Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Happy New Year and welcome to 2022. Let's hope 2022 is a little kinder to all of us than the last couple of years have been. But to kick off this new year, I've got a great show for you today that's, again, quite a bit different than stuff we've done in the past. I was on the Soaring the Sky podcast recently, and they had me on as a guest, which is dedicated to glider pilots, sailplane pilots. And one of the guests that had been on their show reached out to me, Clemens Sipic. He lives down in the Boulder-Denver area now and flies there, but he's an Austrian sailplane pilot and fascinating individual.
Individual, and he got into sailplanes a long time ago, and then went away from it for also again a long time, and then came back to it about four years ago, and he's got a blog and video series and has just really chased it hard, and you know, really figured a lot of things out. So he's been listening to this podcast lately and and reached out and was pretty fascinated with the, you know, the various differences and similarities between the two ways of aviation, so we talk talk about risk tolerance and weather and finding lines and just all the differences. I haven't flown in a sail plane, I'd love to, and I need to, but we just kind of dug into both of each other's worlds and really, really enjoyed it.
And I've needed to get a lot more sailplane pilots on the show. So here you go. Enjoy this talk with Clemens Sepik.
Clemens, welcome to the mayhem. I'm excited to have this conversation with you. We kind of got connected through Chuck Fulton's show, Soaring the Sky. I did a podcast with him recently, and he recommended we have a chat about about flying sailplanes. And I think you—you heard that show, and you caught a few things that may have been, uh, not exactly true, because I don't know anything about flying sailplanes. So, and I've always wanted to, and I've always been super fascinated with them because I—I fly with next to, and very briefly next to, sailplanes in the Alps all the time. It's super popular over there. We don't see them much in my part of the world, but King Mountain's a big site here. You know, they have a fly-in; they used to have a fly-in every year. I'm not sure if they still do, you but anyway, welcome to the show, and I'm excited to talk to you.
Yeah,
Well, thanks Gavin for having me. This is, uh, it's super exciting. Uh, I, I also just got hooked up with the show through Jock. I actually wasn't even aware this is how much we, we fly in the sky together with paragliders and sailplanes all the time, but you know, we still typically don't, don't talk to each other very much. And I said, I'm, I've listened to a few of your episodes. It's, uh, super exciting, and I'm like, Like, yeah, this is really cool stuff. And so I'm going to be a fan of your show for sure. And I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I've always just, you know, I think we're going to delve into, you know, your progression and what you've learned flying sailplanes. And, you know, we were, we've emailed back and forth a little bit about, you know, it seems like the difference about 5X, you know, in terms of distance covered and speed and all that, which sounds about right. But you don't, let's start here. You're, I believe you're sitting in Boulder, Colorado, my alma mater. And, but you don't sound like you're from the States. What's your, what's your history?
Yeah, I'm originally from Austria. So that's where I grew up and actually learned to fly gliders in Austria. I did my license when I was 16, flew probably for about five years at the time. And then, you know, then Korea got in the way and the family and global and stuff. And, you know, I had to move to places where you don't really fly gliders like London and Paris. And, you know, Minnesota is not a super great place to fly gliders either. And then I was in Ohio for a while. So it, it just, it's just, uh, didn't work for a while, but then I'm like, you know, reached a point in my life where I'm like, this is what I wanted to do all the time, and I'm gonna go back to it, and this time I'm gonna do it really, and I'm doing seriously, I'm putting a lot of time into it.
I probably, I learned, you know, this, it's almost like a full-time job now for me because I'm also club president here in Boulder, so I'm, I'm super, uh, I'm super into it. Um, uh, bought my own plane a few years ago, and, uh, I've been doing, uh, some, some really cool flights, uh, in and progressed pretty quickly. I also put up a YouTube channel, uh, chasing the air. I saw that it's
Really, some terrific content there, yeah.
I mean, it's, it's, it's very technical content. It's really for glider pilots. It's, uh, it doesn't really meet the entertainment need as much as, uh, as you know, for the general public. Um, I haven't figured that out, but I have just, I've used all my writings and, and videos to progress myself, quite frankly. So I used it to learn, and I learned so much from going back and analyzing my flights and, uh, especially when I fly with, you know, we have a bunch of national champions, uh, world champion contenders, uh, out here in Boulder and, uh, you know, if we fly together and, and I will go back and look at, you know, what exactly were the differences? What did they do better than I did? And where did I actually make the better decisions?
And it really helped me tremendously to progress very quickly. So, I mean, I'm now flying nationals. And it's been a lot of learning in a very short period of time. And I think at this point, it's super exciting. I'm also finding that a lot of people now look at this and say, yeah, I really like that. I want to do that too.
Take me through the kind of steps of progression with sailplanes. When you start and you start learning, is it just – again, I'm pretty clueless when it comes to –
Yeah, it's quite interesting because what you're being taught, and I don't know if that's the same for paragliding, but what you're being taught in gliding is basically just to take off and land safely. Okay, that's really what you're taught. It's like, you know, it's you're, you're to get your license, and I mean, it usually takes, it can take if you go to a school and you want to do it really intensely, it takes about two weeks to get it done, uh, but, uh, for the most part, if people do it in a club environment, it's, it's a several months, and, and all they learn in that period is really taking off and landing. They have learned nothing about soaring, okay? So, to get your license, yeah, I mean, yeah, sometimes you might have flown in the thermal with an instructor, and the instructor might have told you, oh, this was a thermal, but it's, you haven't really learned anything, so you get your license, and you're a pilot, and you haven't really learned anything other than, you know, you can control your plane, and you can, you can operate in an airport environment.
You, you know how to use your radio and your instruments, and, you know, how, you know, you have your lessons in stall prevention and, you know, pattern altitude and operating in an airport environment. Those are the things to operate safely. That's what you've learned, but you haven't learned soaring. So it sounds
like is that, you know, is that initial instruction, we would call that our P2, you know, you're getting your novice license where you can fly without an instructor. Instructor is, when you do that in the sailplane world, is it quite similar to learning how to fly a small airplane? You know, you're because you're, you know, we don't—we don't get as much of the airspace training because we're not dealing with it as much. We deal with it, of course, especially if you're in, in Germany, or you're in the flatlands in Europe. You've got to, you know, airspace is a big thing. We start flying cross country, but, uh, it sounds like it's kind of the—a lot of theory and the
theory, yeah, there is a lot of theory, and the theory is very similar to the airplane theory. So, in fact, you learn a lot of things that you have to do in the US in particular, much more so than in Europe. In the US, you have to learn all the rules that affect airplanes, even though you will never come across some of those rules, like how do you, how do you stop short at the, at the runway line? How do I stop short, right, and wait for, wait for takeoff? I mean, it just doesn't happen. So, you learn a lot of stupid things that actually never have any material application in your, in, in your real soaring. But, but the real learning, honestly, the real learning only starts once you're done with the license, and then, and then you're basically on your own, unless you have mentors or coaches or friends who help you along the way.
There is no formal, there's no formal progression from there other than, you know, this, you're encouraged to do some badges and you did some recognition around it, yeah, but there's no, no more teaching, no formalized teaching around it, so you, you're basically on your own. And so we lose a lot of people in the sport after they have done their basic license because they don't know how to progress from there.
God, I could be talking to a paragliding instructor right now. You just said exactly what I hear from all the instructors. I mean, we call that the whole nest thing. They get just enough information to get out of the nest, but you don't really teach them that much about going somewhere. That's
exactly right. Really, the attrition
rate in our sport is massive because of that. That's the theory anyway, is because you're kicking somebody out when they know just enough to be really dangerous.
Yeah, and I'm passionate enough that I don't want that to happen. So I think that's part of what my own personal interest is helping people not to get stuck in that phase and actually helping them jump over that hoop. But we've created a lot of good content. And we're really, at Boulder, we're one of the top soaring clubs in the world. Really? Yeah, we are. It's in the U.S. We're one of the top clubs. But then we compete, for example, we compete at a club level competition worldwide against this and online. You basically upload your flights. And there is a world speed league where, basically, the way it's handled is that your flights get, get analyzed based on a two-and-a-half-hour duration in the flight, where you have, where six legs will count towards your distance that you've flown within those two and a half hours, and the average speeds that you achieved over that, over that distance will count towards your league score.
