Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Don't have any housekeeping for you this week except to go vote. We're running out of time. Many states' deadlines for registration has already passed, so make sure you're registered to vote. If you're not sure or need some help voting, just go to patagonia.com forward slash elections, and they'll walk you right through it. So please do it. This is a big one. My guest this week is Coney Shafroth. He is the brainchild engineer and designer behind the XC Racer Varios, that whole family of Varios, which are the most accurate and sophisticated Varios on the market. Many, many people have now switched over to them, and you'll find most of the X-Alps athletes use them.
I've been using them since my first race in 2015. These are just featherweight. Many of the Bluetooth ones are just solar-powered. You never need to charge them. They just release. They're max, which is fully independent. It has a screen. It's a Vario that gives you everything, like the Varios of old, but much more accurate. We talk about the difference, what goes into them, what makes them different from other Varios, the main thing being the accelerometers and the difference between that and a barometer. So we talk a lot about Varios, but also how to climb better, how to find the core. He's amazing. He's got an amazing history. He's been at this. He's been at flying for more than 30 years. He's from Bern, Switzerland.
So the Bernese Oberland, one of the most incredible places to fly in the world. This is the Interlaken, Eiger, Wallis part of the world. Pretty amazing zone to fly in, in Switzerland. And so we talk about how he flies and how he chases it. He doesn't chase kilometers. He chases beauty and flying over glaciers and midnight flights. And his pursuit. His pursuit is pretty clean. And I liked that. So talk a little bit about dangers and risks and one accident he had along the way and what he learned from that. And just a really fun talk with a very interesting mechanical engineer, yet another engineer who has taken strongly to the sport.
So without further delay, please enjoy this conversation with Kony Shaprock..
Kony, it's great to have you on the show. We've been having lots of emails over the years as the designer of the XC Racer, which everybody knows who listens to the show and knows I'm a huge fan of, and we'll be using again in my fourth X-Alps coming up, crazily enough, in June. And so that was just announced. That was pretty exciting, but really fun to talk to you and talk barrios and climbing and your quite considerable history. I just want to thank you for that. I didn't know you've been flying for more than 30 years. How'd you get into all this craziness?
I don't know. I'm a curious guy and I always have a lot of ideas and flying. I was interested in flying since I was a kid. And when I was 16, I started learning to fly gliders on a wooden plane, on a K-8. And then I made my glider license.. And after that, I went to Zurich and studied mechanical engineering. So flying was not that much the priority, rather partying and other stuff. And then when I was 22, just paragliding started. And I had the opportunity to fly with a, it was rather a parachute. And I thought, well, this can be made different.
And then there, near my parents was a guy who was making his own paragliders. It was called Northails, I think then. And then I contacted this guy and said, hey, I can make a paraglider which flies much better than that what you have. And they said, I don't believe, but you can try. And then I made the first one. And it was really, really flying better than the gliders he had. But to be honest, he also had a lot of luck that he didn't have a bad accident. It's really, we have been lucky. This is how it all started.
Was this back in the 80s? Yeah. I guess late 80s, early 90s?
Yeah, yeah. It was 87, 88, something like that, when it started.
How many cells did your first glider have? This always cracks me up. I think gliders back in those days.
I think it was around 20, 20, 21 cells. And it was the first glider where you could fly over the Lake of Thun. You know, you could fly from Nissen and cross the lake and land on the other side of the lake. This was really fantastic.
Wow. So what was that glide ratio? Is that like a four to one?
No, no, no. It was already six to one.
Really? Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. So it was a high performance glider for back then.
I wouldn't fly nowadays these days with it. But yes, then it was a glider.
Right. How many people ended up in the lake back then?
Only me once.
Because we had a, you know, we had a, first it was my brother flying over the lake. That was not good. It was a problem. Then we had a smaller glider. And the boss of the company said, oh, I want to know if the smaller glider can make it too. And then I took off from Nissen. And that was the era where you didn't have really flight instruments. You had no idea. But you just went flying. And then I had the impression, well, glide ratio is not so good. I will not make it because there's too much headwind. And the guy said, no, no, no, no, no. You're far above the mountain. It works. What he didn't tell me, he was crossing the lake with his motorboat to the other side of the lake. Just in case. Just in case. So, of course, I'm much higher than the top of Nissen then. And then in the end, I landed in the boat. Nice. Which was, yeah, but that's easy.
