Hi there, everybody. Welcome to episode 196 of the CloudBase Man. Can you believe it? We're almost 10 years strong here. Pretty amazing. Some fun things are happening in the paragliding world. The Chablis I Can Fly just went down. Tangay Renaud-Goud gave Chrigel a heck of a run for his money, but Chrigel got him in the end, as he does. And the worlds are going on, and the Red Bull X-Alps is about to start. I'm heading over there in a week to run around with those guys and do some reporting for the fans. It should be pretty fun. I'm really looking forward to that. Getting away from this house build. Yeah, 196. We're going to be, hopefully, doing another book that'll be based on the second 100 shows.
And that's coming right up. I'm going to have to get to work on another book. My guest today is Andrei Kuznetsov. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. If I'm not, Andrei, I apologize. Andrei is the owner of AirQuest Parallel Gliding out in New England. He's obviously not from New England, that name, but he's been over here for a while. And he was a longtime national member of the skydiving team. He has a whole bunch of world records. And he, including the Genius Riders. He has a record, which is part of the 100-way canopy formation. And he was a longtime reserve test pilot. So AirQuest does a lot of repacks.
And he reached out to me after the show about the reserve. Well, reserve toss went right, but after the glider had a line failure, maybe, or maybe not. We don't know, but the show we did a few weeks back. He had some thoughts on that and a lot of thoughts on repacks and reserves and how to throw them and the transition from skydiving to paragliding. He never even flew a sea glider. He flew a 200K flight on a B in Texas just a couple of years into his flying in 2012 and just skipped the whole sea altogether and went straight to a D because it was too slow compared to skydiving.
So rather different. And I think that's one of the things that's really interesting about him is that he has a lot of progression and a lot of really interesting things came out of his history in skydiving and transition into flying. So he found a lot of it pretty straightforward and I don't know a ton about skydiving. So I found all that really fascinating and I think you will too. So enjoy this talk with Andre about reserves and records and doing some cool flights back east to the beach and taking care of your kit. Cheers.
Andre, welcome to the CloudBaseVAM. Thanks for reaching out and telling me about your history a bit. We're going to be talking a lot about skydiving and your canopy experience and the crossover into paragliding and your company. And specifically, we're going to talk sounds like a lot about reserves and the importance of packing correctly as you're seeing a lot of really bad packing. So welcome to the show and thanks for sharing your time with us.
Hi Gavin. Thank you for the invitation. I'm happy to share my experience with skydiving and with paragliding as well. I will say I'm an expert in reserve parachutes, which is our part of very important gear.
Yeah, you're a reserve. You were a reserve test pilot in skydiving. What does that mean? I don't even know what does that look
like. It was a very interesting part of my career. I was a national team, skydiving national team for many years. And we had a coordination with a military team and they asked us to test the Ragawa type reserve for skydiving because they use it for the military stuff. And this day it was Ragawa reserve parachute for skydiving. It's not existing. It's not existing anymore, but it was very interesting. It was made in 1981. It's called PZ81 and it's Ragawa type. You can control your landing if you need to.
And we test this stuff. It was a very interesting experience.
And then were you doing a lot of testing on prototypes and that kind of thing as the years went by?
It was not the prototype. And this year this reserve already exists for nine years. And we are looking to modify this stuff, make it bigger because you can load heavy stuff. And we try to give our expertise if it's possible or not because bulky stuff is not safe. And if you throw a reserve and a free fall, it can kill you if it's too big or the reserve has not correct opening precision.
Yeah, sure. Way more critical when you're at terminal.
Yeah, for sure.
I saw one reserve. How many jumps?
Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, with one reserve. How many jumps do you have? I have
over 4,000 jumps.
Was that a four?
4,000, yeah.
4,000. Wow. And how much would that cost to do 4,000 jumps?
Actually, in my country, it was for free. Wow, really? A long time. Because you're on the national team. Yes. And before when I started, it was... It's very similar system like in US. You have for the teenager. I started when I was 15 years old. It was free for us. For the new teenager, you go to the club and they give you everything for free, included food. You can spend weeks in the camp and just practice. The idea behind very smart run by government because all generation, young generation after 18, they have to go to the Army or Air Force and make a service, right? And if government spend money before that, you're already ready for the Army, for the Air Force.
This was the idea behind.
Sure, sure, sure. And how did you start getting into... I would assume with the national team, you're doing the... When you're flying with 100 other people and you're doing formations and acrobatics and that kind of thing, is that just the natural progression, make it more exciting? Yeah.
Yeah, it's... I was crazy about when I... I went to drop zone every, almost every my day, you know. It doesn't matter if it's rainy or it's cloudy. I went to the drop zone and just to see opportunity to make a jump every day. And I was one of the skydivers who made the more jump in the air. And after that, I saw future for the skydiving and I was decided to jump to the canopy formation discipline because it's very interesting, very exciting. And I was dreaming about, actually. And after that, I was in the local team. Then we went a couple of camps.
The guys from the big team saw me. They invite me to jump to another camp. And finally, I am in national team.
And what national team was it? Forgive me for my lack of, you know, I can't really tell the difference between the various Baltic languages. So, are you Russian? Yes, I am. And were you in Moscow or where were you training?
The team was around Moscow, yeah. We were training around Moscow. But the country is huge. And coach collect all good guys from the whole country. Country is huge. And we have selection. Who can pass the selection, jump to the next level. And after that, they see the best of the best. Pilot will go to the final team before every championship. How it was run. And after that, we made the team and we start training for that.
And it sounds like you were pretty crazy about it. So, how many years were you super involved in skydiving? I mean, was this your job?
Yes, it was my full-time job.
Wow. That'd be a fun full-time job.
I know. But when you're young, you don't have family, you don't have responsibility, it's good. Of course, yeah. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. Sure. So, I don't, you know, you do hear about accidents in skydiving. I understand that, you know, the risk goes up quite a bit when you start flying big formations just because of the speed, you know, and mid-airs can be something. But how would you, now that you're flying a lot and you're paragliding, how would you compare the risk of the two in terms of potential and accidents and, you know, is it similar or is it way different?