And, and the way it's scored at the club level is that on I think it's like 19 consecutive weekends during the season, flights on weekends will count towards the league score. And the top three scores from each club, from different pilots each weekend will count towards the club score. And we were number three this year worldwide out of 1,000 some soaring clubs. And last year we were number two.
Whoa. So
we're among the top soaring clubs in the world. That blows
me away. I had no idea it was that strong in the U.S. That's amazing.
Well, the U.S. isn't that strong in soaring. It's just bolder. It's just, you know, we're very good. The Minden Soaring Club is exceptionally good. They were the number one. So Minden, Nevada.
And they fly in the Owens Valley. So they have amazing conditions, especially for that type of flying. Moriarty is pretty good down in New Mexico. And then there are some clubs on the East Coast. But the East Coast, they basically have only ridge soaring conditions where they can go really big distances, where they have to fly, you know, 100 feet or 50 feet off the trees for like six, seven hours at a time. Whoa. At V &E, basically. so these guys are that sounds exciting that's that's a it's a very intense way of flying yeah versus our flying is is much more you know it's much much higher above the ground most of the time
I've had this theory that, you know, the the best in our sports, this guy Chrigel Mauer, and you know, he he's he's famous for not turning and, yeah.
and he's very, very
often on the terrain and and And using little bits of lift coming out of the trees. And, you know, where I fly here in Sun Valley is very similar to the conditions you get in Polder. You know, we get really tall and we go on these monster glides. And your glides would be, you
know, just ridiculous here. I've flown glides for 200 plus miles in one direction without making a turn.
Oh, stop it. Not one
turn. Get
out of here. Just, no, no.
I mean, Especially, we have these amazing convergence conditions where we have the westerly winds is blowing over the continental divide of the Rocky Mountains, and we have thermals rising on the east side of the continental divide, and these thermals are pulling in air from the plains. And so you have got a ground level flow that is coming in from the plains and you've got the wind coming over the continental divide. And where those two meets, that's where our convergence line sets up. and it's an amazing convergence line you can go from the wyoming border you can go you know past pike's peak and you basically don't turn wow is
the bee's knees for you guys. Big FAI triangles is, I mean, that's that's what we, you know, that's the holy grail of paragliding, yeah.
Triangles are, triangles are a big part of the sport because they're more complicated, right? Because you cannot just do yo-yos around the convergence line. So for us, for us, I love flying triangles because it's, it's a real challenge, especially in our conditions. Because now, if for us to fly a triangle out into the plains usually doesn't work, especially we've got this big Denver airspace that is sitting right next to us. So for us to fly a big triangle, we have to go far west from Boulder. So, and so that basically means we have to cross multiple mountain ranges, especially if you want to fly like a 750, 750 or so triangle. I mean, basically now you're, now you're in western Colorado. So you're taking off in Boulder, you fly maybe south towards Pikes Peak, and now you, then you're heading over towards Grand Junction.
And so you're basically crossing multiple, multiple mountain ranges. And then on the way, then you have to go take to another triangle, Lake, that goes more towards the Wyoming border. Uh, you have to cross all those mountain ranges back, but, uh, in, and they have different configurations. And, uh, and then you have to, you know, still have the conditions to at the end of the day make it back home for
you guys, for you guys, is that, you know, you're in serious 14er country there. If for you guys, is that, uh, is that a little puckering? I mean, I mean we can find places to land a lot easier than you do. We actually have one
of our biggest club things is what we call the Fortina Challenge and it's a career challenge. So it's a career challenge for all Colorado pilots or for anyone who wants, it's open to any glider pilot in the world who wants to come fly in Colorado. We have this, we call it the Fortina Challenge. You basically have to fly above all the Fortinas over your soaring career and you basically have to tag them all and there's a sort of minimum distance around the peak. You have to basically be above each peak. And there's 58 of them. And so there's only five people so far who have completed it. I'm well on my way. I've got a few left. Those are the hardest ones that I've still got left. But within three years, I've gotten pretty high up there already.
But that's one of the coolest challenges we have out here is fly over all the 14s. It's super, super demanding and interesting. Why
can't you do the triangle out over the plains? Why can't you just run the east side of the mountains and then punch it out and come back? Is it just too much west wind?
No, it's not so much the way that the conditions over the plains, they tend not to be that good, quite frankly. I mean, there are times, yeah, there are times when it's fine.
Well, there's a practical consideration. So for us, particularly in Boulder, we have this big Denver airspace, right? Class B airspace. And it's pretty big. I mean, there are people who have flown around it, around the airspace. That's one of the kind of interesting flights you can do from here. You can try and fly around the Denver airspace. Conditions aren't super good, usually. And it's more wet, right? You got into the Platte River Valleys, the North Platte, South Platte River Valleys.
Thermals don't tend to be as strong. They are not as reliable. It gets more windy. Cloud bases tend not to be that high. The conditions over the mountains for us are usually way better than out in the plains. Hmm. Interesting.
Let me get back to my question when I was talking about Chrigel and gliding. So the, the, he would say that we're flying really inefficiently here by, we're turning too much. Half the time, you know, when you're turning half the time, you're going the wrong way, right? Yeah. Well, I know you don't, but I was just thinking about, you know, when you're, when you're doing these 14, you know, when you're doing the triangles up into the 14 years and stuff, you know, for us, you know, looking at a 20 K or even a 20, we often have a 20 mile glide between one mountain range and the next, when we're going towards Montana, we got to cross all these mountain ranges. And so, you know, we'll get real tall before we go across the flats for the same reason you just said that the flats that, you know, in the middle of the day, you're going to find a climb somewhere across there, but they're not going to be, it's not as obvious and it's not as easy and they're not going to be as strong as the mountain.
So we'll, we'll spend some time getting super tall, you know, get up close to class one and, and then our class a, and then, and then we'll go, then we'll go on glide and hope we get to the next, you know, we hopefully make it to the range. Whereas I feel like, you know, Chrigel hasn't flown over here, but I feel like if he was here, he would have more of an Alps approach where he would, you know, only get as high as barely needed and then kind of just work it on a really good line and, and get, you know. So I'm wondering if you've been able to, are you guys constantly trying to use more of the kind of the terrain or you've got the glide where you just get tall and you stay tall?
We have, we usually have the glide. In the Alps, it's different and the conditions in the Alps are very different. So I've flown quite a bit in Austria too, in the Alps. And in the Alps, it's compared to the rock, it's very interesting. What I find in the Alps, you have very, very reliable lift along all of the spines. So you basically, as long as you stay right on top of the spine, you can usually go straight without having to turn. And here it's not that obvious because the cloud base is so high and the thermal distance between the ground and the cloud base. It's just there's so much space in between that there is a disconnect that develops between what's happening at ground level and what is happening at the cloud-based level.
And that's why I think in Colorado in particular, it is not as easy, as obvious to go straight along the spines. But in part, it may also be that we're not doing it, number one, because we don't have to, because the clouds are so high. So we can, you know, be up there and it feels a lot more comfortable being up there. And number two is because so much of our terrain is so forbidding. Right. So so in Colorado, we don't have that many places where we can actually safely land. I mean, we're a sailplane pilots. We're mostly confined to airports. I mean, sure, you can go into a farmer's field, but every landing in a farmer's field means that there is a risk that you might damage your your glider. and those gliders are pretty expensive and then when they're damaged they're also down for months at a time so so you really don't want to damage your glider what
About backcountry airports, are they... they fine for you guys most?
of them are not because most of them are too narrow. The narrowness is the biggest issue, right? We've got these long wings and they're pretty close to the ground. And and everyone who's, you know, most of the people who have these big backcountry airstrips, they built them for, you know, this this uh uh big big tire uh kind of uh uh backcountry airplanes; they're all tail draggers, wings, yeah, tail drag is with high wings. And so if you land a glider there, the chances are you're gonna catch a tree or a bush or something uh right on final approach, or just as you as you as you touch down. And you're touching down at 60 knots or 50 knots, knots uh, you know, maybe 45 knots, but that's still a lot of speed and a lot of energy that has to get dispersed.
So if you touch down and catch a wing, then this whole thing will, you know, it will turn around and chances are your tail boom is broken. So you don't want to. Most of the backcountry strips aren't good, so I spent an inordinate amount of time looking at landable places in Colorado, driven around. I have a drone that I fly over fields to check them out and uh, you know, to do measurements in Google Earth, how wide is the runway. Wow, you're dedicated. I've
got a detailed
database of all the landable sites across Colorado that I personally am feeling comfortable I can use, you know, making it available to other people, but obviously always at their own risk. I mean, things change so quickly too. But yeah, most backcountry airports aren't very good.
