Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Before we get into this show with Bastien, I just wanted to thank all of you for listening and for making all of this mayhem possible. We've been at this almost six years now. I think that's right. This crazy experiment. It has been a real joy and a ton of learning for me and I hope for you as well. And yeah, it's just been a lot of fun, and obviously I couldn't do it without you, so thank you, thank you for listening, thank you for participating, thank you for sharing it with your friends and spreading the love and getting more people to listen. I really do truly appreciate it, and
we're also always trying to improve so I thought you know Bastien and Ed Ewing sent me this book book, The Beginner's Guide to Paragliding, which was just published. And that's what we're going to be talking about today in the show. But it is truly a terrific book. They sent me a couple copies and I thought, well, why don't I just, I read it before talking to Bastien. It's fantastic. And I thought, well, I should give these back to somebody else. So I've put up a little survey on the website and it's cloudbasemayhem.com forward slash survey. If you go there and fill fill it in. It'll only take a few minutes and tell us how we can improve. We are, as of this show, 140 shows in and we'll just keep going and going and going.
But of course, we always want to get better and make content that you love and you come back for again and again. So go fill that out and you'll be in to win one of these beautiful books or a bunch of other. I'll throw a whole bunch of Cloudbase Mayhem swag into the ring as well, so new truckers hats and Patagonia hats and Patagonia t-shirts. He's got another new shipment of those; you can also buy any of that stuff, of course, on the website cloudbasemayhem.com. But again, the survey is just at the website cloudbasemayhem.com forward slash survey. Fill it in; it's anonymous, if you want it to be, and just let us know how we can improve, and we will try to do that very thing.
My guest today is Bastien Wenzel. She is the, she's a Nederland pilot and instructor, been at this game for a long time. And she produced a book that's really based on helping people get their pilot's license. So this is the beginner end of the spectrum, but just a beautiful book. My friend Jeff Shapiro is actually doing a review on it for Cross Country Magazine right now. We were talking about this a couple of days ago, and we both really agreed that it's just filled with fantastic illustrations. It gives a great history to the sport, and great chapters on aerology and meteorology and gear and just how it all works. I was happy to go through it and find the most things were thankfully review for me as I think they should be.
I've been at this game an awful long time, but there was also some new stuff in there as well that I either hadn't thought about in a long time or just flat out knew. So I certainly wish I had had this, uh, this available to me when I was first learning, and if you don't have it, haven't seen it yet, go to your local shop and pick one up. It's, of course, available online; you'll find the links in the show notes for this show where to find it, but the best way to support it is to, to support our local shops. And I know many of them are struggling this year in this crazy year of corona. So get out in your local shop and pick it up and then share it, read it, enjoy it. So without further delay, please enjoy this conversation with the author of Paragliding, The Beginner's Guide, Bastian Wenzel.
Bastian, thanks for joining us on the Cloudbase Mayhem. I've been really excited to talk to you. I've just this morning finished your fantastic book that you did in conjunction with Cross Country Magazine. I've been involved in a similar effort over the last year. I know it's a massive effort. Congratulations. It's a beautiful book. Thanks very much. I'm very proud that it's finally here. I bet. Yeah, and I understand this is kind of a second version, correct? You wrote it first in Dutch. Give us a little bit of your background. yeah
Sure, I actually, I I've got, uh, three editions in a Dutch version now. This project started, um, five years ago, almost, or more than five years ago, and 2014 summer, I had some time on my hands and I found, actually, well, I could go back a little bit more, I I did my, um, uh, my license, like the advanced license, and I had to do a theory exam for that and I had to study for it and I found no good information, especially in Dutch whatsoever. It was just all collections, so I thought, well, we could actually use a good book in the Netherlands. There was something here, but not much, uh, so after the, uh, I did my license, I started to think about that a little bit more and I also started, together with my husband Erwin Vogt, we started to teach theory courses because that, that wasn't around in the Netherlands either at the time.
So we set the course up and then our students were asking us, well, what can we read? I mean, where's the information? What's the study material? And it just wasn't there. It was either old or not in Dutch language. So in summer of 2014, I had some time on my hands. I thought, well, I'll just start writing, see where it ends. So I wrote a first Dutch version, and then I consulted a lot of Dutch pilots, friends, instructors, schools to help me to correct that. And that resulted in the first Dutch version in the beginning of 2015. 15, so I printed like, uh, printed 500 books of that and thinking that in the Netherlands with about a thousand active pilots, 1,500 who are members of the association, I thought it would last me forever.
I mean, 500 books is going to sell... 500 books, it sold out in two years. Really? Wow, it's gone 500 books in two years? So 250 books in the Netherlands in two years? I was like, like, what's happening here? And everybody was really supportive and using the book to teach. So everybody was really enthusiastic about it. I got a lot of feedback, produced the second version, second edition, updated. And then an English flying friend of mine saw it. He said, you have to translate this in English. I was like, yeah, why? I mean, the British have books. It's all there in English. It's just the Dutch that didn't have any. He said, no, no, you have to really translate it. It's so good, and you have to do this. I don't know, and I said, "Okay, that's fine.
I'm gonna translate a couple of chapters and you're gonna—and you can read it and you can check the English language, you can correct it for me, and then we'll see what happens." He said, "Okay, I'll do that." So that's what happened in about, I think, winter 2016 or something. Uh, I sent him some text in English and he corrected it. Translate, he said, "It's really good." Even now I'm reading it in English. He... She says, it's really good. She really sent it. I was like, hmm, okay, who am I going to send that to? And then the first person I thought of, I'm sure you'll remember this, is Greg Hamilton. Sure. Because I've had some email conversations.