It's different because skydiving, the higher altitude you have, the more time for cutaway you have. You can fix the problem, you know. The only way to fix problem in skydiving, especially in canopy formation discipline, it's cutaway. You just push the button and your main glider fly away and you use your reserve when you jump out on the side of the problem. Usually, if you can take a look on the pictures, you will see how the canopy formation wrap is. It's like kind of several gliders messed up very fast and every skydiver in my team has at least two hook knives. At least. Because you never know which hand will be blocked, you know, by one.
You have to cut this out. Or I carry three knives because one knife helps me to cut the fabric if I need it. If, like, some canopy on your teammate canopy wrap around your body, you don't have space to throw your reserve. You have to cut the fabric and throw your reserve through the hole. It's the only way to survive. Wow.
That sounds pretty intense.
Yeah. I mean, we had this in the past. This is why, like, on our last record when we made in Florida, when we made 100 wave formation, every skydiver had at least two hook knives. At least. Because they are from, we were from the 14 countries. It's, we collect experience from all world.
I imagine that's, you know, and the use of a hook knife is certainly recommended in our sport, but it's not ubiquitous. Is it? There's a lot of pilots that don't have one. Exactly.
It's very bad because special for Acro pilots, you must.
Yeah. You must. I think the Acro pilots are more switched on to that because they're, you know, they throw the reserve more and, and, and their, and their potential, especially if they're, if they're working on the infinite, the potential for getting gift-wrapped is, it goes way up. There's been a couple of scary videos that have come out this year. Kevin Phillips over, over in Ogana and I just saw, just had on the show. We haven't released it yet, but Phillip Zellner had a very similar incident where he got gift-wrapped working on the infinity. He was actually coming out of it and screwed it up and got gift-wrapped and whoa, you start going down real fast.
Exactly. Free fall. This is why the, it's different between skydiving and paragliding. If you have altitude, you have time to fix it. Yep. If you don't have altitude, you screw. Yeah. And paragliding, it's not free fall. You have more time for
it. You have
more time
to fix
this, your glider. This is why my instructor told me when I start 2009 first lesson in paragliding, he told me, if you survive first several months, you're okay. Because he, he know after skydive, because skydiving had the different reaction on the glider. You have to react faster than paragliding. Paragliding, you need a little bit slower reaction. You don't have to be so crazy fast. And in skydiving, you must. And this is why if you not kill your glider in the first several months, you're okay. You will fly. Really? Yeah. It's exactly like that. Because it's, you need like much faster reaction to turn your glider if you need to.
Do you feel like having the background in skydiving really helped you progress faster than normal? For sure. For sure. When you came over to paragliding just because of your canopy experience and your maybe, what other experience would be very valuable there? Just.
It's approach for the landing approach. You can see the different, you can see the landing options. It, you can like see the dangers on the landing. It's like my, I automatically see the lines, automatically see the way I can land, way I can not land. It's, it's like, it helped me a lot with my final approach and you can like, you have more observe information around.
Like Bianca always happy to see when I say, oh, birds here, birds here. Let's go. Let's go this way. You know, because your eye like 360 around, you have to see all small detail. I mean the same, like for paragliding, the same, very similar for skydiving as well.
Interesting. So it's a very observational, heavy sport. Correct. Yeah. That's interesting because it doesn't, it wouldn't strike me as that. And is that because of flying and formations? You're just really keeping track of everybody else?
Yes, exactly. Specific canopy formation. Yeah.
Now, is this true too? I've heard of, you know, when, when, when you're in free fall, so you haven't released your canopy and you're doing all the formations that, that the mid-airs can often be fatal in the air because the speeds, is that, is that something that's very rare or does that happen every once in a
while? Not really. Usually. For the canopy formation discipline, you have to, you have only two, three second delay. You don't have real free fall. You throw your main glider like after, depends where you are in the position and your team. Like for example, I was number one who throw a parachute because every other three pilots next to me, they saw when I throw, they open it immediately. And we, after like two, three second free fall, we already have formation. It's like four diamond. We already have it. When you open it, we just. I mean,
you, you, you get out of the plane and you're together that fast? No.
Yeah. We just jump out three or four people at the same time from the plane. And we, one, like for example, I was number one who opened the parachute, the first one. And another guy saw me, he throw his glider, open up and like three or other, and we have like, like steps, one, two, three, four, and we connect to each other. And this is. Because, because, uh, like 10 years ago, 15 years ago, it was the second time you started when first, uh, pilot jump out of the plane. This is our team. And we had like a team, uh, eight way team formation. It's like, and, and the last guys who touched the, uh, uh, formation second time, it stopped. This is how we made several world records, like 26, 26, 24 seconds for the four, all guys build the formation.
This. Every, uh, like couple of every second it's come, you have to be like very precisely done what you're doing. You know, you know, you have to know all position, your body position next to your pilot, because sometimes you can fly to his direction to help to minimize this time.
And are those, those skydiving training centers, you know, where you get in the tube and you can, you can practice all that. Is that, is that really important?
It's for different, uh, different discipline. It's important, but it's not for us. Yeah. Uh, because we, uh, do all, uh, training with our canopy when parachute is open.
Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Interesting. So got to ask you some Hollywood stuff before we move on to the importance of, you know, just some fun stuff. But, you know, I just saw that my neighbor down in twin miles Dasher and, and John forget his last name, but they're, you know, they're part of the Red Bull air force and they did a bunch of training with Tom cruise for the latest mission and possible where he's jumping off a bike and base jumping. It looks like quite a cool stunt, but you know, there's been point break, of course, originally, you know, the original surf film with Patrick Swayze and, you know, they're jumping out of a plane without a, without a reserve. Is this just complete horseshit or is that possible? It's just,
it's, it's, it's possible. We just, uh, creative a lot of risk because you like the more professional you are, you, you have more control on it. Hmm. And, uh, I don't know when you probably saw a lot of video on the record when guys landing without open parachute, the free fall and like big net on the ground. The problem is you have to like fly directly to this net. And now I know it's like the first, the first guys who made it, who landed on the empty boxes, remember the boxes, it was more crazy, you know, but it is, but you know, people try to make a show, you know, for no matter what. You know, even with the high risk, it's still.