Take me back to the people that you were talking about that get into it. First, how much does it cost if somebody is listening to this going, man, I really want to get into flying sailplanes?
It totally depends on whether they have aviation background or not. So if you're a paraglider, a hang glider pilot, or you're an airplane pilot, actually, I think hang glider and paraglider pilots will probably make the fastest transition, quite frankly. Because for them, you know, if you're good at it already, you already understand how these things work. You know where to find lift, so then it's more about the mechanics of controlling a sailplane. And I, I mean, but you, you know what it is that you're controlling. Essentially, it's not going to take you a long time to figure it out. Um, so typically it takes, uh, you know, somewhere between, you know, 20—it could be 20, 30, 40 flights with an instructor. Uh, these are usually short pattern flights where you just learn to control this thing, then you fly your solo flights until your instructor is comfortable with you getting the license.
It varies greatly. It usually gets more expensive the older you get because it takes people more time. Kids learn it quicker. It's a few thousand dollars usually until you get the license. And then if you are in a club environment, you don't have to have your own plane. I mean, it depends on the club, right? Right. I mean, we're one of the you know, that's also one of the distinguishing features of Boulder is is we're just an amazing club. We have, you know, two we have two very strong, you know, top state of the art two seaters. And we have two state of the art high performance single seaters as club aircraft. So all of our members can fly those club gliders. And that's really cheap to do.
Uh, but then, if even if you want to own your own, um, the cost very dramatically, right? So you can get a good sailplane, uh, you know, a decent sailplane. It used to be world-class level for twenty-thirty thousand dollars, um, but, uh, you, if you could buy, you could also buy a new state-of-the-art, uh, competition glider that you would buy right now and to be top of the line, that that gets up to $250,000, $300,000.
So the range is pretty wide, but you have just as much fun in a $20,000 glider than you have in a $300,000 glider. And
is that technology changing pretty rapidly or is it just microscopic improvements at this point? Yeah,
it's in stages. I think at this point, it's more fine-tuning. The latest generation of gliders that came out over the last five years is maybe has a 2%, 3%, 2%, 3%, 4 % performance improvement over the prior generation. If you want to win in the world. That's a lot. You want to win in the nationals, 2%, 3%, 4 % is not that much, right? Oh, for us, it'd be quite a bit. Okay. In percentage terms, it's not glide points. Yeah. I mean, my glider is, for example, my glider is 17 years old. It's the prior generation. I've got a glide ratio of 48 to 1. I could get a new one now at the top line. They would be at maybe 56 to 1, something like that, in 18-meter glass.
But I've done some math on it in comparison flights. I don't believe that those differences are as great as that difference. So I would say it's a few percentage points. So
you can beat the guys on that, just make a couple of better decisions and you're fine.
If you're making the better decisions, yeah. The glider is secondary. It's the pilot that counts for the most part.
Cool. All right. So when you come through, the club provides the planes, you pay your club dues and you have access to these.
Yeah, absolutely. Cool. Yeah.
And is it growing worldwide?
It's where it's the sport worldwide is not growing. We actually have a pretty good demand out here. Last year, we had some bottlenecks with instruction because of COVID. So we actually had a long waitlist of people wanting to join the club and get trained. don't
do stuff
Um, and we have, you know, there's um some capacity constraints at the airport, but um by and large, I think we, we don't have a lot of issues attracting people, uh, and there's, there's a lot. We also have a lot of, uh, former, particularly hang glider pilots. We've got a lot of hang glider pilots that, uh, are wanting to join the sport of soaring once they reach an age where they're no, are no longer comfortable that their legs are an appropriate landing gear and substitutes, basically. Okay. And our chief flight instructor is a former hang glider teacher and he had a school, a hang gliding school. It's also a very strong sailplane racing contender.
So, yeah, there's a lot of interest, and we don't have that problem. them there's there's a lot of clubs actually in the country that struggle uh but we're not one of them
Okay, yeah, great. Back to learning the—you know, you said you learned when you were, you know, younger, when you're 16, you got your license, flew some, and then you left it for 25 years and you've come back to it with this just dedication and passion. Uh, when you went from that newbie, you know, you're coming back to it and you're just getting tossed out of the nest, what would be some advice to people in that same position to get to where you are now? What's a—what's a rapid way to—we always talk about in paragliding, there are no shortcuts. It's just—it's just time and currency and, you know, studying everything you possibly can if you're not getting the hours, but you know, so there's obviously training and you can do, you know, you, you can, you can get there fast, but you've, you've got to do all the work.
There's no short, you know, there's, there's no, uh, you know, there's, there's not a, I don't know how to say that.
There is no, there is no, there's no substitute for flying experience. That is, that is definitely true. But I think there is, uh, there's a lot of pilots who have been pilots for 20 years and have not made a lot of progress versus there are pilots that can make a huge amount of progress in a few years. And I think the personal attitude that you have towards it makes a huge difference. And whether you actually really invest the time and the energy to understand what is going on in the atmosphere, how exactly is it working. There's a lot of studying that you can do. There's actually the theory really actually makes a big difference, right? Right. But it's not the theory that you learn from the glider flying handbook, you know, like like government publications.
You have to go well beyond that and and really try to understand what is it that that makes this thing work. Right. And really try to understand the atmosphere. There is what we're lucky we have. There's a gliding. You probably have heard about this. The Condor Soaring Simulator. Yeah, it's a it's a it's basically a computer simulator for glider flight that is developed for competition glider flying. And it's also an e-sport platform and it's it's actually a pretty serious e-sport platform. So I would recommend to anyone who wants to fly gliders, that is a great tool for progression simply because there are certain things like, for example, thermal entry and keeping the right bank angle, keeping the speed, keeping the, you know, staying centered or making centering corrections.
You can do this perfectly in the simulator, and there is—there isn't—that isn't that different, quite frankly, from the real life. So if you can do this well in the simulator, you can probably do it well in real life. So if, and that's a—that's a big difference because, uh, in—in that, because it's—it's—that's cost-free. You can do it every day. Soaring weather on the simulator is good every single day. I mean, you can just basically put in the weather that you want to have in the simulator, right? So you put in the parameters that you want to use. It's not perfect, right? That, but by no, by any stretch of the imagination, it's not perfect. It doesn't have it in the current generation. It doesn't have convergence, it doesn't have thunderstorms, it doesn't have the wave—is still not very good—but thermals are pretty good.
Um, you know, ridge lift is exceptionally well done, maybe a little bit too strong than it—than in real life. But, but, but there's a lot of things that are very, very similar, and, uh, that is something you can practice with, and, uh, I find—I found that super useful. So I actually did, uh, before I came back, I did some simulator flying, and I got into the plane, and after 25 years of not sitting in a glider, they basically said, "Oh, you can still do this. I'm amazed." So I was basically back into it on day one, just because I had done maybe two, three hundred hours on the simulator, and
are these can you get in the condor and and flight to do a flight simulation anywhere in the world I mean, there's
people, there's volunteers that are creating sceneries and those are photorealistic sceneries. It's a lot of work to volunteer work. There's a hugely committed community towards doing this stuff. And there's multiplayer racing every single day. So if somebody wants to be committed and doing multiplayer racing, you can fly at a super high level. I mean, these guys are just as good as the top world-class glider pilots in the world on the simulator. And I think if you're top on the simulator, there's no doubt in my mind that you can get into a glider. And with, you know, after the basic instruction and learning how to operate an airport, the counter doesn't teach you that stuff very well.
Right. It's really more about the flight itself and dealing with decisions on, you know, how far can I glide? How do I final glide calculations? How do I do how do I do the thermaling? What is the tactic? When do I fly fast? When do I fly slow? How do I switch gears? gears. Um, which side of the, you know, on which side of the ridges will I find lift? Uh, where will the lift come up? This is really well modeled, and so I would, I would seriously, uh, suggest anyone who wants to make a, make this—well, this is definitely a great boost in, in speed. Uh, maybe not a shortcut, but a great boost in speed. Wow.
