Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I just got off the phone, did a very long talk that was totally outrageous with Phil Hystek. Phil runs a paragliding school down in Queensland, in Australia. He is the longest by time instructor down in that part of the world. He's been teaching for more than 30 years. Started teaching hang gliding back in the late 80s, early 90s. Started teaching paragliding because he was forced to. A pretty funny story about that. He was teaching out in the Pacifica and the dumps and San Francisco and flew XC and the Owens and Lakeview and eventually all over the world.
When I talked to him, he had just gotten back from a four-week full-biv trip out in beer with a bunch of mates. He used to guide out there. He's taught a whole bunch of very big names over the years, including McNanans and good mates with Johnny Duran and taught him how to paraglide, and he's his neighbor. But this is just a riot. We get into some fantastic terrain and talk about all kinds of crazy stories and a little bit of his history. I would have loved to talk a lot more, but this one runs long. It's two hours, but it just gets better and better and better, so hang in there all the way through. We get into some fantastic stuff about the lessons he's learned and what he's trying to teach his students.
Phil is 65 years old; he's got a fused ankle, and so far this year, he's done 171,000 meters of vertical gain of hike and fly. Super passionate about hike and fly, which he does. He was mostly out in his backyard there in Queensland. But he set all kinds of records and going up hills and flying and just fantastic. This was a riot. And I basically just laughed for two hours. And yeah, you'll hear about stories in Bali and a crazy accident and learning about how to recognize red flags and the devil and the angel sitting on our shoulder and just some great stuff. You'll hear a lot of names and legends. He's won a legend, of course, in his own right.
But John Heine and Mitch McAleer, this was just a ball. Please enjoy this fantastic talk. We'll call this the first one with Phil Hystek because we're going to have to follow this up with several more to catch up. So enjoy. Cheers.
Phil, great to have you on the show. Joe, I'm super excited to talk to you about all kinds of things, including your four-week trip you just had out to beer. Sounds like you had some fantastic flying. We were just chatting it up before we started recording here, but I don't know where to start with you. There's so many places we could start. You've been at this game an awfully long time. You were just saying you've been instructing in Australia longer than anybody if you just put it together. one you started in 92 and and you were uh this is a good place to start you said you were forced to start paragliding what does that mean yeah
Well, good, good to talk to you again. Um, yeah, I do think I sort of... when you first, uh, suggested I talked to you, I think you, I thought you'd, you'd, uh, ask the wrong person or you're scraping the bottom of the barrel, because I don't think I'm that—I honestly don't think I'm that, like, that special. I've just, I've just been, I've just been, I think I've been, been hitting my head against a brick wall for long enough, for just a long enough, you know? That's why, and I'm still here. But anyway, so the, so like, I started, I started thinking about hang gliding back in the night, back in, uh, would have been, uh, the late 70s, when I first left school, right? Because I left school in, um, as I can tell you, I'm 65, I'm 65 at the moment, right?
So I left school in '76. And I started working as an aircraft engineer, fixing airplanes up, right? And um, um, and because my father was a commercial pilot and instructor and everything else, normal airplanes, um, I sort of did a lot of flying with him, but I never had a license, right? Anyway, I must have said a few things about learning about about hand, because I remember like my father tried to teach me how to fly airplanes. I didn't like this; it's like drilling holes in the sky with a big propeller, you know? They're just roaring around, just throwing the air all to pieces, you know. And I really didn't like it. But we lived on this big property. My father owned this 5,000 acre cattle property up in the mountains above town, actually right near Manila, halfway between Manila and Bendamere. So, you know where Manila is. So, I used to watch eagles, big weasel eagles flammeling up.
And I thought it was the most beautiful thing watching them rather than airplanes flying around making a lot of noise. And I heard, I'd sort of read stories back in old Popular Mechanics magazine, that sort of stuff about people making hang gliders and flying hang gliders. And really, like, I thought, now that's got to be it, you know.
So I'd sort of seen some pictures of people doing these hang gliders. And I must have said, I was sharing a house with these two crazy dudes. And one day I come home from work and one of them goes, we're going to learn how to hang glide. And I said, yeah, really? Great. Who's going to teach us that you are? And I said, "What? Yeah, you know how to fly, you know?" So, so anyway, so, so these guys, they're just crazy, you know? Like, you just imagine in the 70s, long hair, like, just like, really, just they were just wild, you know? I was, I was, I had this big G Caddy, I was just this crazy motorbike rider. Anyway, um, so, so we, so we got the hang glider. They bought, bought this hang glider in this is in 1976 or 77.
They bought this hang glider from the bottom of someone's house. I've been hanging there for about 10 years, so this is like a 1960s hang glider, and we had no, it didn't even exist then. It's like a handkerchief, it was like the very, it was like such an early day. So anyway, so they, so that we get the hang, they bought the hang glider. They put it right on the roof of the car, and we went to find a hill to use, and the only place that, that they could find that was sort of what we thought was suitable was very fortuitous. It was a place called, like, the Town Common. It was up behind the hospital. So it was behind the main hospital, right, just some little rolling hills. Perfect if you crash here in the sweet
spot. You just go to the hospital. Exactly,
very fortuitous. It's so nice and close. You can actually see the hospital from where we were going to go. So we got the hang glider, and we carried it across the paddock. Because what I knew, like, they had no idea what they don't do, that I just sort of must have fired up their imagination. So I knew you needed a hill, and you need to win, right? And you, I knew you needed the wind in the up the face, and I knew you need some hill. What I didn't know is you need, you need a place to land. I didn't know, I didn't realize that you need you
got two
Things, right? You just need a place to screw it. That's right, that's right. Wind in the hill, so, so we go up the top over the hill and we're setting the glider up and I'm, and there's these bolts and nuts and everything, and I'm just looking at it, trying to work out how to put this thing together and put the pole in here and the pole there and on the top and, and anyway, so the wind was pretty strong. From my memory, it was quite strong. And so obviously I was going to teach him how to fly, and for me to teach him how to fly, I had to fly myself. So I've, I've gotten the heart, I've got in it wasn't a, so this guy wasn't a harness, it was like one of those little swing seats, a little, little, like a little wooden seat on two, two jeans, like two ropes that went up to the, yeah, it's been up to the swing set. So I get the hang glider, exactly. He does a swing set, and so I get the hang glider and I'm in the seat and I've got this and I push the nose, and one of those old ones have a really long, like a really short nose angle, like really, you know, so, and I stand on top of this hill and I push and I'm standing there looking down, looking down the front, and I just push the, push the control frame out a little bit.
If you know about hang gliding, you just got a frame. I push the A-frame out and the thing, the wind got under the nose, went straight over back and just flipped me straight up, upside down, and I'm hanging upside down in the hang glider on the top of this Grassy hill, right? Okay, guys, did you see that? That's how we do it. That's right, don't do it like that. So, excuse me, so, so I ended up bending the king post, which is the post that pokes up top of the hang glider. It keeps the wings up and falling on the ground, and obviously we couldn't fly it then because the kink post was bent. So, we, so you know, very dejectedly, we packed the glider up and we carried it down the hill, and I suddenly, I got a few little alarm bells going on in my head, and I'm thinking, you know, if I'd taken off, I had no idea what I was going to do.
I, I had no idea how to fly a hang glider. I had no idea what we, I just thought we're just going to take off and you just fly around the sky like a leaf in the breeze and something would happen, you'd end up on the ground like magically, just a light on the ground and off you go, you know, like so happy as Larry. And I thought, that's not going to happen because I had no idea what I was going to do. So we're walking down the hill and I'm thinking, "Uh, not a good idea, not a good idea." So, um, because it was a Saturday afternoon and they couldn't buy a new bit of aluminium, they were going to go to the aluminium place and just buy a little bit of aluminium, put on the top, and they couldn't do that because it, it was Saturday, so they went the next week and got some out of Minium, and they said, we're going to go back up again on Saturday, and I go, I've got to see a man about a dog. Sorry, I can't go with you.
So anyway, I just remember the one guy, he was just this crazy, long, blonde-haired dude, like really just like, you know, full-on, really energetic sort of guy, and he's going up the hill. I was like I was off doing something. I wasn't going to see the carnage, you know. I didn't want to watch the carnage. So he's gone up, taken off, and fallen straight into the side of the hill. Boom. Both his arms. And so I go and see him in hospital. He's lying in hospital like one of those classic, like in a movie, with his arms, both his arms in plaster. I was like, dang it, he can't do shit. Darwin Awards. And I went, now, that was a good decision on my behalf. So anyway, that was in 70s. We have a saying, better lucky
than stupid, right? Sorry, sorry. Better lucky than good is what I meant. Yeah, exactly.
So I ended up, I so I just ended up giving that hang gliding thing away for a while because I thought that was pretty dangerous and I, I was, you know, I was traveling around a lot on the motorbike, so I end up right going riding around Australia on a motorbike and and then I ended up living in um San Francisco in 1988. I'd moved, I just, I went over, I actually went over to to Canada to Vancouver. I bought a motorbike, I rode up to top Alaska and all the way back down to down to Central America, down to Guatemala, and I met this girl in in in Belize, like you do from San Francisco, and I ended up like you do back in San Francisco, you know, for some reason she was, she was, she was very cute.
I, I can tell you. So I ended up in San Francisco, and so I was working. So I shouldn't say this, but I was working there. Don't worry. Nobody listens. It's just you and I. I didn't. Yeah, that's right. Just you and I. So no. So this is back in the late 80s. So no green card, no, like just work, just doing my own job. Because by that stage, I was a sign writer. So I was painting signs, right, on boats and buildings and cars and everything else. And um, and so I, I was actually making pretty good money just working for myself around San Francisco, and one weekend I was just sitting there in little, in the little flat I had in San Francisco downtown, and my girlfriend was there and she said, and I was just talking about the fact that I didn't have much to do and what I was going, what I was going to do, and that sort of stuff.
She said, "You always talk about hang gliding, why don't you learn how to hang glide?" And I went, "That's a good, good idea." So I looked in the, in the yellow pages and I see two hang gliding shops in San Francisco. One's called Shandell Hang Gliding and one was called Airtime Hang Gliding, and, and so anyway, I remember I went down to, um, to Airtime and I had one this free info night, and I shouldn't, I'm not bagging these guys because this is 30 years ago, they're not more than 30 years ago, so, uh, but I, I went to this free info night and I listened because I'm like, I was an aircraft engineer before and I knew what flying was about. And these guys are trying to tell me how they fly a hang glider and how aerodynamics work in a hang glider. And I went, that does not compute to me. That is not right.
So anyway, I just, I walked out the door, I walked out the door and went home and I went, and because I thought, you know, I thought this, you know, maybe I just have these dreams, you know, and I thought that hang glider pilots would be these real, you know, know, like, like sky gods, you know, all fit and healthy and just run off hills in hang gliding, that sort of stuff. And I got this info night, and there was a guy there, and he was this—I, I shouldn't, I shouldn't be judgmental, but he didn't look like a sky god, and he was the owner of the business, and and I just went, I went, "No, my dreams are just completely obliterated." So I walked out there and I went, "No, it doesn't work." So anyway, I, the, the next weekend, I thought, I've got to learn to hang. I really got it. So I just went down to Shandell Hang Line down at Pacifica
at the bottom of Wetslake there, and I walked in the door, and I'm trying to remember his name. There's a guy that used to work there, redheaded. Like he was – this guy was – he was addicted to Mountain Dew. He was young Mountain Dew. It was like the early version of Red Bull, right? This guy, he's – and it was Saturday afternoon, And then this guy was – he was Wyatt. This guy, he was – I'm trying to remember his name. But anyway, he was Wyatt, and he was so intense. But I walked in there, and I said, teach me how to fly. I put the money on the table and said, I don't care how good you are. You can't be any worse than the other guys. You just teach me how to fly. So anyway, so I ended up – so the young fellow taught me.
So this guy that was – he was working out. I wish I could remember his name because he was a nice – he was a really nice guy. But the guy who taught me his name was Andy Whitehill. Now, Andy may be listening, but I don't think he flies handguns anymore. But he wasn't like – Andy was just as intense as this other guy. But he was younger, long hair, like a hippie sort of dude, like full on, full on, and addicted to everything, including sushi. Andy was addicted to sushi. So he was about – I don't know. No, it must have been the wasabi up his nose that he really liked. So it's something to do with his nose.
Anyway, so Andy and I stuck up a really good rapport.