Just there is no wind. It was open, I think, when we did it. And that's easy. But then you had the stupid idea to have to tow me back to the shore. That was not a good idea.
You mean with the glider still up? So you landed and you kind of started accelerating? Ah, fantastic.
Yeah, yeah. You
started accelerating
and then you can imagine the rest. Not so good.
And does your brother still fly?
Yes, but he doesn't have that much opportunity because he moved to the Netherlands, which is not so good for flying. But you can fly there.
Yeah. The dunes. My next guest is going to be Ferdi, you know, Van Shelven, who has done really well. And he took a bye last year. He took some time off and he was hanging out with Tom de Dorlodot during the race, just to see if he really missed it, which he did. So he's applied again. And he's also, he'll be, he's always one to beat. So he's going to be in the next show. But he's from the Netherlands and he's doing pretty well flying in the mountains. So they must figure it out.
No, you can't. I actually was flying once in the Netherlands. Funny story. I went to visit my brother. And then Lisa, my spouse, wanted to go to the sea and to walk. And then my brother and his wife made, you know, the proposition to go to walk in the dunes. And then we were walking there in the dunes, maybe for, I don't know, half an hour or so. And suddenly I see something red. Just a short glimpse, something red appeared and then disappeared. Strange, what is it? And then a few seconds later, it appears again. It was a glider. And then I said, okay, it might be fun to fly there at the dunes. And then I couldn't convince my brother to fly with, to ask a guy that I can fly or use a glider. So he didn't want to do anything.
So I said, okay, I'll try it myself. And you can imagine there's the Dutch experts, the guys who know really how to fly on a dune. There comes a guy with dirty jeans, with a leather jacket, looks a little bit, I don't know, not so fresh. He approached the first one and asked him, can I take your glider? And he looks at me and, yes, if you want to try, you can try. I'm sure he was convinced that he would not be able to take it. He would take off. But the story was it was not so difficult because there's a spot in Switzerland where we often go soaring in the winter. So I was quite used to it. And then I just, yeah, you inflate the glider, inflate the glider. And then my brother pushed me to the dune and I was flying there back and forth.
And with a little bit of break, the glider was almost stalling. And a little bit lower angle of attack, it was collapsing. So I flew for a few minutes. Yeah, yeah. Very dangerous. I flew for a few minutes and then I landed and said, hey, with this glider, please never fly again with this glider. Something is wrong. And I asked him for his address because I thought, well, it might be a good idea to send him a mini-tube because he was so nice to let me fly. And then a week later, he sent me an email saying, oh, thank you very much for flying with my glider. I had to trim it afterwards. It was really completely out of trim. You're right. It was very dangerous to fly. I think it was 15 centimeters, the longest deviation from me.
Oh, yeah,
yeah. That's a little out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was fun.
I've actually sold quite a few of my comp gliders to pilots in the Netherlands because they apparently, you know, it's pretty windy and it's in the sand. So they get abused quite a bit because you're flying a lot. It's in the sand and the dunes. And so they just want gliders that are really fast, but they don't really care if they're old or, you know, the lines are bad. As long as they're, you know, somewhat in trim and they're fast, then they can – that sounds like a perfect kind of wing for there because you can just – you can fly in a little bit more wind because they're nice and fast. And it sounds quite fun.
I prefer snow.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,
totally. Because
snow is soft if you make something wrong. You can crash. You can crash into snow. If you have one meter of powder snow, nothing happens. If you have sand, oh.
Yeah, exactly. No, it's very, very forgiving. I think that's Chrigel always talks about that. That's one of the ways he's gotten so good at dealing with a lot of wind is just going out in the snow because you can mess up.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's – so that's kind of your zone. That's where you fly. You live in Bern. Have you been – are you from Bern originally or is that just the area you're from?
