179. 119 years of experience to pack in

Hi there everybody, welcome to another episode of Cloud Based Mayhem. I have just returned from the Red Rocks Wide Open, and amazing event, super fun. The weather threw us some pretty serious curveballs with the hurricane, which is kind of unheard of off the coast of Southern California. So we had some down days, and one of the days we put together a panel, an open panel for everybody to just come and learn and soak up the knowledge. We had five panelists, and I added it up between the five of them. There was 119 years of experience, so it was kind of stated as a panel on competition flying and tactics and strategy, which we got into a lot of. But they also talked about gust fronts and what to do in those kind of situations, and it went all over the place.

This was in an open park, it was outdoors, and so the sound is tricky at times, of course, because there was cars driving by and it was raining. But Miles has done his usual magic, and you can definitely hear the panelists really well, because I had all kinds of microphones on them. But it's a little hard sometimes to hear the questions, but the answers make it pretty obvious. So on the panel was Evan Bouchier, who was actually the least experienced at 14 years, although he's got a ton of experience. He chases it really hard, and he's done incredibly well lately on the World Cup scene. A couple of top five finishes, including a fifth in Macedonia and third in China this last year. He'll be in the Superfinal here in a couple of months down in Mexico.

Matt Beechinor, who's my neighbor and you've seen a lot in the book and a mentor to me. Ages and ages, he's been flying almost 30 years. Bill Belcourt, 33 years. Josh Cohn, 33 years. And my ex-ALPS supporter and weather guru, Revis Sethman Gray, who's been flying for 15 years. And hosted the most magical party I've ever seen in my life the last night of this thing. So if any of you are listening to this and want to come over to a U.S. comp and not only get some really good flying, but get to see that magic. Wow, what a special party. Here you go. Amazing stuff. Tons of great knowledge and insights from some of our most veteran pilots in the sport.

Enjoy.

Okay, so just so you all know, it does get worse than this. At the World Cup in 2012 in Sun Valley, we had some pretty cool tasks. And then we had a seven-day open distance competition after that. And we didn't fly one day. It was too windy. But it was all kind of salvaged by, I was kind of a newbie back then. And it was all salvaged by these guys, Bill and Farmer and Nick and Russ Ogden. Some of you may have seen the video that Russ did on two liners. But they all dedicated their time each day to giving these. Amazing talks. And if you read the book, this isn't what it said.

But it was really some of the inspiration behind what turned into the cloud-based mayhem. It was, you know, I had read every book that I'd gotten from Farmer because he has them all. And I read every magazine. And then suddenly these guys would talk for an hour. And just all this stuff I'd never heard about. So that's kind of what this is, is just to let you all ask these guys. I just had. I just added it up.

Between our five panelists, we have 119 years of experience.

And Bill wasn't even the winner there. Bill and Josh are both 33. And the weak point was Evan at 14. So we got a lot of hours here and a lot of comps under all these guys' belts. And so I'll fire off the first question. And then you guys can just. Let them have it. Evan, you've had a lot of success. Evan was third in last year's World Cup in China. He was fifth in Macedonia, which had really Superfinal level pilots in. It was pretty competitive, seven days. And so I wanted to just ask you, where did the code kind of crack for you? And what do you credit it to?

It seems like there's kind of a system. You've put it together and figured it out. And can everybody here in the back, does this work? Cool.

Well, I'd love to say that I cracked the code, but it's always changing and evolving. So I think that'd be too much of a claim to make. But I feel like going into China basically was where I had the best headspace and resulted in my best result yet. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, I think probably the key was downshifting more than I ever had in my life.

Up until then, all the World Cups that I've been in, I was always full throttle, always trying to attack, always trying to leave whatever group I was in and catch another group. Just always full throttle. And that was the first time I learned to just downshift and find the appropriate gear.

And as a result of that, instead of like, I was fine. I was rung on something every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every day every the appropriate gear isn't like full throttle all the time it's like each scenario requires a different gear and some often that's downshifting and like you know being more aware of the situation and staying in a downshifted gear for a while until there's actually an opportunity where where going full throttle makes sense and you can do something with it and then using that to your advantage I think that's really been the key break for me I used to in races my pulleys would be locked pulley over pulley all the time now I'm really finding I'm pulley over pulley like 10-15 % of the time it's like picking when to do it is way more important than how hard you're doing it you know so that's it's really been down downshifting and searching for the appropriate gear for the situation and then more awareness kind of tied into that

thanks fire away

that was easy just pizza

that means you all let's let's elaborate on that a little bit like what is it that helps you understand what gear you should be in at any given time

um I mean some of it's like just the pure fundamentals like McCready or whatever if it's a boom and day then then you're hammering a lot harder there's big cloud in front of you you're riding a lot harder if there's someone marking a climb and you're attacking if there's more uncertainty in the situation then then recognizing that and downshifting a little bit if you're with a group of really good pilots like recognizing that you're with the group of really good pilots and I'm trying to pull away from them but instead like match their gear I found China was the first time where I really locked into that experience of like being in the lead group and then like everyone being in an uncertain situation and everyone just downshifted and fanned out and no one was like kind of dive and run away from the group everyone was just fanning out and working as a group and and not lining up behind each other staying wide and and then using that to like to pull the whole group forward so and I mean and then also knowing where you are in the course line and and and being honest with yourself and being honest with yourself and being honest with yourself around what you're trying to accomplish on a given day like a lot of times in World Cups I'm aiming for like top 15 or top 20 on a given day and so I'm trying to make moves that are optimized around that and so you know like so that that often means like staying shifted down and and being more patient and then attacking only kind of right at the very end.

I think the gears are a really good analogy and I would say that it's more than first through fifth with the gears it also includes park and reverse.

Park and reverse are super hard but sometimes a course shades out or something happens with the weather on course line and if you keep going on course line you're gonna just go land so sometimes you got to put it in park and wait for things to pop in front of you again. And the most painful one is throwing it in reverse and going backwards on the course line to go completely around an area and those days are huge separators and what can really make the difference between winning a contest and and uh and doing mediocre you know because those days uh when just a few people filter into goal because you were smart enough to kind of stay in the game and find your way around a situation or can be really critical. Absolutely.

It like reverse or a 90 to the side too can make a big difference because climbing speed is how you win races and if there's a big climb over there and you hang a right and slow down it's basically hard to go find a climb then all of a sudden you're moving as fast as you possibly can or even like flying backwards flying a kilometer backwards so big climb is incredibly painful but climbing speed is everything. How much are you guys trying for uh leading points and FTPs? Is that way faster? Yeah. That's right.

Josh?

I think it's well it depends on like some some comps have it worth twice as much as others so I guess you should probably pay a little bit more attention to it in those uh but for the most part it's a nice to have sort of sort of thing um Are you not changing your strategy on different day? No.

I think it's it's nice it's nice to not like always be hanging back and and also just I guess to be aware that sometimes when there might be two different two different routes to take and if you have to divert early on for one route that's going to lose your leading points because you're not making progress toward goal originally which is sort of a flaw in the leading points formula but that's what it is. Does this optimize the long? Of course on it.

