Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Cloudbase Mayhem. Happy Christmas, happy holidays, and happy new year. Right around the corner from 24 here. Pretty hard to believe. Hope you all have some great flying plans coming up this season. And my guest today is from the other side of the world, so he's currently in their season down there, but also thinking about the Alps next year as he comes over to the Alps most summers and travels around in his van and competes in comps and a pretty wide-ranging passion for the sport is Louie Tapper. I met Louie initially doing some training with Nick Nannens back in the 2015 X-Alps, getting ready for that race. It was Nick and I's first go, and Louie was his supporter and good pilot.
We had a really cool flight from Vonk up to the Kempsey, kind of reverse course line a few weeks before the race and became good friends. And I've since seen him at World Cups around the world. And just a great dude and really, really thinks about this sport in a very thorough way, I guess. He articulates it really well. He flies sailplanes. He listens to everything. He reads everything. Thing, he's very methodical in his approach, and he and a few others were approached by the New Zealand hang gliding paragliding association a while back to recreate a safety and accident report, really comprehensive report that went back all the way to the beginning in New Zealand to try to discover why accidents happen and how they can be reduced or eliminated.
So they went back and and looked at hang gliding, paragliding, speed flying, and really compiled it. First, they had to figure out how to even address the data and where the data was showing and what it wasn't. A lot of these reports were pretty thin on information, so a really comprehensive look. It took them a lot of time to put this together, and it's an incredible document. You'll find the link for it in the show notes if you want to read it, which I did in prep for this talk. And it's pretty fascinating. It's not anything that you wouldn't expect, but the takeaways and how we can improve as a community, I feel like we're kind of angling towards what the FAA did back in the 90s to try to eliminate accidents in commercial aircraft.
aircraft and a lot of this gets back to kind of threat and error management which is one of the chapters in the book but identifying threats before they come errors and then lead down that lead down that path potentially to an unstable aircraft, and what they discovered is, you know, that accidents very rarely just happen. There's a string of events, and if we can identify those and eliminate them, we'd eliminate a lot of accidents, a lot of bad accidents. And so they looked at other models, they looked at other countries. You know, Norway's done some really interesting things here, but so we, we begin by talking about his, uh, his record-breaking kite surfing expedition in Brazil back in 2010, and how he got into flying, and his passion for flying, and the X-Alps, and and a bunch of stuff.
This is a wide-ranging talk, but we end up at this report, this accident report, and dive into it and try to tease out where we all as a community can improve and how we can not hit the ground and participate in this sport for a long time safely. Some great stuff here from a great friend. I hope you enjoy it. Cheers. And again, happy holidays.
Mr. Tapper, we've been trying to do this for years, I believe.
Yeah, I think it's probably about the fourth time you've asked me to do this. Finally, we've got this together. I've been putting you off for a while.
Persistence pays off. Well, you know, you're a very thoughtful lad, and I appreciate that most people are just, yeah, yeah, I'll go for it. But you were, now I need the right, I need to think about this, and I need to be, we need to get this report done, which we'll talk about here in a bit. it, but you know there's, uh, I like that you want it, you want to come out with a bang, man. You want to, you want to impress, I get it. How are you?
Yeah, yeah, look, we've been working on the report for over a year, and it's been a year since it was got released. So, yeah, I just wanted to have something to talk about, really, yeah.
and that'll that'll be really good those of you listening we're going to talk about this safety report that louie and a bunch of other fine folks down in new zealand put put together, uh, studying a lot of accidents and what's the causes and what can we do as a community to improve? We'll, we'll, we'll get to that here in a bit. Cause I've read it. It's fantastic. Uh, and I think there's a lot of learning there, but before we do just so you all can get to know Louie, cause I, I know him quite well. We met training in the, in the 2015 X-Alps. We had a wicked day from, I just love to say this, Vonk. We were, we went up the lift there at Vonk and flew up to the Ashout turn points. We were kind of reverse course line that day. I think Nick made it all the way back. Maybe you did as well, but it was a fantastic day and we got to know each other quite well.
And then we got into the throes of the race, which was very exciting for both of our teams. It was awesome. So that's a little bit of our history. And then since then, you and I have gotten into World Cups a lot more. And so we see each other from time to time, but you came into the sport maybe in similar fashion than I did, but I want to know the timing and the kite surfing thing. I thought a fun place to start would be in your record in 2010, you did some kind of a distance record, and you know my background is in kite surfing as well, so let's start there. What was that all about? I've had many other people tell me about this; I've never had you tell me about it.
Oh, okay. Yeah, so this was a I dreamed up thing that, but I had to kite as far as I could, really, with just a backpack and one kite, one board. I ended up choosing Brazil to do that. It ended up 2,000 kilometres, sort of the curve of Brazil. It goes sort of past the area where all the big flights go and happen in the north-east of Brazil. I'd originally planned on 4,000km, actually, up the coast of Madagascar and in the Comores, but it was going to be $100,000 just for the boat and all the logistics. So I thought it's not about the distance. It's more about the manner and style of doing it. And, yeah,
just quite one board, 2,000 kilometers.
So how did you link 2,000K? You must have started more on the east coast and then went up and around Recife? Yeah,
started in Salvador and ended up in San Luis. Um, so you know, half of the the um, the trip was through the very famous areas that people go to Brazil for, yeah? But the first half is pretty tricky because not a lot of wind, wind often in the wrong direction, reef and sharks, and all that sort of thing, um, is
I don't know if you know, but I sailed solo from Santos, which is down beyond south of, uh, Rio, and and all the way up that coast. And I don't know what season you were in. Let me try to see if I can remember this, but I sailed from there to St. Martin in one go. And it was 33 days by myself. And the section from Santos to Recife was, I mean, I was on a very low performance steel boat, so it didn't point very well. But I, in my first 24 hours, I made six miles good because I, you know, I went out 70 miles and came back 70 miles and went out on a port tack, came back on a starboard tack, and I made six miles because it was just pretty much north northeast, you know, it was blowing directly where I was trying to go, yeah.
It's not really easy. I've... there's been a couple of people who've tried from down that area, and then they've ended up having to drive further north into where the wind was. I ended up having to walk for a couple of days when there was no wind, and a lot of river crossings and, um, things to contend with. Did
You, so you know the pilots, the sailing directions talk about, you know I had, I had really fouled fuel and I, I wanted to do it in one go, but I basically two hours out of port, my third time out of port, I, I lost the engines and, and engine, it was, it was a monohull and thought, ah, screw it. It's got a solar panel. It's got a wind generator. It was a 34 foot monohull. And, and I thought, yeah, you know, as long as I have wind and sun, I can, I can keep things running. I can keep the electronics running. And so all the way up the coast, I had plenty because I was beaten into wind the whole way. But as I started getting close to Recife, I can't remember what was going on. There's something going on with the boat. And I thought I need to, I need to put in and do some repairs.
And the sailing directions basically Yeah, you go into Recife, you're just going to get the boat taken from you and you might die. It was really not a good place to go in from a sailing or boating, yachting perspective. Was that something you had to battle with? Yeah, the day coming into
Recife was one of my biggest days. I think it was about 180 or 190K. Whoa.