Yeah, he's been on the show.
Yeah, yeah, I know, yeah. He's quite a famous person as well. He had printed, he had published some books of himself. So I thought, maybe he has a this small publishing company of that he can do something for me. So he emailed me back really quickly. He says, "Well, I'm too small to do this, but the guys you need to send this to is Cross Country Magazine." Like, oh wait a minute, I mean those are like the biggest, best in the world. I'm gonna, no, he says, "You can send it there and send them to Hugh Miller, who is the publisher." So that's what I did in the end, not expecting much of it. I sent a couple of chapters, and this was 2017, beginning of 2017, and Hugh was really enthusiastic from the start.
He says, "This is exactly what we've been looking for, to write a book for beginners, not experienced pilots like the books they already have, but for beginners." I mean, the start of the series we have Bruce Goldsmith's book, 50 Ways to Fly Better, and we've got Kelly Farina's book. This is for really advanced pilots, but they didn't have anything for beginners, so they're really enthusiastic and said, "We can work with this, no problem." So yeah, that's what we did. I was amazed, really, that they liked it, and we started working together to improve it. They added a lot, a lot of information. They consulted a lot of instructors, people around the world from their network, to improve it and to add, add to it, to make it bigger and better, and we have so much more photography and illustrations.
Yeah, it's filled with illustrations and drawings and graphs, and I just, I think that's terrific because I think it really suits, you know, they're not, you know, a lot of people can't just read and learn that they need to visualize it, they need to see it. You need to go to the hill. I, I kept thinking when I was reading it that it would have been so nice to have when I was learning because, because it's this kind of handbook. You could go home. You're getting filled with so much each day when you go to the training hill. It's kind of overwhelming. And then this would be a nice thing to go home to and curl up on your couch and reaffirm some of the things you just learned.
Yeah, I'm really happy you say that because that's exactly how I wanted it to be. Like the book that I never had. That sounds a bit dramatic. I don't mean it that way. But there wasn't really anything around like this. It's maybe Touching Cloud Days is a good book, but it was starting to get maybe a little bit, well, it needs an update maybe. It's a good book, and it was not in my language. So, yeah, it's like the book I always wanted to have and need it. So, glad you say that.
Yeah, I mean, the chapter for me that really stood out, I mean, they're all fantastic, but the one that really stood out for me is just the weather one because there's so many terms and terminologies And, you know, adiabatic that I just think it doesn't matter how many times you read it. You always need a little refresher unless you're a meteorologist. And you're right. In the beginning of the chapter, you say, you know, that you didn't know this when you were getting into paragliding, but you're going to become basically a meteorologist. We all do. We have to. That's what we're dealing with every time we go fly. And so it's, you know, it was really, it was comprehensive. It was clear. It flowed well. I mean, they all do, but that to me as an, you know, quote-unquote advanced pilot,
Uh, you know that it was, that was the one I really dug into and and enjoyed, yeah.
That's great, great to hear as well, that there's something for an advanced pilot as well in there, because it's really a beginner's book, but we hope that it's going to be interesting for people that fly, have been flying for a while, like a refresher, you're saying, or maybe something new. So, yeah, it's great, great to hear.
And you're sorry? No, I was just gonna say, you're—you're also, are you the editor or what's your involvement with Lyft Magazine? That's the local magazine, yeah.
That's the local magazine. Lyft is the association magazine, like the, like the Sky Wings, or sure, whatever the other are called. Yep, and I've been doing that as a volunteer since 2011, or something, with a small group, like six or seven, depends on that, changes a lot, but we're all volunteers and we make the magazine four times a year, and I'm the one that keeps the whole bunch together, basically, and make sure that everything gets done on time. And tell me again, how many registered pilots do you have in the Netherlands? The association has 1,700 members. Okay, all of them are really active pilots, of course, but we need to be a member of the association to get our license, and that's how many licenses there are, valid licenses in the Netherlands, and
You have a great thing at the the very end of the book on all the different associations around the world, you know, APPI and USHPA and BHPA and all of them. How does your system work there? Is, I know some like in Sweden, it's really club-based, correct? I mean, I know that's not in the Netherlands, but that, how does yours work, right?
In Sweden, I don't know, um, our, uh, our system just has from the association, there are, are, uh, things you need to know. They have lists of things you need to do, uh, and the schools are members of the association. They are, um, I don't know how to explain that, but they're like, they need to be, uh, um, associated with the association. I'm not saying that right, um, but all these schools, um, are, uh, well, help me out here with the English, yes.
I mean that you, you have it, you have it, you... You have a system that the association puts the rubber stamp on that students have to go through to get their various licenses.
Yeah, and all the schools have their – they are licensed to school paraglider pilots. So they have to be in order to give out the licenses. So you go to a school in the Netherlands, you sign up with one of the 13 schools that are a member of the association. And all these schools have instructors that are also, uh, they have their instructor's license from the association, uh, and so they all have their own, uh, or the association has, um, a number of things you need to do and know. There's like a list, but the instructor in the school determines if you're a good pilot. And then the other thing is you need to do an ethereal exam, um, and that's for everybody in the Netherlands. It's the same, so it's a central exam. You sit down, you do these questions
Uh, there are two or three times a year you can sign up for it for an exam, and you have to pass that, and
How do, how do you, how do the pilots in the Netherlands? You know, I know that for the most part, you're ridge sore, it's pretty flat. Uh, do you do the school there at the dunes, and then then they take groups into the mountains, or how do you get the practical?