That's fascinating, and I
know there's there's people who are pressuring the condo people to to you know create some modules to let to to open it up for paragliding and for i
Know, I know paragliders use it a lot to see terrain beforehand. One of my friends that was in the xops with me, Eduardo, talked about that, that he kept going through the course over and over again. And of course, the speed's not correct, it's fantastic to learn, great to see it.
Yeah, yeah. So when I flew, for example, I flew last year in the 18 million nationals in nefi in Utah, and this was because condo is a perfect way to learn the scenery. So when I showed up there, I knew what the mountain ranges were. I knew the terrain and how wide the gaps were. I knew where the terrain transitions would become a problem because you have to go, for example, if you go across the Vassar Plateau from the east side to the west side, you fly into rising terrain. And you have a sense of how wide that is and how high you have to be on the east side, so you can make the safe transition over the West side without getting stuck on top of the plateau, which would be not a good, not a good place to be.
No.
Yeah. We don't want to land in the Uintas either. Right. A friend of mine, Stuart Midwinter, back in the day, flew all of it. Flew hang gliders, paragliders, or, you know, early, early paragliders and sailplanes. And he reached out after the show I did with Chuck on the Soaring the Sky podcast and said that he saw back in the day, I'm curious from you what you're seeing now, that foot launch pilots, so paragliders and hang gliders, are way more comfortable banking it up in sailplanes than pilots that just get into sailplanes and don't have any of that experience. They're more comfortable in the cockpit using the air. Does that make sense?
They get it faster. Now, obviously, that makes sense that they get it faster because they know how it all works. The principles are all exactly the same. But have you also seen that, that they thermal differently? In other words, he was postulating that they definitely core tighter, that they're willing to.
Yes. Interesting. That is true. true so paragliders and tank gliders coming into sailplane flying they have a better saying they have a definitely a much better appreciation where the thermal originates off the ground
okay uh
So, and and that is because when you start off with sailplanes, your instinct is never to be close to the ground because we just, we just can't be and be safe, right? Because we have to keep a glider a landable spot in glide, and even though, yes, our glide is way further than than than in hang gliders or paragliders, um, the um, it's, it's still hard to find, you know, keeping the airport in glide keeps you usually further off the ground. And also because our higher speed requires a much greater turn radius to begin with, uh, we this, the there's usually not, uh, it's, it's very difficult to get that sense where exactly the thermal generate is coming off the ground.
Usually you're finding it somewhere under the clouds. Most of the time you're actually orienting yourself by the clouds and not by the ground. It's rare that especially in the early years when people start to glide that they focus on the ground. They focus more on the clouds, especially out here in the western US where the cloud bases are as high as they are. But if the hang glider, All those foot launches, right, that you described, well, you start on the ground, right? So, of course, you've got to look for thermals based on the terrain and not on the clouds. It's not like you go up on the hog back here in Boulder and you look up into the sky and say, oh, there's a nice cumulus up there at 18,000 or 22,000 feet.
I'm going to launch right now because it's up there. You can't do that. that. So you know exactly, you know, this nook and this cranny and these rocks, that's where the lift is probably going to come from. And most glider pilots don't think that way. Especially not at the beginning. It's a progression and you have to deliberately get there. And then even if you know that's where it is. So that happens to me all the time when I'm flying is I'm like, there is probably a thermal coming off these rocks. And then I fly there and I noticed there is a thermal coming off these rocks, but I with my minimum speed, especially when I'm flying ballasted, so I put water in the wings and make the glider extra heavy, and now I have to turn at least 60 knots to to be safely turning. So if you turn it 60 knots and you crank it at, even if you crank it at 50 degree bank angle, you're still making a pretty, pretty wide circle, and chances are that this little thermal that is coming up these rocks is not usable versus you in a paraglider.
You can just park yourself right on the rock and you, you make your way up. Sure, how much of your
Decision making is... is made, and I'll ask you to answer this without thinking that we have an audience for a second, because I would imagine as you get better and better, start getting bigger and bigger distances, you start worrying less and less about places to land. But is that... is that the case in... in sailplane flying? Because we... we, you know, we... we're always taught, what I'm sure the same thing you are, never fly over an unlandable place and always have something on glide. But as you get better and better, you start... you don't worry about that. You... you know, there's going to be a climb. You know, you can fly over this huge section of trees where there's no place to land, and you know, if you've got the skills and... and you can read the sky, and the crossing I did of the Canadian Rockies, we flew hours sometimes without a place to land.
And that's a whole nother level of flying. I'm not suggesting people do that, but we're not really so confined by an airport, obviously. We can put it down in a tiny little scratch pad. And so I'm just wondering, but to me, when I think about sailplanes, not knowing anything about it, that would be an overriding concern. You're flying a really expensive aircraft that needs, you can't just put it down and a little postage stamp. Is that a big deal or has it become less and less?
It becomes less and less, but it is a big deal. And I mean, that's, I think individual risk tolerance comes hugely into play in that area. So if somebody is like, you know, I just love this so much. If I have a, if I, if I wreck my $300,000 glider, I'll just buy a new one. If, and I'm confident that I can survive life. Uh, you know, they might—they might take the approach. They might take the approach as, yeah, doesn't matter, I'll find lift straight ahead. Um, others may be less so, right? I mean, where I'm at is, is I'm at the point where I am, I'm—if, if I'm absolutely confident, and sometimes I am just totally confident, right?
That, that there is going to be lift. It's just, it's just totally confident it then, then I don't, I don't worry about it. Uh, because, but I, I've reached this point in my, in my progression where I'm, um, that, that is often the case that I, I can really, if it's like 100, I know it's 100, but if, if it's only 90, I will hesitate. Then I will not do it and risk, I will not go into unlandable terrain if I'm only 90 confident that I can fly out of it. Okay? It's just that, just does not work because I can't take a 10 to—I can't take a 9 to 1 gamble, uh, that I'm gonna wreck my glider. Um, you know, even if nine, nine is, nine is that I won't, but a 10 risk, that's pretty high.
I'm gonna, it's pretty high. Yeah, I mean, I'm not doing so, you've got to
be way more constrained by places to land than you are
but they that, what is that, what is offsetting this though, is that you have way better glide, sure, right? And I mean, for the most part, I mean, I, if I'm at, you know, we're in Boulder, you know, where the Wyoming border is, it's like, what is it, 60 miles to the north. If I'm at the Wyoming border at 17,000 feet, I'm in glide of Boulder. Okay. Right. So, I mean, for us, oftentimes I can fly from Boulder. You can fly, you can, there's this badge progression that we have. So you go from, you know, there's a silver badge and the gold badge and the diamond badge. The diamond badge requires you to do a 500-kilometer flight and a 300-kilometer declared goal flight.
You can get almost all the badges in Boulder by flying within glide range. It's unbelievable. We don't have to get out of, even out of Boulder, you don't even have to go to other airports. You don't even have to think of other airports to have to be in glide. So oftentimes you can just, it's not hard to keep airports. glide and even if they're far away how
Do you think about when you said, "You know, if it's a 90 chance," so when you're, you know, you're somewhere pretty deep and your, your glide computer showing that you've got so-and-so airport on, uh, you said you're, you're, you're, you know, all things considered, null your glide on your, on your wing is, did you say 48 to 1 or 45 to 1 or something? Okay, so so are you, are you calculating, okay, this is safe. I've got this on glide per current conditions, or are you going, okay, it's saying that I can get there on a 61, 60 to one glide. And, you know, I've got this crazy tailwind, I'm getting 80, 90 to one right now, but that could change to 35 to one. So I'm going to go to 35 to one.
No, you basically do it on current conditions. And so you watch the, I'm probably, I'm assuming you have the same thing where you can put on your glide computer, you can put a current glide L over D and the required glide L over D. And you can look at those side by side and you say, well, my required glide L over D is 40, but my current is 60. I'm like, you know, I'm pretty sure I'm going to get there.
Yeah. Okay.
So you're just constantly balancing
those things. I
look at those two things all the time. And then you also look at, you know, you can use the MacReady settings for what you think the next client is going to be and dial those up. And they will actually, you know, they make you fly faster. And when you fly faster, obviously your sync rate is higher and your client goes down. So that actually gives you in your flight computer, if you look at what is what is necessary to reach a safe airport, and you have a McCready setting of four, that gives you an inbuilt safety cushion into this thing because it assumes that you're flying faster than you actually have to fly. So you could get a better glide if you have to, as you can dial it back down if you find that conditions deteriorate, you can dial the speed a bit, a little bit back.
