“Flat out Phil” Hystek has been instructing free flight in Australia longer than anyone. It began with a fascination of hang gliding in the 70’s, becoming a hang gliding instructor in the late 80’s in California, being “forced” into paragliding in the early 90’s and his energizer batteries are going stronger than ever today. Phil has racked up 171,000 meters of vertical ascent in his back yard to date this year (at age 65!), just returned from a 4 weeks of vol-biv flying in Bir, India and is a story teller for the ages. We travel the world, meet the legends, pull off the absurd in Telluride, pack it hard in Bali, and find out who thrives in this sport and who should maybe take up a different activity. Sit back, crack a cold XXXX and enjoy, this one will have you in stitches!
Phil’s bivvy site in India
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Gavin McClurg (00:00.555)
intro obviously after this stupid thing here we go okay I'll do an intro obviously after we're all done when this goes live which actually be pretty quick because I've just been I've been traveling for a few weeks and need to get a show out so yeah so we'll trigger that but hey the only thing at the end whenever that may be you know we'll have a nice send off and you know can't wait to fly with you or something just a normal goodbye but don't actually hang up just
Phil Hystek (00:01.859)
Okay.
Phil Hystek (00:09.471)
Meh.
Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah.
Phil Hystek (00:19.413)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (00:24.51)
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, for sure, yeah, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (00:28.267)
My editor will need a little bit of silence to cut on. And then that's our chance to, oh man, what about that story? Or I forgot about this or whatever. That's our chance to fix whatever. So, okay, here we go. Phil, great to have you on the show. I'm super excited to talk to you about all kinds of things, including your four week trip that you just had out to beer. Sounds like you had some fantastic flying. We were just chatting it up before we started recording here. But...
Phil Hystek (00:34.642)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, time.
Gavin McClurg (00:57.611)
I don't know where to start with you. There's so many places we could start. You know, you've been at this game an awfully long time. You were just saying you're the longest, you've been instructing in Australia longer than anybody. If you can't, if you just put it together, and one, you started in 92, and you were, this is a good place to start. You said you were forced to start Paragon. What does that mean?
Phil Hystek (01:13.87)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:22.235)
Yeah, well, good to talk to you again. Yeah, I do think I sort of when you first suggested I talk to you, I think I thought you'd ask the wrong person or you're scraping the bottom of the barrel because I don't think I'm that I honestly don't think I'm that like that special. I just I just been I just been I think I've been hitting my head against a brick wall for long enough for just long enough, you know, that's why I'm still here. But anyway, so the so like.
Gavin McClurg (01:37.86)
You
Phil Hystek (01:50.674)
I started thinking about hang gliding back in the night, back in, oh, it would have been the late seventies when I first left school, right? Because I left school in, as I can tell you, I'm 65 at the moment. Right. So I left school in 76 and I started working as an aircraft engineer, fixing airplanes up, right? And, um,
And because my father was a commercial pilot and instructor and everything else, normal airplanes, I sort of did a lot of flying with him, but I never had a license. Right. Anyway, I must have said a few things about learning about, about hand. Cause I remember like my father tried to teach me how to fly airplanes. I didn't like it. So it was like drilling holes in the sky with a big propeller, you know, just roaring around, just, but just throwing the air all the pieces, you know, and I really didn't like it.
But we lived on this big property. My father owned this 5,000 acre cattle property up in the mountains above Tamworth, actually right near Manila, halfway between Manila and Bendemeer. So, you know where Manila is. So I used to watch eagles, big, big eagles fumbling up. And I thought it was the most beautiful thing watching them rather than airplanes flying around making a lot of noise. And I heard, I'd sort of read stories back in old Popular Mechanics magazine, that sort of stuff about people making hand gliders and flying hand gliders.
Gavin McClurg (02:47.383)
Okay. Yeah.
Phil Hystek (03:05.834)
Really, like I thought, now that's gotta be it, you know? So I'd sort of seen some pictures of people doing these hand gliders and I must say, I was sharing a house with these two crazy dudes. And one day I come out from work and one of them goes, we're gonna learn how to hand glide. And I said, yeah, really great. Who's gonna teach us that you are? And I said, what? Yeah, you know how to fly. You know how to fly. So.
Gavin McClurg (03:31.569)
Yeah
Phil Hystek (03:35.746)
So anyway, so these guys, they're just crazy. I like you imagined in the seventies long hair, like just like really just, they were just wild, you know, I was, I was, I was this big G caddy. I was just crazy motorbike rider. Anyway, so we, so we got the hang glider. They bought this hang glider in, this is in 1976 or 77. They bought this hang glider from the bottom of someone's house. I've been hanging there for about 10 years. So this is like a 1960s hang glider.
And we had no idea how to set it up. I just, it was like the very, it was like such early days. So anyway, so they, so we get the hang, they bought the hang light, they put it right on the roof of the car and we went to find a hill to use. And the only place that they could find that was, that was sort of like we thought was suitable was very fortuitous. It was a place called like the town common. It was up behind the hospital. So it was, it was behind the main hospital. I just,
Gavin McClurg (04:08.581)
That didn't even exist then. It's like a hankered chip with a raw...