Yeah, that's an issue, isn't it? We do a lot of towing, winch operation, especially in the east and the south of the Netherlands. There's a lot of towing. So I would guess about half of the people here do their whole schooling, their whole flight career on tow. And the other ones, most of the schools have, uh, courses in the mountains as well, so you can sign up for a course, you go to France or Austria and do your weeks, uh, training there. So, uh, yeah, I think most people, or no, a lot of people start learning, uh, on toe and then go to the mountains. Or there's also a lot of people that just go with one of the Dutch schools outside of the Netherlands and go to the mountains and learn there.
And you said you and your husband both teach. Do you have your own school? Is that your job?
No, we don't have our own school. And also, the Netherlands is so small that there are only, out of those 13 schools, there are three schools of which the owners can live a bit, but the instructors get, you know, a little bit of cost, but they don't get paid a real salary. So we do it for fun, and we teach with a number of schools, the schools where we learn to fly ourselves. which is paragliding school inferno uh but we teach we sometimes we go with another school as well just it's a small community here so bastian
Can you give me a brief, you know, give me the uh, the first page resume of your, your life of flying? How did you come to this point where you thought, okay, I need to, I need to write a book? I
Need to write a book, uh. It started with just a weekend, the fun in Germany with the school where we learned just an introduction weekend, and then we booked, uh, many years later, but actually we booked a week's mountain course in France, and we actually learned how to fly near the famous site of San Francisco where there's a lot of competitions as well. So that our first flights were from the the world competition sites of, uh, Saint Jean, that's probably our first flight. So that week was, was really nice, but the weather was bad, so we did only like two flights that for a whole week. So we booked another week and another week in Turkey, and another week in Turkey, so we had our license within a year, pretty quick. We, that's like the, I think you call it, P2 license, you can fly independently but not overland yet, cross country.
And I think about a year or two years later, we both did our advanced pilot, so some, some cross country flying a little bit, uh, and we at the same time we started to teach like assistant instructors. I'm still an assistant instructor, by the way, I'm not a full instructor, my husband is, so we can basically run a course together. He would be the responsible instructor and I would help, um. So we started to teach, you know, first just, uh, show people how to attach their gliders and lay out the gliders, and then help to launch, and then the next step is to help to land them. And like I said, somewhere in that process, we found out that there is not a lot of theory, like you can read, you can tell people a lot of things, but it's not, they, we couldn't point into a book or something, and that's how the idea started and
What, what do you think, you know, in obviously using your own system and what you've seen pre-book, what were—what were the big things that people were missing? You know, what were the things where you were constantly going, "Gosh, I, I wish we had something for that."
Well, I think in a daily life, I'm a science writer. So I like facts and I like science. So the things that were missing in my view was I heard a lot of instructors explain things not quite right or completely wrong or completely misleading sometimes. But usually it was not quite right. And I was in the beginning was like, I just don't understand what they're saying. And later I was like, "He's not saying that right, it's just wrong." So I wanted to give the students something to read, like, "Here, this is what it's really like. This is, these are the facts. This is, this is the truth." But it wasn't there. You had to point them to internet, and then, uh, the internet's not, well, there are a lot of, um, fake news on there as well.
So it was pretty difficult to find, uh, to to point them to one book that was clear and easy to understand in all these facts. and at the same time correct. In an
ideal world, this is just so long ago for me, I literally can't remember it. But in an ideal world, somebody listening to the podcast right now who's been thinking about flying or has maybe gone out and seen people fly and land a little bit, or maybe they've had, you know, they've done a tandem or something. What's the best way to, how would you like to see your book used?
Oh, you can buy the book and start reading, but I would really recommend to learn in practice as well. I mean, the book is great and she of course promoted to buy for everyone, but I think the best way is just go out and do it on your own and have fun. Uh, and if you, if you just want to try out for one one day, that's fine. I see a lot of people sign up for a long course or not knowing whether they really are going to like it. And then the schools are requiring them to sign up for a week's long course. Just try it out for a day, go on a tandem or play around. And if you find it something for you, then do go to a school and start flying. And then buy a secondhand glider, or some old equipment, and find a field, or a beach, or something.
Just start playing with the glider. That's the best—the best thing to learn is in practice. And then, if it's raining, or if it's bad weather, if it's cold, or something, or you live in the Netherlands and no flying opportunities, then you just buy the book and start reading about it. How
Do you find a good school? How do you find good people? Oh,
That probably depends on the place where you are in the world. Um, I think in the Netherlands, there are not really bad schools. There are a couple of really small schools, but in for the Netherlands, it depends on they just have different characters. There are no bad schools, but the one is more outdoor minded, and the other one is more towing minded, and the third one is more cross country flying minded. Uh, so and some are, some of them are really for people that are a bit scared, maybe in beginning, so they go slowly and and safe. And some others are more, uh, just go do it and have fun and don't complain about it. So you have to find it, a school that suits your character, the way you're learning.
