Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Got a great show for you today with my friend Stephan Bernard, former Air Force fighter pilot in Germany, and has just recently, in the last couple of years, gotten super into comps, and as of last check, is already in the top 15 in the world. So he has taken how he learned how to fly fighter jets into the world of paragliding and that you're going to find it super valuable and informative and inspiring. Before we get to that, I just want to again mention that these bonus shows that we're putting out, we just put out another one last week that was the third installment of the Red Bull X-Alps interviews that I did. So I interviewed the athletes right after the race. This third one has Maxime Pinot and Willie Cannell, Marco Hergetic, Herga Hergetic.
I never know how to say his last name, even though we're good friends, but and others, including myself. And I think you're going to find these really fun. If you're having trouble getting these bonus episodes, reach out to me. Just go through the website, send me an email. You do not have to be a financial supporter of the show. Again, we don't put anything behind a paywall; that's how it's set up. But if you just let me know that you can't support the show financially, totally fine, and I will set you up with a lifetime account. And also, if you've had any contact with us in any way over the years, whether that be just an email, or you're on our newsletter, where you support us through Patreon or the website, or just a one-time donation through PayPal or Revolut or Venmo, or however you've supported us in the past, you should be set up with an account.
So most of those I have to do manually, and certainly I missed some. So if I've missed you, let me know, and if you can't support us, let me know. I'll set you up. Hopefully, sometime in the future, you can. So yeah, and that once you've gone through that process... Those bonus episodes will show up in your feed just like our normal shows do, so you just have to subscribe using whatever podcast app you use and it'll come into your feed just like our normal one's will. If you're having any trouble with that, please let me know and we'll straighten you out. Uh, yeah, this show, Stefan. I first met Stefan a few years ago down in Columbia. He and I had a pretty good race at the British Open, and this year he's been on a great run. He won the Columbian Open, did great again at the British, uh, Open, down and rolled a Neo.
He has—he was top 30 in the Super Superfinal, I think, last year, has won TAS on the PWC. He's just become really good, really fast, and he credits a lot of that to the training he got in the Air Force. And so we learned a little bit about his history, how he was pretty uninspired by his first few lessons and kind of the real push on passive safety rather than making pilots safe, and just the differences that he saw really coming up through the very professional commercial side of aviation and also the military side, and what he was being taught, and also kind of the peer group, and some of the early disappointments, and then now where he's come to now with his own flying, and he's been able to take a lot of those lessons that he learned in the Air Force directly to flying, and I think you're going to find pretty valuable.
Stephan is also a guide and instructor for Escape XC, Jocky Sanderson company, and he's been doing some pretty fun stuff in opposite sides of the world. taking people flying in cool areas. We learned about some of that, so please enjoy this great talk, my friend Stephan Bernhardt.
Yeah, come on a little, because I want to see your face.
Stephan, what a joy to get you on the show. Thank you so much for your time, and I guess we all have a little bit more time these days for this kind of thing, but I understand you guys. Yeah, I understand you guys are getting back to the air as we are here, which is... which is exciting. We'll see how, how that all works out, but I thought a cool place for us to start, you've got a long history in aviation, not just free flight, but you've got, you know, a whole bunch of years in the Air Force, and then now you're flying for Medjet, which is kind of cool, and that we'll talk about all that. But I understand you got into flying, specifically paragliding, before your Air Force days, and then you drifted away from it for a long time. So I thought we'd go back to the very beginning, beginning, you know, kind of how you learned, and...
and it sounded like it wasn't super encouraging.
Yeah, I mean, where do I start? It's quite difficult. I mean, as you imagine, as a professional pilot, I was always fascinated by flying. As a little kid, I built model airplanes, and the village I grew up, we had little slopes, so every three hour I didn't fly, I was dreaming of flying. So, uh, actually, my My first contact with paragliding and hang gliding was when I just started the Air Force. I mean, finally, after school, I applied for all this, got into the Air Force training. And just before my flight training would have started, I was in officer school near Munich. And a friend of mine decided, let's go and learn hang gliding. That was the first contact I had. So, actually, some quite interesting days. It was in the mid-80s.
Ah, way back.
And, yeah, they're way back. But the thing was, if we would have made it, they would have sent us right away to the States for one to two years to our training. So we went to that course, long story short, and it was fascinating. I mean, flying like a bird, we had these little heels running down with this seat harness initially and just doing the first hops on hang gliders, not doing big flights. And then it came to a sudden stop
Because I had a little motorbike and my friend on the back on one of these days going for for training again, basically I crashed us and he broke his wrist, and that was basically the end of this course. So it's Guido, I'm sorry, still after all this? Yes, a very good friend of mine, but that's because he forgave you, I guess. Yeah, uh, maybe it's for the better, I don't know. People have survived that.
Anyways, that was my first contact. And well, I made it through the Air Force training, got sent to pilot training. I always said, "When I come back to Germany, I definitely want to continue that," because, uh, it was like a dream. I mean, always watching my model airplanes and now sitting yourself in one of these flying machines and, uh, feeling this weightless feeling, leaving the ground and just soaring. It was great, amazing. So, uh, well, after the States, uh, came back and was stationed way northern Germany. No mountains, no nothing. And then the, uh, intense world of being a fighter fight that started. So time was limited. And guess what? I bought a surfboard because the coast was 10k away.
And, um, hang gliding, basically, uh, drifted away till, uh, in the 90s, I guess. It was my wife in these times; we had two small kids. I was figuring out doing something together in this environment, right? I think you have a little daughter right now? Yeah. And as you know, having a job, even a fighter pilot is a job. Um, wife, kids, we build the house. Time is limited. And I thought about paragliding. There was something a friend of mine mentioned that, uh, that might be something you can do where I can combine everything. You put it in the trunk, you go on family vacations, you hike up somewhere, uh, do a little bit flying. So we, uh, both my wife and I started that course with this goal on the horizon.
And for me then, being basically getting into that simple flying again and climb mountains. Fascinating, right? Because I also climbed in these days and mountains in general really fascinated me. So it looked really promising. So off we go. I went, signed up for a school in Germany. And well, to be honest, in the 90s, I wasn't too much impressed by the way it was approached. At least in the flight school I was training in because of the background they have from the Air Force, which is, well, you can imagine, really professional training. You have syllabus, you have goals, you have approaches, and it's really amazing how they get you to a level within a year which you would not expect by just a good training setup.
And I expected something similar from the paragliding world, Not in this complexity, but uh, well, you go there, they have a school syllabus. We have to do 40 flights and there's academic programs, so the whole framework is there. But basically, uh, more or less, I just did this 40 flights and at the end I made my um, my test, my, what do you say? Yeah, yeah, my check, right? And here you go, and you have a license, and I didn't have the feeling that that I really know a lot about flying.
So they handed you a license and you're like, I'm not sure I can do it. It's kind of like when you have a baby at the hospital and they let you go home and you're like, wait a minute, where's the operating manual for this
thing? Exactly. Here you go and you say, and where's the manual? Is there a manual? There's no manual.
