Hi there everybody, welcome to another episode of Cloud Based Mayhem. First, I must apologize, a week behind on this one, been late a bit lately, especially this fall, and I promise we will get caught up. But I just had two back-to-back events that I was organizing and meet directing, the Red Rocks Wide Open and then the Ex-Red Rocks, and in between some furious building going on here before winter comes. So yeah, it's all been fast and furious and kind of over the top, but I haven't forgotten about you all, and we're going to get back to the style of putting these out on time. So I apologize for the delay. But this one will be worth it. My guest today is Tim Roches, very long time test pilot for Niviuk.
In fact, his first testing for Niviuk on the Coyote when he was 12 years old. His dad's a pilot, has a school, still has a school down in Barcelonette. He now lives in Berbier. Tim and I became friends years ago through Niviuk, of course, but very accomplished World Cup pilot. And he's also been getting really into hike and fly the last few years. And doing the Bournes and the Vercoe. And he's been supporting Tanguy Renaud-Goud, who was another one of the Niviuk pilots and future ex-Alps pilot. He just found out he's in this year in the 2023 race. And so he and Tanguy came over for the Ex-Red Rocks when they joined Aaron Durogati and Patrick Von Cannell and came across the pond and had a really fun few days of racing.
And then those two years, he's been supporting the Red Rocks Wide Open. And those two went off and toured around the West and had some amazing flights in Zion and Moab. And had some really stunning footage and stuff. So I've been watching that since the race on his feed on Instagram and stuff. But I've been wanting to catch up with Tim and do a show with him and talk SIV and testing and designing. He also designs a lot of the Niviuk harnesses for a long time. And this was finally an opportunity to do so. So we tried this over the last few days and just kept having terrible connections. But tonight worked really well. So again, apologies for the delay. And enjoy this talk with Tim Roches, who's going to be supporting Tanguy in the ex-Alps. He supported him this year in the ex-Pyr as well.
So those guys are getting their groove on for the big show. Enjoy. Cheers.
Tim, awesome to finally get you on the man. We've been struggling with the internet and stuff. But that's for good reasons. I was traveling after the ex-Red Rocks. And you and Tanguy have been, looks like, having a lot of fun. And so I thought, you know, for those listening who don't know what you've been up to, what have you and Tanguy been up to the last couple weeks over here in the U.S. of A?
Yeah, it was so nice. We did the competition last week. And this week we traveled around all the Utah states. And it was so nice to fly around and to discover a new place. And so many beautiful landscapes around here.
And this was both of your first trips, right, to the U.S.?
Yeah, it was our first time in the U.S. And yeah, so it was really nice to travel around.
What were the biggest differences, I guess? You know, I remember picking you guys up. We
were up in
Salt Lake to go down to the ex-Red Rocks. It seemed like you were both kind of blown away by just the vastness. You know, Utah is bigger than the U.K. Yeah. It's kind of a country on its own. It's a pretty big place. But what was the thing that, you know, really, what will you take home with you that was maybe not expected?
What really surprises is because everything is bigger. You see the car. You see the truck. You see the road. Everything is much bigger than what we are used to. The valley and yeah. What I'm really impressed is also about what we can see from one place to another. We are in Monroe. It's like you have the feeling to be in Canada. And then you go around Moab and it's like the desert. And you go again more in the south, close to Zion. And it's totally different. So in... Okay, it's big distances but it's not so huge. And you have totally different landscapes. And it's just amazing.
Yeah, it's a pretty good playground, isn't it? Yeah. The colors this year, they're always like that. But, you know, I've been going down to that Monroe area for the fly-in for a bunch of years. And then we just started the X Red Rocks last year. And then this year before you guys came, we had the Wide Open, the Red Rocks Wide Open, which is our nationals. One of our nationals events. And also a pre PWC. And both of them had tough weather. It was quite an unusual September. Usually September is pretty reliable. But it was... I'm just blown away with the colors and the possibilities. They're just huge.
Yeah, it's your end of September or even beginning of October. And we did like two times in the week more than 5,000 meters altitude. And the first day that you drive us... From the airport, we didn't sleep for 24 hours. We arrived in Monroe. You drive us to take off at 6. And we went up to 5,000 meters in less than 10 minutes. It was just crazy. Just to chill at the end of the day. Super high and go down for the meeting before the competition. It was... Okay, we arrived. It's amazing.