And, yeah, I got caught inside the reef that day, then had to walk over the reef, got Usa on my foot, and then finished this day in Recife, which has got one of the highest shark attack statistics anywhere in the world from bull sharks.
Yeah, pulled in there, and, yeah, It was – um, you're not allowed to actually; I'm supposed to be swimming or kiting in that area, but we managed to duck in and duck out pretty quick. Uh, the next day were
you by yourself the whole way, or is this a solo deal? Yeah,
This was solo, wow.
and then, no land support, or was this all self-supported? No,
land support no so it's just basically a 35 liter backpack half of that was my pump uh pair Pair of shorts, T-shirt, some repair gear, some first aid kit, maybe a couple of liters of water and enough food for maybe a day.
And how much skin cancer did you come home with?
Well wrapped up. I've got Mauritian backgrounds. Oh,
nice. Okay. So you just bronze. Wow. And how many days did it take?
So there was, oh, I can't remember now. It was a month in total, but about 22 days of actual kiting.
God, man, you must have been exhausted. I think what people don't know, I mean, if they've kited and it's really fun and you're going back and forth, what you don't know about, I mean, it sounds like you were doing a lot of beating up to, I call it recife, but you call it something else. What do you call it? I'm not saying it right. Recife, yeah. But then once you turn the corner, you're going down and down. Going downwind is pretty exhausting.
It's not too bad. Yeah, you learn to stand on the board in the right way, and it's fine. Were
you on a surfboard or a twin tip?
I started on what was kind of like a course board that was before course boards were a thing. Okay. I got about halfway through, and it was getting a bit sketchy going downwind with an 11-meter kite, 35 knots of wind, and ending up changing to just a standard twin tip. wow
Man, does the record still hold, uh?
Look, it was always an unofficial record. Um, I, I wanted to make it a Guinness one, but I got halfway through the event and it's a bit of a story, I guess. And um, I was really focused on that and um, I'd been helping a guy out—that was, I think, he was from South Africa—that was looking at going up the coast of Africa, and I'd written him off and and I saw where he started, and then I saw this update about 2,000 kilometres from where he started, and I thought, damn, this guy's beaten me to it, and moped around for a day, and then I was like, damn it, it's not just about the number. It's really about pushing myself mentally and physically, and so I'm like, right, I'm just going to reframe this, and it's going to be about how fast I can go for the next 1,000K.
Um, I finished the finished the uh finished the kiting and um read his blog a while later, and it turned out he'd gone, I don't know, four four hundred k and then got ditched out to sea about five kilometers, swam in and got scared, and then end up um hitching hitching up the coast, ah.
there There you go. Perfect. Nicely done. Sketchiest moment of the whole thing?
Oh, look, there have been a few sketchy moments. I think one of them was not even a quarter of the way through. Gus Front came through, folded the kite and went into the surf, broke four lines at the same time, and in the process of swimming in, got those lines wrapped around both my legs. eggs, it took me and a passing fisherman about an hour 40 to unravel those because I didn't want them to cut it, so that was fairly serious.
Yeah, that's fairly serious again. It's a retraining.
It's like you could be beating yourself up, going, "I'm a dick for, you know, not even getting a quarter of the way and this has happened," but in the end, it was like, "Well, how can I make sure this? What can I learn from this? And how can I make sure it doesn't happen again?" And so that became the hyper focus for the rest of the trip.
Wow, man, cool. It was that the 2010. Have you done anything as kind of bold and adventurous, I guess, is that sense? Yeah.
It's called paragliding. Perfect, absolutely every
day, exactly, exactly. Yeah, all right. Well, let's get into that cool story and amazing expedition. That's... that's what... that's pretty wild flying history. Give us the resume version: when did it start, what was the catalyst, and how did you get to where you are now? Oh,
Look, it started my sister's town in France, actually, um, near Grenoble, and she lives in a place called Lance of that core, and I was traveling travelling around for the year, going kite surfing and snow kiting, but there was no snow, no wind, so decided I'd give it a crack and did a few flights, first one off the Brevon in France. And I think it was about, yeah, fifth flight in, I just had this overwhelming kind of urge to want to stay up and so I was looking at other people doing that, thermaling, And, yeah, first up, and then ended up thermaling with a hawk on Flight 5 for about 20 minutes and thought, yeah, this is definitely my next sport.
What
year was that?
That was a couple of years after. I think that was around 2012, I guess. Okay.
Wow. So the hawk and flying with the hawk was the aha moment.
Yeah. Yeah, it was just the feeling of flow. I've done a lot of kayaking previously, and if you've ever been kayaking, you know, that feeling of, you know, edging your boat and kind of having your hands in the right spot. And, yeah, that feeling of flow was just really similar to what I'd experienced in kayaking, and it was just something new. I think at that point I had enough of adventure kiting and was looking for something new.
I've asked this many times, And I know you listen to this show pretty regularly, but uh, there's this crazy crossover between paddlers and pilots. They, they go together incredibly well, it seems. And pilots who come from paddling, as you and I have both done, seem to get it really quickly. Have you got any unique thoughts on that that you
Oh, look, probably no more than what you've already discussed, but look, I think that physical act of of doing it, um, you know, that visual, um, spatial awareness is kind of the same. It's a flow sport. Um, your ability to kind of look at water and visualize flow, I think, is a key thing. And if you can take that and just turn it into trying to visualize the air, I think really, really helps a lot. And I thought, I think the other one thing that's sort of a little bit underestimated is the risk management as well, in terms of managing yourself and the cortisol levels. And that's something I got quite good at in kayaking, was just knowing when to push and when to hold back. And then some days you might not feel it, and listen to that hinky feeling to just walk away from it.
I know you're pretty heavy, heavier than I am in terms of the engineering and thoughtful side of this and we're going to get into some of your sailplane stuff and study and learning from that, but you said something there that's interesting, You know, managing your cortisol levels, is that something you actively have thought about and tried to do? And there is this, you know, because kayaking really does, when you were saying that, I was remembering my kayaking days. I mean, you have to force yourself to chill out, or you're getting some deep... I mean, you just, you lose your air, you know, if you, if you're not calm, if you're not like a spear fisherman, you're in trouble because when you know, when you're getting window shaded in a big research kind of deal, that's it's, you got to hold your air, yeah.
For sure, like I mean, there's an optimal level where anyone doing anything is going to perform at. If you're too over-aroused and and stressed out, then you're not going to perform well; and if you're, you know, bored, then you're not going to be as attentive and probably more likely for mistakes as well. So there's, there's an optimal level there, and I've, you know, I've done done a lot of sport over quite a number of years, and I think it's keeping yourself in that zone and getting that, those flow moments, is what we're really all after, isn't it?