What are the key indicators for when you need the final glide?

...........

.............. or whatever you expect. On a day like a few days ago when I was expecting sort of a crosswind, I guess, and I think I waited until like 6 or 7 to 1.

If there's a tailwind that seems to be, then I'm going to leave with 12 to 1 or something.

It's really hard to read guys. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I was saying it just depends on what you expect in terms of headwind, tailwind, lift or sink. And so like the task we had a few days ago, I think I waited until like a 6 to 1 because I was expecting some crosswind headwind and ended up playing over 2,000 over, but I didn't quite make it. Yeah, and I left at, I think I started at an 8 to 1. It had gone to a 5.5 to 1 and I almost didn't make it. Oh, yeah. Because it was just a really bad glide. So you try to be conservative because you really want to make it,

but you don't know what you don't know as far as how good the glide is going to be along the way. So give yourself some margin so you have a high percentage chance of making it

and be willing to sacrifice a few spots if you really want to make sure you get there every time. Because coming up short sucks. On some of the instruments you can put in a safety altitude. So it'll give you the calculation basically to whatever that height is above goal, which I find kind of helpful because, you know, 100 meters or whatever, you can easily lose that much with some unlucky sink or whatever. But you do have more information about what lies ahead than your instrument does. So it's always good to factor that in as well. And you can be less conservative if you expect climbs in front. You can go thinking, I probably can make this, but if it's not working out, I can slow down or stop and climb.

If you think you're not going to be able to climb, you better have it in the bag.

All things being equal, do you guys have distinct sort of strategies or mindsets at different phases of the race or is your gear always dependent on just the situation?

I mean, I heard the advice with waiting for the start to up until, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes before the start or so, just chill and go find your own climbs and relax. And then for that last little bit, you have to kind of fight for position.

And then, you know, at some point when it comes time and you think you can go and fall and glide, then you've got to be ready. You've got to be really, you know, ready for that moment. And in between, it's a little more licky. I guess, like specifically, what about the sort of, you know, that 10 minutes before start up until sort of the first climb after the first glide? It seems like that's where the field really gets differentiated. Like a lot happens that sort of sets your fate.

It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't always help to be in the lead right after the start.

Yeah, with them, not leading them is a good position to be in the start. It seems like at least with the group. I mean, you see a lot of separation right out of the gates. First couple of climbs, first couple of glides, because if you're not with them, if you're a thousand feet below them, yeah, people are going to leave you in a hurry. So getting into a really good position in the start and then trying to hang with that group. And I would say be a part of and be useful to that group. As you're moving through the course, you can stay with them. But they can ditch you pretty quick if you don't get a good start.

I'm usually just trying to relax that part of the race. Like it's so intense being in the gaggle right before the start. For that first few minutes of decompression, I'm just breathing and trying to focus. And you're always trying to be on top and in the front or close to the front. But the start opens and you've got what you've got. And so then you're just trying to open your eyes and see if you're up ahead and out front. Then you've got a distinct advantage. But if you're behind, there's always an advantage to you because you've got a lot more information to work with. So I'm always just trying to relax, open my eyes, see what the situation is and what I have to work with. Do you guys have a strategy to keep track of people behind you when you are in front so that they don't catch a climb and you miss it and there's one spot?

I look over my shoulder a ton. If I'm ever in the front or I'm always looking over my shoulder just because you hate to glide away from something good that's happening behind you. But at some point you kind of commit and there's nothing you can do if people can get something behind you. Sort of that same thing, we all make mistakes when we fly, right? And like do you find, and sort of open question, do you guys find that you recognize the analyze the mistake in flight? Or is it one of those things like, hey, I'm not going to make a mistake. I'm going to pass it on, pass it on, pass it on to the next thing. Do you have a strategy to deal with that? Yeah, be a goldfish.

Yeah, I mean, if you're sitting there dwelling on a mistake that you just made during a flight, you're not doing yourself any favors. And I really feel like you got to just fly in the moment and forget whatever small mistake just happened. You need to yell on your helmet for a minute, yell on your helmet for a minute, but that's all it should last. And then move on and take the opportunities that are in front of you. Otherwise, you're just going to keep blowing your day. That's how I feel about it. And also, sometimes you just have to believe that it's possible to come back from a setback. Because it is. Because you often can. Yeah. Or even use it to your advantage. If you're behind, there's more information available in front of you.

Oftentimes, the lead group, at least at this level of contest, I would say this is less true as you work into a really high level of contest. But the lead group isn't necessarily flying. They're just running at full speed all the time throughout the whole course line. Since they're proving what the course line is, they're not hammering as hard. And there's opportunity for the chase group to catch them as a result.

I find that to be true a lot of times where it's more like three-quarter or half-bar sometimes in that lead group. And sometimes even at high level comps, the lead group will be hammering and then get stuck. Because they didn't read the course line appropriately and got a little too low, put themselves in a spot with some shade. Then you may be able to fly over their heads. Yeah.

I'm curious to hear your guys' musings on the differences in how you approach race flying versus XC. And then at what point those two skill sets either deviate or do they deviate?

I found I had to really switch my mindset when I was trying to do long XCs in Brazil. That I was just racing too much and racing into the ground. So it seemed like once I finally just had the mindset to just try to stay in the air all day, I did better.

I'd like to hear Bill's mindset for cross country paragliding.

Just go really deep and then try the rest of the day not to land.

Because that's how it feels.

So when you're flying the long XC, it's a long day. It's going to be eight plus hours.

You go through a lot of ups and downs throughout the day. It's like some kind of long distance run without the work.

But there's moments you feel like you're in a really good position. And then there's moments you feel like you're not. And you're trying to fly the optimized line of the sky. Which is going to take you a lot of places in the terrain that maybe you wouldn't. Yeah. You wouldn't want to go because there isn't a lot of roads. But still, if you want to maximize the day, you got to fly the sky.

So I'm on speed pretty much all the time. But hardly ever full speed unless I'm trying to escape a cloud or something.

Because you still, you're going downwind lots of times. Unless you're flying the triangle and then maybe it's a little different. And so you don't need to be hammering it. And you know that getting low is not efficient in terms of making, you know, making K's. And so you try not to get low. But you also try not to waste a bunch of time in broken lifts screwing around. Because you're afraid you're going to get low. So.

You do your best. But inevitably a couple times a day you're going to get low. And then hopefully you're low in a good spot. You know, and that is a good spot to climb up. And then usually it works out. But being low isn't fast. And so you do your best to fly the, you know, the middle to the top of the sky. And.

And. And that opposed to racing. You just don't have anybody with you on those cross countries. And so there's a limited amount of information that you have. Which is, you know, the bad part. But there's also no one goading you to go faster. Which is the good part. And that's the problem with racing is there's always someone around ahead of you. Or there's always a group higher. Or there's always, you know, somebody going faster. And then, you know, if you get into racing everybody around you without being strategic about it. You know, you just, you end up low or end up on the dirt. Where you wouldn't have normally done that if it was a cross country flight.