No, I was born. I was born in Bern and then the family moved to Thun. This is where other ones is. And I grew up in Thun. And then I went to Zurich for studying mechanical engineering at DTH in Zurich. And then I moved back to Bern.
You had another engineer in flying. This is a topic that comes up a lot on the show. It seems that the sport really attracts your kind – an engineering type of mind, which I don't have. Much more by feel. But it's interesting that the number of mechanical engineers and the number of engineers in the sport.
Yeah. I think that normally engineers are not so emotional people. And paragliding is only about emotions in fact. And I think that's a good way to have good emotions. I think that's why it's very attractive for engineers. Or programmers or these kind of people.
That's interesting. I haven't heard that side of it before. So it allows you to tap into a part of your brain that's not very natural to tap into.
Yeah, I think so. It might be.
Interesting.
You told me before we started talking that your real passion for the sport now over 30 years has never really been – or maybe it was at some point. But it certainly isn't now kind of kilometer crunching, which is for many people. They get into it and it's just amazing. And they're blown away and then they get into this kind of endless search of bigger and bigger and bigger. That doesn't drive you.
No. No, not at all. It's just I like the beauty of it.
And it can be short flight. It can be a long flight. It can be a flight of 4,000 meters flying over the glaciers. It can be midnight soaring or after midnight soaring, deep snow. I like all this stuff. Or going to a soarers, soaring along the coast. It's just when it's beautiful, when it's nice, that's what I like. I don't have to prove anything. So I don't have to count kilometers or whatever. It's not my style.
Is that been – are you quite passionate about – have you kind of kept that passion for the sport since the beginning or is it kind of ebb and flow?
No. I think it remained. It's just – if I can't go flying for two or three weeks. I get a little bit kind of nervous. It's not good. I think you know it.
Yes, yes, indeed.
Yeah, but when I can fly, then all is good.
How has flying changed your life?
I think it makes it a bit unpredictable in the sense when you have an office job. You have an office job, you know more or less what's going to happen. Then you go paragliding. You never know what's going to happen.
I'm pretty sure that I will get back in one piece. But you never know where it ends up. If it's a long flight, it's a short flight. If you fly far, if you fly high, you never know. And this is the – it gives some kind of adventure, some kind of unpredictability to daily life. So it makes it more interesting. It's difficult to explain. Maybe you'll get it. I don't know.
No, that doesn't – that's not difficult at all. You explained it really well. When you plan your flying adventures, is it, oh, it's a good day. I'll just go see what happens? Or do you have an objective?
Depends. A few times a year, I go to fish.
And the objective is always to fly as far back to Bern as possible. But until now, it was not possible to do it completely.
Yeah, sometimes I have objectives. Sometimes I don't care about – I don't care at all. I just fly. And very often, I go testing. So meaning if it's not for the fun of it, we go testing hardware and software. So that's completely different then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just to stay in the air for three hours to see if the code is reliable and consistent. So it's different.
And is your job now exclusively XC Racer or do you still have your day job in XC Racer as a on-the-side kind of thing?
You're right. Now XC Racer is consuming far too much time. It's impossible to have a job besides XC Racer.
Well, that's good though. So you can pursue something that you're obviously not interested in. So you're really passionate about. That's fun.
Yeah, that's fun. But it's really a lot of work and nobody imagines how much work it is. It's really – we try to make a product which is as reliable as possible and which is as simple as possible. And this makes it so complicated. Sure. This is the main problem.
Yeah, yeah. It's like Yvon Chouinard said, the hardest thing in the world is to simplify your life.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a little bit like that. It's really a big effort. We developed robots, for example, for the production. We have now – how many are there? Six, I think. We have six different robots we use for the production.
You mean robots to put them together?
To assemble? Yes. Wow. Wow. Well, it's not complicated robots. But you have to develop them and nobody knows. And we don't show them because we don't want to. We want the competition to know what we're doing. But it's a lot of stuff that the customer doesn't see. So it's really, really time-consuming.