My favorite, my favorite of those guys are the Frenchies, you know, the, the, I think they call themselves the Frenchies, but they're the ones that do all the music and they're always doing the craziest stunts. They had one where they're driving across a bridge down in Southern France and they all hook, they all jump off the, uh, the top of a bus. They're driving across the bridge on a bus and they jump off and wingsuit eyes. Just so, so did you get into base jumping quite a bit or was it just kind of,
uh, this is why the reason why I don't jump on Bay jump, because from my feeling, the more altitude I have, the more safe I am. Yeah. Because Bay jump, I thought I have a lot of friends who is Bay jumper and, um, like several already passed away because of that crazy experience. And, um, the one, one friend told me the law, the less altitude they have, it's them giving more, uh, adrenaline. Yeah.
And finally
they move. The more
you reduce the margin, the more exciting it is. That's just a recipe. I know exactly. And then they like
jump from 50, 60 meters. It's like kind of limited, you know?
Yeah. I mean, and, and that's why wingsuiting has the numbers that it does. And now in more and more speed flying is, is apparently the numbers are getting pretty similar. And I don't know if that's because there's more people doing it, but it's, you know, in, in wingsuiting. It's the closer you are to the terrain, the more exciting it is. And it's just, man, it doesn't take much to, to screw it up. I have not done it. That's just from talking to my friends who do, but they all have, uh, there's a lot of RIPs in, in, uh, in that community.
Believe me, I had so many, uh, landing like that. Very close because when you're young, you can screw it on the landing and make a swoop on the ground, just very low and just like good is on to fight. You know? It's still, you know, how many times my bat touched the ground faster than I want, you know?
We aren't as resilient as we start to get older and lose our hair too, is it? Are we a little more careful about that kind of stuff? We don't bounce quite as well. Um, okay. Let's, let's switch to, you know, the re the reason you said, Hey, I, I'd really like to, to get on the show is really your, your, your business side of things. You fix gliders. Uh, which we can talk about, but it's mostly the repacking. And you were saying before we started recording that you see a lot of mistakes in repacks. That was surprising to me. I would expect some, but, uh, you're, you're seeing a lot. Let's, let's go through, and this is an audio podcast, so this is going to challenge, you know, being able to articulate this without showing it, but what, what are the steps or what are the things that people are missing?
And can you take us through a proper? Uh,
yes. How I said, I saw like usually my, my business running like last five years for the reserve repacking. And, uh, uh, how you said, I started dreaming and glider fixing and other stuff with the canopy, the reserve issue. Most of the time, um, is the glider. The pilot can know, don't know how install correctly. Usually they like fix it. Flip the, uh, reserve upside down and all lines. If you throw a reserve, all lines will be on your hands. It's one problem. Another issue is, uh, if the handles connect not properly to the, uh, internal container, like, uh, the more dangerous pilot is PPG guys, power motor.
They send me a reserve with the outer container. When I opened the outer container, I saw like, guys, it's crazy. Sometimes they connect. I like it was a couple of months ago. I got the reserve from one pilot in Minnesota. I think, um, bridles was connect to the, it's, it's what's our gallery reserve and bridles was connect to the bridge between risers. You know, if handles was connect to the bridge between risers, if, and I said, man, who connected? He said, it's my instructor. I said, what is his name? Give me, please. His name. His name. I want to talk with him. Of course he, he, he didn't, but you know, I said, man, it's very, I make a pictures and I posted on Facebook just to share this information, how it was on the, on the reserve.
You know, if you throw a reserve and connect it to your bridge between risers from the Eurogala, it will not open. If it's so it's like line will go around the handles around, like it's will not open for sure.
It's just one of the last example, but so other small pro issues is like all the time. They, uh, the second mistake people, when I send it, when I pack the reserve, I left the loops on the internal container, just a little bit, just like two, three centimeters, maybe maximum. I saw the, uh, reserve when they, uh, send it to me for repacking. It's like 20 centimeters, you know, inside the final loop inside the container. When you throw, you will have the big loop sticking out. Yes. If it's not installed properly, it will, it's your creative delay for sure. And plus this loop can hook some other lines and walk.
So you need it. You need that loop to be short. Yeah.
The shorter, the better. You mean it's kind of not, not super short because when you throw, you can leave this inside the, uh, your harnesses, but you need a little bit, just two, three centimeters maximum. Okay. Because, and also, uh, during the, uh, repacking. I'm always at, uh, several other technique, which I found from my experience from my, uh, skydiving and repacking, uh, at special, uh, tricks, which is help open reserve faster. Like, for example, I make a loop inside the, uh, inside the reserve just to, when you reserve, uh, get the air a little bit, you, if it aligns this together, they give you like, like half second. So, uh, that's the way, but because for us, every second, it's count, right?
We have to be like, and I made this, uh, like more and more efficient to open it more faster. Right. Well,
can you explain that in a way that the audience
can understand?
It's probably better. Is this something we need to put in the show notes? Yeah. I will send you the
pictures. Maybe it's step-by-step how it's and you can share it because like, sometimes it's hard to explain, uh, what does it mean, but you have to show the step-by-step it's, it's helped the people to see. Okay. How, how, how much different for the ease, like for the opening.
Okay. Well, we'll, we'll, we'll put, we'll put that in the show notes so everybody can check that out. The, what are you seeing in different deployment times between the various reserves? Any, some, I mean, because some matters if it's a little bit, you know, I, I had a reserve throw really, really low here training for the last X-Alps. And it was a steerable square and boy, it came out fast. It was, it was quite nice. It was lucky that it did. Cause I threw really low. I was basically on the ground.
And my question doesn't this terrible reserve help you steer?