And I remember, so we went out for the first day to learn how to hang glide. And we walked up the hill and we set the hang glider up like this and put all the battens and everything in it and got it all going. And I remember, I ran down the hill. I started running down the hill and the guy lifted me off the off the ground and it was like a game changer. It was completely like, I never felt anything is free, you know? And like all the time I'd spend in airplanes, everything else, this was suddenly like the door opened and I went, "This is the most amazing thing in the world, right?" It was, it almost, almost, it almost still makes it. It's so emotional that this is like 33 years ago and it's still, I can still exactly remember what it felt like when my feet left the ground and I floated down the hill and this hang glider and landed.
Okay, I just pulled the push, the bar, and I was on the ground and, um, it was quite amazing that, um, so when I, um, I remember turning up when the first, when I've turned up on the first day of the training hill, I looked up and there was this guy flying a toss. He must have launched off the top of the training hill, right? And he's fine, he's coming down, he landed. Turned out that by within a year and a half, I ended up teaching him how to fly because I, it's one that you know when you just figure it out, you get into a, are you, when you get into a sport or in something and you go, "This is where I was meant to be." I just, I was, I was meant to be be here. And it was like, I, everything I did seemed to work, everything even.
But you know, and, and Andy taught me a lot. Like he was incredibly good as an, as a, he was very safety conscious, even though he's great, he was absolute crazy guy. He was incredibly safety conscious, really, really a really nice, you know, talking, you have to take him the right way. But if you look at what he was trying to teach you and why they're trying to teach you certain things, it works so, so well, you know? So, so anyway, within a year and a half of learning to fly hang gliders, I was already a basic instructor for Yushka, right? So I was a basic hang glider instructor. I took up the hang glider instructor's rating, and I was teaching people what they used to call basic, which is just launch and landing. I wasn't allowed to teach them high glides, just launch and landing for Yushka. And
are you, at this time, are you going to the Owens? Are you flying XC, or are you just a Pacific? okay
Yeah, so so I, yeah, so so interestingly, I, um, Andy loved flying XC; like, he was an, he was an XC junkie. And, um, and so my first bit of flying, my first XC, was from a place what my, so I don't know how much time we got here, but anyway, anyway, so so Andy decides we're going to go to Elk. The place is called Elk Mountain, which is just out the back.
It's northwest of San Francisco, from memory, sort of on the way to Lakeview. Northeast. On the border between. Yeah, okay. Yeah, northeast. Elk Mountain. There's also a mountain called Hull Mountain, so Hulk and Elk were there. Anyway, we go to Elk Mountain. It was the end of winter, just the end of winter. So the snow's all melting, but so, uh, Andy didn't have a four-wheel drive; he had this combi. It was a V-dub combi, right? And, um, and so we drove up the tarred road up from the bomb out, which is a riverbed, and we're driving up and we get to the turf to the, we turn off the dirt road, and of course, now it's covered in snow. This is in just in the winter, so Andy goes, "Well, we can't get get the combi up here," so we're going to have to carry the hang gliders up.
And the hang glider I'd end up buying from Andy was the exact hang glider, not a signed copy, but it was the exact hang glider that Mark Newman had won the U.S. Nationals on the year before, right, or the two years, so maybe two years before. So it was a Moyes GTR World Beater, right, and it was the heaviest, biggest monster of a glider, but it looked so good. And when Andy had given me the option, he said, "You can buy this training glider, or you can buy this glider." Of course, what am I going to say? I'm gonna, I'm gonna like, "That, that training guy like single surface shit, I'm going for this one here." It's got, it's got like 30, 30, 36 batons in it.
It's got everything. Is like, mate, it was so, it was so wild. I want the phone. No, that's my, that's, that's my glider. That's, that's my, god, I don't care how hard it is to fly, I'm gonna learn how to fly this thing. So anyway, we're gonna carry these gliders about a, well, maybe about a mile up this dirt track In the snow, and so myself and the mate who the one that flew it had flown over the top of my head on the very first day, um, he was still not a—he was, he was at that stage about the same equivalent level as me, because this was, this was only, uh, probably a year after, or yeah, maybe no, maybe a year, be three months after I started, I already had this like the world, the the guy that won the U.S.
Nationals, it was just I was just I was jumping way too far ahead for himself like I. So if I knew— there's no way now I'd let any of my students do anything like that at all, but I was – like, I knew where I was going. I wanted to be there, like, straight away.
So we got these hang gliders. We carried them up through the snow. We get onto this launch, and the launch is sort of like – because it was faced southwest, it didn't have any snow on it, but all the track up there was all full of snow, you know. So we carry these guys up, and these guys are so heavy. We get the launch and we're setting it up, but the wind was still over the back and it's over the back, over the back lightly to cross over the back lightly crossing. Now, this is my first high glide, my first ever high glide on a hang glider. All another glides have been lost on the training hill, so Andy's I'd take me to Elk Mountain, which is probably from memory about, uh, it's probably about 2,000 feet top to bottom and into this, into this riverbed, you know? And so, um, so I'm, I'm standing on the lawn.
Now, I don't know, have you ever done any hang gliding? No, no, no. Okay, so with hang gliders, what happens is that the glide, when the – they have a thing called a VG, which is a thing in Australia, variable billow. So when they say pulling rope on, you pull this rope on the base bar, and what it does, it tightens the wing really, really tight and makes the side wires that go from the bottom of the base bar up to the wings really tight. So the whole wing is very, very rigid, and you do that when you—when you want to do a really long, fast glide, and and it makes the glide much more efficient. But basically, yes, but what it does and yeah, it's so with a speed bar—speed bars on paragliders make guys more, you know, certainly make them more, um, make them go faster.
They don't necessarily make them go more efficiently, but they—so certainly they can go faster and more prone to getting collapsed. What happens with a hang glider, it doesn't make them more liable to get a tuck or anything, but it makes them really, really hard to control, to maneuver, right? So it tightens them up really tight. So anyway, if you don't have the VG pulled on, the side wires are loose. So what happens is the wings will flop. One wing will flop down to the – so the right wing will flop down to the left wing, the side wire goes tight, and then the left wing will flop down to the right one. and just this flopping business side to side, which is really disconcerting. But as soon as you take off and the wings get lifted by the airflow, by your weight, then the thing doesn't have that flopping business, right?
So, but if you pull this VG on, on launch, it would tighten it right up. You wouldn't have the flopping stuff. But what it does, it makes the glider incredibly hard to take. Like it increases the stall speed. It increases the, like the launch speed. Everything gets really, really tight, and you say you don't want to launch, so you got to put up with this flopping business of the glider when you're standing on launch. So anyway, I've got this really heavy glider; I've popped it up on my shoulders and I'm standing there waiting for the wind to come, right? You know, and Andy's saying, "Oh, it's going to come, it's going to come, it's going to come." So I'm standing there because I didn't want to have to pick it up and then run off the hill, so I wanted to get let stable, you know, with his wings going flop. And so when they—when the wings flop, they would move if you held the base bar totally still.
Each wing, if the wings dropped, if the right wing dropped and left wing went up, or left wing went down, the right wing went up. The the tips would probably move at least a foot. That's how far, that's how much, that's how much on the wing tips are moving up and down. Like, so there's this hard rigid base bar you're holding, but these wings are flopping from side to side, and it's really, it's really unnerving for for new pilots carrying a big heavy glider to have this flopping business. And then when you run off, you've got to make sure it all goes right as you run on there. So anyway, I'm standing on launch. And I'm looking down and it's nice open run down the front of the hill, but on the right hand side, on the right hand side is a big tall pine tree. Yeah, big tall pine tree with the tip of the top of the pine tree is about, is about level with my, with my eyesight, a little bit, maybe a little bit lower, right?
A little bit lower down there. Yeah, I know, maybe it's probably if I took a line out. So the pine tree is probably about, I don't know, maybe 30,
maybe 100 yards down the hill and fairly tall. So it's one big, tall pine tree. And I ended up – so I'm standing there and I'm looking straight ahead but looking at the pine tree, looking ahead, looking at the pine tree like this, you know, like you do when you – and I'm looking at the pine tree. And then it's amazing. It's amazing. Amazing. When I, when Andy finally said, Joe, I wasn't, you know, like I was, he just said, it's on, go. So I started running, you know, that pine tree moves straight across in front of me. I don't know how it did it. The pine tree, it just, the pine tree got legs and went straight in front of me. And I'm just going straight for this because, you know, one of the things with the hang glider, the one thing you don't want to do in a hang glider is run off and push the bar out because that doesn't store, it will store the wing, right?
So you got to pull speed on. So you pull the base bar in as you run down the hill, right? So I'm running down the hill, pulling the base bar in, and this bloody tree has come straight across in front of me, straight, and I'm going straight for the tree, straight for the tree. And I go, holy shit. I just, I went, I just let go of the control. I let go of the base bar, everything. I just let everything go. I went, holy shit, I'm in the tree. And with a hang glider, if you pull, it's really easy to pull the bar in and go really fast. As soon as you let it out, it goes to trim and it'll go straight out, and the glider went, whee, just missed the top of the tree, like this, over the top, and then just this big dive over the top of the tree and just coming up there. So I disappeared from view from where Andy, so as he's looking across, he sees me going towards the tree and he just goes, I close his eyes and then suddenly I'm just disappeared because he can't see me behind the tree.
But I'm just going, and I'm flying down towards the landing field going, oh, oh, oh, I was so scared. I just pulled the bar and I saw flames coming out of the back of the hang glider and I'm flying down and was in the valley just screaming. I'm like, oh, I don't want to do this shit anymore. This is crazy. After brewers, after brewers. Oh, and I got to the bottom. I got to the bottom. I ended up doing it. I did a landing where I dropped my nose as I come in because I skidded along. I was just so, so wide and nervous from what had happened with the tree. Then it turns out that Ofer, I've named Ofer Brewers. He ended up being a really good mate of mine, The guy that I'd seen fly off the top of my head went on the first day of the training, and he was—he and I'd carried the hang gliders up—he took off and went straight back and let and crashed inside the hill in some trees.
So I spent all the afternoon, so all the afternoon, trying to get him out of the trees way down the front of Elk Mountain, right so Your first trip to
Go XC was super successful.
at first but it was just that was the first So anyway, so then we go to Lakeview. So most people know about Lakeview. It's a pretty amazing place. It's very famous for the glass off they have there. And so we went up. There's some hill. Some hill is about 20 miles to the south of Lakeview. And I'm trying to remember the name. I don't think they fly there anymore. more, um, I don't fly
Lakeview at all, but anyway, we went up there on that day. Yeah, I mean, I haven't heard of anybody flying there in ages. They used to have comps out there all the time and stuff, and we've been trying to get a comp organized there forever. But, you know, that's where we ended that Sierra trip I did back in 2012 with Antoine Laurens and Nick Grace, and so we ended in in Lake Lakeview, and it just looks amazing. I don't know why nothing's happening; it's amazing.
The glass-off there is, like, mind-blowing. I can tell you a bit more about the glass-off there, a few things that happened in that glass-off. It is just because you've got Mount Shasta up the back there, and you've got, like, is it Mount Shasta up the back of the valley there from Lakeview, I think? Anyway, it's a big, wide valley that produces amazing glass-off. So, anyway, we went up to this hill. This was going to be my first XC flight, right? First time I was going to try and thermal and fly somewhere, so I was going to fly from that hill to Lakeview. Anyway, I took off. I'm on, I'm on this glider, like I'm telling you, that when you pull the vg on it, it's so hard to control. But, but if you're trying to get the max glide out of the thing, you pull the vg.
And so, anyway, I'm coming down towards Lakeview, the township, and um, and I'm getting really, really low, to so low, and I was so focused, like, you know, you get so focused on just like what you're trying to achieve, which is get to your goal. But you don't have any idea how – you really lose sight of how high you are, where you are, where your landing fields are. So anyway, I almost landed on the roof of the supermarket. I was so low. Like I just, just, just missed the roof of the supermarket. I was in the car park and there was this like some sort of farm field on the other side of the supermarket car park. And as I came in, as I came into the landing, I realized the VG was still on the glider.