I can't even imagine how much goes into the – well, okay. Let's rewind to the genesis. How did you decide to even get into this project?
As I said, I'm curious. And I like to make sports. And a few years ago, over Easter, I wanted to go skiing. And the weather forecast was so bad, I desperately needed something to do. And then I stumbled over an Arduino starter kit. Arduino is some kind of microprocessor, simplified microprocessor environment. And I bought such a starter kit. And then it was tinkering. And the first LED was blinking. And then I had the fuel LED blinking. And Lisa always said, what's that good for? And at the time, I was working from 10 to 10. I still do on the watch project. And after a few days, I had the idea, oh, I could use it for making measurement instruments for my watch project.
And this is how it started. And I always said that instruments, the time lag, this is something I didn't like because it's not intuitive. It's like when you're sitting in a car and then you're on the highway. And then you know the exit is coming. And two seconds before the exit, you have to turn the steering wheel roughly 30 degrees. And then one to two seconds later, the wheels will actually turn. I don't know. This is a few years ago. And I didn't like that. And I always tried to convince a friend of mine who was working at the startup to build this. But he never wanted. And then with the Arduino starter kit, it wasn't so complicated. It had a pressure sensor and start tinkering.
So nothing was planned. It's just… And
so the first ones… Yeah, okay. Let's get in the technical side of things a little bit. What is an accelerometer?
An accelerometer is a small device which is measuring acceleration.
And how does that differentiate between a barometer?
A barometer is a pressure sensor. And as you can imagine, when you measure the pressure, there's some kind of noise on the signal. That means you can measure the pressure and then you can measure it a very short time afterwards. You will get a different result. So it's noisy, this signal. When you make the average, it's very, very stable. Very, very accurate. But this noise… You have to filter the noise. And when you filter the noise… Whatever you do, you always have a time lag. Because you make some kind of an average or whatever your field tracker algorithm you use. But it's ending up with some kind of time delay. And this is why a barometer with just only a pressure sensor always has a time lag.
So when I first started flying with the XC Racer, I immediately… And this was your first edition. This was way back. You know, the bigger one. Without the solar. And right out of the box, I loved it. But I felt like it was so fast. It felt the air as fast as I could feel it. And I was used to flying my 60-30, you know, my fly tech. Which is obviously, like you said, that's measuring it differently. So it's more of an averager, as I understand it, than something immediate. Yes. And so I got the config file from a PWC pilot, which I've now shared with hundreds and hundreds of people.
Because I've put this out on the show a few times. Are we wrong? Should we not be dampening? Should we learn how to fly with the device just set up as it is, as you send it to us? In other words, should we learn to fly immediate?
I would say so. Yeah, I would say so. Because Xe Tracer indicates exactly what you feel. Because when you feel an acceleration, it's beeping. Or when the thermal stops, the barrier stops beeping immediately.
So it's immediate feedback. You must get used to it. Because when you're flying with an old barrier for 10 or 20 years, then you might have some issues. Because it's like marriage. You get used to it. And it has its good parts. It has its good sides. It has its downsides. But you're used to it. And yeah, I think so. It's really just try to remove the damping factor as much as you can. You can leave a little bit.
But go down with the damping factor as far as you can.
Alex Roby, I had him on the show a while back. It was actually just after the last race. And he's always right up there in the top five X contest at the end of every year. And does these just amazing things. They'll keep us motivated. They'll
keep us motivated. They'll
keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. They'll keep us motivated. to just, because it's so immediate, it's so quick. So that, that's interesting. If I, maybe, maybe if I just slowly lower my dampening down, then I'll improve in terms of flying, in terms of climbing. Sorry.
I think so. Yeah.
What would you recommend to people, pilots who are, you know, you got, you got to think back a long ways here because this was 30 years ago for you, but pilots that are just getting into the sport, you know, you know, learning on their ENA wing and they're just starting to punch into the thermal part of the day. What would you recommend to them for learning how to utilize thermals?
