Hi there everybody, welcome to another episode of Cloud Based Mayhem. I have a truly awesome show for you today with Canadian hang gliding paragliding pilot Martin Henry. He's been flying for almost 50 years and truly he just took me out of my seat. I was laughing so hard a few times so you're going to really enjoy this. Before we get to it, I've got a few little bits of housekeeping. The first is the last show we put out a couple weeks ago with Malin Lobb was a huge hit. Got a ton of thanks and appreciation for that one. It's filled with fantastic information, SIV and risk and wing control and at whatever level you're at. So please go back and listen to that one. We're going to do a follow-up Ask Me Anything show, a bonus show with him, that we'll release, well we'll record and release sometime after the new year.
So if you have questions for Malin, please shoot them to me. Prefer it via email, just go to the website, go to the contact page, shoot me an email. If you don't have my email, I don't track things quite as well on Instagram and Facebook and stuff and social media. It's much easier to get lost there. But send me your questions and we'll line up another show with Malin. And I also mentioned in that one that we put out a survey a few weeks back that is at cloudbasedmayhem.com. If you haven't done it yet, it only takes a few minutes and we've gotten tons of responses to this. I was really surprised and some fantastic demographics and just a lot of information, a lot of great insight and feedback on how we can improve the show. So for those of you who have done it, thank you very much.
I'll be announcing in one of these future shows here. We've got the swag. We'll do a little drawing here maybe this next week and for the books for Bastien's beginner books on paragliding, and some Cloud-based Mayhem swag is a reward you all for doing that. So thanks so much for providing that feedback. And I thought I'd just before we get into the show today with Martin, I thought I'd go through some of the stats that came in. A lot of this was really interesting to me. Age was about as expected. You know, most, you know, 41 % were between 35 and 44, 23 % between 45 and 54, and almost 20 % between 25 and 34. That was kind of surprising. So a little bit younger. Then I anticipated years flown. 25 % was the biggest number there between one and three years and 15.2 % less than one year.
And then 19 % between three and five years and 24 % more than 10 years. So pretty wide spectrum there. But again, more numbers at the beginning end than I anticipated, which is awesome. And it just means that I'll keep interviewing the best pilots in the world, but we'll also tweak a lot of shows more towards the beginner end. I think that'll be a lot of fun towards the learning and progression end. 73 % are XC pilots. And the big one here that really threw me in a sense was the hours per year, almost 80 % less than an hour, less than a hundred hours. That tells us a lot about the currency and that, you know, obviously it's pretty hard for most to chase it. I'm sure as hard as they would like to.
So that was very telling. And again, will help me orient more towards our listener base. Type hours, 56 % thermal, 27 % ridge soaring. An astonishing 85 % of you have not had an accident. That's great. I hope the show helped a little bit with that. And only 11.4 % have had one accident. So that's great. Type aircraft, 91 % paraglider. So I definitely need to put out some more hang gliding shows, but maybe that's representative. Of the population these days in free flight. I'm not too sure actually. Most, 43 % all about the same actually found out about the show via social media, just slightly less than that through a friend or an acquaintance. Maybe this isn't representative again of the responses we got, the sample, but very few found out about it from their instructors, which I was surprised about.
Instructors get on it, tell your students about the show.
And yeah, a bunch of other stuff that was pretty interesting. Most, almost all of you agree with our support model. Very few of you had no opinion, but nobody didn't agree with it. So that was great. Some people thought it'd be okay if we went down the sponsorship route, but I'll definitely stick with this model. It seems to be working. And a whopping 60 % of you that responded to the survey also support the show, which is fantastic. So again, I don't think that's representative of our listener audience. If it was the case, I'd be a very wealthy man and that's not going to happen, but it's fantastic. And I just thank you again, as I do all the time, for making this possible and supporting us when you can. A reminder, several people had had trouble getting access to the bonus shows.
Many of those we have to enter manually. If you come to us and you support the show via a subscription service through the website, you're automatically added. But if you support through Patreon or like a one-time thing through Venmo or PayPal, or you just buy some cloud-based mayhem stuff, or you just send me an email, those I'll have to enter manually. Again, you do not have to support the show financially to have access. Anybody who listens can have access. Just let me know. If you can't support us financially, I get it. I understand it. It's no problem. I'm not going to ask anything. Hopefully someday you can. But if you can't, no problem. Just let me know. But a lot of those I do have to enter manually and we just missed some. So I will get you slotted in. It'll be a lifetime subscription. Don't have to worry about it. And also, once you do that, once you have an account on the website, you can subscribe to the bonus shows and that will just show up in your app, your listening app, like the regular show does.
If you have any trouble with that, just reach out. But there's instructions on the website under the subscription tab about how to do that. It's pretty easy on both iPhone or Android. But if you have any trouble, just let us know. How to improve, just real briefly here. We did have a few complaints about sound. On my guest side, that's because we've been doing it via Skype, and it's just too complicated, expensive, and time-consuming to send out microphones to all our guests because I'm interviewing people from all over the world. Although we are looking into doing this in North America and in Europe, so might get that up and going here pretty shortly. Nik Hawks has been really helping me out with that. Most of the time I think it sounds pretty good, but we will keep trying to make it better. And we don't...
We have not utilized this in the next few couple shows that you've heard, but the last few shows that I have recorded, I've been recording a bunch of shows lately, we're using a whole new platform that is way, way better than we've been doing it on Skype. So I think this complaint will shortly go away. More shows on the basics and learning, more interviews on gear, more shows on weather understanding, more oriented towards middle tier and lower end pilots, some requests for video interviews. I'm looking into that.
And that's about it. There's a bunch of... More on design. We've got some design shows actually coming up. There's a few requests for PPG interviews. We haven't actually done one of those. I'm sorry. But we are tapping back into the sailplane community here shortly. And like I said... Oh, another quick reminder, and then we'll get to this show, I promise, is that we have our play... A lot of people ask for a playlist with the music here at the top of the show. That is on Spotify. There's a link to it on the website. And there's also one of our listeners kindly did one for Apple Music. John Bouillard. Thank you very much, sir. And you'll find that on our Facebook page, on the Cloud Based Mayhem Facebook page. So follow us on there and you can get that if you listen to music via Apple.
Let's get into the show. Martin Henry has represented Canada and the world, and so has his wife. They spend their summers out in Mansfield in Washington, which is an awesome place. Out on the flats. Those of you who have flown shall land know this spot. But they're up in Canada right now. Of course, they're trapped on that side of the border with the whole COVID thing going on. But they spend their summers chasing it pretty hard in Mansfield. Very special place in the world. And he describes it very well. This one's, like I said, laugh out loud funny. I really enjoyed this. He was... What can I say? He's awesome. So enjoy the show with Martin Henry. And cheers.
Martin, this is such a pleasure. I've been super excited to talk to you ever since you sent me an email ages and ages ago. And my, much has happened in the world since then. But I was just cracking up this morning looking at the article, the one that everybody talks about. And it's a very interesting article. You know, Larry Tudor and all of you legends, the popular mechanics, June 1972. And it's this awesome hang glider-ish thing on the cover. And it says air surfing, a new sport takes off in kites and gliders. Just before we started talking, you said you've been at this for 50 years?
Well, it's getting pretty close. It's starting to round up to the 50 years pretty soon.
You don't look old enough for that. Did you learn when you were two?
Just about. I was probably, you know, like I say, everything's a fog back then. But it was probably somewhere around 12 to 14, somewhere in there.
And were you in Canada then?
Oh, yeah. No, I'm Canadian. I live on the West Coast. And that's where, that's my home. I know that a lot of people confuse me for someone who actually lives in Mansfield. But that's a latter thing in my flying career. And that came quite a bit later. And no, I'm not. I live on the West Coast, make my living here. And that's how I end up paying the bills.
And you're in Abbotsford. Is that, am I, you said that right? Abbotsford. Yeah. That's like, is it rude to say that's a suburb of Vancouver?
Yeah, it's all becoming a giant, giant blob that goes from Vancouver out to the Hope area. But yeah, it's just a little bit east of Vancouver. And
you paraglide as well?
Yeah, I also paraglide.
When did that start? When did you, but you mostly hang glide? Or what's the percentage?
Well, it's kind of a, it's what sport is best suited for what I'm trying to do. Literally for the local flying here now in the spring when it gets really dynamic and there's opportunity, I love flying the rigid wing. I mean, that's the aircraft I love to fly. It's just, it's kind of, you know, I could fly sailplanes. I could fly regular flex wing hang glider. But the rigid wing hangs that I fly right now, the ATOS and stuff, they're just beautiful looking aircraft. I mean, and they're enjoyable to fly. They have lots of performance. But on the other hand, they're a bit of a pain to pack around and hard to get up a mountain. So quite often for the local flying, we talked in an earlier conversation about Bridal Falls, do a hike and fly there with the paraglider.
Certainly not going to do it with a rigid wing.
And when did you literally, when did you do that? Was this also the magazine that got you into the sport? Did you see this and go, yeah.
Yeah, well, you know, it kind of, it was the catalyst. I mean, literally, if you talk to anybody from that era, they would be looking at the pictures in that magazine and they would be going, you know, on my budget, I can handle this. You know, black plastic, bamboo poles and whatever. And I can commit aviation. Yeah. I can do aviation. It's the whole kind of feel behind it. But, you know, what inspires you to go to start flying? You know, it's everybody's got their own thing. I swear, four or five years old, I fell off a sun deck, hit my head. And that kind of might have been the genetic damage that caused me to become a pilot. I don't know. We
all have a little bit of Dane Bramage, don't we?
Yeah. But it, you know, that and my brother was into falconry and he had several birds of prey. And being around those creatures, you know, you realize how impressive they are and how capable they are. It's that probably left a little, you know, you know, when you see them soar, it's just stunning how beautiful they are. And model airplanes. You know, I was fascinated with the space program, this flight. And then along came that magazine. And that magazine just kind of, I was literally in school and my buddy brought it to me and said, hey, look at this. You know, we can stop building models and we can start doing this thing.
And within weeks, we had something that actually got us off the ground. And it was the beginning of the end, so to speak.
And tell me about those early days. Because, you know, when Miguel talks about, we've had a bunch of them on this, well, not nearly enough. But, you know, he was literally, he and his brother were
in the same class. And they were
making gliders from garbage on the sides of the street. You know, and tarps and pieces of plastic and pieces of rope. No
kidding. And what was kind of cool about that era was, you know, people got to realize there was no internet. There was poor postal service. There was fuzzy television. There was, you know, communications was, everything happened in isolation. The magazine kind of revolves around what was going on in California. But it was happening in Europe. It was happening in England, Australia, here, back east in Toronto. There were everywhere somebody got, you know, saw that magazine and started taking off with it. And like you said, built stuff out of garbage. Our little thing in the neighborhood was, at that time, everybody had an antenna.
