238. Acro, Test flying, SIV, Instruction, Meteo and Comps - Karlis Jaunpetrovics

Hi

there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the CloudBase Mayhem. I am just a few hours back from the Monarca down in Mexico. I have a couple little things to say about that before I get to my guest, Carlos Jim Petrovics, which I'm sorry, buddy. I know I butchered your last name, but formerly a test pilot for BGD and now an SIV instructor. He mentored underneath the Fly.io program with Malin Lobb and Fabian Blanco. I've had both those guys on the show, Malin a couple of times. Carlos's story is amazing and we get into all kinds of subjects here. We'll get into that here in a bit. But what's on my mind today is something that should be on it frequently, I think, for everybody.

The Monarca was, as always, just incredible. Awesome flying. We had six amazing days. I, of course, won it last year and this year I literally could not do anything right. I crashed off launch the very first day. Pretty benign, but slammed something in my leg pretty good and took the wind out of me and had a bit of a sprained rib, I think, and then bombed out that day. I relaunched and my zipper was all screwed up. Anyway, just one gong show after. Another, I think I finished somewhere. I never actually even looked, but somewhere in the 70s or 80s. At one point, I think I was last in the competition. So, as my buddy Farmer likes to say, strikes and gutters.

And strangely, I think the longer I've been doing this, when I do poorly, it doesn't seem to bother me very much. Because, not just because of this, but sadly, there was a death on the last day of the competition. I don't know. Really, any of the details. A Norwegian pilot. And obviously, very tragic and very sad for his family and friends and our community. And unfortunately, this is not that rare. Although, it certainly is rare enough that we all keep doing it. But, at the end, at the awards, a friend of mine, who I've also had on the show, was pretty shook up by it.

And, you know, just asked that question that I think we need to ask ourselves very frequently, which is, is it worth it? You know, is the risk worth it? And most of the time, I think the answer to that is yes. I don't think any of us are blind to the fact that what happened to the Norwegian pilot could happen to us. It's just part of the game. And most of the time, I think, maybe for some people, it's all the time, that risk is worth it. But I think it's worth asking. And checking in with that every once in a while. And maybe sometimes it's not. Maybe sometimes you're not feeling it. Or you've got other obligations or family or whatever that, you know, it's never hardest on the person that goes in. It's hardest on all the people who are around that person and love that person.

And, anyway, I think it's something that Belcourt and I talked about it a bit there that last night during the awards or after the awards ceremony. And he was reminding me of that. That, you know, we definitely need to ask ourselves that question pretty frequently. So, to come full circle on that thought, the reason I don't seem to get upset about poor finishes or poor results is that I think we should celebrate every safe flight for what it is. It's amazing. And you get to touch down safely and walk away. And that seems to be helping my... Head when things don't go very well in competition. I can just land and laugh about it and go, hey, I just had a great flight.

And I'm down safe. And bummer about the results. Who cares? It's better than the potentially the alternative. That leads me to Carlos. And Carlos got started pretty early. He's been flying since 2012. He started his flying journey in Taiwan. He was traveling around the world. Got instantly addicted. Flew there quite a bit. He's got some great stories in here about Taiwan. And then he got really into acro. Started doing acro up in Nepal. And became a really competent acro pilot. And that led him to the doorsteps of Bruce Goldsmith and Bruce and Anna and BGD. Became a test pilot for them for a few years.

And then decided it was a little bit too much inside work. Even though he was a pilot. You know, he was a test pilot. You're, of course, flying outside all the time. But he talks about the risks there and what's involved and what he learned being a test pilot. And then decided he wanted to get a lot more into XC and into instructing. Like me, he's running comps down in Le Chabre in La Ragna, which is over by Gap in southern France. One of the places I cut my teeth on a couple of my first trips over to France. And he has a lot to say about... How to run safe comps and the importance of communications, radios, just putting everything in place there to make them work.

When you can kind of step in and decide somebody's taking too much risk and ground them. Both just as an instructor, but also in a comp. The importance of finding mentors. How to find mentors if you're an introvert. And...

Duh. A ton. We just bounce around in a lot of different really cool places that he has been exploring and teaching. He's an APPI instructor. He's got a fantastic website and kind of pre SIV video and a course that you go through. Again, under what he learned from Flyo. The tactics there and strategies for their SIV courses are fantastic. Very similar. And... But check out his website. I'll have all these in the show notes, but it's flyingcarless.com.

Lots of great resources there. And I'll have a bunch, I said, in the show notes as well. Really enjoyed this conversation. He's incredibly articulate about all things flying. And he's making a big impact on the sport in Europe and around the world. And providing an incredible platform for learning. And he's very good at... Very good, clearly, at teaching. So, I was pretty inspired by all of this. We had a great time. We really enjoyed it. And I hope you do, too. Cheers.

Carlos, thanks for coming on the Mayhem. I was excited to get an email from our mutual friend, Jock. I understand he's maybe worked with you on the comps you're running out there in southern France. And he gave me some questions to ask you. And then that took me on a deep dive. And some of your background as a test pilot for BGD and your courses and your SIV. So, yeah, we've got a lot to talk about. I thought the place we'd start is... I'd like to try to say your last name. Jean Petrovic? Is that right?

Almost, yeah. It's...

Not really?

It's Jaun Petrovic.

Jaun Petrovic. Yeah, in Latvia. You're from Latvia.

Yeah. So, in Latvia, the J is pronounced as... Okay. Instead of J.

Okay. Gotcha. Gotcha. And you're in a nice part of the world. You're down near La Ragne.

Yeah. So, I've been in southern France since 2016. And I've moved here near La Ragne-Montaglin, which I'm in a small town, Serre, in 2018. And I've been here as a home base since then. I

understand you kind of took off from Latvia in 2009 or around then. So, how did you land... You weren't a pilot then. That came later. But how did you... You were traveling the world. How did you land in that part of France after seeing so many different places?

Yeah. It was really... I came here first for the job interview with BGD. They flew me out to south of France, Gourlier, or it's just near a Gordone takeoff where the competitions sometimes happen. And it was a two-week-long job interview. Okay. It's the longest job interview. It's the longest interview I've ever had. Really? Yeah. Two weeks.

And Gourlier, that's Ozone's base too, right? Don't the two of them operate in the same spot?

Yeah. Yeah. It's the same. Gourlier is actually where the ICSI MAG used to be based out. I mixed up the towns. They are in Maganiosk, which is more on the main road towards Nice, just next to Grasse, really. Grasse is the easiest town to... Yeah. It's the same place for Ozone. Bruce actually created Ozone back in the day. He was one of the co-founders, so it's the same location.

And they flew me out. The plan was to see if I would be a good fit for the team and to make a commercial for the Epic, BGD Epic, that is now quite well-known, especially in the Accra community. That's how I ended up in France, to be a test pilot. So,

what did they do for two weeks? I'd love to find out how you... What does the interview look like to become a test pilot? Well,

so... Just

fly all the time or...

Yeah. So, back then, BGD was a small company. So, everybody did multiple jobs. Literally, in office, it was Bruce Arna and Anthony Green. And I joined that team. There was only three people in the French office and a few more in Austria. So, the original plan was to fly all the time. The plan was that I would do sales, sales manager for them, for the international market, for the Eastern Europe and Asia mostly, and do test piloting. So, sales in the morning and test pilot in the afternoon.

So, yeah, really, I mean, the sales part, they wanted to see if I'm able to do that. And for test piloting part, it's flying together and seeing if fit. And then, if I would be a fit for the team. As it was a very small company at the time. And then, the flying style, if it matches as well. Because that's...