Because if you compared it to, you know, if you run any kind of road races. It's like. You know how fast you can be for like a half marathon or whatnot. But when you're in the start group. You find yourself, you know, at a heart rate way higher than you would have normally been optimized for a race at that distance. Just because, you know, it's a group of people. There's some people going faster. You know, there's some adrenaline. You feel like you can go faster. And then you come out hot for the first, you know, five miles. And then maybe for the last third of the race you fade. Because you just came out too fast. And so the same, you know, you get the same tendencies when you're racing paragliders.

Is you just start racing instead of flying your own flight. In cross country you're flying your own flight.

So, you know, you have to sort of manage your mindset. Which is easier said than done. Right. And to switch gears from flying cross country to racing, you know, can't be done just like that. But at the same time, the reason you do comps is to fly faster and more efficient. Which makes you a better cross country pilot. And so cross training between cross country and racing is a good way to. To sort of realize your potential as a pilot. And so, you know, even though I fly more cross country these days than race.

I still like to go to a couple of races just to try to remind myself how to be faster. Because I know I can use that in cross country flying. And maybe on the other side of that coin. If someone only does competitions and they're only flying with groups. They might not know what to do if they find themselves out on their own during a task. And just to add to something you said about getting low in a good spot. I find it's really helpful if you have a choice. If you're getting low and you have a choice of different places to try to get up. If you can find a decent trigger that's right near a nice landing zone. Then you can just work it and work it and not worry about the landing part. And that often, having that bit of less stress often.

Makes it work a lot better.

Can any of you guys talk about, I know that probably all of you have done some nice cross country flights. Where you manage the team fly them. And I haven't done a ton of that. And it's always difficult

to determine. I want to know if everybody is really lining up and sticking right with your guys. And when are you waiting for them? When are you deciding not to wait? When are you spreading out? Any team cross country flying tactics

you know? What do you think of that? Great. Yeah. Well like you know. Groups like small groups. You know. Which is just different than racing with a guy. I would say that the top priority is making it a top priority. If you don't have set the intention. And talk about the fact that's what you want to do. It's not going to happen. You can look at what the Brazilians have done. They've really fine tuned specific protocols for how to determine when to wait for someone. And who leaves a climb. But I haven't found any people in the states that want to do that kind of team flying. But if you talk about it and make a plan. That's the first thing. And then personally I would say also live tracking makes it so much easier than it used to be.

If you're running cell based live tracking on your phone. Or maybe you have instruments that can show you the position of your buddies. When you do get separated. Because especially in places like this where there are strong climbs and strong sink. And minor differences in line lead to huge separation. Seeing exactly where the person you want to be flying with is. Really helps you get back to them. And join back up and make the team happen again. So I think communication, live tracking and just saying it's what you want to do. And finding like minded people who also want to do it is the real key there.

It's hard to do. Especially for Americans. It's really hard. So in that vein what's it going to take for the United States to start growing and stop from here? What's it going to take for us to break in on a nice level where the Euros are flying. And South America. What's it going to take for us as a country to get to that level? Team flying or flying in the tunnel? Competition flying. Everybody in this crowd is what I would argue. Because in Europe they have really really good talent deep in the field. And that makes those top guys. Have to fight for it that much more. And the more our whole community can come up. The more the top people that are amongst us. Will be elevated and will be on a higher level when they go to world competitions.

So I'd argue that it's our community that's going to elevate everybody.

But to go back to one thing. What's the intention of TEFLA? What's it sound like? Because I've said at times like. Okay when we TEFLA it we're going to win. We just bomb out. We're both bombing out. What's the intention? I think Grevis left one piece out. And that's you have to sacrifice too. Like you work together. You've got cohesion. But you also have to like go backwards. Go down. You've got a sweet move in front of you. But your buddy doesn't have it. You have to just wait. And it sucks when you're doing it. But you make that sacrifice so that two moves later you're both doing a crossing together. And you can cover a lot more area. Yeah it's really good to keep that in mind. When you're. When

you're doing a lot of things.

When it feels like you're making a sacrifice. Because in the end result if you do fly as a team it won't be a sacrifice. Because you'll have the other pilot or pilots there with you. Finding the climbs more quickly. Finding the efficient lines to glide more quickly. But it is hard to wrap your head around that at first. When you're like I'm a cloud base and you're stuck down there. But it is worth it to wait. As long as the person is climbing. And to Cedar's point like Americans and kind of. I think we kind of suck at it more than some other places. Like we're very wild west. There's an ethos here of like I got something. And I don't care what's going on behind me. Like I'm going with everything I've got. And we kind of race that way too. We fly cross country that way. I think it's born of like the fact that all of you guys. Everyone here flies in a site where there's like five other pilots.

And there's a million miles of open distance. Like the way. The reason you found your way there in the first place is because you're super independent. And so to then like come and develop coaches. And then like engage in the group and make sacrifices. You can all work together hard. We're just not wired that way at all. It's like a very different mentality. And it does reflect when we go to competitions and array world competitions and we're racing against the French kids who have been training together in a small pack for years. 30 of them and they just annihilate us and they're like actively working together as a team. They'll make sacrifices as a team. They'll throw a rabbit out like on in individual days their coach will be like you're the rabbit. it and someone will attack and pull a bunch of people with them and the rest of the team will ride that wave things like this so there's just more built into that mentality whereas we're all so wild west and it's hard for us to want to like shift gears and like group up of that it's really hard and i would also say that the pilots need to be of equal ability uh on the same gliders similar gliders uh and uh know what team flying is and so team flying is not harping yourself behind the guy in front where he can't even see you um and then making the guy in front or whoever it is make all the decisions uh and you know if those decisions work you're in back you're going to take advantage of those if they don't work you're going to try something else and so that is one-sided it doesn't work or if you're um you know you're not comfortable on speedball and so the rest of the crew is hammering and then you're perpetually behind because you're not pushing as much speed um you know that gets old you know because everybody's going to have to wait for it you know if on every glide when you hit the next climb you turn around and the person you're supposed to team fly with is the k back um how many times you're going to do that before you've decided it doesn't work and so if you're going to say team fly you've gotta you know you gotta be an equal contributor on the team for it ultimately to pay off otherwise

um you're you're just asking people to fly with you which is not team flying it's getting guided but one thing i'd say is kind of an exception to that rule is if you're planning to fly a triangle and you have maybe a couple groups where you have people at one level and people at a slightly lower level are flying slower gliders it is possible to coordinate flying a big triangle and a smaller triangle where some of the legs are shared so if you don't have people who are at exactly your level flying the same kind of glider but you get weather to fly a triangle you may still be able to approximate team flying by joining up for the legs and then the faster gliders are faster gliders and then the faster gliders are faster gliders and then the faster gliders are faster gliders so pilots can just stretch out the turn points a little farther

keep in mind too that they're going to have the brazilians that worked at this for a long time they've got really strict rules of how it all works and they practiced it at times when cody and i were down flying with donnie seth in texas um there's a there's a it's a it's a really it takes a lot of practice it's a lot of work i mean like like somebody said it's just having the intentions not enough that's just the start you've got to have the rules and then and then you've got to really work at it it's it's a system is there any way to have like a team scored x contest thing nothing i'm aware of right now