Yeah, that was very cool. Yeah. Just to give you guys a pin on the map. Drive you up to launch and give you a pin and say, land here and we'll hear Aaron's... I think Aaron was presenting that night. Aaron Duragadi. And so everybody was looking up at the sky. And you guys just landed in the parking lot. That was a very cool introduction, I think.
Yeah, really, really.
So I guess you'll be back.
Yeah, for sure. Next year, we will be back for more travel and to try to fly more around this place. Because we discovered something. But we have also new ideas and we want to push a bit more on some place.
Cool. Tell me about the race from your perspective. You supported Tanguy in the X-Pyr and he's, I think, will be announced here shortly. I think we can say this now that he's in the X-Alps. So you'll be supporting him in the X-Alps. You guys have been kind of a team for a while now. But you've also competed in the Bournes and done other comps too. How would you compare what we do over here with what you've done in Europe?
First, what I like, I came to this kind of competition at the beginning because I knew that I would like to be a supporter of Tanguy for the X-Alps. But before to be a supporter, I want to know what is inside. So that's why last year I started to make some competition of I Can Fly. And I've seen different kind of competitions. Like Born to Fly, we did also the Vercos Fly that was quite different. It was like more course around some huts in the mountains. So without assistance. And also something in Dubai was also different. It was more like we had last week. One race each day.
And yeah, what I like on this kind of race of what we had last week in the X-Red Rock. It's like you can compete.
You can
come and like it's one day, one race without assistance.
It's easier. I mean, if you want to race, you can come and you can make the race. And you can, yeah, it's easier for organization on our side as pilots. And what I like last week, it was not in Dubai. It was short race. I mean, every day. And this week it was more like a real I Can Fly race on each day. And we tried to use the complete day every day. But even according to the forecast, because we not had every day good condition. But we managed to do something nice on the complete day.
So, yeah, that's why I liked also to have something on one day. But using the complete day. So, it was cool.
It was really cool. The last day, James Elliott won. He made it into goal. And Aaron Durogati wasn't far behind him. And there was only a few of them, Tanguy and a few others that were able to get back in the air at the end of the day. And have this amazing glass off kind of ridge run flight. And it was pretty wild to be sitting at goal. And the emotions of James Elliott winning that day. And Lanny was so excited. And then Aaron coming in and landing and saying it was one of the best flights of his life. Aaron has been at this for a while. That was really special as a meet organizer to just see the stoke on all of your faces. Because it was hard.
Physically, this year was quite a bit harder than the year before just because the weather was pretty tough.
No, no. It was. Even if the conditions were quite difficult, for sure, we walked a lot. I'm not used to walk that. And I'm not as trained as the others. But, yeah, for sure it was super hard. But it was always interesting because, yeah, you had to... It was never finished. On my side, I tried not to do everything on the last day. I was a bit tired. But I was sure that it was nearly impossible to go to the end. But in the end, they managed to do it. So it was a crazy day. And they did a huge flight at the end. And they managed to go to the goal. So it was so nice.
How much of your time, you know, being a test pilot for Niviuk and a designer for Niviuk. And I know that's your main work. But also a very accomplished World Cup pilot. You know, you're obviously a pilot. You're obviously flying a ton. And I want to talk more about being a test pilot and what that involves. Because I think people would be very curious about that. But how much of your time right now is just spent with Tanguy and getting ready for the X-Alps and getting ready for these events? Because I know that, you know, now it's with the announcement in mid-October. You know, by this point, I was always pretty serious in training for the X-Alps. And I know you guys are taking this pretty seriously. So what's kind of the next nine? I guess a little less than nine months look like for you guys now?
We have a few axes. First, we... Because, yes, we have the X-Alps preparation for him. But we also are on the World Cup events. So the next one will be the Superfinal. That will be in Mexico in December. And this kind of competition, even if it's not the same... I mean, same... Competition, it's help as training. Because we will fly a lot. We will try to be as efficient as possible in flight. And this is something that can be, I mean, for me, very helpful to train in flight.
So that is for him. It will be very important. But also for me, because I also see how he's flying. We can train more or less together when we are flying. And, yes, this is the first step. And then after, we will have, for sure, a few months of checking the routes. Three months of... I don't know when they will announce it, but I think it's around March. But when we will have the routes, we will need to travel around the Alps and to check the routes. In order to see where we will need to pass, where are the different options. And... To have a look on that. And also, because we will not be able to do everything before.