Phil Hystek (04:34.654)
some little rolling hills, you know. So I, exactly, very fortuitous, it's so nice and close. You can actually see the hospital from wherever we're gonna go. So we get the hand glider and we carry it across the paddock, do, and we go, because what I knew, like they had no idea what they were gonna do. I just sort of must've fired up their imagination. So I knew you needed a hill and you needed wind, right? And I knew you needed the wind up the face and I knew you need some hill.
Gavin McClurg (04:37.038)
Perfect. If you crash, you're in a sweet spot. You just go to the hospital.
Phil Hystek (05:02.506)
What I didn't know is you needed a place to land. I didn't know, I didn't realize that you needed. I just, you just need a place to, that's right, that's right, wind in a hill. So, so we go up the top of the hill and we're setting the glider up and there's these bolts and nuts and everything and I'm just looking at it, trying to work out how to put this thing together and put the pole in here and the pole there and on top. And anyway, so the wind was pretty strong from my memory. It was quite strong. And so,
Gavin McClurg (05:10.67)
You got two things right? Oh screw it. Ha ha ha.
Phil Hystek (05:32.586)
Obviously I was going to teach him how to fly and for me to teach him how to fly, I had to fly myself. So I've gotten the heart. I've got in. It wasn't that. So this guy wasn't a harness. It was like one of those little swing seats, a little like a little wooden seat on two, like two ropes that went up to the. Yeah, it's been up to the. So I get so I get the hang glider. Exactly. Does it swing? So and so I get the hang glider and I'm in the seat and I've got this and I push the nose in one of those. Oh, one's got to be long.
Gavin McClurg (05:42.892)
Yep.
Gavin McClurg (05:46.299)
Chains.
Gavin McClurg (05:51.151)
You're flying a swing set.
Phil Hystek (06:01.714)
like a really short nose angle, like a really, you know, so, and I stand on top of this hill and I push and I'm standing there looking down, looking down the front and I just pushed the, push the control frame out a little bit, if you know, into that hang gliding, you just got a frame, I pushed the A frame out and the thing, the wind got under the nose, went straight over back and just flipped me straight up upside down. And I'm hanging upside down in the hang glider on the top of this grassy hill. Right. And so it, and.
Gavin McClurg (06:28.243)
Okay guys, did you see that? That's how we do it.
Phil Hystek (06:30.678)
That's right. Don't do it like that. So, excuse me. So, so I ended up being in the King post, which is the post that pokes up top of the angle. I don't know. It keeps the wings up from falling on the ground. And obviously we couldn't fly it because the King post had been so, you know, very dejectedly, we packed the glider up and we carried it down the hill. And suddenly I got a few little alarm bells going on in my head. And I'm thinking, you know, if I take an off.
I had no idea what I was going to do. I had no idea how to fly a hang glider. I had no idea what we I just thought we're just going to take off and you just fly around the sky like a leaf in the breeze. And something would happen. You'd end up on the ground like magically just a light on the ground. And off you go, you know, like so happy as Larry. And I thought that's not going to happen because I had no idea what I was going to do. So we're walking down the hill and I'm thinking, not a good idea, not a good idea. So because it was a Saturday afternoon.
And they couldn't buy a new bit of Aliminium. They were going to go to the Aluminium place and just buy a little bit of Aliminium, put on the top. And they couldn't do that because it was Saturday. So, so they went the next week and got some Aluminium. And they said, we're going to get back up again on Saturday. And I go, I've got to see a man about a dog. Sorry, I can't go with you. So, so anyway, this I just remember the one guy, he was just this crazy, long, blonde haired dude, like really just like, you know, full on really energetic sort of guy.
Gavin McClurg (07:46.499)
I'm sorry.
Phil Hystek (07:56.978)
And he's going up the hill. I was like I was off doing something. I wasn't going to see the carnage. You know, I didn't want to watch the guys. So he's going up, taking off and fun straight into the side of the hill. Boom. Both his arms. And so I go and see him in hospital. He's lying in hospital like one of those classic like a American movie, you know, with his arm, both his arms in plaster. I'm not doing in there. He can't do shit. And I went now that was I think now that was that was a good decision on my behalf. So anyway.
Gavin McClurg (08:08.571)
Ugh.
Gavin McClurg (08:20.976)
Darwin Awards.
Phil Hystek (08:27.19)
That was my first, that was in 70, that was at 70. Oh, he's stupid. Yeah, exactly. So I ended up, so I just ended up giving that hang gliding thing away for a while because I thought that was pretty dangerous. And I was, you know, I was traveling around a lot on the motorbikes, I ended up going, riding around Australia on a motorbike. And then I ended up.
Gavin McClurg (08:28.291)
Better, better luck. We have a saying better lucky than stupid, right? Sorry, sorry. Better lucky than good is what I meant. Better lucky than good.
Phil Hystek (08:56.142)
living in San Francisco in 1988. I'd made I just I went over I actually went over to Canada to Vancouver and bought a motorbike and rode up to top Alaska and all the way back down to down to Central America down to Guatemala. And I met this girl in Belize like you do from San Francisco and I ended up like you do back in San Francisco, you know, there was some reason she was she was she was very cute. I can tell you.