but you know if you want to do well in x contest doing it with the team is a good way yeah

we're not in terms of xc flying and like utah or these places are really good for storm clouds and i i wouldn't go a lot this summer i was always kind of asking what we thought about the clouds you know it's like determining when i know i was talking to cody about this like when is it what are those factors in the sky that's like all right we keep going there's kind of factors of like we need to have this is getting dangerous which is i think it's a good question that's always a tough call um because the marginal the days on the margins can produce really good flights as long as they don't um cross the line and become dangerous which

often they don't sometimes they they do that's why they're on the margins no one can call it one way or the other and then you know those days tend to have more cloud but tend to to have that cloud be closer to over development and then it's just a matter of scale as to how tall they get and how hard they drop and any kind of indications that you can get of that in the course of the day you know can determine whether you land or continue and so you know the important thing is is not to want it so bad that you're unwilling to end the flight until you know you're in the gust front and it's happened to me a couple three times uh and it's not pleasant to get caught in the gust front uh and not recommend it um and certainly not worth it

so um so it's it's hard to say specifically um how you make the call because every day is different um but i would i'm always looking for dust uh and fortunately in the west you can see a long ways and so um if there's big stuff in the distance um that is sort of uh we would say a bit of a prototype for what might be happening near you um if that stuff explodes chances are the stuff near you may explode um and so um it might be a good idea to land uh but uh there's been days where i've been you know uh

and this this was maybe a longer time ago than how i look at it now is i was landing prematurely too many times um because i thought it was going to go bad and it just didn't go bad and so but eventually i feel like i i got a good feel for it but um

uh everybody nowadays gets you know gets good at flying the gliders fast but um to get 10 years of flying experience it still takes 10 years but you can learn how to fly the gliders really well in a much shorter time than that but the opportunity to fly year after year and experience you know all those different conditions and all those seasons all those places in the world over all of those years um you can't really get that in any compressed manner um uh even though the weather data is really good now you know i was joking with owen um earlier about you know back when josh and i started flying you could call 1-800-wx-free and you could get the wins um you know and that's all you could get you know there's no internet you know there was no cell phones you know just getting on the phone and calling for the wins was all the weather information you had other than watching the news

yeah i had a little noah weather radio you know you could just play the noah recording um and that was all the information you had and so it was it was hard to figure out like what you could do and when you could do it now you can do it much more easily but at the same time that only gets you so far really it's the experience of flying year after year where you know you get a better feel for where the line is between reasonable and unreasonable but you know as spiral tap once said there's a fine line between clever and stupid and you know you can't tell yourself that enough you need to get good at predicting the weather in the next hour or so.

And you can sort of check how your predictions are doing. Like if you're finding that you're managing to always land an hour or 45 minutes or whatever before a dust front rolls through, that seems like sort of a reasonable margin to me, although people might have different opinions on that. But I think just that kind of thought process is helpful, like making predictions and checking how accurate the predictions are, because that's what's going to keep you safe and at least keep you having some margin. Have any of you guys, for some forecasting and helping yourself be able to identify those kind of nuances, ever looked at the good

days that you've had? And I'd imagine whether that is stored somewhere, but I don't really think that. I mean, look back and you might pull

up my best 50 tracks in Colorado and I don't know if it's stored somewhere where I can look

at it. But look back and think, oh, this is what the pressure is, this is what the moisture rate is, and kind of use that as a guide. Yeah,

it's hard to dig up the historical weather data. There are some services, and the National Weather Service does have archives, but it's in a pretty cryptic format, so it's not easy to access and process. I don't know how many years they have publicly available at this point. The University of Wyoming has soundings available that you can look up. On a reading date, you can get like this UT. That does go back years. Yeah.

That's a hero-based, it's like the European model, you know, only goes to about, I think, 34 months of finishing, but it goes back at least 30 years.

It's easier to do it the day after, obviously. The part that we just kind of glossed over was like, we'll learn this to land before you absolutely have it. It's like, I look at you guys and I'm like, oh, this is a really good idea. Chris Porter r r r r

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r and seen you do some shit I thought was fucking on the fucking line, man.

Or over the line. And you got away with it, you know? I don't know. I was thinking of one particular flight in the desert a couple years ago. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, I can tell that story. It's a good story. I was flying with Bill, and he got on the radio and said, yeah, I'm seeing dust. Looks like a gust front. And I thought maybe it was just some Jeeps kicking up dust down there. I kept going, and I got into beautiful two meters a second lift over the book cliffs. And I was just going up slowly and watching 60 mile an hour winds down there rip. Bill was safely on the ground. And I was, like, pretty fucking scared.

But nothing happened. I just, like, got away with it. He's told a story better before where it was like an apocalypse.

Because this whole. This

whole line

went. It was spectacular. Yeah. I mean, it was probably like a 25 mile dust trail. And it was shooting down past Green River. But I was over the book cliffs just going like beep, beep, beep. And beautiful, smooth lift. So if you can get on the right side of the gust front.

That'll be an edit, Miles. That'll be an edit. And I flew further than Bill that day. I did. I did. I did. The moral of the story. He flew further, and he landed in almost no wind. And it was just fine. Yeah. So it was really dumb. Did it occur to you to think that, my gosh, those are some really big jeeps?

I mean, I quickly realized it wasn't jeeps. But it is. It was too late. But it is the, you know, if you're, you know, if you get caught, it's the way to deal with it. You know, because. What

are you supposed

to do with it?

Just stay

up? You just have to keep flying. Yeah. You just have to stay up until the winds dissipate on the ground. Because the gust front's only going to last for so long. If you're trying to get down in the midst of the gust front, that's the most dangerous thing. And so you either land before it or you ride it out. So, you know, I landed just before it. And he rode it out. And both had a good result. So two different approaches. But I would recommend to you just. You know, land if you can. And if you can't, ride it out. So both can have a good result. And avoid terrain that would channel the gust front. Yeah. I was over the book cliffs. And I was like, man, if this like somehow starts dropping out. Like if somehow it starts coming down on me.

I was like thinking maybe I would land on top of the book cliffs. And then think about my decision making processes. But I was like. But I was holding the high terrain. And I was watching the gust front go the other way. And I was like. Seemed like it was going to be okay. But, you know, it was really scary. And will not do that again. Until I do. It seems like the terrain that you're flying in like has a lot to do with your margins for pushing in. Your margins for what you can do if the ship does fall out. And you get to the limit. You know, like flying the mountain is going to cause more out of it. You just don't want to be up there when it's really bad. It would be very, very dangerous. Whereas flying the class of Oregon. Might not be as much. I started a few years ago. Reeling back the conditions I fly in.

And that's something that helps me decide like should I keep going or should I not. I'm trying

to do flights that make

me feel good.

Even after I land. I think like man I didn't just get away with something. But

like that was a good condition. That was an appropriate thing to do. I've definitely done some flights where I've flown in that

fucking condition. Where it starts falling down. Get away from it. But after more. It's like. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't make me feel good.