And they picked up their television by antenna. But cable vision started coming around. So the antennas started coming down. Well, the antennas were made out of aluminum poles and tubing. And probably not very good tubing. But it became the core parts for a lot of the stuff that we started building. And then, you know, there would be a little more outside information start to show up. I mean, you would just die to get a magazine with a picture of a hang glider in it. You know, it would be just wonderful. And you'd look at it. You'd measure it. You'd look at it. And then you start to realize, hey, there's somebody I could send a letter to. And communication started to build. And so did the gliders. I mean, there was the first decade of hang gliding was breathtaking.
It was, you know, even as living as far from the big action as I am up here in Canada, it grew exponentially. And it grew furiously. And it, you know, sadly, it cost a lot of lives. It was incredibly efficient. It was incredibly efficient at snuffing people out. It was just, it was just, and for some reason, that risky sort of sport just took off. And I think Larry Tudor mentioned it in yours. If you could cut a piece of tubing, you could become a manufacturer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there
were hundreds. I mean, right off the bat, there were hundreds.
Yeah. There was a thing that I put down on my notes here. Was. We actually had for a brief period, I think around 76, 75, a hang glider weekly newsletter. Geez. I mean, you were receiving one. It's
hard to
imagine. Yeah. It was, it was just like the flow of information. It was crude. You know, it was, it was just a folded up piece of couple pages or, you know, double-sided paper. And you got your stamp on it and it came to you. But you'd gobble that up. And in there, there was just so many manufacturers that were, that disappeared shortly after that. There was, I had a local kind of a mentor after the first few years that was an importer of a glider from Bill Bennett out of California. And he got me into the first manufactured gliders. But, you know, my first one was, you know, plastic.
Aluminum tubing and plastic sheet followed by another one that was a little more exotic. And then I got a plans for a standard Rogallo. And I actually bought a finished wing. A sale for it. And that became like a couple of years of flying that. And then I bought a commercially built glider and then another one or another one. I think I ended up with six or seven gliders in that first, first 10 years. And the evolution, like I say, was a little bit different. It was stunning. Manufacturers were building stuff that was dangerous.
That they were pushing the performance. That was a real key thing was to try and have something better than the other guy. Oddly enough, at the same time, there was some pretty respectable designs that started to come out. Like the Manta Wings Fledgling. That was something that happened at the end of the first decade at, you know, about 78 or so. And maybe even earlier. And it was cable rigged, fixed rigid wing. But not that easy to fly. So it didn't have a lot of appeal and it was pretty complicated. There was a glider that I kind of wanted to mention. And it was kind of, it created a crossroads for me. And it was from Bennett. And it was the Phoenix Mariah.
And, you know, rising from the ashes.
It was, it was. It was. It was so cutting edge in theory. It was high aspect ratio. It had an enclosed crossbar. It had a huge wingspan. But the whole thing was made out of like inch and a half tubing. And if you don't know much about building gliders, let's just put it. Inch and a half tubing is not really good structural stuff. And not only did this thing excel in performance. But it also broke the... The... the, the, the, um, it, it kind of was the first major catastrophic failure of a glider in the sense that we suddenly discovered something that could fly around quite nicely and smooth air. If it got pitched over, wasn't going to recover.
And you guys
weren't using, it's not, I mean, like the, the guy on the cover here, uh, you know, there's, there's no helmet, there's no shoes, there's a webbing harness. He's not in a swing seat. I mean, so if you made that, if you'd
seen a picture, if you compare a picture, there's no reserves yet to a Phoenix Mariah, uh, and know that it's only about a seven year window that that took place, you'd realize how, how much the sport had evolved.
So it's so exciting. So
the decade kind of ended with, with, uh, that, uh, that glider cutting the next level going into the next decade, where we needed to start making them safer and manufacturers began to really work on the idea of, I know one of the kits that fixed the Mariah was a tail. It's something that took another 30 years before it showed up on a hang glider again. Uh, but yeah, I, I was, I kind of dug this out. I haven't got a picture of it, but, uh, there was a, an early parachute from that era and it was by Bennett. And there was a few other ones that were out there. Hanbury, I think, uh, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a,
was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, was a, liability concerns. And on this little parachute container, it had a little decal just sewn onto the container. And it said something to the effect of this product can, may, and will fail under any and or all circumstances. User assumes all risk. I'm going, I don't know. That sounds pretty bulletproof to me.
As you're
glancing, you're reading this, and it was a ridiculously small chute. It had like 10 lines. It was a big round thing. It was like, being a 10 liner, it probably had, it was more of an impact stabilization device than it was a parachute. And the big red thing would indicate where the crash site was.
Do you think, I'm just thinking about, I mean, you see Red Bull and you see people these days just pushing the limits to incredible extremes. So it's not like humans aren't pushing it anymore. But I feel like if we were starting today with where you guys, if the last 50 years hadn't had any free flight, Rogalo just came out with the first wing and we were starting, do you think it would happen? I mean, with the way, I mean, like you said, Larry had some of the numbers. I mean, with the number of deaths, and like you said, they were very efficient at killing people.
I feel like it just wouldn't be, it just would be not too dangerous, too many lawsuits. I mean, it almost seems like it happened right at the perfect time in history. You guys were all crazy enough to take it on. You're in your teens and you're mad and you think you're going to survive. You're in your teens and you're mad and you think you're going to survive. And a lot of people didn't. But I just wonder if it could happen today.
Yeah, it would have a very hard time today because even today, what you're running into is you're running into with property owners. If we had that kind of level of tragedy going on in the sport now, no one would let us fly there. I mean, as it is now, we had a famous pilot who was killed, the brother of Nancy Green. And she's a famous skier in Canada. And he was killed at Red Mountain, I think, in southern BC here. And it wouldn't matter. It was like 40 years ago. And it wouldn't matter where you were for decades after that. You would be someplace and, oh, didn't somebody die here?
And that famous person. And it would constantly come back. And that comes back now whenever you're not alive. And it would come back now whenever you're not alive. And it would come back now whenever you're not alive. And it would come back now whenever you're not negotiating for an access to a land or a takeoff or something. And somebody will always come up with something like that. Or didn't I hear about, you know, so even when we have just, you know, we have accidents. We're not perfect. But those accidents often reflect on our ability to access flying. And in a way, I mean, the paraglider pilots that are doing all the backcountry flying are, you know, the tiger country flying up in the Cascades and stuff. They don't have to worry about it. But the pilots that have recreational, like their thing is they go out to our local site, Mount Woodside, and that there needs to be some level of organization, because if there isn't, the average person wouldn't let you on their property.
It would be very tough for the sport to, unless it was something confined. I mean, you know, you were saying how, you know, hang gliding in the early days was so efficiently ending people's lives. Well, you could say much the same of paragliding when it started.
And maybe
paragliding had a bit of an in, in the sense that there was already established flying sites. And I can tell you that's what concerned, I was one of those, you know, totally against paragliding in the beginning, because this, people started showing up and they weren't respecting the sites. And there was a lot of animosity back then. But one of the things that concerned us was, man, you know, we can't start having accidents like this again. It's just not going to happen. And so, you know, I think that's cool. We're going to end up having problems.
Yeah. Yeah. That's always, that's always the risk, especially with insured sites and that kind of thing. And I know all the Europeans are going, nodding their heads like, well, we don't have to deal with that. But yeah, I mean, so you, you mentioned you spend the summers in Mansfield and I don't want to jump too far ahead here, but when did that happen? And, you know, for, for people that are listening that have flown Chelan understand what Mansfield is, but you've got to give, you've got to, you've got to give a, the, the opportunity. I think that's going to be a big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, audience at large and understanding of what Mansfield is and where it is. And.
Okay. Well, it's, that's actually a massive jump. It's like 30 years. Yeah. No, we're going
to, we're going to go back, but I just want to set the tone of the drive here of, of that is, I mean, you have lived your life for flying.
Yeah. Well, it, it kind of came down to, we had, we were going through very, um, various iterations of where we would, where we would fly, what our objectives were. I mean, I kind of followed the natural trend of when I started flying, it was just get a flight followed by get some airtime, then start doing aerobatics and then flying cross country and reaching out for different, you know, levels in the sport. And we were into the cross country when, uh, we started flying Chelan and we're from the mountains. And then suddenly we found ourselves flying a site where you go out onto the flatlands and like early hang gliding, you had to go down. So you had to start from someplace high. That's the way it was
starting from the flats. Uh, we left that to the crazy Australians who were towing, you know, and they were doing the boat towing. And it was just like, some wild stuff came from that era before we really learned how to tow. And, um, I have to say at about that time, aero towing was starting to happen to open up flying for people who flew the flats. So I was involved with a little bit of aero towing here in 1985. And about that time we've kind of went, you know, it's got some potential. It's kind of sketchy. It really was kind of sketchy, but it had potential. And, uh, so we, we, we were off searching for cross country flying and, and I was flying competitively in competitions a little bit, Canadian competitions, no offense, Canada, but they kind of suck.
And mainly they suck is because weather, we just don't have a place where you get consistent. There's, there's been lots of, um, lots of places where we get good cross country flying, uh, golden, where they hold the Willie and stuff like that. Uh, it's cool, but they tend to now lean towards an OLC type of contest because trying to have a fixed racing contest in Canada and have five or six days of, you can't set dates.
It's just too hard.
Yeah. So we, we started, we started flying in Chelan and we thought, wow, these, this flat land thing, you don't need a mountain and God, you can get high and God, you can get up from there. And, and God, is it ever rough some days out here, but it's, I, you know, I flew my first hundred miles down there. You know, I like a paragliding flight. I got up and got blown a hundred miles. And that was like, wow, that was amazing. And, uh, we started enjoying the place. And then typical of Chelan, there was, there was, um, an event that kind of went along the lines of there was some bad fire season, the local club, was trying to keep the site open, was trying to keep us access to the top. It started, you had to have a shovel, you had to fire extinguish, you had to join the club, you had to have OSHA, but yeah.
And it became a lot of things. We kind of saw, maybe there's some writing on the wall here. Maybe we're not going to be able to get up the But God, the flats are sure nice to fly. And we heard rumor of a couple people towing out on the flats. And, uh, it was just like, okay, um, there's some potential. And we talked to a couple of people and, and guys in Alberta, in Canada, we're, we're starting to tow. A fair bit. And, uh, I, I don't know if you know, Stuart Midwinter.
Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Well, he, he convinced me to, um, also the guy who introduced us to paragliding, but that's another story, uh, on a highlight too. I think that's what it was back in the nineties. Um, anyhow, uh, he convinced me we could build a winch. And, and so of course, rather than buy a winch for a few thousand bucks, I decided to spend my whole life trying to design one. And about, uh, nine, 1990, somewhere in there, we started consistently towing out in the flats. And when we first went out to Mansfield where there was some excellent tow roads, don't tell anyone, please. You know, I don't want any crowds out there. Uh, I'll talk about that in a second, but, but, um,
you know, that's very, that's a lot of sarcasm folks. You're listening to this Mansfield. There's no, no, I'm
dead serious. There's guys out there with guns and everything. You don't want to be out there. And I'll come back, I'll come, I'll come back to that. But, um, we, we, we, we went into town and we were kind of celebrities. These crazy Canadians came down, they had this towing system. I had a little tow set up on a trailer and pulled it behind my Azuzu trooper. And, uh, we hadn't limited, no, we actually had some fairly decent success. We had a small group of people that worked together with the winch and it worked out well. And we would rent whatever vacant house there was in town. And it's a tiny little town at the end of the rails and the rails got pulled up and the left the town just, it was some grain silos.