Gavin McClurg (09:22.619)
Hehehehehehe
Phil Hystek (09:26.234)
in San Francisco. And so I was working. So I shouldn't say this, but I was working there. Like I didn't. Yeah, that's right. So no. So this is this is the this is back in this is in the late 80s. So no green card. No, like just work. Just doing my own job. Because by that stage, I was a sign writer. So I painted signs on boats and buildings and cars and everything else. And and so I
Gavin McClurg (09:26.275)
Hahaha
Gavin McClurg (09:32.675)
Don't worry, nobody listens. It's just you and I. Ha ha ha.
Phil Hystek (09:54.654)
I was actually making pretty good money just working for myself around San Francisco. And one weekend I was just sitting there in little in the little flat I had in San Francisco downtown and my girlfriend was there and she said, and I was just talking about how the fact that I didn't have much to do and what I was going to do and that sort of stuff. She said, you always talk about hang gliding. Why don't you learn how to hang gliding? And I went, that's a good idea. So I looked in the, in the yellow pages and I see two hang gliding shops in San Francisco. One's called Shandel Hang gliding and one was called
airtime, airtime hang gliding. And anyway, I remember I went down to airtime and I had one, this free info night. And I should know I'm not bagging these guys because this is 30 years ago. They're not more than 30 years ago. So but I went to this free info night and I listened because I'm like, I was an aircraft engineer before and I knew what flying was about. And these guys are trying to tell me how they fly a hang glider and how aerodynamics work in hang glider. And I went that.
does not compute to me. That is not right. So anyway, I just I walked out the door, I went out the door and went home and I went and because I thought, you know, I thought this may be on I've just have these dreams, you know, and I thought that hangout apart would be this really like, like sky gods, you know, all fit and healthy and just run off the hills in hang on this sort of stuff. And I got this info night. And there was a guy there and he was this I shouldn't I shouldn't be judgmental, but
Gavin McClurg (10:56.219)
I'm out.
Phil Hystek (11:23.486)
He didn't look like a sky got and he was the owner of the business. And I just went, I went, no, my dreams are just completely obliterated. So I walked out of there and I went, no, it doesn't work. So anyway, I, the next weekend, I thought I've got to learn to hang on. I really got it. So I just went down to Shandell hang on down at Pacifica and the bottom of San Francisco, just the bottom of wet slide there. And, um, and I walked in the door and, um,
Gavin McClurg (11:25.691)
Great.
Phil Hystek (11:50.13)
I'm trying to remember his name. There's a guy that used to work there, redheaded, like he was, this guy was, he was, he was addicted to Mountain Dew. He was young, Mountain Dew, the strength. He was like, it was like the early, it was like the early, early version of Red Bull. Right. And this guy he's, and it was a Saturday afternoon and this guy was, he was wired. This guy, he was, I'm trying to remember his name, but anyway, he was wired and he was so, so intense, but I walked in there and I said,
Gavin McClurg (12:04.875)
Yes, just wired.
Phil Hystek (12:18.082)
Take me out a flyer, put the money on the table and said, I don't care how good you are. You can't be any worse than the other guys. You just take me out to fly. So, so anyway, so I ended up so the young fellow taught me. So this guy that was, he was working out, I wish I can remember his name because he was a nice, he was very nice guy. But the guy who taught me his name was Andy Whitefield. Now Andy may be listening, but I don't think he flies hangers anymore, but he was a like he, this Andy was.
just as intense as this other guy, but he was younger, long hair, like hippie sort of dude, like full on, full on, and addicted to everything, including sushi. Andy was addicted to sushi. So he was about, I don't know, it must have been the wasabi up his nose that he really liked, that something to do with his nose. Anyway, so Andy.
Gavin McClurg (12:49.339)
Thanks for watching!
Gavin McClurg (13:00.965)
Huh.
Gavin McClurg (13:13.083)
I'm sorry.
Phil Hystek (13:13.51)
Andy and I stuck up a really good rapport. We were like really, and I remember, so I was, we went out for the first day to learn how to hand glide. And I walked up, we walked up the hill and we set the hand glider up like this, just and put all the, you know, all the battens and everything in it and got it all going. And I remember I ran down the hill, I started running down the hill and the glider lifted me off the ground and.
It was like a game changer. It was completely like I'd never felt anything is free, you know? And like all the time I'd spent in airplanes, everything else, this was suddenly like the door opened and I went, this is the most amazing thing in the world. Right. It was, it almost, it almost still makes it so emotional that this is like 33 years ago. And it's still, I can still exactly remember what it felt like when my feet left the ground and I floated down the hill and this hand glider.
Gavin McClurg (13:46.531)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (13:54.083)
Mmm.