20 out of 29. Probably wouldn't go very well. Yeah. And I would always remember these are extreme sports in nature. And you can only predict so much. You're only going to be able to mitigate so much risk. And if you're, you know, you're trying to sort of realize your own potential. Or do something that hasn't been done before. On marginal days. You know you're going to be taking some chances. And you know just know that going in. And ask yourself. You know if you're okay with that. So because there's only so much control you have over what happens out there. In these big mountains with the strong lift.

On these you know pieces of tent fabric and kite string. And so it's amazing what can be done.

Considering what we have to work with. You know it's just like alchemism. It's doing the most with the least. But you know this is aviation instead of climbing.

And because of what you're able to do with what you have to work with. You know it makes it that much more special. But at the same time. There's not a lot of margin.

And there's only so much you could know. Certainly across like a hundred mile plus flight. You're going to experience a lot of different terrain. A lot of different conditions along that course line. And you're going to have to manage it all. But never think that you know you're fully in control of all of it. Because you're not. And so give yourself some margin.

And also try to anticipate. Like if you're in a situation where the wind is picking up. You don't want to wait until it's picked up to where it's going to be really scary to land. You want to sort of see that trend and anticipate it. And land before it's actually bad.

Over time how has your selectedness.

And the day you fly changed?

Yes.

I wouldn't say it's really changed at all. Other than you have more information to make the decision.

You know if you're going to fly. Where you're going to fly. What you're going to fly. And that's great. I wouldn't say the style of which I fly has changed at all. It's just you have more information in order to make a good choice.

Do you fly the same number of good days now as here?

Yeah if I'm not working. So you're. You know usually you're picking. If you got a family and a job. You know you're trying to use your free time as strategically as you can. So you're picking the best days.

You're. You're maybe not just going evening flying for fun. Just because you have other obligations. And so.

You're big game hunting for lack of a better term. Or big wave surfing for lack of a better term. And so you're sort of focused on trying to make sure you can get as many of the good days as you can. You're never going to get them all. And then try not to burn your kitchen passes or free time on just evening ridge soaring sessions. So. So it's kind of. It's kind of like that. It's easy for him to say he flies about 300k every time he gets out. You know. Bill. Bill flies 8 to 10 cross country flights a year. And has won the X contest. Three or four times. So. So I often joke. Good days. Well yeah.

I have this running joke where if it comes out of the bag it's going 100 miles.

So. So. So. So. So if anything is changed it's that. So. Can I get that back for you.

I've been earlier talking about how downshifting is big in your mind. But what are the cues you're looking for when you're downshifting. When you are trying to get to the root. Do you think looking down is more of a misalign.

Well, I'll fall on bills real quick. I don't have kind of the scenario that lets me use picky. I'll take anything I can get. So I do a lot of evening flying. I'll fly any opportunity I get. I feel like all of it helps me add skills and currency. So that's kind of the setup that I have to work with.

Yeah, yeah. So to your question, I mean, again, it's just going back to fundamentals. Like if there's a, depending on where you are on the course line, there's a big climb in front of you. If you're, like if there's a big climb in front of me, if there's a bird marking it, marking something, there's a cloud, any like really positive indicator is when I'm probably 100%. And then the more uncertainty there is in the next move that I'm making, the more selective I'll be with the ground shift. And that's essentially what it is. So it seems like a really hard call to make now and then is when you actually have to stop for the bird because the giggle seems like they have such an ability to get through things that look like they're going to be very tough and have a problem.

Maybe that's what you make it through. And you don't want to be the pilot that's holding back and holding back and holding back and you're never going to keep up. But yeah, I mean, I think like I maybe overemphasize the downshift. Like you're for sure always pushing as much as you can, but it's not 100 % all the time. That never works ever. So I think it's, you know, it's just how much uncertainty is there in the next move is really what's causing like a shift in gears. Or I mean, like as far as racing tactics go, another big part of that is like what do the people immediately around me do? And who are specifically who are they? Like if I see Josh making move, Josh makes really high consistency moves.

And so even if I don't know exactly what it is that we're racing for, if he's going, I'll probably go full throttle. But there's other people that will make a full throttle move that I won't necessarily stick to. So I mean, all those are little things that add certainty or uncertainty to what you're doing and cause a good throttle down route. I study. I study who I'm around for sure. Like here, I recognize more and more people. It's pretty easy. When I go to comps where I don't know who I'm flying with, I'll go home at night and I'll look up the top 20 pilots and I'll write down their numbers and I'll do everything that I can to like remember who people are as quickly as I can throughout the week. Because, you know, there's someone that, you know, someone's got a logo on their wing and they've got a bright wing and you think maybe that's who you should be paying attention to.

But it's actually this guy over here and they've been winning all week, but you didn't pay attention to who they were. And they're making some sort of a move and, you know, you follow the bright, flashy wing and not the, you know, 217 that you should have been paying attention to and you made a big mistake. So I study who I'm flying with a lot. I find that very important also. Like on practice day, I'll be walking around on launch seeing who has new gliders and what harness they're flying, what helmet they're flying, what sleeves they're wearing to try and just as quickly as possible learn to identify everybody. And then after flying, walk around and asking, like, I didn't see you today. What glider are you flying? And memorize as much of that as you possibly can. Because if you know who people are and know their decision making style, their level,

it really, really helps you make better decisions. And you can also write it down and put it on a page on your flight app.

To add to the downshifting comment, it's useful to try to learn to recognize when you get in a situation. Where there's a good chance no one will make a goal and then you're just XC flying.

It doesn't, you know, it doesn't happen that often, but when it does, it can be a big advantage to recognize that before others do.

Okay, so once you recognize who you're flying with, and even when you don't, I'd love to hear from Revis, because you made a cheeky comment before the first task that the LCNI was going to be looking down on everybody.

And I said, uh-huh. He said, no, it seems like that's how it worked out. You do have a really, like, you, Nick Greece, Frank, and Lucio, you guys have a really good ability to control the top of the stack. So, like, what kind of things are you, what kind of strategy, what kind of techniques are you using to stay on top when you're flying somewhere? Fly an extra large cloud? Yeah, I think it's the glider. That's actually a pretty giant leader. You just need to shoot. Fly an extra large glider with some Kiwi Juju.

No, I feel like I'm climbing way better on that glider than I have on any other.

But it also, like, the comp venues where I've had success like that, I feel like play to my strengths in climbing because of the kind of XC flying I do. And it's places where there's a lot of lift, but then there are cores that are significantly better. And if you can sense where that core is faster than the other people in your gaggle and move to it and make a turn, all of a sudden you've, you know, even if you came at the bottom of the stack, now your two glider's higher. And you work that core. And then you feel, oh, it's shifted over here a little bit. And you go find that. So if you can sniff the strongest cores in the climb faster than the other people around you, that's what helps you out climb them. And then as soon as you're above them, then it's easy.

I mean, maybe not. But easier. That was something Donizete was really impressing on us a couple years ago. It was like more seeking because we were, like, coring up a lot. And he was doing these crazy passes and seeking out bigger lift. And we all made it easy. I mean, we all. But made it easy because we stayed in one spot. And if there's someone kind of marking one thing, it makes it easier to safely seek and then turn back to the marked core. And so the more conservative the gaggle you're in is... The easier it is to out climb them by making those moves and sniffing and finding the better lift because they're just going to stay right where they are turning 360s. And if you don't make the right move and it's not where you thought it was, you just jump right back in and haven't really lost anything.