And then, and then you can, can still get there. Uh, for you guys, wind is way more—I mean, wind is important for us, obviously. It's very important for us: headwind, tailwind, uh, it doesn't have nearly as much. Yeah, uh, yeah. wind
can just totally kill us. We can
Kill it, right? I mean, you have about 30, 30, not headwind. What do you? What do you? You can't even fly in that, yeah? Exactly.
Yeah, no, you're—you're—you're either, you're terrified if you're going downwind, and you're—and you're terrified even more if you're trying to go to upwind, because you're not—you're flying backwards. Um, you—let's talk about risk for a second. Uh, you—you mentioned something in our email exchanges before we—we sat down today that surprised me, that sailplanes are statistically not that dissimilar, and I—yeah, there's a big—there's a big difference there. You'll talk about that, but that surprised me. I—yeah, people are when I
came back to the sport, I really wanted to understand how dangerous it really is. And so the way I thought about this was I tried to look at all kinds of activities that people do in their spare time that are somewhat risky. And I tried to figure out how risky, what's the chance that you die doing it within a certain, by activity hour. So per hour that you're doing it, right? So how long can you safely do it before you basically expect it to get killed? It doesn't sound very good.
No, but, you know, it's aviation. Yeah.
And so I did that study, and I tried. It was really hard to come by good data, really, really difficult. So I tried, and it took me a few months to do this over the winter. There wasn't any flying, and I didn't have anything else really to do. So I worked on this stuff. Yeah, it's not hugely dissimilar. So flying gliders, the risk of dying in gliders per hour is not a lot lower than it is for paragliders. It is lower. It's about, I think it's about 1.5 is the difference factor. So it's 1.5 times more risky to your life in paragliders or in hang gliders than it is for gliders. But that risk difference isn't, you know, it's not very high. I mean, it's like if you compare it to commercial aviation, we're now talking 200 times less risky, not 1.5 times less risky.
So it's like we're in totally different orders of magnitude versus we're in the same order of magnitude. We're not far off, quite frankly. Wow. We have a lesser degree, a lesser risk of getting severely injured on top of that dying risk. I'm assuming every takeoff, every landing in, in, in paragliders has some inherent risk that you're going to have some injury of, uh, of, uh, uh, to your legs or to your back or to, uh, I don't know, you know? Yeah, no,
that's definitely where, statistically, it's launching and landing. Certainly,
we have a lot of the catastrophic stuff that happens low to the ground in the sky. Typically, if you're high, people can deal with it and reserves work really well, but it's the stuff that you would think. It's the launching and landing and it's when you're trying to scratch out and you're low. You're trying to get up from a low position. position.
And I also looked deeply in detail into what is it that actually makes it so dangerous? What are the really root causes? So I read a ton, a ton of accident reports. And in many countries, they're doing a lot of work on accident reports. Germany is in particular, Germany has about a third, accounts for a third of all glider flying worldwide. And they do an exceptionally great job at documenting every incident, and I speak German, so that helps understanding these reports. So I went into and tried to find out: what are the really root causes? When do people get into situation where they kill themselves? And is it, is it, is it pilot's fault, or is it, is somebody else to blame? And I found about 90% of accidents can be avoided, so I think that's an important thing.
So you can actually think about it like, in 90%, you'd say, "Yep, you could definitely have have made a different decision as the pilot." So that's really then understand, understanding why is it that what went wrong? Why did it go wrong? And then I found that the most important, uh, the single most important root cause is when a pilot delays the decision to land for gliders. I can't say that for, for anything else, but if you, if you're getting too low, and a lot of them happen right next to the airport, people come back and they find the runway is occupied and they're like, "Like," I don't want to push my glider back so far. I don't want to land at the far end and then push the glider back. I'm going to wait until this runway is clear. And then they keep circling and circling and circling.
And then they find themselves, okay, finally the runway is clear. Now they are so low, they try to fly the final approach. Then they make the turn to final. And there's trees in the way. And they are trying to get over the trees. And now they're getting below stall speed. and suddenly the glider spins in because they're below stall speed and they're on a shallow, but they try to, you know, then they try to fly uncoordinated and keep the lower wing up by flying the turn with the rudder. Now they're skidding through the turn and they spin in and that's the recipe for death, basically. Because once you're spinning in and the glider close to the ground, that's when you die. Because now you're rotating into the ground and the wing is going to hit the ground first and it just drives the nose into the ground and then you die.
So that's a classic case, very simple to avoid incident. Just make your decision to land early enough. I never thought about that with you
guys that we were talking about. I was imagining, okay, you're at 16,000 feet and you've got Grand Junction on glide and you decide, okay, it's the end of the day, I'm going to go there and you give yourself 200 feet of wiggle room, maybe not nearly enough. And then you get there and the runway is occupied. So are you talking to the tower way, way, way in advance to make sure you guys can't just go on around a few more times?
Yeah. I mean, usually the way you do it differently. So first of all, most of our airport landings are not towers. They're just uncontrolled airports. But the way you approach it is you're supposed to approach an airport and you are arriving at 1,000 feet above ground. So whenever my flight computer is actually set to 1,500 feet, especially for airports that I don't... It's set to 1,500 feet for airports that I am not familiar with or where there may be more air traffic. traffic, um, and especially in most cases, when you arrive at an airport that doesn't have glider operations, chances are there's absolutely nobody has a freaking clue about gliders. Uh, the—I've talked to many airplane pilots and they, they're like, "A glider?
What is that?" Uh, so there's a lot of glider—a lot of airplane pilots who don't even know that we exist. So now, you, you turn up at an airport and you're in the pattern, you say, "I'm, I'm a glider, I'm about to land him like a glider." And then somebody will tell you, you know, you're number three, you're number three to land hold.
Hold your altitude. I'm like, I can't. I can't hold my altitude. I'm landing right now.
So that's common? Really? Wow.
It would be common. So basically what you do is when you land at another airport, you arrive high enough, you announce yourself, you say, I'm a glider and I'm about to land. And then, you know, if somebody pushes back, you just tell them you're unable to do whatever they wish to do. And you're allowed to do it. You have priority by the rules. It's just most people don't know about it.
Right, right. So you can just be a little verbally forceful. but it's not
A situation where I'm going on a final glide and I'm like, "Uh, I'm barely gonna squeak"
it in
Yeah, barely gonna squeak in. I mean, some people do that, but it's not a safe practice. Uh, I would definitely not, but it doesn't—you, it doesn't have to happen. It really usually does not have to happen. The only times when these things tend to happen is in, in, in soaring competitions, competitions, uh, as they used to have them when they had the, the arrival at the deck, basically just at ground level at the airport. Uh, those rules are gone, so all our competitions. So, for example, when I flew the nationals last year, the, the arrival was 1500 AGL, so 1500 feet. You've got a whole end of speed cylinder.
You know, you've got an end of speed, so the race stops. And then you, you got plenty of time finish
A finish cylinder, you're getting into the finish cylinder. You have to be over 1,500 feet to not get penalties, uh, you're getting penalized if you fly, if you come in lower than that. And so you basically, and the penalties are so high, it's not worth it. So you definitely want to arrive at 1,500 or above. And if you arrive at 1,500, there's plenty of time. Now you've got a few minutes if you need to, to sort out the, the landing. And especially in the A contest, I think it's hugely important because now you've got, in a contest, you've got 20 gliders arriving at the same time. So now you've got a runway, yeah, you gotta see, you gotta sequence your landing somehow, right? The
The, can we dig into that? 90 could be avoided a little bit more. What are the other things that were really, that really popped out? So you talked about, you know, that you, for the most part, it was people not landing early enough, you know, not making. Yeah, delaying the decision
to land is a huge factor. Another huge factor is flying too close to the ground, especially in rich flying conditions where people will just hit the ground.
So one risk, for example, is that thermals, and you must have the same thing. So you're flying along the ridge and you get a thermal that is starting right off where you are. It creates a lot of turbulence around it. So what can happen in the glider is if, let's say, you're flying on the ridge and there's an outcropping below the ridge and the thermal is breaking off below the ridge, not at ridge top, but it's breaking off below the ridge. That thermal can be so strong, as you fly through it, it can, it can lift up your the the wing that is on the, yep, that is away from the ridge, and it will actually turn the, it will turn the glider right into the ridge. Um, and, uh, and I don't know if you run into that.