You know, you asked me to put together a bunch of questions before we did this, and you and I chatted real briefly before we started this. You know, hey, did you like them? Are they going to work? And we brought up, you know, I brought up in the questions, "Nick name, is that's how we met?" You were supporting Nick and his first, which was my first in 2015, and the question was, you know, "What did you learn from Nick?" We had a a little giggle. I'll let you answer that now, but I wonder, is that one of Nick's secrets? Because he, he, you know, and I think you and I kind of laughed about this in many ways. I always thought Nick was one of the least prepared in terms of just the training and that kind of thing, but he was always, he was very fit. You know, he wasn't unfit. He just didn't train like the rest of us in terms of, you know, the hard strength training and the, you know, he was, he was just a, What do you guys call it?
Tramping? He was a tramper, uh, and he spent a lot—he spends a lot of time outdoors. And but I think one of his magic tricks was just that calmness, although I wasn't with him in the... in the exit was... is that... is that really who he is? I think
Yeah, look, I think one of his—one of the strengths is that he's, um, very resilient. He knows how to walk and manage himself. He's been walking in the hills for years. Um, you know, he's not about to blow himself to bits, and you know, he can just keep going. I think it's, um, yeah, and you know, he's having to draw on that resilience at the moment with his, um, accident, and I think of anyone, he's probably doing the best that I've seen, but, um, in that same sort of situation. So, yeah.
but do you think that Not even the resilience for sure in terms of the physical side, but also the creativity side of what he always did. He was always the most fun to watch to me in the X-Ops because he would take these lines that were just, where the hell is Nick going? It must have been quite fun to support that in a sense because he just has his, I would imagine, very calm way of, he just kind of goes with the flow, doesn't he?
Yeah, look, he's a super individual, um, modeled himself off to 30, trying to do something different to the rest of them. Um, they didn't really work on the first day when he was right up with Chrigel and decides to take a different line. Um, but I think, you know, over time he's realized that actually flying with other people kind of is a little bit more efficient, but you know, like what drives him is being independent and, um, independent thinker. So, um, you know, as a supporter, you don't tell Nick what to do; you present the options and leave him to decide. And, you know, my goal with him was really just to have everything organized so there were no excuses and, um, that, you know, like he could focus on what he needed to do, which was fly and good decision making.
It
Is quite interesting because he, he kept on that track in a sense, and even probably had way less direction, is that, as each of the races went by, because he did it with his family, they weren't pilots, they didn't really know, I don't think too much about the race, and you know, making all those, you know, as opposed to my team, I don't make any of those decisions. I don't, I don't ever have to find a launch, I don't ever have to think about where I need to be in two hours, you know, Revis goes go here, you know, Bruce, back in your day, go here, and Nick's just kind of doing it all. Yeah, we, we have a very different
approach. Yes. Very different approach. Um, yeah. So, you know, it's, um, you know, what's fun for people and fun for Nick was making his own decisions and being the autonomous person that he is.
I diverted us there a little bit into my favorite topic, your history. So you, you get into flying a couple of years after the kite surfing expedition down in Brazil. And, and, you know, now you're, you're competitive on the world cup take take us a little bit more through give us some some of the depth there and some of the passion for flying yeah
Look, so I came, I didn't fly for a year after that initial first flights and came back to New Zealand and learned with Infinity Paragliding and, um, there's a really good community here, which you know, a lot of tandem pilots and people into it for a long time. And, um, I have my cousin who's been sort of eighth in the world who's there as a mentor as well, and there was plenty of good people around. I came into it not wanting to post flights online or anything competitive at all, so that was a complete turnaround for me. I think after a year, I'd won the fun class at Nationals and then got hooked into it, and it was just initially a way to get better at going cross country. So cross country, I knew, I knew right from the get-go, it was going to be the thing that I wanted to do, so I've just been chasing that.
So, yeah, like, you know, when I'm riding up the hill with the tandem pilots, I'm like, how do you get good at this sport, and what do you need to do to kind of progress? And, you know, there was, you know, one simple answer was get a job where you can be flexible and you can fly on the good days. So, right, okay, tick, right, I'm going to, you know, I went and got myself a contract job and really for the last 11 years I've been doing contract IT security work, so six months of the year and then the rest of the time either traveling or flying here in Queensland.
Yeah, so I've noticed that you seem to, when summer comes around, European summer comes around, you're there all summer. So is there no work going on then or are you able to do it remotely? Look,
my work happens different times and, yeah, so on average it's six months a year. I have a van in Europe which I use to travel around with which sort of helps there and I bought that a few years back. Yeah, so I'm trying to use that as much as possible. Obviously during COVID that wasn't happening but, yeah, I mean the flying for me has not just been about competitions, it's about a lifestyle, It's about the community and, um, yeah, really into that. So, um, yeah, it's, um, and for me, like, I think the, the flying is more about progression than it is necessarily about a winning or a place or a number. Um, I think as long as I'm still progressing and learning new things and sort of more of a mastery orientation to it, I think that's really what's kept me in the sport and kept me hooked in when
you look back on that, that progression, are there, are there a couple things or, you know, some building blocks or some aha moments, a few things in that scope of the last 10 years that were, when you look back and go, yeah, that was really important, or yeah
Look, so for the first 150 or 100, 150 hours, I had some simple things on a post-it note and I wanted to go cross country. So, um, you know, I was asking people or, you know, what do you need to do? But really what it came back down to is launch and landings. So as soon as I got out of school, I think there was about 200 flights in that first season, and we'd just go launch, land, launch, land, fly. The other thing that my cousin said to me, he said, look, you know, in that first 100 hours, don't worry about going anywhere too much, but do learn how to thermal and thermal when things are light and a little bit tricky. So yeah, made that, made that a priority.
Um, wing handling was the other one that was, um, important as well, and I thought, okay, well, I need to go do an SIV, and um, so I did a couple of those and Um, and then, you know, you get into the point where you're, okay, you're um thinking about um where you're going to go next. You've got that first thermal, how do you connect the second one and and how do you make decisions about where you need to go?
So right from the get-go, where there was a big focus, I think that's just from a safety perspective and also just getting you to the right spot at the right time was really important, and that's carried through in everything that I've done. So, yeah, in terms of regression, it's just reading as much as you can and then getting out there and doing it and then matching what the forecast is as to kind of what you're seeing in the sky. So your observation was something right from the get-go that I think I'd read in the back of a book that Bruce or whatever had talked about observation being the key to a lot of things. So physically training myself like while I'm driving and while I'm walking around to kind of observe what's going on around me I think has been a key part to the success.
Success, there's uh, anyone that's come retrieved with me or come, um, driven in my car, we always play the tractor game, which is, you know, points for tractors and moving tractors, so I love it.
There's plenty of tractors in New Zealand, yeah.