It's difficult to say. It depends on the barrier they have. Normally the instructor tells them you fly into no thermal, it's accelerating. So, you know, you're not going to be able to fly into no thermal. So, you know, you're not going to know that you're climbing. And then after a second or two, it starts beeping and then you wait two seconds, you come 21, 22, and then you turn to the left or to the right. And this is a conventional barrier. And when you have an exit ratio, you can just wait until it's beeping less and then you can make the turn. The fact that what I, with a conventional barrier, what I feel, what my body, what the body tells me and what the barrier is telling me is never, it's never the same. So I always had to judge, is it, is the barrier correct or I am correct or was it, what is it?
It's not nice to fly like that. And when you have a barrier like exit ratio, you don't have to judge because what the barrier tells you is what you feel. So it's consistent.
Yeah, I can, I can vouch for that, you know, a hundred over a hundred times. It's just, it's, it's, you feel that little bump in your left butt cheek and that's,
that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,
that's, that's,
that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, it tells
you at the same time that you just feel a little bump in your left butt.
I'm doing a show coming up. We, we call them, ask me anything shows. And one of the questions that came in, I haven't recorded the show yet. We'll do that in the future, but I'm going to give this one to you. I was a newer pilot who said, you know, I'm starting to really get thermaling. I understand. And I'm starting to feel, okay, it's, it's, this one's more on my left or this one's on my right. I'm going to turn that way I'm very often being out-climbed. So the question was, how do I find the core?
What I normally see when people are out-climbed, they make circles that are too large. That's the main issue. They don't dare to make tighter circles. So what you can try is just wait until the vario is beeping less, and then make a turn. And then you'll find it quite quick.
And what if you turn the wrong way initially?
Oh, then you fall out of the thermal. It's very simple.
But do you recommend people stay with that turn and just widen it out and come back on the next one? Or immediately make a change and say if you were going left, you immediately make the change go right?
Depends. I can't tell. Depends on the situation. Depends on the situation where you are. When the glider already has taken a lot of speed, a lot of energy, then it's better to continue with the turn.
If you're thinking a lot, I think continue with the turn. It's difficult to say. It depends. Are there other pilots flying? Is the mountain close? There's a lot of factors playing into the decision.
Wind being a big one as well.
Komi, when you say you're doing a lot of things, testing and refinements, you just released the MAX, which is kind of the gold standard of barrios in the world today. There's no real doubt about that. How can these things keep being improved? What do you try to enhance at this point?
They're different things. We try to... We constantly try to improve the quality of our products
because when you get a barrio back for the after-sales service, it's always a pain. This is one thing we try. The other thing we try is to improve the production so that we can produce more barrios at the same time. Then we try to make them more reliable, to get even better GPS reception, to get better data. We're constantly trying to improve the sensor data fusion algorithm. We're trying to improve the wind estimation, for example. It's just small improvements here and there. When we have something new, then we just release it to pilots.
Tell me about FLARM because that's not something that's very prevalent in the US. You may have followed. We just had this massive search and rescue effort for Kiwi. There were a lot of people who were interested in it. There was a lot of discussion as that was going on. Then after he was found about how we could improve our instruments and ability for sending and receiving information that would be helpful to the outside world, especially because we fly most of the... Very, very often in the Western US, we don't have cell service where we fly or at least huge patches where we don't. Tell me about FLARM. It's wild. It's valuable, mostly in Europe.
What that allows... What is the added safety of having FLARM?
The thing is we have... In Europe, we have a lot of traffic in the air. We have a lot of gliders. We have a lot of helicopters, a lot of small motor planes.
FLARM was initially developed as an anti-collision system for gliders. Because gliders are white, clouds are white, and it's very difficult to spot them. And if they're flying with high speed, 150K, 200K below a cloud, so they approach each other with 30, 40 meters per second or even more in 50, it can be very difficult to spot the other glider. And there was quite a few accidents where gliders were colliding and when a glider collides, then it's almost always at least one is going to... And so that's why FLARM was developed. And then first it was just for gliders. And now, as I said, it's also used by helicopters and by motor planes.