Because all the rest of the actual skills of how to be a test pilot, there is no schools for that. So, the company has to teach you anyway. Anybody who comes from free-flying community and wants to be a test pilot, you will, even if you go through the certification center, like Air Turquoise does a course, that course is four to five days or so, and you're not going to become a test pilot. You'll be more informed, but then it takes a lot of time to learn.

Just understand what the testing is. Yeah,

the actual flying bit of testing is, it's an art in itself. It's like the acro reversed. You collapse things and you do nothing. You follow it. And that's a really difficult thing to learn because we, you know, throughout our career, throughout our flights, all we do is to control. Actively the wing and keep it open and, and you have to suppress that and only act when needed. If, you know, the wing is the prototype, not the wing, the prototype, if it's not good enough to reopen by itself, then you have to act. Um, I was all acro at the time and just came from a summer in Organia and it was really, really difficult not to do something. So that was really the most difficult part for me to learn.

It was just let it go and go with it and don't weight shift or it's really, for me, it was really difficult to, to, to do proper tests, uh, because the tests are defined, you have exactly what you need to do, which, and it's all filmed. So it's very easy to check if you've done it right or wrong. Uh, but it's really hard to execute the same test over and over again, exactly as prescribed by the certification.

And does that stay, you'll have to forgive me. Cause I. I don't know a ton about the air Turquoise and certification process, but does that stay static through the different ranges of gliders? I mean, are you, are you still expected to do nothing when you're on a CCC glider as well?

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, uh, the, the, the test, the difference between a, B, C, D classes, uh, the time angle of reopening sort of in a nutshell, I mean, it's a bit more complicated that, but so within for ENA. Uh, asymmetric collapse is supposed to open a certain turn radius and, uh, not radius, but the degrees and a certain pitch forward or so on and so forth. And for the higher certification classes, it's a longer time and more, you know, they can turn more, they can dive more and yeah, you, they are still supposed to reopen by itself for most things. And then some maneuvers is if you had to have pilot action,

then it by default. Go. Is

it, does it being a test pilot, does it, uh, introduce quite a bit more personal risk to what, to your life?

No, I, I think, uh, well, in recent memory and to my knowledge, there hasn't been no lethal accidents for test pilots or serious injuries. Uh, there's been some injuries, uh, this Alan Zeller had a serious injury testing some high CCC wings. Uh, but, uh, uh, I mean, uh, in Gordon, we've, uh, between the BGD at the time we were three, I was on, was about five or six. There was nothing in the two year span that I spent with them, not nothing for us and nothing for them. As far as I know, um, it's, you know, that you're going to do them. So it's the same as an acro altitude box. You know, you, you don't just go crazy when you.

Yeah, you, you have your margins, you have your reserves, of course. And, and the wings that I said, the prototypes themselves, we test them on the ground. My ground handling is a good way to check your wing. If it's on the ground, you're already going to see how the wing behaves in there. There's a lot of indication and you never take a prototype and just take off, you know, you do your due diligence before that. So make sure it flies in the first place and then, then you do your flying bits. And no, I never felt that it would be dangerous or that I, you know, I've done mostly because of stupidity, crazier things in acro, you know, pushing it too, too soon, too far. When I was a young pilot, I didn't have the same experience with testing.

Let's rewind that before your time with BGD, uh, your, your passion was acro. I gather that was when you first, when did, when did you first get into it? Where did you get into it and take, bring us back? Yeah,

so my traveling around as a early twenties, I ended up in Taiwan, uh, I was, uh, teaching English there and, uh, moved in with a guy, uh, Tim, a friend of mine still, till this day, and he had the backpack. And so we started talking about that backpack is, and he told me, oh, it's a small airplane. I'm like, yeah, yeah. Um, I never heard of paragliding before that. So, yeah, I mean, I've seen, uh. People flying with the engines as a, but, um, I, I thought it's parachuting with some motor or something like, I don't know. I had no clue, but paragliding is, yeah. And, um, yeah, so he introduced me to his instructor that taught him, um, back in Taiwan. And so I learned, and I was hooked as we all tend to be after our first flights.

And I used to teach the English five days a week. And I went down to two days a week. And the rest of the days I was flying as much as possible or ground handling the first year. And, um, before going to Taiwan, I visited Nepal and India. I spent a year there. And so I reached out to some people in poker Nepal back in the day that this is around May, 2012. Uh, it was the golden era of commercial tandem flying for Westerners in poker back then. So I reached out to some companies. And see if I can, you know, drive the van or do whatever to, to progress in paragliding. And one company answered and I ended up in poker.

Um, long story short, I did the three seasons of commercial tandem flying in poker while learning acrobatics. Because when you start paragliding, at least, especially back then, when you Googled it, the, the fun stuff for late twenties, the most cool thing that you can see is acrobatics. cross country looked boring. It's like, it was not interesting one bit. You just sit in the saddle for hours for, you know, I didn't know any better back then. So acro it, it was, and the commercial tandems was just a way to pay for it all. So I don't like, so I can fly as much as I can. And in poker, we did quite a bit of acro tandem as well when the passengers were up for it. So we would do five flights on tandem and then do two flights on acro after that.

And day in, day out. It was, uh, my first months of flying tandems was 25, uh, 25 days, five flights a day, every single day. That was my first commercial season. Wow. It's, uh, yeah, it was the wild, wild east back then as a beautiful learning place. Uh, there was a lot of people, quite a few of them have gone to now, the people who've been there in poker and we all were young and just learning. And, uh. Spending our winters there to, to extend the season. Good scene. Uh, and, uh, back in Taiwan, I, for the, I started doing some teaching, uh, beginner teaching, and I reached out to multiple companies for dealerships and things like that to sell some gear.

And so I worked with BGD as their dealer in Taiwan for a couple of years. And, uh, eventually the company was growing and they needed more people. And they were looking for people and they liked my communication with them through the emails. And that's how I got the interview to BGD. And, uh, of course, and they offered me a sales job first. And I said, no, thank you. I'm not interested. They would like to be a test pilot because I want to fly. And I, I worked in offices before and it's not my cup of tea. Uh, so they met me halfway, like midway, halfway. Or what's the experience? Russian. And, uh, so I flew out and the rest is history. I've stayed in France, uh, uh, uh, two years with them as, and

at this point, at this point, were you flying much XC or mostly still just, yeah, no, not at

all. Um, my longest flight was I think 83 kilometers in Taiwan cross country. Most of them were 50, maybe maximum or less. Uh, so it was like, I did a bit of, uh, trying it out. Um, and I started to like it quite a lot because it's, uh, quite a bit of a challenge, as you well know, it's not, it's not an easy thing to do. And especially in the 2012, 13, 14, there wasn't as much information out there. Uh, actually to that point, I listened about 10 podcasts of yours, the first ones in the row, all of them, uh, cause it was, it was the only place at the time to, to find information. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And the source was pre-checked so that you, you did your work, found the people. And so sort of, uh, you were the guarantee that the person that I listened to actually knows what they're talking about. Cause back then it was, I was new to this all. I didn't know anybody in the sport and the only options I really had was paragliding forum. And there it was really hard to figure out, you know, there was a lot of,

yeah, it's

controversies and you don't know who's talking. So the cloud-based mayhem was one of the first sources, online sources to my knowledge at the time.

Oh, that's cool to hear.

Yeah. It's a surreal to be here after all these years to, to be part of it. Yeah.

