On October 25th, 2018 Marcella Uchoa flew into the record books by flying 411 km across the Sertao, Brazil. She broke Seiko Fukuoka’s record of 402 km in Australia set in December of 2015. Marcella was in good company, team flying with Rafael Saldini, Frank Brown, Samuel Nascimento, Marcelo Prieto (the same group who flew 564 km to break the world distance record a few years back) as well as Sebastien Ospina, an ace pilot from Colombia.

Let’s face it- sometimes things go wrong. And sometimes you get lucky. This is one of those stories and there is a LOT here we can all learn from. Rick Heatley was having a lovely day in the sky on a near-perfect day at a new site on the rugged and wild Vancouver Island, British Colombia when suddenly things went proper pear shaped. Moments later he was on a super steep slope, his wing was in a tree and he was in knee deep snow. It was going to be a very long, cold night…

We’re working on a series of weather shows and Nik Hawks recently jumped on the phone with Jeff Shapiro to talk weather and they headed off into a super interesting direction for about 15 minutes into a talk that Jeff has been giving to his students about how thermals work…and the strategies we need to employ to use them effectively. “Use some fu$%ing discipline!”. Find yourself bombing out in comps? Frequently frustrated by a shorter day than you could have gotten? Listen up.