And now we use it also for paragliding. And for paragliding, there are two effects.
With FLARM beacon, I can make myself visible to glider pilots or to helicopter pilots or whatever. So they know that I'm here. Even if there's a cloud between us, they will see me over a distance of a few kilometers. So this is one aspect. It's just the safety aspect of getting seen, even if the view is not so good. When you're flying below a cloud, visibility can be very bad, but the glider will know that you're there. This is one aspect. And the other aspect is that with our FLARM, you can also see. You can see where the others are. So we can see where the other paragliders or hang gliders are. And you can use this as a body feature for when you fly in a team, then you can see, oh, this one is flying just two kilometers on the left side of me
or is 10 kilometers ahead or whatever. You see them. And the third feature that can be very useful is
the MAX will not switch off automatically. You have to switch it off yourself. And the reason for that is it will send, as long as the battery is still a bit charged, it will send a FLARM beacon twice per second. And this could be used for tracking in the worst case when you have an accident.
Would the FLARM be as accurate as, say, a LiveTrack 24 that has, when the devices have cell service, is it the same kind of accuracy? Better or worse?
I don't know the other one, but the accuracy that we have is a few meters. So it can be very accurate. This is not the problem.
Oh, wow. Amazing. You know, in the last three X-Alps, you have created a config file for all of us that has allowed us to use it as an IGC tracker when we're on the ground. So it's another backup feature, which has been just unbelievable. And the solar version, the mini, has been, you know, it's been a lot of work. I mean, I don't never have to charge it. It just goes forever. So things like that have, for the race, or when you have all this other stuff to charge, is really valuable. I mean, obviously at night, we're going to put it on charge just to be safe, but I don't know that I've ever, I mean, this whole summer I've flown with my mini all summer. I've never charged it once.
Yeah, this is, as I said, we're constantly trying to improve our products.
We're good engineers, but we're not good salesmen. You can see that on our webpage. Yeah, and we have, it's difficult to explain. We have a, yeah, how should I tell that? We have a certain way of doing things. First of all, we try to source as many stuff as we can in Switzerland. For example, for the Max, the glass is from Switzerland. The plastic injection molding is made in Switzerland. The PCB manufacturer is in Hungary. And the PCB pick and place mounting is made in Switzerland. The assembly is made in Switzerland. So we try to make as many things as we can with local suppliers, as long as it's, as long as it's, as you can pay for it.
So we try to get, we try to avoid to buy stuff from China for two reasons. One reason is that, it's good to have product production locally. And the second, it doesn't make sense to buy something 10,000 kilometers important, then just transported here. It's just, I know it's just a certain way of doing business. We just try to make an honest business. We don't try to sell as many values as we can. We just, when you have a customer, for example, a coupe car coming to us and then a potential customer being very enthusiastic and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then in the end, it turns out he's flying paramotor. Then we tell him, okay, we can sell you an XC Racer, but it's not worth it because you will not need an instant vario for flying paramotor.
It doesn't make sense. Go to competitors, you can buy a cheaper vario there. This is good for you, that's it. And the reason for that is, first, we really think so. It doesn't make sense to sell a product to someone who cannot, who doesn't know how to use it. This is point one. And point two is, we will then see the same guy one year later, and he will not be pleased when he sees us because he says, well, you sold me something which is too good for me.
No, it's true.
It's not the same. No, I get it. I get it. Yeah, it's funny to think that something is too good for somebody, but in the paramotor world, I totally understand that. That makes sense.
Yeah, it doesn't make sense. So that's how I said it. Maybe it's not the same. Maybe a bit different. I don't know. We just want to make honest business. And for example, we launched the Xe Tracer 2. And when we launched the Xe Tracer 2, Krikkel was flying with prototypes of a Mini 2 GPS, the first X-Opes. I don't know if you have seen that. Yeah, sure. But we have not been 100 % sure that the solar panel was really good enough for charging the whole vario. So we said, okay, we better make the bigger product, even if it's bigger than some competitors. But then we know that the solar panel will charge the vario that it will work. And as soon as we are really sure that the Mini also works well with the solar panel, then we will release the Mini, not before.