Oh, yeah.
Totally, I mean the worst thing with the, I guess the what would happen to us is you could take a collapse on the wind on the on the ridge side, which is worst case scenario, because then you're spinning in towards the hill rather than taking a collapse on the other. So, yeah, it happens a lot.
Yeah, so ridge flying close proximity to terrain, it's just, basically, that's a judgment call. In that case, it's sort of, you know, I count those as avoidable. Some people, I mean, it depends on your viewpoint, right? I mean, every accident is avoidable by not flying. So, I mean, that's—but that's not how we can look at it, right? So it's—it's—it comes to a judgment call whether you call, but what—what hardly ever happens to us, and this is, I think, is a big difference. Uh, it's equipment issues are hardly ever an issue, and if it's the equipment, then it's usually the pilot's fault for putting it together the wrong way. So that used to be a big issue for old gliders, and if somebody goes into gliding and they buy an old glider that doesn't have automatic hookups.
So it basically means you, as you put the glider together, you have to hook up each of the control surfaces separately from the, from actually assembling it. There have been numerous accidents over the years where people forget to hook up, let's say the elevator control. If you hook up and forget that, and you take your takeoff roll, you take off behind the the tow plane, and you have no elevator control, you're already crashed. There's really nothing you can do about it. We call
those schoolboy
errors. You're just making dumb mistakes. Right. That's a dumb mistake. But those don't happen with modern gliders because they all have automatic hookups. So when you put it together, the controls are already hooked up too. You still have to check it. But equipment failure is hardly ever the reason. So these gliders are way more sturdy than the airplanes. planes uh so turbulence will not do anything you know you keep you're
not gonna get a wing ripped off if it's booming. It's I
Mean, it happens, but it's so exceptionally—it's so exceptionally rare. It's exceptionally, right? I mean, it would be like if you're flying, you know, say you're flying above VNE in wave and you're—you're just hitting the the the mother of all rotas, uh, that's basically that you would have to happen. So if you slow down to 100 knots and not do it at 150 knots when you hit the rotor, it's not going to be a problem. You might hit your head on the canopy pretty hard, but those gliders are super sturdy. Is wave
the most dangerous flying you do?
No, I don't think so. I mean, wave can be dangerous. Wave can be dangerous. I mean, wave could be very dangerous depending on how you fly in wave. That really comes back to the pilot again. I mean, the risks in wave are, you know, obviously oxygen has to work, so you have hypoxia risk. There's a risk that you get dragged into clouds. That could be a catastrophic risk if you're at high altitude. Now you get dragged into a ventricular cloud that builds right on your side. You might not even see it if you don't watch out for it. But those happen rarely. First of all, not many people fly in wave conditions at these altitudes. So the frequency of those is pretty low. I would say for, you know, in practical terms, a risk I'm concerned about is that my glide path to the airport gets blocked by thunderstorms, especially with big hail.
So we do have that here. So each time I come back from the west towards Boulder, for example, if we fly across the continental divide, sometimes you have to make a decision. Do I commit to flying towards Boulder or do I stay on the west side, depending on what the sky looks like, without knowing for absolutely certain that there is a clear path towards landing? So that is, I think, weather risks are a risk. You could avoid that, obviously, you know, that would, in my book, count as an avoidable accident, as a pilot mistake. Because I could just, I could just say, yeah, okay, I'll land in Granby on the other side and just have to call my buddies and they have to get the trailer and then they have to drive for five hours and pick me up.
Good, good, good segue. How important, how much weight do you, as a community, not just you, but is it to get home? It's not as easy to retrieve as we are. You don't get to go out on the road and stick your thumb out. Is that way heavily on you or on a big day, you don't care, you're going to go big?
We go big and we have a, you know, it's in our community, we have basically a volunteer retrieve list. So everyone in our club, we've got probably 40 members that are on that list who basically say, well, and it's a mutual commitment. We just basically say, if somebody lands somewhere else, we're going to retrieve them. And in exchange, you have the promise that you will be retrieved by your buddies. It's a mutual thing, but it doesn't happen very often. So in practical terms, it's not a big deal because we don't often land somewhere else. I mean, there's very few times in my close to a thousand hours now, Now, uh,
I've very few times that I actually had to land somewhere that, um, that I didn't intend to land that. So it doesn't take the day,
take, take the day and, and imagine, you know, a perfect day is a hundred percent, how much, what percentage? So we've got, you know, mind frame, preparation, currency, all the things that, that go into making, you know, you're going to go out and do a 1500 K FAI triangle, you know, the biggest you've ever done. I don't know. I just threw that out there. But that would be a big one. That'd be a big one. How much of that is weather and not—not by that day, I'm talking forecasting. How much of that is—is you spending time in front of a computer looking at—tell me, is it SkySite, XCSkies, Noah? What you know? So tell me the resources you use and carve that up.
Yep, it is. Uh, for me, it's SkySide most of the time. Um, okay. And uh, I do use XCSkies. It, I'm struggling a little bit with picking which model, which model to pick. There's so many models, and it depends on the site that you add, which model tends to be giving you the better results than the other model. So, I find just most of the time I'm just too lazy to, to try and study eight different models. Uh, so, uh, I, I tend to personally, I try to use, I tend to use SkySide. There is some, uh, some other resources to, uh, Dr. Jacks, uh, is for us. I don't know if that rings a bell.
Yeah, yeah, we use Dr. Jacks, a
lot, so you use the balloon soundings we
Use that, do we lose soundings, yeah? But, uh, for the most part, sky side is, is actually sky has become my go-to tool. I use top medio for a while. How much do I spend on it? Um, usually watch the weather a few days in advance for looking for good days. Uh, when, then, when I know the evening before is usually when I do my task planning, so the forecast is good enough that I will spend, maybe, um, an hour, uh, at night, uh, looking at the weather, and then that's when I plan the task. So, where, where should I go? What, what, what term points should I declare that would be best aligned with the weather? And, um, when will it get me on final glide early enough?
And you do the timing calculations of when do you have to take off, and where do you have to be at each of the turn points to make it back home? Um, and, uh, um, and then on the day off, in the, I'll, I'll check in the morning before I drive to the airport. Uh, I'll check if something has changed, and that, that might cause me to change some of the term points, or I might dial the whole thing back, or it might make me expand it a little more. But, it's about, that's about the extent we
We have this saying that, you know, fly the day, not your desire. And I've often found, you know, if I put a lot of effort the night before into, you know, I've—I've seen it usually a few days out on GFS and, okay, it's looking like a good day and you start rallying your crew and Thursday looks good. And, you know, start thinking about, okay, what can we do with this? If I, you know, on the way up to launch, I've got, I've got my task in. And if I've often found that it's hard for me to break from that, if I, if I've set that up as a goal, man, I want to fly that goal. whereas you know it's obvious that that's not setting up now you know models are just models right and uh do you find that also hard oh yeah
I mean, there's there's maybe I would say I would probably complete, uh, maybe one out of two tasks, or maybe one out of three tasks. So, if I set myself ambitious tasks, I'm I'm maybe I'm completing one in three tasks, um, and it's just because as you fly and you find, you know, what are the tasks that I set for myself? It's just not going to work. But I'm going to still enjoy the day and I'm going to change my plan. But I think that is very up to the individual. And how stubborn you are and how flexible you are. I mean, there are people who don't like to do task planning at all. We have people in the club that have like, I like this task.
It's usually the weather is good. And that's the task that I want to accomplish this year. And each time they take off, they try that task. And they haven't spent any time really understanding if that task is supported by the weather on that particular day. They just try to do that task. And chances are it will take them a long time to complete the task. Unless the task is really simple, right? I mean, there's tasks. You can set yourself tasks you can complete almost any day. But yeah, I think it's totally individual.
I'm going to ask you a question I'm not sure you can even answer. But we talked about that hang gliders, paragliders, and foot launch pilots might have this advantage coming to sailplanes because of their background and their understanding of thermals and being more comfortable with banking it up. We're just more comfortable doing that in our aircraft maybe. but, uh, what do you think would be the reverse? Is there, are there some things that sailplane pilots, uh, that we don't know that we're not clued into that, that, you know, if you came, if we reversed roles there, what would be the, whoa, I, you know, what could you teach me that I probably don't know?