Oh, no, no. In that case, not at all. No, it would have been impossible. I, I, I'm just saying that's what I threw in it, but it, what I was impressed by was that it, it, it, it, it opened very fast, which I needed it to, I was, I was, it was not good. And so that was very thankful that it opened really fast. I'm just wondering if you've seen much difference between the octagon or a, or a, or a round or a square.
Technically, it doesn't matter much. It's only does it's how fresh your pocket, because it's like, because your fabric compress sit in the container. Right. And like for 12 months, at least you can imagine, right. If you compress the, like your people. If you sleep on the people, you compress it with the smaller and smaller and to back to the same size, you need time. This is what we're losing during the troll reserve. Right. It would, this is time. And if it's fresh repacking, it's opening faster. Everyone knows about it, but people are lazy to think about it because it's like, oh, I probably will not use it, you know, but you never know. Right.
It's a lot of conversation. Oh, I own, for example, you repack my reserve years ago, but I didn't fly. I will not repack this season. I said, listen, it doesn't matter. It's sitting in the small container. It doesn't matter if you use it or you don't. You still, you have to repack it. It gives you like more chance to open it. I mean, faster.
And Andre, not to promote laziness whatsoever, but you know, when I watch your videos of repacking, you're going to get it way better than I can just because you're doing it over and over and over again. I have been told that, you know, the perfect little folds and really getting it right. Perfect is not really that important. True or false?
It's not important. It's going to be done by manual. But the more important, keep all lines straight. This is which created the issue. If your line is messed up, it can be open, not symmetrical. It's one problem. But another is can grab another lines and make a knot or something like that. It's like possibility. But this is why for the new pilots, I am not recommended. I am not recommended to buy like sterable reserve or like ragala type or like a square sterable reserve. You don't need it. It's complicity. It's good to have. If you like, for example, you and me, we fly comp, we have two reserves in the harness, right? And we have a choice. Which one? Like, for example, my main reserve is square and my sterable reserve is my backup.
My ragala. It's just in case, because if you have altitude, you can choose your sterable reserve and kill your glider. Because if you don't disable your glider, it doesn't matter which reserve you have. It doesn't help you much. Your glider drag you. It's like even sometimes created more issue, more problem. Yeah. And this is why you like the low altitude. I will throw my square reserve because it's less complicity and it will be guaranteed to open faster than sterable.
I think that's important. I threw my reserve, a sterable down. In Columbia fears back in just a day, right before a comp. And I had to wait quite a while to throw it because I was trying to drift over a little tiny field. And I thought, man, if I could throw this and then stick it into that field with my sterable, that'd be really sexy. And I ended up landing in the field, but the sterable was joke. I did not realize how long it takes to make all that happen. You know, by the time I had disabled my glider and had it all in my lap. I was on the ground. And luckily the wind was in a, you know, I, I landed in the little field and packed that reserve up and relaunched and flew back to home because I had the other reserve.
And so it was, it was kind of brilliant how it all worked out, but I, that I had heard this, you know, that it takes a long time to, to activate the steering, you know, side of things when you have a steerable, but it really takes a long time. It takes quite a while. So I have the same thing. I fly with a steerable. I actually fly with my steerable on my primary hand and I fly. So maybe I should reverse that. That's interesting. You fly it the other way around, but the, you know, I can, I'm the same way. Now I would think about it. I would choose, you know, instantly I go right hand, not instantly I go left hand. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. You, I don't want to skip something. You said people put it in backwards or upside down lines. Talk about that.
It's very common mistakes. Because if. I think the guys from England, they made very nice video with the testing. Yeah. Matt Wilkes. Yeah. It's like they, they explained very clear, you know, if you throw your reserve with two motion, front and back, you're lying on your hands and it's stuck. You know, it's the same when you throw a reserve. And this is why most of the harness now they sell on container, internal container, because they market it like advance. They always have the market. Where's your face on the container should be Matt pace on the car. Nice. Right. They'd like two dots. They have to map. And this is like good idea because otherwise people flipping a line up and give you a list like slippery,
right? You put the wisdom more like harder to, to throw. And what's your lines down? It winds down and all are not. Everything should be on the bottom of the harness. And because nothing should be on the way. Sometimes people just put the old line or not on the, on the top of the reserve. When you throw you, you throw out for the hardest with all not there was everything on the top of the container. This is how creative the issue.
Okay. And, and I think it's really important. The other thing you said, because when I learned how to paraglide, you pull it forward and you hook it back and that's totally changed. Now that's not correct. Yeah. I think a lot of people still have that in their, in their minds and it's, you know, you, you have to, you have this thing where you're pulling it out and then you're hooking it, but it's just one fluid motion. Isn't it? Exactly. Exactly.
And you have to practice on your own harness because like, for example, one harness has the like container with a, like 40, 25 degree flip. Like, uh, for example, uh, Wooda Valley has it and you have, and you throw just on the back. Sometimes it doesn't help, you know, because like special for tiny girls, they don't have muscles on the, uh, like on the right hand, for example. Right. They have to fall on the technique, you know, like how they recommend it. Exactly. Like in, in practice, you have to practice as on, uh, hardness has some was the front mountain container has a three pins. It's creative. Some delay with the opening. What I saw, but you have to practice. You have to build your muscle.
I, we were just recording a show again. This one hasn't out yet, but I had Nick Greece and Russ Ogden on the show yesterday and we were just talking about spring tune up things and we, we got into reserves and we were talking about auto rotation, which Russ hates that term auto rotation, because there's nothing auto about it. You have done this. This is manual rotation. It's your fault. You've gotten into the auto rotation and you can get yourself. Out of it. You know, it's not an automatic throw it's get out of the auto rotation, but if you have to throw, obviously if there's doubt you have to throw. And what he was talking about, what they're finding is if you're in that kind of situation where there's a potentially a lot of G force when you're, and I'd be interested to get your thoughts on this.