Phil Hystek (14:08.99)
and landed okay, I just pulled the push the bar and I was on the ground. And it was quite amazing that. So when I remember turning up on the first when I've turned up on the first day of the training hill, I looked up and there was this guy flying a toss, he must have looked up the top of the training. He's fine. He's coming down, he landed, turned out that by within a year and a half, I ended up
teaching him how to fly because I it's one that you know, when you, you get into a, are you, when you get into a sport or in something and you go, this is where I meant to be. I just, I was, I was meant to be here. And it was like, I, everything I did seem to work everything even, but, you know, and, and Andy taught me a lot. Like he was incredibly good as an, as a, he was very safety conscious, even though he was crazy. He was absolutely crazy guy.
Gavin McClurg (14:42.465)
You just figured it out.
Gavin McClurg (14:50.904)
Mm.
Phil Hystek (15:05.622)
He was incredibly safe and conscious, really, really not, you know, talking, you have to take him the right way. But if they looked at what he was trying to teach you and why they're trying to teach you certain things, it works so, so well, you know. So anyway, within a year and a half of learning to fly hang gliders, I was already a basic instructor for a year ago. Right. So I was a basic hang glider instructor. I took up the hang gliding instructor's rating.
And I was teaching people what they used to call basic, which is just launch and landing. I wasn't allowed to teach them high glides, just launch and manage for you. And anyway.
Gavin McClurg (15:41.879)
And are you, at this time, are you going to the Owens? Are you flying XC or are you just a Pacific?
Phil Hystek (15:46.974)
Okay. Yeah. So, so I, yeah. So, so interestingly, I, um, Andy love flying XC. Like he was an, he was an XC junkie. And, um, and so my first bit of flying, my first XC was from a place. Well, I don't have much time we got here, but anyway, so, so Andy decides we're
Gavin McClurg (16:09.807)
We have forever.
Phil Hystek (16:16.266)
The place called Elk Mountain, which is just at the back of sort of it's northwest of San Francisco. From memory, sort of on the way to west to on the way to Lakeview on the border between. Yeah, no, yeah, no, yeah, no,
Gavin McClurg (16:29.875)
Northeast, northeast of San Francisco. Yeah, okay. Yep.
Gavin McClurg (16:38.283)
Yep.
Phil Hystek (16:45.49)
melting. But so Andy didn't have a four wheel drive, he had this combi, it was a VW combi, right? And, and so we drive up the tarred road up from the bomb out, which is a river bed, and we driving up and we get to the turf to turn off the dirt road. And of course, now it's covered in snow, this is in just in the winter. So Andy goes, well, we can't get the combi up here. So we're going to have to carry the hang gliders up and the hang glider I'd end up buying from
from Andy was the exact hang glider, not saying copy, but it was the exact hang glider that Mark Newman had won the US nationals on the year before. Right. Or the two years, so maybe two years before. So it was it was a Moise GTR, GTR world beater. Right. Yeah. And it was the heaviest, biggest
Gavin McClurg (17:30.298)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (17:38.756)
Good?
Phil Hystek (17:43.626)
monster of a glider, but it looked so good. And when Andy had given me the option, he said, you can buy this training glider or you can buy this glider. Of course, what am I going to say? I'm going to, I like that training guy, like single surface sit. I'm going for this one here. It's got, it's got like 30, 36 battens in it. It's got everything. It's like, mate, it was so, it was so wild, but I thought, no, that's my, that's.
Gavin McClurg (18:07.216)
I want the Ferrari!
Phil Hystek (18:08.662)
That's my glider. That's my glider. I don't care how hard it is to fly. I'm going to learn how to fly this thing. So anyway, we're going to carry these gliders about a maybe about a mile up this dirt track in the snow. And so myself and the mate who the one that flew it had flown over the top of my head on the very first day. He was still not a he was he was at that stage about the same.
Gavin McClurg (18:19.835)
Oh, in the snow.
Phil Hystek (18:36.682)
equivalent level as me because this was this was only probably a year after. Well, yeah, maybe not more than a year, but three months after I started, I already had this like the world, the one the US nationals. It was just I was just I was jumping way too far ahead from myself. Like if I knew there's no way now that any of my students do anything like that at all. But but I was like I knew where I was going. I wanted to be there like straight away. So.
Gavin McClurg (18:56.146)
Mm.
Phil Hystek (19:06.822)
So we got these hang glides, we can up through the snow. We get onto this launch and the launches is sort of like, because it was fat is faced Southwest. It was, we didn't have a snow, but all the track up, it was all full of snow. You know, so we carry these guys out and these guys are so heavy. We get the launch and we're setting it up, but the wind was still over the back. And it's over the back, over the back, lightly cross over the back, lightly cross. And this is my first high glide, my first ever high glide on a hang glider.
all another glides have been off to the trading hill. So Andy decided to take me to Elk Mountain, which is probably from memory about, oh, it's probably at 2000 feet top to bottom and into this river bed, you know? And so I'm standing on the log. Now, I don't know, you don't know any hand gliding? So with, okay, so with hand gliders, what happens is that the glide, that when the...
Gavin McClurg (19:55.039)
No, not none.
Phil Hystek (20:01.182)
They have a thing called a VG, which is a thing in Australia, Vero Billo. So when they say pull your rope on, you pull this rope on the base bar and what it does, it tightens the wing really, really tight and makes the side wires that go from the bottom of the base bar up to the wings really tight. So the whole wing is very, very rigid. And you do that when you want to do a really long, fast glide and it makes the glide much more efficient.