So that's, I guess that that might hold for the rest of the world as well. Just go out and see if you like the people that are around, just talk to them and watch for a while, and then decide if it's for you in
All your years of assistant instructing, I guess, with your husband and in, you know, writing the book and seeing what you've seen, are there? I mean, it was—it was the book really kind of took you through the whole progression of learning, which was terrific. You know, it has the—it has the history of paragliding, which is always just a blast. Uh, then there's a chapter on gear, and then there's kind of getting started, and you take us all the way through until, you know, more complicated subjects like airspace and rules of the road and getting your license and all the various licenses around the world. But what—what do you—what do you see as the—the biggest, the most important things that people need to get on the way, or things that, uh, cause the most problems?
Oh,
That's a hard one again. I think you have to fly a lot; you have to to just go out and do it instead of, I mean, studying is very good and it's good as a reference to read a lot about it. And I, for myself, I'm really a person that needs to read and needs to know the facts and understand aerodynamics and meteorology. It's not really necessary to fly well. I think you have to fly a lot and fly in a lot of different circumstances and a lot of different places.
From my own experience, What I liked about the school where I learned how to fly is we would go to a lot of different takeoffs and in a lot of different conditions. And other schools that are more staying in one place, the students will only see like a grassy hill as a takeoff, and then when they start to see a rock face or something that's really steep, they don't know how to deal with that. So I think you have to gather a lot of of experience by doing many different things and go to many different places, and maybe switch schools a lot or switch instructors a lot, so that you see a lot of different things instead of just going down from that one little hill. And most importantly, I think people should have fun.
It's not about—well, of course it can be about, um, flying big numbers or big big things, but I think in the end it's a hobby, so you should have fun. Good.
Advice? How about you have some other advice? Sounds like you've got a pretty special relationship with your husband, and I know that that doesn't always work out when people are, you know, participating in the same sport, not just paragliding, but anything. Any advice for, for couples out there, or people that want to become a couple in the, in the sport of free flight? Because, you know, there, there's that, and there's that problem that always hangs out just beyond our reach, which is the risk side of it, you know, that can be kind of tough on couples, I think.
Well, we've never had that problem at all. The only problem we have is that we don't have anyone to drive within two to two weeks.
And it's usually my husband's problem because he ends up running back up the hill and getting the car. But no, we don't have problems like that. I mean, we have a different view on risks, and I take my own decisions, and he takes his own decisions.
But it's fine, I think. We know from each other what we like to do and what we do not like to do. And on the whole, it's more fun to fly together than alone. Otherwise, I mean, we do all our holidays flying. We spend most of our holidays flying. We haven't done anything else, basically.
What a dream. Holy cow. And do you have kids? no we don't have kids if you did have kids would you want them to fly
I have no idea. I never wanted kids, so I... I've never thought about that, but it would probably be... I think my niece and nephew, I would try to get them to go and attend. My husband, that would be fun, but other than that, I really haven't thought about that at all. I
have a three-year-old, and I've been thinking about that a bit lately. I mean, part and part of me is like, "Oh yeah, that'd be so, so great." Barbie's like, "Yeah, she doesn't like it, that'd be fine too." Yeah,
I can... I lots of lots of parents have, I, uh, there is a Dutch acro pilot, Luke de Veert, who is really, uh, up and coming right now. It's like, he ended a fifth of the world last year, and I know his dad very well. He's my age, and I saw Luke grow, growing up at the beach, playing with gliders, and I think his dad is, is really happy with his son flying. It's, I think, it's fine. So looking at them, it should be fine to have your kids flying, yeah.
You know, that I think a lot of people don't understand that acro is actually really safe. You know, you don't really see that many accidents in in acro. You know, they get really good at throwing their reserve and amazing at wing control. And yeah, I think I think any kind of acro training is is, uh, very important for longevity. I
Fully agree. I'm, I, I like to fly baby acro more than, uh, more than cross country flying, so I, I do a little bit of that, although it's, it's nothing compared to the real guys, but I really have a strong opinion on SIVs. I think everyone that flies in turbulent air should do an SIV, and I know a lot of people that don't. Just, it's just a matter of time that you get a big collapse and don't know what to do, so yeah.
It's like, it's like Russ Ogden says, we're not playing golf.
Right. Yeah. And if you're too scared to do an SIV, you should really consider why you would be flying in turbulent air.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's, let's unpack the book a little bit. Like I said, before we started recording it, we don't want to go, you know, chapter by chapter and through everything that's, you know, people should get the book and do that. But, uh, you know, the, the first three chapters are all, you know, pretty self-explanatory. where I really started getting excited about your chapter, Understanding the Air. What are some of the things that we should take away from that? Because that was really nice to review, I have to say. That was fun. And like I said, there's a lot of illustrations that really help understand glide and just speed bar and what the air is doing and how even lift is created. I mean, these are things that, like I said, I haven't thought of in over a decade.
Right, right. I think aerodynamics is a subject that most people rather skip because they think it's difficult. And why would you want to know why the glider flies? Because it's going to fly anyway. I mean, you don't need to know that. And I totally disagree, but I'm a scientist. So I really like these kind of techie fact things that you can actually calculate. So I've always been fascinated by aerodynamics. But, um, I really didn't really understand it, so there's a, actually, it was a learning process to write that chapter and just to give an example, one of the things that really cleared stuff up for me is that the ratio between forward speed and descent rate, that's actually glide ratio, right? And that's also the ratio between lift and drag, so that, that's just that explains everything, so.
