240. A lifetime of Skydiving - Jeff Ayliffe

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of CloudBase Mayhem. Before we get into this show with Jeff Halif out in South Africa, I wanted to give you a little update about another hike and fly race I am organizing called the Global Rescue X-Lost. The reason it's called the X-Lost is it's going to take place in the Lost River Range mostly. That's over at King Mountain, a famous hang gliding site back in the day and still is an amazing place to fly. It's kind of on the main spine of the Rockies, and this is the southern end of what Will Gadd and I did all those years ago up in Canada. But big mountains, big, huge, beautiful valleys, strong air, amazing just zone for big, big, big XC.

And we're going to do a three-day hike and fly race there, kind of like what we do with the Global Rescue X-Red Rocks at the end of September down in Utah. This one will be at the end of May, the last three days of May, and over that weekend. And we don't have anywhere you can find out much about this yet. It'll be up on the website here shortly. But if you're interested, let me know. There's only 30 spots this year. It'll be free for the most part. Just go out and rally with your friends and have fun and gather points at waypoints. That's how we're going to do it. We're just going to make waypoints that go farther and farther away from King. And the more you get, the more points you get. That's how it'll be scored. And so everybody's kind of on their own and decides what they want to do with the weather of the day.

It should be a lot of fun. Jeff Aleph has been flying his entire life. He's 62 now. He started getting the bug with skydiving when he was five. Started hanging out in drop zones and packing and doing everything he could to start jumping out of airplanes, which he did, has done his entire life. He was on the national team for a long time, done a ton of formation flying, and has some fantastic wild stories about all the years of jumping out of airplanes there in South Africa and around the world. We also talk about his most recent passion, flying the mustache and flare kites on the dunes and on the coast regions there in South Africa.

He's in the garden route in South Africa now. And, yeah, this one's just filled with good stories. I had a blast with this. We don't do a lot of shows with skydivers. This is mostly skydiving. We get into paragliding, some other hang gliding, some other stuff, too. But this one's mostly jumping out of airplanes and what happens when it goes right and what happens when it goes wrong. A lot of fun with this one. Enjoy. Cheers.

Jeff, it's great to see you here. I know it's evening there in South Africa. First question is where in South Africa are you? Where's home?

I'm currently situated on the garden route. The southern Cape, which is about four hours drive from Cape Town. I've been living here. I've been traveling back and forth for about 14 years, but I've been permanently here for about six years now. And this is really the paragliding capital overseas. And we are in our season at the moment for summer. And we've got so many visiting pilots from all over Europe, from the U.S., from everywhere at the moment. So we're back in the middle. Is that near Porterville then? Porterville is west of Cape Town. So Porterville is probably about six and a half hours from here. But it's the same general area. Porterville is the big cross country side. So you're at the east side? You're at the Durban side or the east side or the west side? Yeah, we headed towards the Durban side.

Ah, okay.

I sailed down that coast. It was very action-packed. Let's see, that would have been – I was coming down through Mozambique and went around the Cape and then up into Cape Town for about a month. That was 2018. Yeah, 2010. And, man, we came into Durban and we were sailing bare poles doing beyond hull speed. It was blowing so hard. Yeah, well, Cape Town – And went in there at night. It was one of the spookiest things I've ever done. It was – I mean, it was all lit up and it's for big ships. And we were just a 57-foot sailboat. But, man, it was edgy.

Yeah, Cape Town's got a reputation. Table Bay has got a reputation. We have the Volvo Ocean Race stopover. They're there every four years. And we've had some interesting restarts for the Volvo with 30 knots plus of breeze in the bay and those guys just hurtling out of there. So, yeah, it's impressive.

Yeah. And Cape Town's so pretty. How did you end up – what did you call it? The garden route. How did you end up there?

I used to be in Durban. I grew up in Durban and I was – I started skydiving in Durban as a young kid. But my sort of part-time career was radio and I worked for a radio station called Capital 604 in Durban. And after 1994, with the new government, the arrival of democracy when Nelson Mandela became president, the radio station I was working for shut down because we were technically broadcasting out of the trans sky. And my only other option for radio work was to move to Cape Town. That, for me, was the next best thing. And I was still skydiving but not as actively as I had been. And I was starting to dabble in paragliding. So I thought, well, a move to Cape Town can't be all bad. And I moved to Cape Town to get involved with radio, to get a radio career going again.

And media has been your profession. Well, for most of my life. I was teaching skydiving full-time for a number of years before I got into media. Funny enough, I got into radio through skydiving. I was running an AFF school, Accelerated Freefall School, out of Pietermaritzburg. And I was jumping on the South African team. And we were about to go and compete at a World Championships. It was a World Championship event in Brazil. And Capital Radio, who I listened to, was my choice of radio station. The sports team from Capital Radio happened to call the Drop Zone and said, and I answered the phone. And they said, we're looking for one of the South African team members who's going to be going to Brazil in a week's time to the World Cup. And I said, well, I happen to be one of those guys.

And they said to me, great. Would you like to do a little four-minute radio piece for us every night from Brazil just for a little live thing on our radio station? And I said, sure. I was pretty honored that I was going to be on Capital Radio. And I did that every night of the competition. And when I got back, they invited me to the studio and showed me around. And they said, you're welcome to come in at any time. And gradually, I started going in on weekends and learning the trade between my skydiving. And that was my next – I thought this was a pretty cool-looking career to get involved with radio. I was offered a job as a trainee sports presenter. And a year after I was doing that, the – the – the – the – the – the – the – the – the – the – the – the – the I was offered a full-time job as a sports presenter.

And so you present any sports or do you kind of – did you kind of drill into certain, you know, more aviation? I presented

all sports at that stage. I had to. It was all the – all the main sports in South Africa, rugby, cricket, soccer. We didn't have a big focus, of course, on basketball, baseball, you know, the sports that are bigger in the U.S. But when I left full-time, I was full-time in radio. For many, many years. In 2013, I basically moved out of full-time radio, started a freelance media business. And there my focus became aviation and sailing and outdoor sport, trail running, mountain biking. But my aviation has always been closest – closest to my heart, so to speak.

Before we started recording, we were doing a little sound check and you were – you were giving your quick background getting into skydiving. When did that happen and how did that? Man,

we had a – we had a show every year in my little town that I grew up in, Peter Marisburg. And it was called the Royal Agricultural Show. And I was – must have been about five years old or six years old. And I heard an airplane and there was four skydivers doing a demo jump into the – into the show. And they were wearing smoke bombs. And I – as a little kid, I saw these guys in free fall with these trails of smoke behind them. And apparently, I said to my parents, hey, that's it. This has got to be the best thing, the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life. And I demanded a book on parachuting, which I still remember. The book was by Charlie Shea-Simmons from the UK. It was called Sport Parachuting by Charlie Shea-Simmons. A lot of skydivers, old-time skydivers will remember the name. And I ended up going to the drop zone as a schoolboy, as a young schoolboy, aged 11 or 12.

And I started – I learned how to pack. And I had an official Aero Club Packers license at the age of 13. And I could only jump when I was 16 years old. So I had to wait. And I got – the next course was two weeks before my – It was my 16th birthday. And the drop zone contacted the Aero Club of South Africa, as it was called then. And they got permission for me to do my first jump as a 15-year-old. So I started skydiving at age 15. And I pretty much picked it up from there and carried on.

What do you think it is about you versus another five, six-year-old? What was it? What was driving your interest and passion in this? I mean, because that's – you hear these stories of the hang gliders. And in all forms of aviation where you learn – you see it when you're nine, but you can't go until you're 15 or 16. And you just – you spend every day at the aerodrome or wherever it is. And you pack and you pack. And you don't get to do it, but you stick with it.

What is it? I don't know. It's interesting because I knew that that was my calling. There was no doubt. And to balance that, I never had any interest in the school sports. Sports like rugby. All my – my – my – my – my – my – my – my – my – my – my – my – my – my – my My peers at school loved rugby. They played rugby. They all wanted to go and support the school rugby at weekends. I never had any interest in rugby. I never had any interest in cricket. All I wanted to do was to get onto my bicycle and drive to the drop zone and ride to the drop zone and jump out of airplanes. I never had any desire to be – I did athletics. That was probably the closest they got me to school sport is I had an uncle that was a fairly well-known athlete. And I – so it was kind of part of my genes. And I enjoyed athletics, but that was really – you know, it – it – certainly when the weekend came, don't try and ask me to go into an athletics week on the – on the – athletics meet on the weekend because that was skydive time.