It was full on, and this glider was, was notorious for being almost uncontrollable when you had the VG on, and I came in for the landing and it was, and because I then realized that the VG was still on because the big long rope tagging behind me, but I was too low to even let it off, and as I coming in I got this—it must have been a dusty coming through the paddock—and I got picked up like, wham, and just slammed, like, wingtip straight into the ground. On the side? So, so hard. On the side? On the side. So it just went, side slipped. So I must have gone up maybe, I don't know, maybe 10 metres up in this dusty, and it just slammed into the ground on the wingtip, right? And the glider was, I broke the wing straight off the glider, just tore the tip of the sail right off the wing.
like the wing broke about maybe two, maybe two meters in from the wing tip, just tore the wing right off, just took them, took the whole baby. So, any anyway, so my beautiful glider was trashed. And so, any anyway, I ended up buying a new, a new hang glider, which was a really, really difficult hang glider to fly. But you know, buying this new glider, I left this glider sitting in Andy's shop just as a pile of mess in the corner with the intention that one day I might try and put it back together, fix it up, get it. Yeah, yeah, meaning that I have to actually sew the sail back together, I have to put all new, new tubes and everything else, but it just lay there for ages.
So, anyway, I had this, I have this passion for teaching people how to do things, all right? I've done, and I taught – both my parents are teachers. My big – my elder brother's a teacher. Like, we have this teaching, you know, DNA thing, you know. So, anyway, I was playing around, sort of mucking around with hang gliders. And I think Andy saw that I was relatively skilled. So, he says, why don't you become a basic instructor? Hang glider instructor. I went, yeah, okay, okay. So, I thought that was a pretty cool thing to be offered, you know. And he said, you can work for me and you can do all the weekend launching landing stuff down the beach down at Big Sur. because we had a beach down, you have to go down past San Jose and you go sort of down the coast there and there was some beach down there that we used to teach on.
So I'd drive down there on the weekends in the morning and I'd teach hang gliding and come back.
Anyway, Andy had this... is back, this is in about '90, 1990, I suppose. I know I lose track of years and dates and this sort of stuff, but not long after I'd started teaching hang gliding, I was like, I was a hang glider pilot and I was obsessed with hang glider. It was the most beautiful thing to do in the world, like it was... it, hang gliding is actually an amazing thing if you ever get a chance, chance to fly one. They're beautiful things to fly.
thing is very compelling, you
know, oh, they're beautiful. And and also, so um, in this time I'd also flown the—I'd I'd gone and flown the Owens, I'd flown a Telluride, I'd flown it. Um, I'd flown at point of the mountain, I'd flown um a lot, a lot of places, all west, all west coast U.S. stuff. Were you getting
into comps at this point, and that kind of thing, like the yeah
Yeah, I was finding comps. Yeah, I was finding comps. I was, I was, I flew, um, I flew in the... they had a big comp in the Owens. They had a big comp in, um, uh, the manufacturers league meet at, um, um, a Telluride. Uh, also they had one at Diet, a place called Dinosaur. I flew there. Dinosaur, um, which is right on, I think, Dinosaur's on the border of Utah and, um, yeah. Yeah, so there's a big camp they had there, and there was another place. Oh, so many different places there, but we did a fair bit of flying around Salt Lake City as well.
Anyway, so Andy came to me one day, and he – so Andy went over to – he went on a holiday with his girlfriend to Europe, right? And he came back, and he said, you know, he said, There's no hang gliders there anymore because they're all paragliders, and what had happened, I'd seen like people had been playing around paragliding in San Francisco. They weren't allowed to fly at Fort Funston. Um, so Funston is a hang glider site, that's you do not fly paraglider. Funston is like, it's so, it's so rigid there, so and I used to fly, I was flying the hang glider Funston all the time, and people used to be launching from West Lake down from the what, what they call the dumps, which is just down if you go south from Funston, you go down there and you've got these little dunes, that sort of stuff.
Anyway, the paragliders would fly there and people, they were always getting taken away in ambulances. And they were going like, people were crashing, all that stuff. And they'd take off from the top of, you know, like Angola would take off from Funston and cruise around. You'd get in what they call the sheer convergence and you'd be doing, you're way out there cruising around. And paragliders would take them and go, boom, straight to the beach. Boom, straight to the beach. You know, they just – and if they made the beach without crashing and hurting themselves, that's amazing. But they were just so, like, big, massive, like, six-cell gliders, you know. They were just so old, just shitbox things, you know. So anyway, they were just a joke. They were just – they were a joke. So anyway, but Andy goes to Europe and he comes back and he says,
there's no hang gliders in there. There's just paragliders everywhere. He said, we've got to teach paragliding. And I said, find someone else. He said, no, no. He said, I want you to learn to paraglide so you can teach paragliding. I said, no, buddy. I'm a hang gliding pilot, and I'm a hang gliding instructor, and that's me. I'm not teaching those things. I said, they're dangerous. They're stupid. They have no performance. And they all look – and they're all flurro.
I'm not flying one of those. No. No. And so anyway, he goes, so he says, okay. So about a week later, he comes back and he says, I want you to learn to play paragliding so you can teach, because we need to broaden the scope of the shop. We need to teach paragliding because it was a Shandell hang gliding.
And the two guys, actually, Actually, I think Jeff might even still be in the business of paragliding, but I remember that airtime hang gliding, which was the opposition to Shandell, which is where I first went to try and learn to hang glide, was owned by two guys, Jeff and Kelly. Kelly actually killed himself on the cliffs in front of Funston on a paraglide. Interestingly, he didn't die crashing the paraglide. What he did is he landed, slope landed, because he was thinking out in one go in the ocean, slope landed. He was walking along the edge of the cliffs, flipped and hit his head on a rock and killed him.
Oh, my God. How was that? How unlucky was that? Anyway, but they were getting in. That shot was getting into teaching paragliding, and Andy goes, we've got to teach paragliding. I want you to learn to paraglide. I said, no. I said, no, you can find someone else to teach paragliding. No, I'm not going to do it. So eventually he came back to me like about three weeks later. He said, okay, if you don't learn to paraglide, I don't want you working for me anymore because I need someone who can paraglide as well as hang glide. And I go, because I was so obsessed with hang gliding, and it was such a beautiful thing, and I was meeting some really cool people, teaching people how to fly, and it was just, you know, I was flying. I really, really wanted to stay in the business of hang gliding.
And if that meant I had to learn to paraglide, then okay, I'll do it. so anyway are you still at this point are
You still doing signs and all that? Are you just making your living from instructing I
Am still doing science, I'm still doing side, yet I'm still so. What I'll be doing, I'd be doing is I'll be down mostly. I started the the most things, I was painting with the chancellor of boats, right? And so down on the in, in the San Francisco Bay, and I'd be, I'd be sitting there on the, on the boat, you know, painting away. I look up and I'd see the sky started looking good, and I'm going see, I've got, I've just washed my brushes out and off. I'd go, you know, so working for yourself, I could do that stuff. So I spent a lot of time, I was, I was so teaching on the weekends, I was flying anytime I was flyable, and I would, I was making some, the making money painting signs, if I wasn't flying. Would you say that was that, you know, would
You say your jam back then, so this is, I'm guessing, it's like '92, '93, is that right? Yeah,
yeah no yeah Yeah, 91, 90, it would have been the early 90s. Yeah, 90, 91.
Would you say your jam back then was teaching? Was it XC? Was it acro? Was it, what was your?
No, it was, because I was still so new to the sport, it was like a whole learning invention. Like it was, I was still learning so much. Like I was, you know, I idolized people like Larry Tudor, Like, um, Tim Lee, um, who else? There was the guy I was just talking about, uh, Eric Beckman, who was the originator. He, he was the main test pilot for the Swift, yeah.
the green. He wrote the book, right? Oh, this book's amazing; it's so funny.
Yeah, yeah, and so there was all these, all these pilots who were just the legends of hang gliding back in those days, and I was just trying to—I was, you know, like there was so many people and so many things to do that I just, I just wanted to get into everything, right? So anyway, I was, um, so, so, um, so Andy goes, "I find." So I finally capitulated, and I go, okay, I'll learn how to paraglide if that's going to keep me the job, right? So because I probably wasn't getting paid a lot of money by Andy, I was just, you know, but I was in it for the love, which is what most people were doing back in those days, more the love thing, you know?
So anyway, so Andy goes, okay, so this was sort of like a funny thing. So Andy goes, okay, I'll teach you how to paraglide. I said, good. Okay, so we said – because the shop at Pacifica there was about probably a mile and a half from Westlake, from the dumps. He says, what we'll do is we'll take the car down to the dumps. I'll show you a few things, and then I'll have to come home because I've got to come back to the shop to do some more work, and I'll leave you there, right, with the paraglider. So, so I take—we take the two cars. He jumped his car, I'll jump in my car. Now, normally when we go, when I go hang gliding teaching, I spend like a half an hour loading hang glides on the roof of the car, loading hearts in the back of the car, tiny for the non, putting all the radios, harnesses, the wheels, everything like this.
So we're going to go down to West Lake and have a go at this paraglider thing. So Andy gets this little bag, a little like a little backpack, throws on his back, back, puts a helmet on the top, and we just walk to the car, hop in the car, and then we go, and we park, and we just eat a little bag out of the car, and we walk down the beach. Like, that's it. It's a tiny little bag. And I went, well, this is, that just, that confirms me it's a joke, you know, like, because an aeroplane's going to be big. Like, an aeroplane's going to be big. You don't just, like, have a little bag. You can't fly a bag. So anyway, so we go, we get to the top of the sort of sandy, grassy slope, and normally Normally when I get to teach in the paragliders, in the hang gliders, you'd spend another like at least an hour setting all the hang gliders up, pulling them out, opening it up, batons in here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
He gets his bag out of the car. He puts it on the ground, opens it up like a minute and a half. He's got the thing open. He's in the harness. He runs down the hill. And he says, there you go. And so he shows me. So this is the old inflation technique. It's a bit of breeze. This is like an afternoon. He grabs the two front. So he's got the, you know, doing reverse inflation, he's got the right hand, right hand to the brake that goes to the right side, which is when you're flying the left side, a left hand, so not cross brakes, so brakes that are, you know, right, right, left, left. So he inflated the glider, bring it up over his head, let go of the brakes, turn around, grab the brakes again and run down the hill. He said, that's how you do it. And so he does it twice for me. And he comes up and he gets out of the harness and he goes, Have a go, I said.
That looks pretty easy, so I have a bit of a go. Get the canopy up, turn around, run down the hill, and I just—I mean, left the ground just by this. Yeah, at this stage, I was a pretty experienced hang glider pilot. I'd, you know, at that by that stage, I'd flown the Owens, I'd flown all through, you know, Telluride, that sort of stuff. So I sort of—I was pretty comfortable flying
But this thing was just a, just a joke. It was like, I didn't hardly even left the grass. I was just running down the side of the hill, but I did one run. Come out, he said, "That looks good. I'll see you later." So he turns me and walks off to his car and, and just leaves me with a glider, with a power glider. He's given me like five minutes of instruction and he says, "See you, see you back at the shop when you finished." So what
You mean that's not how you do it now?
There you go, here's your P2. Nice job. That's right, yeah. Just give me, just, just, just load my, load my wallet up and you can, I'll just give you the last up. You go, just do it, just do it. So, so anyway, within, I reckon within half an hour, I've got the glider in a complete mess. I've walked through the lines, I've got the thing over my head, I've just got it's complete shambles, right? I've got it looks like one of those abstract sculptures, you know, like just like all this shit and lines everywhere. I have no idea, no idea what to do. So and I'm, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm just trying, want to think why I did this. I think it was one of those early heart, like I think, um, ITV used to make them where the glider and the harness were one unit, so they weren't, you, you couldn't disconnect your life in the harness.
The, the risers were part of the harness because what they used to have back in the old days, they had the thing called a speed seat. You've ever seen the speed seat? so speed seat was where you had on the harness so nowadays you have three risers come to a carabiner you know, like here. But these three risers came straight down to the bottom of the seat, so the front riser went to the front of the seat, the back riser. Exactly. So when you want to go fast, you'd lean forward, and when you want to go slower, you'd lean back. That's the trim of the glider, right? And I think this was one because I remember that it was such a mess, and I couldn't figure out how to take the harness off the glider, and I couldn't figure out how to get the harness through the lines. Obviously now it would be much easier if I knew then what I know now, But so I started undoing the quick links between the between the rise and the lines.
I started undoing all the picnic like this, and then I got in this mess where I had those lines everywhere and I went, "Oh, this is not, this is not working." So I just, I stuffed the glider in the little bag like this and put the harness on top of it, and I put it on my back and I'm walking back like the the, you know, probably 100 meters back to the car and I'm and and I got to thinking I, and I thought, you know, one thing this isn't, which I thought it was going to be, is easy. I thought it was going to be really easy. And so I went and like, you know, in my life, I'm sort of attracted to difficult, difficult things. And I tend to tend to like having challenges that aren't just easy. So I thought this is pretty interesting.