So yeah, look, I've—I guess the um, I just look at paragliding like a series of building blocks, like every other sport, that there's a couple of of fundamental things that you need to start building on, and then every iteration there's, you know, there's things that you add to it. And I'm still working on the stuff that, you know, I was working on the beginning, you know, like the thermaling. There's always a next level of thermaling, or next level of observation, or better decision making that you can be making; it's just you're doing it at a higher level. So I'm
Curious as you approach your progression, let's, for example, this year, you know, getting ready to go back after this winter and go back to Europe for the summer, which I'm assuming you're going to do, how—how will this year be different? How will that pursuit look different than last year? For example, is it—is it more comps? Is it less comps? Is it more aesthetic? Is it more—is it bigger triangles? Is it more ground handling? You know, what—what is that? How do you—how do you adapt each year? How do you—you keep it interesting? Oh,
It's doing a bit of everything, so it's not—I don't want to be doing comps the whole time, um, and just mix it out with some cross country, um, throwing some, well, what I call basic acro in there. I'm not super flash at that, and that's probably been a bit of a gap in what I've done, but um, yeah, the yeah, it's just a variety of things and not, not, not trying to push any one thing, um, but they all build together, really aren't they? It's kind of we're going to make good decisions and, um, you know, for me tactically, I think there's some things to learn and there's obviously things around thermaling that could get better. There's, you know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about, um, you know, this, this whole accident thing and how if we thought thought about and made better decisions, we could be safer and also perform at the same time.
So I've taken some of that knowledge and try, just trying to apply that to making less mistakes or being more consistent with the decision making.
Okay, so one more question, then we'll get to the accident report. You, you got me into a podcast, and a guy—actually, it wasn't a podcast, but it was a guy that was, you know, very articulate sailplane. What was his name? Um, D—
dale was
It, yes, exactly. Uh, sorry, you should
Definitely interview him, yes.
Yes, I need to... he's been on my list here, sitting right here. Uh, so but you've also spent now quite a bit of time flying sailplanes, and I'm... I'm wondering how that has affected your paragliding. What... what has it taught you? What have you... what have you gleaned from it that those of us who haven't should know about? Yeah.
Look, I mean, there are a lot of the same processes in terms of decision making that we have that cross over. Um, I guess they talk about, um, different energy systems, so you know, like dynamic, wind, thermal, convergence, divergence, um, but there's one area that we don't tend to talk too much about in paragliding, which is wave flying. Um, and you know, we're not necessarily flying in wave, but what happens underneath that wave is quite important in terms of, um, energy lines and where the, where the thermals might be popping more. I think I've got better at gliding and shifting, so you know, in gliding, you're flying a lot on energy lines and moving a lot.
I think the concept behind that has been quite beneficial. And what else? So, look, I was very lucky to learn with Gavin Wills who set up Glider Marama here in New Zealand. It's one of the top 10 places to go in sailplane flying. He's been in it over 50 years now and really one of the best weather people that I know. And so just the way we're looking at weather in terms of the bigger picture, probably zooming out. And I think what I brought to bring to sailplane flying is the understanding of the – well, as paraglider pilots, the understanding of the micromet.
So generally I think the sailplane pilots are looking a lot bigger picture because they're covering a lot more ground over the course of a day. So, you know, how you look at the weather over the course of the day and, you know, real focus on the synoptics is different. But from the very beginning, the weather was something that I think the sailplane community does a lot better and more detail than what we do. Obviously, there's pockets of good knowledge out there in the paragliding community, but I think generally, you know, they've—they've been at this a lot longer, since, you know, early, you know, 20s, 30s, you know, and they've—they've made the mistakes, made the learnings, and and that's quite a depth of knowledge that, you know, being only, I guess, three decades, three or four decades old, that um, that paragliding is quite young and still probably got quite a lot to learn.
And that's a good segue to the report, because it's one of the things, I was just reviewing it again last night, preparing to talk to you, that seems to be much of aviation follows much more strict rules, sequences, strategies, whatever words you want to talk about. But there's there's there's checklists. There's you know, there's there's things that you do. And we're a lot more freewheeling. And this is one of the things that came out of the report. But talk about what was the why behind the port? You know, who commissioned it? And yeah, let's get into it. Yeah,
look, I started this probably about four years ago when one of our executives came to us and said, oh, look, our reporting system's no good and we need to find something better. So I'd done a search around the world to see what other reporting systems and what other things that people were doing and what the Europeans and co were doing in this space. and I realised actually it was relatively poor and the accident reports that are coming out were pretty limited. I'd actually witnessed an accident quite a number of years ago in Wanaka. It was a spicy kind of day and flying a tandem, I'd made the decision to go land myself and another pilot who sort of flew over the top went to the next spur, had a collapse, and died.
So he was a year into his flying career, and I read the reports that came out of that, both from the CIA and also from the coroners, and I thought we really didn't learn or anything from that incident in terms of what was actually reported, so that was really an impetus behind it. So we set up this group a couple of years ago and sort of handpicked some really good guys that were a organisational psychologist. We had someone who was really good with the stats and people from different disciplines like hang gliding and also speed flying.
So yeah, the first part of it, we really wanted to keep it in the problem space to understand really where the problems were happening, rather than come up with solutions. I'd looked at previous efforts around the world, and it's very easy to get into solution mode early on, so we spent quite a bit of time just reviewing, you know, the basically the the information that was out there and other other reports and other associations, and then delving into the 350 or so accidents at the time that we'd had across our database, and then even gone back into the 90s to look at the paper reports on some of the deaths and serious accidents.
How do you feel like the number is correct? act, or you know, our our reporting relies totally on people just volunteering the information. It's not mandatory, it's not. Yeah, there are a lot of accidents that just don't even get put into anything. People don't, people don't submit them to anything. Yeah, look, I think
Worldwide, worldwide, it is is a problem with under reporting, and I think that's across across everywhere. Um, we've seen a increase in reporting here in New Zealand, and we've really made that a focus, and it's, you know, it's the just culture approach, which is a no-blame approach, and then how can we learn from this? Um, I know our um, uh, CEO at the moment, he'll personally call up people after an accident, and the first question is not that, "Why did you do that? You're an idiot?" It's, um, "Are you okay?" and, "And how can we help?" you know, in starting a dialogue? And I think that, you know, the more senior pilots and people that people look up to share those types of events, the more likely they are that, you know, people are willing to share.
And there's a whole bunch of reasons why people don't share. I guess it's, you know, in a lot of cases it's embarrassment. You know, some of the time there's an inhibitor to the reporting system itself. So we simplified that and made it easier for people.
It's a no-blame type approach where people feel like they can come forward and do that, I think is really important. But the other issue is perception of what actually happened. We've had some situations where we've had eyewitness report putting in a report and the pilot themselves putting in a report, and they're two completely different things. So often, the pilots themselves don't really know or understand what actually happened, so that translates into the report being fairly limited. And it's actually not until you start doing some questioning afterwards and one-on-one that you actually really get to the the nub of what might be happening.
We often get the first order problem: okay, I had a collapse and crashed, but what you you didn't see was, okay, I had an argument with my partner and I was a bit stressed and I rushed and then I didn't notice the knot, and there was a series of things. But I think that's particularly poorly done or reported, um, within all of the excellent databases around the world.
And it's interesting because the the FAA has really sorted that out, you know? They they always always talk about the the forensics are the first place you go, and yeah, you know, and that that order of that order of tiny tiny tiny mistakes, they—it's it's never like you said, it's it's the the engine doesn't blow up, that's that doesn't happen. It's not just a boom and everybody dies; it's always a series of little things that, you know, if if noticed, handled, it's a non-event. It doesn't it doesn't escalate, yeah.