It wasn't time to be going to do school sports. So it's difficult to tell, Gavin, but I knew. The

adults and the – you know, the mentors and the people you looked up to at the drop zone must have just been so excited to see you get into it after all those years of just hanging around and packing and being part of the scene, but actually doing it. Yeah, they loved it. I mean, they used

to –

It's been fun for them. It's been fun for them.

Regularly, they used to arrange for me to go up in the airplane. It was a little Cessna 182 that the club had at that stage. And they used to let me go up, and I used to be tied in with a monkey belt. And I used to watch them skydive maybe once a month or twice a month. And they were really excited. The four guys or the three guys that came on my first four-way formation skydive, it was really special for them. And they were all – as you said, they were people that had watched me grow up in the drop – in the sport from a little kid. Wow. So it was really special, yeah.

And did that passion – Did it hold? Did you still skydive? Is this something you've done your whole

life? Yeah, it did hold, Gavin. I don't skydive anymore. So I skydive pretty much full-time. I was team training. We were on a team for a lot of my skydiving career. At one stage, I was on a team. We were jumping seven days a week. And then I worked for a while in a parachute factory, Parachute Industries of South Africa. I was in research and development, but I was still skydiving on weekends. And then I was teaching AFF for a long time. And in France – We went over – AFF. In 84, 1984, I went to the World Cup in France, the year before we went to Brazil, in fact. And I saw some skydivers running off mountains in France with their skydiving parachutes. And they called it parapente. It was called parapente or slope soaring. So we came back to South Africa, and a group of us started doing this in South Africa.

There was no paragliding that existed. And it was chaotic days, Gavin. I don't know how we survived it. We were running off mountains. And off the hang gliding sites.

I once talked my way into a building. I told them I was a photographer from a very popular magazine called Panorama. And I needed to take a photograph of the ocean from the top of the roof of the hotel, which was right on the coast. And I smuggled my glider, which I told them – my skydiving parachute because there was no glider. I smuggled it with me, and I told them I was a photographer, and that was my camera equipment. The security guard came up with me, let me onto the roof. I then took a picture of the ocean. I told him, don't worry, just stay with me. I'm going to take time setting things up. You can go down into the stairwell and just wait for me. And he was happy to go down and have a cigarette. I then laid out the skydiving parachute, and almost zero wind pulled up and ran off the roof of this building, and I landed on the beach. And this poor guy came back the next – must have walked out, and I was gone.

And he probably – to this day, he probably wonders what happened to me. But interestingly, about two weeks later, I went back at night to go and do this at night. And at that stage, I had managed to – oh, and I didn't tell you, I kept the key. When I ran off, I kept the key, so I now had a key with me. Smart. And I went back at night, and I had a disastrous launch. There was no wind. I had to pull the wing over in front of me. I had a big frontal collapse on the one side, and I rotated through 360 degrees. I don't know how I missed the building, but I didn't have the altitude to reach the beach. And I landed – the only option was in the swimming pool of the hotel. And I thought that's – and the manager of the hotel, the next day, elected Parachute Industries of South Africa to find me, and he said to me, he's heard that I've done this before successfully, and would I like to go back over Easter during the school holidays legally and fly off the roof every day and give the kids Easter eggs?

And I was absolutely delighted. So that became a legal – What? It became a legal gig. A legal gig for me. And yeah, you know, so we were just those barnstorming days, man. We were soaring with skydiving parachutes for like 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. We had to land. We had to land because the harnesses were cutting the blood supply off. It was crazy. And then paragliding started in 85, 86. The first paragliders arrived. And we were then basically slowly alienated and pushed away. And of course, their equipment started to improve. So we then joined the regular crowd of paragliders, and I subsequently carried on flying. And yeah. So

these are – when you were doing that off the roof and stuff, I'm imagining that's a nine-cell glider or something like that. Yeah, there was a nine. A nine-cell. Big,

huge, wide cells and terrible glide. Yeah, it was called a Skymaster. It was a very popular student skydiving parachute called a Skymaster. I used to take the slider off. The sliders used to – obviously, we're there to slow down the openings for free fall. So I used to take the sliders off just to sort of flatten the profile a bit. And I often used to put an extra link in the front risers just to what I thought was giving myself a flatter glide. We experimented with all these things. But yeah, they were very basic skydiving parachutes.

You said a term earlier I didn't know. What's AFF? AFF

is Accelerated Free Fall. So when I started skydiving, you had to start doing static line jumps. Your first 10 jumps, you were anchored to the aircraft and you exited and the parachute was automatically opened. But a wonderful new form of free fall, of learning, was called Accelerated Free Fall, which was started in the US. And basically, the student on their first jump, they exit from 11,000 feet. With two instructors. And you do a 40-second free fall with instructors holding you and literally coaching you in free fall with hand signals. You've got to go through a series of things. And you've got to do, the instructors coach you, telling you to arch more, to relax more, straighten your legs, bend your legs. And after the third level, one of the instructors will let you go. So you've only got one instructor.

And then the fourth level, you're going out with just one instructor. And eventually, you basically learn in eight or nine jumps what would take

you to the next level. And it's going to take

you effectively about 30 jumps to learn on static line. So it's just a great accelerated way to learn to skydive. A great way to learn. Yeah.

And in skydiving, is the fun there? I'm imagining it. I've only done tandem and I've done one skydive on my own. And so I don't know much about it at all. But is the fun there kind of like, you know, with wingsuiting, you get into proximity flying pretty quickly. Yeah. And it's, you know, the closer and closer you are to terrain. With skydiving, is it the formation thing that's really fun? It's just flying with more and more people?

Yeah, for me, it is. And that's a point a lot of your current skydivers who are listening now will say, no, you know, he's old school. But I was old school and flat flying. We used to flat fly in big formations. But my days were the 80s and the 90s. I mean, I skydived. I was in Zephyr Hills in Florida, which was one of the world headquarters of skydiving. And then I worked at a drop zone called Paris Valley in California for about a year for a gentleman called Jim Wallace. And the late Jeff Jones. And those were the glory days. We had big airplanes and big formations. We used to regularly go and do 30 ways and 40 ways. Nowadays, Gavin, because of the cost, I think they still do great skydiving in the States. But in South Africa, the sports change. There's very few big airplanes anymore. We used to jump out of Hercules, C-130s, Dakotas, Transols.

Those days are gone now. Nowadays, it's a lot of solo flying people. They fly upside down. They do sit flying. They do style. The sports changed a lot. Head down. Flying, which I would be hopeless at. But my primary things were sequential, relative work, formation skydiving, four-way and eight-way, and then canopy relative work, which was a big part of my skydiving career, where we used to build four stacks with parachutes. And then once you built the four stack, the top guy used to go over the back or the side and dock onto the bottom. And as he docks the bottom, the top guy goes again, and you rotate as many rotations as you can or speed eight stacks. That was very popular. So, yeah. Have

you ever gotten into the whole wingsuit flying without a shoot and any of that just crazy stuff that the Red Bull guys are doing?

No, I haven't. The base era, I think if the wingsuiting, this current wingsuit time had been around when I was in my youth, in the 80s and the late 70s, I've got no doubt I would have loved it. But it started when I had already started to move. Out of skydiving, wingsuiting really started to become popular. You know, when I was very active, there was a handful of guys. The late Patrick de Godon from France was the father of wingsuiting, and he passed away. But I've never really got into, you know, into any of that.

You know, and I mean, I've met, I know a lot of great, great wingsuiters. I met Jeb Corliss. Jeb had that infamous strikey hit table mountain. I was there that day. And I actually, I was the first person to get to hospital. Somebody phoned me and told me, and I knew straight away, it was Jeb because I knew he was in town and the guy, Jeff, who was his cameraman, I was literally the first person to get into hospital. They let me up into the room just to see if Jeb needed anything. And Jeff was there and he said, no, he was, he was fine. He didn't want to do any media because he didn't want to make a big thing of it because he realized it was harmful for the sport. So, but yeah, that was terrible. But yeah, and we've got some great wingsuiters. JJ, Jean-Jacques Vallis is a very brilliant paraglider pilot. He's a top moustache pilot, flare pilot, speed wing pilot.