But if you're with a really good gaggle, they are going to track your every move and join you immediately as soon as you show that stronger lift. The really high level of pumps, it doesn't feel like anyone's going like this ever. It's like everything... Everyone's seeking all the time. There's tons of seeking. Way more seeking than I have. Can you articulate for those of us with fewer hours what you mean by sniffing? I know what that is, but can you step further into that?

It's pretty hard to describe. I think it's something that you develop kind of a feel and an intuition for. And it's also something that potentially becomes easier when you're flying higher aspect, higher performance gliders because they just give you more information about what the air is doing.

But yeah, for me, a huge part of it is the feel the glider is giving me through the risers and the brakes and the way the tips are moving. But describing how to take that information and know where the actual strong lift is, I don't think I can put that in words. It's opening up... When we're searching in thermals like what Evan's describing, you're opening up your turn into directions where the lift is just as strong as what you're in or a little bit stronger. Yeah. If you're in a climb and your 360 is beeping a little bit hotter on one side of the climb, oftentimes I'm going to open my turn up and keep pushing into that. And most of the time, nearly always, the stronger lift is on the windward side if there's a windward aspect of it.

And so I'm seeking, I'm trying to seek upwind a little bit more to sniff into that.

And oftentimes if you open up your turn and you fly straight, sometimes you discover that there's... You're sitting over there coring hard. You're

sitting over there coring hard

in a certain area thinking that you're in the core and you open up and it's just this huge broad area of massive lift. And you can fly straight for ages, like seconds, and end up in the true core in the area and really nail the climb. So it's just sniffing into the stronger bits of the climb and constantly adjusting your circles over that strongest bit. One tactic that's helpful, mainly when you're just flying with one or two people, is to if you're flying along and both fly into some lift, one person starts turning to the right, so you don't necessarily have to start turning to the right with them. You can turn to the left. You can do a cloverleaf and see who gets the better part of it.

And then if they're higher, then you join their turn. Or even doing that by yourself. I naturally turn to the right more. So if I think I'm getting into the climb, I'll start left. Because then later on it's easier for me to reverse and go the other direction to into a right if I think I'm doing something over there. But switching directions, if you're not sure exactly what's going on, switching directions can be another way to just cover more ground. Having a device, especially if you're not flying in front of other people, if you're having a device in that town, you're not afraid about falling out of it and not being able to find it again. And you've been flying solo all the time for a bit.

I think especially with the Actually, I'm a higher aspect glider. If I'm flying and it's a pretty strong lift, you know, like three, maybe to five or six for the day. And I'm flying into three and I can feel my glider just wanting to still bite, I'll just keep flying into it because it's just getting better and better. And it feels like it's just wanting to hang out in front a little bit. Or if it pulls to one side, I'll usually go into that side a little bit and find the better part of the lift. You know what I call that wobbly, hollow feeling at the edge of the thermal before you fall down? And knowing even sometimes it's getting better, but like, with this wobbliness and there's no like, okay,

it's time to turn because you don't want to. It's just a quick slide. I think it's

good that you, this is being a bit of words on how you choose line, line better, rather than just sort of like pointing at something that looks good and hopefully the best. All right.

Great clouds. I'm

going to go ahead and get a little bit of a look at the camera. So

let's, farmer's a really good blider. Yeah. Yeah. It's a farmer question. Yeah. How did you

get this

reputation? I would say don't believe the hype.

So I would say, or I'm working to figure out where to glide and how to get through a big crossing and get there the highest. When I say that, it's really very similar to thermaling, which is just, you know, it's you're just trying to find the most positive air. And so you're looking for ground based clues, any kind of, if you're out in the flatlands or if you're crossing a valley between two ranges, any kind of ripples in the train that you think might act as triggers, they might not produce a thermal, but they might produce better gliding lines for that crossing. And so you're kind of looking for like land bridges. So there's ground based clues. You're looking for any indications in the sky, birds, bugs, or hens.

Hayes domes, little wispy clouds, any indication of lift to try to put yourself on those lines as well. And I, I think that feel and sensing it is something that you can practice. And I've kind of talked about, you know, getting a sense for L over D over ground. And at first you're looking at your instrument to kind of see what that number is, but far more important than looking at your instrument. Cause that's just the beginning of the training is keeping your eyes up and putting your eyes on the horizon and feeling it. And just like when you're flying without your Vario, um, the best way to sense, uh, whether or not you're in, uh, climbing air or not, when there's not a terrain reference around, when you're high enough in the sky that there's no train reference is to put your eyes clear out on the horizon.

And, um, and, and. And try to get a sense for whether or not you're in positive or negative air. And, uh, so those are a few things, I guess. Um, What do you do if you're in sync? If I, if I'm in really bad sync, I am trying to do something about it. And I would say the, the, again, the bigger the crossing is, the more I'm willing to deviate off my line. Um, you know, 45 off course line is something I'm willing to do to try to get into more positive air. And it's.

Uh, another thing is something else I can do is something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can do something else can um deviating off course line a little bit if you're in really bad sync to try to find more positive air and affect the situation and um i would also say that leaving a climb properly is one of the things that's given me i feel like a reputation of gliding better and i'm not gliding better than anybody i'm leaving climbs better and um if there's a cloud street of course you're just going to follow the street and put yourself underneath it but the more separation there is between big climbs the more you're going to want to think about exiting a climb properly and by that i mean thinking about uh what direction the wind's blowing so if you're going downwind like we're on a lot of cross country flights and you're in a nice big climb if you go directly downwind of that climb on your exit there is rotor behind that climb there's sink behind that climb and if you just exit 45 or sometimes even 90 to course line out the side of that cloud is your first meter before you go on your glide and get back on whatever your course line is you can put 500 people 500 feet on people before you even start the glide and then by the time people look over they're like wow he's gliding really well well i just left the climb better um and so you know that that one's pretty big i think because leaving climbs better and you can um

once you kind of start working on that and figuring it out you can you can really feel how that lift extends sometimes instead of just going over the waterfall you're kind of riding surfing the lift out the side of the thermal what about the mechanics you know that's super helpful from learning from the home like how we set up the harness and what we're doing like doing the harness and with the glider like what are some of the things that you're thinking about when you're gliding about how you're holding the rear what you do with your head all the different one thing that comes to mind is that it takes at least several hours to properly set up a pod harness so you got to put in the time if you want it to work well and that could be done in your garage i mean i would say that you can spend um certainly from getting the thing set up nicely and getting it comfortable for yourself you don't need to sacrifice a bunch of flights you can sit in your new harness in your garage for hours

and uh figure out it's really good it's really good it's awesome yeah yeah i think i think what people often miss is that uh all the gear that you put in the back of the harness makes a big difference in the balance point so if you want to get the angle accurate you got to put that stuff back there

everything yeah like you're going flying um and get your kit all set up so but just some specifics there too like chasing people like honorin and baptiste