Wait, I'm just supposed to figure this out? Are you crazy?
Yeah. I mean, in these days, I was around about 30 or something like this. And, I mean, I was a full hot-jot fighter pilot in these days, flying MiG-29s, Russian airplane in Germany. And so I was really full on. And then I come to this paragliding world, and I thought, that's not possible. Flying was invented 100 years ago, and these guys here try everything from scratch again, right? Even safe plane pilots, they had a lot of good lessons learned in the last 60, 70, 80 years. But it was a bit strange. and to be honest, um, well, I drift a little bit negative to this world because a I completely expect different people there, like, uh, something like I found in the mountains.
Normally you have, um, how do you say, there's a low profile guys, you get judged by what you climb. There's not, how can you say that, yeah?
in these
days there's
A lot of humility, I
Call them might sound a bit harsh, and I don't want to, want to really blame people, but a little bit of a wannabe word, right? It's like it had the label of extreme sport, and you saw a lot of people showing up. Basically, it's like, well, there's an easy access to extreme sports, but not a lot of people were extreme, and the way they were treated in that flight training, I think, was not for the benefits. It's more that psychological game, and that's what I didn't like. And even I, I mean, you didn't get a a lot of answers. He had so many questions, and uh, I remember days, it's perfect weather, you look at the sky, you have an aviation background, and the guy says, "Oh guys, last flight, two o'clock." Uh, the phone comes through, and you look at phone, "Fuck, we have no wind here, stable high."
Can't be none of our phone comes through, and so, so we get all this question every takeover. I was standing up there and it's like, "Is this safe now?" Uh, you didn't just get the tools you needed to make a good decision, and I think that's the main thing for pilots' training, to make own good decisions. And long after that, I just realized that it more or less was his time to stop to have a beer in the beer garden at four o'clock, and then the phone was coming every day.
For me, that's a little example how this world was in these days, and I, I think I don't know too much. I think it developed dramatically. They have really good people now on the DHV, and they have good programs, and the instructors are trained differently, and I hear a lot of good feedback from some schools here nowadays. But in these days, if I look at myself, I struggled with that a long time because, for example, in the Air Force, you're the same. You're young guy, you step out and say, "Hey, welcome, you made selection, here's the class." They give you the training, the academics, all you need to know, and then they take you out flying every day. And in the beginning, you need—I think this is very, very important—no matter what you do or fly, you need a calibration of your mind.
Is this safe? Is it unsafe? Is it's on the line? Because as a beginner, you don't have a clue. You don't know if these turbulences are too strong or too soft, is it handlebar or not, unless you try. But in, in our game of paragliding, well, you don't want to try everything yourself the first time alone up in the air because you cannot say, "Stop." Um, and I had a lot of learning myself to do it, to find out what are limits, where, where is it safe or where is it unsafe? And, um, again, maybe an Air Force example: they teach you aerobatics right from the beginning, and the first flights are always they show you the red line. This is a stall form, uh, they spin you, and it's like, and show you how to get out, and they from the—these are the first flights before you do even the normal training, just to show you where the boundary is, to calibrate your mind that you develop a feeling.
Well, I think I have to watch out, round this sound, this speed, this feeding on the stick. Well, I think we're approaching the limit, I have to be careful now. And this is what I really missed in paragliding in the beginning, and, and it's a different concept. It's, it's, if you look at it, and a couple of years later when I started again, it was a big topic for me. I talked to a lot of people, now I just let it go. I think that sometimes we do a little bit of a wrong approach because at least here in Germany, I think we stress too much the passive safety I know the background; it is a approach to flying.
We make the environment safe and the glider safe, everything's safe, so the people don't get hurt. But I believe in a little bit more different approach. I think, um, you have to make the pilot safe, separate line
It's surprising this has come up quite a bit lately, you know. Alex Robey was the first one to really voice that concern about, you know, if you—if you really stress the pilot safety, you take away the autonomy of the pilot and the desire to, you know, you're aviating in a slow glider that can collapse. You got to take responsibility for this. There's only so much we could put on passive safety. And if we, if we offload it, if we offload the responsibility to passive safety, we never really become autonomous pilots. Manu really brought that up. I'm not familiar with it, but it sounds like the APPI system, the Swiss system, handles this pretty well. They put a lot of emphasis on SIV.
And, you know, like SIV in the States is totally elective and you have to really chase it. It's not part of any of the ratings we get. And in fact, you know, in a sense, USHPA looks at it negatively, like it's a potential way to get hurt. And so they don't push it. And it's just the total opposite of what we need, excuse me, what we need to be doing.
I believe, I believe. I completely agree with that, completely, Gavin, because this is how I saw it coming fresh from this, well, extreme fighter pilot world, which was my normal world, to that. Because I think it's even more important in a non-professional world where you do not fly every day, train every day, and be current every day to go, I don't know, to combat or something like this. And I have so many examples. I mean, especially in Germany, I don't know how in the States, people are always talking about the glider classification. So you say, what do you fly at this? Or what is that? Is it a high B, a low B, a mid B? And then you fly the glider and say, what's the difference between that? And in the beginning, I don't know.
I wouldn't classify it like this. I did a lot of motorbiking, too. So after the Airbus, we went two or three years to the racetrack for fun and stuff like this. In the motorbike world, which is also a dangerous world, nobody is classifying the motorbikes and would make the bike responsible, right? Sure. Everybody can buy a 200-horsepower motorbike, and the approach is more, well, train it, be careful, and handle it. And nobody, that is my example for gliders when I oversee their training, you know, all this passage safety, let it fly, hands up, let it fly. Now imagine you're on the motorbike and your knee is on the ground and your front wheel starts drifting. Nobody would tell you, "Take the hands off the handlebar and let it recover," right?
It's insane. So, so stuff like this, it would be the opposite. You, you have to know what the line is and then what you do when it happens. And basically, the training, in especially in the 90s, was way, way too much focus in Germany on, let the glider do the job. And I think this has a bigger implication. Because if you learn it like this, especially if you're somebody who might be just a normal person, not the most talented or whatever, it gives you the wrong feedback because the gliders were designed to more or less dampen out all the inputs. So how will you get the feedback of your own actions if the glider is not translating this to a motion, movement, or a reaction? I mean, I, I saw people taking off in Greifenburg on training with an A glider, and you—they launch the glider, they start running like, uh, like a sprinter, moving arms up and down, up and down.
You look at the glider on top, he does the job, he just ignores the input of the pilots and takes him in the air, right? So, so my approach is more, why not build a glider who doesn't let you take off if you do that, right? If you do that, you should not be able to fly or stall or whatever. So you never get the feedback that you do something wrong.
Dumbing it down too much.