It's not as easy as I thought. thought, and because I was a, I'd end up in San Francisco as a, having ridden all around North America on a motorbike, I only had a, like, I was more a motorbike rider than a carb driver, and I thought I could put this on the back of a motorbike. So I thought there may be something in this, uh, and Andy really wants to learn how to fly, so yeah, okay, oh, I might have a go. So I went and bought myself my first paraglider was Wills Wing at 125. Now, if you, if you want to do a search on that one, it was actually, it was Wills, so Wills Wing were a, were a hang glider man. They still are a hang glider manufacturer in, in California, and they license, they, they built, um, uh, Pro Design under license.
So there was a, the, at was like a Pro, it was a equivalent of a Pro Design something thing or other, and they were an absolute shit box, but they were still, you know, that. And so I bought this thing, and what I would do is when I went to teach hang on in the down at down the coast I'll try the paraglide in the back and on the way back home. When I sent all the students off and they all went home, I would just... there was a couple of beaches down there and I just play around the beaches with the paraglider. And so my, my official learning, my official learning experience in a paraglide was five minutes of instruction from Andy Whitehill at the dumps in 99 in 1991. That was it, and the rest of it was in the... we taught it, we call it "suck it, suck it and see." So it's just like I would just end up like, I would go, "No, that didn't work." Like, I get dragged over hill, some I get blown over some hills.
I was just like thrown out of the back of, like, lucky I didn't hurt myself, but I, like, I got caught out because I was so used to the hang glider where hang was a whole different kettle fish, you know? Like, it's, you can, you don't, you don't, you're not inflating the canopy, so you've got this wing that does produce no drag when you walk to launch. You're not going to get dragged backwards by the, by inflation of the wing, you just, you can keep it in really good control and just take off. And, um, and so I kept thinking the paraglider sort of like that, and I would try and take off in really strong winds and almost get, you know, I get dragged over hills and three bushes or anything like that, but I kept... but so what happened is I, I kept what they, you know, there were people with that were developing really good, um, techniques, that techniques, because paragliders were developing pretty fast, right?
And people were, there were some really amazingly good European pilots who were developing skills based on the new style of gliders, and I would just watch these people and see, "Now that, that's a really good looking technique." That does take, that doesn't look very good. That, that one's sort of okay, we could probably get that one to modify a bit. So I end up just, just getting, um, just adopting heaps of different techniques from different people, and that's the way I learned it. Wasn't, I didn't, and so probably to my, you know, I see it now as to my benefit was that I wasn't taught how to fly, and so I wasn't indoctrinated and saying, "This is, is the way you do it." Like, because if you go to school now, yeah, a lot of schools, yeah, it's like open, like open source, open source learning the paraglide, so.
But you know, you go to school even like now, when, when people come to me, I go, "This is the way you do it," because I've been doing it long enough and I sort of know what works and what doesn't work, so we do it like this, uh, but, but when I, and so if anyone learns with me, they tend to have my style. Yeah, that's like, and people when, when people learn with me, they sort of – I've got some very characteristic sort of very identifiable ways that people do things that they've learned with me. And so people can actually see that someone's learned with me anywhere around Australia. They'll go, oh, you learned with Phil Hystek because you just got that way of doing something. But I didn't have that. I didn't have the benefit of that because no one really knew what they were doing. Back in the early 90s, no one really knew what they were doing in paragliding anyway.
One, so I was just, you know, it was all, it was really, it was a suck it and see and try and work out whether this worked and that didn't work and, you know, you just gotta be lucky that ones that didn't work didn't kill you and the ones that did work, you know, you gave you a really good time. So, you know, so when did you go back? So, so that was the long, that's the long story about the fact that I, that I was actually forced to learn to fly paragliders and I've been running a, my only form of of income for the last 25 years has been teaching paragliding. Really, I've only taught that's, yeah, that's my only form of income is teaching. So I've gone from not wanting to fly paragliding at all to being absolutely obsessed with paragliding and, you know, like, and nowadays I do a lot of, a lot of different stuff in paragliding, you know, like I'm, you know, I don't think the one thing I don't do a lot of in paragliding is, um, is acro.
I'm not a, I'm not a real high G person. I don't, I do, you know, I'd like to do three big wingers, that sort of stuff, but and look, my little mini wing and that sort of stuff, but I don't, I don't, I'm not into doing helicos or, you know, or misty flips or, you know, infinities and that sort of stuff. I just, I'm just not that kind of person. I'd like to keep the wing above my head rather than underneath. What do you think when you talked about, yeah, when you talked about, um, when I was in hangline and whether I went trying to – whether I – what sort of discipline I was sort of heading towards. It was mostly XC and comp flying. But I did – I actually became very good friends with John Heine. Very,
very good friends with John Heine.
And, yeah, there's a few stories. I won't talk on this podcast about how good John is probably, isn't it? but um, but have you ever—you would have, you would have interviewed John Hiney at some stage. I will
Of course, but John Hiney was, he
was by far the... Him and Mitch, him and Mitch were the two top acro pilots in Hong Kong. Yeah, they were. They were the top aerobatic Hong Kong pilots, John, John and Mitch were like vine all the time for the... for the number one slot and um, and so I became... I I wasn't – I never really met Mitch McAleer, although it's interesting one time when we did – we had the manufacturer's league meet, right?
I don't know if I should keep talking because I guess you're going to waste up all your time.
So we went – so we had the – this is back in the hang gliding days. We had the manufacturer's league meet in Telluride, right? Or just – it was a fly-in, I think. It might not have been the manufacturer's league meet. This would be something fly-in there, right? and you're flown Telluride? No, I've
Been there a bunch; I've never flown it.
Incredibly, okay? So, so there's so in in Telluride, there's there's the main launch, which is over 12,000 feet, I think. The town's at 10,000 feet, so it's 3do you're high up, you're thin air, that sort of stuff. And um, most people who fly there, um, will end up hypoxic to some some degree because, you know, most people, they'll just rock up to Telluride and they're going to acclimatize and straight up to 18,000 feet and whatever. And so in Telluride, they've got two landing fields, right, two main landing fields. They've got the Leisure LZ, which is a big cow field on the outside of town, and they've got the Seizure LZ, which is a baseball diamond in the middle of town, right?
Leisure and Seizure. Right in the middle. That's Leisure and Seizure LZ. z, so anyway, I went to this thing. This must have been when I was, I only mean, I think I've been flying for nine months, not not even a year, and I've gone to this thing with my, with my GTO World GTR World Beta hang glider thing. You know, I thought I was a legend, but I was still only a, I was only an intermediate hang glider pilot, right? And I rock up there and they give us the run, you, you know, they read the riot act, right? So you're saying, you know, you can't do this, you can't do that, because, you know, it's a pretty big place, you know, like you're in the middle of the Rockies, you know, it's really, it's big, strong thermals, that sort of stuff. They say, so for you, dude, because you're a new pilot, you can't fly, you've got to launch before 10 o'clock, right?
And you can't land in the seizure LZ. And I went, so that's what you think. So that's what you... so, so, so, the first thing I decided to do is, I was gonna, I was gonna fly in the middle of the day. No, no, no drama about that. I was gonna, I was gonna go up there and I was gonna take off right before the the cutoff time and I was gonna stay up as long as I could, right? So anyway, I've taken off and I just remember this actually classic thing. I've gone up there and it was actually on top of the hill and there's myself and a few other people said, and Mitch McAleer was up there, right? And we sort of took off together. We're flying around and just cruising around. And this is the time where you wish you had back in that, you know, like never had GoPro, didn't have anything back in those days.
But the time you wish you had a GoPro, because I'm, so I'm family up above Telluride, above the top of the mountain. And I'm probably at about 16 grand or something like that. And I'm looking around trying to think, you know, Mitch was in the same gang with me, you know, in the same family. Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? I looked to the side, you can just imagine in your hang glider looking over to the east, and you've got the rocky mounds and everything, and here comes Mitch. He's done this loop and he's right beside me, upside down, like, right, he's in the top part of a loop, he's straight up like I'm hanging on trying to slam like this, and Mitch has done this big dive, he's come out of the top and he's straight upside down right beside me. And if only he'd had a camera, as the most amazing shot of the rocky mounds and Mitch making it upside down in the hang glider like right there, and I went, "What an amazing, amazing place to be, you know?" So anyway, what a legend, too.
I mean, the stories about what he would do in those kind of situations are epic. Oh, he's just, he's actually crazy. So anyway, um, towards the end of the day, we're getting towards the end of the stay there at Taylor Ride, and um, and I'd been like, I'm, I kept saying, "I'm gonna land the seizure, I'm gonna going to land the seizure, I'm going to land, I'm before this finished, I'm landing the seizure LZ." So, so every afternoon I'd go up there and I'd be watching people land, watching people land, and now the, the seizure LZ is right up against the side of the mountain, right? So you've got the mountain coming straight down, um, and I think that side, I think that side of the mountain faces, faces north, so it's, it's, it gets like, it gets the like, it's quite cold there in the afternoons, and so, so when people come in to land, they would come in because the wind by that stage would be katabatic.
And so you'd come in over a little creek, there's a little creek bed and into the C0LZ, into the baseball diamond. And because you're coming into a katabatic wind that's coming down the hill, you've got a headwind and you just come in and land, right? So you can come over the town because the town's a bit lower than the baseball diamond, Over the town and just like almost laying on like a like a shelf like a little aircraft carrier, so I've been watching people all day, all week, watching them land, watching them land, watching land, picking up skills, tips where they were setting up, that sort of stuff, had it all nailed. Anyway, so the last day I'm thinking, I'm gonna land in the seizure, I'm gonna land the seizure. So we drive up the hill and we get to the launch there, and of course what happens is a big thunderstorm setting up out to the to the east.
So I'm standing there and I was watching this storm coming, sort of heading in towards us, and I really wanted to fly. I really, really, really like, there was my, I was obsessed that I was going to land in the in the baseball diamond, right? So, so I'm standing there on launch and the storm's getting closer and closer and the, you know, like the calm before the storm, there's no, no wind at all, and I didn't even like, you know, there's a storm out there's still like probably, I don't know, maybe 10 miles away, just over the top of the mountains, right? But I'm focused, I'm going to land, I'm going to take off here. And of course, on on um um, I'll tell you, right there you've got this ridge that where you launch from, this ridge that go down towards the town, right?
And if you go to the east when you take off, go the east, you're going out over town; you go to the west, you go out towards the leisure lz, right? And you have to make a choice. Well, you can, you can launch from the east and still get around the leisure, but you, but it's a little bit more of a squeaky glide, right? So we're, so I'm standing there on the launch and there's no wind at all, but I knew if I want to land the season, I've got to go off the east side. So I'm standing there and and the storm is getting closer and closer And this guy, the launch marshal, goes, he says, "I'm going to close the launch in five minutes," and there was no wind, and we're 12,000 feet, right? 12,000 feet in the hang glider. And you know, you really need a bit of wind to take off in the hang glider at that altitude, the tube. So I'm standing, so I'm standing, and um, can you hear that?
What
Is what is that?
It, that that bird, that bird is an annoying. It's a very beautiful, it's called a butcher bird, and it sits, and when it rains—it's raining here right now—when it rains, it sits out. I've got a harness hanger outside my shop here, and it sits on top of the harness hanger and sings the most, most amazingly beautiful, uh, call, but very loud, very loud, and very annoying. I'm on the phone, I think, right outside. It's just shoo it away because it's just beautiful. Sometimes actually comes inside shop this. It's a little black and white bird, looks like, it looks like a magpie, like they're beautiful, but they're quite aggressive. They eat
oh it's a
beautiful it's it they have the most they have the most melodic sound them and the magpies have the most melodic sounds of any birds in the world, I think, that really have the most beautiful vocal modes. Anyway, that's something else. So here we go. We're back on 12,000 feet on the top of the mountain, on the top of the mountain, about to take off, right? And the guy goes, I'm starting the launch in five minutes. I'm waiting. I want wind. I want wind. And he's counted down. He says, three minutes, two minutes, one minute. And he says, launch close. And I just took the pick the glider and ran like stink. I just ran as hard as I could down the hill, down the hill. And there's a road, the access roads are probably about maybe 30, 40 yards down the hill.