That was, that's been quite a while. Yeah. It's

10 years. Yeah. Yeah. I've been flying for now 13, 14. So yeah, it was early in my flying career before I. There

you go. Um,

and nowadays we were lucky. We have a lot more of it. Um, YouTube's are getting better and, uh, yeah,

there's a lot of outlets doing a lot of really good things, you know, for, for sure. I mean, even the, I used to say, you know, the, even from a magazine, it's hard to get long form answers. Yeah. I mean, it's, they're, they're articles, you know, so it's, it's hard to get, you know, Bruce has been writing for XC magazine for a long time and they're so great, but it's, it's hard to get, you know, you always want to go, I want to talk to Bruce. I want more. I want, I want more. But now they're doing their masters. Class and, you know, the, the, the media sphere, when somebody told me I should do a podcast, I didn't even know what a podcast was. I just went was so the, the media sphere has really expanded and there's lots of, lots of people like yourself with your YouTube channel. It's, uh, it's great that we have so many different ways to get information out there.

What's the flying like in, in Taiwan? I, what, how big is the community?

At the time there was about 200 active pilots on the island. Local, uh, uh, some tandem, uh, operations and schools, um, very friendly community. I can, to me personally, it's been nothing but amazing community of local pilots. Um, the flying itself, it's, it's an island. It's about 400 kilometers north to south and 200 east to west. Uh, the size of it, it's a teardrop shape. Middle of it is, uh, mountains up to 4,000 meters. Which is quite surprising. They even get some snow.

Yeah. Well, I had no idea it was that high. Very rarely,

but yeah.

Wow. Cause you're, you're quite close to the equator. It's not too far off,

but it's, uh, you get the snow only at the mountains, of course, not, not to the sea level. And, um, it's because it's subtropical, it's all thick forests, uh, and, um, humid air. So cloud base is quite low usually. And it's hard to get any longer distance, but, uh, I've been following Taiwan ever since, of course, and people have done now 100, 120, I think straight land flights on the east coast, which was not the case when I was there. Uh, it was, I think national record was like 80 kilometers or 90. So now boys are, we're pushing the limits of it. I mean, there's not much, cause the, there's not much distance left that you can do straight.

Okay. So you can't fly the length of

the island.

Yeah. Cause the

south and north. Yeah. The

north is

windy, it's Venturi, the island crates of Venturi as the ocean winds comes around. And so that gets too much for us. Uh, so you're kind of limited to the more or less middle of it. So you can of course fly north and south on specific days and the mountain range is all, it's like a dinosaur's back. It, it, it goes down at the both sides, all sides of the island and the center is really high. So it's, um, for big, for big distances. This is tricky, but for this time of the year, from about November to late February, it's really nice, smooth flying, quite reliable in the westerly coast. Um, it's an amazing culture. It's a place worth visiting, um, uh, flying there.

It's not grand for big distances, but it's nice. And yeah,

you were saying it's quite forgiving, quite in some ways. Yeah. I've tested the trees.

Tree landing. Early in my flying. Yeah. Yeah. Sunk into one and it's a long walkouts and a rescue there. I mean, helis are hard to get by. It's mostly military. So rescue, it's self-rescue or hiking out. But yeah, it's very forgiving if you're going to end up in trees. The most dangerous thing is if you land in a betel nut, uh, plantations, it's the chewing thing that they do. It's like a chewing.

Ah, the chewing thing.

Yeah. That destroys everything in your mouth and teeth and all that. I

didn't know that was a thing in Taiwan.

But it's, uh, it's, it's, um, it's more valuable than gold there. And, uh, so they have bear traps and people come with guns and, uh, it's a serious. So if you land there, it's, uh, better not to move around because they have actual traps. And, uh, that's

it. I mean, I always associate betel nut with cocaine producing countries, you know, that's usually kind of goes hand in hand. Like bus drivers will always chew on the betel nut with the coca leaves because it keeps them awake, you know, so they can go. Drive 18 hours straight, you know, places like Bolivia and that kind of thing. Is it, is it similar in Taiwan? Well, not that I know

of. Cause I mean, uh, the betel nut is fully legal and it's sold everywhere in the country. Uh, yeah,

I think the, I think the betel nut does not, uh, I don't think that has any cocaine properties. It's more that they, they would wrap it. I might have this wrong. I know that it's used with the coca leaves. They wrap it

with leaves in Taiwan as well, but not coca leaves. Uh, some, some leaves, uh, well in Taiwan. Okay. Drug trafficking is capital punishment. So the, that's a lot more strict, uh, uh, sure. But, um, uh, betel nut, uh, yeah, that's, that's just for the nut itself. And, uh, apparently it's very addictive and more

valuable than gold.

So, yeah, they, they protective of those, but it's easy to see the skinny single trees and kind of, it doesn't look like forest. So, yeah, those are the ones you don't want to avoid.

Okay. Stay, stay away from those areas.

Taiwan is incredibly safe and incredibly friendly. It's a, it's an amazing place. I spend there five years. It's my home in Asia.

Right. Wow. Cool. That's a good try. Try it out. I think you're the first person I've spoken to that I've, maybe others have flown in Taiwan and we didn't, didn't touch on the subject, but I don't know anything about the flying in Taiwan. That's, that's cool. It's an

interesting place to explore.

Cool. Okay. So then you go, then you go to BGD and you spend some time being a test pilot. Or what was, why did that end? What did you decide? You decided to do something else? For me,

this is something that is a, doesn't sound like it when you're a test pilot, but a lot of the work is in office and the flying is, we still flew three, three, four days a week, would go out and test.

And it's very, the process of it is very repetitive. And I, I, I like challenges that is add some like cross country. It's never the same, even, even though if you fly the same site, it's never going to be the same flight. This is also why I stopped acrobatics seriously, because it's the same repetition and this every day is the same for where cross country, you never get to the same days. And that's what I really love about cross country and why I switched into cross country flying and more than competitions or anything else as a pilot to fly, it's the, just to try to do as big of a distance as the day allows and connect different mountain ranges that, that, that's what I love the most about paragliding and, uh, being a test pilot doesn't offer that.

And this is why I decided to part ways and go do my own thing. We still cooperate and, uh, we're going to run the BGD waitlist together and, uh, the single biggest mentor I've had is Bruce Goldstein. And, uh, about 80%. I know about this. What a mentor. I couldn't believe my luck on that one.

Not bad. Yeah. That's the gold at the end of the rainbow.

It was surreal to land in Nice airport and have him pick you up. And I was only, that was my fourth year into flying. I was brand new pilot. I didn't, I was shapeable, very shapeable when I arrived, it was all ears. And

yeah, that's nice too. Isn't it? Yeah. Well, he must, must've been doing something right. Karmically for that was, that's a, that's a good place to learn

more than I thought is possible. And I had no idea what I don't know. I gets the, um, this is, um, also like, as you mentioned about Bruce before that he's written a lot of articles. And when I was with them, I pushed for the Bruce tube that Bruce may be. Yeah. The BGD, we did about four or five episodes at the time. Uh, cause it's the knowledge that the single biggest thing, but I took from the, my experience, my time with them is that the, the knowledge gap between guys like Bruce Goldsmith, who's been in the sport from the beginning and designing, testing and taking part in every aspect of it. And the rest of the community, there's a big gap and it's guys like you are doing an amazing job.

Making the gap smaller, it's Bruce is really good at what he does and he doesn't have time to go and teach and things like that. And, uh, so it's, and it's the same case I'm talking about Bruce because I know him, but it's the same for all the rest of the people who are involved in the industry. All of them. Yeah. Uh, my, uh, I, I was shocked how huge the differences and how little these things are talked about. And, uh, so yeah. That that's what eventually inspired my own YouTube channel to pass on, start doing something towards that. And yeah, a good mentor is, uh, uh, I think this sport more than maybe any others, it's incredibly necessary that it's to, to really, I mean, I bet it's the same for you, right.