Extraordinary. I used to skydive on the South African team with JJ's uncle. So JJ is just doing phenomenal things with wingsuiting worldwide at the moment. He's on the World Wingsuit League and he's certainly an incredible teacher and doing some wonderful things here in South Africa. He's in fact in Thailand at the moment coaching.

You hear, of course, you know, in our sport, all the accidents in paragliding, the hang gliding, certainly, especially in the beginning, speed flying. I don't hear that much about. And skydiving accidents, how does it rank in there with risk and safety? And do you see a lot of bad stuff in your years skydiving as well? Or is it relatively more safe?

No, look, I would go as far as to say it was safer than paragliding for sure. I had less drama or saw less drama in skydiving. Obviously, in the U.S., there was fairly regularly, there were accidents and fatalities and they logged them very well. And there was. The accidents were put out on a very educational sort of way that you could learn what caused it and how we could go about it. But I went through a long period of my skydiving where there was very little accidents or stuff around me. And I had a very unfortunate situation, which I'm happy to share on the podcast. I met a young lady and we got very involved through skydiving. And the time I was invited.

I then had to relocate to Johannesburg because that was where the team was based. And her name was Deirdre. So Deirdre and I basically decided to move up to Johannesburg and she was going to find work up there. And it was a big sacrifice for her because she was very close to her family. So we moved up to Joburg and our first weekend there, we got there during the week and we found a place to stay and we found a beautiful little apartment. We bought bits and pieces. We had a cat.

Our very first weekend, we went to a drop zone called Coltonville and we did a five-way skydive with the four members of the South African team. It was myself, Peter Lawson, Chris Dales, Huey Newman, and it was Ruben, the five team with the reserve. And then we had Deirdre and she joined us on the skydive. She was a competent skydiver. But yeah, to this day, we went up and we built the formation and we all tracked off. I then opened. I saw Deirdre struggling. She was struggling to get the pilot chute out of the pouch, out of her leg strap pouch. And it was a new piece of equipment for her, but I mean, she was happy with it on the ground. And I watched her going and yeah, and I could see I was yelling, pull the reserve, pull the reserve.

And eventually I saw her hand come in and pull the reserve. And as I saw the reserve come off her back, I just saw this cloud, this burst of dust. And I realized that she'd impacted. And I went and landed there, which possibly. I shouldn't have done, but you know, you say to yourself, if there was the slightest chance that she had survived that, but obviously she impacted a terminal velocity. So it was a very quick death. But yeah, that was, and that for me, we'd been living in this job in our new house for literally two days. So that was my introduction to Johannesburg. And that changed me a lot, Gavin, you know, that incident showed me a dark side of skydiving and through luck, possibly I'd been through many, many years of skydiving where I hadn't lost any friends, you know? And then that the closest person to me was lost on a skydive with me on the jump.

And, um, and after that, I started to regularly, not regularly, but I lost a few more friends in the sport and, and I saw another side of it, but, um, you know, that happens and it, it, uh, it wasn't, that's not the reason I stopped skydiving. I mean, I carried on and, uh, you know, um, yeah. But I, to answer your original question, I certainly believe that, uh, paragliding, I've seen more accidents. And paragliding, I certainly believe that paragliding is, is at a stage where it's skydiving is probably safer. Um, I would

say in, in, I'm sorry, that is a horrible story. I'm sorry about your loss there with Deidre. That's brutal. But the, the, is our accidents typically, would you call that human error or equipment error? Um, I would, I would probably say, uh, she knew what she was doing. It sounded like it was just wasn't packed. The, the, the, the, the, she wasn't packed. I mean, she was confident that

the, the, the, the pilot, she would have come out of the pocket. I mean, she'd pulled it out on the ground. She was comfortable with it. Um, I think it could have been a number of things. It could have been the fact it was a new drop zone. Um, it was her first day at a new drop zone. Um, you know, it was a new rig. Um, and maybe there was something the way she was pulling it that unsettled her. Um, you know, it could have been, she hadn't jumped maybe for, for a week or two. Um, and then something might've unsettled her. And she might've just started to get more and more of a fright and became fixated to pull it out. It's very hard to say, but as I said, she was a very competent skydiver. I mean, she'd been jumping with me. Um, yeah. And it was, I never had any reason. And if, if I didn't think it was a sport that she was comfortably doing or safe doing, I would have told her, listen, I would rather you not be doing this.

So, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it almost seems that, well, two things I hear of, you know, when the, with the formation flying, isn't the danger. Then it's kind of mid airs, right? We're getting the timing wrong with one of the other pilots, somebody pulling when they shouldn't have or vice versa. There's

not a lot of that, you know, and ironically, again, a friend of mine who worked with me at parachute industries of South Africa, a young guy called Victor Malik skyworm was his nickname. We were on an eight way together out of two separate, two airplanes, two Cessna one, seven twos. And he was on the back. He was in the back plane with me. Um, so the, the front plane, the base four go out and they build the base. And then the back plane. You know, the divers and the four divers go out and we dive down to the formation flare and then we dock the formation. And Victor was one of the divers on that skydive and, and we built a seven way and, uh, we had a six way around, sorry, flying. And I didn't see Victor. He, I was out seventh and he was out just behind me and I didn't see him. And we built a six way and I was looking around. I didn't see Victor and I didn't see Chris Cochran.

He was the other guy missing. And I then saw Chris open way below us and I never saw Victor again. And we landed. And what had happened is Victor had miscalculated his dive and had hit Chris in free fall hard enough to knock himself unconscious. And he rolled over onto his back and started spinning and Chris started to chase him and Chris couldn't catch him. And Chris realized when he got down to about a thousand feet, he wasn't going to be able to catch Victor. So he opened, but as I landed Chris, I ran over to Chris and I said, where's Victor? And Chris said to me, he's dead. He said he impacted on the end of the runway. So that was ironically, that was a, but. Those Gavin, those kinds of accidents, I think are fairly rare. Um, one of the greatest skydivers on the planet, um, uh, had a, had a situation like that. A gentleman called Tom Paris and I had the privilege.

Tom Paris was part of a, one of the greatest ever American teams, us teams called the air bears, um, captain by Guy Manos. And I had the privilege of skydiving with Tom Paris, um, in South Africa and, and Tommy had a very similar incident. Um, that's how he passed away. Really? And, uh, but, uh, most of the, I can't, I can't really say what most of the fatalities in skydiving are because it, it, it varies. Um, as sky, as a skydiver, the thing we were worried about the most was, was aircraft problems was, uh, an aircraft failure at a low altitude where we couldn't get out of the airplane. Um, that was, that was generally what scares most skydivers, um, is an aircraft issue. Um, but yeah.

When did the paragliding begin? And I understand that's been kind of your, you know, your, your. Your new, uh, your new drug of choice is the mustache.

Yeah. I mean, I, I started flying, as I said, we were starting running off a skydiving parachute, but I, I guess I officially started flying in about 2000. I did a course, I did a paragliding course because I was running off illegally and eventually the paragliders was the population was growing. And eventually a good friend of mine, he was a paraglider came to me and he said, Hey, Jeff, listen, you know, do the right thing. You know, he said, rather than hiding and running, running off and hiding just, and I agreed. I said, yeah, you know, you're right. And I went and did a course and qualified and started flying. But because of my skydiving background, I always loved small skydiving parachutes. I was always, I always had a high wing loading and I love to, to, to, to, uh, canopy piloting and I love to swoop and I always loved. So I was, that was the way I was going to go. I was never, I said to you before we did the podcast, I hope you don't want to talk to me about cross country because you're going to be talking to a wall.