But for sure, we will need to take a lot of time to check the routes on Google Earth. On the application like CU and XA Contest. Just to have a look where we can go from where we can travel in flight or where it's difficult or everything. And after that, for sure, it will be the training. Physical training part for him. That it will take a long time. What do you think
is the most... What do you think is the thing that makes Tanguy most nervous? What do you think he's most concerned about at this
stage?
I think the airspace.
The airspace is something that it's quite... Can be tricky. That... You need to be very careful with that. I think physically, he will be ready. He's already well prepared. He's already perhaps not ready on everything. But I'm sure that he will be ready for the start. After the experience, we have seen a few things that we need to improve. That he needs to train more. For example, in the flight. And when we need to go down the walking and it's not flyable. So... It's something that he knows now that he needs to train more than before. But... And he has a trainer,
correct? Yeah. He's working with a professional. Yeah.
He's working with a professional now. So it will be better for him. Because before he was doing his training plan by itself. So now he will have some more help for doing that. But as I said, the airspace will be tricky. You
know what? I'll... You know, that was always something that... That made me really nervous. Because as you've seen the last couple of weeks flying over here. We don't deal with airspace. We don't have airspace that we have issues with. I mean, there are places, you know, out in Southern California. Where they really have to deal with airspace. But where I live in Idaho, we don't have any. We got to worry about 18,000. And that's it. So that's pretty easy. So I was always really worried about airspace and the ex-Alps. Also because it's gotten a lot harder. Yeah. You know, in the early years, they didn't really care about the national parks. And, you know, a lot of the things that they really do now. And you can get penalized harshly for it. But do either of you use the FlySky High app on your phone?
What we use now, we have the NaviTor applications. You see your navigator. That is really nice to see the airspaces. Okay. So it's something that we start to use this year. And it's really a good tool. It's good? Yeah.
And I would just say whatever device you're going to use, that that's super critical, especially just leaving the Geisberg. You know, the Geisberg up going south down towards Waugrine. There's a whole bench of airspace there. But the FlySky High has this side view that I've talked about before on the show. But it's an extra little map view that you can put in your map screen that has the side view. And it shows you flying along. And then it shows the airspace in front of you. So it shows if it's down below you or above you. And it makes it so visual because the hard thing with me, at least with airspace, is if it just has an alarm or if it's saying, you know, 500 or 200 meters until the ceiling and all those kind of things, it's hard for me to visualize it.
And I can get really confused. But if you have that side view, and I don't know if XCTrack has it. I'm not sure. I
think XCTrack has it, yes. But CU, we don't have this option. It's very nice to see in 2D. But for sure, your application, it's much better for that. And it's something that can help a lot.
It just makes it. I've never, you know, there's been many times I've had to get really close to airspace, but I can see it. You know, and it really makes it much easier. I remember in the 2019 race, Toby and I both left Lermous pretty much empty. We
were in the garage together
and on our way to Davos. And he hit airspace and got a big penalty. And I just flew right underneath it. You know, I could just see it. Every time I got kind of close, I either just big ears or full bar and a couple, you know, a couple spirals real quick. But, you know, he could have sworn that it was in a scenario we really know. It's an obvious one. You know, it's a CTR. You can't hit it. And so, yeah, that makes it really nice. I would encourage something like that. Especially because if you're tired, you know, the other thing that we would do is each morning Revis would draw the airspaces or just have them, you know, from the file and put them in my pocket. The ones I had to worry about that day. So that, you know, I could literally be in flight.
And if I was nervous about something, I could just pull out a real piece of paper and see it on there. And that helps too. Just because, again, when you're tired, you're sometimes not thinking very clearly about
heights and altitudes and stuff
like that.
Yeah. It's something that we have seen also in the XPEAR because one day we have, I was not with, I mean, not close to Tanguy and I was checking the route and I was checking the live track. And I had to call Tanguy very, very fast because I was, hey, Tanguy, you will enter in the airspace. And he didn't. So we need to check very well the route and where the potential airspace that you can cross.