To get where you've gotten so fast in paragliding, it wasn't a lot of mentors.

I mean, it was, I think, I think the other. Chunk of. That. And it sounds like this was you, okay. I'm going Denise. I think you, you it's two things it's mentors and it's being in the right place. And I think they really go together for me. It was after years of sailing and, you know, I really wanted to get into flying. It was happening to meet Nick Greece and asking him where I should live. And he said, well, there's three places in the, in the U S you should live if you want to fly big lines. And. I think no matter where I would. Have moved, I ended up choosing sun Valley, but there were really good pilots in all three places. And so, uh, you know, they, they went hand in hand, but it sounds similar to you that you decided, okay, well, I'm going to go to Nice and, uh, I'm going to base myself in a place.

That's one of the best places to get hours in the world. Really? I mean, you're, you're, you're getting. Oh, well, that's why I was on and

BGD is testing there. It's one of the most reliable places in the world to fly. Exactly. Oh, for airtime.

Yeah. I'm one. I'm in one of the least reliable places, but there's good pilots here when it's good. It's amazing. So, uh, but the mentor thing was, was just enormous for me. That's actually a question I get a lot. So I'll ask you that. Uh, I think it's easier for people who are extroverts and quite gregarious. Uh, and I've had Cedar Wright on the show. If you tell, you know, he's a, he's a pilot who's gotten really good. But he was incredibly aggressive at getting mentors. Some people are, can do that because of their personality, but often people are not. They're either introverted or they're shy. Uh, what would you suggest in terms for, how do you suggest to your students to find mentors and to, because it really is a very important piece

of the game. Yeah. Well, in that case, it's, uh, join as many groups organized, you know, cross country clinics as heavy. So any kind of, uh, organized thing, because then you're part of the group and you, you're, you know, and, uh, and, uh, as what I suggest, especially is that, um, try as many different instructors as you can to find a match. And because we paragliding has a lot of different philosophies, how to do the same thing. And, uh, a lot of times both multiple philosophies are correct. We don't really have one, one right way how to do things. Uh, and then finding the one that matches with your personality and how you want to do things. And it's trial and error. And, uh, groups, uh, I think any kind of organized groups would help because then for a introvert person, then you're not alone.

And, you know, part of it's easier, might be easier. And these days, this podcast, uh, YouTube is full of information. There's, uh, uh, the event courses are coming out online. Things, you know, that you can subscribe for something. Uh, yeah. And, uh, and then maybe through the same courses, you'll find a mentor there and instructor or build a community of pilots around you. Like-minded, uh, from ads. That would be the way to, cause I, I just went to, you know, travel and looked and bought a beer to a guy and talk to him. I'm extrovert. So for me, that's, that's how I go about things and just go talk to them. Um, if that's not an option, then I think, you

know, uh, join the course or multiple and then no one course is enough. It doesn't matter how good the instructor is. You have to do like repetition is the key in this sport. And, uh, currency is the king and without currency.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You're reducing your margin. So you leave BGD. And was it kind of on your mind already to get into instructing and SIV or is that when you went to fly? Yeah. It was,

uh, yeah, I've never thought about, uh, I mean, I've, uh, helped some friends of mine and, uh, we, you know, I've done some cause I've done enough of acrobatics and test piloting. So I had a good understanding of it, but, uh, it was my, uh, repeating clients for cross country clinics that I did. They wanted to learn SIV from the same way I taught, uh, my progression courses. And, um, so eventually I agreed to go out and try. So I, I did do my research. I, a good friend of mine is Theo De Blic. So I spent a lot of time with him in Ixalps. I was supporting him in 21. So we did a lot of walking and a lot of talking. So I picked his brain on, uh, on, you know, SIVs and all that.

Um, but. But the first, once I started teaching, I quite quickly realized that the way I was teaching the, it was limited, the, the, that it should be possible to do it better. Because, uh, even though I still, I did my best to take it progressively and individually and, uh, but the structure wasn't good enough to keep everybody out of the water. Everybody was safe, but people were getting in the water where I thought that that shouldn't have happened. I've missed something in a, in a training bit somewhere. In my mind, in ideal scenario, uh, the, you shouldn't go in water if the instructions are done well. A lot easier said than done.

Cause there's a lot of things has to go right from instructor's point of view, student's point of view and all that. And I'm not there yet as an instructor. That's my goal. I would like to have a season of SIVs with nobody in the water, but that's, uh, yeah. Maybe another 10 years. We'll see. Um, so, so I apply, I was actually very interesting. The story, cause it all started with Bruce's interview on my YouTube channel. Um, I made a, we posted a video about the 10 % breaks that you should, you know, you should fly hands up or fully down or actively piloting, but not that five, 10 % for you just kinda react and grab the little bit of a break. And it was misunderstood. Because Bruce just said fly with hands up and people took it literally.

And, um, neither I or Bruce realized that that could have been misunderstood. So it made a bit of a controversy, controversy back then. And Malin commented on it. Malin Lobb did. And I knew about Flyo and Malin before that. And so I sent him an email. Malin just basically said that it, you know, that can be misunderstood and people have misunderstood it. So I offered. I offered Malin to do an interview for my YouTube channel to clear up that cause he's teaching civs. I knew him only by reputation, never met the man before. So he agreed. And I went to Hennessy to decide and sat down with him for about seven hours. We spent that day together on Saturday. Uh, it's not all on recorded of course, but, uh, wow.

So, and, uh, through the interview, he mentioned that, uh, if, uh, the instructors are willing. And, uh, they're willing to share their knowledge and welcome pilots to come and learn as long as they leave their ego at home and are actually willing to come and learn. And so I took him up on the offer. And then I, that was May. And in September of the same year, I went to spend five days with them on the boat and in the classroom while they run their courses. And then Malin and Fabian would debrief me on what they do, why they do it. And, and I would ask a million questions. I came back with, I think it was 15, a four pages of notes after five days, 15, one, five, a four pages of notes for myself.

Um, the, the detail. Awesome. What

a treat.

Oh man, that would've been awesome. It's, uh, the detail, the Malin's struggle, Malin's it's Fabian and Malin. The detail they go into is. I've never seen anything like it to, to go in that much precision for the specific maneuvers. They dissect everything like, uh, uh, the simple rotation. When you enter in rotation and exit without no input, natural exit. And then, you know, rapid adds another one. So, and you know, it's, it's the attention to every detail and explanation and, uh, and it's all based on the four fundamentals that Malin and Fabian has covered it on this podcast. Before. And those, I would, I should backtrack before the course.

The, the biggest game changer, in my opinion, single biggest thing from flyers is the pre-course knowledge base. And this is something I've never thought of myself because, uh, and I, I did the same in my courses. It would be the day before, or usually the day before or in morning, you have a four hour briefing of each part. And, uh, how it's all going to go and all the rest of it. That's four hours of a lot of information. I mean, with the gear check. So it's not talking for four hours, but it's two to three hours of theory. And then you have your gear check and off you go the next day or the same day. That's humanly impossible to, to get it all in and understand.

Yeah. And just our minds can't, our minds can't handle

it. So the pre-course is, uh, all the theory. Yeah. All the information you need for a SIV course is given to you months ahead. The moment you register for the course, you have access to in detail, extensive knowledge base of everything from simple rotations to stalls to back fly to everything from what the box is a side briefing, whether you know how you're going to should approach the LZ and all the rest of it. And you have months to go through that. And even, uh, in my pre. Cause I took all those ideas and fly or allowed me to use their curriculum to, to add in my courses. And I have, um, and I've gone as far as I even added exercises that you can do at home.