So, one of the key bits of research and, um, was by Matt Wilkes. He's done a quite extensive literature search and, you know, um, you know, a lot of the research is saying, you know, look, you know, there's, there's actually not too many pure equipment failures that are happening out there. There's maybe 10 of them, um, but actually, it's, it's coming through human error and human, human decision-making, a third of the accidents have some form of urology or weather-related kind of factors in there. Wow, that's pretty high. But, you know, the human factors part of it is so undercooked in our community.
It's really well studied, and it was quite interesting watching watching the commercial aviation and how that's progressed over the years. You know, every sport or every industry goes through what I call a dangerous stage where, you know, initially the flight training and the gear are woefully dangerous. You know, we saw that with hang gliding in the 70s, with kite surfing sort of late 90s. and where the first order of change was actually about changing the gear so that it was safer and that got better and then instructors' training standards and that got, you know, improved things. But in the airline industry, they got to about the 90s and, you know, a perfectly good plane with good crew crashing into each other, or into hills, or falling out of the sky, and they started realising that actually human factors and crew resource management was two of the areas that actually had the biggest focus in the early 90s, and that caused
the accident rate to drop significantly because up until that time it had sort of plateaued off, similar to what we've got in arid lighting today.
But, yeah, there's a ton of research that's gone into that area which is so, I guess, so undertapped in our community. I think I'd spent, you know, like a good six months just delving into all of that because I'm really interested in errors and how we make errors and why we make errors and how that could translate from, you know, not only safety but performance.
I think there's a whole talk that we could do on that and I think Matt, who was part of our team, would be probably the best person to talk to that, and I probably won't do it justice, but I do think that is a big area that we can see some improvement on. I look at the backcountry skiing community, for instance, and they've really got this down. I think they realised quite some time ago that you could teach people to dig pits and assess terrain and have all the right gear, but actually the problem was around the decision-making and what they're calling the heuristic traps that sort of sit around that.
Yeah, we've got one of our real experts at the Avalanche Center here. I actually had him, I went and saw one of his talks on decision making that was so good. And I thought, holy cow, this is, he doesn't have to change a word of this. This is exactly what we should hear in free flight. And I just hired him to come give a talk. And actually didn't hire him; he did it for free. But I would have hired him to come give a talk for our club, and he literally didn't have to change anything. It was just—it was the slides from the—it was the talk that he gave for navigating, you know, decision making in the backcountry, and it's the same stuff. Peer pressure, it is the same stuff. Thinking you're going to be okay, you know, it didn't happen to him.
It's all the traps that we get into, you know, hasn't happened—happened to me before. What happened to me today, you know, getting away from that. This one flight is the most important flight of your life. Thinking that—that gets people in trouble, yeah.
Look, there's lots of great research in the commercial aviation, but by and large, it's been poorly adapted for our use. And so the language and the approach doesn't sit very well, but there, the the research that underpins it is absolutely applicable to us. I think in the backcountry skiing, they're closer to the adventure ethos that we have in paragliding. And so probably resonates better with most pilots.
When you look at backcountry, I think one of the things that stands out to me is that deaths happen in the backcountry every year, but when they do happen, it's a big deal. Last year, there'll be, I think last year was a big year. there was a, there was half a dozen in the, in the U S which for numbers of skiers, you know, that, that, that is a, that's a big number. That's, that's very unfortunate, but it's nothing compared to free flight. Um, you know, I wonder if it's, where are we in this stage? I guess what I'm saying is, is, you know, will, will we, will we be able to reach that or is it just that much more dangerous look
If I had a crystal ball, I'd probably make a lot more money than I am at the moment. But, um, uh, yeah, and you'll be able to answer your question, but I don't know, I think my sense is that we're actually relatively young. We've sort of hit a plateau here, I think. You know, internationally, the instructor's training standards are, you know, vary from, from, um, association to association, but even the big ones, like, you know, France and Germany, are still having significant number of deaths. Um, I, I think, you know, like what the, what the report sort of taught me, or just reinforced, is that there's some really basic things that people are getting wrong on a regular basis, and if we can address those things, then, um, you know, we can, we can reduce our risk a lot.
So, you know, around launch and landing and the decisions to fly, for instance,
Um, you know, things around wing handling and ground handling and stuff like that. Um, look, we all know we need to ground handle, but how many of us actually go and do that? Why don't we do it? What's inhibitors for that? Yeah, and you know, we all know that it's, you know, it's, it's, um, it's going to help you fly better and react more naturally to you, to your wing. Um, you're going to have better takeoffs and less chances of crashing on takeoff. And your landing, you know, structured approaches to landing, giving yourself space and margin. That concept of margin goes across all sports and everything that we do. We just had one the other day where someone wanted to land next to the car, and that's a common thing, right?
We all don't want to walk, but is that the safest place for you to land? You know, like, okay, if it's, um, if it's, uh, you know, it's compromising your safety in a way that you, you don't have, uh, any margin, then, you know, giving yourself margin, I think, is like a really, really key, key concept, yeah.
I mean, if we're not going to remove all the risks, but we might as well remove the risks that we can, yeah. Those are easy, you know. Never, what is it? Nick Greece always says, you know, never, never be, never, never inconvenience yourself. Never, never wait. I see, not see. What is the, what does it say for you? Never want to be afraid or something of inconvenience yourself? I'm screwing up the, the quote, but it's, you know, yeah. Walk another hundred yards, don't put it down in the little timestamp, yeah.
So, if I was looking at launching, you know, and the key bits for that, yeah, there's two parts to it. There's obviously the setup and the decision to fly, and then there's the mechanical act of the inflation controlling it and then, you know, obviously committing to running. So, you know, the human factors comes really into the decision to fly, that first part of it, setting up your kit. The spot where you choose to launch is vitally important. There's, you know, there's multiple accidents that we've seen where, you know, people haven't cleared or checked where they're actually running and being rocks that they've slammed into. In terms of the actual launch itself, I think, you know, it's pretty clear that that control phase of, you know, when you're inflating control and then trying to commit to it, people are rushing that, which ends up, you know, with the wing in an undesired state or, yeah, collapsing or doing something it shouldn't have.
So it's really taking the time to make sure that that wing's well-controlled before you're committing to that launch.
And it's not always possible when it's super windy and you get plucked off, but obviously the ground handling really helps with that and is a key bit to keeping yourself safe.
Just do a quick checklist here. What were kind of the main summary takeaways? ways that I think it's the third or fourth page in the in the in the report. It's, you know what, what are the things like, you just went into launching the landing, uh, deciding to fly. What are the big ones? What, what other than those, what are the ones that you just see repeated over and over again? Yeah,
Well, those are the big things. So, like, I'm saying this is the basics and doing the the basics well. So, you know, doing, um, in terms of the landing look, um, there's all through the reports we commonly see the description, "I was too high, too low," and then something happened. So, there's a multitude of reasons that, you know, things might be going wrong in that space. Is not giving enough time for that, um, you know, final commit to to landing. So, that comes back to the the setup and the structure of of the landing. Um, you know, it's, um, it's dealing with those situations where you're too high or too low, you know, maybe deeper in the breaks.