Yeah. Yeah. I
mean, in the
last race, you know, Aaron Durogati hit that one basically in his home. And it really can get you. It's nice to have, you know, just each day part of our, here's a couple other tips. When we do our briefing for the day, we never do it first thing in the morning because everybody's not awake. You know, Tanguy is going to get up and hit the road. You've already planned that out from the night before, you know. So you've planned it out from the night before. And so, you know, we're going to have a briefing for what the morning walk and the morning glide is. And so it's basically just handing them his stuff and the map, go. And then the team can have coffee. And then when you have your breakfast or when you meet with them again and everybody's awake, you know, at 8 or 8.30 or something, then you can have the briefing, you know, the weather briefing.
And then that's where usually Revis would give me the airspace too because I'd be more fresh, you know, if you're talking about it at the wrong time. So,
you know,
either the night before when you're exhausted or first thing in the morning when you haven't woken up, then nothing gets in.
Sure, sure.
So you have been with NIVIUK for how long?
Oof, long time.
I'm with NIVIUK, I mean, I fly with them since nearly all time.
My father is quite a good friend from Dominique, the boss of NIVIUK. Oh, wow. I did, as SIV, the certification of the coyote, the smallest size of the first coyote when I was 12. One day, in fact, Dominique asked my father, I need your son because we are missing one very light pilot for making the certification of this wing. And I know that your son is flying. So can you come to Switzerland with us? Yes,
of course. We
will make something like SIV and Tim will make some maneuver to test the wing and like that we can certify this small size. And it starts a bit like that at the beginning.
Really? So you've been a test pilot since 12?
Yeah. So this was the first time that I was close to them. And then I continue, I mean, for the competition. I start competition at 16. And I was already with the team at this time. And after that, after a few years, very, very close to them, I was testing a bit the competition wing, the prototype. I was around Olivier sometimes. And I did a few internships after my two, I don't know the word in English, but my two classes of university. And after that, I start to work full time with them since now it will be five years in January.
So quite a long time.
How old are you now?
27. Jeez,
you're young. Holy cow.
And you've been racing World Cups for since 10 years, right? So 17.
Yes, 10 years. First World Cup. Yeah. And
then I was
in Val-Lorraine in 2013, I think. Yeah, around a bit less than 10 years.
And are you still a test pilot for NIVIUK? Yeah. It sounds like you're more in harness design. Okay, so you're doing both. Yeah, I do. Harness design is the main thing?
Yeah, I'm doing nearly everything in NIVIUK.
I'm mainly working on the harness at this moment for designing. But yeah, I'm testing and also working on the trimming of the wing with Olivier quite a lot. So yeah, it's full time. It depends on the day, but in general, when it's normal day, we are at the office in the morning working on the design. On my side, I'm on the harnesses. Olivier is on the wings. And in the afternoon, we are testing and trimming the wing when it's in good condition to fly. It's like normal day.
And there's some pretty interesting stuff coming out from the harness side. Tell me about that. I mean, I've seen a few little clips come out, but it sounds like some cool harnesses coming out.
Yeah, we just finished the two new classical harnesses, pod harnesses. We have one which is called the Hawk. It's a simple pod harness without tail. And we made the same with the tail. And yeah. It's based on the same harnesses. And we just exchanged the back. And yeah, this is two really nice harnesses that we are working on since a few years. So now we can say that they are ready. They are in production. And we try to make something very comfortable with a moderate weight. It's not a very light harness, but it's around 4 kilos for the medium size. Using quite, no, I will not say quite.
But because it's durable harness, durable material, sorry. And it's the frame we made something quite rigid in order to have something stable. And to have the feeling that even with a light harness, I mean with a 4 kilo harnesses,
where you can have the feeling of a competition harness. I mean, you are very close to the harness. Everything is 3D modeling. The back, the seat, and everything is work a lot with 3D shaping everywhere. And the frame is very comfortable and stable for this kind of harness. So yeah, I think we have nice products with that.
And this is the comp harness?
No, it's not the competition harness. It's the hook and the arrow will be for cross country pilots. And we are working on a very more aerodynamic harness.
We call it the Drifter 2. And this one, we will have some pre-serial version at the Superfinal for the team pilot. And you will have one.
And yeah, it's a much more aerodynamic harness. Completely closed. It's not the same concept as the submarine. It's not inflated, but we are full closed. And we work a lot with the 3D simulation to optimize the shape, to optimize the thickness of the harness, the shape of the tail. And we have something that is very performant and also very comfortable. That's why we are also super happy about this point. So yeah, we have many, many projects working on this harness part. We are working also on the X-Harp harness that you probably have seen last week that I was playing with.