Yeah, definitely. And this was the training. Like say if the SIVs just said in these days, I was expecting something like this in my training, like the Swiss do too, I think. And now they do it, but definitely not in the 90s. And I said, hey, can I fly a stall? And they would say, a stall? Are you crazy? Not even a stall. I mean, I was flying, I said, well, it's a glider, I'm vulnerable, might be weather coming up, how do I get down? It's not an airplane where I can just push the stick forward and this plane goes down, put the speed brakes out and land. The only thing they taught were the big ears, but why not teaching me this spiral? Because this is the most effective way to do it. No, no, no, are you crazy? That's too dangerous.
And I think completely the opposite. I need these tools, and I need to master it, and I need to train and learn it with an instructor who can show me and tell me what I do right and wrong and where it's dangerous before I have to train it myself alone with low hours somewhere because I want to learn it. And
is that why, Stefan, is that why you left the sport? Because you stopped flying for a dozen years or 15 years or something, right? yeah
It's like I had some crazy first two years. I mean, a of this, I was younger, I expected something different, I had not much time. So, uh, basically after my training, I immediately decided, uh, this is not my peer group, this kind of environment, this is not that, this is this, um, I think jockey be named that once, ground suck crowd, and that nailed it right to the point. And I was sitting in Bassano and when the first year's family vacation, so I wanted to fly and I said, "Whoa, beautiful day, a little bit wind, a little bit from the left." And then it's like 20 guys sitting there, only a few girls, everybody shades on, nobody's saying hi when you come to the takeoff.
Everybody's looking really, really cool, and every time somebody took off, there were comments like, uh, I don't know, like in the crowd of birds, right? "Oh yeah, shouldn't take off." "Oh, that was dangerous." "Oh, did you see?" "Oh, mom, not with this wind." So, is it great? And it was going on and on and on like this. They said, "Dude, are you having fun? Do you really want to do this? It's in your sport." So, uh, pretty soon I, I decided, well, it's not what I found in mountaineering, skiing, or motorbike world, so whereas it's more like, "Hey, nice, where you're from? Let's fly together, what you think?" And make some realistic judgments, and then, well, give the other some respect to make their own decisions.
I mean, I have so many of these examples from the beginning. I, I remember, well, just my approach them was, it's like, okay, I want to get away from this crowd, so I got this great book from Oliver Gune, uh, rest in peace, I met him in my pilot training. He wrote a book like the, the hundred most beautiful flying sites in the Alps or something like this, I think it's quite now. And I said, well, let's take these hundred takeoffs off. I think I made 30 or 40 in the first two years, and my approach was only fly once at everything and then move on and go somewhere else and try. But I, for example, what I just explained in Bassano, I had a happening that was on Col Vodella in the Dolomites.
It was the same, um, I think that was in the day of my when I did my check, right? It was in the neighbor valley, and then I just moved on. That was my first on flight. There was a guy, obviously very nervous. It's, it was the, um, the south takeoff just in, in front of, of the gondola there. I think it's very famous now. In autumn, hundreds of people go there. It was crowded, a lot of people there. Again, the same crowd, crowns are crowd, mostly watching, not taking off themselves, everybody looking cool again, a bit of a strong wind, but quite nice. I mean, doable, you have to be on your reverse launches and stuff like this. And you saw this elderly guy coming there, wants to fly, uh, obviously pretty nervous. You see, um, nobody really helped him to open the glider, only one guy got up and like 30 others just watching, no comments.
And then he messed up his takeoff, he twisted out the wrong way, so he got dragged the next push and tumbled over bar, nothing happened. So, um, I think I was the only one who jumped off basically and helped him. Everybody, Everybody else comes here. What a, what a idiot turned around the wrong way. Blah, blah, blah. How could you take off here like this? Blah, blah, blah. No, this time. Come on. So the guy was there and it was shaky and he was sweating and saying, hey, come on. Not so bad. Calm down. Do you know what happened? And it's like, I don't know. And I got dragged. I turned the wrong way. So, and he was, ah, do it again. So come on, let's sit a minute. I want to talk. So, and I calmed him down. Then I helped him to do it often and talked a little bit with him, and I was a beginner, you know, but at the end he was calm again and he said, "I thank you so much, appreciate that," because, well, that was what I needed.
And basically, then he took off and he flew away and had a nice flight. So, but again, I, I started to have this strong disconnection again with these people who were there that day. It's like, I don't want to be like them; it's not my crowd, that's what I meant. And this is why I tried to move away from it. So I flew for myself a bit with a then a B glider and combined it with family vacations and stuff like this. And I think the only thing I had was that I didn't have a peer group; my friends were not flying, and I was living in an area where there's no flying sites for, I think, 800 k's around in northern Germany. So then at the end, and he died, basically. And then he moved to the Netherlands on an assignment.
And it just drifted away. And I said, well, that's not what I thought about. But still, reading all these stories about guys like you doing this crazy mountain stuff. And so, well, it must be out there somewhere. But probably not where I have been the last two years. I didn't find it there. So
back to flying, back to the Air Force. And that kept you occupied. obviously your kids kept you occupied and it just kind of remained in the back of your head
Exactly, yeah. So I never sold equipment; I still had it. I mean, finally, then after when I started again finding my old glider in the basement after 15 years, I sold it for 100 bucks for some ground handling, but I still, I still dreamt of it. And, uh, I had a good peer group when I did some assignment to the Air Force and finally ended up in Cologne, where I live right now, joining up with some old friends from the Air Force again. And I think that's my main peer group, like four or five guys here. We did all the same. We were climbing, mountain biking, skiing, ski mountaineering, you name it, surfing, everything the same. It's like this connection you had from the Air Force, which can be really strong.
And nobody was paragliding. Or say like this, two of them were, but stopped to because of different reasons. And, um, funny, one of my best friends here, Andy, probably listens to that podcast later. Say hi, um, he's flying for Lufthansa and he also always tends to paragliding. Hey man, you have to do a license, let's do it. And still having this hike and fly is mountaineering stuff in our mind, climbing up, flying down, going and life and all this. And believe it or not, after the financial crisis, basically my company had a hit. I got a sabbatical year and the kind of a job share program was pretty nice. And Andy had time because it was changing fleets, so he did his license on paragliding and that was the initial kick for me.
Together we bought the same wing, a Swift one, in these days some light equipment, equipment. And then I started hike and flying. And that was my re-entry into the sport again.
And that was 2012, correct?
2012. Okay. And then how can you kind of encapsulate since then, you know, kind of compact it together in terms of where you, you know, how have you approached, when you came back to it, how did you approach your training in a different way than when you did it back in the 90s how did you kind of go from there and to being a comp pilot now well
I mean, with all this experience I was talking before, um, I didn't want to go on this side of the sport again, and I was really happy to fly it on the end base. That was, we did a little Tour de Mont Blanc I could fly, but we used huts for that one, and um, flooper sauna, and just getting back into this. And then he had to work, and I had a whole year off, so at that one point I made a decision, um, that, well, why not designate this year now to do some sort of training? And more or less, I put myself on a little roadmap what I wanted to do. Um, for example, I never did nicer detail and stuff like this, so I, I said, well, autodidact is a little bit difficult in the sport because if you mess it up, you might hurt yourself.