Gavin McClurg (20:27.891)
It's the hang glider's speed bar, basically.
Phil Hystek (20:30.922)
Yes, but what it does, yeah. So with a speed bar, speed bars on power gliders make guys more, certainly make them more, make them go faster. They don't necessarily make them go more efficiently, but they certainly make them go faster and more prone to getting clapped. What happens with a hand glider? It doesn't make them more liable to get a tuck or anything. What it makes them really, really hard to control, to maneuver. Right. So it tightens them up.
really tight. So anyway, if you don't have the VG pulled on the sidewires are loose. And what happens is the wings will flop one wing will flop down to the side the right wing will flop down to the left wing the sideway goes tight, and then the left wing will flop down to the right one. And just this flopping business side to side, which is really disconcerting. But to see you take off and the wings that lifted by the airflow by your weight, then the things doesn't have that flopping business, right? So
Gavin McClurg (21:27.717)
Mmm.
Phil Hystek (21:29.002)
But if you pull this VG on, on launch, it would tighten it right up. And you wouldn't have the flopping stuff, but what it does, it makes the glider incredibly hard to take it like it. It increases the stall speed. It increases the, like the, the launch speed, everything gets really, really tight. And you say, you don't want to launch. So you've got to put up with this flopping business of the glider when you're standing on launch. So anyway, I've got this really heavy glider. I've talked over my shoulders and I'm standing there waiting for the wind to come right, you know,
Gavin McClurg (21:49.656)
Mm-hmm.
Phil Hystek (21:58.258)
And Andy's saying, Oh, it's going to come, it's going to come, it's going to come. So I'm standing there because I didn't want to have to pick it up and then run off the hill. So I wanted to get left stable, you know, with his wings going flop. And so when they, when the wings flop, they would move. If you held the base bar totally still each wing, if the wings dropped, if the right wing dropped and left wing went up or left wing went down, the right wing went up. The, the tips would probably move at least a foot. That's how far that's how much that's how much.
on the wing tips are moving up and down. Like, so there's this hard, rigid base bar you're holding, but these wings are flopping from side to side. And it's really, it's really unnerving for, for new pilots carrying a big heavy glider to have this flopping business. And then when you run off, you've got to make sure it all goes right as you run on down there. So anyway, I'm standing on launch and I'm looking down and it's nice open run down the front of the hill, but on the right hand side, on the right hand side is a big tall pine tree.
Yeah, big tour country with the tip of the top of the pine trees about is about level with my with my eyesight a little bit, maybe a little bit lower, right? Little bit lower down there. Yeah, I know. Maybe it's probably if I took a line out, probably the so the pine trees probably about I know maybe 30 maybe, maybe 100 yards down the hill and fairly tall. So it's a run big tall pine tree. And I ended up so I'm standing there.
Gavin McClurg (22:57.903)
See where this is going.
Gavin McClurg (23:04.155)
Okay.
Phil Hystek (23:23.694)
And I'm looking straight ahead, but looking at the pine tree, looking ahead, looking at the pine tree like this, you know, what you do when you're looking at the pine tree. And then it's amazing. It's amazing. When I, when Andy finally said, Joe, I wasn't, you know, like, obviously he just said, it's on, go. So I started running, you know, that pine tree moves straight across in front of me. I don't know how I did it. The pine tree, it just, the pine tree got legs and went straight out in front of me like this, and I'm just going.
Gavin McClurg (23:29.851)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Gavin McClurg (23:43.131)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (23:47.331)
That damn tree!
Phil Hystek (23:51.334)
straight for this, because you know, one of the things with the hang glider, the one thing you don't want to do in hang glider is run off and push the bar out because it will stall the wing, right? So you gotta pull speed on. So you pull the base bar in as you run down the hill, right? So I'm running down the hill, pulling the base bar in and this bloody tree has come straight across in front of me.
Gavin McClurg (24:00.251)
Yeah. You need speed.
Phil Hystek (24:20.67)
Holy shit, I'm in the tree. And with a hang glider, it's really easy to pull the bar in and go really fast. As soon as you land out, it goes to trim and it'll go straight out and the glider went, we just missed top of the tree like this over the top. And then it does this big dive over the top of the tree and just comes up there. So I disappear from view from where Andy, so he's looking across, he's me going sort of towards the tree. And he just goes, I close his eyes and then suddenly I'm just disappeared because he can't see me behind the tree. But I'm just going, and I'm flying out towards the landing field going,
Gavin McClurg (24:21.115)
I'm sorry.