I don't do cross country. I've always loved fast, small, fast canopies and wings. And I started flying speed wings. You know, soon. Soon as, soon as, uh, the first range of really good speed wings started coming out. I, I loved speed flying. Um, but I still also liked that other side of speed flying. I mean, I'm not a youngster anymore. You know, I don't want to go barrel rolling down these lines, these gullies, you know, that's, that's, I'll keep that for the 20 to 20 year olds. And that like guys like JJ, you know, I'm, I'm at an age now where I love flying fast, but I'm also a little bit, uh, a little bit more, um, um, cautious. And I, then I, then I discovered the moustache, you know, and, um, I was flying an Icaro, freestyle wing, a little 18 square meter Icaro, which I really loved. It was small. It was fast, but it could thermal nicely. And then about two years ago or three years ago, I met Armin Harre from the man from Skywalk.

And he was the man who designed the moustache and he let me fly the prototype and Gavin had changed my life. And I said to Armin, when I landed, I said, really, I said, I have to take everything I know about flying a paraglider and throw it out the window. This is just so different. Everything. And in fact, I think, uh, he actually used that quote from me on the official brochure, but, uh, yeah, I knew then and the moment the flare became available, um, yeah, that's all I fly now. I've got a little 18 moustache and I'm loving it.

Really? God, I, you know, I had, I had Armin on the show and it's the, I haven't flown one yet. I'm feeling really silly that I haven't now, especially watching the smile on your face. It's they, they just, they, they look like a riot. They absolutely.

Yeah. You know, and they, they, they, it's, it's so addictive. You know, I mean, I've, I've, uh, no, I mean, I'm in, I'm helping them with marketing with flare here in South Africa and I've seen so many times people don't want to fly them. They, they just a little bit skeptical, but it's so intuitive. It's if you're an experienced paraglider pilot, it's just so intuitive, you know, and, um, the moment and most 90 % of the people that I know that have taken the demo for a flight, they land and they come back and they say, I shouldn't have done that. I now need to find money to buy a moustache. And it's just, it's that. You know, and I mean, I met Marcus Anders, um, just recently, um, the, the flare design team, uh, Benny Boley and Marcus Anders was here. He does a lot of work on the harnesses. It was great to meet Marcus Anders.

I mean, I follow you guys on the Red Bull X-Op. So to have met him was, was a privilege, but, um, yeah, they came out with a new range, the next range of moustaches of flares and just watching these guys fly them was also for me was just so special, you know? Um, but they, they're incredible machines. Yeah. Yeah. Very addictive. And are you, are you, are you mostly ridge soaring with these? Is that what you're doing? Yeah. I'm mostly, I'm mostly ridge soaring, flying coastal winds, but we've got a, a number of nice sites. We've got a place called the bowl, um, when the wind's really up to like 30 kilometers an hour, we go and fly in the bowl and you can really throw these wings around, um, and do tip drags and tip touches. Um, and on the coast when there's good winds blowing, I mean, we've got kilometer after kilometer of just of sea cliffs with just bush.

And we can fly, it feels like a hundred miles an hour with your feet just dragging through these trees under the flares, you know, going, you know, going muck too with your hair on fire. It's just, for me, that's just great. And other flare pilots fly, they, they fly them, they fly, I know a couple of guys who fly the moustaches that fly like, they fly them like hang gliders. They just want that extra safety where if a breeze suddenly does pick up, you know, they've got all that, that extra speed on, on tap, um, you know, and every flare pilot's got their own conditions that they really like to fly. And a friend of mine, Jamie, Jamie and Ianni are, are come and spend, uh, swallows. They come and spend six, a season here, very experienced flare pilots, and they do so much for the community. Jamie's loves to fly in really strong wind. You know, when Jamie's, you know, frothing and rubbing his hands together and packing, running for the takeoff sites, that's normally when I'm saying, uh, you know, I can maybe back off a little bit for me because I'm a little bit lighter, but, um, yeah, they're just so addictive and we've got a good core of guys here that are flying them now.

And, uh. And, um, what's interesting for me as well, Gavin is to see how many manufacturers are not coming out with parakites. It's just seeming starting to explode. You know, you see more and

more of them. I think there are certain parts of the world too, you know, where there's dune flying and soaring and that kind of thing where it's just taken over. That's that I understand that that's all you see, you know, I'm still up in the big mountains. We, I haven't even seen one.

Yeah. Look, it's, it's, I'm, I'm going to be honest and say there was, there was a fair amount of, um, unhappiness when. Yeah. The first moustache has started to arrive here because you suddenly had a situation where you've got paragliders on these ridges and they flying really slowly. And, um, and if you flying a paraglider and the flares are flying, it's scary. It can be scary. Um, because the flares have got so much, they, they, you look behind and you'll see a flare behind you and he'll be 40, 30, 40 meters behind you and above you. And you look at front and you'll fly for a, for a few seconds and look, and he's not there anymore. Suddenly he's coming underneath you at a overtake. He's taking you underneath you at a, at a, like a bat out of hell. And then he's climbing up above you again. So you've got to be very cognizant of that fact. When you flying a moustache, um, you've got to be very aware as well that you flying on so many different levels because of your ability to climb and your speed, you've got to be very aware of what's happening.

It's as important, but it can be very scary for the paraglider pilots, especially the inexperienced ones. And there was a lot of guys that were just getting too many frights and it started causing a bit of bad blood. There was a lot of, uh, I won't say fights. But there was, uh, it started to get quite tense and we had to pull everyone together and, and now there's more and more moustaches arriving. So it's, it's gonna, we're going to need to be very careful about how we, how we monitor it. Um, it sounds like ski board, skiing and snowboarding back in the day, trying to learn how to get together. Exactly what our men said to me, he said, it's like skiing and snowboarding and it's like windsurfing and kite surfing. The windsurfers are going crazy. You guys are going to cut our necks off with all these lines. And it's exactly the same as that. Yeah. And as people are going to get used to

it. Yeah. You almost need, you know, like in hood river, they, they ended up just designating, you know, you had the windsurfing area and the kite surfing area and it was, you know, almost draw a line and split people up. It's exactly the same as that. Um, I'm trying to imagine why, why can you launch a moustache or flare what these, uh, a parakite in so much more wind. They, they just don't have the power right off the ground that a paraglider would, you know, why? Why, why, why don't you get, just get plucked into the sky and have it be all sketchy. Like it would be on a paraglider.

Well, it just basically you've the, the Ford speed of these things are so incredible that the steering system works on pulleys, you know? So when you go hands up under a paracat, um, it's not only, it's not just like pushing a speed bar, the entire wing, the whole wing basically pitches. So you've just got, it's like depowering, powering up and depowering a kite surfing car. So you've just got so much more speed. Um, and it's huge range. Yeah. Speed range. And it's instantaneous. It really is instantaneous. And I mean, I've, I've had incredible experiences where I've taken off in strong conditions with the, uh, with the mustache and I've literally been able to pump it just rhythmically. And I've gone up, you I've been able to pump, literally pump it up. I've seen JJ lawn from the ground and pump up to the, to the roof of the hangar. You know, it's, it's just phenomenal.

And of course, because of the inbuilt reflex, they can't front tuck so they can dive right over you. And if you keep your hands up, they dive right over you. If you apply brakes when they overshoot. You, if you then apply a little bit of brakes, then you'll get a front tuck, but I mean, they've tremendously safe in terms of the reflex stops them and they do collapse. I mean, we've seen videos doing the rounds of, of mustaches that can collapse. Do you fly anything into turbulence? If it's a soft wing, it's going to collapse. So you've got to be aware of it. Speed wing pilots. I've always said they need to be way more aware than cross country pilots for turbulence because the speed wing collapses and turbulence things can go south very quickly. And I think the same with the mustache, but generally I will go out as far as saying that I feel so safe. I'm safe for flying a mustache and I have under any other glider I've had in turbulence. It just feels so solid. I've got the speed to get away.

If winds, if the wind picks up, I've never had any, um, any issues.

Fascinating. Did you ever spend any time hang gliding? I did a hang gliding course with Johan Anderson, but, uh, I can't, I did about seven high flights. Um, and it's to me, hang gliding is the most, still the most pure form of human flight. I believe it's the purest form of human flight. And whenever I see a hang glider. Um, you know, especially one of the modern gliders, these beautiful new Moyes, the toplesses. And, uh, I mean, they, to me, the big issue was just the rigging and the de-rigging and carrying it up and carrying it down.