What is it? A couple hundred people?
Yeah. We're between two 50 and three 50. It's been that way for years, maybe four 50 at times. I'm not sure. Um, it's got a big high school there, uh, basically from K to university. I don't know. It covers everything. Um, and really nice people. I mean, really friendly people. We, we had a neighbor that, you know, helped us find a place and some people in town owned the store and we brought a little money in, not much. It was Canadian money. It was hardly worth anything. But, uh, we, we kind of started basing and they're basing out of there. And, uh, it started at some, for some reason, it just started getting a little bit difficult to rent a place. And especially if somebody could rent their house, they'd prefer not to rent to us for a month when they can rent to somebody for a year.
Sure. So at one point we had a place that we were renting and the guy said to us, you know, she'll, the place is for sale. You might want to offer something on it. And, uh, Mia, my wife, my partner here, who, uh, I taught the fly back in the late seventies when we met, um, she, um, she said, well, we should buy the place. I'm kind of hesitant. I don't know. It's a lot of money. I'd rather buy a glider. And then they came and they mentioned, well, I think he only wants $25,000 for it. And it was a house, an old house with a, uh, uh, three lots all on it kind of in the, I know it's in the desert, but it is in the flood plain of town, all the water drains in my neighborhood. So in the spring, in the spring, I got a sump pump that's running steady to try and keep us alive.
Uh, but it, it became our base of operations. We've, we've owned the place now for about, uh, Oh geez, that's gets fuzzy. Everything gets fuzzy about 16 years, 17 years, I think now. Wow.
Awesome. So you, you, you and your wife go fly out there every summer,
every summer. We've, we, we've now made it a, an effort with the exception of this year because of COVID, uh, the border has been closed. So we're kind of isolated from the property, but, um, we make it an effort to go down in Easter, open the place up. We're really big into birdwatching and outdoors. And so there's just so much stuff down there that we, we really, really enjoy that. Um, uh, we'll, we'll go down, open it up in Easter and we won't be, you know, we'll go back and forth probably 10, 15 times in a year. And it's about a four hour, five hour drive. Well, yeah, it'd be a five hour drive from here. And, um, and, uh, yeah, we would primarily aim for, we'd start seriously flying. The tow rig would go down probably, uh, May, May long weekend.
And you might book a week there and we'll book like four weeks or something through July and try and get as much, as much as I could get out of my work for holidays. I would go there.
I gotta say, I mean, I, I haven't done a ton of flatland flying, you know, I've done Daniloquin
and I mean, I, I have done some, but the flatland flying in Washington state and particularly right there. And we've had a lot of goals at Mansfield, you know, you go out and do a triangle and you land at Mansfield is it's just extraordinary. I mean, the, the, the comp pilots I've talked to over the years who have done world cups and flown all over the world, uh, it's she lands always number one. It's a special place, isn't it? It's just strong. And you can see the thermal, because the dust levels to 12,000 feet. I mean, it's just, uh, it's special. And those Arroyos, what is that? What do you call it? You know, these, these, the, the huge washes, you know, the, uh, the Royals, is that what it is? Well, there's
also, there's the, uh, the, uh, Badlands that were east of town, the, the pot Hills. That's one of them. And then there's all the, like this, they call it the, the mini, uh, grand Canyon, which is dry falls. Uh, that's an amazing area to fly over. Uh, and, and the wheat, I mean, you got wheat, you got sage.
Yeah. And you say wheat too, but like the Palouse is a, is a photographer's dream. I mean, when you fly, we had that one real famous. And now since then there's been even a longer one, but at the time it was the longest task, I think in world history. Uh, and it was two 26 or something from the Butte out there. And at the end, you know, you're flying out near the Idaho border and you're flying over those fields and you're like, deaf. I definitely took acid this morning. Something's wrong with my, this can't be real.
Especially if it's, uh, uh, early enough in the year where the, uh, the weed is still green.
Yeah. But you have the green and the gold and the red and the wild out there. Uh, so special. And you wouldn't really see that. Flying a
rigid wing though. You're looking down and you're like, damn, which way is that Hill? Which way is it? I don't know. And you go on and on and on because you, you, you're at the end of the day and the air is very buoyant. And if you're traveling with a wind, like, by the way, I, I've always said, I don't go open distance on a rigid wing because open, open distance on a rigid wing is actually, it spells divorce because nobody wants to go and get you after you've gone, however far you can go. Not unless you're flying Zapata and trying to break 700 miles or something, but
sure. But
no, we, we like to come back. And that's, that's the other reason that, uh, the place had the huge attraction for us is that we, uh, we fly triangles. Uh, it's one of the most enjoyable kind of flying that, you know, coming home late in the day, uh, making it even coming up short, uh, just coming back a long ways in a triangle. Um, you know, it's, it's so rewarding. Well, and
that's when a hang glider really makes a lot of sense, isn't it too? Because, you know, 10 K an hour for you guys is nothing. And
I don't know, I've, I've had my, I've, I've had my ass kicked by some PWC pilots down there. They pick lines. Funny story about, uh, one of the years with, the PWC was, uh, uh, of course we're starting off to the East and they're starting out in the West and 99 % of the time, the first thing they're going to do is they're going to, well, they've started doing a lot of neat Northern routes now, but they've started, uh, they usually head East and, you know, someplace out to farmer or something like that. And so I'm, I'm a hot, you know, a hot shot on my rigid wing and I'm flying by myself early in the morning or early in the day. And I'm starting off with a westerly leg and I'm going out to water, and, uh, uh, towards Badger mountain or something. And I see my first PWC thing,
gaggle this column of, I can only imagine what it must look like to some poor guy in a little Cessna coming around the car. So I'm, I'm, I'm smoking towards it at high speed and, uh, thinking I'll do a little fly by and show off. And as I get closer, I'm going, God, that thing's awful big. I'm going to stay away. There's a little tiny group on the side. I'm going to go bug them and wave at that, but I'm not going near that thing.
Yeah. I mean, I was, my next question was just going to be, you know, you've flown literally them all. Um, it must be wild to think back what you were flying in the seventies compared to now. I mean, the, the, the ships, it's just a different sport.
Yeah. It's, um, you know, although I, I have to say in the eighties, uh, once you started seeing pilots like Larry Tudor and that get on a, um, a double surface glider in the late eighties and early nineties and start to unleash the performance that they had. Um, it, it, it, it was kind of like the, the, the golden age then in the mid eighties through the mid nineties when glider performance started to get up, uh, rigid wings were it to be, you know, to be really honest. A rigid wing right now, the highest performance rigid wing you can get might be getting 20 to one. I don't know if you believe the manufacturer, maybe 21 to one or whatever. It's, it's, it's, it's up there, but realistically 18 to 20 to one, uh, and, and a new modern high performance flex wing with, uh, uh, the best harness, a really good pilot flying the best configuration all the time, probably gets up close to 17.
Now, 16 to 17. Hmm. At, at, at, least then you toss in you know old senile pilot high performance glider against some hot shot that's really knows how to fly and picks every good line uh can see the air better than i can um i'm at par it's my compensation device so
what were take me back to that time so i mean you're at the 70s people are falling out of the sky there's all these accidents and you're like yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna go ahead and teach this new girl that i just met to get into it as well was there was there just massive survival bias going on what what was the talk at night drinking beers because it just seemed like i mean to me when i talked to larry i had the incredible opportunity of sharing some sky with him down in texas this this summer um you know he's flying paragliders now it just seems like were you guys just detached from the was it so awesome that you just had to kind of ignore that side of it or was that it
it was so awesome that you did didn't want to do it didn't want to talk about it yeah and and frankly in in in uh after i had owned the phoenix mariah and i just paid a lot of money for it back then it wasn't much but paid a lot of money for it and all of a sudden i get root stories that this thing's dangerous and you don't want to hear that no you don't want to hear that this thing's dangerous and you start guys kind of going oh man and at that time uh we lost two pilots on the same weekend in two different spots for two different reasons and uh it it kind of affected me and i pulled back from the sport a bit i actually took a bit of a break and that's when i went met my wife uh you know she was uh traveling around from uh she'd come over from the netherlands and i think she was looking for a husband and new citizenship or something so she she snagged me and we went and did like a half year or whatever out in the
bunch of exploring the back country of bc and stuff and she she convinced me that it was a good idea that we get married and uh we went to work on that and uh uh in the meantime she had driven for some friends of mine and and and uh i'd started flying a little bit and and it basically came down to no i'm i'm not going to drive for you anymore i you know once in a while maybe but i want to learn how to fly and i'm going oh okay so i taught i taught her to fly and at that time well at that time i mean the really the schools weren't doing it
and i was like
much better so uh and we had gear kicking around and she's a relatively gifted pilot uh she's um you know took it naturally and and did quite well and uh my life was ruined ever since i i i have a shameful uh uh uh contest where she actually beat me quite badly and i was had a big snit and i regret that to this day but you know it's it it it's it's both you know it's hard to teach someone to really care for especially at a time when uh the sport was you know getting dangerous and we were starting to understand it was dangerous i i think what helped us up here an awful lot is that um it was dangerous when we started to get outside the envelope when we started to really push ourselves but the conditions and flying around this the country we're in here is a lot of marine a lot of coastal air not not that vicious and if you were learning in some place like texas or california incendia or up in the mountains or you know anything big oh man i don't know there was a lot of people that uh that got killed because the gliders weren't up to the conditions right
sure i
mean you know low to the ground lots of trees i mean my incidents in the early years were trees you know you end up in the trees or whatever and there was a few of those i
i love i love the i mean it just struck me when i was talking to charlie uh larry said he was he's pretty sure that charlie was the first one to ever thermal now of course like you said it's blowing up all over the world so we can't compare it to france and other places where people are getting after it too but it's kind of wild to think that of course there was a time where you didn't know that that was possible yeah
well it it would have just come from sailplanes it would have you know they were they were there they were doing it they were turning and of course and yeah and then it would it would it would also come from somebody in a contest
thing and so it'll be a bit different for us and for us as well and so it'll be different for us and for us as well and so it'll be different for us and for us as well and so it'll be different for us and for us as well and so it'll be different for us and for us as well and so it'll be different for us and for us as well and so it'll be different for us as well and so it'll be different for us and for us as well and so it'll be different for us as well and so it'll be different for us as well for us as well and so it'll be different for us as well and so it'll be different for us as well and so it'll be different for us as well and so it'll be different for us as well and so it'll be different was looking for a ridge site. Sure. We could get our head around the mechanics of ridge soaring. Sure. Thermaling, that was a little bit stranger. You know, that took a little time, a little altitude, and then eventually it was, like I say, it must have come just from the natural evolution from sailplanes, people that were aware of what goes on in sailplanes.
