Happy New Year, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Cloudbase Mayhem. Let's hope 2021 is a little rosier than the last and things continue to seem pretty crazy out there in the world, certainly here in the States. But yeah, let's just hope we get back to some normalcy soon. This is a great show with my friend Renee on glider design, which we will get to here shortly. But before we did, I wanted to thank all of you who have contributed to that survey we put out quite a few weeks back. We continue to get awesome responses there. And I have decided, with the help of Nik Hawks, who I've got a show come up with soon, a lot of people were requesting more shows, kind of focused on the beginner and intermediate pilots.
So we've got this kind of fun Q&A and a show where he asks me a bunch of questions and I ask him some on his development and coming up in a few weeks. And he also, after looking at the survey responses, thought, "Hey, you know, you should drop in a tip or two to the front of every show," because I'm getting proper buried in requests and information and questions both, just directly via email. And also, in that survey, we got a ton of them, and I realized just how hard it's going to be to cover all these questions in talks with the guests that kind of range all over the place. So these are going to be real specific topics, and you know, how to climb better, and we'll just drop it into the front of every show from now on, and you let us know if you like that.
So I'm either going to do this by myself, or we're going to do it with a guest. And today I've got my good friend Bianca Heinrich, who has been, uh, racing with Eduardo and the ex Alps, and we've been flying mine together a lot over the years, and she was just involved in an incident and had some thoughts on making sure that we're covered. This is something that I've been harping on for years but a lot of people still travel and it just doesn't take high priority and then something happens and it becomes a real cluster. So, this is something that we really need to take on as a community to make sure we have the appropriate insurance and the appropriate medevac and get home insurance, so it doesn't become something that our community or our friends and family have to be shelling out in some cases more than six figures.
So it's an easy thing to do and there are easy answers. And so we just want to encourage you to get educated and take it on. So Bianca, thanks for sharing with us your thoughts on all this. I really appreciated your document. And we're going to pair that up with my kind of ongoing document that I have on the website on cloudbasemayhem.com on insurance. And so take it from there. What did you learn in this kind of scary incident? And how can we be better prepared as a community? Yeah,
thank you, Gavin. So I, a few years back, as a new revolution, also decided to really get best insurance out there and be prepared, especially when traveling abroad. When you're traveling abroad, it's really important to be covered for three things. So you need search and rescue insurance. So this is a SARs and the best option for that is typically the GUS SAR high risk insurance that covers paragliding and hang gliding. So we have to make sure it does cover paragliding and hang gliding. Besides the search and rescue, you've got to get expatriation services. services. So you need to make sure if you are in a hospital, if you are in a hospital abroad, you need to be able to get home.
And if you can't take a commercial airliner, you have to have an extra plane coming and getting you. And so this is very important that you have repatriation zones. And besides the search and rescue, besides the repatriation insurances, you also need medical insurance abroad. If you end up in a hospital, a lot of times they want cash guaranteed before they do anything or if they do do it, if they do do surgery or something, they're not going to release you if they don't have a guarantee of payment from your insurance company. There are only a few insurances out there that cover medical expenses for paragliding and these basically come down to the IMG signature insurance that cover a hundred thousand dollars,
If you cover paragliding, there is a little bit of a question whether they cover paragliding within competitions. So just be aware of that. But there's also World Nomads and there's Dogtech Extreme. Those cover medical expenses, $100,000, which is not a ton, but it is pretty good. And you will need about that amount if you have a big surgery. That's basically what you would need. So make sure you have coverage, not just for repatriation, but also for actually medical expenses.
Yeah. And it's good to point out, folks, that this is two separate things in most cases. In most cases, the GEOS used to have this high-risk benefit slash medevac insurance that you could couple with your search and rescue on your device. So if you hit your search and rescue, if you hit your SOS on your device, they are going going to come get you regardless. But now it's this question mark. Now that Garmin bought them out that they don't offer this high risk benefit on that. And so you might be up for a big bill, but I'm being told by global rescue, if you have say global rescue insurance or, or MetaJet or Medivac insurance and put that in your emergency notes, you know, if, if I've pressed the SOS, it's most likely spinal, I'm a paragliding pilot or whatever you are.
And here's my policy and here's who to contact. Here's the 800 number. Then GEOS should activate whatever you've told them to activate. So that's the workaround that we know of right now. But again, like what Bianca is saying, it's really important to understand that there's travel insurance that you need. So this IMG City Insurer, World Nomads, or Dog Tag Extreme, those are the only three we know about that cover paragliding and hang gliding that is, once you're out of country, that cover medical expenses where you are. It's very, very important. And then the second one is getting you home. That's—that could be a massive bill if it's a private jet, so, or helicopter, something else. So that needs to be Global Rescue, MedJet, or, uh, what was the other one? Um...
There's Global Rescue Medjet, but it is also covered; it is included in Work Nomads, and it is also included in DogTech Extreme. So, if you—if you just do a couple of trips a year, um, you can actually get that as a the two-in-one, basically, if you get Dark Tech Extreme or if you get Word Nomads. You get expatriation with it, and you get medical insurance with it. The IMG signature does not have repatriation services at all, so that's just medical. That goes basically for that you need in combination with Global Rescue, basically. And you can get the signature insurance, the IMG signature, on the Global Rescue website if you are a member there. So that kind of goes together a little bit. So if you have a yearly membership for Global Rescue, get the NG, question
load reply competition, you might want to think about it in different ways, because they clearly state in their fine print that they're not covering competition. But if you get World Nomads or DocTech Extreme, it covers both of these. But you still always need also the SARS option. So there are kind of three things to think about. Search and rescue, finding you and bringing you to the nearest hospital. hospital, the medical expenses, so the hospitals that are abroad are charging you obviously for their services and you've got to pay that, if you have a big surgery that can be $100,000 easily. And then lastly, how are you going to get home? So you've got to be covered for all of those.
We actually experienced that a lot of times the local ambulance services, when you kind of, they find you and get you to the nearest hospital, a lot of times they don't even charge for that. It's kind of a local service, I think. But then you might need to transfer from the small hospital to the big hospital. Of course, they're going to charge you for that if you're not insured. So Global Rescue, for example, would provide that as well. There's ground transport and there's air transport. So Global Rescue would cover the ground transport from the small hospital to the big hospital and then maybe home. So many things to think about, but you've got to make sure we're all covered.
Yeah, and I like making this a really simple step. What I love about making a spreadsheet before your group goes now, usually when you're a part of a group, you know, whoever's running it will be doing this. Or when you're in a comp, it's just automatic. You have all you've already given them all your insurance information and everything else. But most international comps don't demand they only want you to have your insurance from home. So, you know, I've never been asked, do you have global rescue? Do you have IMG signature? So one of the things about having a list with your group is that it makes everybody accountable. I personally don't fly with anybody if they don't have an inReach. That's just my personal thing. I don't want to be involved in an incident where somebody doesn't have an inReach. I just think it's totally irresponsible of us as pilots.