So you can already practice some basic things at home. So you understand all the concepts and so you come prepared. If you've done your homework, it's a, and then I did my last course before going to fly or in August. And my next course was in April and the results of the progression from the students and how, how much quicker they understood things progressed and easier. It was for them. It's a night and day between what I was teaching before and applying the structure. And, uh, to me, among all the other things, it's one of the biggest things is the pre-course knowledge base. At least the difference between my courses and theirs. I can't speak of other people courses and how they run them. Cause people came prepared and they knew already what's this about speech backbone pitch forward.

I

would imagine it's just so much less stressful having the time to go through all those things. So you're not just getting thrown under the fire. You're, I mean, there's tons of science now that shows that visualization is right. Almost the same as actually doing it. You know? So visualizing. You're not just shooting a basketball and landing it every time, just doing it over and over and over. It's the same thing as going to the court and shooting basketballs. So I would imagine just seeing the video, going through the progression, understanding what stalling, what side of the wing or full stalls, all the maneuvers, rapid exit, normal exit. You know, you're, you're doing it in a sense, even though they might not be thinking that they're visualizing and seeing it, but they're seeing, they're, they're watching the video.

Their, their body's being trained, their minds being trained to actually do the maneuver. I

tell them even between the runs to do that on the way up to the mountain, just imagine, you know, to close your eyes, visualize. Yeah, for sure. Visualization works amazing for that.

And you can practice some basic things. Yeah, it really is. Like a simple natural exit with a very low amount of energy because you don't need a lot of energy. It's enough to just generate a bit of it, release it, wait for it to come out and look for the throw control. Find it with one attempt instead of two or three. As most of us cross country pilots, we control the wing actively, but we rarely control the roll with one input. It's usually multiple. And it's nice to try to do another simple natural exit with a single input to find exactly where the roll is and how much you need to stop it just with that and then have a clean pitch back and let it shoot forward. And, and you don't need nose down. You don't need even 45 degree angle. It's a very little energy with very low consequences.

It's all progression based instead of just throwing you in the deep end and let's see if you got something out of it. I

remember Fabian saying something that really blew my mind and I might have this wrong because it's been years, but I think one of the first things he does regardless of the pilot level. So you're a 10 hour ENA pilot or a multi-year World Cup pilot. He has you do a. I think 360 with the rapid exit, just okay, do it. And so he can, he can assess you. And I think he was saying that some tiny percentage, I mean, just tiny, tiny percentage of the really quote unquote, good pilots, you know, the World Cup pilots pilots that have been at it for a long time that were good World Cup pilots couldn't do that maneuver.

Well, you know, they, they would, they were, they weren't very good at that. They weren't very good at the most basic foundational maneuvers because he said it rather than having kind of a set and correct me if I'm wrong. Cause you've worked there, you know it, but rather than having kind of a set curriculum that is okay, day one, we're going to do an asymmetric collapse and we're going to do these, these six things day one. And then day two, we're going to do these six things. And then you're going to end with the, with a full stall the last day, you know, rather than this would just be okay. I'm going to watch you do this. We're going to do this 360 with a rapid exit, and then we're going to design the course. We're going to design every, we're not going to have a, a check box.

It's not, it's not far off. Is that the

flyo approach? The reason

he asked to show you that because in that one 360 rapid exit, it shows you all situational awareness. You go through all the axes and yeah, most pilots can't get it right. Cause we all have habits, how we can exit it. And it's not a clean rapid. Um, and it's a tricky, especially the, the more, the more airtime you have, uh, the harder it is to learn this precisely because you have to break habits. Now, uh, the newer pilots is easier, but the reason they ask is to see where you're at and, uh, the course structure, uh, will be similar for all. But, um, what the biggest difference is that, uh, there's a lot of time. And effort put in the rotations, the natural exit and rapid exit, rapid being just that you pull by yourself instead of let the wing come out and mostly rapid to get it clean.

Get it quick, nose down, eventually all the way nose down, quick, rapid exit, clean, catch and release. And that's it without no, um, uh, parasitic, uh, over left roll or everything. Cause that means that once you go farther into outer rotations, it's the same family. So it's the same principles to control it. And then if you go in the stalls and you have a asymmetric shoot outer rotation, then you can handle it and all that. So it's, it's the, the fundamentals comes in play of course, that without going too much in detail. But the idea is that we spend time in paragliding 80, 90 % rotating.

Thermaling is a rotation. And it's the same as a rapid exit, just a smaller energy. Like you rotated the last time. And you can get the best angles and all the, so it, from the way I see it, if you come to the course and in a, in the three days you only learn the rotations, but you really get them. That's, that's a win already for depends on what level. And then next we're going to try to get you to outer rotation if possible. So you can exit cleanly that and quickly. Cause that's the number one killer in our sport. And only if all goes well and the pilot is able to get through. Then we just, then we go for negatives and work on those. So you, the structure is based on what's most important. So you go from the rotations, which we spend most time in outer rotations to avoid any, you know, unwanted the meeting with the mountain.

And then you go for negatives to clear things. And then you can play with that structure here and there. There's a multiple exercises. That is these. I would call the main blocks, but there's a lot of different people, things you can play with. To adjust them and get people out of, and they stuck in

cars front and center on your website. I went to the SIV courses. This is part of your progression, but the Malin touched on all these as well. But I'd love for you to just speak briefly about the four. It sounds like you're there's four things that you're most concerned with in your SIVs. The base of support, the disassociating arms, love that full break range. So using the full break range of the wing and situational awareness. Can you just touch on each of those? Why are those so important?

Yeah. So I like Malin's example for base of support. That's the first one, right? So you, you want to have a good base of support and the easiest thing, meaning lean back and be comfortable in harness and use the harness as design. And the easiest thing. The easiest way to imagine that or visualize that is to imagine the race driver on a exercise ball racing around the track or being snugly held by the bucket seat. And it's the same in paragliding. If you start leaning forward in your harness, you're not using the full support of the harness. And then the harness is more twitchy and it's not holding you as designed. So you will look for your own body's balance with your hands.

And as

we do, we've learned that as kids, you know, when you fall, you throw your hands out there to catch you. And so when you are more secure in the harness, when you have good base of support, then you can, and you start trusting your harness that you're not going to fall out. And that's actually fine to be in any configuration. You can find yourself in paragliding that the harness will be there and you will eventually be caught by it. Then you can start dissociating your arms to control the wing instead of controlling your body posture. Or, you know, catching yourself. And dissociating arms is incredibly important because usually in paragliding, or actions needed to pilot the wing is contraintuitive, contra or instinct.

And if you fall forward, we're going to put our hands forward where we have to put them behind us in paragliding. If you fall back, hands, you know, it's opposite to what we are learned as a human on the ground. So that's, and that needs to be controlled by the mind. This full brake range, that's what I mentioned earlier about the talk, YouTube video with Bruce. It's that we have to let the wing fly fully when needed and we have to control it fully when needed or whatever amount of brakes needed. But what we definitely don't want to do is hold about 5 to 10 % brake input. And on any modern wing, that is what's correct. It creates a lot more aggressive collapses than the certification would predict.

Because certification is a collapse without pilot input. But once you add input, then any ENA wing with those 5 to 10 % brake input will have a CCC result on the collapse. YouTube is full of this where people launch off on the takeoff and just after the takeoff, they grab the two toggles in one hand to adjust the harness. Wow. Massive. Because their airspeed is low. And they fall out of the sky.

That airspeed is one. And by grabbing even the handles together in one hand, you're adding a touch of a brake. And that, I call it reversed reflex profile. And that creates more aggressive pitch movement for the wing and more stable so it doesn't collapse as quick as it should. And it goes farther and you can fall into the wing just from that. Do you see this as a big reason

for people taking huge hits coming in to land? As well?