So I was looking for training. So the first thing I did, basically, obviously, I booked an SID. I tried finally to nail this with stalls and stuff like this. I looked into a second SID. This is actually where I met Jockey in Annecy. It was really great. And I looked around on the internet for XC courses because I just wanted to do a bit further flight, not only the top the buttons I did before more or less with some small 20-30k slides, and I found only one in Austria these days and I went to that one. So the thing is, I more or less wrote myself a list what I wanted to do. It's like more the episode: first I have to know what is the limits of the glider, so SRVs, handling, aerodynamic envelope of the thing.
There's some major differences to airplanes, like we don't have a rigid wing and we don't like negative AOAs, collapses, stuff like this installed, and then basically building on these just mechanical flying skills to know your glider, going to the next step, basically how to use not sermons environment, etc. And for this, I just went on an XC course, not that I learned so much there, but I realized very quickly, and this is the red line through all this, this is mainly a mental game because I think, I think the paraglider in general is the easiest tool you can fly with.
It's the only airplane I can say when you don't do anything, it flies straight and doesn't crash you. So, actually, you don't have to do anything in still air. And the skills to manage it as a normal glider in normal conditions, not extreme. You can learn this. Almost everybody can learn this. It's more about the mental game in your head. Am I on top of it? Am I scared? Am I anxious? And the decision-making, and this is what I had to learn, um, whether we are so vulnerable on this thing and this point of no return once you're up there, thousand meters above the ground, there's no way to get down now. So the decision-making, that was the main thing did
Your did your training and did your flying in the Air Force, do you feel like that really impacted how you approached kind of relearning flying what you know? Were there lessons you'd learn in terms of approach to risk, risk, or the mental game that you were able to bring across that might be new to those of us who haven't flown airplanes?
Yeah, definitely. I mean, when we talk a little bit about comms, I think in comms even more than in the initial how I approached the flying. In the initial part, when I restarted, it was more have it a bit structured. It's like a checklist. You want to know tick mark and SRV, tick mark there. You want to do a 50K flight. Like, how you approach is get your, uh, the knowledge straight, read about weather and stuff like this, and the decision making, and then later, definitely. But in the Air Force, basically, um, I learned there that my own judgment sometimes is wrong. Um, there's a lot of studies in all this. You might notice the 10,000 hours people say, or intuition versus rational decision making, and all this can be quite complex.
But all that say, um, we are all really emotional, um, or listening to our feelings. But if you are a brand new beginner, like even a small kid in a dangerous area, you cannot know if it's dangerous or not. So fear is not a good advisor in these scenarios; it always puts you on the very, very safe side. Sometimes, most times, irrational fear, I
mean same
Sometimes with climbing, now you can train this too. If you're safe on the rope, why not try to move? If you fall, you're hanging the rope, that's fine, but still, you feel that fear to do it and the angsty. And then you have to say, well, everything is safe, let's try it. Um, so in this paragliding world, I think it's very important what I say, a, I need to find where is the limits. We're getting dangerous, but in a a manner to be on the safe side, because the worst thing in paragliding, I think, is that you scare yourself too much. If you have a very close call, if you have a gross misjudgment, if you hurt yourself, if you have an accident or something like this, I think that can throw you back a big time. Not many people can handle that very well because it's very deeply inside of you, you lose trust and stuff like this.
But how do you approach that? Now that was my analysis in these times because because the whole official paragliding world is always talking about, oh, it's too dangerous. The fern is coming. The glider is too big for you. There's so many examples of this. So how do you approach this? And, for example, how I tackled this, I was flying on this Swift, which was a B in this time. Before that, I was flying a glider before I stopped. And everybody says, oh, go slowly. You know, you have to change blah blah blah. I think you have to look at the individual that is in general true, but then also for yourself, you can see, well, some people are really talented.
You get people who start the this sport and, uh, really, really good after two years already, and others take 20 years and don't progress much. Um, so I said I want to fly a competitive glider because I was doing some smaller comps too. I did all my homework, like my SID is ground handling on my small wing and I got to that feeling it's holding me back. So I bought the used M4 D wing and everybody was saying fuck, that's not good. You should fly C wing first, do this and this. And then it's like, well, in general, they were right. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to encourage people yet how to go and throw away your a-glider and go to a two-liner right away, but the way—and this was the Air Force approach you asked for—um, hey, I bought a used one because I didn't know myself that I'm able to fly it.
I left that question open. It's like, well, everything, I'm not the most untalented. I did flying my whole year. I know I approach things. It's a certified glider, so the glider itself is not a prototype. Everything tells me I should be able to learn and handle that one, so I put myself in a safe environment. A, I bought a used one so if I can't handle it I could set it with not a big loss B, I bought it in the winter time so I just went up and generally on really still days basically from ski slopes and did normal glide flights with it and just played with it just like left, right, small wing overs and then do a little spiral, oh yeah, yeah, glide's different so that's what I mean with a build up approach, that's an air force approach, A build-up approach and do it step by step, by step.
And once I was comfortable with that, I took it to competitions, basically. And then you push it more and more and stuff like this. And maybe one add to that, it's a very good example even in my mind with that background and all this thinking I did. I remember one of these winter days taking off with my Mantra M4, and it was a little bit wind up there. Nothing, everything completely, completely safe, just not very still, yeah? So the glider was moving a bit, but in my mind, the mind game was, "Whoa, it's a D glider, it's a hot ship, and I never flew this before." And I watched myself just like doing all this left, right, and the break, see, a bit, two centimeters here. And after a minute, "Say, what are you doing?" And I just forced myself to keep your hand still and watch the wing, and nothing changed.
And it was only this mind game. It's like there was nothing going on, it's just my mind game and telling me, "I'm on a head trip and I have to control it." I have to control it. And I took a deep breath and that was completely gone. And this is kind of this build-up approach which you have to do. And for me, that was,
I identified this as the biggest problem to get out of this world where I trained and learned mentally and to approach it in a healthy, safe, but rational way how to progress. That's what I tried to put on the line.
And you, you pretty quickly got wrapped up in kind of the comp scene. I understand, you know, you, you, you felt like, uh, I don't know that, that the comp scene just pulled you in. And I mean, I think this year, you know, you, you, you've had some great results. You're now 15th in the world, you know, so that's pretty meteor. That's fast. That's a, that's a quick, you know, going from 2012, you know, basically just learning Learning really anew to, to be in 15th in the world. What do you credit that to? What, what, what has been your approach? How have you approached progression and training? training yeah
I think that started in that year 2012 because, uh, or from the mindset where I wanted to go because initially, like I said, it was more the mountaineering side, but now at this time and this whole year off, and what I did in the same year when I, well, I did the SIV with this swift bought that mantra, and then I did a second SIV because, again, the app was approached. Now I have, I have a hot ship, I need to do an SRV with that. And this is where I signed up for Jocky Sanderson's SRV in NSE, Escape Adventures. And I think, Jocky, if you listen to that, thank you so much. I think you're really, really, without you, I would not have pushed that to the limits, or not to the limits, to the place I'm right now.