Phil Hystek (24:50.59)
Oh, I was so scared. I just pulled the bar and I saw flames coming out of the back of the hangar. I didn't fly down towards the valley, just screaming down there. Oh, I don't wanna do this shit anymore. This is crazy. So anyway, I got down. Oh, I got to the bottom. I got to the bottom. I ended up doing it. I did a landing where I dropped the nose as I come in, because I skidded along the gravel. I was just so, so wide and nervous from what had happened with the tree. Then it turns out that
Phil Hystek (25:19.81)
I thought this was my job name over brewers He was a you know being a really good mate of mine the guy that would that I'd seen fly top of my head went On the first day of training and he was he and I'd carried a hang was up He took off and went straight back in late and crashed inside the hill in some trees So I spent all the afternoon So all the afternoon trying to get him out of the trees way down the front of Elk Mountain, right? So there any anyway, so that was that was my
Gavin McClurg (25:43.672)
So your first trip to Go XC was super successful.
Phil Hystek (25:46.822)
It was just that was the first time. So anyway, so then so then we go we go to lay view. So most people know about live here. It's really pretty amazing place to imagine. It's very famous for the for the glass off they have there. And we so we went up. There's some hill, some hill was about 20 miles to the south of Lakeview. And.
Gavin McClurg (25:57.827)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (26:16.348)
I don't think they fly there anymore. But anyway. Don't they?
Gavin McClurg (26:19.843)
They don't fly Lakeview at all anymore. We went up there on that, yeah, I mean, I haven't heard of anybody flying there in ages. They used to have comps out there all the time and stuff. And we've been trying to get a comp organized there forever. But you know, that's where we ended that Sierra trip I did back in 2012 with Antoine Lourans and Nick Grease. And so we ended in Lakeview and it just looks amazing. I don't know why nothing's happening out there anymore.
Phil Hystek (26:27.938)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (26:35.913)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (26:41.843)
Lakeview. Oh, it's amazing. The glass off there is like mind blowing. I can tell you a bit more about the glass off there, a few things that happened in that glass up. It is just because you've got Mount Chester up the back there and you've got like it's, is it Mount Chester up the back of the valley there from Lakeview, I think. Anyway, it's a big wide valley that produces amazing glass off. So anyway.
Gavin McClurg (26:48.068)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (27:01.088)
Yeah, sounds about right.
Phil Hystek (27:07.818)
We went up to this hill. We were going to. This is going to be my first XC flight. Right. First time I was going to find thermal and fly somewhere. So I was going to fly from that hill to Lakeview. Anyway, I took off on this glider. I can tell you that when you pull the VG on, it's so hard to control. But if you're trying to get the max glide out of the thing, you pull the VG on. So anyway, I'm coming down towards Lakeview, the township and
I'm getting really, really low to solo. And I was so focused. Like, you know, you get so focused on just like what you're trying to achieve, which is, you know, get to your goal. But, but you don't have any idea how you've already had lose side of how high you are, where you are, where your landing fields are. So anyway, I almost landed on the roof of the supermarket. I was so low, like I just, just missed the roof of the supermarket over the car park. And there was this. This like some sort of
Gavin McClurg (27:46.479)
Get there.
Phil Hystek (28:06.946)
farm field on the other side of the supermarket car park. And as I came in, as I came into the landing, I realized the VG was still on the glider. It was full on. And this glider was, the Taurus were being almost uncontrollable when you had the VG on. And I came in for the landing and it was, and because I then realized that the VG was still on because the big long rope tag in the homey, but I was too low to even let it off. And as I come in and I got this, it must have been a dusty coming through the paddock and I got picked up.
Gavin McClurg (28:09.627)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Phil Hystek (28:36.622)
Wabbing and just slammed like wingtips straight into the into the ground like so hard and it on the side So that just went sorry slipped. So I must have gone I must have gone up maybe I know maybe 10 meters up in this dusty and they're just slammed into the ground on the wingtip right and the glider Which I broke the wing straight off the glider just tore this tip of the saw right off the wing like the wing broke about maybe
Gavin McClurg (28:43.219)
On the side? On the side? Oh god.
Phil Hystek (29:07.547)
two meters in from the wingtip, just tore the wing right off. Just took the whole wing right off. Anyway, so my beautiful glider was trashed and so anyway I ended up buying a new hang glider which was a really difficult hang glider to fly. But I you know, buying this new glider, I left this glider sitting in Andy's shop just as a pile of
Gavin McClurg (29:11.303)
Oh, you're a baby.
Phil Hystek (29:35.37)
with the intention that one day I might try and fix it up. Get it. Meaning that I have to actually sew the sail back together. I have to put all new tubes and everything, but it just lay there for ages. So anyway, I had this passion for teaching people how to do things. All right. I've done, I've taught my both my parents are teachers. My big, my elder brother is a teacher. Like we have this teaching, you know, DNA thing, you know, so anyway.
Gavin McClurg (29:38.863)
put it back together. Yeah.
Phil Hystek (30:02.23)
I was playing around, sort of mucking around with hang gliders and I think Andy saw that I was relatively skilled. So he says, why don't you become a basic instructor? Hang gliding instructor. I went, yeah, okay. Okay. So I thought that was a pretty cool thing to be offered. And he said, you can work for me and you can do that all the weekend, launch and landing stuff down the beach down at Big Sur. Because we had a beach down, you have to go down past.
past San Jose and you go sort of down the coast there. And there was some beach down there that we used to teach on. So I drive down there and on the weekends in the morning and I teach and come back anyway. Andy had this is back. This is in about 1990, I suppose. I know I lose track of years and dates and this sort of stuff.