Yeah. I actually recently saw a video of that on Lake Garda. Yeah. It's sort of the panic reaction. Because we fly, and especially the older pilots, because back in the day it was taught that way. That you should put some, the pressure of your arms on the wings. If that was true back then, it's definitely not true anymore today.

And the modern wings like to fly hands up or accelerated. And by hands up, I should specify, it's contact position. You're feeling the wing, but you're not hitting the brakes. I

don't mean literally.

But you're feeling

the wing.

Yeah, you're not inducing or bending the trailing edge. Trailing edge is still sharp as a knife. And then you can correct, control it actively as needed, when needed, and let it fly the moment you've done what you needed to do. And so most people don't use that last, the top 5 to 15 percent. Like we can fly at shoulder pressure, or hands roughly at shoulder, and deeper. And rarely people are willing to go actually all the way up. And so that's the full brake range, right? So you go all the way zero, contact position, and all the way to stall point, or stall if you have to, depending. So you get comfortable using the whole brake range. It's the same as driving a car.

Sometimes you need to use the full steering wheels rotation. Not just, you know, 20, 30 percent. And the last one is situational awareness. Because it's all nice and good to have all the skills that you learned in the SIV. But if you don't know when to use them, then what's the point of them? And so what we do in the course is that throughout the course we Will Gadd little pointers to help pilots to look around more and to pay attention more. And the repetition is what really helps you to start looking around. It's, again, comparing to cars, because everybody knows a car. When you start driving as a new driver, all you're thinking is about the rev counts and the gear shifts.

So, you know, you're all focused in your cockpit. You barely see that there's, you know, children running on the street. Or you have very small capacity to see something. Where now, after years of driving, you drive for five hours, you don't remember what you did the five hours. You were thinking about something else. So that's the sort of where we want to get you eventually as a pilot. Is that the wing control, that's, you know, that's the physical bit. And the situational awareness is that what you actually are there for. Because flying cross country is 95 percent mental game, observation and decision making. And only about five percent of physical input. And the goal is to get you from... And it's the same when you start.

You're about 99 percent physical with the ground handling. And then the goal is to get you from that to the five percent physical as soon, as safe as possible. So you have your situational awareness. And you can keep yourself safe.

And I don't know that there's any statistics to back up what I'm about to say. But just going on what you've just said. And I'm curious if you agree with me that in my experience, I would say, the large majority of accidents happen because of the loss of that last one. The situational awareness. I mean, when I have seen... When I've seen the bad stuff happen, it's because people spend way too long in the cockpit. To use your analogy of being in the car. You know, they're not... They forget to look at the ground. They don't react. They don't react in time. You know, so they've had the margin and they've lost it. Now, and then there are the really bad accidents... Where there's just no margin.

And there's very little the pilot could have done. Except give themselves more margin before they got into that position. In other words, being really low. And there's never too low. We should still throw. But the really bad stuff I've seen has been when the cascade goes too long. And there's no throw.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if there's any statistical backup to that. But yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. That... We get tunnel vision when we don't... When we're new to something. And if you... A collapse for most pilots is something new that they haven't practiced enough on. And when it happens in the wild, you're, you know, you were just nicely thermaling. And all of a sudden, this is happening. And it's too many things happening at the same time. And we're not... It's too fast. Most pilots, if you ask what happened, they're barely going to recollect. And often, the recollection will be complicated. It's completely different from the video. If you have a video footage, that will be very... If you ask straight away after the accident.

Yeah. It's...

Without proper training and skill repetition, it's impossible to have full situational awareness. Because you won't see the details. And without that, you... That's why they spend so much time in the cascade. And I would say that there's also this... I guess it's the... Intermediate syndrome, right? When people think that they can fix something, but haven't done it for a while. And then they spend too much time trying to fix it without... Which also comes back to situational awareness that they don't look down how much time they have left.

Yeah. Carlos, two things I want to talk to you about. One is, you know, we talked about some of these before we started recording. But Jacque had some questions. You're running these comps. The Polish, Irish, the Norwegian. The Norway, the UK. You're doing these comps in Lorraine. And the... He had some questions about those. When does weather prediction become an art rather than a science? What does he mean by that?

I think he's referring to local... I'm very fortunate with my mentors. And the weather is no different. I have a man who's lived in this area for 30 plus years. And been a meteorologist for over 40. And also is a paragliding pilot. So I think he's referring to him.

And also Jacque himself is very good at meteo. So we have had a lot of conversations about it during the events.

Because it's... Especially in this area, it's quite complicated when it comes to aerology. So you have the general meteo that you can see on GFS or something. And then the aerology kicks in as the day progresses. And then the thermic day. So the art form, I think, what he's referring is the understanding of the micrometeorology of the influences that we fly in. And the general meteo is very well documented. And that's... We're doing pretty good at that as humans. But the micro... This is the really fine data

that the models aren't picking up.

We're not there yet. I'm sure eventually. But at the moment for paragliding pilots... So that comes from local knowledge. If you're really well at understanding, you can bring it on to any other mountains. It's possible.

And so... And Jacque, on the contrary, is very good at reading large systems visually. So you look at the sky. At the highest layers. And he's very, very good at predicting how the system moves for the next hours or day. Depending on that. Which I'm not very good. Where I'm very good at the micro. So that's where it became an art for the Polish and Irish. Because we had the local knowledge and the micrometeorology. And he had the global from observational point of view. And this is without... Of course, we used forecasting and all the observations from satellites. But visually seeing it, that you can see that, okay, this is going to move there in the next 15, 20 minutes.

And how that will... Especially stratus layers are nice and important for us if they cover the skies. What

was the catalyst to get into running comps? Were you... Are you an active comp pilot yourself?

Oh, no. Not at all. I've done, I think, five. Five events myself as a pilot. Well, I did the World Championships as my second competition. But I'm Latvian. A little easier to make a team. You know?

Yeah. It's not a French team. You know? It's not the same level.

Basically, if you qualify by the FAI standard criteria, you're in. Because there's nobody else. But, no. It was... A friend of mine, the local campsite owner, the Camping Monde Glyn, the RHQ, where we hold the events, a couple years ago asked me, could we organize our own event? Because we've been friends for years. And the Chabre Open, the Ozone Chabre Open, been running from Chabre for about two decades. And he's been hosting that event every time. And he wanted to have some more events in the area. And I want to promote it, the area. Because I love the place.

It's incredibly complicated to fly. At the same time, it's incredibly safe to fly. It's forgiving for tactical mistakes. And weather is incredibly reliable. We have 300 days of sunshine here.

So, that's how it came about. And I went, you know, how hard can it be?

I could have told you that. Knowing much more. More about it.

And as you know from your own experience, it's quite... It's an undertaking. It's quite an endeavor.

I'm lucky. I have a very strong team. I also, for the camps, same as I've done with everything else in paragliding, I seeked out mentors. And I was incredibly lucky with them. The local team for Ozone Chabre Open, Jazz, Brian and Luis, they've been supporting through long meetings with me. And me asking a million questions. Brad Genovese endured me for a week in his house last year to ask a million questions from him about how do you go about it? What do you need? What's that? I had no clue as an organizer. And it's mentors again. And asking a million questions no matter how stupid they might sound in your head. But you still ask because you need to know the answer.

They're a

big team effort. Yeah. We get to say we're the meat organizer. But you couldn't do it without a lot of people. It's a lot.

Oh, no, no, no. Not at all. I'm connecting people and bringing them together. And without the team, it's impossible. Yeah,

it's impossible.

I'm incredibly lucky with all the team.