Um, yeah. And I mean, my friends always used to tell me that's part of the game. You know, you're going to have the, you'll have the reward, get it, get involved in the sport and you'll have the rewards. But, uh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I, I just think being prone makes so much sense. You know, you're it's, it's the form of aviation where you're a bird rather than. Just sitting there in a couch. It doesn't, it doesn't make any sense how we sit in a paraglider. Yeah,

I agree a hundred percent. That's what makes, that's why I say it's, it's the most beautifully natural form of free flight. And in fact, before I, before I, uh, I go, I think before I'd even got a hundred, I had a hundred jumps, not even a hundred jumps. And I, I went and did a hang gliding course. I wanted to go and do, I wanted to go and do a hang gliding course with, uh, in Natal, but it never happened for some reason. But I was as attracted to hang gliding in the early days. And I think it was a pure. Balance. If I'd started hang gliding before I started skydiving, I think I would have gone the hang gliding route. Would have been that. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway,

that's interesting. Huh? I think I missed an opportunity to ask you about something, not to take us back to the darker side of these sports, but you said, you know, when the accident happened with your partner, with Deidre, uh, it, it really changed your perspective. Yeah. Can we dive into that a little bit more? What, what? Yeah. How did you, how did it change your approach? How did it change? I don't know. In a sense, who you

are. Yeah. Gavin. So I, my, I, my background in skydiving, I was, there was, there was a group of two of us, myself and a very good friend, Norman Girdwood. And we were, we were very influenced by two other young skydivers. Um, uh, Eddie Meinke, um, who's also, uh, no longer with us and Eleanor Gorman, who's remains a good friend of mine. And they were really, Eddie and Ellen were, were, were very much, uh, the people who influenced Norman and I as youngsters, as schoolboys. And Eddie and Ellen used to see how low they could go. And they were getting grounded all the time and they were, they were naughty boys. And, uh, my skydiving career started off like that. Um, I mean, I, we've got a, we've got stories. Um, one that comes to mind is still a jump that the Maritzburg, it's still, people still talk about it in Peter Maritzburg and nobody knew for a long time whether it actually happened or whether it was urban legend.

But, um, five of us basically stole the aircraft out of the hangar at 3am in the morning after an entire night in the bar drinking. And we then came back. And took off and there was a dingy little, um, uh, little fast food restaurant called the Pie Cart in Peter Maritzburg, which was in downtown Maritzburg in the bus depot in the taxi ranks in downtown Peter Maritzburg. And we always, one night at about seven in the evening, we decided tonight would be a good night to go and skydive into the Pie Cart, which we'd been wanting to do for many years. And the more beers we had, the more, the more this idea appealed to us. And eventually we got rid of all the safety officers and the instructors. And at 3am in the morning, we took, in fact, it was about 2.30am. We took off in a Cessna 172. We had no lights, no torches.

I think one person on the load had an altimeter. And we took off and we flew to 7,000 feet and we exited over the middle of town and we built a five-way round and we landed, tracked off. It was a beautiful skydive. By the time we were in free fall, we were all sober. I'm pretty sure. But it was this most beautiful skydive. We were sitting there. We could. Or so you thought. Yeah, so we thought. And we all landed in different spots in, in the city, went back to the parachute club.

We packed our equipment at that clubhouse, not at the hangar, so the guys wouldn't find out. But we made the mistake the next morning. The guys, we planned the jump on the hangar floor with chalk and we had a big cross. We had parkart and somebody had heard the airplane take off and saw us going and they saw an empty airplane come back. But there was no parachutes at the airfield. So they knew we'd done something crazy. And the next morning we got back to the hangar smiling. We got away with it. But all the instructors were looking at this pencil mark on the floor with all the names. This is where Jeff lands. This is where Alan lands. And yeah, we denied it. And I was the youngest in the jump. So they try to, they try to pull me aside and grill me and get me to admit. But we flatly denied it for years and years and years. And eventually we all agreed about a year ago to write the story, which I wrote.

And yeah, and that was the first time that the story was actually put out there. And that, so, I mean, that was just an example. And I, we've, I mean, we did night jumps. My friend went to the army before I went to the army. And my friend went to the army. We did crazy night jumps. We were opening low. And I just, I was, I believed I was bulletproof. My skydiving career, I got away with so much that I shouldn't have got away with. And Deirdre's accident made me realize that there are consequences to this game. And you can never. How old were you then? I was about 24 at that stage. Ah, pretty early. 25. Yeah, it was pretty early. Uh, I'm trying to think how old I was. Uh,

I was about 20. I was about 26, 26 thereabouts. Between 24 and 26. Is it, is. That was 1985.

Am I jumping, am I jumping to too much of a conclusion? Do you ever look at these things and go, man, she might've saved my life?

Yeah. You know, I mean, that's in a, in a way. I mean, I haven't actually looked at it like that, but the way you say it now. Yeah. When I, and what I've just said to you, that makes perfect sense. You know?

Yeah. I, I just, I, I often think that for me and listeners who listen to the show, I've heard this one before, so I'm not going to get into it, but the, you know, the, the, the incident in a sense that I'm pretty convinced saved my life was basically dying in a river. Uh, you know, I was, I was my previous life. I was really into rivers and paddling and, and did a lot of scary, really stupid stuff. And we were doing a bunch of first ascents down in. In, in central America, I was down in Mexico doing a first ascent and, and got eaten in a waterfall and, and I think properly, literally died. And, and by, you know, a combination of miracle and luck, uh, you know, came back and it just forever changed me because before that moment, same as you, I was invincible, you know, I was going to get through whatever it was.

And, and after that it was, Oh, there's consequences. And of course I knew there was consequences before that I'd lost friends. We were running really hard stuff. I mean, we talked about it all the time, but it hadn't really hit home. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's an interesting point. You know, that, that, that incident, the, the, the tragedy with, with Deirdre could well have been the catalyst. Well, it was the catalyst that made me realize, you know, and that, that could well have saved my life, you know? Um, so yeah, I mean, my scariest moments in Skydive, the closest I came to, to fatality in Skydiving was in Canopy RW, we had a horrible rep, parachute rep, all four of us, or three of, three out of the four of us were involved. Um, and I was stuck, I was wrapped up in all the lines in the middle of all of this and the other guys eventually cut away and I then had to get out of all the lines before I could cut away. And, um, I wasn't even sure by the time I'd got too low and I wasn't even sure whether I was still attached to the, to their three parachutes, but I didn't have time anymore to keep trying to find lines.

So I thought, well, I'm too low. I've got to cut away. And, and if, if, uh, I've got the grace of God on my side, I'm going to be clear, uh, and I'll get my reserve. And if not, then that's it. And I cut away. And the, the most beautiful thing I ever saw was seeing three parachutes as I pulled the cutaway handle, going back into free fall, seeing three parachutes disappearing. And I've rolled over, pulled the reserve. I was under reserve really low. Um, yeah, I mean, that was lucky, but, uh, apart from that, I, I, how

did you guys get all tangled up like that?

So we were doing rotations. Um, so we build a four stack of speed. Four stack. And then as the lot, as the bottom guy hits the top guy, then used to stall full stall over the back of the parachute and go down and drop down in the burble, um, behind and then hit the bottom. And as he hit the bottom, the next guy goes in a, so it's just, it was a high speed and we were two weeks, we were two weeks out from the competition and we were, we were favorites to win the nationals. And we were two weeks out and Henny, um, the side note, um, um, was, was it Henny? Somebody, one of the guys. One of the, the top guy went over and got caught the pilot chute, the bridle cord and the pilot chute is tracks behind. And for some reason on that rotation, the guy got his foot, his ankle caught in the pilot chute and collapsed the second canopy.

As he was going, the second canopy then collapsed into the third canopy, which pulled me into the canopy. And then she, um, we were all just, we were all in chaos. God, what a mess. That was a mess, man. Yeah.