So, what happens when you're braking, and what happens with a heavier pilot versus a lighter pilot? So understanding that part alone got me a lot further. So I didn't know all that either. So I had to read and to ask people what it was all about. Yeah, it made
me think a lot more about, okay, how steeply do I want to bank when I turn? How much brake do I want to use? You know, I think the really, really talented World Cup pilots, you know, unless it's a real heater, you know, you're turning very, very flat and you're letting the glider do almost all of the work. And, you know, so it made me – you've put it in a way where you can really think a lot more about, you know, the differences between parasitic drag and lift-induced drag and how they all bring us down to the ground faster. We have to avoid all these things.
Yeah. I'm not sure if it makes anyone fly better. I'd be really happy if it does. but I think in my mind it's fun to understand why that works, and for example, why does weight shifting work? If you think about it, I mean, why, right? So I didn't get it either, but if you lean one way, that that side should go faster, right? Because it's loaded more, so that's not the way it works, because if you lean to the right, you would turn to the left, so that's not the way it works. And I didn't know that either, so I asked Michael Nestler at one point, who works for Swing sometimes. I don't know if he's well known, yeah.
the acrobatic pilot and and co-author of Acrobatics is still the handbook for acro terrific exactly
Exactly, he's a designer for swing nowadays. I also asked him, "Uh, why does weight shift shifting work?" And it actually has to do with the part of the glider, part of the aerofoil where the lift is generated, which is on the top of the arc, like right in the center on the front on the top. So if you lean to one side, the top of that arc moves to the other side, right? Because the glider banks. So if you lean to the right, the lift moves to the left of the of the of the glider, to the left of the wing, and that side, because it has more lift, will go faster. That's why weight shifting works. I didn't know that. I was like, "Wow, yeah."
That's not intuitive, is it? I mean, there's a lot—there's a lot in there that's not intuitive. I mean, you know, for example, you know, we—we have all always known that that bigger pilots have a better advantage on glide because they're flying a bigger wing. Physics tells us that a—a bigger wing is going to have a better glide, but you've also got more parasitic drag in that person. You've got all these things that balance out that, you know, so a bigger pilot will get to, if you just go on glide, you leave their thermal and you've got a bigger pilot and a smaller pilot and they both go on glide. If they both glide well, you know, obviously we, We can't test for this exactly if it's thermic and, you know, and unstable air and wind and everything else, but if you just, if you had it, if you had the exact pilot skills and the exact air, then the heavier person's going to arrive at the where they land faster, but they're both going to land in the same place.
Like that, that's that was also something that just kind of, I had to read that twice, like, wait, what, what's going on here exactly?
yeah yeah so in in a competition a heavier pilot all things Other things being equal, in a competition, the heavier pilot will go faster, so we get to go first. But if you add wind, it all gets different. So if you're in a headwind, the one that goes slower has a disadvantage. In a headwind, the lighter pilot has even more disadvantage because he's in headwind longer. But in a tailwind, the lighter pilot gets more advantage, other things being equal. cool so it's it does tell you a lot of things although like you're saying in reality it never happens like that yeah
That's the thing, I mean, it's—it's in some ways I hate these sports that have, you know, it's not basketball, it's not just shoes and a ball; you've got all these forces that, you know, that make it fascinating and fun, and also in some ways, you know, especially for—for lighter people, I mean, this has been a big argument for a long time, and Bruce is trying to tackle this with his weightless comps, which I think is terrific that, you know, we've got to account for this somehow to make it fair, but well, okay. Just, just for the listener, describe that. What's the, tell us the difference between the angle of attack and the angle of incidence.
Right. The angle of attack is the most important one. The angle of incidence, it's even in the name, it's difficult because that's an, uh, an airplane term, but the angle of attack is, is important. And that's the angle at which the air that's coming from below hits the profile, hits the cells, and and hits the uh, it hits the aerofoil, so that determines your lift and the lift and drag ratio, and therefore it determines the glide. And the angle of incidence is just the way that the glider, the whole profile is sitting in the air. It's it's usually a little bit backwards, counterintuitively, um, so and that doesn't change much, uh, the angle of incident, just it just changes when you push the speed bar or do something with the trimmers.
But the angle of incidence is not the most important one. The one that's important is the angle of attack. And you change that by pulling the brakes mostly.
And something that was kind of floating around in the back of my mind the whole time I was reading that chapter is— and we've touched on this on the podcast several times, and it makes a big place in the book that we're working on right now with Cross Country, which is, you know, the kind of the other end, it's like the advanced end, but, um, you know, kind of almost like a public service announcement here is, you know, speed really matters and airflow really matters. And it could be, I would imagine, um, you know, maybe some of your local pilots who are just learning on the dunes, uh, and are used to all that wind and not traveling very fast, but hearing a lot of wind and then go into the mountains and, you know, That you kind kind of lose touch with that, and you forget how important speed is, and motion through the air, and relative motion through the air is.
If you don't have it, you're, you know, like as you point out in your book, you're an airplane and you fall. You gotta have a certain amount of speed and a certain amount of airflow, and I always think about that with just, you know, if they're suddenly, if you suddenly gone from, you can hear a lot of air and you don't. That's a, that's a big red flag.
Yeah, yeah, it is. And it's always a confusing concept for people, uh, the relative airflow and a glider always going down through the air, even if the thermal is going up with you in it, and the—the so the ground and the ground speed compared to the ground speed, which can be zero or backwards or whatever, but the airflow, the relative airflow, always has to have a minimum on speed because otherwise your glider stalls, and that's sometimes—that's a difficult concept as well, yeah.
