they're the pre, pre-settled in lengths, if you like, you know. So that means the a-lines are shorter because the glider is probably a little bit faster when it's brand new, and then it will settle in over, say, 30 hours, and then the a-lines get a bit longer and c-lines get a bit shorter, and then you'll be settled into what the glider was like after it was certified because they've also done probably 30 hours of flying by the time they're certified and also what's in the manual.
So those are the, those are the check lengths This is the opposite to what some brands do. Some brands like to have new line lengths and put the same lengths in the manual; then, when your glider's settled in, they like to force it to try and make it back to the new line lengths again. And to me, this just doesn't make sense. But, um, so that's why why we don't do it. But I think the brands are kind of split between these two different methods of of calculating the line lengths and the check lengths in the manual. How
Often, should we trim our gliders, um?
I would say, I mean, we always put a loop on the the lighter loaded lines, so that's the stabby line and the the sea lines, and I just released that loop after say 100 hours of flying.
Oh, you go 100 hours before doing that?
Yeah. Wow. Okay. So 100 hours of flying, release the loop. And then we recommended a line check every 150 hours. This is in the certification label of every glider.
I see. Okay. Interesting.
But you don't actually have to do a full line check. You can also do what I call a relative line check. So instead of going, if you can't go to a laboratory to do, you know, the full laser line check, what you can do is you just take the A1 line and then compare it to the B1 line and compare that to the C1 line. And normally the difference is, you know, maybe three centimeters and you can check it in the manual. It's supposed to be three centimeters. Then you have a look and see whether it is three centimeters. I mean, it's very easy to get a quick check on whether your lines are roughly right or not just by doing that.
Just A1, B1, C1.
Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Even if you just check those three lines, you're 80 % of the way there. Great. Because the number one lines are the most important. They take the most load, and that's what defines the trim of the glider the most. And so if you're just checking, there's A1, B1, C1. and the relative difference between them because then you don't have the trouble of trying to have exactly the right load. If you just take one line in one hand and one line in the other hand, as long as you have the same load on both, then you can see the difference. It's a kind of auto-compensating system.
That's fascinating. Great. Love it.
And yeah, I'm surprised not more people know about that. I've never heard that. It's a system to teach all instructors worldwide.
Yeah. No, I've never heard that. That's great. What a great one to know.
Yeah, and it's also good, just for a quick check, you know, it's um, if you feel the gliders, well, the other thing is, you know, the way the glider launches is extremely important. As long as your glider launch is nice, then you can be 99% sure that the glider will fly nice, hmm.
Ah, another one. I didn't make sense. I
mean for my own gliders, I always, if a glider launches without pulling on on the air riser, then for sure it flies fine. Some some gliders don't launch very well without pulling the air riser, but um, all my own gliders always can be launched without pulling on the air riser. So if you, if you can launch without pulling on the air riser, for sure the glider flies fine. You're
Talking, you've got some breeze here you're talking about, right? Yeah, yeah.
You got some breeze; you just lean into it if you know, with a, you know, it takes a little bit of skill and timing, but you just lean into it and then move back towards the glider, and if the glider just pops up on its own, then for sure there's no trim problem on that glider. Okay, we have a question here about the EN certification and whether it's really making gliders safer or holding back designers, and this is a very difficult question and has very recently been discussed in a open meeting in Switzerland about six weeks ago, which I attended, and most of the big brands were there where we were discussing, uh, collapse lines, and whether collapse lines should be accepted in the ENC class.
I mean, the result of that meeting was, uh, was positive, and they decided to accept collapse lines in the ENC class, but this is very much relates to this whole question of, of how certification is holding back design or not holding back design. And I think this kind of relates to what a paraglider is. A paraglider, when I first started flying, it was described to me that a paraglider is a flexible structure so that when everything goes really wrong and the glider goes below the pilot, the glider should collapse, go back above the pilot, and then re-inflate and carry on flying.