And everybody got out of it. Everyone got out of it. Yeah. And the most surreal thing for me was, uh, the guy who was the second to last guy to cut away, he had lines wrapped around his feet. And the only way he got out was by pulling his shoe off, got, got the line off his feet and then he cut away. And I remember all this chaos and mayhem. And then I cut away and I had a round reserve. Then I didn't have a square reserve, cut away back into free fall, round reserve opens of mine. I'm under this round reserve and it's absolutely silent. And I'm still sitting there thinking, I can't believe I've just got away with this. And there 25. Or 30 feet from me comes past me, the shoe with two laces, perfectly stable, the two laces and the shoes just wafting past me. And it was just the most surreal moment.

I remember looking at this being fixated on the shoe thinking, well, yeah, you know, crazy. The things your mind remembers, you know, um, when things like that happen. Did you guys win? We won that nationals. I'm very proud to say, um, we, we were very, uh, average drop. We had two more weeks to train. And we went back, we took the next day off and, um, we came back midweek to start training and our average went down a lot, but we came back and we won that nationals by two points. It was very, very close, but we brought it out the bag. That's pretty

impressive that all four of you were able to hold it together.

And I think, uh, you think

somebody, one of you would have been like, I don't know about this. Yeah.

And Gavin, I think that is probably the, probably the proudest achievement of my skydiving career was that competition was winning. That was winning that, that four-way, um, rotation. Nationals. God,

I bet. Yeah. Wow. You got any other stories like that? That was a ripper, man.

I'm just envisioning this shoe going

down in front of you. That's wild. Yeah, I know it was, but I mean, we are, we've had, you know, we were, we were doing four-way training and other funny stories. We do. Well, it wasn't funny at the time we were doing four-way training and, uh, there's a drill. We call it a drill dive. We were just doing donut 360 donut. The donuts call the formation donut 360 donut. And the other way. Donut 360 donut. And there were two layers of cloud that we went through in the aircraft on the way up and the bottom layer was at about 3000 feet and the top layer was at about five and a half thousand feet. So we figured we just, and it was with Alan O 'Gorman and Eddie, um, the two bad guys and myself and Norman. Yeah. And we were on a team with him at that stage and the team was called re-entry. And, um, we figured the bottom clouds at 3000 feet. So we're not going to worry about looking at altimeters. We just going to go when we break the bottom cloud.

Um, that's. That's our cue to track off and open. And, um, we just carried on doing donuts, but in the interim, while we continued our climb to altitude, the cloud base had changed dramatically and the low cloud was sitting sitting at, I can't remember. I'd be lying, but I'm guessing probably about a thousand, 500 feet. And we burst through this low cloud, the bottom cloud in free fall. And we looked down and we just see these houses that looked like buildings, these little houses. And we realized we were low. And I think the four of us just literally, we hardly even track. We just kicked away from one another and four parachutes open. I mean, we were very lucky. We

were very lucky. What do you need in a skydiving rig? What, where do you, what do you got? What's really low? Well, you want to base jumping. They can base it from 400 feet. No, base, that's not low for

base. I mean, base, that would be starting to get ready. That would be a high base jump. But in those days in sports skydiving, you want to, the technical, the rule was to break off the formation at three and a half thousand feet track. And you want it, you had to be under an open canopy by about 2,200 feet. Um, so yeah,

so a lot of time.

Yeah. So you've got time and that was really just to give yourself much time, but in the event of a high speed malfunction, you want to give yourself time to, you know, to cut away, to get away from it.

Yeah. I can say I, I did some acro training a few years ago over the desert, you know, so instead of over the water, I was doing it over the dirt. So we were towing up, uh, I was doing it with my friend Cody and, and our, our kind of hard stop was a thousand feet. But I can tell you if you're having trouble at a thousand feet that you don't have much time. Yeah, that's it. A thousand feet goes real quick, you know?

And I think Gavin, the scariest skydiver I was ever on is our parachute club got together to try and break our club record, which I think was a 35 way or 40 way or something like that. And it was being filmed by the grand master of, of free fall photography, a guy called Norman Kent, who's from the United States and, and Norman Kent was filming the skydive. So, uh, Paul, Lizzie Smith and I were the, were the last two to close. Uh, he was, he was like. 39th and I was 40th, if that was the number, but we were second last and last. And I was still sitting in position, watching this formation building. And next thing I looked across and I saw Norman Kent open and he was gone. And I, I suddenly realized, well, there's only one reason he's going to go. And I looked down, um, at my altimeter and I was passing through three, about three and a half thousand feet.

And, um, I then, uh, I opened and Paul Lizzie Smith opened as well. And the most terrifying thing. We, we were sitting in free fall, watching this huge formation of about 35 or 40 skydivers just disappearing and blending into the ground, still in free fall. Um, and, uh, eventually people started, people realized what was going on and there were people pulling out of the formation, opening, throwing pilot shoes out of the formation. I think the lowest people on that load were under canopy, uh, probably about 400 feet or 300 feet. Um, it was terrifying and how nobody died on that jump. Nobody to this day. Actually has any idea. I mean, it was crazy. Um, and that was just, uh, yeah, it was just a human error from the group in the base who were monitoring the, uh, the altitude.

Um, and I can say that, but then it is every skydiver's responsibility to, to monitor your altitude and monitor your own, be aware of your own altitude, you know? So you can't put the whole blame on the base, but we almost lost an entire club. Um, and I think Norman Kent still remembers that vividly to this day. You know, he, he, he's spoken about it a number of times. That was probably the scariest. He was, he was,

Norman was the photographer.

Yeah. He was the videographer. Yeah. He was, he was, so he was the

one that really the first one that noticed he was above everybody. Yeah. He, I think he had an audio altimeter. Yeah.

He had an audio altimeter, which just started pinging in his ear. And then he realized, man, these guys are just overdoing it. And he opened and, um, yeah, unfortunately it took the majority of the jumpers a lot of time, but I was convinced. I was sitting under, on the canopy at the height that I would probably normally be open at, um, with everybody else. And I saw this literally this entire formation just blending down into, into the earth and Mubatu. And, um, when they started to break, there were people tracking and I just saw pilot shoots coming out and canopies opening everywhere. And I was like, okay, this is going to be a, uh, not a happy ending to the day. And, and miraculously nobody was, nobody was killed, you know? Cause that's,

that's the worst case scenario, right? When you're,

when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're, when you're,

when you're not allowed, you don't have enough time to track away and get away from somebody. Everybody's just opening cause they're panicking. Exactly. Oh man, crazy. Wow. Uh, that was your scariest. You got any other scary stories?

Um, no, look, I mean, uh, not, not, I mean, I've had malfunctions. I've had a, I've had a bunch of cutaways, but those happen so quickly, you know, you have a malfunction and you realize you've got trouble. You don't even think about it. You automatically, you know, pop a cutaway. Pull the reserve. Um, but yeah, that canopy entanglement was probably my, my scariest thing in, in skydiving. Um, yeah. Do you paragliding touch train really

hard for those malfunctions? Is that kind of part of the training where you're, when you're coming up through it? Cause is that, is that something you can expect sometime in your career? It's just things not going to open.

Yeah. It's it malfunctions. It's not, as the saying goes, it's not a case of, of, of if it's a case of when, you know, you're going to have malfunctions at some stage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the aircraft and you go through the skydive in your mind, but you also, you'll see the guys just going through their cutaway procedure, you know, um, just okay. Right hand on the cutaway puff, left hand handle cutaway, you know, um, you go through that in your mind all the time, you know, you constantly aware of it. So when it happens, it effectively is second nature.

I did a, I was doing a, a little shoot called locals, uh, for outside. This was quite a few years back. And you've heard of the parent bridge. Probably a twin falls. It's one of the legal bridges to, to jump off in the, in the States. And, you know, people, when the weather's decent, people are going off that thing all day, every day. And, uh, you know, miles Dasher is one of the Red Bull pilots and, uh, has made it very famous. He lives there in twin. And we went down for this film, the short film thing. I, we were, I was working on and, uh, they wanted to hook me off the bridge and I had never done a bridge. And, and so he, you know, he packed my shoe and said, Hey, listen, you're this will open.