And is there any, this is a curiosity, because I still have that one. And I have that on my comp kit. And I use the Mini 3 on my hike and fly kit, just because then I don't have to switch them back and forth. I know that's crazy, but it's just nice. It keeps me from forgetting something. But is there any, am I missing anything with that? I mean, in terms of the, you know, each one gets a little bit better, but in terms of the sound and the accuracy, is there any much reason to, if you've got one of the older models, should you upgrade?
No, no, it's not. No, there's no need for that. It's, if we have a code or new sensor data fusion that also runs on the old varios, then also, yeah. Release it for the old varios. The sensors are not that good, but you don't, most of the time, you don't feel the difference.
Yeah, that's a hard way too, Kony. You're not making things obsolete like Apple, where every phone you get, you've got to get a new charger and a new thing and a new remote and new headphones and, oh my God, drives me crazy.
No, we try to make the products as good as we can. It's maybe not good for business-wise, but that's how we work. I don't know. Well,
good for you. That's refreshing. Okay, well, let's switch to some of your flying. I wanted to ask, in all these 30 years you've been at this, have you had any accidents?
Yes, I had one three years ago, four. It's like always, it's a lot of factors that play a role there.
I had a glider which was, before I always had gliders, that when you brake too much, the wing was going to bend before it would make a stall. And this new glider was just stalling over the whole wingspan, just was stalling back.
This is one reason, and a reason was I was testing various, and then I wanted to land on top of a hill. And there's a rather large field. And I wanted to land on top of a hill. And I didn't, there have been some clouds and I didn't really look carefully because when I approached the field, then it was covered by cows. But you know, the real cows are horns. So it was not possible to land there. And the large field was in some kind of a lee, but since it's large, no problem. And then just before the field, there was some kind of a platform made of concrete. And so to land on a concrete platform is not a good idea when you're in a lee.
So I tried, I had to avoid, I had to fly to the left side. On the left side there have been trees and the lee was stronger. And then I had a stall roughly two meters above ground and it was falling on my back.
It was not good.
Did you break your back?
Yeah, it was just half broken, but I was very lucky. So I don't feel anything. Oh,
wow, great. Did you have a good proper harness with a big pad or was it just you just
landed or Alki? That helps.
No, no,
I had a good, I had a harness. And it really just was just different factors that led to this accident. And I was really embarrassed because before that I was flying without any accident for 30 years.
It's funny how the embarrassment comes in. It's an interesting emotional aspect to what we do. Or just a little tiny bit of complacency or just, you know, thinking about something else briefly. Or just doing something that you know you didn't need to do.
Yeah, and then that's too late. And
then it's too late? Exactly.
Yeah, yeah. I learned, what I've learned in 30 years is that paragliding is very, very difficult in fact. And my landing spots get bigger and bigger. And I still, after 30 years you can have, you know, you can have a lot of problems. You can learn new things about aerodynamics for example or about weather. Things you never would have thought it's possible but it happens.
Yeah. I
think paragliding is probably more dangerous than we think, than we believe. I
think that's probably 100%. I think that's for sure.
We've pushed the boundaries a bit too far. That's the issue.
Why? Why have we done that? What's pushing that? I
don't know. I think it's just to have more kilometers in the logbook at the end of the day I think. I think it's, this is the reason. I don't know.
Yeah. I would agree. I think there's a, you know, there's a really good side of something like X-Contest and there's a bit of a dark side as well. It's, you know, it's great to have the database. It's great to have the knowledge. It's fantastic to have the inspiration. Yeah. But it's also, there is a dark side there. There is a, you know, that's not really the reason. This has come up a lot lately. I'm not trying to be preachy in any means because I definitely fall into that category 100%. But it's a dangerous pursuit.
Yeah. It's just I think paragliding is dangerous and there's just some certain weather conditions where we simply shouldn't fly. The eagle can fly maybe but the others shouldn't.
That's right.
And this is the main problem I think.
Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, it's interesting. I asked a lot of the, we did this kind of, we did three shows after the X-Hops where I interviewed a lot of the participants and a lot of the athletes in it afterwards. And that came up a number of times that it is quite dangerous. But it's the least dangerous for Chrigel. He's the most relaxed. He's the most trained. He's the most calm. And when you watch him, especially when he gets out in front, he's having a lot of fun. He's not, he doesn't seem to be, is having to press it nearly as hard. Whereas the rest of the field is, they're sleeping less, they're pressing harder, they're pressing their bodies harder and harder to try to keep up.
Yeah. So I think in the end, he's actually taking the least risk.
I think so because that's always the case when you're in front. You have to take less risk than the other ones.
Sure. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Well, we get to see him perform in his seventh this June. That will be fascinating as always. If you could rewind the clock to your 50-hour flying self, what would you tell that Tony? Knowing what you know now.
Be more careful, I would say. When I was flying on my own paragliders, learning to fly on my own paragliders, we had a lot of luck.
I was 20 something, 22. So yeah. Nowadays, I see things completely different. But I'm much older.
Right.
Did you say, do you have kids? No. But you mentioned your partner, Lisa, was that her name? Yes. And does she fly?
Yeah, she flies too. Yeah. Okay. She was flying in a tandem with me for more than 15 years and suddenly she said, okay, I want to learn it myself.
Wow. Were you a commercial tandem pilot for a while or just for fun?
No, no, never. No.
Okay. Wow. Interesting. I was going to say if you had kids, did that change your – well, let's talk about risk. How has your risk profile changed over the years?
It's getting less and less risky.
Yeah. Do you attribute that to age or knowledge or seeing accidents or all three?
I think it's all three. It's all three. It's just you learn more. You know more what can happen. You see things you wouldn't like to see and then you get older. You get older. I think you know that too. It's just when you get older, you think more and you simply take less risks. Hmm.
Well, let's end this on a super positive note. Best flight – best flying experience you've ever had and feel free to think about it for a while. I know we've all had many but is there something that pops to mind you can share?
There are a few of them. There's not just one.
Share more than one. We have plenty of time.
No. It's always absolutely great when you can fly over the glaciers and it's fun to see when everybody is chasing the valleys up and down. I'm trying to fly over the glacier to climb the Finster Aarhorn or whatever mountain. I'm trying to fly as high as possible. This is very, very emotional. It's really, really great. It's one thing. The other thing which can be very fun is we have been once on holidays in Mallorca and Lisa's kids wanted to have some fun. But there wasn't much.
But we had the opportunity to rent a tandem. Wow. And then we were soaring along the coast with the tandem until sunset.
Wow. That was
really amazing because we didn't take anything with us. We never thought that there would be paragliding at this time of the year. But they flew and we could rent a tandem for little money and this was really, really great. It just came out of the blue.
Yeah. I've sailed around Mallorca. I can't remember. I think we flew. Would it be like the northeast side of the island? We flew from a little mountain but it wasn't on the coast. We flew over dirt. But was this the flight you did, one of these cliff kind of flights where you're over the water?
Yeah, yeah. It was one of those flights, yes.
Those are just magic. I had one of those. It was actually that picture from that went all over the place and outside magazine and stuff that Jody took. But I flew. I don't know.
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you. I'll keep it for you.
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you. I'll
keep it for you. I'll keep it for you. I'll keep it for you. I'll keep it for you. I'll keep it for you. I'll keep it for you. I'll keep it for you. spot and it was always too cross or too strong or too light or you know it has to be just right because otherwise you're going the ocean and finally on the last day we were there we got it right and it's still to this day and that was a long time ago that was 2009 i think 2010 and it's still one of the most memorable flights i've ever had i mean you just couldn't it was just perfect you didn't have to worry about going in the ocean and you're just flying flying over the atlantic ocean yeah next stop united states it was that was that was pretty special
when you go flying on the stories it's really special the problem is that when you go flying our stories and then you come back then you need holidays because you you meet the local guys and then three or four times it ends up at two o 'clock in the morning and you're dead you you
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