It's also a nice one. It will be called the Arrow Plume.
It's based on the harness that we just presented, the Coupé Car, the one with the tail, the Arrow. But in light version, we are around 1.5 kilos for the moment.
And it's really, really comfortable. A few things to fix, but I'm really happy about the results that we have already. So I will work on this project on the next week when I will be back in France, in Switzerland, sorry. How
long does it take to go from concept of a harness to delivery? It just seems like an incredibly complicated piece of kit.
Yeah, it depends on which project you are and depending of many things, in fact.
For example, this competition harness, we are working on it since a few years. But...
We also have some projects that we had to finish before. So... Yeah, it's always tricky to manage to work on many projects at the same time. But... Now we have a very powerful tool at the factory. Before it was quite... I will not say complicated, but it was difficult to be fast. And now with the new factory in Vietnam, we have just an incredible team there. That works very fast. They are super efficient and they have a huge knowledge on this part. So... We are much faster than before. We also have one team in Spain that can work also on research.
I mean, for the form, for the competition harness. That helps us a lot for the research and we can win a lot of time. But... Yeah. Developing one harness is a long task. When it's a string harness like the Romer piece that we have, it's few pieces of fabric. So it will take less time to make the pattern. But when it's a complex harness like the Drifter or the Arrow, you have thousands and thousands of pieces that you need to create, to match, to sync. And... It takes a lot of time to adjust to... When sometimes you have some wrinkles, you need to change a bit the shape of the curve or...
I don't know... Many things. So it takes a lot of time and it's much more manual job than you can do with a wing. With a wing, for sure it takes time. But the software is doing the 3D of the wing. And it exports the 2D panels and the 2D palanets. We send them to the factory. They do the nesting. They cut the wing and they sew. On the harness, you need to create the pattern from yourself. It's not the software that creates the pattern. So... It takes a lot of time and you can have many things to adjust and also the movement of the fabric and the tension from one webbing to another fabric or something.
It will have also some difference when you have a different setting. From one pilot to another with different morphology or... You need to make a compromise between everything and you need to match everything. So it's quite complex. But it makes it super interesting.
And what about a wing? So from say the EVOX to the X1, how many prototypes is between those two wings typically? Or between... You know, the Arctic 5 and the Arctic 6 or... You pick it. Is it always just little changes? Because, you know, the X1 was a big change.
It depends. For example, on the EVOX, we were working for many years. It was a very, very difficult task to find a good compromise to adjust everything. Because we had to learn a lot.
And it was also the first moment that we were working really with the simulation software. So we had to try to see how it was working between the software, the simulation and the reality. So for the EVOX, we did... I don't remember how many prototypes. It was a very, very long task because we learned a lot, in fact. And with the X1, it was quite different because we had this knowledge that we learned during the EVOX development. But we pushed everything higher. I mean, we pushed the aspect ratio. We pushed the number of cells.
We pushed also different things. We pushed different things in the airfoil. And it was faster. But now, we made a huge step between the EVOX and the X1. And now, with the new version of the competition wing, it's difficult to find the better compromise on everything. We have new things that are improved. I practiced in speed on some prototypes. We are faster. Or we are gliding better. But we need to find the good compromise to be better in everywhere. And this is something that is quite difficult for the moment because we need to find the new things that will help us to find the best compromise to be better than the X1.
We have a few things interesting, but it's not ready for the moment. So, yeah, it depends on the prototype. It depends on the wing we are working on. Sometimes it's fast. Sometimes it's long. Sometimes we are starting from a new page.
Sometimes we are taking the previous version that we tried to improve according to what we have seen or what the customer said. Okay, there is too much rolly. Or the wing is really good in turning. But we feel that we can do better on the wing. We need to have more performance. So it depends. We are never fixed on something. It's depending on the wing, the project. Yeah, it's always interesting. What
does being a test pilot look like for you? You say often you guys are working in the office in the morning, working on design or working on the software, that kind of thing. And then in the afternoons, if it's flyable, you go fly. I see, for example, you and Ted. I saw this for the first time down in Argentina when you came into goal one day. You were both kind of doing this crack back. It wasn't really a tail slide. It was just kind of reverse horseshoe just all the way down to the ground. And I came over. Whoa, that was wicked. I've never seen people just do that down to the ground. It was kind of this little helicopter move. And I said, should I do that on my Evox? And you said, no, no, no, don't do it on that one. It was the prototype X1s. But you did it.