So secondly, if you had this sheet, I'd really think about, am I going to fly with a group of people that aren't insured in Columbia? I don't think I want to be involved in that. So it makes everybody accountable. You can have this sheet and all the contact information of friends and family. What if something happens, who to contact, et cetera, et cetera. But you can also look and go, Hey, Joe, you don't have any insurance. What are you doing? You know, it's super easy. It's super cheap. It's only a few bucks a day. That's literally what this comes down to. It's a few bucks a day. And so it's just something we really, really must do. And you know, if you travel a lot and you don't do a lot of different, uh, flying kind of things, you know, something like the yearly Global Membership, Global Rescue works really well for somebody like that.
You know, that's—this is what I get: I get IMG Signature for every trip, and then I have Global Rescue for the year. I used to do the Geos; that was a really great because it was one shop, but they don't have that anymore. That's not being offered, so that's what I do. Uh, but like Bianca said, there are other, there are other routes, and this is something that we've really got to take on with our community so please look into this, please go to the article on the website it has all been updated on what what the various options are and recommendations, so just go to cloudbasemayhem.com put in the search term insurance, you will see it and reach out to Bianca or I for more solutions and ideas and if we've missed anything please let us know. Yeah,
I think that's really the point to bring home is we are all responsible to make sure our bodies, our flying bodies, have that information accessible and are insured, really. And if they're not, we've got to make sure that they will be.
Yeah, and I understand you were involved in this incident where the victim had IMG signature and they just guaranteed the $100,000. And that's the other thing we haven't mentioned yet. It's super, super duper important. As soon as you get hurt, you've got to make the call. You've got to call your insurance company right away. This is not something where they'll back do it. You can't go back to them two months and send them all the bills. That doesn't work. You've got to right away. You've got to call the insurance company. So-and-so is at an incident. Here's what we're dealing with. And then they can start and then they can immediately just go, okay, what do you need? What help do you need? You cannot do it from the back end. If
they don't organize it, they're not paying for it. They need to organize things. They need to organize the ground transports, the air transports, all those things. They provide a guarantee of payment, let's call it, up to the max limit of the insurance. That's the only way you're going to get this pay. And what happened basically in the most recent case is basically they're like, well, if you don't get this guarantee of payment, the hospital said that, you're not going to release the patient. So you're going to get in big trouble. You cannot come up with the money. They're not going to let you go.
And one final little thing that I just wanted to put out to our audience is be mindful right now of what COVID is doing in the hospitals. I had a friend of a friend just got hurt, spinal injury that was not stable down in Columbia, a place that many of us go year after year after year. And they could not get her into a big hospital, period. They're not accepting foreign. I don't know if it was foreign or just trauma, but because COVID has so overwhelmed the hospitals there, they wouldn't accept her. And so it was several days where they were dealing with, what do we do with this spinal injury? Because she was too unstable to put her on a medevac flight to get her home. So be thinking about that.
There are some things that insurance doesn't cover. Now, depending on where you go and what you're doing, it's a risk. I'm not saying don't travel right now. I'm just saying that it's riskier than it typically is. And it's good to do a little bit of homework to find out where you can safely go. Because trauma, a very minor trauma incident is massively labor intensive in a hospital. You know, when Ben broke his back, there was 20 people, at least minimum, on that first 24-hour shift that's dealing with that. So, you know, a lot of hospitals just don't have the staff right now to deal with a big trauma incident. And
it's also a good point in terms of permits. These medevac planes need permits to come into a foreign country before they can even land there. Getting these permits now takes longer than it used to be because of COVID as well. So it's all delayed. It's all a problem. So think about it before you go somewhere and where you go.
Bianca, thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank
you. okay
Hope you enjoyed that, and here is the main show. My friend Renee Falquier, he is a young pilot and chasing it pretty hard. He's flying an enc and totally addicted as all of us are, and he got a thesis. He's, uh, he's an engineer and he put together his thesis, submitted it Bruce Goldsmith over at BGD designs because he was living in Switzerland and went and did a year-long project with BGD on design philosophy. And this was one of the things that a few people really wanted in the survey results was more about gear, more about technology, more about glider design. I've always been a little worried to take this on an audio format, but Renee did an awesome job.
We really had a blast with this conversation and I think you're gonna very much enjoy it. It's kind of the science versus craft and how they tackle design, how wings improve and, uh, just what they're up against in terms of certification and all that kind of stuff. So I think you're going to enjoy it if you're into wings, you're into tech, you're into flying, you'll enjoy this conversation with Renee. Cheers, Renee.
It's awesome to have you on the show. I've been really excited to talk to you. The last time we saw each other was down in Valle, and I understand you had to race home for a family emergency, which I'm really sorry about. I understand you've had a pretty tumultuous year outside of COVID. We're all having a pretty tumultuous year. But before then, you were doing a very cool project with BGD, which we're going to talk about. And why don't we start this off with hearing a little bit about your flying history and how you got involved in this whole design project with BGD hey
Gavin, absolutely. It's, it's an honor to be on the show. Thank you, thank you for having me. Um, yeah, it definitely has been quite the year, but happy to be kind of wrapping it up on, on a positive outlook. And yeah, so a little bit, I guess, about my flying history, I am firmly in the intermediate category, 300-hour range, which I know on a recent show was kind of highlighted or flagged as the start of the one of the danger zones. So, I guess they're all danger zones for sure. Um, but yeah, just being, being mindful of that. And I've been flying a little over four years as of this year formally with BGD's team, which is just this awesome opportunity, something I'm really grateful for, and uh, an extension of my involvement with them as part of my master's thesis, which started as part of an industry project that we had to do for the aeronautics program at the university that I was studying in, that I was enrolled at in Stockholm.
And the professor there was a sailplane pilot. So when I got to talk to him about paragliding, he suggested that I try to find this project in the paragliding industry, which led me to going to the 2018 Coupé car with a CBE and an idea to pitch. And that's where I linked up with Bruce and with Tom Lollies, his co-designer, and the rest of the R &D team. We talked it over and we just came to this agreement that fit what they needed and what the university needed. And that was the start of this really exciting project.
And you sent me the project, which is not exactly layman's terms for me, but But describe what the project is and, you know, give us the brief on that. What was it?
Yeah. So the project fit a side of development, which it gears towards helping designers create virtual prototypes. And what I mean by that is that the designers, and we'll talk a little bit about this as uh, kind of as the episode develops, but designers have these tools that currently are more akin to, uh, as Felipe put it in his podcast, kind of a designer's pencil, right? So it lets them draw out the geometry that they're, that they're intending to create. So the shape of the glider, the shape of the canopy, the line placements, But the software doesn't really tell them all that much about how the glider is going to behave, or even whether the the glider is going to look that way.