I mean, books about soaring have been around for decades prior.
Right. Okay. All right. Yeah, I missed that. Of course there were sailplanes doing it. So you mentioned you got into competition flying?
Yep. I flew a fair bit. It was like the next local thing that happened, and we started flying contests where you had to fly to a turn point and then, you know, to spot land. That was the first stop, and that seemed kind of neat. And then cross country competitions started to come up, and they evolved. You know, we started talking about using data-backed cameras and stuff from that, Instamatic cameras, for contests. And it was the sense that it was challenging to push yourself to go someplace and come back or go someplace and land there as a goal. And so there was a bunch of that going on. Like I said, unfortunately, Canadian contests kind of suck, and I didn't travel much away from this area.
And you start getting tired of putting in a lot of time just to get to a contest. And then, you know, I'll catch up, and I'll get back to you. But carrying it forward, the ultimate end of my interest in contests was more or less the 1989 World Championships in Fiche. I put a huge amount of effort into getting there, and actually, Mia had earned herself a spot on the team. Small side story. There was a pilot who's a very good pilot, and he hadn't been participating in the point system. And he came to the team and asked, you know, said, is there any way you can get on the team? So Mia, who was on the bottom of the list, stepped aside and let, she went as a backup pilot.
And the guy deserved to be on the team. It was like, we could have been, you know, real jerks and not let him on the team. But the guy's name's Randy Haney. He's one of the first big distance pilots that flew out of Golden and flew down across to Tago, Montana, just across the line. So he flew, you know, 200 miles back in the big days. And I mean, flying gliders that weren't that easy to fly. Sure. That would have been like the magic three or something back then. So anyway, we went to the world championships. And literally the day that we pulled up to the landing field, having spent a whole lot of money to get there and the weather didn't look that great. Somebody died in the LZ. And it was not a pilot.
It was a visiting pilot for, I think, Brazil or something. But it kind of set the tone for the whole meet. And nothing about the organizers. They, they did a terrific job, but you get 200 pilots sitting around in bad weather for a whole, almost two weeks. It was a week and a half, I think altogether, eight days. Oh my God. We were all crawling. We were, we were not, it was great seeing people. Like I, I met people I'd heard about for years and, but I kind of left that going, you know, the whole thing of somebody telling me to go fly someplace on a day that I really don't want to take off. Yeah. Um, you know, Mia, my, my wife ran into much the same thing when she was at, um, uh, the women's world championships.
Uh, she actually flew coast and first, uh, it's about 80 something. I can't remember when they had the women's worlds over there, but she also flew the world championships down in Chelan and flying off the Butte. And you know what it's like when it gets windy.
Oh yeah.
Uh, there was a push, push, push to get people in the air. There was a push by a couple of the competitive pilots. I think, I think Kerry castle was one of them and they got into the air, but then, uh, Mia was actually on launch and she says, nah, I don't like it. I'm going to back off. And a couple of people got in the air, Kerry castle and a few of the top pilots and probably not a big deal for them. But there were a lot of pilots there that, you know, it would have been a big deal to have gotten in the air on that real windy day. And, uh, it was bad. You know, it got so windy that they couldn't land down at the, I think the soccer field at the time they couldn't land over at the BB field. On the other side, they had the land out front or they had to try and hope that they could get onto the flats. And yeah. And the compression was so strong that you couldn't get up.
And she was thankful. She didn't fly that day. So between the two of us, we both started going, you know, contests, not really what we want to do anymore. Um, and part of it, again, you know, you, you look at a Florida contest for hang gliding where the arrow toe, they look like fantastic meats. Yeah. And maybe, maybe I'd change my whole site. I'm
going to try and get a
little bit of a better shot. I'm
going to try and get a little bit better. I
don't like getting beat by anybody. My, my buddy, my buddy, let alone your wife. Yeah. Let alone my wife, my buddy out of Spokane that, uh, Mike, Mike Bomstad, you see a lot of his videos and stuff that he uploads. Um, you know, he comes out there and there's like only two of us flying together out there, but he's driving me nuts. Cause he's right behind me and he's on the radio and he's, he's hired. And I am, he's going further than I am. He's waiting for me to make a mistake. I just fall apart. I can't stand it.
What are you doing? Canadians? You're not supposed to have big egos. You've been spending too much time in the States.
Oh no, but I'm an old man. I need something to look forward to, you know, come home with a little trophy on the wall.
Well, and, and I mean, fish is, uh, fish can be gnarly. I've spent a lot of time there. I have spent a lot of time in that little town, just, you know, in the rain and the wind and not doing anything. I mean, you're at the bottom of the biggest glacier in Europe. And, um, I've had a lot of, everybody who's flown in the ball has had scary days and it's going up the
Furka pass.
Oh, I mean, getting
stuck at the top, the Grimsel
snake, you know? Oh yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's always a dicey proposition.
The other thing that we, we, we had a couple of nice flights before the contest got going, but a couple of the things that we, uh, uh, started to notice that, man, you get anywhere down in the green, you're done. Yeah. You know, you get down the green and you're finished. You're going to be in a side Valley. That's it. It's, it's over. You're going down the land and you're going to drink beer in a local bar. That's about as good as it's going to get.
Were you guys, I mean, it's just, again, it's hard for me to imagine. Were you guys landing right there in fish with all the power lines and everything in the little village where you are, was goal somewhere else. Cause I mean, it's a pretty tight little spot in paragliding, but I, I can't imagine, you know, 50 hang gliders coming in at the same time at goal there.
They broke up into three groups. Um, there was, um, one, one group went to over the Furka pass on the other side, there was a launch over there that they went to. Uh, and so with the three groups of roughly, you know, 65 to 80 people per group, uh, and then one at the top where the tram was, uh, and then off to the West, I think was the other launch. And with the three groups, they broke up the groups and they all had different LZs. Uh, I did land like first day. I sunk out also made me feel really good about contests with my fragile illegal. And, uh, I've got a funny story about that day. I, I, I, I took off scratched around. It was really stable. Uh, I didn't know the place that well, hadn't had that much experience.
And I sunk out. I just like, I didn't get it. I just, and I went down with a few people and I did land right at the bottom down near the tram. There was a small field down there. And, uh, the check, uh, the check team who had sponsored their entire trip with it by taking a bus and filling it for the, for one end to the other with Pilsner beer about layers thick. I think the coach came out and gave me a bottle, you know, maybe you'll have a better day tomorrow. I was obviously, you know, pouting and having a snit and, uh, famous Canadian pilot who was, uh, who didn't fly that day. He was on the team, but he went to another launch and they didn't call a task, came back and, and he picked me up and his name was Willie Mueller, uh, father of Chris Mueller and Willie in his, uh, Austrian way.
You know, he said, you know, it's, it's okay. You know, nobody's it's a, it's a bad day. Nobody probably got any scoring and it might not even be a valid day. And as we're driving to go pick up a couple of people that did get a little ways away, he says, oh, this guy here, he probably, uh, probably broke his arm, you know, trying to land on one of these snow sheds. And, and I kind of, oh yeah, okay. Laughed. Oh, it turned out he did break his arm and he was out of the meat. Oh, okay.
But, but he, he was, Willie was, uh, a really good guy for a coach. Yeah. He kind of calmed things down because we were all getting pretty grumpy by the end of that meat.
Right, right. Uh, glad legends. Um, the, what has it been like flying all these years with your significant other with the, you know, I've, I've often thought about that. You know, I took, I took Maddie for a tandem a few years ago and about 30 seconds into the flight, she's careening her neck around, you know, looking at me going, Hey, did you want to, uh, what, what are our plans? What are our plans for Friday night? And I thought you, you have no interest in this whatsoever, do you? And she's like, yeah, no, not really. I don't really get it. And I was kind of like, oh, thank God.
Lucky. Uh, because, um, you know, then it, it, it's, you know, you're always worried about, uh, uh, when we, when we, uh, uh, push ourselves, uh, you, you, you, you, you're pushing your risk and risk management is something that we took a lot of, uh, pride in when we decided to stop flying. Comp competition is that it's one thing to push yourself because like Mia, uh, behind me here, I've got a few of my world records hanging on the wall. Mia's got more world records on her wall in her side because she's a girl. She got, got her own records, but, but she flew them very well and deserved every one of them, but never really having to push, uh, other than, you know, take on dynamic days and deal with them.
I, I mean, that, that, that was the level of push that we had, uh, between us. And it's hard, you know, um, you worry about her, you know, you, I worry about her when she's, you know, a little too far out where we babysit each other pretty good. Now down on Shalan, we, we drive, we crew for one another. I mean, my day to fly her day to fly and I chase her on her rigid wing and she chases me on my day. And we, and we, well, you know, we do a lot of driving and we, we could just go out there and fly and come back. She, we had one driver one year that basically sat us down and said, Oh, I'm going to get the house with the radio and, Oh yeah, that's good. Okay. What if we got low, maybe start packing up a cooler to come out, but we'd have to make it back or we'd be waiting a long time.
But anyway, she's it's, it's, it's hard to, if somebody is in that situation and they're trying to, uh, they want their, their partner to learn to fly and their partner has maybe reservedly said, Oh yeah, I'll give it a look or whatever. Try and have a third party, do the teaching, do the, it's somebody you respect, you know, in my case, Mia learned paragliding from, uh, uh, I'm, I'm sure, you know, I'm Alex Ramon. Yeah. Um, I don't know if he's actually a serious, uh, a certified instructor right now, but anyway, he, at the time, you know, he's one of the mentors from the paragliding community that I took on. He was an old hang glider pilot. It's hard to say old and Alex, but anyway, uh, you know, he, he had been hang gliding in his younger days and moved over to paragliding.
And, uh, he had a real hang gliding perspective of paragliding. And, uh, it was very nice to have that translated. So she took, uh, lessons from him and I felt a lot better about that. And she did what, what we did in hang gliding, which is a lot of practice, you know, a lot of time on the training Hill and, and that sort of thing. And, and, uh, we, we, uh, I, on the other hand, self-taught with Alex sort of, you know, mentoring me in the background. Uh, but, um, I think, I think of, of, of all the, um, the, the advice that I could pass on to, first of all, for hang glider pilots that have their head up their butt about paragliding. Um, and they've got whatever,
yes, they collapse. I got a video that shows you, they collapse and they can get a real mess, but I can tell you right now that they compliment one another. Uh, I, I have the two extremes. I have a rigid wing and I have a paraglider, the paraglider. When I'm flying my little local site or Mia and I are flying the little local site and we're scratching, you know, you wouldn't want it. It w having a rigid wing and then flying my little Mount Woodside is like having a Ferrari in downtown traffic. What's the point? What's the point? Other than a big ego show. And I, I don't care. I just, it's not the, it's not the craft. Whereas on a paraglider, I get a lot more out of it. I, I could feel the air. It's a lot more intimate relationship with, with what's going on in the air.