Yeah, for sure. Um, and we—we see this a lot, don't we? On, you know, with—with pilots who are learning, you know, get too deep in the brakes taking off, you know? They don't really have that touch yet, and they don't have that sense of—and landing big time, land. It's probably worse. There's another
really clear example that I see on the beach here in Holland, the high wind soaring on the dunes. When you're flying low over those dunes, we're like two, three, four meters high, they're really low dunes. So you're going fast and you're going low. So your sense of speed over the ground is really, really high. It's like, oh, wait a minute, 40, 50 k's an hour is really fast if you're going low over the ground. And especially when the wind's a big cross, and you're going downwind, your speed can be over 50, 55 sometimes. And if you're that low, a lot of—a lot of people, a lot of new pilots, get a bit scared and they go unconsciously, they pull the brakes a little bit.
They want to slow down, yeah.
just to slow down, it's just
instead of crabbing, or instead of just pointing more into the wind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and
Then they want to make a turn, they want to turn around because they have to go back, and what they do is pull that one brake, that inside brake a bit more, and the glider stalls because you already had it, had a lot of brake on, so you, you spin and you're three meters above the ground, you get a big old crash, and that happens quite a lot, yeah.
We have a, we have a real famous soaring site in, in Salt Lake called Point of the Mountain, where a lot of people like me learned, learned, and that happens all the time. Yeah, yeah. Wow, yeah, one
of the nastiest accidents on the beach and Windsor and High Windsor, yeah.
It's, it's a funny thing, isn't it? Speed is your friend. Uh, yeah. Um, yeah. Well, I, I, I really enjoyed that. The, the—do you have any more to say about that, that chapter? Because you know, the next one's weather, which I just loved. Uh, but do you have any more, any kind of heads ups about airfoil and lift and what we need to understand about the air?
Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it because I'm hoping that a lot of people will actually read it and get something from it instead of thinking, oh, aerodynamics is just difficult stuff that we don't need to know. So it's actually quite a practical chapter that I'm hoping that people read it and understand it maybe for the first time. And, yeah.
to break and, and slowing the glider down. You know, I think that again, I think, you know, climbing is one of these things that takes a lifetime to get really, really good at, but I think you could kind of propel through a couple of things and not use as much and let the glider do more work. And I've been thinking along those lines for years now, but I think it really rammed at home what you're doing when you're slowing down a glider.
Cool. Cool. That's, that's great. Right. It's, that's what I wanted. So I'm really happy.
Weather, you know, so I, I'm not a weather expert. I'm kind of a weather geek, I guess, because I sail around the world a couple of times. So I'm one of these people who, you know, I will always find a skew T challenging. I just, I just can't read and transfer over. But I understand, you know, I understand pressure gradients and fern and you know, know, how weather works and cold fronts, warm fronts, but it, it was terrific. You kind of take us through, uh, the beginning to the end in a nice scaled way, uh, and, and talked about things like, again, terms like adiabatic and, um, that, that I've found really fun.
Um, and, and a great reminder, what do, what do new people need to know about weather? You know, it really is something that, you know, there's the twofold side. There's the theory side, you know, understanding how to even just look at something like exeskies or medio parapente, reading a discussion forecast. To me, it's just time. Nothing replaces doing it just over and over and over again. But where should people start with weather? And what are the most important, you know, if there's five things you really need to know about the weather, what are they?
Oh, wow. That's a big question.
The way I wrote this chapter is I didn't know a lot about it at all. So I just started writing with my own thought process. This is basically my own learning process. This is the way I understand it. But the thing with weather is that all this theory in here, I think it's a bit disappointing in a way. You're sitting on a hill and you're thinking, "Ah, now I know, I learned this from the book, I wrote it myself, or whatever. Now I understand that's happening over there and that's happening over there," and it's not because it's a local system, it's completely different. So I was a bit disappointed after knowing all that. I'm not a weather expert at all, I'm still not. So I thought after writing this, this chapter, that I learned a bit, but it's completely different every time I go to a local site.
It's, it's different. But for example, there, there's this site, Kussen in Austria, famous site, yeah? Um, it's a north launch and across the, the valley is a south launch. The north launch works at like 10 o'clock in the morning or 10:30, sometimes it's already thermic and it's working. And you can go up high. And the south side, I never see anyone flying there. There's a launch, but I never see anyone flying there. And I don't know why that is. It's probably because it has a west and an east face as well on that launch hill. And there's the Bavarian winds, which are north. But I thought I understood. I mean, you have to be in a south launch and there it always works, but it doesn't. So I was a bit disappointed about that.
I think, again, you need to go out and practice and talk to the locals. But the thing this chapter on meteorology does do, I hope at least, is to give you the background information you need to understand what these other people are telling you and what the books are telling you and the magazines. like the series of Hansa Raymondek, the meteorologist who writes in Xemag, in Cross Country Magazine. I couldn't follow his text before, and now I'm sort of hoping I can follow. But you need some background information to understand what he's writing. And that's what I'm hoping this chapter can give people.
Yeah, I mean, I think honestly we have to find some kind of workable middle ground. Hans is a great friend of mine. I've spent so much time with him flying and walking around with him in Nevada. And when I ask him about meteorology, I literally understand about 1%. That's not an exaggeration. I mean a meteorologist learns so much more, but what he – what I loved about in his podcast with him and what he will tell you all the time is that we are operating at a level where the models don't do a very good job. That's just the facts. There are so many other things that influence our weather on a micro scale that you're not going to pick up.