I think that's a difficult one. Um, um, I mean, we have, we have, i
I really don't know what you don't know. That's... that's, yeah, that's a hard one, isn't it? That's my... my problem, right? Um, I mean, where would we be really good that a paraglider foot launch pilot might not be, for example?
I, you know, Chuck asked me a question in the show that, uh, I was really surprised the he he said that his buddies that fly out at Marshall in San Bernardino mountains, mountains, you know, they'll often be up there on a blue day and, you know, having a good day and they don't see paragliders and and I, I was that really caught me off guard because I thought, well, they're either not seeing them or I don't know that crew as well as I thought because I thought that, you know, I, I know I have a lot of friends that fly out there religiously, a bunch of them live there and, you know, if it's a flyable day they're, they're flying, they don't care if it's blue and I mean we obviously just like you, I'm sure we love it when there's clouds but, you know, blue days are you got to train for those too and, you know, so my, my thought was is probably more windy than he than those guys, you know, we can't handle a lot of wind and I would imagine it's just more windy on those days for a sailplane pilot it's fine but
That's what I suspect. I don't, I don't see that blue day thing as I was surprised, quite frankly, about that, about that observation when I listened to that, to the podcast. Yeah, um, uh, and I mean, I listened to your, your answer. I think there was some discussion about you thought there was, there were way more para paraglider pilots out there than, than glider pilots. And as glider pilots, we think there are more glider pilots out there than there are paraglider awesome.
See, I love this.
So, so, so, so, I thought that might be a good, a good point of discussion. Uh, if I fly out of Boulder, I often see, you know, it's a pretty big paraglider community. It's a reasonable pair. I mean, you, you tell me how many. You know, I don't know, but I think
It's very big. I don't know the numbers, but I know that that's, I think, it's the fastest growing, uh, region in the states for paragliding. That you know that their clubs doing a good job when I
Go fly most of the time. I see glider pilots that I don't see paraglider pilots during flight. Um, so, so the the time when I see paraglider pilots is right after launch, right? Especially on days when you, you can actually get off from the airport as a glider pilot reasonably early. We oftentimes have to tow far deep into the mountains, but most of the time we don't, but sometimes we don't. And the paragliders, they always, most of the paraglider traffic here tends to be pretty close to the foot of the hill. Exactly. And it doesn't go deep in, versus we fly always deep in. And when I talk to paraglider pilots, they tell me, Well, they look at our flight traces online and they say, how on earth are you going to fly that far back?
I wish I could fly that far back. And they listen to my stories about the convergence line and where the convergence line sets up and how it sets up and how to use it for flying straight. And I'm like, I wish I could get back there. And I'm like, well, me too, because if I don't get back there, I can't fly at all. Yeah, I often it so, so we tend to fly in different spaces most of the time, uh, and it's rare, so it's, I mean, I do see occasionally, I see paraglider pilots high up in the sky, far away from anywhere. So happened in Utah last year, happened a few times where I'm like, over the Wasatch and at 17,000 feet, I'm like, "Holy shit, there's a paraglider," and I say "holy shit" because, because Because we have, I think that's maybe if the sport grows and keeps growing,
there's a potential for a safety risk. Sure. Because the glider pilots with our technology, we're increasingly, you know, obviously you have to look out the window. And you do all the time because you're looking for the clouds and you're looking for where to find lift. But in terms of orientating yourself where other traffic is, the technology has so advanced that we see everybody where they are. And increasingly, all the gliders have transponders, they have FLARM, so we have anti-collision systems. Increasingly, even ADS-B out. And the more technology there is in gliders, the more you expect that any object that is flying around in the sky shows up in your instruments.
And if you don't see anything on your instruments, your brain might assume nothing is there.
Yeah. And I mean, let's face it, you know, if we're at the same elevation and we're, you know, we're ships in the night, you know, coming right at one another, we are really hard to see for you guys and vice versa. You guys
are actually a lot easier to see than gliders.
Well, yeah, I was going to say. You're way easier. You've got colorful
canopies. Right.
Right. But if it's right at the same level, you know, you know, it's one thing if we're banked up, you know, but if we're right at the same level, it's, you know, same thing. It's hard for us to see one another. And so, I mean,
we're freaked out. I mean, gliders against gliders. Yeah. That is the biggest concern. Right. So because we tend to, we fly the same lift lines, right? And most of our flying is straight, as I said, right? I mean, my, I think my average for last year was, I think, below 20 % circling percentage. So I'm at, it's 80 % of my time that I fly is straight, more than 80 % of the time. Sexy.
But now, and it's at 100 knots. And so now you've got two gliders coming at each other at 100 knots. Closing speed is 200 knots. And we're flying exactly the same lift lines, right? We're flying the same height band, usually between 14,000 and 15,000 and 17,500. some who are between 15 and 75, that is for the most part where I spend my time. Almost all of my cross country flights are almost all in that height band. So mid-airs
must happen.
They do happen, yeah. They don't happen that often. We're more concerned about them than is statistically appropriate, if you will. Right. In Europe, it's a bigger concern because there's more glider traffic, much more glider traffic, especially in Germany and in the Alps. That's where you have a lot more glider traffic. But for us, it's a big concern. That's why we have all that technology in gliders. And so now I'm saying, you know, I'm always monitoring. I know where my buddies are flying. The entire flight, I know where people are. And we also will make radio calls to each other and say, you know, I'm here, I'm over Mount Evans, and I'm northbound, 17,000 feet northbound.
And so everyone knows northbound means that he's going to fly along the convergence. Right.
And exactly nowhere, right? And so we monitor each other and so we communicate with one another. And so we're trying to have this situational awareness and mental picture of where everybody is.
Yeah, and our new Varios, they often have F-Larm now. And it's slowly transitioning.
It's slowly
transitioning. Not many people here because it's just, it's not nearly as well. You know, most other pilots don't have it yet that, you know, when you're in the Alps, it's, you know, it's highly recommended because everybody's got them, you know, all the sailplanes have them. And and, uh, but here we just like you said, there's not that much traffic, and so I think it's been a much slower uptake. It's, it's definitely, you know, people are talking about on the forums and stuff, and I think, you know, hopefully it'll, it'll get there. You know, the big, the big change for us has been, you know, pretty much every pilot has an inreach these days, and that's, yeah, I'm
sure I'm sure you do. I mean, it must be complicated because you've got a lot less room to carry stuff. Yeah, and everything is a weight decision. You
have to carry
it up the mountain, right? I mean, you basically have to carry all this stuff. Yeah,
I mean, we try to trim wherever we possibly can. But our Varios, they're in the low grams. They're tiny. And it's just an audible Vario, and it connects to your phone. phone, you know? So the phone has really eliminated a lot of the stuff that we used to have to carry. And and then and the f-arm is built in there, you know? So it's it's tiny, it's just no big deal. What we don't have is, you know, a very easy way, you know? You'd have to have another device. They have it on the phone now too to show you, you know, to so we see you too mostly. It's set up so you can see us, and we rely on you because you've got a nice cockpit and, you know, you've got better instruments to avoid us. It's not so much the other way around. Well, also,
you're much less maneuverable. You're just much slower. That's it. I mean, if you came right at us, we're toast. It's hard to avoid, right? I mean, I'm super careful when I fly with paragliders. I mean, I enjoy it. I really enjoy it. It's kind of fun to have people circling in the middle and you're just flying around them. And it's a nice competition and see if I can keep up.
Yeah. And I, you know, we... I've never talked to anybody that minds flying with sailplanes. It's always a wave and we're psyched, you know, and it's just, it's always thrilling for us to see, you know, how fast you go, you know? So Chuck asked me, is it annoying to fly with sailplanes? I've never, you know, I've heard of a couple mid-airs with sailplanes and, and, and paragliders in, in the Alps. And they've, the ones I've heard about have been catastrophic for both parties, you know?
So but we know you are too. And same thing, you don't turn nearly as tight as we do. So when we're in a thermal together, it's pretty easy to share.
Yeah. Yeah. It's usually, it's not, it's usually, it's not a problem. I mean, there's only so many people I can watch out for it. So if there's more than three or four in the gaggle, I tend to stay away from it. I don't, I don't like to fly. When you have a gaggle of with 20 paragliders, this is not, it's not, I'm not going to, I'm not going to mace with that.