You know, there's something going on the landing paddock, like, you know, thermal kicking off or changing wind direction, and then suddenly you've sawed and you've sputtered in low, low turns to the ground. Profound common common issue. Um, I think also, um, observation of what's going on, I think we might be lacking in some cases. So, often people are ending up in downwind situations where they end up too high into the paddock and then end up having to force it in. So, do you chop that up to
complacency, or just unaware? I don't know, I
Don't I don't I can't really read people's minds in every case, so um, I think in some cases it's overload, and this is a common problem across any sport that we do, and um, you know, particularly pertinent to what we do. You know, when you're stressed, and you might not take in as much information as you um, as you, you need to, to realise that the windsock's changed or the wind's changed direction.
Yeah, so I don't know. I'm not sure how well we actually teach people to actually observe. I know that's something that they actually teach in the sailplane world is how to actually look. You know, scan path control in terms of how to look and what to look for. What are those cues that you need to look for? And you know, so you know, you could be at 10,000 feet and some of these really experienced sailplane pilots know exactly how much wind is there just by the color of the um of the lake and the texture of it. So, um, I think that's important too. You know, it's not just what you're looking at, it's um, yeah, not just that you're looking, but you're looking for the right cues.
Fascinating. Yeah, I'm curious, what's been the fallout? Are you seeing? Are you seeing results? And maybe even compare this to your own personal—how have you changed your own personal approach to flying as a result of going through all this work? Yeah,
look we always we all have a pattern Like if you look back at your accidents and you look at different things relating to those accidents and there's a common pattern in there. Like you might be rushing or inattentive to the pre-flight check or, you know, there might be something in there that applies to everyone. For me, it's kind of reinforced a lot of things. Um, I mean, I've always had the, if it doesn't feel right, and what I call the hinky feeling, that's probably not right. And, and you may not know what that is at the time, but if it's you're paying attention to that feeling and then being able to step away, I think that's just reinforced
That, that's really important. Um, the discipline with checks and stuff like that, I think that's really what's come out of um gliding for me is that, you know, they're all about the checklists and um we've got the five-point check, which is fine, but there's what about the personal check? You know, how you, how you're feeling, what's going on around you, um, those sorts of things, I think um is important. Um, yeah, I, I think the, the wing handling is vitally important as well, and I, and I really like the approach that Flyo have taken. I know you've interviewed them previously, but there's some basics in there around connecting with the harness.
So, you know, when we get scared or people get scared, often you're sitting forward in your harness and maybe not connecting with that. So that's vitally important. Disconnecting your hands from the body movement is vitally important because, you know, when you have a collapse, Your natural tendency is to want to put your hand out and put your hand down, which then creates a cascade of events, and I think that is something that I think they do really well. And they talk also about situational awareness, which I've talked about as well, so being aware of where you are relative to the ground and being always prepared to throw that reserve if need be.
There's one thing that, um, Mac Wilts's, um, studies taught us is, you know, if in doubt, throw. You know, because there are a lot of deaths that are happening or serious accidents because people not throwing early enough and not having that situational awareness to do that. So there's two parts to that: there's the the decision to throw and training that, and then there's the physical act of throwing, which I think is vitally important. Yeah, you
And I both been in the game long enough that we've, we've seen some, some horrors. Uh, you know, one is obviously both of our friend Nick; that one shook up the community in a way that I hadn't seen others have because it was Nick, but also because it didn't sound like it was a radical day. It wasn't an ex-Alps day. It wasn't, you know, the thousands of days he's flown in. It sounded, for the most part, unless I don't have the story right, it sounded, you know, certainly for Nick, pretty benign. There were lots of other people flying. uh he had thrown his reserve multiple times he you know he had the training he had the awareness he has the calmness uh and we have all had other people who
Are very good at this sport, have had the same or worse. How much you know when you're going through, and you've looked at these, these reports, how much of it is still, in your opinion, just a roll of the dice versus being able to, you know, and you are, you're you and I are pursuing this sport at a, at a, you know, at a level where we're racing World Cups and that kind of thing. You know, how much of it is a roll of dice for look
I don't know for sure, Gavin. I, my gut feel says, it's probably around 20, but I don't have any facts, yeah, figures to back that up. Sure, but I think I would make the point that actually, um, oh, first up, in Nick's case, look, we're probably both surprised it hasn't happened earlier. I've seen some of the stuff he's done, yeah. Um, but look, if the accident stats bear anything out, it's not all about the hardcore conditions and the, you know, the big mountain flying that's creating it. A lot of these things are happening on your own home site, on in good conditions. So, you know, like it's pilot error or something else that's creating it. Look, with Nick's accident, it wasn't actually the initial impact that created the issue.
I don't know if you've seen his latest video, but it was actually a reinflation of his reserve as the helicopter came in that dragged him down the hill and it ultimately likely caused the problem. Wow. That's some awful luck. Yeah, so look, I'm not having go to any of the rescue people because, you know, they do a fantastic job, but it's just a combination of, um, events that sort of led to that. And, you know, like, it's not bubble wrapped and, um, it's not a Disneyland ride, um, as is a lot of other sports that we do. But I think if we focus on the basics and try and, you know, making good decisions and aware of the things that, you know, those heuristic traps and the things that are influencing this either
internal distractions or external distractions? I think we're in a, in a better space to be able to prevent a lot of these, what I call avoidable accidents. I'm
Curious, when you went back through, and I think you said there was, you know, 350 reported, or or maybe known incidences that that you looked at a lot more closely. I'm curious how things skewed in terms of hours. You know, is it more the beginners? Is it more the intermediate syndromes? Is it more the expert halo folks? Yeah, right. How did that skew?
Yeah, look, that's a really interesting question. And look, a lot of the accident stats around the world are not tied to what I call the gold standard, which is a per 10,000 hour rate accident rate. So what we had been able to do in New Zealand is tie that to the 10,000-hour rate. And what we see on a per-hour basis, the first 100 hours is double as dangerous. And it's a really steep hockey stick in that first 20 to 30 hours.
Say that again. Say that again. I want to make sure everybody got that.
Yeah. So in the first 100 hours, on a per-hour basis, it's double as dangerous.
Double as dangerous. Okay. Wow. In
the first 20 to 30 hours, obviously, in the graph, there's a bit of a hockey stick there as well, so it's even more. It's like you don't know what you don't know at that point. Interesting. But that's not to say that us as advanced pilots are less at risk. We fly more hours and we're doing more stuff, so any one year we might be just as at risk. risk. There was a really interesting stat that came out of the French association recently, which said that their, uh, instructors were basically double as likely, um, for a serious accident or death than, um, other people flying the similar sort of hours.