Are you just kind of doing acro all day? No. I don't know. What does a test pilot look like?
In test pilot, there is, I mean, a few things. You have first, when you receive the prototype, you need to fly it. You need to just to feel the wing, to see how it's working, how it's sensitive, or just fly the wing to see how it is. Then after, you need to trim to check the speed or if it's, for example, the center is too fast or the tips are too slow. You need to trim the general, yes, the general trimming of the wing. After, you have the brakes that are also a huge part of the job. If you want something that turns more flat or something that turns more with a bigger or smaller radius, you need to trim the wing.
So something with light pressure on the handle or something a bit more. And so this is, yes, the second part that you need to trim the wing and to do what you want with the wing. What is the objective of the wing and what you are doing with that will define the character of the wing and also the performance for sure. And after, you have the certification. Yes. The manoeuvres that you need to test to see how it's working, how the wing is, what is the compartment of the wing when something goes wrong. For example, when you are doing some front collapse or some asymmetric or some stalls or all these kind of things, you need to test it.
Even if it's not the final prototype, you need to test it.
It's something that is really important. When you are making the developments, okay, you are trimming the brakes, for example.
But what you are doing with the brake can have an influence on the results of the test of the spiral, for example. When you are doing the test of the spiral, for example, if you want an ENA wing, when you are doing the test, the wing must exit in less than one turn. If you want to have an ENC or an ENB, it must exit in less than three turns. I think, yes, it's in three turns. And if you are doing something with the brake, the brake will have an influence in this compartment. So even as I said, it's not the final prototype and this prototype will not go to the certification because you will have some more improvement later with the second prototype.
You need to test that and you need to have a look on the compartment, on all the manoeuvres. Because if something is not working on this prototype, if you do something the same on the next prototype, it will not be right. So you will not be able to pass the certification at the end. So, yeah, you need to fly the wing, you need to trim the wing and you need to test the wing in different manoeuvres and different conditions.
When I think about test pilots, I think about the test pilots. There are always guys like you. They are really, really good pilots that have a ton of hours and they are testing all the time. How do you change your brain or even do you need to when you go from an X1 to a Coyote? It seems to me like an ENB pilot should fly a Coyote to know what it's like. How do you know what it's like when it's such a basic wing for you? Do you still have that kind of… I guess what I'm asking is what makes a good test pilot? Do they really have to be the kind of the best pilots in the world?
No, I don't think that it needs to be the best pilot in the world. For me, it needs to be… You need to be able to switch, as you said, from one X1 to a Coyote. And you need to be able to be in the skin of the pilots that the wing will be designed for. So it's something that is interesting that you need to feel what is the objective and what the wing must give you as feedback. And you need to feel the different things in the brake and you need to understand all these kind of things. You don't need to be the best world top pilot.
For me, it's not the objective. But you need to be able to switch from everything. You need to feel confidence with all the wings you are flying. And you need to understand the wing. You need to understand how it's working also. Because one part is testing, is flying. But you need to see how you can change the different things. Or what you can do for correcting this problem or this kind of thing. What I like… I'm working a little bit on the wing. Not often, but I'm working a little bit on it. And for me it's very important to make the parallel between what you see in flight,
what you see on the software and what are the possibilities you have to change. What can you do? Even if it's not talking about the character or the compartment of the wing. Sometimes when you have a wrinkle or something on the wing, that you want to correct, you need to think about how is the internal structure of the wing. Because you see the external part, but there is also something very important inside. I mean the tension bands, the diagonals and the internal construction have also an influence on the wing.
So it's important to be able to make the parallel on all these kind of aspects.
How do you not just get on a coyote and launch and just rag it to death and just collapse and think it'd be so fun to just beat it to death?
Yeah, it's quite fun when you are doing testing. When I'm going to Villeneuve for testing over the lake, it's always fun when you're… I mean, when you are with simple wing, you are going like that. Okay, that's fun. And we go, we take the A, pull and make the collapse. When it's more complex, when you are with complex wing like X1, you are a bit more stressed, but it's still fun. I like it.