I mean there's just – there's innumerable examples of this. I mean, in the second day of the 2017 X-Alps, we had a really strong north fern and we were heading south. We were heading down towards Slovenia, down to Triglav. And Chrigel, as he always does, made this incredible move to launch, kind of got out of the straight line where we were all getting hammered by this fern wind and flew down to Triglav. And then when he got down there watching his live tracking, you know, there's, there's this big long cliff face and he got down there kind of late, you know, in the afternoon. So it's, you know, very much in the West facing sun and he, and he scrapped and scrapped and scrapped and scrapped on the West face of this, where it should be working.
He's, he's kind of in the Lee and, and it's just lit up by the sun and it doesn't work. And so he hops over to the East side and immediately pings out and gets the turn point, you know, and it just doesn't, you know, Looking at it from the outside, that doesn't make any sense. It wasn't like he was going to a lee climb. He was already in the lee because the wind was from the south. But it worked. And how did he know to try that? I would have struggled around on the west side until I bombed out. So maybe it was desperation, but probably not. Not for Chrigel. He had some working theory there, but you're not going to find that in the textbooks and And you're not going to find that in any kind of model. You know, it's mountain weather and everything's being affected by a lot of different things.
And it's tricky to write about.
Yeah, yeah, it is. And understand. So what I'm hoping is to give some background to at least start to understand all these things.
Yeah, I think it's really important to understand, you know, cold fronts, warm fronts. You've got a great cloud chapter, just understanding, you know, some of those things that I learned at sea, like you said, you know, if you see alt of a cumulus in the morning, you're going to have thunderstorms in the afternoon. That's almost a guaranteed. And, you know, these are nice things to know. These are important things to know because they clear out. It gets real nice and clear usually. And then wham. And I've seen it over and over. I mean, that's almost 100%. And so, and there's a lot of things like that that are really useful when it comes to being safe.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Phone is the same thing. If you understand phone, you know why it's dangerous. You're not going to fly when it's around.
Yeah, and this is a weird one. I mean, this is something that really struck me in the last race was, you know, like you said there at COSEN, what's going on there? you know, and you know how much do the, obviously, the locals have figured that out because they've seen it over and over and over again. We have a place here in Sun Valley where we've got this beautiful southeast-facing ridge; is one of the ridges I train on all the time. It's called Durance, and the I learned from my mentors here that for 10 years they flew over to this thing, knowing they would get up, and they never got up, and they couldn't understand it, and finally it... It was because it was really a transvergence. It wasn't a convergence of the air. It's where the two valleys split. And so it was never allowed – the air just splits there.
It's a divergence, not a transvergence. It's a divergence of air. And so it just didn't work. But it's not obvious. It's one of these things that just – oh, that's going to work. That's southeast facing. It's this big, long ridge. It's 3,000 feet high. It's a collector. It's going to work. But, uh, you know, in the—in the Alps, in the race, that—that it's so complicated. There's so much going on there that, you know, I'm constantly feeling like the—the locals really have one up on you because they're, you know, they've learned—they've learned it and they—they know, they know that stuff like at Coast and like that doesn't make any sense, you know, because that—that's morning. The Bavarian winds are haven't really started yet, you know, it should be the south stuff should be working.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But what I find interesting is I was just listening to the podcast you did with Ferdie van Schvelven and he was saying the opposite. Don't listen to the locals because they will go, they will go to their own house thermal and it won't be there. And your gut feeling is it won't be there and you can fly the other way unless you listen to the locals and you're stuck as well. I think that's a really interesting way of thinking from him. Yeah,
I think both are true. What we are told, what I was told over and over and over again before my first race in 2015 was don't listen to the locals. And most of that, I think, you know, 80 % or some, you know, some big percent of that is really that most of the time we're not flying in very recreational conditions. competitions, and so their referee, their reference points are not going to be accurate. Um, you know, what do we learn from comps? We learn that it's almost never the local hero that wins. It almost never, you know, because they have their, they're set in their ways. They, they have a view of the sky that has worked for them for a long time, but they may be missing out on some things that aren't so obvious and that suddenly work. And, uh, so yeah, you, you know, Chrigel's famous for not scouting before the races because he doesn't want to have any preconceived; he wants to fly it on the day.
And, you know, as we know, the day is different all the time. Yeah, it changes that would
mean you are, and you have an advantage on, I know
See, I need to pack that into my head. I might... there's a lot of resistance in there. Well, the Alps are the Alps are... are complicated. There's just so many valley systems and so many different... there's so much going on there that there are definitely some things, you know, a valley wind will arrive at this time of the day that is really helpful to know for sure, depending on... depending on where you are and what's going on. But um... but yeah, back to you, back to the... the book. Anything from... from weather? I made a bunch of notes here, you know, like um... you know, the lapse rate's obviously really important. You talk about, you know, kind of how thermals work. Uh, you know, this was interesting, I didn't know that when a thermal releases because air doesn't mix well, you know, it releases when it's about two degrees warmer, tends to...
obviously things change. But then... then the surrounding air and when it releases, because air doesn't mix well, it's not that the it's getting like shaved off. It's that it's expanding and going into colder air above, obviously. But things like that, I found really useful to just think about and kind of imagine, because when we're thermaling, you know what we operate in the invisible air and we have to understand, at least it helps me to understand how those things work.