And I ran down and dove over the road and almost hit the ground again, running down the hill. By this stage, I was pretty good at launching hang gliders, but I had to run so fast, so fast. So anyway, I've got off the hill and I'm flying out And I'm flying out towards the town, and I'm going, leisure, seizure, leisure, seizure. Like, you know, you have the idea you're going to land in the hard landing field, but they said you're not allowed to do it. You're not allowed to do it, and I'm going to do it. But there's a storm, and am I good enough, and am I going to kill myself, and I'm going to look really bad with all the people there, and I'm going to – I'm disobeying their rules. Well, anyway, I'm flying out towards the landing field, I'm flying.
It was a landing field and, um, and then I finally, I go
I'll do the seizure, so at this point here, there was no going back. I had to—you get the point—I have to land in the middle of town. I'm landing in the middle of town. I'm gonna—I'm gonna be landing the top on the top of the supermarket. I'm gonna be landing somewhere. So anyway, I'm flying out towards the landing field and then actually, so this—so on this flight, I was using this new hang glider I bought after I'd—after I was flying the—after I destroyed my other hang glider at Lakeview, I'd bought this new hang glider. It was called a, um, a seed wing sensor, and it had this—it had the leading edge material was this very special material, material that was super, super smooth, like it was like glass.
And what would happen is when you went flew in the rain, the glass—the—the raindrops would beat up on the leading edge and make the thing stall at a much higher speed, a much higher airspeed. Like, what you're better off to have on the leading edge is like ripple stuff, a little bit like vortex generators on an airplane. They have like—they—it's like, like golf balls have little ripples on them to make the—to keep the—the airflow connected to the— it makes the— it breaks up the lamina flow a little bit and makes a little bit of turbulence on the top. So this glider was very renowned for hating being flown in the rain, right? So – and it would just – even at trim speed, like you're flying at trim, it's just on a stall all the time. So it'd keep flying really, really fast. So I'm flying out around the town thinking now, okay, I've got the landing field all sorted.
I'm just going to go in and I'm going to land, right? So I'm flying around, and suddenly it starts raining on me. And I'm flying over Telluride at 11,000 feet in a glider that wants to stall at about 45 mile an hour.
And so I'm thinking, okay, I've got to suss, got to suss. Then I realize that this storm is pushing a gust front up the valley towards the town rather than the catabatic coming down the hill. So now rather than having – so the landing that I'd worked out for the last week is pretty blown out of the water. Now I've got to approach from the side of the hill. And the landing field, the baseball dome, is really small and right against the side of a tree-covered – it's a pine tree-covered mountain, right? And I'm going around and thinking, you know, like at that point there, you have to take control of the situation because no one's going to help you.
Like no one – you're just there, and you've made the decision, and you can't do anything about it. You just, you like, you're in the middle of the ocean by yourself in the canoe, and that's it, and you just got to go. What am I going to do? I'm going to paddle. So I so, and there's this other guy, so, and I just end up in the landing place with some other dude as well, and I'm thinking, that's all I need is someone else. And we're both in the same altitude, and we got this tiny little field, and we can't extend our lines at all. And so anyway, this and, and it's getting quite heavy rain. And so I was smart enough to go right in deep against the side of the hill, A big cranking turn against the side of the hill with wind tip like right almost on the baseball diamond with a diving turn back into what wind there was now, because the wind had backed off a little bit.
And I was coming across the baseball diamond. This other guy comes screaming from my left, plowed into the ground in the baseball diamond and just wiped his gliders, skidded across on this wet grass, right across in front of me as I'm coming in, I'm coming in, setting up, trying to be all like really, really, really calm. And this guy just wipes out across the field in front of me, you know. And so then, and so, but I did this most amazing sort of like, I just land and I flared the glider and I just dropped the wingtip a little bit and I was so happy that I got to land the seizure. You know, and I'm carrying my glider back over, and who should be standing at the, uh, the grandstand right next to the grandstand? Because, you know, baseball dimes got the grandstand there.
You have to walk the glider out. John Heine stand there, and he goes, "Not bad." He just says, he just says, "Not bad." And like, I, I wasn't, I was at that stage, I wasn't really good friend of John's, I just, but I just, John was like an idol to me, you know? And he was like the most amazing acro pilot, and he goes, "Not bad." And I went, "Wow," like, not only have I landed the seizure, I've ate, and I've flown this bloody sensor through all the rain, but John Heinies told me that I'm not bad. I think, "Wow," like, I, I have, I have made it now, I really am. And then, and then, and then just the last, the last icing on the cake, we had this like a – it was a prize-giving thing, you know, like after this competition sort of thing, Bob, you know.
And so they gave me the Rookie of the Year award, right? Ah, nice. Because they – yeah. And so I walked out. I had this – I was feeling chuffed, you know, and I walked out and I was standing next to the front door of the room where we're having the prize-giving and Mitch Mackley walks out and he goes, he goes, nine months. I said, yeah. And she says, wow. And just turns around and walks off. He just goes, wow, and then walks off. And I went, well, I don't know how to take that. But I know John Hiney said pretty good. And Mitch McAleer goes, well, wow. And I thought, well, yeah, maybe I'm pretty good. I don't know.
but then dangerous words, isn't it? Uh, but but I proceeded to add to to to get myself in a lot of shitty places after that, because probably because I thought I was pretty damn good, um, and end up like getting, yeah, getting, getting myself. I was very lucky that I was, after that, I was pretty lucky to survive, um, what I was doing, because I was, I wasn't being really stupid, but I was flying Flying in places that were really radical for my skill level, I still didn't know enough about the atmosphere, you know, which is what's really important when you're flying a paraglider or a hang glider is to know more about the air than it is about how to fly the glider. Yeah, sure. You know, that's the most important thing is understanding the atmosphere. That's what I say to all my students is that the number one skill you need to develop in paragliding is to understand where you want to be and where you don't want to be, and that's how to understand what the air's doing and what the air's going to do.
question
Totally left field here, but before we started talking, you talked—you, you said that you actually instructed, and I remember Nick telling me about this, but you instructed Nick Neynens and you went to—you went to beer together back when he was a total newbie flying the Bolero. Yes, what makes—yes, I would imagine Nick was a terrific student. You know, we went on to see all his incredible accolades and flying all over the world, and all of his bivy expeditions and incredible exploits, and you know, uh, what makes—let me try to rephrase this. You know, you have taught a lot of people for 30-something years; you've taught everybody. I
know, I've taught actually a lot of—a lot of people have become really good at flying. I know, if you've ever, yeah, I think I don't know if you haven't interviewed Wally. Yeah, Wally was on the show about, yeah, he's
amazing pilot
he was my he was one he was my student as well he was one of my students um so what you know Wally is a little different than Nick. Wally's very organized. Wally's an amazing pilot.
I admire him so much for how he's ability to organize things and to be so good at flying but so good at teaching and so good at everything. He's amazing. He's a really good mate of mine too. but with Nick, with Nick, Nick, um, he, the thing that I really, I really learned from, because I did, I've done quite a few vulvas with him. We did, we did quite an amazing, um, few days down in Tasmania, uh, probably three years ago, uh, just him and Nick and myself. We went down there and did some vulva through the, through the ranges down there in southwest Tasmania, in absolute tiger country, like crazy stuff. But that's, that's for another time. But, um, and then I did, I did a vibe with him.
In um, in Pakistan, um, just a really nice one up towards um, Spantic, um, and so the thing that, that really, uh, that that I learned from Nick was Nick's amazing ability to not get stressed in stressful situations, right? That's what made him, that's what made Nick the pilot he, he is, um, because what he would do, you know, so what most people do is they have a plan A, and they have a sort of plan B in the back of their mind. They go, well, that doesn't work. Nick would always have a plan B that was just as, just as, just, just as organized as the plan A. But the thing, what's happened, what happens too, is that sometimes when it goes from plan A, plan B, if A is not going to work, plan B is gonna, it has to work.
If that goes pear-shaped, because the conditions change completely, most people lose their shit, yeah? Most people just, they go, oh, like suddenly the stress comes up and you don't think straight and you start making really, really bad mistakes, right? The one thing Nick always did is he was able to just think completely clearly about the, how about the next step, to not get himself into trouble, yeah? And, and because, you know, with, with flying, with flying, it's so, it's so much a mental game, right? It's, it's an amazing mental game, and if you don't, and, and most people can fly in, in most, in, in a lot of conditions, if, if they keep their mind on the job, right?
And the thing with Nick is that even if things were going wrong, he was able to keep himself completely focused and work out a plan, like work out a plan. And so there were big times when I was flying with him and I'd go, what are you doing that for, dude? Like, what are you – why are you going over there? But he'd go over there and it'd work out because I would get really stressed. So I remember we were in Pakistan doing a vol biv, and we were flying back towards Karanabad, which is where we were staying, and after we'd done the vol biv that night, the night before, and I sort of misread the valley. There was some big, steep gorge we had to fly down to get out of this valley,
and Nick ended up really low in this valley getting trashed. I happened to get a good climb, and I was way up on top of the mountains, I was looking down and thinking, what's he going to do, what's he going to do? So I didn't want to let him, you know, I didn't want to leave, get him, I didn't want him to leave me behind. So I just, you know, even though he's down low, I pushed ahead, I pushed out and sort of got down to where he was. But we both got stuck in this quite strong valley wind. And I was looking and I thought there's just a rocky, raw rocky gorge down below, you know, this glaciated river, just massive big boulders and sort of stuff. There was a landing field that we could have taken further back down the valley and landed, but it was still big boulders. And I had this idea. I said, I'm going to push down the valley and try and get out through the end of this gorge to a big open river flat.
And Nick goes, that's not going to work. He said, the wind's too strong. He said, we're just going to land here on the side. Like this scree slope was so steep that when you stood on it, you just couldn't even stand it. You slide down the steep, down the scree slope. But to him, it was a landing field. And I didn't even look at it as a landing field. I was getting stressed because I was, you know, it wasn't what I thought was going to happen because I, you know, like the conditions weren't as I thought they were going to be. But Nick goes, Nick calmly goes, no, we're just going to land over here. And we just went and landed on the side of this scree slope, sort of slid down to the little road at the bottom and packed up and walked out. And that's the sort of thing when you fly with Nick, he would just, he would always have another plan. Yeah. Always. And he would never get stressed.
And very, um, totally independent, totally self-sufficient. He would, he would never need anyone to do anything for him. Yeah, like as far as, as far as you know, uh, like he would be happy to go. Like, when I first taught him, the first thing he did is went back to New Zealand with his little Bolero and started flying in, in up, you know, doing hike and fly and trying to evolve up in the mountains. And he'd only been flying for like a month and two months, he'd come, come back to me. He says, "How come I go backwards in valleys?" And I go, "Maybe you guys may go, the wind to be too strong for your Bolero." Oh, okay. Yeah.
Amazing style didn't faze him at all. I think he—he was the first one that that I had I heard say, I mean, we all think this, you know, when you're talking about plan B, plan C, that kind of thing. But his—his whole thing for, you know, when it gets rowdy, you're stressed, he's got kind of a series of things. One is just turn your varial off, you know, that—that reduces a lot of stress because it's making all these crazy noises, you know, screaming thermals and massive sink. And well, just turn that off. And then the second thing was, you know, if it's too—if it's gnarly where you are, go still fly somebody else somewhere else, you know, which in other—in other words, it may not be really great to land because the valley winds are cranking or you're like—you're saying you're in a storm, that kind of thing. Well, just go to another valley, you know, fly somewhere else.
It's going to be better somewhere else, yeah.
No, he is, he's, he's amazingly centered when it comes to stressful situations. Yeah, and um, you know, I, I remember like, uh, we went in in Tassie and, uh, I won't tell you all this whole story, but I ended up having to get—I got helicoptered out off the mountain. I got stuck in an impenetrable, inescapable scrub. I was walking. But we were flying together. We were heading towards over these mountains towards another range, and I ended up just making a wrong decision. I thought I'd just land and relaunch when they got better because the thermals weren't as good as we thought they were going to be. And I ended up just landing in the totally wrong place because I thought that's what Nick would do. Nick goes, no.