But what he was nervous about is, you know, I hadn't done any skydiving and he said, you know, just the only reason I'm letting you do this is because I know you've got a lot of aviation background and you're not going to panic. You're going to jump off this bridge and you're going to, you're going to grab the pilot and throw it, you know, because, because most people, if it's their first time and they haven't done a bunch of sky, that's why they do so much skydiving before you start base jumping is because, you know, people lock up and they just plummet to their death. They're not going to grab that thing because they just, they just panic. And, and I said, listen, I'm not going to panic. It'll be absolutely fine. And it was, it was all, it was a thrill. It was great. It was, it was a ton of fun and I grabbed it. But is that, uh, is that a big thing?

Do people just not throw?

Man, I've, I've haven't, to be honest, I haven't come across that type of thing. I don't have any, any base jumping background, but certainly in skydiving, um, I haven't seen, I've, I've seen people that, that certainly lose track of altitude and lose track of time where I've had to, in my AFF career, I've physically had to open a number of students. I've been giving them the signal to pull, to pull, to pull. They don't, they haven't pulled. And you give them as much, uh, option as you can safely within the parameters. And then eventually if you're the main side jump master, you then take the decision, you throw, take their pilot shoot. Throw it. So, I mean, I've had that on a number of occasions, but, um, yeah. And for me, the, for some of the scariest jump mastering or instructing that I've done is people on first free falls, because there they've done 10 static line jumps and their static line jumps go well, they relax, but their first free fall, something in their brain tells them that they are no longer attached to this umbilical cord.

That when they leave, when they step off that step, they, they've got to make the, they've got to make the, the physical action of pulling that rip cord and something in their brain, um, fries and inevitably they often will go unstable. I've seen very few perfect first free falls, you know, um, they'll do perfect static line jumps, but the moment the first free fall psychologically, you know, you on your own, you no longer have that umbilical cord and they, you know, the static line's not attached. And, um, I've had some horror things where I've seen them go unstable and roll and eventually get the rip cord out. Um, yeah, you know, you have sleepless nights sometimes, but as an AFF instructor, you learn very quickly to analyze what you've got

to do. What you've got

on your plate in terms of a new student. And there's been a time in my career as well, where I've had to go to somebody after three levels of AFF and say to them, with all due respect, this is not really your thing. And, um, the people there have actually realized they've, they've obviously intelligent enough to know, okay, I, I understand. I can see that I've really been battling and I agree with you. They're almost happy that you've given them a, an out, you know, but there's been just a handful of times where I've, I've had to go to, to my students and say, listen, guy, you know, this is, I know you love this and you. You trying, but it's just maybe not your thing, you know? Um, yeah.

What now, now we're in some pretty serious crossover with, with, with paragliding, I'm sure hang gliding as well. This has come up on the show quite a bit. And, but I haven't heard many instructors have to do that in paragliding, but I feel like it should, there are definitely people that get into this sport that should be doing something else. Uh, how do you approach that? How do you, how do you deliver? What's, I would imagine they would be very thankful that they've got an out, but there, there are people

that shouldn't be doing this. I agree with you, Gavin, you know, a hundred percent. And I'm not a, I've never did my instructor's rating in paragliding. I was always just going to fly for fun. And obviously if I, if I see somebody, you know, I'm, I'm always available to offer advice on, you know, if I see somebody landing and struggling with a landing approach or something, but I'm not a certified instructor. Um, but I agree with you a hundred percent. I've seen, I've seen takeoffs. Um, and people flying in strong wind conditions here where I've seen people getting thrown off the mountain where literally the instructors have done everything, you know, and my first belief is that if you can't take off and if you can't launch on your own, pull it up and launch on your own, then you shouldn't be flying. And I can understand your first flight if it's a bit of nerves, but I've seen repetitive cases where people are having to get, um, baby through.

And I, yeah, I, in certainly more cases in paragliding, I've seen, I've seen people that I'm just. I just wonder, you know, man, this is maybe this is not for you, but, um, you've got to respect for me, the people love, love what they're doing and they want to fly. So I always say, you know, if I see somebody blatantly endangering themselves, of course, I'm going to go and say something, but, um, yeah, we've, we've, we see crazy times, especially this time of year, you know, at our, at our, um, our local flying site here in the garden route, when we've got strong winds and we've got a lot of visiting pilots, a lot of them aren't used to launching in high wind conditions. A lot of them are used to Alpine. Type launches with flat light wind, grassy slopes, and we see some crazy stuff going on, man, you know, and, uh, yeah, but anyway,

uh, not, not to continue to pull us back into dark stuff, but I understand you, you, you guys lost somebody recently in, in Porterville. Did you get any more details?

Yeah. Look, we still don't know. And sadly he was one of our, one of our most experienced pilots, a gentleman called Josh Deganaga. An absolute legend in the sport, a full-time tandem instructor and a cross country, absolute addict. I think, uh, he would like to be known as, um, Josh, whenever he got the chance, he'd go into the big mountains, uh, into the flatlands and tow. That's where all the records were broken. And he used to go and winch up and, uh, Josh's great joy was going out on his own and getting towed up. And then, you know, we've seen videos that he used to post of just flying this bucking Bronco in crazy thermals at like 3000. And he's still going up and riding the smoke from fires. And, uh, he was just an absolute legend. And, uh, yeah, sadly he was on, he was on holiday, um, with his wife, um, recently.

And, uh, he took off and nobody knows what happened. Um, he was found at 3 AM in the morning by a rescue team and he was found in a river. Um, I don't know the details where the drowned, whether death was by drowning or whether, but his reserve had been thrown apparently. And I know they are busy doing. The accident report at the moment, uh, Josh's funeral was in Cape town just a week or so ago. So it's a huge loss to the flying community. Um, you know, and, um, yeah, that was, uh, it was a very sad thing, but we, uh, unfortunately we don't have any, any details as to, as to what happened. And we in fact lost, there was another pilot that died about two months ago in portable as well. Also flying, crossing over into the Tilbach Valley, uh, also an experienced cross country pilot.

And he was found. We don't know. Um, what happened? We

don't know what the

situation was there. Portable, unfortunately is, is big sky country and it claims, it claims lives. It's a lot of, a lot of people have lost their lives in portable. And it's for me, I used to fly there when I was filming cross country, I was doing media. I used to go and, you know, scratch in a flight before the window opened for the cross country pilots. And it was always, I mean, now there were days at portable. I remember I was struggling to land. I was battling to get down, to get back to the takeoff, to film the start of the task. And I was just like, you know, why am I flying? I'm flying in this place. Yeah. But anyway, it's windy. Yeah. I haven't. Yeah. It's, it's, it's very thermic and, and the sea breeze pulls through in the, in the late afternoon. So you want to get your flying done before the sea breeze comes in. But there's sometimes if there's a little bit cross, um, you know, competition tasks, sometimes they've, they take a chance and they'll, they'll, they'll send a task off with a little bit of a crosswind and a big, strong thermals, you know, that can cause chaos.

Um, yeah. And I take my hat off, you know, to the cross country guys who go and fly there. Um, but that's not really my, my thing.

Last thing I wanted to ask you about is, uh, and I know, you know, you just said cross country is not your thing, but South Africa has had, you know, since Neville has had the, you know, it's put it stamp on the big distance, you know, there's Texas, there's Brazil or South Africa. Those are the big three. And you mentioned Marcus Anders, you know, they were out there recently going for it. Uh, you know, we, we still think we've got the biggest potential here in the States with, with, with,

with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with,

Texas, although it's man, it's a, I went down there a few years ago to try it. It's a, it's a battle, you know, you're, you're hanging out in a very hot place and a ton of wind day after day after day. And, you know, you're often back at the camper at 8am going, well, try tomorrow. You know, it's, it's, it's kind of a job. I wouldn't call it that much fun, but, uh, it just seems incredible to me to do it across South Africa, knowing, you know, I've driven across South Africa and I've been to Joe Berg. and I've been to, you know, I've been north of you, Namibia and a bunch of countries up there and Malawi and stuff. It just would be incredible to fly across your country. I mean, that's kind of what they're doing, right? They're almost going coast to coast.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, because the wings, as the gliders improve and the performance improves and the standard of flying improves, it's becoming more and more difficult, you know, to find because there's certain areas you can fly up to the mountains at Lesotho from as far, you know, from the one side, but you don't want to go over the big mountains into Lesotho because that's pretty inhospitable terrain. So I don't follow that closely, but I mean, I know that the guys have been struggling. They used to start from a place called Da 'ar, but now they've covered that distance. Now they're needing to find places further and further away, you know, to make that gap longer and longer. I had a really interesting trip about 2010, I'm guessing, but Ozone came out a couple

of weeks ago. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't

know if

you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. I don't know if you've seen it. Mike

Kavanagh and Dov DeGol, the test pilot and designer from Ozone came out and they had all the new Ozone wings. And I was pulled on board as a media guy and they were towing every day. And basically the plan was we started off in Swakopma up right on the West Coast, as far West as we could go in a place called Springbok. And the plan was just to fly and follow the dirt roads and winch up. And whoever lands the furthest, that was, we camped for the night and then we took off the next day and we carried on going. And that was an amazing trip. And there was my exposure to some top cross country guys. These guys used to get winched up and just thermal and just disappear. And then they used to radio us from another town and say, okay, I've landed in a small little town. Here I am. Yeah, it's a part of the sport, Gavin, even you guys, the ex-helps, that's a part of the sport that's very alien to me.