So Tom Lullies is working on this incredible structural simulation program which resolves the actual of the canopy once there's aerodynamics involved, once the glider is loaded. And what I did was create a software that takes that output and then runs a series of analyses on them to then give some feedback on how the glider is going to perform and how the glider is going to behave and pitch. Specifically, at the start of the project, we really wanted to do all degrees of freedom, so we wanted to have roll and yaw included, but really in those six months, we realized just getting pitch alone was was a six-month project. So that's what my thesis was was gearing towards.
I
love that you pointed out in your in your thesis that it's this kind of cool combination between science and craft. Can we drill down into that a little bit? Like the, you know, this gin CCC wing that was brought out for the Swiss PWC. I think the only PWC we had this year, unfortunately. But, you know, it took after the fins of a humpback whale. I think it was a humpback, right? Yeah. Just fascinating. Fascinating. And so how much of it is, yeah, drill into that a little bit. When your team starts to develop a wing, and Bruce said on his show that you're never really starting to develop a wing. You're always just refining a wing you already have.
It's very rarely just starting from scratch. But in the case of gin, in some ways it was. It was just a whole new, okay, how can we just make a radical change here?
Yeah, no, it's super interesting because, you know, aircraft are pretty tricky in general from a design and analysis standpoint because their degrees of freedom. So what I mean by that is, you know, up, down, left, right, forward, back, pitch, roll, yaw, they tend to be coupled. So changes to one of these degrees of freedom will affect the other ones. But in paragliders, we really only have one active surface for that, which is the canopy that affects all of them. And this is in contrast to, say, a fixed wing aircraft like a plane that has its main wings, it has the stabilizers in the back, it has a big tail fin. So you have a lot of active surfaces to try and decouple how these manage. And how that ties into the difference between craftsmanship and hard engineering is that there are a lot of readily available tools to do the analysis, to do the simulations and to do that engineering front.
front, but the reality is that designers rely very heavily on their own experiences. Um, I think on a—on an almost different spectrum for those familiar with surfboards, there's this similarity in how they're made. And that surfboard, uh, shapers rely on these templates, no will work, and in a similar way, paraglider designers have an idea of a starting work, and then they have the analysis tools and simulation tools to supplement that. But the fact of the matter is that there's very good paragliders being made without that kind of heavy analysis or or simulation tools, so designers have to find that happy medium between their experience and and their craft and that black guard that they've been so attuned to and leveraging all these new cool tools that are starting to cop up
so are are you saying with the with the kind of software engineering and the in in the simulation tools that you have, does it, does it keep, or does it allow a manufacturer like BGD to, to skip a prototype, to actually skip one of the stages where that you can go, okay, we can see that this is going to need this and this and this, and you don't actually have to go back to the factory, make a wing, test it, you know, put a test pilot on it, take it through the rigors and then, okay, it's going to need this, this and this. Can you kind of skip some of those steps or you still have to do all that?
So that's actually been the target, I think, of implementing these new simulation tools is to try and reduce the number of physical prototypes. So I think if we look at it from this design loop standpoint, right, is the designers have their objectives. They know what they're starting with. Then they go into the actual geometry. So designing the shape of the canopy, the internal structure, the attachment points and all that. and then, by running it through these simulation tools, they'll get these outputs that will let them make decisions on whether that prototype is worth even making, right? So, at that point, they can go back and alter the geometry and go through this virtual prototyping stage before getting to the physical prototype. So, in the latest glider that BGD developed, it's a high b called the base too; they had something like 57 virtual prototypes versus seven physical prototypes, um, and what I heard from Bruce was that those seven physical prototypes were actually all really good, and they were focusing on the, um, I think if we were to divide a paraglider into a tangible parameter side versus intangible, you know, tangible are things like performance and pitch stability and pitch behavior versus the intangible ones are things like how it feels, right?
It's hard to really get an analytical, um, parameter for what a glider feels like, or the type of feedback that it gives you. So, all seven of those physical prototypes were really good on the tangible side, and they were, they were just honing down into those more nuanced human aspects of feel when
Can they say, "Okay, this, this is done." I mean, is that, is that it? Just seems like you could just keep going with that infinite, infinite item, you'd never end, oh
My god, yeah, no, that's so. It's really funny because I think at BG I saw was Bruce and Tom on the design side, and then Arna, is Bruce's wife, is is managing kind of the more sales operation, okay? That's so.
That's what you need. You need, you need the bean counter to go done. We're releasing this to the world, oh.
Absolutely, I think if you—if we just let Bruce go to his devices, I think he'd still be working on one of these wings because he's just—he wants it down to the end detail. But there are these realities of, hey, this thing needs to come out, this needs to be put out to the market, and we need to get some feedback. So it's, I think to answer your question, is it just depends on what your reality is. If you have the time and the the funding and you just really don't care about how long it takes you, man, you could—you could just hone it down, yeah, at infinitum. And I think that's—that's a big part of the reason why wings get iterated is, you know, we see these step releases of these families of wings that over time are just going in the direction of some optimality.
right this that's a good term step release Do you see, you know, in spending all this time, you know, behind the scenes and in the programs and talking to Bruce and the designers, is there something like the huge advance that we saw with the shark nose? nose. Are, are you guys still talking about that again? Because most of the people I've talked to that seem to be in the design space feel like, you know, at this point, it's, it's little things. It's better sewing, it's better, you know, but there, but in terms of something that just radically changes the performance of a glider, like the shark nose, um, is probably, but then they always say, well, you, you know, you just never know, of course, but is there, is there something like that coming?
I, so I think that the way to treat this, this question is we're going to try a little visualization exercise and I need you to work with me here. Um, so when we look at, at optimization and optimization problem, right, We're trying to get to the theoretical maximum maximum of whatever we're treating, in this case, a paraglider, and what that optimality curve looks like, if you will, is on the vertical axis you have the performance, in this case, and then on your horizontal axis you have the effort invested for each incremental gain, and what you have is a a diminishing return curve.
So, if we look at the history of of paragliders specifically, you know, any aircraft that is an inflatable parafoil over your head that is intended to glide At the beginning, every increment was going to be huge. It didn't take that big an effort to get that next step in performance because there was very obvious things that could be addressed, rest, um. And then, as time went on, it seems that that performance increase per year started kind of flattening out. And I think that, yeah, the shark nose was a huge step, but I think since then we're getting into that part of the curve where each incremental bit of performance just takes that much more effort. And I'm not sure that for paragliders as we know them, there's going to be a huge step.
Um, there is a theoretical maximum performance that can be achieved for a given aspect ratio, a given size, and I tried to run some numbers on it. I think we're, we're not there yet, but it's starting to get to that point of the curve that's really flattening out. And I think if we see a big step, it's not necessarily going to be in paragliders as we know it, but there's intervention potential in playing with different canopy shapes that might shift us and to a just different curve entirely by
different canopy shapes? You mean like the the wave nose of the gin or becoming more like a hang glider or something else? I
think the the gin example is a good one of something that could potentially shift the curve, if you will. Um, but, uh, but what I was referring to as more of, yeah, that step that you saw between hang gliders and paragliders. And Bruce actually had this very interesting article of how free flight has actually been trending towards less performance, right? We started with sailplanes, then went on to, to hang gliders, which don't perform as well, and then to paragliders. But on the other hand, our access to it has just exponentially increased. Sure. Um, I think in the context of human free flight, the fact that we, we can fly off a mountain and realistically do hundreds of Ks out of a backpack. I think is, it's pretty close to the ultimate.