Tell me about that. When you're testing the X1, just knowing they're harder to recover,
are you more nervous about it or you've done it so much that it's still just not a big thing? No,
no. You
don't know how it's going to behave.
Even if you… You are used to it or when you are working on it since a long time.
I'm not working on it since very long time, but I'm doing it.
You are still nervous when it's this kind of wing because you know that, okay, perhaps the wing have very good comportment, but if you do something wrong, it will go bad. So when I'm doing in general, I'm starting with trim speed collapse, with front side collapse and everything. And then I'm going to push a bit more, a bit more, a bit more until, okay, now I'm at the limit, I'm full speed, and now I need to be very concentrated to follow the mark, to do the correct collapse, following what we need. And I don't… I have to stay to the mark and don't want to go too much, because if I do, for example, not a 75 % asymmetric collapse, but 80 or 85 or 90%, I know that, yeah, the results will be huge,
huge, huge turn or something. So, yeah, you need to be precise, you need to be concentrated and to think, yeah, to be careful when you do it. And it's important.
What I'm hearing from other people like you who are test pilots or just, you know, really good acro pilots who are also good XC pilots or also just pilots that have been around for a long time is that what they're seeing potentially is quite a big risk, is the, you know, the Peak 5s, the Xeno 2s, the E &D 2-liners that are, you know, amazing wings and very fast and… but also quite stable. You know, they're big 2-liners these days. We just, we don't see the blowouts that we did back in the open class and, you know, 10 years ago and 15 years ago.
But people that are flying them almost get too comfortable with that. You know, they're aware, they know that if something goes bad, they have to react appropriately. But many don't have the skills to. But it's just, you know, because they don't… because they're so collapse resistant that when it happens, it's kind of a big surprise and often we're a little bit late in the inputs.
Yeah, it's something that it's… For sure, when you have a 2-liner wing, you feel it's more compact, more stable because the repartition of the line and the construction of the wing, it's more compact. You have more run-forth inside. And you feel more… At the beginning, you feel that the wing is more stable. But you will still need to be good under it to be aware about what can happen. And, yeah, for me, what is really important when you are flying this kind of wing is to fly them quite often and also to make SIV. When you can make few days of a flight, you can fly them quite often. You can go to the lake and doing stalls and to make…
Yeah, to see what you can do with your wing, what can be the reaction. And like that, you are aware and you know what you can do and what are your capability. I don't know if it's… I can't say it in English. What is your knowledge and, yeah, it's important to know what you can do and to train on this kind of wing.
If you were a test pilot, if you were just a pilot and you were doing a few World Cups a year and trying to do well, how much SIV would you do?
For me, what I like to do is to do one SIV before the season. In general, with the French team, we are doing one in April or end of March. Like that, we are ready when the conditions are starting and the competition are starting also.
So, yeah, for me, if you do one good SIV at the beginning of the season, it's the best. And
what would you do… What are you doing on your X1 in SIV?
Mainly, I do stalls. What I try to do in general, I'm starting with flat stall. I mean, from straight flights, just one stall trying to recover quite fast. Like that. And after, I try to make one stall, recover, do a stall again to try to have more dynamic. And I try to do them as fast as possible and as clean as possible. Like that, you know that, okay, you are… It makes like kind of simulation of, okay, you are in this stressful moment because you are just exiting from a stall and you need to exit from the stall very fast.
It's like when you are in normal condition, you had a collapse or you have a cravat or something and you are not so high and you need to exit very fast. So, this is something that I like to do. As I said, I start from stall, from flat stall and then I make few stall one after the other. And also, I'm doing also spin. Spin is also interesting to recover because you are stalling on one side, you are turning, you need to block. If you can block, you can exit from the back or from the front. But it's something interesting to understand but asymmetrically.
And I'm not doing collapses with this kind of thing because it's difficult. You need to put the folding line. It's not easy to do and yeah. If you don't know how to do the collapses with this kind of wing,
it's not very useful and you can be surprised and it's not the objective.
You're talking about like asymmetric frontals and stuff? Yeah,
asymmetric or frontal collapse. Because if you pull the A on this kind of wings, you will never find the way to collapse. There is too much pressure and you will not be able to… to make any collapse. You need to make the same as we do for testing. We add one line in front, more in front of the A that can help you to make the collapse. Yeah, yeah. You
said your dad was… Is he still a pilot? Did you learn from your dad?