And this is the basic safety mechanism mechanism of paragliders, so they're designed to collapse so that the glider stays above the pilot, basically. Whereas, um, if you've got a hang glider, for example, uh, hang gliders don't collapse and they tumble instead, you know? And, um, and that's so it's a complete and so the only thing that keeps a hang glider safe is the pitch stability of the wing, and that's and they have all these design features to help the pitch stability of hang gliders, so that's, you know, luff lines and reflex sections, and you know, it's a whole different way of of designing and testing gliders. So this question about whether a glider should collapse or not is a fundamental question about the principle of of how a paraglider flies and how a paraglider is safe.
Do you get what I mean?
totally yeah
So it's, yeah, it's a very difficult question, and when you start to talk about uncollapsible gliders, then, um, then you're really talking about something completely different. And now we, you know, as gliders get more stiff with more and more plastic in them, that we're getting into a gray area where the gliders are not really paragliders anymore. And if that happens, then, you know, I think the only way forward from that is to start to do design a paraglider like we design a hang glider. So that means you have to design a glider with pitch stability so that it can't tumble, and nobody's even thought about doing that, I think so, so far. But it's a logical result of the way things would go if we started to design non-collapsible riders.
Next question comes from Taylor. He and some buddies are stationed over, I'm not sure if they're stationed or they're working or what's going on, but they're newer pilots in the kind of 50-hour range who are over in Mongolia and trying to figure out how to get weather resources resources and what they mean when they find them. So I went to my weather expert, Revis, who's my supporter in the X-House. He was also at the World Cup in Australia and apologize for the sound here a little bit. We were right outside where they were scoring for the World Cup and there was a lot of traffic at the hotel going back and forth and people in the pool in the background, but Miles will do his magic and it shouldn't be too bad. But Revis is definitely one of the preeminent weather people, I think, in the world right now when it comes to flying and assessing weather.
So I asked him this question.
Hi, Taylor. Great question. I understand your need to get out and fly more and how difficult it can be to predict the conditions that are going to allow you to build the airtime you're looking for. I use a variety of different resources in the various places I fly, and I don't know how many of them will be applicable in Mongolia, but I think I have a few that'll be helpful for you. Probably it makes sense to start by talking more about the general conditions you're looking for to achieve soaring flight in a paraglider. If you're just starting out, you'll want ideal conditions, and even so it'll be challenging flying for 250 meter hill to get good enough at thermaling to build the airtime you want.
The only way to do it is to get out and try though. Generally, there are two sorts of conditions you're going to want. It depends on how mountainous the terrain is in your area and how much moisture you get. Either you're going to want a high pressure condition where bridging is in effect, and that's the case if you're in an area that's prone to overdevelopment and storms. If you're not in such an area, then you typically are going to want more post-frontal conditions where a trough or front has moved through and mixed out any inversions and brought a colder air mass, increasing instability. stability. So once you know which of these sorts of conditions you're looking for based on the area you live, you can start with your basic point forecast, whatever weather resource you have available in your area, to get an idea of whether pressure is trending higher or lower.
And the most obvious indicator for high pressure conditions is an increase in temperature and sunny, clear skies. eyes. So if you're in a place that's prone to overdevelopment, You're probably going to be looking for the time when the temperature peaks and there are no forecasts for clouds as the day that you want to take off to get out to the hill and hone your thermaling skills. If, however, you live in an area where overdevelopment is very rare, then it's much more likely you need the instability in order to give you enough energy in the air mass to do the thermaling you want to practice. In this case, watch for increasing cloudiness and a decrease in temperature in the coming days. In the northern hemisphere, you'll typically see the winds shift to a southerly direction ahead of a cold front or trough.