Yeah. It's incredible. Tell
me about the testing side of things. And I know that's not specifically what you were working on, but I've always thought, gosh, I'd be like the worst test pilot because I get so excited about everything. And I just be like, yeah, that's perfect. That's awesome. Obviously you get to where you have a much finer feel for a glider and okay, okay, this needs to change and that needs to change and what causes that change. But tell me about, you know, like when you're saying the base that just came out or is just coming out, this high-end B, will the test pilots just be, you know, Bruce level who can fly anything or should you have also test pilots that are, that's what they fly or ENBs?
So there's a funny anecdote tied to that, which is that during my time at BGD, I was, I was having that conversation with Bruce of, Hey, you know, what is, what do I need to do to become a test pilot? And Bruce just looked at me kind of point blank and just said, you're not crazy enough. Um, you'd make a pretty bad test pilot. And, and that kind of caught me off guard at the time, but he's like, yeah, you just, you don't strike me as having that confidence. If I can pull that huge deflation over ground and I know I'm going to sort it out. Um, And in working with the test pilots, they're cold, man, like those guys are so gnarly. They'll… And you know, in Gourdon… You're seeing not only our test pilots, but other brands are doing their testing too, and I mean, yeah
The stuff you see the test pilots doing is pretty out there, and once that all sunk in, I, I realized Bruce probably was right. I'm not sure what
Do you—what do you mean by gnarly? Do you mean that they're just incredibly confident that
They just don't—they just don't—incredibly confident, but also incredibly competent, right? I mean, that's the thing is, they're not worried about it, but just as importantly, I'm not worried about them either.
right you
know like, sure, you just—they just look completely in control, and part of that might be ours, part of that might be, um, kind of their, their psychology, but they're definitely, they're very attuned to what they're doing, and and so to also answer the part of your question of who's really doing the testing, I mean, all those guys are pretty expert level, but I do appreciate that while I was there, I was included in that test loop, but kind of on a late stage of the testing for a given prototype, right? Once the actual test pilots had had their way with it and said, yeah, this is what we think. This is where it's going. It was almost like, here, let's hand it over to Rene. He's probably a lot closer to the target audience of this glider than we are.
And I would be involved on that end of things, which was really cool. I
bet. Can you single out the step or the person or the software or the test pilot? What part of it is the most critical to creating the best wing?
The designer's ability to make decisions at that interface between the objective criteria of a glider and the human criteria of a glider. I think that's, that's where you would find kind of the best quality glider because we're always shooting for performance and we're always shooting for a certain, you know, pitch behavior, certain pitch characteristics, but there's something to be said about a designer's ability to filter out all those very technical, jargony nuance things and translate them into a glider that you can hand to someone and it makes sense to them from a handling perspective, from a behavior perspective, perspective, and that second part is, it's really intangible, right?
There's no software that you can run a glider through and say, "Hey, this glider is going to be really well received by the reaction time of an EMB category pilot," um, and who knows, maybe as we get better parameterizing at kind of extracting those parameters, uh, for the different behaviors, um, we'll be able to tune into that, but but right now, that's definitely in the black art experience side of a designer.
This is – yeah, I'm glad you brought up black art. It seems to me that with all of these manufacturers, Ozone without Luke, Bruce without – or BGD without Bruce, Olivier Neff without Niviuk, do they survive? Can they keep making great products? It seems like without the visionary, without that post of this is who we are and the genius behind these folks making these wings, do they make it? I'm putting you on the spot here.
Let me ask that a different way. How critical is that person?
I think they're super critical. I for something that struck me about my time with BGD and seeing how Bruce and and Tom Lully's, the Tom Lully's is 25 years old, um, he's, he's grown up around paragliding and it's clear that in working as a co-designer with Bruce, it's—I'll put it this way—a paraglider designer is not the type of job that you can post and say, "Hey, you need this experience and these requirements and please interview and we'll see how it goes." It's, it's a lot more akin to an apprenticeship in, in my eyes. Like, you really need to be working with someone who's been doing it for a long time and, and learning the ropes and, and kind of taking it on from there. So, I think these brands do survive, but they're, it's
going to be important for all of these visionary designers to pass that on in some apprenticeship style of learning because there's a lot of room for philosophy. And that's what I kind of keep alluding to, this meeting point between the objective, tangible design criteria and those intangible human aspects. And that's what I think makes this sport so exciting from a design standpoint too, is you can really see that philosophy play out across the different brands. I mean, a gin generally has these very diverse, different characteristics to say an ozone, to say a Niviuk, to say a BGD, and I think that's the designer's influence. That's the amount of leeway that they have to implement those more human aspects, and I love that.
I love that you can pick up a different wing and they can all be like, objectively good on a performance or behavior standpoint, but the feel is going to be completely different. This
might be, and I love that. Yeah, that's—that's very cool. This—this might be something that's a little bit before your time. I don't know if this is something that you're still seeing that much, but in—in my even, you know, compared with the legends' short history in the sport, but there's always been, you know, until pretty recently, there have been bad wings. You know, there—there have been—there have been wings that get released. We were like, "Look, they kind of missed the mark on that." That doesn't seem to be happening really across the board. I—I don't see, you know, wings being released these days by any company that isn't really pretty damn good. I mean, I only fly Nivy, well, except in the last X helps, I flew the Zeolite, but uh, so I'm limited within their brand.
But, you know, there's—there that was always kind of a common thing that pilots would talk about, you know? And now it seems like they're—you know, there are definitely misses at the CCC end because you're talking, you know, half of 1 % at that end. I mean, they've just, they've got to go or they just don't compete. So that's just more, really more speed. But, you know, and people will learn how to deal with the handling of anything at that level if they can get a little bit more performance. But in the main, in the, you know, in the wider range of gliders that most Most people fly, you know, A to D there, there seems to be, everybody's making good wings.
Yeah. I think to your point, that's, I was pretty fortunate to come into the sport at a time where it seemed that, that just, that's where things were gearing towards. Um, and I've had the chance to fly a variety of wings, mostly in the B I've had the chance to sample a few C's specifically the, the cure to, I think with BGD, but a couple other ones. Um, and I think what I found is that on the object again, like back to this, to the objective tangible things, I, yeah, to your point, I have a hard time saying that like, "Oh, I flew this wing, that's just this death trap, I never want to go near that thing." No, I mean, they're, they all seem to hit those marks. And again, the differences that I found are just the subjective things, like, "Oh, this wing seems to, to go great, but the handling to me is, is a little dull," or maybe it's too lively, or, or those more subjective elements.