Cause I had never heard this. This sounds really scary, but he was talking about how important it is to have that reflex of where the handle is. You do it every time you leave the hill down to, you know, you follow this and deal to Blake talks about this all the time, just that you're, that needs to be totally automatic where that handle is, because if you're in a cascading situation, you may not be in a situation where you can look a, or he was talking about that era. If you're in really heavy G4 situation, he said, people hands can go down. And if you miss the handle, your hand gets buried down. And the G force holds it so hard that you don't have the strength to get back to your handle. And that, that is really spooky.
Have you heard of this? Yes, I do. And I'll say another issue it's can be done to like, if your right hand and your reserve on your own side with the rotation, you like your hands can be locked by rising. Right. Okay. And you cannot pull your right, right. Hands down. Get your
hand out. Yeah. In this
case, you have to use it to your left hands. This is why. I would have a frontal, like a backup container, which is good idea because you can reach the handles or left or right hands on the, your frontal, right on your front mount container, which, which helps. Oh, yeah. On the advanced harness, you can access for the both reserve from the left and from right side as well. It's, it's helped.
You know, I was just thinking about this when I threw my reserve, I was on light kit, you know, I was, I was doing a baby expedition. I was doing a bunch of training and I was very heavy and I was also on my light kit. So I had, you know, I had oxygen and all my camping stuff and it was a front mount and I'm trying to visualize, I think I just grabbed it and hooked it, but are you supposed to go around the riser and hook it from the outside or can you just go right? Usually it should
be going around the riser because if you throw from here, you, you will go through, through your risers, through the lines, through the lines, through your leg inside. You have to go out of the riser. I must
have done that because I had a clean deployment, but I was just, I remember thinking about that a lot when I got my front mount, it was, you know, something we're kind of unfamiliar with. We don't think about too much. Your, your point that you've got to practice this stuff. This is, this is an interesting thing because these days as you, as you start to get better in this sport, we start flying a lot of different gear. Don't we? We have our bivy kit. We have our hike and fly kit. We have our cross country kit. We have our racing kit. We have our, an acro kit. I mean, I have five different harnesses and this is a, you know, when I had an issue training acro over the desert, switching back to my acro gear that I've talked about many times in the show, it was hysterical if it wasn't so dangerous, but that, that muscle memory wasn't there with the acro harness.
I hadn't been flying. I've been flying my hike and fly kit, which only has one reserve. My first reserve wasn't attached through it. Whoa, my gosh, look at that. And so, but I, I briefly for the very briefest time forgot that I had a second reserve. So that wasting a second or two meant I hit the ground without the second one deploying. I threw the second one, but I, but that, you know, I saw it roll out and then I hit the ground and luckily it was okay. I had enough of my wing flying over my head and it was in parachutal and not, you know, resurging or something or restarting. So there was a lot of things there that went really well. My way, but that muscle memory wasn't there with the acro kit. And it was, it was, it could have been lethal.
Yeah, exactly. You have to practice this. You have to know your gear for sure. Especially if you have several kits, like you said, and I have two, I have one white one and I have competition one. And, and I like white one because in New England, we have to hike to the mountain almost every time. We don't have option with gondola or with the lift. Yeah. Cause it's not available in our area, but you still, we, we have to hike. This is why I don't want to hike with my competition gear.
So how often you said, you said the reserves definitely open faster if they've been freshly packed. And then they get, Russ was even talking about that. They get kind of a static energy when they're, when that is that static energy. Is that right? Yeah. Because if you like
special new fabric, they're synthetic. Now they live, can like, can live now for 15, 20 years. The old reserve, they stay for 10 years only because they use a different type of fabric. Now the new one, and of course this is the nylon or some other type of fabric, the synthetic when you, I mean the creative, some electrical static, right? And when you, when I refresh the reserve, my, my, my usual process is open the reserve, give a brief for 12, 24 hours, you know, just to be, because a fabric has a memory. You have to release this and back in a little bit different shape, because if you found the same shape, it's kind of after a couple of years, it will be creative.
Some even fabric is soft. It's still, when you bend it in the same place, several times, it can be placed with a will damage. It has the damage. You know, it's, it's a possibility. It's not like we'd be like a hundred percent, but it's still, it will be a stress point for the, for the reserve.
So, so it sounds like regardless of the hours you're flying or your currency or anything out of thing, you know, the minimum is once a year or is that not even enough?
I, when I was in national team, we repack every month. Every month? Every month.
No, but that's skydiving. What would you do? For paragliding, I would recommend it
at least every six months.
Every six months. Regardless if you're flying the kit or not. Exactly. That doesn't matter. Really.
Yeah. But you know, still it's fresh repacking. Let's give you, and plus when you're hiking up and fly, you sit on the harness, your reserve fits, sit inside the harness as well and make us sound like kind of, uh, for following the shape of the harness. You know, it, it can change configuration inside. It's not big deal, but still it's, uh, can be an issue for, uh, for opening. Hmm.
Yeah. I, uh, I, I wonder how much resistance there is to this. It's, it's interesting, isn't it? The, what we, what we're willing to spend money on in the sport and where we're willing to shave money just in some ways makes no sense whatsoever. You know, it's a reserve. It's a pretty important piece of your kit. Exactly. You know, it's like flying without an in-reach. It just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Correct. And people still, oh, I don't need it. Square reserve expensive. I will buy the round one. But round has some like kind of, you know. It's not stable landing. It can, I mean, it's kind of full delay and old design already. Why you have to buy old design because it's cheaper. You own like you, you buy the cheap insurance for yourself. Exactly. You save a hundred bucks, but so what? Exactly. You will pay more later, you know, but it's no point.
You know, I, I like, I think I'm sure many people who listened, uh, who were listening today, you know, I had this thing, well, I'll never have to throw my reserve and for years and I was flying in sun Valley and really, you know, strong air and a lot of hours and a lot of comps and the X-Alps and the whole thing. And never, never, never, never, never, you know, I must be a really good pilot. And then, you know, I've thrown three times now in combat and, you know, and not in other words, not over the water, not training acro. I've done several of those now too, but those are, you know, these were in situations where I needed my reserve. And I can tell you that, you know, even on a reserve that is, you know, 20 % over the weight range, all the things that they recommend, you can come down pretty darn fast.