But not long after I'd started teaching hang gliding, I was like, I was a hang glider pilot and I was obsessed with hang glider. It was the most beautiful thing to do in the world. Like it was, hang gliding is actually an amazing thing. If you ever get a chance to fly one, they're beautiful things to fly. And...
Gavin McClurg (31:13.919)
Oh, I know. The whole prong thing is very compelling, you know.
Phil Hystek (31:19.242)
I just they're beautiful and also so in this time I'd also flown the I'd gone and flown the Owens I'd flown the telluride I'd flown it. I've flown it pointed amount and flown a lot of lot of places all it was all West Coast US stuff but I don't.
Gavin McClurg (31:38.891)
where you start, where you getting into comps at this point and that kind of thing like the, okay, okay.
Phil Hystek (31:42.558)
Yeah, yeah, I was finding comps. Yeah, I was finding comps. I was, I flew in the, they had a big comp in the Owens. They had a big comp in the manufacturer's league meet at a Telluride. Also they had one at a place called Dinosaur. I flew there at Dinosaur, which is right on, I think Dinosaur is on the border of Utah. And, and yeah, so there's a big comp they had there.
Gavin McClurg (32:06.687)
Yep, yeah, Dinosaur National Park. Yep.
Best of luck.
Phil Hystek (32:12.986)
And there was another place, so many different places there, but we did a bit of flying around Salt Lake City as well. Anyway, Andy came to me one day and he went on a holiday with his girlfriend to Europe, right? And he came back and he said, you know, he said, there's no hang glows there anymore.
they're all paragliders and what had happened, I'd seen like people had been planar paragliding in San Francisco, they weren't allowed to fly at Fort Funson. So Funson is a hang glider site, that's you do not fly paraglider. Funson is like it's so rigid there. So and I used to fly, I was flying the hang glider Funson all the time and people used to be launching from West Lake down from that what they call the dumps which is just down if you go south from
Gavin McClurg (32:54.143)
Yep.
Gavin McClurg (33:06.053)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (33:08.802)
funston you go down there and you got these little dunes that sort of stuff anyway um the paragliders would fly there and people they were always getting taken away in ambulances and they were going like people crashing all that stuff and they take off from that they take you off from the top of you know like Angola take on funston and cruise around you get in what they call the sheer convergence and you'd be doing you're way out there cruising around
And paragliders would take them and go boom, straight to the beach. Boom, straight to the beach. You know, they just and if, and if they made the beach with that crash and you hurt themselves, that's amazing. But they were just so like big, massive, like six cell gliders. You know, they're just so old, just shitbox things, you know. So anyway, they were, they were just a joke. They were just, they were, they were a joke. So anyway, but Andy goes to Europe and he come back and he says, he says, there's no
No hang gliders in there. There's just paraglides everywhere. He said, we've got to teach paragliding. And I said, find someone else. He said, no, he's not. I want you to learn the paraglides so you can teach paragliding. I said, no, buddy, I'm a hang gliding pilot and I'm a hang gliding instructor. And that's me. I'm not teaching those things. I see they're dangerous. They're stupid. They had no performance and they all look and they're all fliro. I'm not flying one of those things. No.
Gavin McClurg (34:11.715)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (34:33.114)
And so anyway, he goes, so he says, OK, so about a week later, he comes back and he says, he says, he says, I want you to learn to play paraglider so you can teach because we need it. We need to we need to broaden the scope of the shop. We need to teach paragliding because it was a Shandell hang on and the two guys. They actually I think Jeff might even still be in the business of paragliding.
Gavin McClurg (34:33.188)
Hahahaha
Phil Hystek (35:03.158)
But I remember that airtime hang gliding, which was the opposition to Shandel, which is where I first went to try and learn to hang glide was owned by two guys, Jeff and Kelly. Kelly actually killed himself on the cliffs in front of Sam trying to function on the, on a paraglider. Interestingly, interestingly, he didn't die crashing his crash in the paragraph. What he did is he landed slate landed.
Gavin McClurg (35:23.927)
Mmm.
Phil Hystek (35:30.774)
Because he was sinking out in one guy and he actually slept man and he was walking along the edge of the cliff slipped and hit his head on a rock and killed him. How was that? How unlucky was that? Anyway, but they were getting that shot was getting into teaching paragliding and Andy goes, we got to teach paragliding. I want you to send Linda paragliding. I said, no, I said, no, you can find someone else to teach paragliding. No, I'm not going to do it. So eventually, eventually he came back to me like about three weeks later. He says, he said, okay.
Gavin McClurg (35:38.315)
Oh my God, wow. Yeah.
Phil Hystek (35:58.238)
If you don't learn to paraglide, I don't want you working for anymore because I need someone to compare glides as well as hang on. And I go, because I was so, I was so obsessed with hang gliding and it was such a beautiful thing. And I was meeting some really cool people teaching, teaching people how to fly. And it was just, you know, I was flying, you know, I like, I really, really wanted to stay in the business of hang gliding. And if that meant I had to learn to paraglide, then okay, I'll do it. So anyway.