And we're doing it again next year. We have three events as well. And I wouldn't at this stage because I have limited experience with camp organizing. I wouldn't do it with any other team because these people, I know them for years. They're local. They know all the places. And without them, it wouldn't happen.

I don't know how comfortable you are talking about this question. We talked about this again before we started recording. But Jock had a question about it sounded like you had to ground one or more pilots for making unsafe decisions. I don't want to throw anybody under the bus here. It's potentially that they'll be listening to this. But what was the reason? What can we all learn from that? Because obviously we see in comps and organizing comps and I've done a ton of comps. We see people doing some pretty risky things that we'd like to see not happen. But what was the reason to have to do that?

I guess that's pulling out the red card. You're going home.

Yeah. Well, for all three events, I was the safety director. And now there's a call another story about the new regulations in France after a serious accident. Yeah. After Timo, things in France changed quite drastically. Well, it actually changed the day before our first event. I had a very long phone call with Julian Garcia that you've had. He's also interviewed. He's been incredibly supportive throughout the process. So we had very strict safety rules and regulations set by the French Federation. Which I think is a very good thing. It will take some getting used to from the pilot point of view.

Because now you will have more responsibility as a pilot when you come and join the competition.

But I think it will make it a lot safer. Because we didn't have safety issues. I mean, of course, we had some incidents and accidents. Pilots flying, you know, 150 pilots flying. There will be that. But that's a bit off topic. We introduced radio checks before taking off. And radios are mandatory to be on. And I've been in comms myself. And I turn it off because it's annoying as hell.

But I found that I did what I learned from Flyo. Pre-course knowledge base. So I did pre-comp emails to inform pilots about these new requirements. What we expect from them. And it helped. And then, of course, repeating it all. Safety briefings every day on takeoff. And as our team got better at it as well. The last event. The radio checks took less than 15 minutes. So what are you doing? So before you launch,

you're checking straps. You kind of have a system where maybe you're checking the harness straps. Chin strap. And radio that their PTT is working. Is that what you're doing?

Yeah. So that's all explained in emails and safety briefing that pilots should try to do at home before. And the PTT. So radio check is a literal radio check. Pilot number such and such. Yeah. And they give it back. And in this radio check, you can pick out the faulty PTTs. Oh. The ones who get stuck. And I even was able to recognize just by the tone after a while. And the same pilots will have the same issues. Every day. So you pick them out quite quickly. And I swapped out some radios. We have a bunch of extra ones. And we gave them pre-programmed radios for the event. And it solved an issue there.

Also, another thing introduced is that maximum time to talk on the radio is 30 seconds. And suggested is 15. And that also limits that noise that you get in the competition all the time. Pilots transmitting all the time. So this is a setting you're actually changing

on people's radios?

They change themselves. All the radios has it. As far as I know. All the radios has a time to talk limited. And we send the instructions in the email where to look for it. And then you pick up a manual. You find your radio's manual. And you'll find which setting that is. Okay. I'm going to need to get

these from you. This is great. I've learned a lot.

Oh, for radios. I went in the room. Before the competitions I went down the rabbit hole with multiple radio experts to learn all this. I already knew quite a bit for my own courses. But for comms.

Yeah. So we have. We had very little PTT issues. And even in the air. And we also talked about how to respond in case of an emergency. I'm going off topic. No, that's okay. That's right. This is

fascinating to me.

Because in the Polish, the first competition we did, the Polish and Irish, we had a rescue throw. And there were three to five pilots trying to transmit at the same time in Polish. Trying to help. And one of them transmitted for about a minute and a half talking and trying to explain the situation. But his mic was exposed to the wind and the whole minute and a half was just blocked. So this is another place where the time to talk is a great thing to have to cut off. And then you can tell the pilot like, look, your mic. You're wasting your

breath. Yeah.

And he's also wasting valuable time for the organizer. Sure. And so we talked about it for the next events that it has to be short, precise, concise. You know, you have to think before you talk. Things like that. Simple things. Because nobody, everybody, the people who are on radios, they want to help. They're not trying to, you know, annoy the organizer. But when you do these simple things, you know, that before you're going to say something, think what you're going to say. Then prepare yourself. Press the short messages within the 15 to 30 seconds max. And let it go and wait for the response. And because it's Europe, we have multiple languages. We specified it all has to be in English. Because the team doesn't speak all your national languages.

English is the language we run the event in. And things like this seems very simple. But reminding it over and over and over again. And also I, as a safety director. Was not allowed to launch anybody who didn't have the working radio. That's a request from FFVL now. So once you tell that to the pilots. If you don't do the radio check, you're not flying today. Things get easier. And it's not that I want to ground people. It's not like we had extra radios. We were prepared for in case. And we did swap out multiples. You know, radios break. People sit on, you know, things happen.

But. And then things like this. Like the simple thing is time to talk. And radio check can take off and make. Because when I did my first events. I thought radio is just, you know, whatever. They're going to tell me when the weather is bad or all that. But the real importance of radio is that. From the organization point of view. From the safety point of view. Is that once a pilot is missing. Meaning that your flymaster tracker or whichever live tracking system you're using. Is not working for whatever reason. It's electronics. They're not 100%.

If we can't reach them on the radio.

The next one will be phone, of course. But that not everybody can. Then we need that frequency to ask other pilots to locate somebody. And if your live tracking is off. And you switch your radio on. And we can't find you. We assume the worst and we act accordingly. We have protocol for that. What we do. And up to calling a helicopter. And search and rescue. Within very short period of time. We inform the emergency service 15 minutes. 15 to 30 minutes is where we inform them. That we might have a. So it's really short period of time. So this radio checks and PTTs. That's incredibly important.

To have it working.

And. Not reaching a pilot is something historically that has.

Don't want to get in. It can be a problem if you can't communicate with the pilot. Or find them.

And then on top of that. When you have 150 pilots. And one of pilots are not applying to these rules. Then organization is focused on that one. And you jeopardize the rest of the pack. It's a snowball effect.

So that's small. But to answer the original question about.

Grounding a pilot. It's multiple failed takeoffs. And putting himself at danger. It was the only pilot that I actually had to stop on takeoff. I. It was about three days into the event. That I. Oh. No later. I think it was one of the late last days. And I've. I've noticed that already before. Yeah. Throughout the. Multiple.

Blown launches. Yeah. And what did you do? Just. Yeah. You just said. Hey. You know. Pull you out of the line. You just had to kind of sit him down. And.

Well. He. Kind of rolled down the. Mountain. Not mountain. The slope is. Quite gradual. So. I know. This is La

Ron. Yeah. So. It's not.

It's nothing dangerous. Just. A few. Bruises on. You know. And. And I was. I think. It was about. 20 minutes left. Till the window. Or 15 minutes left. Till the window closed. For the start. And. By the time. He would get back. On the mountain. It's like. You know. So. It wasn't. I didn't. Had to stop him. You know. Just. As a window open. So. The timing aligned. Well. And. He was bruised up. And. His harness was damaged. It was. An easy call. And.

A lot of. Even though we. Have protocols for that. The. They are. Again. With the new rules in France. Is that. We have no live tracking. And. I can't track you. On an instrument. You have to report back to me. Every. 10 minutes or so so radio contact and then if you don't and that's up to the safety director's discretion if I have one and I feel like I can safely track him, that's fine but if I have two or three I might land all of them because I can't anymore track two or three pilots without live tracking. You mean he might stop the task? No, land the pilots without tracking.