And depending on the terrain you're coming into, you know, flat, rocky cement, top of a roof versus a nice slope with grass, like you have in the Alps, you know, it's, it's really variable. And, and it's, it's always been surprising to me. How fast. How fast do you come down? It's, it's whoop, you're on the ground. And it's, yeah, I think, I think having that.
This is why you have to add extra, at least 10 kilo on the top of your takeoff weight. Even your glider fly next to you, right? It's, you cannot count your glider, for example, like five kilo, for example. But still, if you fly in Utah, for example, on 14,000, right, on 12,000, you need a bigger reserve.
Exactly. Exactly. You need a bigger reserve. I would say I will recommend it at least 10 kilo on the top of your takeoff weight. 15, 20 is the best. But yeah, it's, it's like a recommendation. But of course, people are looking for the cheaper option. Sometimes, you know, I have a hundred takeoff, I will buy the hundred reserve for the hundred kilograms on the top. You know? And
I think what you're talking to the, the pendulum effect. Yeah. Or the, the back flip. But the down plane effect, whatever they call that under the round. I, I think that, or down planing. I think these kinds of things can really impact this, right? I mean, if you, you, you happen to have that timing wrong, which you don't have any control over when you're going to hit the ground, when you're in the reserve really is, it, that could be the difference between, you know, a walk away and it, and a trip to the ankle doctor.
Exactly. Yeah, definitely. It's. Yeah. And if you throw a reserve high enough, you have time to fix it, right? To all left and right moving. If you're low, you don't have time, you don't have choice. You throw, you throw. This is why I always recommend it to my students. If you, before throw a reserve, just check your altitude. Sometimes people are crazy and don't worry about altitude, but check your altitude first. First, if you have enough altitude, okay, you have more chance to survive and be without any issue to land it. If you don't have altitude, just throw. Just throw, don't think.
Yeah, I would postulate too that when people don't have quite a lot, and I mean way more than one SIV training, that the fatal accidents I have seen, and I've seen quite a few, have been, I have never seen anything bad happen under canopy. I mean, in other words, under reserve. I have, all the really bad stuff I have seen, not launching and landing, I'm talking about in the air, have been just not throwing. You know, people going all the way to the deck without throwing. And I would postulate that's because they're trying to fix it and they've lost track of where they are in the sky. They're not checking ground.
Exactly. This is why when I throw my reserve in Florida during the camp on Paragonia, I had frontal on 4,500, right? And my glider was like, had the very frontal collapse, and we had the free fall. It was like, task was canceled because the strong wind, and something happened with the wind and thermaling. I was in the sink, very big sink area. And glider cannot open it. I saw my glider, I remember glider on the front of me, and we like, he just tried to open, but not enough air. I don't know what happened, but we free fall for maybe five, 400 meters. We free fall. I checked, I checked my altitude.
My free fall was like 12 meters per second, 10, 12, 12. Wow. And, and, okay. And from, and just my, uh, skydiving background show up, I say, okay, uh, my altitude, two, three. Okay. I'm throwing reserve. I saw. I saw the trees. It's time to open it. And it was opening exactly how the skydiving, no delay, just boom. And my harness was broke. And like, because, because free fall opening, uh, Paraguayan reserve, it's kind of a little bit, yeah, it's like fast open for sure.
And this is what you don't, because you don't have the little square thing with this guy. You don't have that little thing that kind of slowly, it's like immediately
it's shock. It's open because this is why my heart was damaged after this opening. Wow. It's open very fast, but it's remind me like my skydiving, you know, skydiving experience. I have, uh, of course, uh, I have two opening or I cut away real cutaway in skydiving and other testing, just, it's not count, but in the real one, it was exactly the same. You have to like, just free fall and open, throw your reserve, you know?
So let me, let me see if I can summarize real quickly where we're at so far. We, we got to fly with a hook knife. We got to fly with freshly packed reserve. You know, ideally no more than six months, we want to repack them. Uh, we want to fly with two reserves whenever possible. It's nice to have that, that backup. There's some interesting data on that, but, uh, we want to fly with newer reserves, you know, the new materials and new, newer designs, square octagon, rather than around. We don't want to fly a reserve that's more than 10 years old and we want to, we want to. We want to make sure it's packed correctly. We want to have the lines down. That's super important. We want to have the handle correct, uh, correctly attached to the bag.
We want to have muscle memory for where the reserve is and the harness that we're currently flying. We want to make that super redundant that we do it all the time. And it's just, we can find it with either hand in various situations. And that just comes from practice. That's one of the things I do every time I take off. I just take off once I'm away from the hill and I'm, I'm safe. I grab both toggles and I just do it even on comp days. I just make that kind of part of my, it's almost like my pre-flight check, even though I'm in the air, every missing anything.
Um, looks like everything. Yeah. And in the reach, how you said you have to like have your position and insurance, right? Global risk insurance. Actually, this is exactly, it's a, it's next town, a global risk you had headquarters. It's Lebanon and New Hampshire. It's next town. When I flew was, was the record, you know, from Ascati. It's next town and the same. We're
going to talk about your record here in a sec. Yeah. I was just actually on the phone with those guys, you know, they're, they're our title sponsor of the X Red Rocks. And so I was initially worked with them with my boat operations and, you know, we had a guy get a really bad staff infection on the boat in Papua, New Guinea after a reef cut and they evacuated them out of there, out of there, which was a big. Job getting someone out of the very remote part of Papua, New Guinea, getting him home to Europe. But so I've been a fan of theirs for a long time, but like you said, it's, again, this is one of these places where we should spend a little bit of money, you know, given what we do and, uh, and given the, given the odds and the, the chances and all those kinds of things. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's not inevitable for sure, but it can certainly happen.
Yes, for sure. You shouldn't tell me
about your record. That sounded amazing. You just. Did this just happen?