I think you know Jocky. I know Jocky well,
he's awesome. awesome
He's an awesome guy, and he had this opposite attitude, the attitude I always was looking for, looking into, uh, the positive side of this sport. It's joy. It's, it's not about getting scared and stuff like this; we do that to just have fun, enjoy flying with each other. And it was such a great positive motivation for me to meet him there and to do his SIV course with him, um, so he helped me basically mastering this, uh, M4, and we did a little, little bit of XC's, uh, in NSC. And then he said, "Well, I think was, was it him? I think him, or did I sign up myself?" He said, "Why don't you come to the Sharper Open? It's next week." And I had time and stuff like this.
So basically, through him and his courses, I more or less ended up in the Sharper Open in Laranja. Yes, I think by now everybody knows that it's kind of a beginner's comp. No, it's more or less designed for B glider, C gliders; they don't want two-liners in there. It's like a step-in competition where the focus is on flying together, learning together, having a beer together in the evening. Jockey does the briefings every evening, talking about the task. It was like an educational comp, and basically say, "Why not? Let's do that." And this is basically where it clicked. I, I did really well in this comp. I think I won in my class there.
And it was such a feeling of, wow, finally the people sitting together. There's enthusiasm about the sport. You fly together. You have problems to solve. Then you have a beer together. You talk about it. You do it again the next day. So I had the feeling that this is the environment. And in these days, I didn't plan on going to World Cups or something like this. So I was like, well, this is a training ground. That's what I saw, a training ground where you can progress quickly. And that was it for me. Initially, it was these comps where I think, besides the basic flying skills and handling a glider on SRVs, I learned the most. Because, I mean, everybody, I think, would agree who's doing comps.
In environments like this, you just learn so much in so minimum time. And the basic thing, they give you a problem to solve, like a task, and the turn point is there. And it's not a question if you should fly there, if you go for yourself, "Should I fly you there?" I know that's cut right? No, you have to fly there. Now solve it. And this kind of environment, I think, made me progress so much. You try stuff, then sometimes you fail, you bomb out, and "What did, did I do wrong now?" And then the Air Force life kicked in again because I found so many things perilous again, uh, from my efforts. Like this basic stuff they taught you in the beginning, it's like this, uh, I don't know if you heard this, we've had this 70s proper pre-flight planning prevents his poor performance.
or
Decidedness was always very important. I mean, a fighter, you go 400 knots, low level, somewhere. These days, still, it goes really quick, everything. So there's no time for hesitation, but you want to make good decisions. And what I saw in the comp world, too, is like how you deal with frustrations or wrong decisions. Like, "Damn it, I should have gone left. I missed that. Why didn't I stay?" Say, it's only really bad thinking. And this is what you learn in fast jets, really well. Was mistake, don't think about it, look ahead. The more you think about it, more you're behind your airplane, and what it's happening in front of you, cannot change it. And this acceptance of the things you cannot change, to just let it go and not get emotionally involved and just deal with the situation right now.
Um, this I found in paragliding comes the same too. So many times after landing, and people say, oh, I should have done this, should have done – that's fine maybe for debrief, but a lot of people in the air get quite emotional by that and then miss out to assess the situation in front of you.
Get too wrapped up in what just happened instead of what's just ahead.
Exactly. It's like – I mean in hindsight, I thought a lot about my – what was normal life for me, my squadron life and stuff like this, how you Denali mean, you fly with your buddies in a squadron. Not everybody is your best friend, but most of them. It's intense. Your life depends on each other and everything. And it's not always like, say it like this, it's so intense. You don't have the time to be always nice. Deep breathing is very straightforward, and this is true. And you have to be able to disconnect emotionally, even if you're angry at yourself or maybe angry at your body because you did something who endangered you or sacrificed the tactics. And the way you do it in the Air Force, you get call signs.
Sometimes that's blue one, two, three in the formation. That's then not the Gavin and Stefan. So I call you blue two, left one. And in the debriefing, you would do it the same. You depersonalize that stuff. And I found out from this fighter pilot that helped me a lot because sometimes in gaggles it's really tense or in the start cylinders, you know, it's really close. Some people fly too aggressive. So I never get angry at somebody, never ever. My picture is what I see. It's just a situation in front of me. It's moving objects, I always call it. Some people laugh at it. It's not pilots or people. Well, if I know you, I say, well, that's Kevin. He kicked me out.
I seem
to remember almost taking you out of the air in Colombia a year and a half ago. You were very cool about it. I was like, oh, dude, I'm sorry.
No, but I think that helps a lot. People have problems with that. It's not only in comms, but flying somewhere. It's not about blaming others or things. It's just like, well, there is an object who is just now crossing my flight pathway. I want to go. How do I deal with that? I can't continue and I crash into it or I have to deviate or something like this. And that makes it very unemotional for me. I just react to things that happen in front of me. And again, an Air Force thing is that's what they teach you in air combat all the time. It's always this assess, predict, maneuver. And that's a constant loop. I mean, even in the one-on-one dogfight, you assess, okay, he's nose up, he's probably below corner velocity, so he cannot go over the top, predict, he will have to come down in five seconds to the right maneuver, I pull lead to that, then I intercept him at that point and draw my gun or something like this.
but then you don't stop so you do that at the moment you assess, predict, maneuver you start again assess, predict, maneuver assess, predict, maneuver. What's next? And that is so quick that you always get in this loop, and this is the same like what you can use in comms. That, in general, this assessment starts with observation that you always scan everything and assess what will happen next, then you predict where you want to be or not, and then you maneuver that.
sounds a lot like tactics to me, and you actually mentioned tactics just very recently there. Let's talk about tactics a little bit in comps. It may be specific. You won the Colombian Open this year and then did really well the next week in the British Open, which is, to me, a pretty fast World Cup. There's a lot of talent at the British Open these days. Tell me about tactics.
Yeah, well, tactics, it's for me, it's a little bit—I always say it's chess in the air. I mean, probably a lot of people would, would say like this, or sometimes I even title it from my background, there's that slow-motion air combat in the two-dimensional world.
So for me, sometimes it's, I don't know, it's like, uh, I can eat my banana on a big glider and do, do that all. It's like somebody put it all on pause. I don't have to be on it right away, so but it gives a lot of times to do that. It says predict maneuver, but the baseline I think about all these tactics is this observation and assessment, what's happening. It can be simple things. I mean, I had that even in PWC, I think it was one task in Brazil last year. It's pretty good, I think. I, I even finished fifth. Yeah, that was really cool. We had six or seven tasks. I learned a lot during this competition. I have some good and funny examples. Remind me to give me an example of one task where I basically messed up my seven teeth.
Let's start there. I'll remind you right now. Let's hear that one.