As the trough passes, there'll be a significant increase in cloudiness. You may get rain, and the winds will probably increase as well. Then they'll switch to a northerly direction immediately after the passage of the trough or front. It's going to to depend a lot on your specific location, exactly which day after the passage of that front you want to go flying. Typically, I would say in the mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere, it's likely to be one or two days after the passage of a front. However, if your ground doesn't hold a lot of moisture, maybe it's even the day of the front if it passes early enough in the day. So, the main key here is how much wind are you going to find on the back side of the trough, and how long will it take for the sun to cook the moisture out of the ground, so that not all of its energy is going into evaporating moisture.
I can't give you an answer for your location in Mongolia but look at one to two days as the the most common answer there. So let's talk a little bit about the models and tools available to understand what weather you have approaching. The National Weather Service of the United States runs a global forecast system model, GFS, and there are a variety of ways to view that information. A lot of paraglider pilots use Chris Galley's XCSkies tool. It's a subscription service, but provides a really good way to visualize the GFS data. GFS is not particularly reliable, detailed. It uses a large grid size, so it's very much an approximation, but it does cover the entire globe, so it's one of the most general tools available.
Another global model that a lot of times is outperforming the GFS these days is the European European model, the ECMWF. The only source that I'm aware of for viewing ECMWF data without outrageous subscription fees is Windy, which is is available freely in the web browser.
It also provides a lot of different ways to visualize this data. And it's worth spending some time playing with it, digging around in the user interface, reading help documents and tutorials to understand exactly how you can pick apart the data that's available through Windy. Those tools are probably your best options worldwide for getting a handle on what you have approaching in terms of good paragliding conditions. Beyond that, I have a folder of bookmarks for each location I visit and the local resources vary drastically in availability and quality. I don't know if there are any soundings being produced in Northern Asia, in Mongolia.
I don't know if there are any local high resolution models. If so, reach out to anyone you know in your community who might have those pieces of information and find links to view the data.
I also asked Max a question when we were in Argentina that hadn't come through from the listeners, but it's come through many times in the past. When is a pilot ready to step up to a pod harness from a seat harness and why? And what are the advantages, disadvantages, and risks inherent to do it?
So when it's time to fly with a pod. Actually, in the pilot life, you have to change your flight position.
There is quite interesting things, which is the role inertia, the mechanical inertia of the pilot. When you are a beginner, you need something really stable, so you start with a stable glider, a stable harness. And your flight position, sitting really upright in a pride position, makes the pilot, the physical system, really stable on the roll inertia, which goes in the right direction because it dampens all the movement coming from the glider, coming from the armrest.
And also, when you are a beginner, your field of vision is located to the ground. So by having this right position, your field of vision is in front of you, and below you, you can see exactly where is the landing, where to go, how you built your landing, blah blah. The more you fly, the more your field of vision has to go higher. When you start thermaling, you still need some indication from the ground where the thermal can start, a few indications, but more and more you need to watch the sky, where are the clouds, where
to find the thermal, how are the clouds, how are the other pilots surrounding you. And naturally, you will have to go in a more reclined position. And the more you go reclined, the less your roll inertia will be. And by doing this, so you're changing your point of view, you're not watching the ground, you start having more information coming from the sky,
and you're lowering your roll inertia. And just by doing this, without having changed anything in your flying gear, you start becoming more sensible. because all the movement coming from the glider will be transmitted more precisely. You will get more information from your glider, from the same glider actually. And the more performance, the more skilled the pilot is, the more he will go in a prone position. the position. And for top pilot, cross country pilot, competition pilot, we all fly in a prone position because the information we need are up in the sky.
We need to see the clouds, we need to see the birds, sometimes we need to watch the ground. And also something really important, you need to see the glider. Because the more you fly in a high level, the more your glider is demanding, And by flying in a prone position, you always have your glider somewhere at the border. You feel a vision and all the movement coming from the glider; you have a visual indication, maybe not conscious, but it helps for understanding what's happening with the glider, how it starts moving. So you see it moving before to feel the information formation, and you get more precise in your action.