Uh, which records are you talking about? Well,
you know, you
flew to the beach for the beach. Yeah. It was done a couple of weeks ago in New England. It's, uh, is this the first flight from paragliders because they used to fly only hang gliders to the beach because we always fight with the breeze from the ocean and even, uh, hang glider cannot fight, fight through the breeze from the ocean because we from the ocean. So. So strong, you cannot reach it.
You've got a strong sea breeze there. Are you in the answer?
Yeah, we, uh, we fly from Vermont, uh, and like, it's almost a hundred miles from the beach and it was like, I was not expected, let's say this way. We just, that wasn't the plan. No, it was not the plan where we just, I just had some feeling, uh, in my head. Uh, I just, I just fall in my intuition. It's like, are you with anybody? Yeah. I was. I was with my friend, uh, max, uh, I just streamed his glider and he was so happy for the first. He was a little bit, so I kind of scared because it's first flying dream glider. He never, he kite only, but didn't fly. And he, after a while he was, wow, it's so nice glider now, you know, and we flew together in the team fight, the team fights helps a lot, you know, especially with the blue day, not so high cloud base.
We just fall on the wind and. And we had, uh, two, our space have to fly out. I flew maybe a hundred meters from our space board, just to try because wind was pushing us to the airspace. Vice and we fly out of, and it's just competition helped me to push, uh, my bar faster and fly faster as much as possible. Just, okay. Uh, I flew, uh, climate too. Now is my white gear and a boomer 12 on my competition. Yeah.
Climbers, a beautiful way. So you, so it was how far is
a hundred miles? It's 153 kilometers. It's almost a hundred miles.
Damn, man. That, so, I mean, I can't visualize this cause I've never flown. I mean, I've been to Vermont. I used to ski race out there back in the long, long time ago. I used to ski race out in Maine and Vermont, you know, for the Noriams and stuff, but the, you know, for many of the listeners flying in new England is something they've never even heard of. What, what describe the terrain? What are the mountains like? It's very treed. I would imagine it's
a lot of trees. It's not so high mountain. Uh, it's like we have a white mountain and green mountain, green mountain, most of the Vermont and, uh, white mountain in New Hampshire area. And you have, it's, uh, New Hampshire has this, uh, Washington mountain, it's called, uh, one of the 10 places in the earth with worse weather. It's why is the craziest way. Seriously. If you check the Google, if you Google, we've seen
all of Eduardo's training. Films on that mountain. Jesus, my
like 12 years, 13 years experience. I flew once this mountain and for him too, because we cannot find the nice window for flight or flight in this mountain. This is,
I had, uh, I had a awesome sailplane pilot on the show way back when Kevin, he, I think he was taught is, is Mount Washington. Is it set up a wave? Yes, they fly in the way. Oh man. Wow. Crazy. I will. Yeah, it's top
landing in this area, but, uh, it was not a good, uh, weather. And I went on the bottom after 70 K or so, you know, like it's not much landing area around for sure. It's like long fly to the trees, you know, like sometimes you have 50 by 50 meters and you have to be lucky to plan on this. Yeah. Wow.
I've seen, I've seen some of Donna's that days photos are flying in the, in Northeast and you look at, it looks like Finland. I mean, there's that. Exactly. Everywhere. There's water everywhere. I mean, when I, when I did the podcast with Joanna, she showed me, you know, the Finland, they call it the land of a thousand lakes or a million lake, 10,000, a lot of lakes, there's water everywhere. And, and I would look at Donna's at these photos. It looks like that. Exactly. Exactly. You think, well, how, how are the thermals happening here? Uh, this is
why one of the, uh, element, what we flew two weeks ago, it's no leaves on the trees, you know, and this is like thermic, the forest can release the, uh, termic as well with the big difference temperature between night and day. This is like, uh, how created the nice term, like couple of weeks later, it leaves already on the trees and probably it's with the less active, less punchy. Oh, okay. But still we stay, we still have some, uh, uh, heels. And, um, still some small mountain, but we can't fly around, like for example, uh, my new Hampshire record, I took off from 250 feet mountain, it's like training heels.
Yeah. That's some UK stuff there, man. I mean, that's, that's a big note for the UK. When I, when I went over there and watch those guys, I thought, wait a minute, you're going XC from here. This is a tiny little mole Hill, you know, you know, Mount Monroe, where we have the wide open that's 5,000 feet to the west. I know I've been there. I've got some time to work at 250 feet. How far did you fly? Uh,
80 kilometers.
Wow. And I was practice,
uh, my Puma, uh, June glider. I was take off and top landing, take off a top and just practice my, like, uh, build my, my, my experience. And I didn't have this time violet. I don't have anything with me. I just, with the short jacket and not with nothing. I don't have, and I just find the nice term. You can just, uh, drifting, drifting, drifting. I say, okay, I can go. And I, and I left and I call my guys, you know, like, Hey guys, can you drift my car? I don't have anything with me.
Oh, I love the unplanned stuff. That's special. That's really neat. And then you start thinking, I mean, don't you, then you start thinking how often could that work? You know, what w what was special about that day? Maybe not that much. You know, you might be able to go back there and repeat that over and over again. I mean, that's what, it's what the, the British pilots talk about on their little Hills. You know, that they, once they discovered that works, it works, they can get away. It is.
You just, I mean, you have to have, uh, like your plan always behind you, inside your head. You have to like thinking, okay, if I took off and I found an observation, you can see the bird. If you see the bird start climbing, okay. Join them. This is key. Even, even you're super low. This is your key. But, and of course you have to feel the air. You know, if you feel like something lifting, you have to move. Go forward and just try to play with it. Of course, we don't have much choice. If it's a lot of trees behind you just to be very careful and confident. If you, if you grab this, you hold it. This is why you all buy it from New England. They're very patient usually because you play with the small stuff and you stay forever.
You know, this is why my result on the competition. Not so good because I am at the goal, but I am like in the end of the list because I am a waste.