He just kept flying. He went over the mountain, over down this valley, got a climb and went over to another mountain about five miles away and just ended up over there and ended up landing there, walking up the hill and taking off. And because he went to a hill that he could see it was a better proposition for a thermal, even if he got over there low. But I just thought, well, I'll just land here because I'll just wait. I'll wait it out here. But he doesn't think that it doesn't get in that stressful situation. He would just go, well, I can see a hill over there. It's going to work. Like, it's not—it's not that I don't, and it's not that I don't know that that was going to work; it's that when it gets stressful, um, I, I don't think of all the options. I don't, I don't allow my head to think all those, all the options, um, but Nick had that ability to do that and
I don't know. I mean, I mean in your experience teaching all these people, all these years, I mean that doesn't seem necessarily like something someone can learn, you know? That's just who Nick is, you know? I mean, that's—that, that's not
By, by a long shot, it's—it's like, you can, you can have all the, uh, skill in the world. You know, the interesting thing is that, you know, I don't think Nick wouldn't mind me saying this, but you know, there, Nick isn't the best, the best part in the world, but what makes him vastly better than the majority of pilots in the world is his ability, A, to fly the glider. He flies it pretty damn well. But his ability to think clearly in stressful situations. That is, you know, and you've just, you know, you watch what he's done since he had his accident and broke his back. He's just completely calm and accepting of where he is, what he's doing, and moves on and just does something. He doesn't dwell on things that are possibly going to hold him back.
He just goes, "Well, there's an option, there's another, there's an opportunity there. I'm just going to take that," you know? And that's—that's incredibly inspirational when you see people like that. Like, that does, you know, he inspires me and inspires a lot of people in the world, you know? Nick, he's—he's an amazing man. Yeah, yeah, truly. Um...
Phil, another thing, I, I know you're, I know you're super into hike and fly. Craig was telling me you're, you're breaking all these records. You're 65 and you're just chasing it super hard. I can tell, the way you talk, you've got an insane amount on an energy, um, but at the same time, you know, all these years of teaching and you came up through the sport when the carnage was massive, and then I don't know, is it backed off? Is it worse? But, but, uh, you know, you're, you've seen a lot, a lot of good, a lot of bad, uh, how have you maintained the level that you've got for it? You know, the, the, the passion, the energy, the, the stoke, well
Yeah, well, I suppose the good thing nowadays is that there are a lot of, there are a lot of facets to fly, a lot of offshoots to paraglide. You can do, like, back in the old days, you just not enough top of the arm, just glide in the bottom, and got pretty boring after a while. Um, but you know, now you can do, you know, you can do hike and fly, vol bid, acro, speed wing, mini wing, XC, you can do so many different things. And you know, I, I do have a bit of a, I, I, some people say I've got ADHD. I don't, I don't know, I don't think I do, but I do have, I do tend to go from one, one thing to another thing pretty quickly. Um, but you know, like, so what I do now, like, I've, I was a comp pilot for quite a while. I flew a lot of comps, um, never, never won.
Uh, I was never Australian champion because I'm just not, I don't have the mindset to be, to be a champion. XC competition pilot, because I'm just not... anyone who knows me, I'm not organized at all with instrumentation. Like, instruments and me just don't mix at all. It's okay, I have no idea. Like, I'll get on... I'll get on launch in a comp and I'll go, "How do I even turn the barrier on?" You know, and I'd have... no, I'd back in the old days when you have to enter your task, you route manually on the... on the fly master. I have no idea what to do nowadays. It's great, just go to QR code, scan the cab, bingo, off, off you go. off you fly. So I sort of lost a bit of touch with comp flying, but I've got myself back into comp flying now. I've got myself a Boom 12, and I've been flying that.
I did pretty well last year in the Australian Nationals and that. Flew it over New Zealand, come third in New Zealand last year in their Nationals on the Boom 12. So I'm really – I love pushing myself to extremes, um, to doing things like, you know, like flying the Boom 12, it's a pretty high and wider, so I'm sort of, you know, I'm using that as a bit of a challenge. But when it like, I love one of my passions, hike and fly. Um, so this year I've done 171,000 meters vertical this year, in since the beginning of the the year, 171,000.
Holy shit, dude, are
You kidding? You got 171,000 meters. You're doing a thousand meters almost every day, yeah?
Well, well, I'm some days I'll do 2,000, okay? I'll do 2,000 some days, okay? Um, but that's like pretty good. Um, yeah, yeah. So I don't know, I, I, and so the thing is, so, interestingly – Are you going to sign up for the X-Alps
next year?
No, no. So, interestingly – so, I wish – there's a couple of things I wouldn't do. The reason I couldn't do the X-Alps, I can't run because I actually have a fused ankle. So, one of my ankles is fused for a motorbike. I had a motorbike. I got hit by a car when I was 15 on a motorbike, and it smashed my leg up really bad. So, my ankle has actually been fused. But it got fused. My ankle was fused between the tib and fib and the talisman, so it's your main ankle, so I can't bend my foot up and down. So I can roll it side to side with the lower joint, but I can't put it up. Until about four years ago, my ankle was getting progressively more and more arthritic because I broke my ankle in 1975, 75, and by 2000 and 2019, 18, my ankle was really arthritic, like so bad, and I couldn't walk more than—I couldn't walk more than 50 meters without being in severe pain.
I was—I was taking painkillers every day, three or four times a day, right? Just continue feeding myself with—with Panadol and whatever. And um, the reason I—I—I didn't, I'd been told by a doctor years ago I'd have my ankle a fuse, but I didn't want to have a fuse because I thought it would stop me from walking, and I could still walk even though I broke painkillers, I could still walk, but only 50 meters or so. So, um, anyway, and and because I thought I had an internal, I thought I had an allergy to to titanium internal titanium, because when I first broke my leg, when I got hit by the car, they put plates and screws in my leg, which all got rejected. My body rejected all the plates and screws; they all end up coming out infected and everything else. So, I thought I had this real fear that if they they put anything in my body, plates or whatever, to fuse my ankle,
my body's going to say, no, I've cut my leg off. So I ended up getting an internal – I found there was only like four places in the world you could get an internal allergy test for titanium, and one of those was in Geneva. So I was over there for – I used to go visit a good mate of mine who lives in Geneva, Patrick Rosa, and he lives just down the road. You know Patrick, he's a really good mate. Yeah, he is. Yeah, he's a, he's a new big mate. Patrick and I are really long time good mates. Um, so anyway, I was saying to his house and I found that the place was just down the road from his house. So I went down there. I was staying there one year, went down there and got the test and they said, "You're completely free, you're completely okay for titanium, pure titanium put in your body, you own that proper at all soon as I." Soon I found that out, I went straight to the surgeon in Australia, said, "Here's my ankle," and even though, um, even
Even though I felt that it would rob me of my ability to walk up hills, I knew that I would be pain-free. So I did it, and then I found out that I could walk up hills without any pain, like no pain. So suddenly I went from not being able 50 meters to walking up hills without any pain at all, and because I use poles, they help me a lot. And so the reason I walk up hills now, the reason I do bob is because I can. man, not because I want to, but if you're denied the ability to do something and suddenly they'll say, well, you can do that now. If this happens, you just do it. You take the ball and run with it. And so I've gone from not being able to walk at all to walking up mountains and I'll walk 1,000 metres up the side of a mountain without even thinking about it.
The good thing about doing hike and fly here is because the mountains are all small, you do get that three or five-minute break between your hikes to fly down and then walk up and fly down, walk up, fly down. So like I'll do, my normal hikes will be – so I've got a flying site in my property here. So I live in a town called Conungra, and I live on 60 acres. My 60 acres go side of the hill, so it's a long, thin block at the top of the mountain. so I walk out my door of my house, walk straight up to my launch site and fly down to my front yard and the hike up is 270 metres high, so I do 270 metres, so I just did this morning I walk up, fly down, walk up, I bundle my glide into a little, into a like 80 litre bag, I just, I fly a little Jim Griffin 14 and I just go up, walk up pretty fast, I'm not, again I can't run I just like, I can run under launch, so I can, I can launch a, I'd fly an 11 meter.
I weigh 90 kilos. I fly 11 meter gin fluid when I'm flying, when I can, when I have the sights to fly it, but normally I just fly 14 griffin here because it gives me a good glide and, um, so I'll walk up, set up, fly down, walk up, set up. So I did this morning, I did three of them. Um, in there's a lot of cloud around, just as rain is coming in, so I got three before it started raining. Yesterday I did, um, I did six off another, another hill that's about 350 meters high, so I did six in the morning of that one, man, I
Just you've taken that ball and run really far with it.
That's amazing. Well, again, and if you can, like, you know, honestly, like, there, I remember this, this, this ex-girlfriend I had. Had this son who was a really nice kid. He was autistic, and so, and so, so he had, you know, he was the same height as me and everything. He had the, like, he was only 17, 18, had the, you know, like perfectly physical, able body. And he wouldn't want to do anything with his body. He'd just sit in front of the TV and play games. And I'm thinking, dude, give me your ankle. Yeah. Give me your ankle. And I'm just thinking. You're wasting it. Yeah. If he was robbed of the ability to walk, I'm sure he, and they'd said, you can walk now, then you would just start walking. Yeah. Because you just go, well, I've been given that opportunity to start doing it, and so that's why, like, you know, even though I've been told by a surgeon she'll be knee replaced because my knee's pretty stuffed from using it from, you know, when my ankle was really bad, the other knee's got stuff, but I don't want to stop because if you stop, you can't start again.
And because you've got given this gift of being able to do things, then why not do it? Yeah, why not do it? But I, I am lucky, you, I'm lucky. I live, I live like, so I can do hiking. I can do like 1,500 meters hiking and flying it might probably without even starting the car. I just walk straight up and fly down. I can, all the sites around here are within five, well, maybe 10 minutes' drive or motorcycle ride from my house, so I can, I can just go to an, you know, if it's east, I go over the back of it to another hill behind my property, and that's only a 10-minute ride on the motorbike, so I'll go over there and I can do, you know, so I don't have to worry about driving from Brisbane down to here, which is like an hour's drive. So I'm sure if I lived in Brisbane, or if I lived an hour away from here, I probably wouldn't do as many hikes, but you know, I'm in a place, I'm in a place where I can do it.
Either I have a body that can do it, and I think, well, why not do it? I
mean that they my wife's a personal trainer, and she has this saying, you know, "If you want to be going upstairs when you're 80, you go upstairs when you're 50." You know, you got to be doing it now. If you're doing it to do it, then you know, you want to dance, you got to dance. I
Do enjoy? I do enjoy the the challenge of keeping up with people, or or beating people of half my age. Oh yeah, I like up the up the hills. I do, I do tend to push it a bit. Everyone knows me as a bit of a mountain goat, so I do push it a little bit. It's not, it's not because I want to beat them; it's just maybe because I just don't want to come second. Oh no, it's not okay.
So, hey, there's, uh, I, I want to ask you a few questions that are, that are shorter, just because my editor at some point, he's gonna say, "Dude, we can't just do a three-hour show." Yeah, exactly. Uh, but you've already—no, no, no, this is awesome, man. But I, I want to know, I want to know a few things. Best place in the world to fly? Because you've been all over the place. When you, when you're, when you're sitting there in Conungra, you know, tomorrow, you want to take off and go somewhere, where would you go? Well,
if, if it was closer, if it was closer and it, yeah, it wasn't such a drag to get there. I love Iceland. Iceland is amazing. Okay, amazing. It's not such, it's a, if you can do XC there, it's amazing for XC, but it's not, it's not, it's definitely not a good, it's not a good XC place, but if you can get XC there, it's great. It just, it's, it's a wild Wild, windswept adventure paradise for coastal soaring, for strong wind stuff with small wings. It's just – no, it's not a speed wing place. It's more of a mini wing place. It's just because the whole place is on no trees. You just look up a hill. You walk up a hill and take off and fly. It's just – it's quite stunning. So I love Iceland. I really, really love it.
I certainly love beer, but if you get the beer and you get the mountains and get out of the back, it was Manali. It's the most amazing playground for doing ball bid. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. I do like – I've just – I spent a little bit of time in South America last year or this year, early this year, in Bolivia, and I'm going to go back to Bolivia there. I found that like I really, really enjoyed that place because it's – Those
are big
mountains too. I love –
There's a lot of big peaks out there.
Big mountains. The Andes are amazing. Amazing, um, I just, you know, I like, I like places that people don't go to. That's, I sort of prefer those places. That's why, you know, not like a lot of people go to Iceland, but they don't go there for flying; they go there just to look around. So, you, when you fly there, there's one there, beer, the same thing when you go to the back, there's not that many people flying at the back of the air. Um, in Bolivia, there's only like, I think there's 20 piles the whole country. Like, it's, it's, it's an amazing place to, to fly them in the volcanoes and get, you know, like launch heights at 4,000 and 5,000-metre altitude, that sort of stuff. It's quite a stunning place.