So this change of position is quite natural, actually, and it's natural and compulsory somehow. You have to go; the more you fly on a performant way, the more you have to go prone position and In addition, by changing this position, you also gain some performance because your aerodynamic shape gets better. The front area is lowered forward, so you have less drag; you make less drag and you gain in performance. So, so when is it time to start flying with a pod there?
Is no precise answer, but I would say it's when it's time to do it, when you start making cross country, when you start improving your skills, when, when you start, but also flying for a long time. Because you can have the same advantage in terms of sensitivity, in terms of weight shift ability, without a pod, just by flying with the foot stirrup in a prone position. But then when you start flying for a long time, the pod has a huge advantage in terms of warmth.
It's much more comfortable to fly with a pod because you don't have to wear a flying suit in which you are sweating at the take-off, then you're wet when you reach a cloud base, you're cold. With the pod you don't have this trouble, it protects you from the airflow, it's a way better insulation than any wing suit, In a flying suit, sorry, and same, by saving this energy, you are, you increase your safety because saving energy means taking better decision. Yeah, taking better decision, it may avoid you to make a wrong decision, a bad choice going in a place you did not identify as being dangerous or whatever.
So everything is linked somehow, uh, and of course life is never simple. When you get something, you always have to pay back something, and the pod has a disadvantage in terms of safety because it, it's lowering your drag in straight flight, but it's increasing the the drag when if the airflow comes from the side. Obviously, this huge surface is really increased when you see it from the side, and when does the airflow come from the side? It's when you get into trouble, when you start rotating, and and when do you rotate?
And the more you rotate, the faster you rotate, more drag you create with a pod. It's when you do 360 deep spiral, then you control the, you control the thing, so it may not be a problem, but obviously it's when you get a collapse and start rotating because of the collapse. In that case, having a pod may increase the risk of twist. because your glider start turning and the drag created by the pod prevent you from following your glider. So flying with the pod means, in case of trouble, you have to change your position really quickly. You go upright position, bend your legs, try to minimize this size shape,
this size drag, for avoiding twists, because the twist might be one of the most delicate, the most tricky things to manage when you get a collapse all your sensations are inverted your visual is inverted and it's really it's really complex to control a glider when you when you twist it and Regarding the pod and what I just said before with the risk of twists, that's also a reason why we are now increasing dramatically the size of the rear fairing. It's not only for aerodynamic—obviously, it helps—but this fairing will also compensate the front side area, and by compensating this by
making them equal somehow. You improve the ability of the harness to follow the flow and go with your glider when it starts turning, and it means it's minimizing the risk of so
Max, on that point, uh, there's been this huge advancement in super lightweight harnesses to match with the X-Alps and all these hike and fly races, and I know a quartel is on the cutting edge of that. What are we giving up when we give up seat boards and fairings, and what are we giving up when we go to uber lightweight gear? Because there seems to be be a huge demand for this kind of equipment, but I'm assuming there's a huge compromise there in safety and in performance.
There is a confusion that people make quite often. Super light harness, pod harness, hammock harnesses. Yeah, and there are mainly two different geometry. You have the pure hammock; pure hammock has almost no dampening system, and in that case, it's really unstable on the roll axis, and they are really tiring to fly. And that's the geometry we didn't like for, for the beginning, and we developed our own geometry with the colibri, which is a split like a harness, as almost any mountain harness, ultralight mountain harness, seated harness, and that geometry makes a pretty big, as a naturally, a pretty big dampening system and
it's quite stable and it really helps for controlling demanding glider.
An ultralight harness without a seatbelt is not necessarily really dynamic and lively on the roll axis. It can be stable and even quite stable, it's just a matter of parameter to adjust, but it's possible to make a harness really really stable even without a seat plate I mean. But in any case you're losing something which is precision because a seat plate harness, when you apply your weight for weight shifting, when you apply a force, the force is transmitted directly by the plate which is rigid.