Holy shit, is
that right wow
yeah so we're we're all at risk, but for different reasons. So, you know, as you get better, you know, complacency can set in and then you're playing a numbers game in terms of the number of hours that you're flying.
Curious, and I don't remember this from the report, but when you studied it and when you also studied other countries and, you know, That stat's amazing. With instructors being twice is more likely, does it start to change in terms of where and how the accident happens? Is it still the basic stuff? Is it still the launching and landing, or is it more the "I can solve this" and not and not dealing with a cascade, or not dealing with not having the margin, you know, being too much ego, right?
Yeah, look, so the stats that I was referring to regarding the instructor ones came out of France, so there could be some cultural things going on there. One of the the problems that we have is that every association is doing their own thing. The Europeans do share data amongst themselves, but the output and the lessons and all that sort of stuff is—it's really done quite independently, um, and by and large, so it's very difficult to compare, you know, apples with apples in terms of that per hour, right? But in that particular case with With the French one, I think they identified that there was a small number of what they would call, you know, gnarly conditions or things that were obviously creating that because of the conditions or the type of flying that we're doing.
Mostly it's, you know, regular flying and regular stuff that people are getting caught out with.
You mentioned in the report Norway as a good example. What are they doing differently? yeah
Someone said to me, I talked to a guy that would, um, being part of the civl and, um, safety through the mid-2000s, and you know, he did, um, comment that you know, a lot of the big associations, like, um, Germany and France tend to do their own thing, but, um, Norway had actually learned from all of them. They'd had quite a high number of accidents, um, you know, deaths, I think was around, around 2% of their membership were dying. So they stopped the speed when flying stuff for a year, got a proper syllabus in there, and were training.
They've just really turned around that accident stat. So I think this has been a focus on some of the human factors stuff. They track all their members' hours in an online logbook so they can see accurately within the country and when they go travelling as to kind of the accident rates. But I think the one that stood out to me, like in the gliding world, there have been a couple of examples of really good associations that had basically brought their, significantly brought their accident rate down. You know, The British realised that they were killing people on tow and put a program together and then did a sort of a road show over a couple of years to all of the clubs to retrain people and get the winch drivers up to speed to do that.
But the one that really sort of stood out to me was Flytop. This was, I think it was a Swiss or German thing, and it was led by basically a human factors sort of mindset behind it. And they said rather than train the individual, they trained the club and the community together to kind of help do what I call sort of threat and error management and crew resource management, some of the things that came out of the aviation world. world, so they, they're influencing a, um, a culture rather than necessarily in an individual, and I think that culture has a large part in and kind of, um, you know, possibly an underrated, um, part of, um, you know, the safety, um, thing that we maybe don't give enough credit for.
Absolutely. So I think Brad Paterfield, the guy that does the base accident rate, he talks about this. He says that when a community's had a few accidents then they become more conservative than if that memory's not fresh. And that lines up with the human psychology as well, which are really terrible at assessing risk, most of us. We assess risk based on proximity of our experience to what's actually happened. So, you know, as we get more experience, we see more things, and you know, some people get more cautious with that. I see that in my regular job as well, which is IT security, and the base of that is assessing risk as well, making the same errors across
domains, domains, so it's, um, we all make errors all the time.
yeah it's
Just we don't always notice that we're making them, so the first step is to notice that we're making them, and then, then we've got a chance to actually maybe do something about it.
Yeah, this is this thing, this this concept of making cheap mistakes, you know? If you don't, yep, you don't make the mistakes, you don't really learn. But man, the mistakes can be expensive when you're dealing with gravity. Yeah, interesting. I, I like the community side of it. I hadn't heard that. I remember being in Macedonia a bunch of years ago and sitting down with it was either the Danes or the Swedes, and they, you know, their their club approach to teaching was very different than anything I had seen before. So if you go to the club to learn how to fly, you're kind of taken in to the fold. By you'll get a mentor. They don't really call it an instructor, as I remember. And and the club will, will send a group of people down to aniseed to learn to, you know, to do your SIV or to do, you know, to learn your your initial XC.
And that mentor, they get the, they get the trip, you know, that the club pays for that trip. And so, so if so, then if the student then comes up through that program, and they sometimes someday, they they become the mentor. They're incentivized. I'm going to get a trip if I become a good mentor and instructor. And so it's all kind of feeding the system. You know, you're very incentivized to teach well and to bring people up through the program. And that was kind of a cool concept. So I imagine, you know, there you're not necessarily teaching and you don't have a curriculum for the instructor. You have a curriculum for the club.
Yeah. Look, the British have that sort of model as well. oh, they teach into a certain level and then get into a club scene. I do think there's something in that first 20, 30 hours in terms of a sign-off, you know, like where you need to go and learn but then keep learning for that first 20, 30 hours in a sort of a supervised environment, which then at the end of that you get signed off. So there's examples of that in Australia and the Swiss do it. but I don't have clear numbers in terms of, you know, that it reduces the accident rate, but my intuition says that really, you know, we've got a real problem in the first 100 hours. And not just accidents, we've got a lot of people leaving the sport because they might do 40 flights.
They just get enough to be able to launch and land, but not necessarily the confidence to carry on. On, so I think that socialization into the community is like vitally important. And you know, you know the the connection between the the schools and the clubs or the community and helping people get into that community. You know, if if you're you've got a bunch of people to go fly with, you're more likely to go flying, and then you're more likely to learn off others where you get your license and then rush off and then into the mountains and go do your, you know, you vol biv and fly hike with 20 hours of flying. Well, that becomes quite dangerous on your own. So I think that oversight, um, because you don't know what you don't know at that stage, right?
At least at 100 hours, you know what you don't know, and maybe you choose to kind of do something different. But it's very much, you know, in those first 20, 30, 100 hours, it's very much like driving a car. You know, when you first start, you're focused on changing the gears and doing the mechanical parts of it, and that needs to build, right? So it becomes more automatic.
Um, and then then you're able to observe better, right? And so if you're too overloaded in those early stages, then yeah, you
start running into brick walls, running
into brick walls so either Either you give up or you have an accident.
Yeah, right. I'm curious. So this came out a year ago.
How hard has it been to change the culture in New Zealand? How easy has it been? What's, again, the fallout? What's happened as a result of it?
Yeah, look, New Zealand, like a lot of associations, we're run by volunteers. So there's a natural limitation in terms of the amount that we can do in any one year. we have some safety campaigns that are in the wings that are about to be released
We've been doing instructor seminars on various things, like landings and take-offs and stuff like that. At a club level, we're trying to influence the safety officers.
So, it's honestly, it's slow progress, and I can't say that we've actually turned it around yet, but I'd like to think in five years' time, it's a long-term thing that we can have some proper steps in there that are actually making a difference. Part of the problem, I think, is because we don't have good stats internationally, how do we know on a per 10,000-hour basis what interventions are actually working and are effective? And I've often thought that actually maybe we're approaching this the wrong way. we're we're we're doing the accident research after the accident rather than thinking about well what are the people that are not having accidents doing different and
Maybe that might be a way to come out of
instead of focus on focusing on the doom, we focus on the yeah
because we don't actually we know we know the accident reports are not as accurate um in a reflection of what's really actually happening here.