It's a very good example where a lot of things come together. I mean, the comp was really good for me. I was doing well. Always like top 10, top 20 at the end. Like I said, I made it to fifths, um, and flying every day, long and hard tasks, um, so, um, like I said before, you have to have attention for detail. Uh, this proper pre-flight planning prevents this performance and everything because, as you know yourself, the higher level of competitions are the less mistakes you can make because the one who makes the fewest mistakes in the end probably wins. So that nobody makes any mistakes, but there's no room for big errors. So that day, it was pretty nice.
We're doing really well, it's fine, and I'm at takeoff and, uh, everybody's getting ready to go and I put my stuff together. I have a coffee. I'm normally a pretty relaxed and I'm never really, uh, excited and suddenly say, "Man, where's my cockpit?" When I fly a cannibal race, you need the cockpit too. Otherwise, you cannot fly with all the instruments, everything. And suddenly, I realized I forgot my cockpit. Ah, yes. Schoolboy here. Exactly. Never happens to me. Never, ever. I'm a pro. Well, it did. Here we go. And now, that was the proper pre-flight planning. I messed that seriously up. Now, when I look at the watches, one and a half hours window open, I might be able to make it.
But now I had to find a car because we had to go this long drive with the bus. Pico da Gavaio, I think the bus drive was an hour something already. I was like, "What? That's bad." So I tried to find the meat director and another guy Not everybody spoke proper English. I don't speak Portuguese.
then I found somebody might have a car big story took forever finally Finally, I got somebody with a comp car who would drive me down downtown so I could pick up my cockpit. So we were racing downtown with this car. Gas station had to fill it up. They gave me the keys and said, good luck. So I went back. We were living outside of the village, even in a little ranch we hired. Found the cockpit, came up again. So the majority of the field already took off. Really sweaty. I get my stuff together. Other, put it on, and I remember this moment, and this is this Air Force world again where you have to, I think, the big picture. When I get some less stunt over here, you have to be able to blend stuff out. Well, I really did a big mistake, I can be really upset about myself, but there's no time for it.
So really focus, do all this, and, uh, at the end, I was the second last with Claudia. Claudia Bulldog was with me at the takeoff, and it's exactly the moment where the wind turned on the takeoff, and on this place, you can take off from three sides. I think we're on the south takeoff, but at one moment the wind more or less switched to the north, and I looked at my, uh, watch. Me just trapping in there was like 15 minutes to go, going to take off at like 10 minutes till the wind did the start opens in the air, and I was like, still top 10, I wanted to do that, and I said, "Shit." And then Claudia, standing next to me, says, "No, sorry, Stephan, I don't take off here, it's backwind now." So I go over there and it's like, how did we go over there? We never make it to the start. Well, let's go. And then at this moment, just like, okay, what do I need?
Wind is the limit. And you have to have your skill. You know what you handle, if you answer or not. There was a big windsock on the left. Little look. There was two birds surfing there. The windsock turned a little bit, showing to the center of the thermal. And my assessment was just like, I have to take a window now. I go left for 200 meters. My best assumption is that there is a thermal. All signs are pointing for that. I go to the base, and then I might be just in time. Basically, I took did exactly like this, took off, manage the glider, come to the left, go over the wind, so I hit right away a three meter climb. I made 800 meters, and then basically, uh, I was two minutes late at the start, just 200 meters below the lead gap, and went off. And, uh, from this, what I want to say with that is not, "Hey, look how good I..." No, it's about the things you can transfer, what is so important.
You have to be able to, like a beginner's mind, mentally calm down and let everything go and focus on the stuff which is right there, right ahead of you, and which is now important in that moment. No matter what happened before, what the weather did to you, what another pilot did to you in a gather, or what you did yourself in a bad decision that might still happen. You have to live with that and have to let it go. And I think you can train that a lot with mental training. I mean, besides my Apple's background, I meditate a lot, to be honest. It's a really cool way to train your mind to let thoughts come and go, not get attached to it too much.
And
are you meditating at the start, before you take off? Or are you talking about when you wake up in the morning? Or do you have any kind of practice that's specifically tied to flying?
Yeah, it's like a while ago, maybe three, four years ago, I discovered this. Maybe people know this Headspace app. Yeah, Headspace is great. It's like this Andy from England. and I think it was a monk somewhere came back and his approach was like a more Western approach without too much spirituality. It's just about the techniques and everything. I use that a lot and now basically I have a daily routine. I more or less meditate every morning. And if I miss it once in the morning, then I find something in between time to do it. But I think people who meditate a lot would agree it's not only about the meditation itself. I think, how can I put this?
Meditation, maybe it's a tool, a frame to train awareness and awareness in everything.
Are you using that awareness and, you know, kind of meditation? Are you using that to help you either enter or get out of kind of a flow state when you're flying? uh
Yeah, I mean, what I discovered when I started meditating is that I found kind of the same feeling, this flow awareness, and so in almost everything I did in my life, that was definitely the fight of my life. It was very intense missions, and it's hard to tell how that was, but you get in a state like this. I found this in like climbing, um, on the motorbike, on the racetrack, and stuff like this. It's, it's this typical flow thing when you're just there, things slow down, you have a clear mind and a clear view, and I think meditation, especially in our world, in the paragliding world, is a good tool to, to prep you for this moment that, uh, I mean, I know a lot of people who are really excited before a task.
For example, you can use that to just let it go. Breath, breathing is a, a very big center thing, and meditation uses that as a main anchor, um, and awareness. I mean, not only aware of the task itself or the flying itself, it means in the moment, um, for example, what I try to do. It's a lot of people, you said you have a routine, how you prep for the task? I mean, you go to the briefing and you set yourself up. Everybody has different techniques for that, but I like to be in a bubble for myself. No, get my stuff out, it's packed, always the same. It's like, again, this Air Force background, have to have habit pattern stuff goes to the same when you click in that, you, it's simple.
It's not that I just have this buckle in my hand, so I really see the buckle, I feel it, I feel when it clicks. Your home's you in on on just this moment, and that's the whole way till you take off the glider spread, you listen to your breath, you feel the wind, you have a quick look, smile at some people, the glider rises, so you go from step to step to step. I'm not far ahead now on the on the final glide or something like this, I try just to be right here, right now, enjoying it, and that's a really nice feeling. And then it basically comes all together at one big thing because you go from one moment to the next one in a very relaxed and open way, and this is the way I use it.
You know, one of the things I... we're just finishing up the the book about the the podcast, and we've been talking about this in the last few shows, and it's... it's basically, you know, my job's done. It's now in the editor's hands at xcmag, but it was really interesting going back through all the shows where, you know, the book's based on the first 100 shows, kind of pulling out all the best of the best and the the the folks that are you, you know, really, really top pilots, especially at the competition and the things, but also, you know, even in things like the X-Alps and, you know, intense hike and fly races, they, a theme of like being cool comes up again and again. And by, by that, I mean, you know, it's, it's the folks that are laughing the most, that are the most relaxed, that are the most chill.