And that's where I think it's just important to try different wings and, and find what works, what works for you, do
You credit this, uh, you know, all the manufacturers making pretty solid wings. Is that, is that because the software and the kind of, uh, the engineering side has, has, has caught up with these, you know, designers' wild plans and hopes and dreams? Is the mesh just gotten, they've, the it's gotten more synergistic between the two, um, you
know, I think that would be... I would have a hard time giving a definitive answer, just given my somewhat limited exposure to the entire design space. I think what I would attribute it towards awards is that many, if say, if one manufacturer comes out with a wing and that wing sort of sets the new safety standard for a given class, any wing that gets released after that by other manufacturers is going to be held to that bar. So there is this catch-up game that's being played on the safety spectrum as well as the performance spectrum, because you know, if a manufacturer releases, say, a new two-liner D that has just incredible safety characteristics given that it's a two-liner D, and then another manufacturer releases their new two-liner D and it performs just as well, but it's twice as twice of a handful, they're just not going to be able to keep up.
It's not going to sell, right? So I think there's that catch-up dynamic at play. I
Just, I can't imagine. I'm sure you've got a firsthand account of this, but it seems relentless to me. It just seems like it must be – you're constantly feeling like you're constantly catching up. What is it like kind of behind the scenes? I mean obviously there's some things that I'm sure Private or Bruce wouldn't want to expose to the world. But what can you tell us about that side of it, just maybe the business side that's kind of fun or something that most of the audience probably doesn't know.
I think, and specifically speaking to the relentlessness of the pace at which things are being released.
Yeah, just the, I would imagine it's one of these businesses where you're like, you just can never feel like you can take a day off and sit on the couch. It's just this constant need to, you know, because like you said, If, if the new, you know, high end E and B or the new C comes out and it's just, you know, a factor better than your wings obsolete, you have to create that or better it, you know, let's use the Zeno as the, as the example here, you know, the, the Zeno has just been an insane seller and huge for the ozone brand. And it just really set the tempo at that two liner D level.
You know, there's no reason to produce a wing that didn't beat the xeno, and you wouldn't sell it.
Right, and and I think it's very telling that the Xeno 2 is, yeah, I mean, how many years has the Xeno been out, right? It's been
close to four, four years, yeah, and
So it, it, it speaks a lot that that there hasn't yet been a release there, and I think what that's trending towards and something, something that I, yeah, I kind of noticed it when I was kind of in that area behind the scenes is there is a relentless pace because there are these, especially these incremental innovations that very quickly start to make a difference to consumers. But I wouldn't say that there's unnecessary iteration. You know, some brands might be doing it. I wouldn't be able to say specifically which ones. I mean, I'm sure there's a business case to be made about like, Hey, just create the perception of new, but overall, I didn't get that impression of the, of the paragliding industry as a whole. Right. It seems that things are iterated when they need to be.
And I think that's also partly because I'll put it this way. No one's getting filthy rich off of paragliding, right? Like that's, That's the other element: is everyone that I met that worked in the industry was there because they loved it. I mean, it's there's just this passion that goes into every side and every element of it, and Felipe pointed out really well in his podcast by trying to put a number on it of just how expensive it is to release serial class gliders and certify them and to just make it viable. So there really isn't a lot of room for unnecessary iteration; you have to get it right. That
blew me away. What did he say? It was six figures, right? Yeah,
like 100K for about four sizes. I didn't have a direct look at any of the finances, but just at an order of magnitude, it makes sense. I can totally see that. What
are the things you hear from Bruce and the team that are kind of the biggest roadblocks to progress? Is it the testing? Is it the market? Is it funds? I think if
you asked all the different vendors this question, you'd probably get different answers. And I think part of it is part of the answers lie in where the different vendors are hedging their bets. But I think with BGD, they've made a tremendous investment in time and resources. And for example, helping me out with my thesis, Tom's PhD is in fluid structure interaction, which I definitely want to talk a little bit about, which is this incredibly technical project. And so BGD, they're hedging their bets on breakthroughs coming from the ability to simulate things. things, but I'm sure that if there was a lot more funding, that would go a long way towards kind of throwing more money at the problem, well
Let's, let's go down that road a little bit. You just said a whole bunch of words that I didn't even understand. Fluid dynamics... um, tell us about that side of things. Yeah,
So, fluid-structure interaction. Um, so I guess before we start talking about that, we want to take a bit of a step back and try to look at a paraglider as a whole, right? So, the most important forces that we're experiencing in the air are lift and drag, and by far the biggest contributors to both lift and drag—definitely lift, but also drag—is the canopy itself. And so, how you quantify those forces is generally the field of aerodynamics, and within aerodynamics, there's this other subcomponent called computational fluid dynamics, and that—that is a word that either strikes fascination or absolute terror into the engineers that work with it, because it is, Oh my God, it's you're looking at these equations.
And I remember the first time I saw them in my class, I just thought like, okay, this is getting really, really serious. And what's interesting about the equations that govern fluids is that so far they've proven to be mathematically correct, almost down to the particulate level. You can, in theory, describe a room full of air particles or a parcel of air particles down to the particles with those equations. But the problem is that it gets computationally very expensive. So, and I guess the way to visualize how that problem is set up is if you, if you imagine the canopy kind of just sitting in, in some 3D space, and you create a bunch of dots around, and those dots represent the air around it, and then those dots are linked to the adjacent ones with little lines, and those lines represent the equations that link each particle to the one that's next to it.
Um, and I want to add the caveat here for the listeners that might be familiar with CFD that this analogy isn't 100% correct, but it will get the point across. And so you have as many equations to one of these problems as there are links between two given particles, or between the number of particles that you have in your problem, and part of the classes or part of the courses you take in CFD, one of the classic things they have you do is to draw out how big a room of air you need to get, get to the point where you have a problem that will take computationally more time than there is time in the universe. Whoa, it gives you a sense of the scale of, of these problems. And so CFD has become like the, you know, the equations and everything that governs it is definitely
scientific, but the implementation can be a bit famously, a bit of a black art within engineering, of just knowing how to play with the mesh and playing with where you make those links and how many, you know, particles or equation links you realistically need to get to a good solution with a problem. And CFD, this field of fluid dynamics can get very good, especially if you know the shape that you're dealing with. So if you have a rigid object like a ball or even a car, you can get really, really good results, especially if you have a way of verifying them, say with a wind tunnel. Now, the problem with not just paragliders, but all aircraft, is that aerodynamic forces can get very large, and so anything that's subjected to forces is going to deform.