And, uh, it compliments on the other hand, uh, for the PWC guys, fine. They love Shalane. I don't think I'd want to fly a paraglider out on the flats. I just don't have the, the, the, the, the, the bump factor that takes to fly a paraglider out there. I get these collapses now. And I literally talked to the wing and go, what the hell was that? Why did you do that? You know, what was that all about? It was fine on mine and my own business. I, I, so, but, but, but hang glider pilots need to understand that, um, if you're going to learn to paraglide, I guess some of the negative attitude comes from, I tried paragliding and all this thing happened and it was just stupid and I didn't like it and whatever. And they go away. Well, don't. And I made the mistake of taking some of my hang gliding with me to paragliding.
And the biggest mistake is if you're not going full into paragliding and doing the full push, you're just using it to, to support your, um, uh, you know, to, to back up your, your, your, your flying experience in your area to make it easier to be able to just grab the peril glider and go out for a local flight. Um, go at it with the attitude that I'm brand new and I don't know anything because if you, if you go at it with the attitude, well, I'm a pilot. I know how to fly. No, you don't. And my video bad stall is a good example of, yeah, yeah, right about there. I, I gave up the aircraft and I was a passenger. You know, that's, that's, it's,
it's, it's, I do like that. It seems like both you and your wife, you know, you kind of, you made this transition, uh, and you started flying paragliders for the ease and for, you know, a different, you know, learning again, all those, all those things are really exciting, but you still, it sounds like both of you still, you know, on a good day, you're going to fly rigid.
Yeah. If it's
still where the passion is, I, and I like that. I mean, I, I like that in terms of, I, I want hang gliding to still be a thing. You know, 20 years from now, it's just, they're, they're amazing gliders. It's a different, you know, being prone is a very different experience. I
also, you know, I was going to say, uh, one other little item. I put a note down. It is kind of sad to see that hang gliding is not doing better given the gear. Right. I mean, the, the stuff that's being built, Wills Wing and Moise and, you know, I, I've got, you know, nothing but admiration for some of the high performance stuff that these guys are putting out arrows and the, and the, and the, uh, the combat series and stuff that they're flying. These are, these are really good aircraft and, um, and they've become, uh, like exceptionally safe in big air. Um, there's still risk, you know, it's not perfect. You can still tumble and break one of these things in big air, but the gear and the shoots and the recovery systems and stuff that are in place, I just don't understand.
And, and even more so for older hang glider pilots that have started to drift away from the sport, because, you know, frankly, the rigid wing that I fly, it's not the easiest thing in the world to land. And I have to admit there's lots of times I don't quite get it right. It's not pretty. Um, but, you know, when they step back and you can get onto something like a sport three or whatever version of the sport that's out there now by wills wing, they're beautiful gliders. They're easy to fly. They land like a piece of cake. You know, they're just, I, it's just stunning that we don't see the sport maintaining. Hanging or improving or getting more people. Um, and, and frankly, I think you're seeing a little bit of that in paragliding right now. I, I, I think that perhaps it's just not that wild risk that, that some people seem to thrive.
It's become too mainstream. I, I don't know if that's the right way to put it. Uh, it's, I, I'm seeing locally that maybe it's the costs, you know, it's not a cheap sport. And I think one of the biggest aspects for both hands, hang gliding and paragliding for what retains the members or pilots is, um, is, uh, how much commitment it takes to do it. And frankly, our lives now, everybody's life is just so busy trying to, you know, everybody's trying to get by, get ahead, do that. It, the, the pilots that really Excel or pilots that pull away from that. And, and, and I'm having problems too, in my life right now, where it's like, you're kind of, you got projects and things that are always piling up on the side and you're getting close to return. He's got to start thinking about that.
And, and having the time to get out and go flying is not easy. And if you're a student, like I've, I've often, when I look at the fresh little students sitting around the field out at Woodside or whatever, and I, I give him a hard time and say, you ready to commit, you know, you should have taken up heroin because at least the government has a, a plan. They can help you out, but flying, no, you gotta be committed. Yeah.
Yeah. And I mean, I, when I, when I talked to some of the pilots in Europe where, you know, the, the Brits have, have the whole race Academy, you know, the juniors program, the French, you can make a living, you know, you, you can, if you grow, if you come up through the juniors program in France and you work for orange or, you know, some company, part of your income is going to be from the, they have to pay you to go flying. And I mean, they, it's a, it's a national, there's pride in it. There's a national thing. It's a big sport. And as you know, you've been over to fish and, you know, you, you see people flying everywhere you go. It's just, it's our, it's not, it's not our NFL, but you know, there, there are a lot more people participating and here you really do. It has to be, you have to do it on your own.
You're not getting a lot of support and that's hard to do for an 18 year old coming out of school or a 20 year old coming out of college. I mean, how do you have the time and the money and the,
and, and, and the sites, the access to the sites, you know, w we rely on private landowners for landing fields. We, we rely on government land for takeoffs and in, in the area where we're from here. Yeah. And it, it, I, I mentioned earlier a gondola project for a local flying site here called bridal falls. And my real reservation is less about the gondola. It's more about the business going up on the hill. Hmm. I, you know, are we going to be limited because of business liabilities or whatever? It's, it's, it's like a concern. So, you know, having access to flights, I, I know that the death knell for hang gliding, in, in our area here is just no training hills. Oh, there are no training hills.
Yeah. You can't learn.
You can't learn. Yeah. And, and you can learn paragliding from the basic little hills that are around here, but there's a couple of little parks. So once you get the foot launch down and you get a little bit of background, you can go fly off a mountain and light, calm air. And it, it all works out nicely. Uh, where the hang glider, you've got, got a really perfect to take off and landing and, and there's no place to do that here. There people try to tow. Uh, I mean, you can try that, but nothing. If you're foot launching, you need to have a, a training hill and we don't have anything. And, uh, it's so hard to find anything to replicate that or do that. That hurts the sport.
Yeah, sure. And, uh, we were talking about insurance stuff before we started talking and that's too complicated here. And I want to hear more stories, but that's, that could be a big death knell coming. Just certainly down in the States right now. It sounds like we're going to be, we're kind of on the cusp of, of losing a lot of sites. It's just the insurance rates keep going up and clubs can't afford it. But, uh, leaving that aside for a second, you mentioned, uh, you mentioned records for both you. Let's, let's go into that a little bit.
Um, sure. Um, it's, it's was just kind of, I got to call my competition task on the day when I wanted to do it, when the conditions look right. Um, you know, I, I got to pick the day. I got to pick the direction I wanted to go. I love doing triangles. I, I find there, uh, uh, an amazing equalizer strategy and there's lots of stuff involved. So, uh, in the flats, when you haven't got a mountain to run into, uh, you, uh, can really drive some amazing triangles down there though. Um, I have to, you know, hats off, total respect for the top paragliding pilots that are driving the big distances in the Alps. Uh, you know, even the, the, the rigid wing pilots that have been flying there don't quite grab the big back country stuff.
You know, the real rough terrain and way out in the mountains that, uh, the paraglider pilots are doing. And, uh, you know, the fact that you can put a paraglider down practically anywhere is helpful. Yeah. Uh, you can smash a lot of carbon trying to put it down in a spot that's not suited. So we tend to be a little bit more reserved on where we get, even with the great performance. I mean, a good example of that would be something. Like, uh, a big 200 K triangle that was flown here, uh, in an area that you've flown near Pemberton and they flew up over the Pemberton glacier and they flew back over. It just, those were just
unbelievable lines. So those,
those, those lines are just like, they give me the shakes. Yeah. I think about my rigid wing and I'm going, I got to keep like about a 15 to one out of here. That's the way I got to keep it in mind. I just cannot think of ever landing this glider back here. That would be the end of it. Right. Uh, so no, it, it, the, the flats and chasing triangles and then chasing triangles for speed. There's, it's kind of cool when you're, when your only competition is the clock and your head, you know, you're, you're, you're chasing after a triangle, you're trying to drive around it. You know what the speed is, you know, like, you know, at the time and the day I was chasing one 50 K and a hundred K. And those are easy. Those are like, uh, in the sense that I got to do it in two hours for a hundred K, I got to do it three hours. And, and you, you, you, you, uh, you know, you get a, a really good thermal and you go, okay, I've got to get a good line.
And if I pick a good line and another good thermal or a street, or go off course a little bit to pull the street, it's a really fun challenge in your head. Um, there was a record here actually set just a little while ago in Europe, uh, involving the 25 K. And again, a real technical task to fly because you're, um, you're, you're having to not only, uh, drive the coordinates of the task. You have to, in the case of the 25 K and 50 Ks, especially, uh, there's a start and finish altitude that you have to, you know, if you start really high, you got to end really high. You know, there's, there's only a certain percentage you're allowed to have for differential. You can't climb to, you know, on a 25 K climb to 12,000 feet above the ground and, and, and then roar, you know, just staying up as wherever you have to, and then arrive on the deck when you get back.
No, that doesn't count.
Yeah. I didn't think about that. I didn't know that that was, that was, I called, I call it
threading the needle. Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's, it gets, and even the a hundred K, there is some numbers you need to keep in the back of your head. You need to go, okay, well, I'm going to arrive at this altitude. I should be okay. And you don't want to rise super high in your altitude window either. You wasted time.
And you're going too slow.
Yeah. You're going way too slow. So, you know, between the two of us, we, we started pursuing triangles out on the flats or out and returns on the flats. And, and, uh, and, uh, you know, from an ego perspective, it's, it's easy because there's nobody else chasing records. I mean, the bureaucracy of chasing records is a whole bunch of paperwork. We're trying to make that simpler. But, uh, back in those days, I mean, I, some of my records were set using a repugna barograph, which is a thing when you crank it up and it's got a little drum inside and a little needle followed a little piece of paper that had some sort of coating on it. It would leave a trace and it had to be certified. It had to be taken to a, an aerodyne, an arrow, an arrow shop to get them to barograph, uh, put it in a bar or barograph chamber or whatever, and calibrated that all had to be done.
And, and you could forget to wind it or you forget to turn it on or some stupid thing. And you have a great task and this thing's just got a pointer sitting in the same spot. You go, oh, great. So you're, so
you're running that damn thing and you're taking pictures of the waypoints with the film. And,
and, and those pictures of the waypoints actually had to be good enough that you could verify. Right. And it's the, the funny thing on the flats is, where are your vertical references on the flat? So your pictures are silos, uh, buildings, barns, you know, you, you do anything to find something with coordinates on it that you could use and, and, and, and data back cameras. You had to use data back cameras. Oh, and you had to have an official observer. So you, you know, you recruit friends and whatever and get them to write their certification or, or sign up for an official observer status. And it, it, it, it's not easy. And I just finished adjudicating a speed record in Canada here, uh, for a world record, uh,
uh, guy flying a Swift back East. And, uh, he, uh, you know, it's so easy now to adjudicate because you get me the G, you give me the IGC file and I'll insert it into CU and I'll, I'll assign the task. I don't even need an IGC data logger. I can just assign the task and I can read it. I can give you your start and finish altitudes when you got to your turn point that the turn point had the, this poor guy had, had, had set out on several occasions to set a record and managed to find almost every possible way to screw up like, uh, the, uh, uh, minimal leg distance that's involving a cylinder. You know, he was navigating his task to the, to the actual way point instead of taking off, subtracting the cylinder.