It's often, you know, the, the really consistent pilots. And now, you know, there's some young, you know, French pilots who are just amazing, but you know, the, the ones that you kind of see consistently in that kind of top 10, top 20, you know, almost every time they don't, they, they, they seem to be very detached from mistakes. Like you said, I mean, I think one of the most valuable things I've learned in flying was from Tom Payne before the 2015 race, we went and visited visited him in, in, uh, in Zurich and, you know, he, he competed in 2009 and then he supported John Chambers in 2011 and 2013, I believe. And he, he said, you know, one of the first things he said when we walked in, you know, Hey, what can you teach me?
What, Tom, what, what do I need to know about this? Cause I was so freaked out. I was going into this race for the first time, you know, what do I need to know? And he said, the most important thing you guys need to have is conflict resolution. Conflict is going to come up and you need to figure out a way to deal with it so it doesn't take you down as a team. And we just decided, okay, well, we're going to make mistakes. That's inevitable. Everybody makes mistakes. We're going to make a ton of them. And let's figure out what it was and drop it immediately. Here's the mistake. Let's not make them again. And there's no blame. There's no tension. There's no anger. Let's laugh it off And so I like that when you said that to be detached from mistakes, I haven't had that so much in mind for comps.
And of course, that makes perfect sense. You know that these guys that and gals that are really good. I think one of the reasons they don't get that upset when they bomb out is because everybody bombs out. Even they, I mean, it's just inevitable. You're going to make mistakes. so whatever exactly
Yeah, because everybody makes mistakes, and we have to acknowledge this. There's a bit, what we had in training in the beginning of our talks, is like everybody expect 100% safety, and basically it's not possible. It's not there. Yeah, you have to just realize that. And the same with, no matter how good you get, everybody will make mistakes. Even Russ Hopkin makes mistakes, and he knows that, but you have to learn from them. And it's like, I mean, there's all these lines I, I think everybody knows, is that if you do not make mistakes, mistake is necessary to progress and learn. With no mistakes, you will always stay at the level you are. And you might know some pilots. There are a few pilots who always blame something else, the weather, the wind, the pilots or something like this.
And if you're not able to open up to your own mistakes, You will never change because only a mistake allows you to analyze something thing and to progress and to make you in something better, and this is not maybe another example of the air force world in this 20 years plus air force flying. I had not a single flight where you didn't debride and more complex stuff. Sometimes you flew one and a half hours only in the debride for three to four hours, and you sit down, the door is closed, and you have your matrix, you go through versus always, uh, any safety calls. Well, to get it out of the way, uh, what are things? Every caveats, every radio was good, blah blah, no excuses, boom.
And now you deconstruct or reconstruct what happened, right? But with a of a line, and in our world, a lot of times people think they debrief and think they debriefed when they reconstructed what happened. I saw you there, uh, yeah, cool. And and then I jumped to that bridge, fine, and I didn't catch the thermal. I bombed out, blah, blah, blah, blah. So what's your best learn? Well, I didn't catch the thermal. But the reconstruction is not the debrief. It's the base now to draw the lesson learned. It would be like, okay, you reconstruct. The quicker you can do that, the better. Nowadays, with a GPS tracker, you could do that even on a task with us. We had, like, in the beginning, we have chalks and boards and notes made in the flight. And then you have GPS trackers who can do that.
But when you know what happened, it's just a rewind, then you can start to analyze. And then it's more like, okay, did we execute the game plan? Game plan today, transferring it to paragliding. Okay, my game plan was I want to have a good start right in the front. I want to push the first 30 % of the race to get max leading points. Then I want to hang back a bit and stay with the group to go. So now you would ask yourself, did I execute the game plan? And say, "Oh, I had a shitty start, uh, and now I didn't really push the first 30. I attacked in the end and pushed there. Did it make? So, so, it didn't execute the game plan. And then you would say, 'Well, did it work or not?' It's still good, fine, then it's okay. But why didn't you do that?" Well,
I forgot that the main lead points were in the first 30 percent. I was distracted, and my P2 wasn't in the right position as on a seven-piece again. So, little things. And you would go through something like this, and then at the end of all this, there must be a lesson learned. And every single flight of my air force had at the end, "Now, lesson learned." And LL would formulate. So, if you would do the same thing tomorrow, would you do the same thing again, or where would you do something different? Even if it's a little bit, get my P-tube straight and then pushing the first 30 percent. And I remember, I remember exactly there where I left that thermal, but that was on a point of the race where I didn't want to do that because I wanted to hang with the guys. And then you have a debriefing going, and you can use that.
So the mistakes are very, very important. So you should embrace your mistakes. They're your friends. So a flight without any mistake is kind of a sad thing because you don't learn anything. You see it like this. So it doesn't have to be a catastrophic mistake, but especially in cons. And this is the difference between doing it joyful or getting angry or frustrated.
I mean, I remember, I think it was two years ago in Ager, German Open.
I was really good at one task. And I was at Mark Wenzel and Johannes Baumgartner. They were pushing like hell on this rich full bar speed. And I tried to stick with them and fine. And they're going and going. Oh, and I look at my instrument and say, hey, guys, we have to go left at one point. We have to leave it because the next turn point is like 15k to the north. We're going east. And they were such in a like racing each other that at one point, I just like, no, see you. And I peeled off and I was alone. I had to cross this whole thing. And they bombed out. And at the end, they said, well, we just forgot about it. They were just having fun. They really missed it. But then at that moment, I said, "Yeah, great, I did a good decision." And there was now like the front edge, little groups now split it up and transitioning over.
And then, for this analysis, what I just said, and then I saw this—these two birds circling at the end of the canyon. I was not the highest anymore, and the sun was in there, so I was like, "I should go there because this is a trigger point. Point, if I catch that thermal, I can win that house." So I go for that, and then I suddenly realized the rising terrain. I push. I still had options going left to right. I was alone, nobody else with me. I cannot reach these two birds; they're climbing out above me. And I basically, I landed at the end of this rugged canyon there somewhere in Asia, and it's like, "Fuck, I just went there finding out." Well, well, this is not really a path out. And basically, I packed up my stuff, hiked two hours till the next street.
Jessica was picking me up there with the car and I was scratched and all my t-shirt was ripped because it was just the middle of nowhere. But I was just sitting down. I remember when I was landed, it was so beautiful because it was quiet and this fresh bushes, the smell of them. And I just laughed at myself. like from hero to zero in like two minutes, right? It was a huge mistake, huge mistake. I just could hung back, waited for paper, and the other guys join up with these guys.
It's incredible. This is a lesson we have to learn many times, man.
It's like, it was still like 20, 30 days to go. There was no rush or something like this, but I'm sitting there and, and I remember them. And this is what you can train out, that's what I wanted to say. It's like I could be there, I said, damn it, what did I do? Man, that's stupid. So instead of no, it just happened. So you sit down and then you just analyze it for a moment. Very good decision to leave the ridge. Mark and Johannes completely wrong. Stuff like this. Everything's fine. Here's the critical point. So why did you do that? So the next time, and I visualized this, I rewind the whole tape, see myself at the same position where I took the decision to go for this spot with the two birds. It's like, no, don't go bar. Go off bar. Get max height, wait till the others come. You had to have an advantage then, and then basically join that gaggle and fly together.