I certainly, you know, I like flying around Canunga. It's a beautiful area. Flying in my local area has real challenges. You go from small hills to flatlands to back to hills to flatlands again. It's great for triangles. Canunga has a little bit of a problem with sea breeze comes in in the summertime, pretty sort of early, 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and that stops you from getting back here, back to Canunga, because you mostly go west and you have to come back towards the coast to do it at return. But it's got some amazing challenges. It's like, you know, everyone goes to Manila. When they come to Australia, they tend to go to Manila. But, you know, Canunga, the launches aren't very high.
They're not very big launches because, you know, You know, we just try and keep ourselves sort of low key as much as we can. But it's an amazing place for flying, for challenging yourself to fly cross country here. It's really nice. And I do like Corian as well. Corian is a really nice place down just above Bright in Victoria. And they have good comps there. That's a nice place. Okay,
how about this one? Uh, when you look back at your long career of flight and passion and just being in the air all these, all these hours, if you could rewind the clock, go back to that, you know, either late 70s when you first got into hang gliding, or you know, early 90s, you were forced into paragliding. What do you, what, what do you know now that you wish you could have known then? What could, what, what could yourself go back to? you know, your 30-year-old self and go, dude, this is what you need to know? Would you change anything?
Probably not because I guess, well, you know, I suppose because I didn't really hurt myself that bad. I did have a major accident in Bali. That's another epic that I could tell you about. That was – have you ever been to Bali? I have, yeah, many times. Yeah, so I crashed on the Timbus beach really badly, really badly, and ended up six weeks in hospital on the front of the map, breaking the pelvis and sproking the back of the pelvis on Timbus. Oh, God.
So do you want to do a little quick story about that? Yes. That was a bit of an epic. I think I'd just been over to Indo and we'd done the Indonesian Nationals in Java, and we were on our way back to Australia, and I thought I'd just drop in and see a few people. I'd taught them how to fly. They lived in Bali in Kuta, but I taught them in Australia how to fly. And so we come back, this is this is in '95, so there's hardly anyone flying paragliding barley at all. Timber speech, you get timber? There'll be no one flying, right? Yeah, so I um, I was I was spending about three days in in in CUDA, and I didn't find a timber a little bit, just cruising around.
I had a I had an Adele energy. I don't know if you've ever heard of an Adele energy, but they They were one of Mr. Jin's last designs for Adele. Yeah. Anyway, and so I'd heard about this site called Chandi Desa, which is up the coast. So I went up there, got there, no one flying there, found on the side of a hill there was some old terraces, took off, had a beautiful flight there. The last day of my stay in Indo, right, And so I was flying there the day before, and I had to get back to Kuta to get my flight at 11 o'clock that night back to Australia, right?
And I'd rented a little motorbike, and I was at Chandi Das on the motorbike. So that morning, I got on the little motorbike, and I was chuffing back down to Kuta. And I come into Kuta about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, all right? And I was coming in there. And this is a good story about listening to yourself and what you should do and what you shouldn't do. So I'm going on the motorbike and I'm coming towards – and so like I'd come second in the Indonesian nationals, second to – I know Charlie Follet had been a mate of mine at that time.
And I had this paper bag full of rupiahs, Like the amount of money they gave you for winning this, for coming second to top, Was I had this massive bag of money and so I'm coming in and and and so I was that bag had been left at my friend's place in CUDA where I guess I was staying there for a couple of days and I'm riding back into into into CUDA on the motorbike and I'm thinking I've got my glider in back I might go and have a quick flight timbers before I go back to CUDA and I'm thinking I should go and buy my girlfriend some presents with the money I made I think I should go flying I think I should go and back and back and buy some presents maybe I should go flying I'm going towards the point where I've got to do a right hand turn to tutor or go straight to timbers I'm going along going along going along and I'm and it's getting it's getting more and more intense do I go by presence like the airplanes leaving at 11 o'clock like and so so I say and so I made the choice I'm going to to go fly so I ride up the CUDA I mean up to timbers and I ride the little motorbike across the dirt to timbers no one there of course this is 95 no one flying perfect on like a train right so I get me and and by the size I'm you know I've been teaching for five for four years three years that was I was you know I was reasonably skilled at flying a paraglider um so I take off from from timbers there and I'm going left along the ridge there the wind was a little bit crossed from the left right so I'm pushing along the left and yeah when you go the left you go along and the ridge cuts around a little bit there's a bit more of a bowl that faces more into that in that left wind right yeah so I'm going along there and I'm and it's a little temple up there and I'm cruising around by myself having a fat old time right cruising around enjoying it and I'm looking at my watch I'm thinking yeah I really shouldn't eat I need to go back I really do need to go and land and go back to to to Kudo so this is the last day of my last second of my last flight of the last day of my of the the comp where it always is money I'd have all these really good flights right and I'm flying and I'm flying and I saw I flying back towards the the launch and I'm going to top land and I've got this glider's got it's an old the old Adele energies used an old compromise used to have trimmers and a speed bar so trimmers and a speed bar so and I'm done I'm an old hang glider pilot I like I like the the speed rush you get about doing a fast run along a ridge you know so I've got a slight tailwind because the wind's coming up my ass a little bit and I'm flying down the ridge and I've got the bar full on
I'm flying really close to the ridge, screaming along on this energy, getting a good ground rush because I'm a little bit tailwind, and then I decide I have no idea what, so I do it. I let the the trimmer's full up, full open. So I've got the speed bar full on and the trimmer's full open, which doesn't do anything in coastal air until I go just past launch where they've now got that big hotel complex down the bottom below the right-hand side of the lawn. But back in those days, it was just – it was seaweed farms and some little paddocks down there. And they used to kick off thermals there, and it was still a bit thermic. And I went past launch, and Charlie was on launch, Charlie Flay, he'd been traveling with me, we'd had a little bit of an argument, and that's why we didn't turn up on the hill together.
I didn't want to know about him anymore, but I went past Launch, and he's standing on Launch, and I just waved at him, went past Launch, all I was going to do was go down the ridge, I was going to do a left-hand 180, come back, and land. And I went down, and I went about probably 300 meters past Launch, And he got this massive asymmetric on the right-hand side and went straight into the hill. Yeah, go straight in into the side, like it was more actually sort of a bit of a glancing blow as I went into the hill. I sort of hit sort of on my left side in a glancing blow into the side into rocky shitty cactus covered side of a cliff, right? And Charlie saw me, he saw the big collapse and just saw me disappear, so luckily, and I'm I'm lying on, I'm just lying there and I'm trying to feel my feet and I could feel my toes, which I thought, well, that's good.
And I moved my right leg. I thought, well, that's good. I couldn't move my left leg at all. My left leg just wouldn't, I could move my foot, my left foot, I couldn't move my left leg. So I ended up, I was lying there thinking, that was really stupid. That was really, I mean, a lot of pain. And then, So Charlie takes off because he couldn't get to where I was by walk, and so he took off and flies across and lands right where I was. And um, you know Katut, who runs the power gardens, he runs a tan, he runs a tandem business there on um, on timbers. Anyway, he's been, he's been there; he started his business that year that I crashed. He was actually there as well. So Katut and Charlie turn up with me. I'm lying in a harness on the side of the hill, so they pick me up in the, in the harness and throw me in the back of a little Suzuki jeep.
And I'm just like, just throwing it back at the thing and then dancing down the road. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. And we get out. I have no idea what's wrong with me. I have no idea what's wrong with me, right? I know I've got this appreciating pain in my, in my groin. I thought I'd just torn ligaments in my, in my groin; that's what I thought I'd done because I couldn't read my leg. I thought I'll probably, you know, torn, torn tendons or ligaments or something, but anyway, take me to a doctor on the way back to Kuta, doctor goes, I think you should go to the hospital and I went, I'm going home, and now one thing you're going to learn about when you go overseas, it's a good thing to have travel insurance, which I didn't. I'd admitted to travel insurance, so I had no way. I wasn't about to ring up travel insurance company and say, "Get me home."
so the guys got me in the back of the little Suzuki and they said what do you want to go to the hospital? I said no, I'll go to my mate's place So they drive me to a friend's place in Kuta, and I'm lying there on the bed, still haven't had any painkillers, and the girls – there was a guy and his girlfriend who I taught how to fly, and his girlfriend had some period pain tablets, and she gave me a period pain tablet and said, that's all I've got, I don't have anything else to give you. So she gave me this one tablet, and I'm lying there on the bed, I'm lying on this bed, And the pain's getting worse and worse and worse and worse, and the time's getting closer and closer to the time I need. I need to go to the airport to get an airplane. I'm going to get get home and, uh, and I'm thinking, hospital, airport, hospital, airport, hospital, and then finally I go, finally I go, take me to the airport.
So I, so I, I get up and I hobble out to the car, I'll go out of the car and they turn me back in the car and they take me to the airport and they, and I said, "I can't walk," so they get a wheelchair and they take me to the to the check-in desk and the lady goes, the lady goes, "What's wrong with you?" and I said, "Uh, I've just hurt my ankle." Um, she said, "Oh, it's okay, you can get on the airplane, get in the airplane, but you can't take the wheelchair in the airplane." So it was, it was a 747, it was a red eye flight back from Bali and leaving at 11, I was going to get back and in Brisbane at like eight o'clock in the morning, something like that, anyway
There's no way. So I
get to the – they push me to the front door of the airplane, and now I've got to get out of the wheelchair. I still have no idea what's wrong with me, right? I've just got – I can't move my
left leg. You don't know
you've got a broken pelvis and a broken back. No, I have no idea. So I'm using the seats like crutches. They get down the – and luckily they gave me an emergency action ride, which I don't know why they do that, but they gave me – so I lay back, put the seat back, and I actually went to sleep, and I actually slept almost the whole way. I don't know why. I must have still been a lot of adrenaline going on. And so I get home and I ring my – and so the people would come and pick me up with my girlfriend's parents. Now, my girlfriend at that time, she was paragliding in Europe. She was doing a trip in Europe and she was in Spain somewhere paragliding. So she wasn't there to meet me, but her parents were, and they're very, very hospitable Germans, right? And so I said, don't be surprised if I come out in a wheelchair because I've hurt my ankle, but I should be okay.
So I didn't want to worry, you know? So, so they turn up, I come out to the car park in a wheelchair, I jump in the back of the car, and then we go back and and we and they said, "Oh, you want, you just come on the airplane, you want some breakfast, you want to come home and have some breakfast?" And I'm going, "Oh, you know, like because they're really hospitable, they really want to look after me," and I go, "Um, okay, okay." So we go back to their place and I'm sitting there, so I'm sitting. They've given me a little bit of help to get into the house. I'm sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast, and the pain is just getting so bad in my groin. And I'm thinking – and I say to them, I need to go to the hospital. And they said, we'll drive you. I said, I'll drive myself. It'll be fine. I'll drive myself. So I crawl out to the car.
I get in the car, and I drive to the hospital, and I get to the car park, right? And I'm in the car park. And then I think, I can't get into the hospital because I can't walk. So, so I find a an umbrella in the back of the car, and I use it like a crutch, and I walk across the car park into the emergency with this, with this umbrella, and um, I get into the emergency and the lady goes, "So, what's happened with you?" I said, "I had a bit of a crash." It said, um, she said, "Well, fill this paperwork and don't sit over there in the waiting room." And I said, "I'm sorry, I can't sit anymore." I said, "I've got to lie down, I've got to lie down because I'm in a lot of pain." So you guys, he goes, oh, yeah, okay, okay. So they get a little trolley out. They put me in the trolley, and they push me into the hallway, and I'm lying in the hospital.
And then they take me into the X-ray. They do all the X-ray stuff. And they come out, and I'm lying in the line. And I'm just lying there. I think they've given me a little bit of painkillers by now. And I'm lying on the bed. And then I remember the surgeon, the doctor comes out, and he says, I'd make myself very comfortable on that bed if I was you. I said, why? And he said, you're going to be there for six weeks. I said, "Six weeks?" What's that? He said, "Well, you're breaking your pelvis in two places and breaking your back." And I said, "What a cocky shit." I said, "I walked in here, I'm going to get myself out." He said, "No, you're not. You're going to be on that bed for six weeks." And it turned out that I was, I was flat on my back for six weeks. I wasn't even able to sit up for six weeks until, and it was exactly six weeks from the time that I went in there, the time I was actually, I could sit up six weeks and, um, and And if I – so, like, I don't know if you know about broken pelvises.