And so he flew this task and it was like, uh, I hate to tell you, but you know, it's kind of like 99, 99.8 kilometers. You, you fell a little short, it's not a hundred K speed. I, I'm glad he stuck with it because he deserved this last record. It was, it looked good. Do you go ahead? Yeah, it's good to see the, the, the, the FAI and civil could do a lot better in making this simpler. And, uh, we'd like, I'd like to see, I'd like to see electronic declarations. Um, there's sort of this thing now where you have to have a advanced notice via, uh, an email or something to your national aero club. Uh, that could be cleaned up and made simpler. I, at that point, I don't even know if you need an official observer at your, at your point, but at your start point, but it would be helpful if you make your task declaration in advance.
Yeah. You know, that that's, that's, that's kind of the crux of proper record setting.
You know, the, uh, I kind of woke up to some potential that I'd ever even knew existed. And of course, like you said, the sail planes have been flying wave out there for long, long time. So I just was, you know, I just didn't know about it. It was stupid, but the, uh, you know what you hear all the time, South Africa, Brazil, Texas, Australia, to an extent, those are the big ones. But what about Alberta? Are we, are we missing something? Do you think something really big could go down there or is, is what they went? Cause was that two summers ago or actually it was spring. It was like April or may. Um, I, and I forget what, how far they went three 80 and they went pretty big.
Yeah, it was pretty big. Uh, it's, it's, it's never going to be a triangle site. Uh, although the, no, but for,
for just, for just open distance, cause they're, I think you, I think you run out of
day. Yeah. You run out of day. Okay.
It's just too far north.
It's too far north and you run out of day. Um, you know, the, the big distance places for open distance will be Zapata, Texas, uh, uh, that corner out closer to the dry water. Yeah. Okay.
Yeah, I did. I, when I saw those go down and it was early, early season, I was, we were still staring at snow here and I
was like, Oh my God, that's awesome. That's
very cool. They,
they have a miles and I think it's miles and may thing, a fundraiser thing that they do. And, and, and, uh, there's a lot of distance can be flown there, but it tends to always be open distance. Although there's a few of the hang pilots and stuff are doing out and returns in that, but it tends to be windy. So it is an open distance thing and believe it or not, even though it's the great white north and there's nothing going on up here and we haven't really got a military, uh, you know, we got two guys with soft with camels, uh, the, uh, you, you've got airspace and the one big difference between Canada and the States when it comes to airspace and hang gliding and paragliding is in Canada. We're considered aircraft and in States you operate under, it was a one Oh four one Oh three or whatever it's called.
Fr. And, uh, your air recreational vehicle, right? So the laws and regulations are, are quite important. I mean, it's a little bit different. And so there's certain kinds of airspace in the States that you can fly through that you can't fly through in Canada. And, and it does create some headaches and you know, it, it, we've got the ability to in Canada to write something called the Hager or it's a, it's an air regular air regulation exam. And it gives you the right to fly within class E airspace in Canada and some other controlled airspace if you get permission. And there's been a few flights where there's been some challenges, even of all places. I mean, um, uh, golden where it's quite possible to get to 14 or 15,000 feet up there.
And you would think it would be all uncontrolled, but it isn't there. There are nav routes that run up there that technically, you know, if you put it in an airspace checker, it'll show you broke the law. And, um, yeah, it's, you know, just south of golden, uh, near Bill machine and stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Arrow gate. I think down that way, there's, there's a couple air nav routes that are up there that involve revel stoke further to the west in Vancouver over the top out of Calgary. Um, there's a few navigational roads that technically we're not allowed to go in and, uh, they're really confusing. Like they're really hard to interpret because they involve glide slopes and altitude at this point. And, and, uh, you started bumping into them and, and it's, it's not really critical, but it is a law.
So, you know, it, it's, it, it's challenging. Whereas the only, the only thing, the only thing we got to watch for in Mansfield is your military can tend to make things a little exciting. I mean, I've, I've actually got some video footage, I think on YouTube where, uh, actually not military in this case, it was Boeing and they're operating a seven, four, seven. And at first I see a shadow on the ground. I think, yeah, that's, that's a big plane. And, and then I realized that's a big plane. That's a big show. Cause the, both of them are right on the ground. And this thing was cruising around a seven, four, seven, right over the tow site at about 800 feet. Whoa.
Geez. Sounds like Marshall, but, but with big glow, man,
we used to regularly see a sixes or the whatever, E six five B Prowler thing or whatever it's called. Uh, and, uh, we w we would see a few of those regularly flying there. They, I think they have something where, uh, you know, Jamison Lake. Yeah. Well, they shoot a, uh, uh, uh, some sort of approach for, um, sub spotting. Like there's submarines down there. I don't know, but they, they, they simulate stuff into that Canyon. So they'll come bombing out there in pairs. Well, the prowlers have been replaced now. I think it's F 18. So they're a little bit more dramatic when they come by.
Okay. That's a, that's a good, that's a good segue then. So when you think back to almost 50 years of flight, uh, most memorable, sketchy experience.
Oh God, the most, my recent crash at launch at Woodside. That was, uh, that was something that was, that was kind of like, wow, that one could have really, I could have hurt myself, but you know, um, it would probably involve weather, you know, it, uh, you know, it's one of those things where you're pushing yourself and, uh, um, this, this really, okay. There was one that kind of stuck out was probably back in the, the late, late eighties. And, uh, we were flying at Mount Woodside, our local Marine site. And, uh, there was, um, a wind warning up that day. What were hang glider pods? We don't know wind warning. What was it? This can't be that bad. And, uh, you know, wind warning usually means it's good and sorable, really good Ridge lift.
So we were kind of not looking at the weather and we didn't realize that this weather system was going to be so dynamic. And, uh, I, I, I got to launch it. I was setting up and yeah, the day looked a little funky at this. There was a lot of streaky looking clouds to the south, uh, you know, Alto Stratus. And there was just some, some odd looking clouds that day that, yeah, yeah. Well, they were just, they were, they were getting flattened out by something, maybe the, uh, high wind warning, you know, it could have been. So at, at, at 11 o 'clock in the morning, which would be unusual, uh, I launched into possibly, you know, 20, 25 mile an hour winds, which is fine, but it was early. And, uh, Mia, who was set up behind me, she, she started to move out to launch.
And by that time, three or four other people had gotten in the air and it was starting to blow 25 to 30 on launch. Oh, okay. That's, that's getting up there. And she got up towards launch. She said, nah, this something's going on. She packed it in and broke down. Lucky for her, uh, the, about the half dozen of us that got in the air, uh, winds picked up to, uh, you know, I, I, I'm guessing probably 50 miles an hour, 45 to 50 miles an hour. And it was like penetrating out was a problem because now you're at the top end of your glider and, and you're not making much headway and you had to really work the lift to be able to get out to the landing field. And I remember looking down at the LZ and I went gone, those trees are just like blowing over and they're just bending in every direction.
It's rolling. Feeling geez. Yeah. And so it's, it's what saved me that day. Well, other than luck, um, was just kind of an adage that I'd like to pass on to a lot of pilots, which is never stopped flying the aircraft, no matter what's going on, don't stop flying the aircraft. In fact, your first rule should be get the aircraft to the ground in one piece. It might break something might not be the, what you wanted for a landing, but if you get the glider to the ground in one piece, chances are you're coming along just fine. Right. And it was violent, rough coming in, you know, from no wind on the ground to 35, 40 mile an hour winds and gusting. And, and, uh, about four of us managed to pin it into the field. One of us took a wild ride. I managed to get down in the field and that was like, once you were there, you got, got to get the hell on clip because you don't want to be attached when it starts gusting again.
Right. But that was the most, that was probably the, the, the worst flight that I ever had for potentially getting in a lot of trouble. Did that have any
kind of long-term, did that change? Anything for you? Did that have any kind of fear injury? You know, we talk about a lot on the show. Was that, was, did that leave any, uh, tendrils of sketch? No, no, that,
that, that didn't in the sense that other than, gee, maybe you should pay attention to the weather forecast from now on. It was just a
good learning experience. Yeah. Yeah.
It was a good learning experience, but if there was something that left, um, you know, an incident, you know, now you got me primed up here a little bit, um, flying in golden. I was, uh, doing it, uh, trying to fly some, some out return record attempts up there. And I tumbled.
And normally if you tumble a hang glider, it's going to break, uh, it's going to break and, or you're going to end up upside down and you're going to have to deploy your shoot and come down on your canopy. I tumbled the glider came around right at itself. And now I was able to fly again. And the thing that affected me the most then was the fact that it just like, literally came out of the blue. I had, you
couldn't put it on something you couldn't under, it didn't make sense.
No, it just slammed the nose. The nose just pitched down, pitch past. And I went, holy Mac. And I'm just hung on. And next thing I know, I'm right side up and flying. And, and then the next part of it was, uh, the glider had a turn in it. I bent something. I bent the glider up pretty good on one leading edge. In fact, uh, I know of a pilot too, that very similar spot. This is down there. Uh, that spot I mentioned earlier, Harrogate, uh, we nicknamed it horror gate. And, uh, the same, uh, another pilot I knew tumbled there and broke the glider on the leading edge, but recovered and flew down knowing something wasn't right, but didn't know what. And when he was on the ground, realized the leading edge was broken halfway between the crossbar and the nose blade.
Wow. Uh, Barry Burt, uh, Barry, uh, Bateman, uh, an English pilot that came to Canada and tell us, spent his whole life telling us about the wonderful green grasses and hills in England. Uh, he, he, he tumbled up there and came under pair, came down under parachute. Um, I was able to get the glider out and I, I was just concerned it was going to break. Uh, I, I had something broken and I didn't know what, so I actually had about a thousand feet over the, the Harrogate store, a good landing field there. I put the glider into a bit of a speed and put a pitch just to kind of load it up, see if anything, was going to break. So I'd have enough altitude for the shoot to come out. And, uh, I was satisfied. Okay. It didn't break. So I should be able to run an approach and not risk breaking up low to the ground.
So yeah, that, that left an impression with me in the sense that, you know, you, you, you, it happened just so violently out of the blue that you go, yeah, this can happen again. And I, I'd had similar things after that. And I have to admit, even now there's, um, down in Shillane, there are, or Mansfield, there's a line that we drive quite regularly along Badger mountain to the south. And it can be rough. There's some sort of convergence. Sheer thing goes on a lot down there. And some days when you, when you're into like an hour of just, God, it's rough today. That's in the back of your head.