r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r r that and pulling your toes down so you keep yourself at that angle like those little bits of flourish it all it all it all adds up it has like a tiny little point and on a 10k glide that gives you an extra 100 meters on the other end or whatever and it all adds up speed sleeves anything that flaps anything that's flapping your bleeding bleeding efficiency as you cross so keeping all your flappers tucked in tight stretched under the speed sleeve got all that i tend to cut off the zipper pulls on the harness

pam i use pam i spray my whole

super slick in the air yeah like cliche every morning i'd say let that i'd say let that glider fly yeah don't over control it on the bees you know you can be on a bunch of bar and if you're pulling just as much bees as you're on bar because you're scared of the speed bar you're not on speed bar um so let that thing fly and react to the things that need to be reacted to don't react to everything you know so if you're reacting to every bump in the air with the brakes or the bees and you're knocking the glider back um you are uh you know kind of degrading the performance of the glider and kind of waffling out of the sky sometimes as you go through some of those bumps that you don't need to react to that aren't going to cause a collapse and you can just chop through them the energy of your glider will will translate that into a climb a little bit on the other side

and so you know react to react more to loss of pressure and less the glider position over your head is what i would say and be smooth does that mean like lighting your glider picture yeah it's going to do that yes yeah um i'm trying to feel pressure through my hands and it's really hard to feel it through your legs because those are big muscles but you're trying to feel pressure loss as an indicator of that collapse more than glider position and if you train on like porpoising your glider super hard um with bar and brake movements you can you can learn that you know your glider stays open in pretty extreme positions and so you learn to trust it more when those pitch changes uh you know aren't all that extreme and you can just let that thing fly which is always going to be more efficient than over managing the glider

my mind is like all that movement is not not efficient

this is more true for the for the higher performance wins but they will take that movement and translate it into that you know a little bit of a climb on their side so um you know the the lower level wings will tend to get beat up more by that turbulence and the really high performance wings will translate that into little notches of climb up if you're not over managing it

do you control the pitch of the glider on the speed bar also like when it's moving forward and backwards once it's going backwards you step a little more yeah when it goes forward only that's all for me for me only if i think it's about to have a really big funnel yeah i might come off yeah the bar as well as pull the bees that used to be the whole deal back before we were flying two liners with b handles you know it was so much of it was in the bar

and so i'd say that uh it's it's hard to

to not do that on the bigger movements it's it's all about coming off when it's going to go so grabbing some bees and coming off the bar the more extreme the pressure loss or movement to the glide of the bar to indicate a collapse the more reactive i'm gonna i'm gonna be when it comes to hammering the bees and coming off the bar in general though just keep it packed

what's the time like you might be flying and you get into the top of the sink and the moment you deviate and you get into the top of the sink and the moment you deviate or the thought process of there's gonna be a big climb the other side of this how much out did you have yeah got plenty of altitude you know it looks like there's gonna be some things like cloud in front of you um terrain coming up you're just like just claw through it yeah uh get you know it's like you got you got altitude to burn burn it um rather than worrying about being on seeing if you could be on a better line and also what have you experienced so far in the day and on sunday i felt like after crossing i-70 almost any time i hit three three three and a half meters down i just push more bar and say here comes the climb yeah that the sink was the indication that there was going to be a climb not something to it's not really good it can be a really good sign i think just sometimes like you know the big flights if there's like convergence line you're like

get into the sink and you're like oh there's gonna be a climb and like realize oh i'm just on the outside of the convergence

it's like realizing oh i gotta actually turn into the convergence as opposed to there's gonna be a climb from your side yeah i mean those two kinds of sinks seem to have kind of a different flavor i don't know exactly how to describe it but like there's like a sink that feels like it's drawing into something versus yeah like linear sink where you're on the wrong side of the convergent flying then 45 movements will help you to get up or down window right there's the when you're just gliding through really smooth air and then you get some bumpiness that might not necessarily be lifty uh but it's often a good sign unless you're flying into rotor or something some bumps

it's a bad side yeah it probably depends also on the if you're going into the van versus the van completely

any of you guys comment on the on stepping up in glider classes and i'm most curious personally about just to take on the difference between the modern two-liner d category versus the CCC gliders and just how that experience is different how much the workload is different what

you feel like you get out of one of the two of them

yeah i'd say josh or farmer um they've bounced back and forth more than most so even rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung

rung rung

rung rung

rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung

rung rung

rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung rung

rung rung load is a little higher so I find that if I'm gonna fly an eight-hour cross country flight in strong conditions I'm gonna have more energy and mental bandwidth left to finish that flight on a two-line D than I would on an Enzo. And it also seems like if you do have an event just the the chance of being able to recover it is a lot better on the D than the 668. And a pilot will always perform the best on the glider that they're most comfortable on. Always. You can't buy cross country flights and competition wins by buying a higher performance glider.

You can try though. You can try. I did that. I tried that.

I full-stalled the Enzo.

It's, yeah. Yeah. You should be on the glider that you are super excited about to go out and throttle it as full bar and be happy doing that. And if you're scared to be on a full bar on your glider then, and you're on a lower level wing, then you need to train more on the bar. And if you're on a higher level wing you've just stepped up to and you're scared of the bar then you need to, you know, maybe think about going back down to another glider. Because if you can't use a full bar, if you can't use its full ability then what's the point of that performance? And there's also a risk to reward sort of calculation relative to the conditions and the site and so on. That's why I'm flying the Xeno II here whereas I was flying an X1 in Chelan.

Like Chelan I'm pretty familiar with. It's for the most part not super extreme conditions. And I didn't know the site here and I'd heard it could be kind of big air and could be kind of remote sometimes and so on. So it just felt like the risk to reward was more favorable.

Do you guys have any advice for being a better gaggle pilot? There's like an infinite number of variations. A couple common ones are, you know, if you're with one or two other people, there's 10, 20 people below you a few hundred feet and those guys start going. It's like, alright, you're gonna go with those guys, don't wait for everyone else or vice versa. You're on the bottom, the whole armada starts going and then you're like, do I take another five, six turns and then try to catch up or do I take my poison and go and hope to pick it off the bottom? Well, following from below hardly ever works.

We've all tried that a lot.

You're like, I'm winning! I'm landing!

So I would say, you know, take your medicine. That's always the best.

Easier said than done, but that always is the answer that's going to have the highest percentage of better result because, you know, you may get an opportunity later to make up for it. And so be patient. So you're taking your medicine here, but you'll have some gliders in front of you. Maybe you can take a better line based on that information and have an opportunity later. But yeah, racing from below is a low point. And the other scenario you described depends a lot on the conditions. If you're still in a good climb, but people below you are leaving because maybe they fell out of the bottom of the glif that you're in, I would be thinking about kind of the angle of control that I have on those gliders.