With these harnesses, with this seatless harness, It's flesh, flesh, which is transmitting the force, and you, you're not applying force on a rigid plate on which the webbing, straight webbing, is connected. You are just rolling into your harness, and this is somehow a lack of precision for weight shifting. And there is another thing: it's the independence of the two legs with a plate, with a seat plate harness. When something is happening on the right side, it's transmitted equally, equally by the plate to your whole body with this harness.
So, her arm work, obviously, it's pretty much the same, but without the dampening system, it makes it really dynamic, and with a split like the harness, like the Colibri, then your two legs are moving independently. And that might be a bit disturbing at the beginning. With performance gliders, we are not used to feel these two half gliders so independently.
And it's a matter of time before we really get used to it. And that's for the difference in behavior in flight, but for sure there are some other things you giving up when flying, when deciding to fly with such a harness. In terms of performance, still, there is a very simple test to make you sit in your harness: you go and fly, and you just bend one leg to catch your speed bar, and you will see your hanging point moving.
At the moment you bend your leg, the hanging point on the same side is going up. When you start pushing, it's going down. When you're pumping for controlling glider, Your two hanging points are moving up and down following your movement, and which leads in loss of energy for your glider. You start making your glider moving, and you lose—whatever you do, you lose—in terms of performance. With a pure competition harness, huge one, rigid, when you move inside your harness, nothing's more because it's much more rigid, and this really light harness are really soft, they have no rigidity and all your movements are transmitted to the glider,
make it move and make you lose make it lose a few in terms of performances. There is obviously another loss, it's the durability.
Light gear can't be as durable as a really heavy one. it's physically impossible we know that a lot of people are asking for lighter and lighter one but durable
This is just impossible, and you also lose in terms of money because they are really costly.
I
Hope you enjoyed that pretty cool show, and I'll try to do more and more of those as we go down the line. Most of those Ask Me Anything shows will be released as bonus content, but send me your questions and if I can't answer them in an email, I'll line them up for an Ask Me Anything show down the line. Thanks for listening. If you find the Cloudbase Mayhem valuable, you can support it in a lot of different ways. You can give us a rating on iTunes or Stitcher or however you get your podcasts. That goes a long ways and helps spread the word. You can blog about it on your own website or share it on social media. You can talk about it on the way out to launch with your pilot friends. I know a lot of interesting conversations have happened that way. And of course, you can support us financially. Financially, this show does take a lot of time, a lot of editing, a lot of storage, and music, and all kinds of behind-the-scenes cost.
So, if you can support us financially, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show, and you can do that through a one-time donation through PayPal, or you can set up a subscription service that charges you for each show that comes out. We put a new show out every two weeks, so for example, if you did a buck a show and every two weeks, it'd be about 25 a year, year. So way cheaper than a magazine subscription. And it makes all of this possible. I do not want to fund this show with advertising or sponsors. We get asked about that pretty frequently, but for a whole bunch of different reasons, which I've said many times on the show, I don't want to do that. I don't like having that stuff at the front of the show. And I also want you to know that these are authentic conversations with real people. And these are just our opinions, but our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors or advertising dollars. I think that's a pretty toxic business model.
So I hope you dig that. You can support us. If you go to cloudbasemayhem.com, you can find the places to support. You can do it through patreon.com forward slash Cloudbase Mayhem. If you want a recurring subscription, you can also do that directly through the website. We tried to make it really easy and that will give you access to all the bonus material, little video casts that we do and extra little nuggets that we find in conversations that don't don't make it into the main show, but we feel like you should hear. We don't put any of that behind a paywall. If you can't afford to support us, then just let me know and I'll set you up with an account. Of course, that'll be lifetime. And hopefully you're being in a position someday to be able to support us. But you'll find all that on the website. All of you who have supported us or even joined our newsletter or bought Cloudbase Mayhem merchandise, t-shirts or hats or anything, you should be all set up.
You should have an account and you should be able to access all all that bonus material now. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your support and we'll see you on the next show. Thank you.