It's interesting that you say that about that incident, because Kari brought that up when she tumbled, she was at a comp in Austria, I think it was, and it was the second time she tumbled. So she tumbled in the Owens the first time and it was all, it didn't bother because it was so obvious why it had happened. You know, you're, you're in the Owens now she's in Austria and it's beautiful. It's perfect. She's winning the comp, she's going up to cloud base and all of a sudden she tumbles and it really messed with her head for quite a while because she, like you said, she couldn't like, even when she's on the ground, you know, she threw a reserve and she didn't, she wasn't able to recover. Like you said, she, her glider just disintegrated and she had to throw a reserve, but she said, it really messed with her for a long time. Just what the hell just hit me?
What, what caused that?
Yeah, I think something that's like exceptionally on a sudden and out of your control will, if it doesn't leave an impression, I don't know, you're either made of iron or whatever, but you, you know, you, you've got to keep that in your head and you got to keep, well, what do I do about it? And I, you know, like one of the biggest reasons that I stopped flying the high performance flex wings, it was, there were, there were two reasons. One was, um, they're quite fatiguing, especially the early ones. They're fatiguing to fly. So when you fly for six or seven hours, I mean, even Larry Tudor will probably tell you that you, you start to get, uh, carpal tunnel. You start to get, you know, tendonitis, uh, uh, when you fly rough air, you grip, you know, like you're always gripped, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's my paragliding.
Uh, a mistake is I, I tend to grab my risers, you know, I start leaning on my risers when it gets a little rough and, and you get gripped, you're psychologically, yeah, you're psychologically not relaxed. And, um, you know, when you're, when you, when you, when you're trying to, uh, so-called relax in big rough air, bad things can happen because you're not flying the glider. And, you know, like being active as a paraglider, you start just going, oh, I just have to relax. You might be setting yourself up for a big event cause you're not feeling the wing. Yeah. You got to find that sweet
spot there, don't you? Yeah.
So, so, so the flex wings were beating me up and I was, cause I was putting in a lot of hours in very rough air and I had the option of just giving up flying flex wings and maybe going to paragliding. And I didn't really see that as practical for Chelan, not, not the way I felt about paragliding at that time. I, uh, I thought, well, rigid wings, they have aerodynamic controls. There's less stress when you're flying them. And the big thing that happened in that era was they put a tail on them. Um, poor old Davis Straub, who's done, uh, a lot for our sport for being a great communicator, or at least providing a forum that we can communicate. Don't always agree with the guy, but he's actually the guy who got me my first flight on a rigid wing. There was a demo day thing happening in the local area and he showed up and I got a chance to fly an Atos B and it planted the seed for about five years later when I got a rigid wing.
But when they put a tail on them, things got a lot nicer. Uh, you can drive some very, very nasty air in a rigid wing. And it's, yeah, it's bumps and it's, you can go weightless, but I've never ever felt like my rigid wing was going to ever pitch over on me. Um, the tail and the new design, the latest carbon fiber keel arrangement they've got on the new ones. They're just so awesome and rough air. So it's like now the Atos that I'm flying now is the excellent choice for flying the rough air of the basin. You know, I feel comfortable on it. You know, there's days when I get flashes about flashbacks of the old tumble stuff that's happened in the past, but it's just more, you know, it's got a tail, man.
Just, just fly it. It's, it'll be fine. Can you
tell me about the psychology differences that you can remember? Obviously, like you said, it does get foggy. It certainly gets foggy for me too. But you know, when you think back to, you know, when you were learning in the seventies, compare that to now, is it been kind of a win? Is it a wave? Is it an up and down thing? Is it, or because I, I definitely feel like I'm paying a lot more attention to fear and I'm having to, I'm having to be more mindful about, you know, keep checking in that. This is just an attitude that's going on between the two years. I can change this, but I'm having to work at that more than when I was young and dumb.
And, and I'm trying to, I'm
trying to
figure out if that's just because I've got more experience. I've seen enough people pound. I know how risky this is. I'm not so stupid anymore. Or if it's just age, I got a three year old. I'm not, I'm struggling to understand which, what it is.
Yeah. I, a couple things. I'm going to, I'm going to go to my bad stall video. Okay. So what bad stall does? I think I mentioned something in the comments on it, but you know, that really went, Holy crap. I really screwed up there and, you know, giggle laugh, you know, kind of like false sense of security that, okay, I just need to learn to do better. But had I just put my tail between my legs and soaking wet, wandered off and disappeared for the rest of the day. I know I aged Brad, Gannucci, or at least that descent. I, he must've aged about 10 years. I don't know. He was trying every conversation on the radio and I'm kind of like, you just shut up. I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing.
And I don't know what I'm doing, but you're not helping me. Not right now. Right. But what he did that probably did a lot of good for me was to,
come on, get back on the horse was the essence of it. You know, you got to go up and do it again. I, well, my glider is broken. I tore the lines off it. Well, fly Mia's glider. Mia was flying a, a gin sprint. So it's a, it's a, it's a low B or a B wing glider, but it was small. So, so I was going up to do a stall on a heavily loaded B glider. And he pushed me through, I think it was four, four stalls on that couple. Weren't that pretty. But I, I managed to get those the same day, another set of stalls out of the way. And I think it did me a huge amount of good. If, if something bad happens to you and you don't take time to really analyze what happened,
you might not go flying again. Yeah. And maybe a good thing, maybe a bad thing, but you, you, you need to realistically ask yourself, and that's something as dangerous as that. You know, I, you start asking yourself, well, is it worth it? Well, I've always felt flying has been worth it through all the years. Maybe because I'm no good at anything else, but this is what I do. And I, I've never considered myself a really good pilot. I'm a mediocre pilot that tries to fly. Safely. I try and use a lot of the education that I learned from the, that the accidents of other people in the past. I've, I've really tried to carry that with me when I go someplace, you know, you don't, you don't have to fly on a, on a bad day. And I see people with minimal skills or skills that are questionable going flying or ignoring a cloud or ignoring the wind or, or something like that.
And I'm going, and then they get away with it and it reinforces something that isn't going to do them any good down the road. You know, it's, but yeah, it, I, I've, you can't ignore it. You, you, you really have to, there's, there's times when I've told and I'm going, ah, I'm just not in, it's not feeling right today. You know, I'm just, you know, we, when, when we tow out at, out at, out at our tow site there, um, it's dynamic. I mean, when I flew high performance flex, it was, it was challenging. It was like the edge, all the time when you were flying under full thermal conditions, dust devils around the tow site. Um, you know, I, I used to call a glider set up or a glider set up and mounted on the rig bait.
That's what it is. It's dust devil bait. And I, I, Mia, when she set her, her a hundred K out and return speed record down there, um, we had a observer, the glider was loaded. She was in the truck. The observer was in the truck. Uh, Nicole, uh, McLaren and she, uh, uh, we had a dust devil pop up on the road, uh, literally a hundred feet in front of us, 200 feet in front of us. And, uh, I said, well, we've got an option here and that is to back away. And she didn't quite understand, but I, I, I, I, I carefully backed the truck up and backed it out into a field out away from the dust devil. Uh, it, it's not an option that's always available, but it was like, gotta be aware.
Yeah. And, and, and, and it's, it's like if you, somebody was talking about, I think on your, your, with the Dutch instructor that you mentioned something about being able to see the air. Hmm. And I, I've often said, I don't know, maybe you wouldn't want to fly if you could actually see it. Oh, I, I think
it'd be terrifying. That'd be awful. Yeah. The
Columbia, the Columbia basin. If you fly there, uh, anywhere, she land out towards, uh, Wilbur. Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. But if you fly there in September, the ground is as dry as it can possibly be. And the dust content is as high as it possibly can be. And the number of dust devils that you see, it's probably no more than it is in June and July, but you could see them all. Yeah.
Yeah. No, I had, I had a, a newer pilot contacted me one time just over, you know, over the internet and said, you know, wouldn't it be awesome if Google or one of these companies could, could make glasses where you could see the atmosphere. And I just said, well, that would totally wreck the sport. A I mean, that's the magic is not being able to see all that. And B no one would fly, be terrified. If we could see what was going on in the sky, we would never go.
I, I, I think where it would be kind of cool is if, um, uh, uh, back to the, my hated dreaded, uh, gifted pilots, uh, uh, you know, a pilot who I, there was a pilot at one of the, the, uh, uh, Shillane classic, Joe Bostic famous hang glider pilot, uh, said something like that. Nobody could understand why he took this crazy line, uh, of Leahy way up over Pearl Hill, way out to chief Joseph dam, and then kind of curled back into Shillane and landed after doing like 180, 200 kilometer triangle. And nobody, nobody else had any reasonable luck that day. And he said, well, I could see there was convergence up there. And I'm going, how, how do you see, how do you see convergence?
Okay.
There are, there are Eagles in our sport man from rumor and Chrigel and they see stuff. I don't know how they do it either. Yeah, no, I, yeah, he's, he's, you know, a really talented pilot. Well, so what you, you mentioned, um, I'm going to get into some kind of rapid fire questions here in a sec, but you mentioned that there was a lot of crossover. What do paragliders who haven't, haven't flown hang gliders, what are they not know? What are, what are, what are some of the things that you've picked up over the years from hang gliding that are transferable that maybe aren't as obvious? Cause I like, like one of the things to me is watching hang gliders in Brazil, who I flew with Jeff Shapiro down there.