How far can they get away from me before if they reach a climb of this strength, I won't be able to get it on top of them? And so once they start going, I'll probably leave to maintain that position. I'll let them find the climb. But I won't let them get so far away that if they find the next three meter climb, I'm going to come in underneath when I try and chase them in that climb. I guess the one I was trying to get to is, you know, you're with a couple of people well above the rest of the gaggle. Those couple of people go. So you're like, do I go with the two or three top people or do I wait for the top people? It depends who they are. Yeah. It also depends if the climb you're in is better than average for the day and better than what you expect to find next. I'd say that's a really big one, which is if you're in a boomer climb, like a unique climb for the day, I would definitely stick with it and take advantage of that climb.

A lot of your speed on course is gained in stronger climbs. You know, it's really hard to catch people by following them. And it's really only through taking advantage of typically a really a lot better climb than what other people have found that put you in a position to actually do it. Catch people up.

I have maybe an answer to a slightly different variant of that question, but how to be a better gaggle flyer. Like the mentality as far as like flying in a tight group and flying on glides. The mentality I try to have is like, how can I fly in such a way that I pull the whole group forward? And that's not necessarily like, okay, yeah, you go ahead here. If you're all circling and there's a core there, I'll attack and take the inside of the core to mark that there's something there. And hopefully draw people into the part of the core. And then similarly, when you go on a glide, you know, if I'm high but a little bit behind, I'll dump some of my height so that I can be part of that front fan. Even though then I've lost maybe a little bit of kind of this height advantage, then I'm out there on the front line, I'm helping move the whole group forward.

And if I happen to be the one that finds a climb first, suddenly I've got something to work with. Whereas if I'm behind and someone else finds it first, the best I'm ever going to do is arrive at the same place as them. So, yeah. Let's do two more questions. Or I think we're going to have two more.

Can I ask a question? So, let's say there is a goggle in front of you and one behind. So what's your kind of process thinking about? Like should you just fly by yourself, try to reach out the one in front? Or should you wait for the guys behind you and fly with them so you can have more, I don't know, chances to survive and like fly faster?

Well, who's going to do more for you? You know, and that is like if it's the lead goggle in front of you, it's likely going to have a better collection of pilots in it that is going to solve the problems better. And if it's the goggle behind you, they may only just be interested in following you. And they don't have any answers for the problems that you might encounter. So,

goggle flying is the company you keep. And the better company, the better the results. So, I would say you just have to guess who is going to do more for you, the goggle in front or the goggle behind. And if it's the goggle in front, you just try to catch them. I think another way of saying that would be try to stick with the fastest goggle that you think you can stick with.

So, Phil, I read that you're doing a lot of mentoring and things like that.

And I wanted to ask if you have a specific specific way of

how to train the.

Well, rule number one is try not to get anybody hurt or killed.

Because, you know, like I was saying earlier, you can master flying the glider on quicker than you can master when to. And so, you know, you're trying to share as much as you can, but you're also trying to make that appropriate for the group that you have. So, you're not encouraging them even accidentally to get in over their head, which doesn't mean that, you know, that they're just going to get hurt physically. You know, you can get hurt mentally, which can be more devastating than even being hurt physically, resulting in a much longer recovery time.

And so, you know, you want to just make sure that the level in which the curve that they're on is appropriate for the individual.

And that's about the best way I can explain it. And so, the days you're going out are reasonable days. And if they're days on the margins, you know, you make sure you talk about what that means. And you talk about it before you launch. You talk about it in the air.

And you try to always be available after if someone wants to. And you try to talk about it further. You know, and I think that's the key with mentorship is, you know, be participating with the group regularly so everybody sort of knows how people fly, how they process information, also plenty of time in the vehicle for questions, and then be available after. But I would say beyond that, I don't have a specific, you know, I'm not a specialist. I'm not an instructor. I don't have a curriculum that I work with. It just depends on the individual.

Someone here wrote a pretty good article talking about a progression pen in the Youth Magazine. It could be worth looking at. Very specific.

Yeah, let's do one more. I just have one more question. Sorry. It's not quite as profound as maybe that last one. But on the topic of technique, can you guys talk a little bit about, like, flat efficient turning? I've heard, like, two schools of thought on, like, weight shift, break as little as possible to affect the change you want or the turn that you want, or, like, a little bit of out shift, side weight shift, trying to keep it flat. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah.

Bank angle should be determined by what it takes to stay in the best lift. I mean, to me, that's how simple it is. So if it's a, you know, a scrappy little strong bit and the only way I can get a full 360 in there is to stay in the glider up on a tip and do a, you know, pretty steep, inefficient turn, I'm staying in that lift. The bigger and broader the lift, the more I can get in there. The broader that lift is, the more I'm trying to stay flat and fly efficiently to get the most out of it. So to me, bank angle is about how can I position myself to maximize me staying in that climb. The really tricky ones are the tight, light, and, like,

sometimes the only way to work those is to fly kind of slowly. And you really want to… Yeah. …have, like, practice to spin initiations before flying that slow.

Or I'll put it a little different, and that is with every turn, you're trying to carve the perfect turn in the perfect spot. You know, and that is, as Farmer said, the appropriate bank angle for the size of the thermal and then trying to get the glider in the best part of the thermal board. Yeah. And that's the thing that's really important. You know, you're climbing for that 360. And you might be climbing for 5,000 feet, and it's never over. Every, you know, you're… It's like mountain biking. You're trying to get each corner. It's like, oh, I got that one. I didn't quite get that one. And so, thermaling is the same way. It's like sometimes I feel like, oh, I got that circle perfect. And then, you know, I don't know, next circle, not quite right.

But all the way up to the top, you're trying to see how many good circles you can get out of that circle. And then, you know, you're trying to get that perfect circle out of the act of climbing.

And do it every time you're climbing. You're trying to get that perfect circle. And that will keep you engaged when you're flying. And it will also make the climb better. And I think related to that is if you can… So, if you're in a gaggle and you're like reacting to everyone around you constantly, you're going to be like kind of darting around and bobbling around. And of course, you want to give people something. You want to give people space. But the ideal thing would be to do this totally smooth circle while still avoiding everyone.

You know, and often that's not so hard to do. But you just have

to… If

you're on top. You just have to…

Perfectly smooth circle on top of everyone. It's easy to avoid everyone if you're so high. You can top the whole gaggle by a hundred feet. That's what I'm going to do. Just be smooth and turn perfect circles. And… No, but just to… It sort of requires a little anticipating where everyone's going to be. And on the technique side of it, I would say that on any given day, I'll try a whole variety of techniques. And typically, most thermals on a certain day will respond best or the glider will climb best using like one side of those techniques. And that would include inside brake, outside rear, some weight shift inside, possibly weight shift outside, possibly… Using like a lot of inside brake, a little bit of outside brake to control the tip.

Sometimes almost just weight shift. Sometimes thermal on both ribs. And then when they're really strong cores, bank it up tight.

Y 'all, before we shut this down, thank you for coming. Thank you to our panel.

I'm going to leave you with this thought. When I called Bill today to see if he would do this, he said, we have an obligation to do this. And I've had a lot of people ask this week, how do you find mentors and how do we get more information? All you got to do is ask. Not everybody I've ever been involved with in this sport who knows a lot more than me has ever said no. It is. It's an obligation. And I think all these guys proved that they're willing to give it to you. So ask. Let's have some fun the rest of the week. And hopefully we'll do it. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris.

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