And I have huge respect to anyone who can fly in those conditions day after day. Man, that must take some doing.

What do you, what keeps you up at night in a good way with this sport? What's in your future? What are you excited about?

I'm excited. I would just love, I'm excited about the development of the wings and the gliders. You know, and I've said, I was saying to Amin the other day, you know, the very first square parachute was a, well, technically the first popular square parachute was a parachute called a Stratostar. And that came out in 1976 or 77. And my very first, my very first, my very first square jump was with a Stratostar. And I had to have 72 jumps under a round parachute before I was allowed to jump a Stratostar. And I then jumped a Stratostar. And in my career, I've then followed the progress of square parachutes from seven cell, five cells to seven cells, to nine cells, to elliptical wings, to, and I've jumped. And because my passion was the parachutes, I've jumped all the latest designs and the newest designs.

And I remember the wing called a canopy called a Stiletto. Um, by performance designs was my favorite. And I remember being overawed with jumping the Stiletto and, uh, for me to have done that and now to have reached the stage where I'm now flying a parakite, which is the latest. And for me, you know, the, the interesting thing is just to see where the development of these wings are going to go, you know, and that's what I think about whenever I get an opportunity to fly a new design wing. Um, I love it just to feel what it's like. And at the end of the day, the skillset, to me feels the same. It's just, it's a, it's the ability that you have to, to become one with the paraglider, not to, not to have to think about what you're doing, but you feel you take off on a glide and you can feel very quickly, okay, this is how this wing is responding.

And you can just change your subtly change your style to fly a new wing. And that's what excites me is flying new wings and feeling the differences, the subtle differences. I mean, I'm 62 now, so I'm not going to be competing anywhere. I don't think I'm ever going to get it. I'd love to, to end up in an instruction role with parakites at some stage and certainly in a marketing and a media role with parakites if I can. But, um, for me, the exciting thing is just to, to follow, to see where the new gliders, the design of the wings are going and to hopefully to be healthy enough to keep flying them for as long as I can.

Hey, I lied. I do have two more

questions. Actually, your son, tell me about your son. Yeah. My son is, um, grew up around, around skydiving and around paragliding. And, uh, he was flying my speed wing. He was ground handing my speed wings when he was seven, six years old, seven years old. And, uh, he was in fact running off dunes with my speed wing when he was about 12 and very natural little pilot. He did a paragliding license, uh, about four years ago. Um, and he was a, he was a very, very gifted pilot. He took to it straight away. But, uh, when he left, when he was in his last grade 12, his last year of school, he decided he wanted aviation was going to be his thing. And he wanted to become, he decided instead of going my route into free flight, he wanted to fly real airplanes, which I'm not going to say I was too disappointed about.

It's an expensive route, but, um, yeah. So instead of going to varsity or college, he then went straight to aviation school in Durban and, uh, did a, did an aviation, uh, private pilot's license, then went on to become a commercial pilot, then instructed in Johannesburg. Um, and, uh, he had a terrifying incident. He was, uh, teaching a student and they were flying a one seven two back from, uh, the general flying area on a night flight. They were actually flying to the general flying area. And this, the, the, the aircraft engine started to vibrate. So Talon is his name. Talon told the student, listen, it's my airplane. The evening's over. We're going to go back. Something's, something's not good. Turned around. He made a, he made a, just, um, I think they called it a pan call, um, just to let people know that, that, uh, there was potentially a problem and he was put into a pattern.

For, uh, for Wunderbohm airport. And he was probably in a long downwind leg in a queue. Um, and, uh, the aircraft suddenly started to vibrate really, really violently. So he then called, uh, Mayday and he peeled out of the pattern to go straight for the airfield. And at that point, the engine cut and it was absolute pitch darkness underneath him. It was pitch black. And he saw what he thought was a street lamp, which was in fact a street lamp. Um, and it lit, it lit up a small little piece of road. And he, by the grace of God, managed to put the one, seven, two down in blackness with this little piece of road. And it turned out to be the road in a little location, a little township location outside of Pretoria called the Maloto township, uh, Maloto street.

Sorry. And he landed this road with telephone wires. It was a small road and poles and houses. He put the one, seven, two down in the dark by the grace of God. They, they were absolutely fine. The aircraft was undamaged. Um, yeah, that was, that was terrifying, man. But anyway, I'm happy. Yeah. And, uh, that, you know, somebody said to me his, his glass, you know, you get, they say you get two glasses, one glass of luck and one glass of experience. I think he used up a lot of his luck glass there, but you know, yeah, it took

a few coins out of that one for

sure. Yeah. But he's now, I'm proud to say he now flies a PC twelves and grand caravans for a company called federal airlines. He's now flying into Africa, into Zambia, into Botswana. Um, and he's flying, he's, um, flying captain and a, and a beautiful PC 12. So he's doing extremely well. And, uh, yeah.

Awesome. That's great. Jeff, if you could rewind the clock to your kind of 50 hour self, which was, you know, you were probably 10 quite a while ago, but, uh, what would, what would your 62 year old self tell the, tell that 50 year old self, you know, you could, you could say one thing to that self and say, Hey, you know, here's something I've learned. Here's what I want you to know. Going forward.

Wow. That's a tricky one. Um, I would certainly have, uh, I would say spend more time in the industry. Um, if I had done that, I mean, I'm at a stage now where I'm freelancing. Um, but I would, I would have said to myself, spend more time in the industry, getting qualifications. Um, I often look back and, you know, um, I, I should have gone and become a parachute rigger. Um, uh, and I should have set my goals higher and to getting into the design, my interest purely because of my design and wings. Now, you know, I'm disappointed that I just wanted to jump out of airplanes and I wanted to cause trouble. And I was, I was, uh, I was just, uh, you know, I was young and inexperienced and I just wanted to have as much fun. I would tell my young, my young self, I wouldn't have changed that lifestyle and what I chose to do, but I would have gone about it with a much more, uh, dedicated look as, as, as a career.

I would have gone and said, get as many ratings as you can become a master rigger, maybe even get a, a private pilot's license so you can fly as well, become a master parachute rigger, become a designer, learn about the design stuff and spend more time in the factories with the guys learning that side of the sport. That's my, probably my biggest regret. So yeah. Otherwise I wouldn't change a thing.

Yeah. Good advice. Just more, more balanced, more thorough, more foundation. I like it. Jeff, you're a treasure, man. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. This has been a real, real thrill and a real joy. And it's, it's fun to hear about, uh, side of the sport. That I really don't know, know much about.

Yeah. Gavin, thanks very much. It's a, it's a huge privilege for me. When I got your message saying, Hey, do you want to come on my podcast? I was like, this is the Mayhem podcast. You've got the right guy. I sent you a message. I think you may remember, I don't know if you've got the right guy, but it's, uh, it's been a privilege. I definitely got the

right guy. And you've got, you've got students and people around you who are going to be thrilled. They've been, they've been asking for you for a while, so they'll be thrilled to hear this one come out, but I appreciate it. Jeff. Thanks a lot. It's

been an honor. Thanks a lot, Gavin.

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