He's really good at picking lines. I think hang gliders get really good at picking lines. Maybe, maybe cause you got the better glide. And so you can get to, I don't know, but it seems to be that you've got a better feel for,
well, it might, it might have something to do with, um, you, you pick a better line or a stronger line or, or, or, or, uh, uh, an advantageous line. Cause you don't thermal as good as a paraglider. Hmm. So you just have to, you know, even in, even in a toast, um, I can climb, I can out climb a paraglider if it's the right day and the right time. If
it's the right circumstances,
but as far as being able to adjust and pick up on the, on the tiny core or something, not as good as a, you know, I, I it's, it's like an evolutionary comparison. If you have a paraglider pilot in the middle or a Hawk in the middle of a paraglider pilot, a hang glider pilot, and then there'll be a sale plane doing a stately turn around the outside. And everybody's going up at the same speed because somebody had to give something up the sale. Plains got massive better sync, right? Yep. But he has to fly a big circle. You can't get right there. in there if he banks it up in the middle he can't climb as good good point but yeah good but but but but carry over you know like from a paraglider pilot that wants to learn about hang gliding it's more about speed management um learning you know fly fly slow a funny funny story
i've i've flown other aircraft i've flown in sailplanes i've flown in powered aircraft and kind of for powered aircraft or sailplanes knowing where aircraft stalls is a big Denali mean that's really important to how you you fly you you know if you're flying by feel you got to know where the thing's going to stall not just by looking at the airspeed indicator you got to know how the aircraft is telling you you're getting close to stall well in a hang glider or a sail plane or a power plane when you stall other than a spin entry or something you're it's a fairly straight thing straightforward thing it's fairly not dynamic whatsoever well i'm i'm i'm telling my instructor alex about you know i was kind of seeing how slow the glider would fly and he kind of turned pale please don't do that i was trying he's going don't do that no more right and then of course you do you do a bad you do a stall and you go holy crap that's a whole lot different yeah that's dynamic but so so speed management um i think i i i think you you you've used the phrase a couple times speed is your friend yeah the other part of that expression is speed is your friend don't abuse the relationship and that is like um i've had people come to me and ask about flying rigid wings and and frankly a rigid wing is a pretty sweet aircraft to fly but one of the things you really have to respect is airspeed some of the models i used to fly a glider called a vr and they will literally fly
explode uh a sailplane is much the same if you put the nose down you can break you can rip the wings off it it's you can intentionally rip the wings off it uh my my vr i've had it up to speeds getting close to 75 miles an hour it's you know i'm sure the designer is freaking out now if he hears that but you know glass smooth air and and and you let the speed creep up just to see what it's like up there but uh you know you literally start having to pay attentions of speeds not to exceed and the dhv certification of 55 miles an hour for a rigid wing is is kind of that vne do not exceed and fly slower with more flaps if it's rough uh paragliders the speed just sort of happens i i you know i fly low b wings so you know i step on the speed bar and i go okay yeah wow okay whatever you know oh that was exciting yeah it's just going faster now i don't know i guess so what uh but it it's speed management is a huge thing whereas in um hang gliding you less about feel uh you do acquire a certain natural feel but when you go to paragliding there's just gobs more feel the seats moving around uh you know i remember i i took a um an osium harness for a test flight with no seat board or anything it was freaking me out man it was moving and dancing around and i'm going no no no i want a seat board i want to i want a lazy boy comfort chair i don't i need i need stability it's too nervous for me and uh and and and so when you're when you're when you're a hang glider pilot you go to paragliding you have to appreciate the speeds are different the glides are different uh be aware of uh you know maintaining your aircraft in the air is is something you know hang glider you get it in the air it's it's built you know you the joke about paragliding is you know it's the only aircraft you take off in reverse of course you're not going to be able to fly it in reverse you're not going to you you uh taxi in reverse you assemble during takeoff and you may do in-flight maintenance
i've heard that one
i thought i heard them all that's great you
know it's just you're constantly having to pay attention and if you don't pay attention it'll let you know yeah uh fortunately you know and and for hang glider pilots looking at going into paragliding i can't do it give you much advice the other way but for a hang glider pilot that considers paragliding go at it with an open mind uh don't take all of your your your attitude and and and and and skills into paragliding think it's going to do anything for you because you need to learn all over again yeah uh you need to to realize that the aircraft's quite a bit different there's a lot more feel there's a lot more subtleties to flying a paraglider a paraglider is the easiest thing in the world to learn yeah it's just totally simple but get in
and all of a sudden you're a pass
it's like it's like russ ogden says it's it's the easiest thing to learn it's the hardest thing to learn to
fly well yeah and and a hang glider on the other hand it's hard to get it off the ground it's yeah there's instructors that would argue with that but it it's it's a much more challenging aircraft aircraft to get off the ground to land it and that's you know once you get those two things out of the way and you're ace and that stuff the flying's pretty straightforward you know your typical errors that new pilots make you know judging glide and how to fly it
martin if you could rewind the clock what would you change going
back um i don't know i maybe maybe have made more effort to go to other competitions that uh were outside of my little backyard i've had people say that you know i should have flown i should have not gone to australia i never did uh um but i once i went to i mean i go to australia choke on the same dirt sit around 105 degrees 110 you know it's the same thing so i didn't need to waste all that money i could waste it on gliders and beer
hey before we started talking we were having a little laugh about our mutual friend larry tudor and you said you were going to save a a good story about him or two tell me some larry stories
okay well the first the first one that uh every american needs to know is that he's a traitor uh he he spent a great deal of time in canada uh trying to raise money for the canadian team i i don't know if that was just to boost his points position as in the world championships he's the dark
prince he might have had some yeah he
he came out twice and and gave great little talks funny the same stories that you had but hang on our pilots you drink a beer and you'll listen to any story more than once and uh yeah he did a he did he did he was a very good pilot and he's a great pilot and he's a great pilot and he's a great uh gracious host uh at a couple of the uh speaker at a couple of the fundraisers we did so just you know he was back in the enemy not that we were challenging anybody but uh and the other the other story was uh uh when larry was flogging gliders and he uh was visiting the lower mainland and i think the big glider at the time for a recreational glider was a sport i think there was uh i don't know an hp or something enclosed crossbar and uh uh he was you know doing the old shilling gliders selling selling them at uh representing Wills Wing and uh he was running up and down the mountain and we were having a comp uh the locals were having a comp you know all of this hyperventilating competition pilots and uh all thinking like i'm thinking i'm really hot and uh so we get up to launch and there's a glider sitting on launch and uh it's not assembled there's just bits and pieces of it laying here and there and it's sitting in kind of my prime spot you know what what goes here whose glider is this nobody really knew who it is i think it's larry's but uh he's not here well if he's not here then he's not setting up here either and i moved his stuff off to the side well larry showed up and uh and he kind of walks up to who moved my glider who touched who touched my glider nobody touches my glider man you don't touch a glider in the dark prince man he looked pretty serious at the time
you were in the middle of our local competition here and he just gave me you bunch of wankers
damn canucks yeah
damn canucks hey
uh i i need to wrap things up here against my will because my my girls are just walked back in but i wanted to when you reached out to me this spring and i do not want to talk about covid and i do not want to talk about politics that's off the we're not allowed to anymore uh but but i did want you had this fantastic advice that you said hey you know this was right after the it was during the lockdown can't remember but you said you know what i put out on the forum recently was that doesn't matter what you believe in this kind of thing what we need to be thinking about here is it's just a distraction and what i've learned over the years doing this sport you know like like you just talked about you know this one flight you're taking right now is the most important flight you're going to take i mean it's it's we've got to be kind of on the ball right it doesn't matter if we're ridge soaring or whatever it is it's just a distraction and it's just a distraction and it's just a distraction whatever we're doing it's you know complacency kills um and but you you you framed it in a way that i really appreciated that i've thought a lot about this year because i think we're all a little distracted and uh and it's something it's something good to think about i thought maybe you could just
tell me what you were thinking when you wrote that email and and and why and oh
god i gotta think it yeah um you know there's there's been a i i was involved with uh accident investigation i was involved in an accident i was also involved with an accident investigation involving the uh pilot that took off without clipping the passenger and and i've i've been involved with other fatality accidents uh where i've worked for the coroner and the rcmp and you know putting that stuff in the back of your head um it makes an impression like it could drive you out of the sport if you spend too much time thinking about it but it was just so simple and so subtle that led to the death of this passenger and it was you know it it's it's people think that a little distraction can't really add up to most much and and thankfully our gear and our stuff is so good that you know you you can get away with a lot a lot of mistakes and often it just it just helps reinforce maybe a lax attitude and you start getting complacent and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and letting stuff happen around you that has no ramifications.
Like you, you literally get away with it every time you might've ignored some little deal and you go up to launch and you're thinking about, oh man, I didn't make the payment on such and such, or forgot to pay the bill or, you know, this person's been nagging me at work and you take it up to launch. And sometimes that's the little tiny detail that's, that's going to bite. Now you can't shut everything out, but you got to compartmentalize it. You gotta, you gotta take it. This is not here now. I'm on launch. I've, I've literally told people to, because I'm a grumpy old man. I told people to buzz off on launch. They're bugging me when I'm standing there getting ready to launch and there's conversations going on. And, um, I've seen pilots that are, that are so tense that they can't have any of that going on, but maybe they shouldn't even be on launch in the first place.
Good, good quality, good, good, skillful pilots can let stuff creep in and it can cause a problem as it did to me. Yeah.
You know, one of the best lessons I learned was literally when I was getting my P2, it was the last day, uh, Jeff Farrell, who was until very recently, Chris Santa coach, he's partner forever and ever and ever. And I was just, I'd had such an amazing week. We were out at the point and I was learning how to ground handle and I was doing my first flights and you know, as it is for everybody in this sport, that's where we get addicted and we just can't believe what we're doing. And he took me across the other side, the other side of the lake and to kind of like my first mountain site. Cause you've got to get that sign off, you know, and I was so excited. I was going to get to fly off a mountain. It just, I was buzzing. And, uh, and it was with my good friend, Randy Campador. And we got up there and, you know, I, for whatever reason, it was, it was hot, hot, hot, you know, June and it's in the middle of the day and I hadn't had enough water.
And, uh, I just wasn't, I wasn't putting things together, but I didn't know it, you know, and he was just standing off to the side and I had, you know, I was clipped in and I was ready to go, but I just couldn't remember if I turned right or left. Couldn't remember which hands the brain was, the brakes, my hands over the top and the top, you know, like all these things that I had done perfectly all week and really had down and really, you know, understood. I mean, for, for a brand new pilot, I'm not, you know what I mean? But I, and he just, he kind of, he came over, tapped me on the shoulder. And he said, you're done today. And I was like, what, why? What do you, what do you mean? I'm getting to do my mountain flight. And he goes, no, you're done. Unclip, pack away your glider. And, uh, it was just, I still think about that all the time.
I had no, I, I couldn't recognize that I wasn't operating. You know, I was just, I was fumbling around, but I didn't have the experience then. And I was just, I was, I was sapped. I was too tired. I was too much input all week. And I was, my brain had had enough and, but I didn't recognize it. And we need to be able to recognize these things. I
will say this too, then, um, you know, there's a difference between an instructor and a really great instructor. And like Brad making me go do the stalls again. Yeah. Um, like your instructor spotting that something wasn't right. I mean, not so good instructors just let things go, you know? Yeah. And they pluck their student out of the trees and they give them hell for, you know, why'd you go in the trees? We've trained so hard, but to have an instructor that goes spot that you weren't, you know, cued in, it wasn't happening for you. Um, you know, that's pretty cool too. Yeah. We need,
we really, we need our instructors and then we get kicked out of the nest and we need our mentors. And, um, Martin, what a pleasure, man. This was, I've been, like I said, at the top of the show, I've been dying to talk to you. And this was, it was just a blast. I'd love to maybe do a followup show with, you know, the original plan was to do it with your wife and have you both on at the same time. So maybe, maybe we can talk her into another one of these, but I appreciate it. Thanks for all your knowledge and stories. I know we've tapped a fraction of 1 % of them and there's many, many, many more. So we'll have to do a, we'll have to do a round two as I've promised to do with, with Larry as well. But thank you very much. Thanks for sharing your time and, and, uh, and your knowledge and your stoke.
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate it.
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