And then I let it go, because once you have your lesson learned... It's no sense in drooling it again and again and again, and it was quite funny because then I remember I had to wait for Jessica quite a long time on this deserted road, and that was like, like just a wasp fighting with an ant. And I remember me sitting like 10 minutes on this road watching them. And this is what I mean with awareness. It's just try to be the moment. And this big mistake, well, threw me back in the comp, but it gave me a memory of life. I will never forget this day. The smell, I will never forget. This hike and this magic moment of this insect. Jessica finally comes and picks me up and then we find something to eat and drive for.
So life is good. Life is good. Life is really good. I can't change it. And it's more for me, it's more funny, but it was a good lesson learned in comp flying, when to risk and when not. Sure. This risk to award is always a big thing.
Yeah, and I mean, I think there's huge crossovers there to just recreational XC flying as well. I mean, you really do have to, that's a constant analysis analysis and, and, you know, you got to get it right or you end up on the deck and when you end up on the deck, that's okay too. Uh, Stefan, I want to be mindful of your time. And I also just heard my little one waking up. So it's about to get really loud. So we'll, we'll, uh, we'll wrap this up in a sense, but I know you're doing, or you have done some guiding and some bivy stuff and cool adventures with jockey and all over the world. What, what, um, what's a risk in your students and the people you're guiding what's a risk that you wish students would take and more of and a risk that you wish they wouldn't take more of
It's a good question. I mean, if you do your homework, I mean from a baseline of, I always say this, you have to be humble in our sport, like with, I think, every adventure sport which is remote, same like climbing or somebody, so because we don't have a net below or something, so the, uh, the outcome of huge mistakes can be fatal. So you have to be humble and, uh, whenever you have a feeling and everybody's different kind of, I'm fighting nature, I conquer it sometimes. Moyes suggest stuff like this: you're always, always, always the weakest link, so out of this position of humbleness of being nothing, being smaller than And playing intelligently with your knowledge and your skills, you can progress a lot.
It doesn't mean you have to be anxious or something like this. But never, never forget that you are the weakest link in whatever you do. And if you build on that, then be also self-confident enough to push your limits in a safe way. Pushing your limits, I don't mean I go full bar now and I have three collapses in one minute. I have to be, I have to push, not that type of limits. But we all reach plateaus. So in a controlled environment, the story of what I did with my M4 in these days, try to push your limits or with a good SRV instructor, try to push your limits. Or with courses we do, with jockeys, stuff like this. If you are not really sure, join a group, go on an XD course.
We even did a BB course in beer two years ago. Uh, and explore it with people who a can teach you something and B, you have to mind same mindset with you. So, uh, be honest to yourself. That's the main thing. Um, this honesty every day. Um, am I fit for it? Am I fit today for it? Am I on my wing or not? And don't push yourself mentally in a corner where you don't belong. How
important – you're a super fit guy. How important do you think fitness is to flying well? And how do those relate? Do you stay really fit because of flying or is that just who you are?
I like sports. I cycle every day. Right now I'm not time, but uh, I think, um, the type of flying you're doing, fitness is very important. It's like, you, you know that? I mean, if you have to hike for hours, days, or stuff like this, uh, it's a complete different environment. Like, in a competition, I think, in normal flying, it's like in life too, the mental fitness is the main thing. And I think the world we are living in, the Western world, we stress the physical fitness way more than the mental fitness. It's not part of our life or society.
Maybe it's way much more in the Asian or the Eastern cultures. Us, um, that changes a little bit, you know? This is this meditation, or is my mind fit for that? What I'm doing, can I work on that? I think this mental fitness, um, gives you a big advantage in XC flying, in comp flying, and stuff like this. You have to be able, I always say, to enjoy and regenerate in flight. I don't get tired when I'm flying, I even if I have a bad night and shitty day at the the moment I fly, I have the feeling I can regenerate. I'm comfortable harness, I'm in the air, I feel great. I look around, the longer combi is normally better I get because
The mental state is different there. If you don't manage your mental fitness, you will drain—you only have a certain amount of attention bucket, I always say. And every little bit you train it, you train it, you train it. If your gear is not fit, you train it at takeoff because your, your reserve is not nicely fitted. You train it in the start gaggle already because you're not comfortable flying close to others. You train it in the mid-time because the turbulence, your skills are not up to date. And when it's empty, you're tired and you do more mistakes. So for me, I think the mental fitness part is a very underestimated value or position in paragliding.
For me, that's very important.
Last question, how has flying and put your Air Force into this too, and so all the flying you've done, how has flying changed your life?
It was always a part of my life.
And that's a complex question because, well, say it like this, from a young guy just coming from school, dreaming of being a pilot, you have the doubts and everything. thing. Oh, they only take like a few of ten thousands who want to do that. You never make this; they're all superheroes and stuff like this. This experience, uh, what the effort showed me, to show me what capabilities are in myself, which I never thought I would find. There was a big point in how I see myself in life, what I do in the same time, not like in overconfidence, that's the complete different way. It also showed me the this weak side, this humbleness and stuff like this. So you have to work hard, you can achieve something, but with the right attitude, and this, I think, for myself gave me a feeling that I can deal with life in
Anyway, it comes to me this, this basic relaxed confidence that I can handle things and stressful stuff. That's the, the one thing, and um, when I, I always say I rediscovered it in paragliding, because I do not find this in the civilian flying I do. That, it's complete different world, but in paragliding, the same, um, it's that feeling of freedom finally. It's one of the few things in our society which are left over; you are self-reliable, self-governing, nobody's telling you what to do, and no rules and regs. It's you and only you who doesn't make the decisions, and you and only you can be blamed for it.
There's nothing else to play, and this is kind of a constant recalibration of who you are as a person, and a constant recalibration on how you should see yourself, because I think modern society doesn't give us this anymore. Everybody's great, everybody has a cool job, money and stuff like this, and people start to believe that till the point where you really get dragged out of this environment, maybe your job, maybe you're the way you live, so, and who are you? And so flying made me, I think, deeply philosophical about that. Nowhere am I, is it really me or not? What do I want? What is important? What is not important? This feeling of just being a little nothing in a big kind of environment, nature, universe, whatever
and giving me a very, very solid and deep gratitude for this life, this few years I have on this planet. I think it's the whole baseline of how I see my life and how I go through it; it's more or less shaped by flying
beautiful, Stefan Stephan, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I can't wait for us to fly again, my man. That would be so fun. And give Jessica a huge hug for me. And you guys be safe, be healthy, and see you at Cloudbase here sometime.
Yeah, hopefully soon. Take care, Gavin. See you out there.
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 up 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. 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 costs. So if you can support us financially, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show. 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, 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 I, for a whole bunch of different reasons, which I've said many times on the show, I don't want to do that. I, 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. site. We've 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, uh, nuggets that we find in conversations that 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, and you're being in a position someday to be able, 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 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.