I'm like,
walk to the top and push the bar after because it's, I changed for, you
take, you take your time. You get to the top. Exactly. I mean,
Bianca told me you have to go, you have to push the bar. I said, yeah, yes. But when you tell me just walking with it, you're like, you're like, you're scared to leave it because you're in New England. If you leave the thermic so low, you're on the ground.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's a, it's a different approach. I mean, and I think that's why the British pilots are so good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, it's a, it's a different approach. I mean, and I think that's why the British pilots are so good. When it's light, you know, they're very, very good when it's, when it's, the cores aren't gathered and everything's kind of mixed up and it's just super soft and you have to drift forever and you have to be very patient. And that can be, that's not a skill that those of us that live on the West side of the, of the continent are very good at because it's so strong. You know, a two meter climb is something you have to leave.
Two meter for us, it's like, oh, it's a good climb, let's do it. Yeah, yeah,
for you, that's a
boomer. Exactly. Exactly. I'm serious. It's not a joke. It's, it's reality.
No, I know. It's a, it's a very different kind of approach and we need to have experience at all of them, especially when you start competing. Welcome to New England. You're not going to always fly by.
Welcome to New England. We can't show you how you have to. Yes,
I need to, I need to come out. I love all you guys. I need to come out there. And I know it's a, it's an aspiring community. You guys are, you guys are tight and doing a lot of stuff together. I'd love to get your perspective on trimming.
It's one of the important stuff for the... It's one of the important stuff for the competition glider and for recreation gliders as well, because it's kind of, it's safety. You know, if you, I had the glider a couple of weeks ago, even it's B glider, but one line was longer than other on 76 millimeters. It's B, it's B lines. It was different. And I saw it was made professionally, but probably a pilot choose the wrong link of the lines. It's 76 millimeters. It's 76 millimeters different. So how you survive on this glider? I don't know. I just, it's, it's an inspection is also part of the safety for the gliders. Because these day people just new special for new pilot, they buy new gliders and most of the light gear, which they are not ready for this for, for the light gear and they damage the glider very quicker.
Yeah. It's, it's good to have, but not for the new pilot. And it's kind of a... It's strange for our old pilot who like had some experience, he just realized like the new glider is good if you have, you have to hike with the gear and like how you said, the light set, right? But trimming is one of the safety issues for the old gliders. You have to check. Yeah. I've
talked about this a lot on the show, so I won't, I don't want to totally hammer it, but I mean, I think we need to be really cognizant of what we're giving up when we go with the light gear. You know, A, it's very expensive and it wears out. It wears out really fast, you know, so there's a, there's a cost side of it that I think a lot of people don't, don't really process, but there's also, you know, that they're, these are more fragile in every way. They, you know, they, the line stretch easier, the fabric deteriorates faster, your lightweight harness is not going to have the protection, even if it's EN certified, it doesn't have the passive protection that we're used to. We don't have a seat board, so we don't have the authority with the wing. So there's many things. Come down to, you know, typically we're flying with one reserve, not two.
So there's lots of things that is celebrated. I'm, I'm so excited that it exists and that there's been this huge push because it allows us to attack the sport in, in really wonderful ways and, and walk up the hill without my comp kit, which is lovely, but it's, we are giving something up. You know, we're not flying our Cadillacs anymore.
Yes. For sure. Light gear. And it's, it's. You're absolutely right. The light gear is kind of died very quickly compared with the regular gear.
Yeah. And it also, it just also behaves differently. You know, the, the light gliders are, they, they collapse differently. They, they are more work. Exactly. For sure. Across the board. They're not the same. It's not the same ENB as an ENB and it's CNC and ENC. They're different. Yes. I
can compare. I flew Leopard. And I flew Puma. The Puma is light version of Leopard. Exactly the same structure. Exactly the same line. Everything the same. Different fabric and different riser. And feel differently. Leopard can fly longer, especially for New England. You need to like nice glide. Puma is kind of copy the same, but of course, light fabric cannot hold so much pressure and can like, uh, fly a little bit differently. But the good of this for the, for Puma, it's with the strong, long lift, it can softer on the control, much softer because the Leopard can kick you so strong because it's a regular fabric, right? The Puma can allow you to play a little bit softer.
This is why Puma is female and Leopard is male. You know, it's like kind of different, you know, different animals. Yeah.
I think the, before we leave trimming it, it seems like at the competition end of things too. The, a lot of the really top pilots are trimming their gliders every comp, you know, it's something that they're really staying on top of and, and I can say in my own experience, it really makes a difference. It is. And
why, why in stretch? You cannot change it. Why in wheel strength? Depends how much, uh, pressure you put on the lines, you know, if you spiral down you like one side, uh, extend faster than another side, for example, or you, if you stow your glider, it's different. You have to check because all lines are sensitive now, for sure. And you put the speed bar, you change your angle of attack all the time and your A is like stretching up a little bit. You cannot avoid it.
Well, let's finish here. What is your company? So people know where to find you and what you're, what you're doing and what's your website and, uh, thanks man.
My company is Airquest Paraguayling, I ran this company last five years and I do reserve free packing and inspection, which is important part of our gear. And, uh, I do the, uh, glider inspection and repair, any type of repair and plus trimming. Now last winter I went to Austria and I was at FSA school where I took all this, uh, uh, training about the streaming, where so many details, they like explain me so nicely. And, uh, I was happy to visit Austria. Austria last winter and spent weeks there was great.
Where is this? I didn't know there was a school for this.
Uh, and after it's not for this, it's like a school, they do this service and they just give me a like certification of the stuff, what they do. And they train me for the exactly for the training and small detail for the gliders. It's like for testing and for inspection. Glad. Okay.
That's wicked. Well, Andre, you'll send me all this stuff for the show notes. We're going to, you're going to send me some photos of, you know, how to, and how not to pack and that kind of thing. We'll put all those in the show notes for when we release it, but thank you very much for your time and sharing all this great knowledge and, uh, congratulations on your big flight and we'll see you in Chelan.
Thank you, man. I was happy to talk about and see you soon.
Thanks a lot. Cheers. Bye. If
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