The this is classically studied under a field called aeroelasticity, which the Feedback loop at studying is that the aerodynamics say over a wing are going to deform that wing, and now when the wing is deformed, it's going to create a different set of aerodynamics, which then deform the wing further, and so there's this feedback loop until it settles at a given shape. And with a paraglider, it's easy to imagine because everything's so damn flexible, right? The canopy's made out of ripstop, the lines are hard just Kevlar and Dyneema and and whatnot, but what's important to emphasize here, this is relevant even for fighter jets. I mean, this field is is important in anything that flies, and if the listeners want to scare themselves out of flying in planes,
if you do a YouTube search for something called flutter testing, there's these incredible compilations from NASA labs where you know aircraft prototypes are just literally shaking themselves apart because they hit resonance with their own aerodynamics. And this is this is a carefully studied phenomenon, and you know, listeners will be happy to know that all commercial aircraft are subject to very rigorous testing to make sure that they can't even fly in in areas where this happens, at least not in normal operations, right? Um, and so to bring it back to paragliders, fluid structure interaction comes down to this idea that as air flows over a surface, it will change the shape of that surface, which in turn changes the air dynamics, and eventually it has to settle.
And back to the computational fluid dynamics problem that I described, you have all these equations that are tying the air particles as they go over a given object, but now you also need to create parameters for the canopy itself. So you need to give the problem, or the computational problem, the information that it needs about the ripstop nylon, about the lines, about how they stretch and how they deform, so that this piece of software can spit out the actual shape of the paraglider down to the wrinkle once it's subjected to airflow. Good.
Lord, I still count on my fingers yours, Rene. I can't imagine actually trying, trying to figure all this stuff out. It's fascinating.
It's this, it's a wild problem, Gavin. And I mean, I, I, I definitely understand it at a conceptual level, but I'll be honest with you, man. If someone came up to me and said, Hey, you need to implement this. I'd be pretty intimidated. It's, I can't emphasize how, how tricky the problem is
Renee, does understanding this side of our game, do you think it makes you understand aerology? Do you how forces work, how a glider works? Do you think it helps you pilot? I think I
Mean, if I could translate all the analytical knowledge into into piloting know-how, I would absolutely love that. And that isn't to say that, that it doesn't help. It, it certainly does. Um, but I think when it comes to actually flying a wing, there's, there's this analytical side that, that can help. But I, I would think that a pilot that goes by feel is going to outdo the pilot that goes by analysis on almost any day, right? Because I think with analysis, we can And I see myself doing this all the time with an analytical mind. We can sort of force our assumptions on what we're seeing as opposed to just feeling it out and seeing what's actually happening in front of us.
We always need to be careful with analysis in terms of not getting what's called observer bias, right? Right. Like we we have a theory of how something is and we look for evidence that points towards that theory, a lot of the times ignoring the evidence that might go against it.
So I think more than more than whether it helps me be kind of a better pilot at a piloting level, I think it helps a lot with my risk management because I'm able to kind of conceptualize these things and really break them down to to a nitty gritty.
Knowing – that's a cool segue. Knowing the behind the scenes more like you do and what most people will never get, does it make you more confident or less confident in gear? And I don't mean, and I don't mean obviously, uh, I'm not asking you about BGD wings. I'm talking about flying in general. You know, does it, does it give you more confidence in what these craft can do or does it, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, no, I totally get what you're saying. And it actually, it, it brought back a memory of when I, when I first started to fly, um, you know, Torrey Pines is an interesting place to learn to fly because it's a bit of a peanut gallery, not just with other pilots, but the general public. There's this viewing area that you know people are out having lunch or whatever. I mean, it's a beautiful place to go and have a picnic, so we have a lot of people just in the greater San Diego area that come out, and a lot of people are curious and they're asking questions. And I remember when I was learning, there's this guy and he said, "Well, aren't you terrified? I mean, look at what you're flying. It's this, it's just nylon and strings. Like, what? Why are you so sure this thing's not going to fall out of the sky?"
And I remember at that time, I just thought, "Oh, it makes perfect engineering sense." Like, it's just in my head, I was like, "Oh, it totally adds up that this thing's not going to fall out of the sky." So I think early on, I noticed that just understanding how, how it works, and maybe at that point it was a little bit of a blind faith, but but I could make sense of it in my head. And that made me a lot less scared of it. There's this FUD factor, right? This fear, uncertainty, and doubt that just, it wasn't there because I could wrap my head around how these things worked. And now that I've actually been kind of behind the scenes and seen what's going on, I would say that's reaffirmed. The way that the testing is done, the way that load testing is done. I mean, they're rated up to eight times maximum weight with a safety factor so that translates to eight g's with a safety factor and
There's military aircraft that have a maximum G loading of six geez.
really right
So that gives us a sense, yeah. And general aviation aircraft, I think, have maximum G loadings well below that, so it gives us a sense of what our, you know, at a first glance, very simple-looking aircraft can accomplish. It's, it's incredible.
How'd you get into flying so?
I grew up, it... it started with a Calvin and Hobbes comic, of all things. Um, there's these little strips where Calvin buys these scale models and he's, he's having his fantasies and he's, I don't know, flying an F4 all over the place. And, and then the F4 starts malfunctioning and then eventually he crashes, and the next strip is him putting together the scale model and it's just this mess of glue and parts everywhere. And that, in my head at 10 years old, I was like, I want to build scale models and I want to build these little planes. So I started, just all my allowance just went towards that, like buying glue, buying kits, buying paint.
And I think over, you know, from when I was 10 to 18, I must have built close, close to 100 and painted them. And by the end of it, I was submitting them to little competitions and just having a ball with it. But that's what started turning my head towards, well, what if I eventually get into aeronautics design and, and designing these things and how that would work? And then that spurred, well, an interest in just what it would be like to fly and Um, so that curiosity has just been getting fostered ever since I was, ever since I was a little kid. And when I was 16, my dad was Swiss and we were visiting family in the south of Germany and Fussen, and we were there for, for a week. And my dad says, "Hey, why don't we go to one of these paragliding courses?" And I thought it was an awesome idea, so we signed up and we went and did it together.
And, you know, it was the equivalent of like a P1, just first flight getting off the hill and, and just an easy grassy takeoff with an easy grassy landing. And I think at that point it really stuck in my head. Um, but my parents made it very clear to me that my dad actually walked away from that experience just with A lot of apprehension, really. Um, yeah, he didn't have such... I think he just didn't have the coordination. He ended up, um, landing in some cow pies at one point, which probably a little bit, um, and so they made it very clear to me, if I ever wanted to do it, it was going to have to be on my own terms, and which I thought was very fair and, in retrospect, very important because it made it forced me to to go through the risk analysis process on myself and justify it to myself.