You're
freaking crazy. You're crazy. I can't imagine the pain. You must have the highest pain tolerance in the
world. So, broken pelvises quite often sever femoral arteries. Quite often. A lot of people bleed to death by having a femoral artery severed by a broken pelvis. I am so lucky I didn't do that. I have no idea how I did, but it broke through the hip joint, like right through the middle of the hip joint and through the bottom of the pelvis was broken. And so I'm lucky it didn't displace. If it displaced, I would have been dead. But anyway, so that sort of – so since then, I haven't had an accident because I learned from that one that you don't use chimneys and speedboats at the same time. That's the takeaway. But also, if your head's telling you don't go, don't go. Yeah, no, go buy presents.
If you're going to go buy presents for your girlfriend, do that. Exactly. you're a long time her dead that's amazing
And an amazing place to stop, that's incredible! I can't. So you did, you did it like a tuk-tuk drive, and you lay down in the thing, and then back to the airport, and then a red-eye flight, and then, then the breakfast, go have some breakfast before you go to the hospital, and all with a
break all with a broken pelvis and a broken back but um you know Now, interesting that a good mate of mine, Alex Yashchenko, who still has the Australian distance record, he was one of my team pilots, my gym team pilots years ago. I was flying with him in Pakistan when he broke. Yeah, I was there. I was with him on that day. Oh, wow. Yeah, and that was another one of those things where all the Swiss cheese was coming together. That it was like, of course they'd had, you know, there was no—I'm not going to say too much about this, but there was so many things that were little red flags that were red flags. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it, don't do it.
And then it happened, and you know, like and and and a big part it was just bad luck that hit the ground, the way you hit the ground, which caused him to break his neck. But you know, like when when those—it's it's really, really hard, it's incredibly hard, hard to see those red flags yourself, and it's even hard for people who are around you to see them until after the fact, and you go, you know, that was so obvious. But but at the time, there then they're not obvious to a lot of people, but if you, but certainly I've known a lot of people who've had accidents where all those, all the holes in the Swiss cheese, all lined up and bang, they they went and and it's, you know, and it's sad, you know, because Alex is a really good mate of mine and he's, you know, obviously he's in a really bad way now, and you just think, if only one of those things hadn't happened, one of them, he wouldn't, he would still be totally fine, you know?
So it's, yeah, that's the one thing about flying that I, whenever I take off in a paraglider, I'm still, I still always, always, like I keep in mind that if I do it wrong, I'm going to kill myself. And I just feel that a lot of people that fly don't fully appreciate how much they're putting themselves at risk when they're flying paragliding. Because paragliding is the most amazing thing. As I said, I've been flying for over 30 years and love the sport. I like the challenge. I like the rewards. But I'm also really, really mindful of how fast things can go wrong and how little control you have over the environment you're in. You have no control of the environment, you have control of where you want to go in the environment.
But a lot of people I know, they just fly around with the, you know, the head in the clouds almost, you know, basically they just, they just cruise around and, you know, and that's why a lot of people have accidents in paragliders. It's because, course, paragliding is so easy to do. It's like, it, you know, if you can't fly a paraglider, you won't fly anything else in the world because they, they are to, to actually take off and fly in a straight line takes no skill at all, pretty much. Well, take no skill to fly straight, takes a bit of skill to take off. Yeah, but when things go wrong, they go wrong really fast in paragliders. And luckily that, you know, you know I've known, I've known Jim for, for many, many years, you know, almost 30 years, and I take my hat off to guys like Jin who were able to design,
they've perfected the design of paragliders so they are so forgiving. The new paragliders are just so amazingly forgiving and it's to the full credit of people like Jin and like the other guys, all the designers, Hannes and those guys who just designed the most amazing gliders that are so forgiving now that weren't that way back in the old days. But what it's done is it's let people who have no skill and almost, you know, I shouldn't be like this, but have no right to be in a paragliding. That's the one thing. It's almost, if I don't like paragliding, it's because paragliding makes it too easy for people who shouldn't be in the air to be in the air.
Yeah, I mean, Russell, I didn't have a saying about that. It's not
a sport thing.
Yeah, Russ Ogden has to say about that, that it's incredibly easy to fly a paraglider. It's incredibly difficult to fly it well.
Well, it's incredibly easy. Most people are being carried, just carried as a passenger in the glider. They're not integral to the glider. Because the thing with a glider, this I try and make my students understand, is that the glider is, you are part of the glider. Like the glider is the only aircraft in the world that will not fly without the pilot. Every other airplane in the world, you can jump out and it'll fly by itself. But a paraglider is completely not an aircraft if you're not in the in the seat, so you are not just the pilot; you are integral to the glider's ability to fly. And so you need to think, you need to think of yourself as being part of a machine in the air, part of the device in the air, rather than I'm just flying this glider, right? It's it's like, and you watch people who are really good, it's an extension of their body, you know? It's and it just it's the way they move with the, it's like watching someone who knows how to ride a horse really, really, really well; they don't look like they're even riding the horse, they're part of this big animal that's riding around.
And the thing is, paraglider, paraglider is so big and so light and so powerful. But so, but but you have to, but you're a big part of it, you know? You're 90, you're 90 of the aircraft, you know? The human is 90, 90 of the aircraft, yeah, the
the the thing that has I've never been able able to totally wrap my head around, and something we talk about on the show all the time is what you talked about with red flags, right? That your ignorance in the beginning, you don't know what you don't know, but it happens to in every level: expert, intermediate syndrome, expert halo syndrome, the beginner, because you don't know what you're doing. But it's the when you when you dissect it, when you look back at the accident report, it's just the same as is skiing backcountry. There's there's always, there's always, if you could just take one thing out of the equation, the accident probably wouldn't have happened, right? So there's always these things. Exactly. But like with you, if that hadn't happened, you know, we all need cheat mistakes. Hopefully we don't have the big asymmetric collapse and smack into the side of the cliff and break our pelvis and break our back.
But if that hadn't happened to you, it'd be hard for you to recognize the next time. You know what I mean?
Totally. How
the frick do we teach people, you know,
recognize the red flags? Well, is this
a red flag or is it not? Or is it, you know, I mean, you got to listen to that little devil and the little angel on your shoulder. But I can tell you in the ex-Alps, you know, there's all these times where it's really intense. And, but you just got it. You're, you know, you can't listen to the devil. You got to fly. You're going to deal with this. And you do. Yeah. But, you know, but, but when you're with any time outside of the race, that would be a massive red flag. Like, dude, this is not a day to go tempt fate, you know? And I don't know how to teach people that it's impossible. I don't know. Is it? I don't know. What do you teach your students?
Well, certainly with, with my students, I tend to say to them that everyone, everyone, most people will have an accident. Yeah. The accident is the thing you learn. That's, that's, That's what it takes to learn because, you know, certainly some people are a bit more risk-averse and less inclined to push themselves to that point where they will have an accident. Some people have an accident because they're just like total bozos and if an accident is going to happen, they're going to have an accident, but they may be lucky enough to just not have an accident. But some people will put themselves in a situation; they just don't see the flags, and they don't see the flags because they've got the blinker, they've got the flag blinkers on, or they've got the—they've got the little devil and angel earplugs in, so they can't hear the devil and angel, and it takes the accident to pull the earplugs out to be able to hear, and it takes the accident to take the blinkers off to be able to see.
Oh, I should have seen those things happening, you know? And so, like, you know, I've got a—I've got a very, very good, good friend, uh, this lady pilot I taught, um, a while ago, a couple years ago, and—and she'll know, you listen to this podcast and she'll know who I'm talking about, but I've told her numerous times that if she survives, she'll be a very good pilot, she'll be one of Australia's best female pilots if she survives. And I'm really concerned; I've always said that, you know, I can see—you know, I watch, you know, I've seen, I've taught so many people, I've watched people move through the sport, and you can see he's going to have an accident. And if they don't have an accident, it's probably because they were lucky they didn't have an accident. But a lot of them will have one, and you can tell them until you're blue in the face.
And some will listen, like this girl is listening. She listens to me now, which is really, really good. And I think she appreciates that I'm saying the things because I'm looking after her. I don't want to see her hurt herself. But you can sort of sense that other people that I talk to, it just goes in one ear and out the other. And it will take them to have an accident. All I hope is it's not going to be a bad accident. It's just going to be a small incident. A small incident, you know. It's really hard.
I like what you said. You know, Jeff Shapiro was one of the first people I interviewed on the show. I've had him on a couple of times. And, you know, he comes from a hang gliding background as well, but a big time base background and wingsuit background. and you know, wingsuit pilots have it, have a saying that this flight, this one flight, is the most important flight of your life because it is so radically dangerous. You know, there, there is no margin in wingsuit, you know, in, in proximity flying, and so I like what you said about, you know, that you just have to be constantly in the frame of mind that this is, this could kill me, this, this could hurt me real bad, and that's this very basic. And I said that right off my home hill and benign conditions at 8 a.m. could kill me. And if you have that in mind, then you're going to respect it every time, right?
And that's what I say, like, you know, when I get on the launch and, like, our launches around here are quite touristy. There are a lot of tourists there. And some of my students are saying, how do you take off with all these tourists around? I said, I don't even know they're there because I get so focused when I'm doing tandems there. I get so focused on the job at hand. And Tommy Baumke goes, I mean, I wouldn't even know because I'm so, so focused on what I'm thinking about, all the things I've got to do. And so I try and impart that to my students too, that you just get focused on the job at hand, you're focused on the situation you're in and what you're going to do. And that's why I spend a lot of time with my students getting them as good as I can on their launching so that there's one thing they have to think about when it flies, what they're going to do to take off.
like the takeoff should be, should be totally, um, like it should be just an instinctive thing to do. You don't even have to think about what you're doing with the takeoff, because if you're not thinking about the takeoff, you still think you know, obviously, it's, you're still thinking about what you're going to do with the takeoff, but that's not taking up a huge part of your focusing. And I've got to try and get off this hill safely, because that becomes just a natural thing to do, and then you can think about the stuff you've got to think about in the air. And you've got to think, think about as far into the future as you can in the air for the time you're going to be in there. Yeah, you're open to observation and
instinctually, you're open to noticing
everything. Exactly, watching, looking, all these other – and you're open to seeing the signs that you might not see. You're seeing the warning signs you might not see if you were so focused on one other thing. So that's one way to do it is to get people really good at some of the base things. Not so good that they become too cocky, but it's more that it takes that that allows them to free up their focus to look for other signs that will be that that could be warning signs yeah if that makes sense totally
Phil, you're a treasure, man. I appreciate what you're doing for the community and, uh, and the stoke and the bivvies and the 171,000. There's so much, there's so
much more, I know there's so much more I could have. So anyway, we'll come back
to, we'll do a part, part do. And for sure. Otherwise my editor will kill me if we keep going. But don't get me talking. Don't get me talking. I don't stop. We got to let you talk. You're, you're, you're good at it. My dad would love you, man. He was Irish. He loved a good story.
I appreciate you, buddy. Thank you very much. And thanks for sharing all this knowledge and some great stories. and we'll come back and get some more at some point. Thanks, bud.
It's been a pleasure talking to you, man. If you
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So way cheaper than a magazine subscription, and it makes all of this possible. I do not want to fund this show with advertising or sponsors. We get asked about that pretty frequently, but for a whole bunch of different reasons, which I've said many times on the show, I don't want to do that. I don't like having that stuff at the front of the show. And I also want you to know that these are authentic conversations with real people, and these are just our opinions, but our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors or advertising dollars. I think that's a pretty toxic business model. So I hope you dig that. You can support us. If you go to cloudbasemayhem.com, you can find the places to support. You can do it through patreon.com forward slash Cloudbase Mayhem. If you want a recurring subscription, you can also do that directly through the website. We've tried to make it really easy, and that will give you access to all the bonus material, little video casts that we do, and extra little, uh, nuggets that we find in conversations that don't make it into the main show, but we feel like you should hear.
We don't put any of that behind a paywall; if you can't afford to support us, then just let me know and I'll set you up with an account. Of course, That'll be lifetime. And hopefully you'll be in a position someday to be able to support us. But you'll find all that on the website. All of you who have supported us or even joined our newsletter or bought Cloudbase Mayhem merchandise, t-shirts or hats or anything, you should be all set up. You should have an account. You should be able to access all that bonus material now. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your support. And we'll see you on the next show. Thank you.