Ah, okay, gotcha right and then of course to not penalize pilots for instrument failure we have a backup with PureTrack which is you can use any live tracking device you have from in reaches to your phones to anything you have, you put it in one place and we have a group for Devon so we have a backup tracking for everybody and then of course our first thing is if your live tracking is not working, we go for the backup and if we can't find you in the backup then we proceed because we don't want to interfere with other pilots competing and talking on radio. If we can't avoid it we don't talk on radio. A perfect task is radio silence the whole way except us saying that it's all good, you know. Every now and then we'll say something so you still know that we're there but ideally you hear nothing.

That would be...

Do you create a specific safety

group of pilots or is everybody on your safety committee? I've gone back and forth with this, you know, we've had we've had comps where everybody's on the safety committee so in other words, I mean anybody is always in the comps I've run anybody can call in a level at any time, you know, level one, level two, level three. If you've got a concern you can call but we've gone back and forth with that. We've had it so everybody can be on the safety committee but then that was hit, especially in the World Cup, people didn't like that. They wanted a safety committee and they wanted three or four pilots that were we would try to pick out pilots that you're going to have some in the front, some in the middle, some in the back and they're really the safety committee and again anybody can call in but these are the people who are in a sense paying more attention to.

Yeah, so for us we had a safety committee of three pilots chosen from the event anybody can call in level as they want with a... If it's level three you have to land. If you're going to call level three you land immediately. Yourself. So there's no manipulation with that.

We didn't find that it's an issue that pilots would call in too much levels. Maybe we just got lucky because it's only three events.

And the safety committee was they gave us some nice feedback when it was early thermals or before the start and things like that. That's where safety committee can talk more and the rest of the pilots were welcome to do levels as they see fit. And we had a few times where pilots would call level that wasn't there

because they were in leaside or it was a rough thermal for them. So we check live tracking where the pilot is because it's requested pilot number such and such. And we check, we have a look satellites visually, physically because in France it's requested to have safety director and me director. So the me director so safety director follows the pack roughly middle of the track so we I can physically see the sky. Plus we have a meteorologist of course and so we have multiple people on the ground checking the weather and tracking everybody.

And then if it is level such and such and we see this like drizzling rain level two but it's not just drizzling then we see we say that such and such TP has such and such conditions. But we haven't found an issue with that. I think with a higher level more competitive I guess there can be more issues with levels.

We learned in this last one because we had pretty dynamic weather for the World Cup is we had one day in particular that got pretty spicy and we knew it was going to get spicy. We were trying to pull off a short task in a short window and we knew it was going to go ballistic and it did. And just before I called the task I requested level. I hadn't heard any levels not from my safety committee and not from anybody in and but I was standing right there. I was on top of the mountain but I could you know the lead pack was coming into goal which was right in front of launch and just I wanted hey let's hear some levels and I got level I got a couple level twos from the in the lead pack and that was it and what we decided afterwards because it was clearly level three

but it was what we what we learned people don't like calling level three. It's a cultural thing that I think needs to shift that there's some I don't know if it's shame but there's partly like what you said if you call level three you've got to land but I mean you get in this competition mindset that well I'm not hearing anybody else call it so maybe it's still two level two but it was very interesting because we had a big debrief on it and the what we came up with the end result was that there's a stigmatism to calling level three that I think needs to change in our community and I mean it's not something we even need to discuss right now but it's interesting you know I think there's a real reticence of pilots to call level three

yeah I can see that it's also when me as a pilot in my limited competitions I didn't even feel comfortable early in my career to go on the radio and say anything there's also that exactly yeah yeah exactly I think there's I think there could be more like the safety briefings is one but before the competitions this could be discussed I think yeah I think so

too Carlos we're way already past our time limit but I cannot let you go without asking you about my favorite subject in all the world the X-Alps you supported Tio who I love in in 21 I raced in that one as well and you might recall we were he and I were battling at the back at that one around Dentosh I didn't get to

see you

guys that day but after the he had the he had an airspace penalty delay there right yeah he'd had quite a he'd had quite a as we all had in that that one was the weather was atrocious in in 21 but he had quite an eventful competition with hitting the cable and but I'd love to just and again we don't have a ton of time to dive into it as I'd love we could have a whole show on the X-Alps but just from your perspective as a supporter

any maybe a really good story from the race or any big takeaways I mean did you do you guys walk away from that going my god that was just stupid crazy fun what was what was the where'd you land on at the end I know it it was tough for him at the end

for me it was an amazing adventure but I was on the ground I would personally I would not fly in those conditions that's just not my cup of tea you guys you know as a spectator for X-Alps I knew the race is tough but I had no idea like watching the live trackings from my home and all that I had no clue I gained so much more respect from for the all the pilots who's ever done the races it it's insane they at least that year was absolutely insane for the conditions the yeah the walking the hiking and I did about 30 % of what Theo did when it comes to walking and hiking but I didn't need to fly in that exhaustion it's not the same the

me

for me was going in I knew that Theo and I we're gonna hate each other are we gonna be friends after this and there's no two other outcomes and I was you know this kind of adventure there's only two options really right you're never gonna talk with that person again or you're gonna be friends for life so luckily we're friends it's great very good I was very happy the team got together and the whole we had a really great adventure we had some the cable we were really dialing in before the cable we're getting good catching up getting to the mid pack and the cable just I think that was the turning point for the event for us and and even then after it was getting good and the airspace was the choice between airspace or trees and so yeah that's

gotten so many pilots over the years that where he hit the cable and what what was the uh oh yeah uh what's the name

the other guy just yeah just near Martin yeah I need a map for that

yeah yeah but I mean it was Aaron Durogati has a crazy story about flying and cloud in that same Valley and I have flown up and down from going both ways uh through that you know because the cables are actually really bad on both sides of that pass uh you know where he hit him and on the other side as well more than the Switzerland side I guess or the northern side uh but I have flown through there just recreationally and it is terrifying it's just incredible I remember after Dio hit it and who was the other pilot why am I drawn such a blank there was the other pilot who had who broke his back uh yeah he got helicopter down

I can't

believe it it's just I don't know how these memories go Italian yeah

it will come back um yeah

Italian the young guy um yeah he's amazing anyway yeah uh I remember that you know Jurgen called me as I was walking into that Valley because I was behind you guys at that point and what it I for me too things were starting to get better I had a horrible start and then things were starting to get better actually teal and I were together in the early early on in the race but uh I remember Jurgen actually calling me and and just he was almost you could you could hear the tension and the the the fear in his voice just please be careful please be careful going through this area make sure you have the you know because you have that cable uh layer on your phone and it can show the cables and oh it's just it's it's a dicey place to fly and that's on the train which we are

that specific valley i met a local guy paragliding pilot who was from the valley and i took him in the car and went through the old valley and he showed me every single cable ahead of where theo hit after we got there and even though he went up and took off again and he hit again almost again another cable that we didn't see and we were on the ground in the car with binoculars looking ahead and it's just they fingers insane yeah you

can't you can't even describe it it's just unbelievable and they're totally invisible there's so many of them those little single thin ones that are they're invisible and i one of the things i started suggesting to many others when they were in that area if they're just free flying as you know just make sure you don't have polarized sunglasses because then they're really invisible yeah i say

that you should fly above the grass fly at the cliff height don't fly at the grass because it's it's to collect hay mostly for cows so it's above the grass line there's usually you know these little cables that's what i've been told right yeah if

you're just surfing the trees on the side where we always do and we're just trying to get some extra distance you're gonna hit one it's it's almost guaranteed they're just they come out of those trees in the worst ways cool well thanks thanks for sharing that yeah i'm glad you guys are friends that's uh that's a that's a good place to to end a pretty pretty radical adventure but thanks for all this carlos a real pleasure talking to you and i'm looking forward to either flying in one of your comps or doing an SIV with you or doing something fun with you in the future but i appreciate it thank

you for having me it's been a pleasure if

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