Um, so it took me another 10 years, or close to 10 years, before I'd saved up up enough money to to take a course. And living in San Diego, I'd see them all the time at Tory Pines, but I mean, Tory Pines, a very limited introduction to the potential of paragliding, and the more I found out, the more I loved it. I mean, this sport is just absolutely incredible. There's
An interesting fulcrum here that I've that I've thought about a lot, especially lately. You know, on the one hand, you know, I'm so envious of somebody like Chrigel, who you know, learned how to ground handle when he he was nine and got his license as soon as he actually got it. He started flying before he was legally able to in Switzerland. I think it's 14 or 16 or something there. And then, you know, and he's just, that's what he's done with his life. And certainly we're just so much more capable of learning when we're young. I saw that my example with my dad was sailing. You know, he, he was a, he played on the tour and in golf and an incredibly solid athlete. He was just very gifted as an athlete, but, you know, he tried to learn how to sail.
We learned how to sail together when he was in his early sixties. And it was monumentally harder for him than it was for me, just because it's, you know, the terminology, it's just harder to learn things when you're older. And so, you know, I didn't learn how to fly until I was 36, and I often, you know, just think, "Gosh, if I could have just learned this when I was 16." But at the same time, me at 16, me up until 30, that's just, you know, I don't know if that would have been a very good way to to see 40. I just don't know if I would have made it through. We have a very different tolerance of risk when we're young. And so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's
especially
interesting with this sport.
I, yeah, I completely agree. man. And in, in retrospect, it, I'm really glad that I got into it when I did, because I had, how do I frame this? I'd had a really nasty surfing accident before I started paragliding, which completely changed the way that I approached risk. And I think if I had started paragliding before I had that surfing accident, it, it it could have led to something really nasty. Just not managing. I just wasn't managing risk in a way that was appropriate. I was taking way too much risk for the skill that I had at the time. And so it led to a near drowning on a remote reef pass in the Menawai in Indonesia.
And it really shook me awake. It really made me think, well, how do I prevent this from ever happening again? And I'm glad that I had that before I started paragliding. So I, in short, I think I'm echoing your point of on the one hand, yeah, it'd be, it would have been great to start earlier, but I'm really not sure that I had the right, a sustainable mentality. I'll put it that way. But
that brings up another interesting point, you know, that Chrigel, we have a quote of his in the book that, you know, people that are, that are too concerned with safety and driving the speed limit and being careful, aren't really a very good fit in paragliding. You know, like if you're worried about surviving, you're probably not going to be a very good pilot, which is kind of a, there's a blunt truth to that. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, there's, there's friction in all these steps, isn't there? Like Bruce said, you wouldn't make a very good test pilot. So somewhere, this spectrum is interesting.
It is. It is. And there's probably not a single – the way that I manage risk probably doesn't work for someone – I mean, I'll put it this way. You and I probably manage risk very differently, but both you and I seem to be comfortable with how we're doing it. Um, and I think that ties back to everyone's risk profile. Is it's going to be very different, and it has to tie into what you're trying to accomplish with a sport, and it has to be realistic to not only your goals, but also you need to have a real honest conversation with yourself about about your own aptitudes, right? And and and to not sell yourself short, but maybe not oversell your your own abilities either.
And you always want to have something to reach towards. I think that's really important. But yeah, I think it varies by person. And it requires that kind of introspective honesty to hone in on what works for you.
We're straying here from your project and design and your time with BGD, but this is fascinating. I want to go down this road just just a little bit longer when you were there and you were, you know, you had this incredible opportunity to share space and air and thoughts and brain power with a proper legend, uh, in Bruce. And also I would imagine it would have been kind of a fascinating time because he's, he's devoting a lot of time to his son. And his son's becoming a really good pilot. And I think maybe when, I don't know if that was when you were there, But it was when Tear had his accident. But, um, I'd love to just know, let's talk about what you were able to sponge up from that relationship and, you know, maybe things that the wider world wouldn't be aware of without actually working there, yeah?
I mean, I think as a starting point, just from the offset, the first time that I got to fly with Bruce, I just got the impression of someone who's just so overjoyed every time he flies. And, and it's something that I love seeing consistently all out of there, because you know, it's not great conditions all the time. Sometimes it's just a sledder, but man, for someone that's been flying for what, 30, I mean, since the mid 80s paragliders, since like the mid 80s, and hang gliders before that, has won world championships, has just done incredible, incredible things and accomplished our dreams in the sport, he still just looks like a kid after landing, after a sled ride. You know, he's totally overjoyed, and that's one of the things that, that I think I really picked up on there.
Is this is supposed to be fun? This is just, this is incredible. It's, it's, it allows us to do things that were previously in our dreams. And, and keeping that in mind is always really important. And, and he would always have this thing where, if it's safe to fly, then fly. You know, don't, don't psych yourself out at the hill of, oh, it's not looking that great today. I mean, if you were there, there to fly and it's safe to do so, then, then do it. And what that means to different people is obviously relative to, to their own safety considerations, but again, just trying to fly as much as possible. Um, and the other element with Bruce is that he, I Mean, he's clearly very analytical in his own right, but there's this—he taps into this, or the black art side of the sport too, um, and you can see it, and just the way he flies, the way he talks about fly, the things that he's picking up on.
That I'm glad that that we would be able to have those conversations, because then, you know, the way he would look at certain clouds, or certain birds, or just a ruffle of a certain tree I picked up on, but I wouldn't have picked up on them without him kind of pointing them out, um, and in his relationship with Tear, I was there shortly after Tear's—well, not shortly, kind of like a year after Tear's accident, so I was kind of there for his rehab, and when he started kind of getting back in the saddle, and you can tell that Tear's been around paragliding his whole life because he got back in the saddle and just went and did this, this really technical cross country right off the bat, and lands, he's like, "Yeah, that felt pretty good," and
That was kind of the extent. I'm like, "Yeah, but you know what? What did you—what were you thinking about? Were you considering he goes?" No, I just sort of went out and flew the day. It just seemed right. And that's when I realized, I can prod all I want, and it's not that he doesn't want to tell me, it's just that nothing there. He's—he's just operating. Yeah, he's just operating on a different spectrum there.
What I've learned in the, you know, in the last bunch of years doing this podcast, talking to people, you know, there's most have had an accident, um, and for everybody, it's different. I see it seems, and it seems like for many, if you understand why the accident happens, it's a lot less traumatic. And sometimes that can just be something you can just get over instantly if you know what happened. It's often, it seems like it's more traumatic. Like Kari Castle talked about her tumble in Austria, which was her second tumble. Uh, you know, the first one was, was way more traumatic in the owens, but and there was injury involved and stuff there. But the second one, she just didn't know why it happened and it all worked out fine. She walked away. It was no, no big deal, but, but it was really traumatic because she didn't know why it happened, yeah.