And I think if you come back to that, I think, you know, the first order of things in safety-critical systems is the design. So we've seen that, you know, with ENZOs, you know, the very top level. You know, people used to be throwing the reserve all the time and killing themselves and getting into it. You know, we still have reserves, but nowhere near the rate. We've changed the gear. The second thing is the training.
and good and proper training, I think, and consistent. And that's not consistent throughout the world. The third thing is education. So that's what we're talking about now, podcasts and materials that go into magazines and stuff like that. And the very last order of things is legislation and rules and regulation.
But we do the exact opposite in a lot of cases. And this is not just in paragliding, But in other industries and other places, we start with the rules and the regulations. We try and do a bit of education, but we never really address the real root of the problem, which is the equipment and the and the training that sits underneath that, that we're all fallible.
human beings and we're gonna fuck yeah yeah absolutely absolutely well said that's that's a nice way to look at that. My last question that I had written down for you, you've kind of answered this in terms of that hockey stick, you know, with the, with the hundred hour pilot, but I'm curious because the, the pilots who make the sport run in a sense, and I'm talking about from the financial side and the manufacturers, and, you know, we wouldn't have the Enzo if we didn't have the B and C pilots, right? And they are, what do we call them? We call the weekend warriors, the people who are on their way to becoming comp pilots and flying CCC gliders.
But the 85 % of this sport, the folks who are maybe getting 50 to 100 hours a year kind of pilot, I may be wrong there in terms of the hours, but you know, folks who love it who don't have the time or the job or the the ability to do it maybe as much as they want, but they get after it when they can. How would you categorize, and I don't know if your study answered this, but I feel like you probably have a good knee-jerk, uh, to this. Is you know, how would you compare the risk of that pilot versus versus an X-Out pilot, you know, and say in this last one that's dealing with 60 kilometer an hour winds at peak height.
You know, just abhorrent, scary conditions for any recreational pilot. But it's interesting because we don't see, we've certainly seen plenty of accidents in the X-Ups, but we haven't seen anything major in the history of the race. Yeah, look,
I'm not sure if it's a useful comparison. And we don't need to be that extreme. I mean,
like the expert versus the intermediate.
Yeah, look, I mean, Julian Garcia in your previous podcast really nailed what I think is going on with the X-Alps and the risks involved there. You can do it relatively safely, but if you're wanting to be up the front, you're going to have to be taking some serious risks in wind. So, you know, it's about margin, right? And these guys are operating to the edge of their margin and probably relatively good at kind of judging that. For the majority of us, we're not always good at judging of, you know, where our level is or what the conditions are, and I think that's a major, major difference between the two.
Yeah, so, look, there are different things, different risks at different levels, and I think, you know, if we ask ourselves, you know, know who's most at risk here, and we point outwards from ourself, then we're doing ourselves a disfavor because it, you know, ultimately we're all at risk regardless, and there's a—there's a lot that the sport can bring, you know, and and we just, I'd look at it personally from what, what I get for what I might lose, and at the moment that, um, that's, uh, in the favor of flying, and maybe that changes with, with time, but there's certainly ways of flying that are less risky than others, and I think if you pay attention to those, then you can have a full, and there's no reason why it's not possible to go without an accident, but certainly there's, you know, there's some inherent risk in there that you just can't get away from.
I like that thinking about it, you know, what can I get versus what can I lose? I mean, I think if you had that approach to every time you're going to take to the sky, That's a... that's a nice one. You know, Chris Shanakuchi says, you know, that the good days are going to come around. You don't need to fly the bad days, you know? You could just wait for a better day. Yeah, for sure. Love it.
Yeah, um, look, yeah, I often think that if we avoided, you know, 20 of the the meteorology that's sort of dodgy, then we'd reduce the accidents by 80. I don't have any figures to back that up, but I think, you know, there's there's a um, it'd
certainly be nicer for our heads, wasn't it? Wasn't it because you, yeah, we've all gotten out of a lot of those situations without an accident, but it can certainly leave other types of scars where, yeah, it's not that much fun, yeah
Yeah, look, in terms of um gear and stuff like that, look, I've mentioned before that, but it's a relatively small part of the equation in terms of causing accidents. But, you know, we've really gone ahead with the wings and the passive safety with those and the performance. But I have a feeling that we're kind of going backwards on the harnesses and the back protection.
Yeah, for
sure. And it's a complex problem because it's a chicken and egg. You know, the manufacturers will produce what people want, And what people want is lighter, you know? They could produce really good back protectors, but if it doesn't sell, then you know it's, it's not going to be successful. So, I, yeah, yeah.
This, this, it's a matt. We've talked about this quite a bit, uh, won't hammer it here, but the, you know, the hike and fly thing is incredibly exciting. It's great for the sport, you know, it's increasing numbers, it's, it's getting people into nature, it's all good, right? But man, that's a massive compromise. I mean, you know, for my four campaigns, I've had to fly a quote-unquote certified harness. It wouldn't protect a bug in a, in a rug, you know? I mean, these are not, these certifications are awfully low standards when it comes to harnesses, uh, and I couldn't agree with you more there that we are, we are radically compromising on safety and, uh, people just need to understand that.
Yeah, look, it was Matt Wilkes that sort of twigged me to thinking about this a bit more, and he presented it to us, and like, he, he still hikes up, um, hikes up hills with the lightweight stuff. I said, "Matt, you're a neathestess. You see these accidents, you know the stats, but you're gonna do it. What would change your mind?" And he like had to think about it, and he said, "Well, there's not good valid alternatives that are light," and you're, "There's a compromise at some point, right?" Exactly. You want light? Then, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
I wonder if if we could all see the inner workings. You know, you don't, you don't see too many nurses riding motorcycles because they've seen the head injuries, you know, over and over and over again. You know, I wonder if we could really see it. I, I wonder if we'd be doing it, but really awesome stuff. I really appreciate this and I appreciate you and your team going through all the effort of producing this. I would love to, you know, I've been holding us for a long time. Is this something now, you said you released it about a year ago. It'd be great to, can I help share this document and get it out? Great. Look,
it's not an easy read. We didn't do it for mass consumption. We did it to highlight where gaps might be to kind of make further effort. So it's not a super easy read, but, yeah, certainly happy to share that. For a lot of people who have been in the game a long time, it shouldn't be too surprising, But we've tried to break down the recommendations, recommendations, and cherry picks and stuff, um, based on, you know, what can association do, what can a school do, what can instructor do, what can an individual do? We're not claiming it's comprehensive, but it was just where we thought things were at, and more than happy to kind of interact with, uh, others around the world on this, and if people got feedback and I've got other things to add, then, um, yeah, happy to carry on that conversation, right?
Well, we'll get it out there again. Thanks to you, thanks to your team, and thanks for all making us, making us all hopefully a little bit safer. I appreciate it. Sure, no.
Worries, well, pleasure being on here and, uh, yeah, good, good to chat to you again, given
Always, thanks bud, if
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