Yeah, expanding. The thing I learned is why clouds suck. Why do they pull up air? Because of the condensation of water vapor, of water that releases energy. I didn't know that before I wrote the book. I thought it was interesting to know why does a cloud do that.
Yeah. And why it doesn't just stop at cloud base. Yeah, that's right. So what are some things here, like in the desert where I live, one of the biggest things we look at is probably after wind is relative humidity. That's a really important one for us. Because if we've got a lot of water vapor at height, it's going to OD big time. It's going to be super dangerous.
Right. I'm not a meteorologist at all. I'm not really an expert on this topic. But I would think that if there's a lot of moisture in the air because it's hot in the desert, so the air can contain a lot of moisture, a lot of water vapor. So that contains a lot of energy. So, in a hot, humid environment, it's going to explode with more energy than in a drier environment, I suppose. But that's just off the top of my head.
Yeah, no, you started that off right. But then I think in a drier – like you said, drier environments hold more water vapor, which is kind of backwards. We think of it as like humid is having more, but it's the other way. Yeah, so it can – that's why they explode is it can just – it can hold a lot more water vapor, which is energy. I love this about water vapor. Hansa really focuses on this. I think in your book you say that the general atmosphere has something like 5 % to 7 % water vapor. Is that right? Do I have that right? Yeah, that's right. Without water vapor, we'd have no weather. I love that. That's cool.
Yeah, that moves the energy and it makes clouds.
My friend Nate Scales, who lives here, back when I did a podcast with him, And he was talking about just all the things we're learning and getting better and getting better at gliding and getting better at covering distances. You know, in general, half the air is going up, half the air is going down. Why can't we just stay in the lifty bits?
You're going to have to find it. That's the secret, isn't it? You can.
So if we could see it all, could we just stay in the lifty bits?
Sure. You can. Like the idealized model of the earth, just a billiard ball with just the air floating around it. I have a model somewhere. It's just the air rises at the equator and the air goes down at the poles if you just stay around in the rising air. But it's going to be a bit high, I suppose. So, yeah. No, it can't stay up all. Darn it. um
I've written down here, this is—this is jumping to a totally different place in the book, but what does it mean to you to be an autonomous pilot, um?
You need to be able to make your own decisions at every spot you, you arrive to fly, uh, and that sounds really obvious, but it's not. I know a lot of pilots that can't do that, that are just looking around for, for other people to do to make their decisions. So you need to be able to make your own safe decisions based on where you are, what you're seeing around you, and, um, yeah, judge if it's, if it's okay for you, and not let that depend on other people. And, yeah, it sounds so logical, but there's a lot of pilots that can't do that.
Yeah, I think that—I think it's really important, isn't it, to just... and I, I think you learn, learn, a lot of pilots will, you know, they kind of have their home site and they don't push out much, which is totally fine. But, you know, I think you start learning a lot about being autonomous by doing a little bit of traveling, you know, exploring new launches, exploring new LZs, you know, you kind of force yourself out of your comfort zone, you know, which is of course taking on a little bit more risk too, but you're, I think that's part of the kind of, you know, know sticking in the key and turning the turning the lock of figuring this out yeah
Yeah, I fully agree, although I think that that's not for everyone. There's a lot of people that are totally happy and also, uh, fine and safe just flying at their own site or with their own group of people that do make their decisions for them, as long as they recognize that's the way they are and don't kid themselves by thinking that they're autonomous. That's totally fine. I even know one pilot that doesn't do back reverse launches, only only forward launches, and doesn't fly when when it's not flyable for that kind of technique. So, and that's totally fine if you realize you're like that. I think it's totally fine if you don't want to cross your own limits or boundaries, as long as you recognize that you're one of those people and don't think, well, I'm really good and I can do all that, but I'm don't feel like it today.
I think it's dangerous. I think.
Bastien, we're, we're nearing an hour here. So I really appreciate your time. And like I said, there's, there's so much valuable information. It would take us forever to go through every little bits, but are there any other parts of the book that you really want to draw attention to? You know, there's a terrific thing on airspace, which, of course, is more important for pilots over in Europe than it is for us here. We don't have any. We don't have to deal with it too much where I live. But there's – it really takes you through kind of the A to Z of learning how to fly. And, again, I just want to thank you for doing it. I know it's a massive project. Thank you for your contribution to the sport and encourage everybody listening to run out and grab it. You will learn something for sure. and um but what what other are there any parts that we you know we kind of skipped over that you want to draw attention to um
Well, um, I'm not sure if I said it enough, but I think it's really important message to fly for fun, and I'm hoping that the book, uh, radiates that as well. I think there's, there's a photo of me in the beginning of me having fun. It's a bit of a silly photo, but, but that radiates what I want to bring across with it. So just like Jocky Sanderson said, I didn't make that up myself, but the best pilot's the one that's having the most fun. And the other thing I really like to mention is that the book got so good because the team of Cross Country Magazine took it up and made it so much better with their illustrations and their dedicated photography, went out and took all these new pictures, Uh, corrected the text and went out of their way to improve stuff, write new chapters, so it's really gotten good because because we all did that together as a team.
So that's, uh, I really want to thank them for cooperating with me on this project. Yeah, they're
They're an amazing team, very, very skilled, and yeah, they've—they've put together a really nice, what I'm sure will be a, a Bible of sorts. So, well, Bastien, thank you for sharing your time and your knowledge and this great piece of work. The community thanks you.
You're welcome. It was my pleasure. Thank you.
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