I think that with tears, actually, I definitely got the sense that he was very honest with himself about how it came to be. Um, it was top landing in Gordon and really kind, kind of aggressive conditions, and and he was very frank about it. He basically said, "Yeah, I was getting a little cocky. I'd done my..." I think he'd competed in the Worlds recently and things were starting to shape on really well on the competition front, and he's like, "Yeah, so lesson learned." And he, he, I think, dealt with the whole aftermath of that accident in a very with a lot of equanimity, right? I think something I like about Tier is he's a pretty stoked guy at any given time, and he's a joy to be around. For that reason, yeah, so
After doing this, you know, you've been home, unplanned home, for much longer than you were. You were thinking, you were thinking, you were going to be in Switzerland this year, but what does the future look like for Renee? What is this? This going to be your job? Is this going to be something you want to keep pursuing? Yeah, I think I
I, I've made a big effort this year to stay involved to the extent that I can on, on the analytics and the engineering side with, with BGD and, um, I'm definitely keen to see where that continues to go. Uh, for me, it's been a lot of fun and it's actually opened up some doors, um, kind of on the wider industry side, hopefully a door that might open in the future. And in Switzerland, I was, was talking to, um, very
much an introduction call, you know, that just to get to know each other and and we'll see if it pans out. But it's a an aerospace consultancy that does pretty much this, right? The analytics and stimulation for for aircraft on a contract basis, and all of them are paraglider pilots. Um, so they were very excited to see the thesis, and I think more importantly, as I realized, they actually understood what I was getting at um with the thesis, and that built a a lot of rapport. So I don't know if that'll pan out where we've said we're going to keep in touch, but that's certainly made me realize that there's opportunities in that direction. And I I'm just a nerd when it comes to these, anything that flies and in any of the simulation space or analytic space behind it.
So that's where I would love to gear that side of my life, and on the flying side, you know, just keep on the progression, keep being mindful about it. Um, as I've mentioned to you in the past, like there's so many lessons that I feel I've implemented from the mayhem and, um, yeah, definitely in it for, for a long game. And I'm keen to see what, what comes with it.
Renee, we just did this survey we released a couple of weeks ago and I got a ton of great questions. Do you mind if I give you a couple and we'll, we'll end on that? Yeah, absolutely, man. man. Um, any, what, what's the biggest aha moment in your flying career or something you either learn with Bruce or just in your 300 hours where you were like, ah, that works. It could be gear, technical gliding, thermaling, whatever.
Yeah. The one that immediately came to mind there was we're often choking our race. And by we, I mean, pilots maybe in my range and the intermediates here at 300, we're often choking our wings. Um, That's something that came out of out of the thesis testing when I had to go out and fly a polar. Which, man, Gavin, that's a topic in of itself. How do we do, um, like flight testing for for verification, for for performance testing objectively? Um, is when I realized, man, most of your polar in the break range is in the first 10, 15 centimeters. Yeah, and I think a lot of pilots are flying with that as a default, and immediately you go into part of the polar where you're really just sinking out of the sky.
So that was a—that was a big moment where I realized, oh, you're that the
nuances of flying with that with brake are really a lot shallower than than I thought before a
Recent guest we had on Malin Lobb, you know, he's an instructor with flyo. I think you guys know each other, but he was talking about it. Chrigel put out this video pretty recently that basically said we should be flying around on full bar all the time. He's talking to two liner, but, but flying around on full bar and you modulate your speed and keep the wing over your head just with the bees. You're so you're, and I've been trying this lately, but what does, what does Bruce have to say about something like that? Is that, do you guys talk about that much? I mean, that that's a, that's a pretty interesting approach. I mean, I've done a lot of flying with Aaron Durogati and, you know, especially in world cups there are there are pilots who use a lot of bar yeah
It's, I think, there's an important distinction there with the CCC class, or even the two-liner geese, where you just have a much flatter polar at that end of the speed range; like, you just have much better glide throughout the speed bar range. Um, and on a three, at least what I'm flying, there's a certain point where just pressing more bar gives me a little bit of air speed, which might help me penetrate a little bit more, but man, the glide penalty is just almost not worth it. Sure, yeah.
You can't, you can't cross this. You can't take that statement for and down into the three liners; that just doesn't work. No,
but there's something interesting, which is that we're starting to see rear riser systems for three liners that are that make sense, right? Because for a while, we were just putting handles on on on the c's for three liners and sort of calling that a rear riser system, but But it really wasn't – I mean, we're never going to get to the point, I think, where – well, that's maybe too strong a statement. It'll be very hard to get to the point on a three-liner that you have the same rear riser control as you have on a two-liner. But, man, some of these new riser systems that are being put out are really exciting. I don't want to oversell or have too much of a conflict here with the fact that I'm tied to BGD. But the rear riser they put on the base too, actually feels like I have pitch control now.
So, to expand on that point of we should be flying on bar and really just modulating with the rear risers, that might be a practice that can start to filter down, certainly, into the C category and increasingly into the high B category. Um, there's something to be said about flying with, with intent, tent, and with speed within the constraints of, uh, of just the skills and our comfort. What's
Your favorite flying site, and if you could just be somewhere right now and fly, where would it be? Maybe they're the same spot, maybe
I'd say it's a toss-up between
valle and
piedra jita ah
Never flown Piedra Jita. I got to get out there. Sounds awesome, awesome.
It's a very... I love it. It's an intense place to fly, but it's... I just, I don't know if I'm just biased towards it because that's where I had like my first real XC, following a convergence line with a low saves and everything, but I just found it to be such a fun place to fly. And then, by... I think it's... it's just a powerful place, man. I
was just gonna say it's super interesting that But the two places you pulled out of your hat are not the soft, soft, grassy slopes of the Alps, but two places that rip pretty hard, you know, Valle and Piedrahita.
Yeah, I think I like strong conditions. And when the day is on and I feel good about it, it helps me get right into the zone. zone.
I asked this with everybody, but people in the, that answered the survey unanimously loved it. So we'll, we'll ask you as well. And this wasn't too long ago for you, but if you could rewind your 50 hour self, what would you change?
It's funny because I was thinking about that earlier and, and there's
something meta about the question, because this is, This is probably the most important question that you've asked your guests in terms of what I've extracted from the mayhem, and I think consistently what I've—the the lesson that I pay attention to for those guests that would have done something differently is, I think there was a a convergence around the idea of just take things slowly, take things at your time. Um, I've been pretty happy with the way that I've managed my progression, and so yeah, I think I would just tell them—tell my 50-hour self to to keep on that and just take it at your time. You're in this for the long run, and there's a a whole lot of Dick Simon to be at.
Love it. Rene, thanks for sharing all this with us. It's fascinating. I wish you the best of luck, not only with just your flying, but this whole design side. It's not something I think I'd be very good at personally, but I do have this dream of being a test pilot. I think I would really enjoy that side of it. But thanks very much, and thanks for sharing this. And we will put some of the resources you gave me to prepare for this talk up in the show notes and your wonderful PDF, which is actually hysterical considering it's very scientific. It's not exactly layman's terms, but I thought it was really funny. So hats off to you for making something scientific, hysterical.
But thanks a lot, Rene. Appreciate it.
Hey, Gavin. It's been a pleasure. Thanks again for having me on the show. And, you know, let's hope that we can find ourselves back in the sky again soon, racing in some crazy place like Bahia or wherever it may be.
I hope so. Thanks, bud. If
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