Yeah. My father is pilot and he also have a paragliding school in south of France. And he's still working.
Oh, he's
still working. Yeah. Sorry? Wicked.
That's one of my favorite towns. Yeah. It's a beautiful little place. Yeah,
yeah. But you're
in Verbier now full time.
Yeah, yeah. I was born in south of France. I grew up in Barcelonette and my father have the school close to La Ragne. It's quite a well-known place in south of France.
Yeah, that's a great place.
And now, yes. I'm living in Switzerland in Verbier where we have the R &D office.
Is Tanguy a test pilot too?
Tanguy is working a little bit with us sometimes. He's not full time with us but I'm playing with him when we are working on the X1. Now, we also have one young pilot that start to work with us in Niveau. It's Louis Goutany. And he's helping us a lot. He's also a lot for testing the wing. Because when you are testing the competition wing, it's, yeah, as I said, you have the feeling part, you have the trimming part and the test. But some things that take a lot of time and it's really important to do the comparison,
to fly side by side to see if the wing is working well in this condition or not in another one. Or if the wing is faster than the previous version. And it's something that it takes a lot of time. For example, this winter we went to Columbia with Tanguy. We spent one full week just doing comparison with prototype of Icepeak. You compare at trim speed, you compare at middle speed, you compare at full speed, in moving air, in calm air and also in termaling to see if one wing is climbing better than another one. You are also comparing the stability at full speed and yeah, this is something that takes a lot of time and this is very, very important to do it properly and to take care about every single one of that.
And yes, Tanguy is helping us a lot since few years for this kind of task, as well as Louis and Olivier. But yeah, we still have some energy. Um, the last year and the last two years, I spent a lot of time with Lewis and, uh, and Tongi working on the ice peak, uh, for testing and trimming, uh, this thing.
Cool. And, uh, you know, this year you guys are going to be pretty wrapped up with the X-Alps and stuff, but I'd love to hear about your own personal goals. How do you, you've been, you've been flying since you were awful young. How do you kind of approach your own, uh, improvement and world? Are the world cups big to you or what's, what's kind of the stuff that gets you excited about flying?
Yes. For me, uh, I'm still very excited about flying the world cup and doing good results. Uh, last year was a good year for me. Uh, this year, the first year, first part of the year was really good. I made my first, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my best result in world cup in, in Columbia. So, um, I'm still really motivated for that. And it's still one of my biggest goal. It's to, to perform better in, uh, in, in world cup. But, uh, yeah, I'm also looking for, for the six, the six Alps, uh, to be on another side. It's totally different for me, but trying to, to make my best, uh, and to see what I can do and help, uh, that's for the team for Tanguy.
And, uh, yeah, it's another goal. And also as we did, uh, this week, I love taking picture and video and some crazy shoots, uh, in different places. So yeah, competition, X-Alp and images. It's something that I like a lot. And. It's what, what I like when I'm playing. So. Yeah. Now you take amazing
images. You're, you're one of my favorites to follow on Instagram. Pictures are gorgeous. Um, Tim, thanks, man. Thanks for coming all the way over the pond and, uh, in racing with us and spending some time with us. I hope you enjoyed the, some American, uh, hospitality and, uh, we got to give a shout out to bill Belcourt. I know you've been running around in the. In the blue ice van last week or so, which has been very cool. I know I've seen all the pictures of that. It looks like you guys, I think you wrote me that you're living your best life. Yeah. As I said, yeah, no, for sure. It's a,
I just, if I can add something, it's just, uh, yeah. After this two weeks, I'm just, uh, impressed about the hospitality of all you guys in us because it was just incredible. I can't imagine. Oh yeah. For me, it was just the best welcome ever. Uh, uh, yeah. On, on the earth. You welcome us like Kings and it was just so nice. Well, we got it. We got to take
care of you guys. It's our, uh, it's, it's our, it's our pleasure. Uh, you know, us doesn't get a lot of things, right? We're pretty good at that. So we, we would look forward to doing it again and, uh, glad you guys had fun. And give my best to Tanguy. I wish you guys the best luck with, uh, with preparation and the ex-Alps and reach out if I can help with anything, but thanks man. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks for coming over and, uh, sharing the stoke.
Yes. Thanks a lot. See you. If you
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