Clemens, what's the, what's the, uh, in your sport, you know, I, I hung out with Gary Asoba quite a bit. Uh, I think a legend and, you know, hang gliding, he was the one that found Zapata or, or a group of those guys found Zapata. I'm not sure if it was actually him, but you know, I've, I've talked to him quite a bit. He's down in Moriarty and he talks about flying speed. You know, his, his big thing now is flying really, Really fast, and and not so much, you know, the 10-hour, 11-hour trying to break distance records, but trying to get around the course or the task as fast as possible. You know, more nose-down kind of flying, like you talked about. It sounds like with X contest now, or however you you're do you use X contest? Is that no?
It's, it's different. It's different, okay?
so but is it is it you know So are you building towards Perlan? You know, is that just the ultimate in sailplanes or what is it?
No, Perlan is very specific. It's one glider that is specifically built to fly in ultra high weave. It has to have a pressurized cockpit. I mean, it's not our world. I mean, we watch Perlan out of great interest, right? We're fascinated by it, but it's more as a spectator. I had a chance to, they had a simulator for Perlin at the last Soaring Convention, and you could fly in the simulator and land the Perlin thing. You almost can't see out of this glider because the windows are on the side and they're like round holes and you can't even look straight. Oh, really? Oh, really? It wouldn't be for me, no.
No, the gliders, I would say there's a few different, like in all sports, people have different intentions. But the sport of soaring, I would say there's comps. Obviously, there's racing. So people who just enjoy that. And that is as much of a social thing than anything else. You just like to compete and you like to fly with your friends. That's where you go to soaring contests. Um, you don't usually use the full day. You don't fly as far as you could, right? So, for example, at this 18-meter nationals that I mentioned, we had like the most amazing weather. We had one of the fastest soaring flights that were ever flown, which is pretty amazing. We had almost everybody finished with more than 100 miles power average speed, so the winning speed, John Seaborne, our local champion, and he finished that day first.
He flew 188 kph, so 118 miles per hour, I believe, 118 miles per hour. This was over a 568 kilometer task. But we only flew a 568 kilometer task. That day would have supported easily 1,500 because that was just an absolutely amazing day, right? But that's what you do at contests. You fly with friends. You fly fast. You compete. You're having fun, right? So that's one that's one that there is there's a guy, a few guys, and I really admire them that do these absolutely amazing, spectacular flights. A lot of them are in Europe. I don't there's not a lot in the US, but I'm super fascinated by them.
I find it super inspiring. There's a guy called Klaus Ohlmann. Yes. I think I've been trying to get
him on the show. I want to get him around
80 or something. I'm not sure, but he's he's like amazing, a legend. Absolutely a legend. And he would fly these unbelievable flights where he takes off in France, in the Alps. And then he crosses the sea to Corsica. And then he climbs in wave over Corsica. And then he will fly over to Italy. And then he flew from Italy. He flew down in Italy, flew down to Sicily. that he climbed in a wave. What? He crossed over to Greece and then he crossed Greece. Jesus. He crossed Greece and landed close to the Turkish border. What? Isn't that unbelievable in a sailplane?
So I've heard all these triangle stories that blow my mind, but you're basically following the Alps. This is, what? Are you serious? That is crazy.
That was last year or two years before, two years ago, something like that, a year ago. Unbelievable flight. Oh my God. And another guy did the same Corsica thing to Italy, but he then flew a triangle back. He flew north in Italy. So he had to go in wave across to Corsica and then in wave to go, climb in wave in Corsica high enough to get to Italy. And then he had to reach, he reach soared a portion and then he thermal soared through the Po Valley, which was almost impossible. And then he had to get back over through thermals over the Alps to make it back to the starting point. And that was a triangle flight. Awesome. So there's some unbelievable inspiring flights that people can do.
Where in North America are they doing stuff like that that you're looking at going? Is it the Owens? Is it the stuff they're doing out in Nevada, Stan? Yeah,
the Owens Valley is amazing conditions, but it tends to be like this north-south route that is just extremely fast flights because most of them are in waves. Uh, so you do in the in the Sierra Nevada, wave it is north-south, uh yo-yo runs, uh, at exceptionally high speed. They, they don't interest me that much personally because it's, it's kind of flying in waves. It's once you figure out how to do it, it's kind of boring, uh, and cold, uh, so I always freeze my feet off. And, and you just, just, you know, you know where to point it and you just, you just go, go straight. They go straight all day long. They never circle. Not once.
Do you fly in sleeping bags? How high can you get and literally not turn into an ice cube in your plane when they're not pressurized? When does it start to just get beyond?
Depends on the season. In the summer when we fly, we have to fly below class A most of the time. There's very few places where you can get localized wave windows where you can climb higher. But most of the time, we fly below 18,000.
Oh, okay. So you're not boosting the 40s
and stuff. I mean, there are. The Colorado state record is 45,000 feet. So that would freeze everything off. Yeah. But not many people do those high. High altitude flying is a very niche thing. And it's sort of, you know, because it's kind of capped by whether you have a pressurized cockpit or not. But there are no new records to break, really. The only way you break new records is with a Perlin glider. Okay. And if you don't break records, whether you climb to 30,000 feet or to 34,000 feet, to me, it doesn't do anything.
I got you. It doesn't do anything. thing, uh, what, what sort of, you know, would inspire me would be like a flight from, you know, across all the Rockies, uh, like if you could fly from a desert. There's a, um, Campton Isuno is the guy who proposed that, that flight, uh, that would go from, from Boulder to the Pacific Ocean. That would be, that would be pretty amazing if you could fly in one day from Boulder, take off in Boulder and land in California at the coast and do it in one day. That would be pretty big.
Whoa. What would that route look like?
It would go, well, it would, first it would cross the front range. I would probably do it at the sort of northwest of Estes and then fly along the Rabbit Ears Range. And then from there, there's ridges
North of the Moab area, if you go north of Moab where these mesa plateaus are, basically along these mesas into the high Uintas, and then along the Uintas, and then you cross into the western desert west of basically weird south, a little bit north of Nephi, south of Salt Lake City, get out of that, you know, don't get into the air space there, um, towards Eli Nevada, okay? And then, uh, from, from, from there, um...
Yeah, if you can make it from there to the Owens Valley, and then you're, you're up and over, you're up and over. Yeah, oh
see that's the kind of stuff you know even a even a short version of that is would be exceptionally rare for us because it's always west you know And we just can't go against the wind. I mean, you get these spring and fall, you get these rare days where - I
don't know if that flight is doable, but it's an inspiring idea. Oh, God,
that'd be incredible. What a party when you get there.
Wow, that's amazing. I mean, I got to look at Klaus's flights. I had no idea he was doing that. I knew he was, you know, I'd heard about these monster 1500K FAI triangles, you know, know seven countries in a day type stuff that that are that would just be amazing, you know? Flying the maritimes and the high alps and just all just seeing it all in one day would be incredible, but I just, I didn't know they were crossing the med and I
wow and
I mean, that is
Unbelievably, it's amazing, right? That's absolutely amazing. I just, I didn't, I had no idea that was possible. There's now guys who've connected the Alps and the Pyrenees, and there's another amazing, amazing thing, right? Where you fly the Alps and then you basically make the jump over to the Pyrenees and you fly to Pyrenees. See,
this is the thing about, you know, ah, the sailplanes are so cool. It's just that, you know, it's, that's, I hope people listening to this go, yeah, okay, now I really got to do this because, you know, it's one of these things I've thought about for, I've always just thought, yeah, you know, someday, you know, like you said, when my landing gear is not as good, then I'll get into sailplanes. But, you know, That's just got to be incredible. Well,
you should come back to Boulder to your alma mater and we'll go flying.
Let's do it. Let's do it. How about that? I'll take you up on that. Let's do it. Clemens, thank you very much. What a joy. And this was a lot of fun. And I really appreciate your time. Thanks for sharing this with me. And good luck with racing and your speedy education there. And congratulations on the success you've already had.
Well, thank you. You, I mean, thanks for having me. This was a, was a ton of fun. I'm gonna, you know, this is, I'm gonna go back and listen to your past episodes because it's, I go trail running, I need something to listen to. It this is, this is perfect. Great, great.
if
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