Gavin McClurg (36:10.988)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (36:28.087)
Are you still at this point, are you still doing signs and all that? Are you just making your living from instructing? Okay.
Phil Hystek (36:28.102)
Um.
Phil Hystek (36:31.882)
I'm still doing science. I'm still doing science yet. I'm still. So what I'd be doing, I'd be doing is I'd be down mostly I started sort of the most things I was painting with the transom of boats, right. And so down on the in the San Francisco Bay. And I'd be I'd be sitting there on the on the boat, you know, painting the way I look up and I'd see the sky side looking good. And I'm going to see I've got to just wash me brushes out and off I go, you know, so working for yourself, I could do that stuff. So I spent a lot of time I was
Gavin McClurg (36:56.122)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (36:59.878)
I was so teaching on the weekends. I was flying anytime it's flyable. And I would, I was making some, the making money, paying signs if I wasn't flying. So that was that, you know,
Gavin McClurg (37:11.651)
And would you say your jam back then, so this is, I'm guessing it was like 92, 93, is that right about right? 91. Yeah, 90, 91. Would you say your jam back then was teaching, was it XC, was it Acro, was it, what was your, all of it?
Phil Hystek (37:17.79)
Yeah, yeah, 91, 90, it would have been that early 90s. Yeah.
Phil Hystek (37:31.19)
No, because I was still so new to the sport, it was like a whole learning adventure. I was still learning so much. I idolized people like Larry Tudor, like Jim Lee, who else? There was the guy I was just talking about, Eric Beckman, who...
Gavin McClurg (37:40.972)
Hmm.
Phil Hystek (37:59.294)
was the originator. He was the main test pilot for the Swift.
Gavin McClurg (38:02.467)
The green, yeah, the green guys, he wrote the book, right? Oh, this book's amazing, it's so funny.
Phil Hystek (38:07.546)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there was all these all these pilots who were just the legends of hand riding back in those days. And I was just trying to I was, you know, like there was so many people and so many things to do that I just I just wanted to get into everything. Right. So anyway. I was so so. So Andy goes.
Gavin McClurg (38:28.146)
Mmm.
Phil Hystek (38:38.142)
I finally capitulated and I go, OK, I'll learn how to powerglide if that's going to keep me the job. Right. So because I probably wasn't getting paid a lot of money by Andy. I was just, you know, but I was in it for the love, which is what you most people were doing back in those days. More than a love thing. So anyway, so Andy goes, OK, so this is a lot of funny things. Andy goes, OK, I'll teach you how to powerglide. I said, good. OK.
Gavin McClurg (38:52.304)
Stand up.
Phil Hystek (39:06.998)
We said, because the shop at Pacifica there was about probably a mile and a half from the from West Lake from the dumps. He says, what we'll do is we'll take the car down to down to the dumps. I'll show you a few things and then I'll have to come home because I got to go back to the shop to do some to do some more work and I'll leave you there. Right. With the power glider. So
Gavin McClurg (39:34.596)
Mm-hmm.
Phil Hystek (39:35.094)
So I take, we take the two cars, he jumps his car, I jump in my car. Now, normally when we go, when I go hang gliding teaching, I spend like a half an hour loading hang glides on the roof of the car, loading hearts in the back of the car, tight everything on, putting all the radios, harnesses, the wheels, everything, do, do like this. So we're gonna go down to West Lake and have a go at this paraglider thing. So Andy gets his little bag, a little, like a little backpack, throws it in his back.
puts a helmet on the top and we just walk to the car, hop in the car and then we go and we park and we just, a little bag out of the car and we walk down the beach. Like that's it. There's a tiny little bag. And I went, well, this is, that just, that confirms me as a joke, you know, like, cause an aeroplane is gonna be big. Like an aeroplane is gonna be big. You don't just like have a little bag. You can't fly a bag. So anyway, so we go, we get to the top of the, of the sort of sandy grassy slope.
Gavin McClurg (40:27.73)
I'm sorry.
Phil Hystek (40:32.37)
And normally when I get to teach in the paragliders and hang gliders, it's been another like, like at least an hour setting all the hang gliders up, pulling them out, opening up, batons in here, all the blah, blah. He gets his bag out of the car. He puts it on the ground, opens up like a minute and a half. He's got the thing open. He's in the harness. He runs down the hill and he says, there you go. And he shows me, so this is the old inflation technique. It's a bit of breeze. This is like an afternoon. He grabs the two front. He's so he's got the.
you know, doing reverse inflation, he's got the right hand, right hand to the brake that goes to the to the right side, which is when you fly on the left side, a left hand. So not cross brake. So brakes that are, you know, right, left, left. So in fight the glider, bring it up over his head, let go of the brakes, turn around, grab the brakes again and run down the hill. He said, that's how you do it. And so he does it twice for me. And he will he comes up, he says, take the other hand, he goes, have a go.
Gavin McClurg (41:14.68)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (41:32.002)
I said, that looks pretty easy. So I have a little go get the canopy up, turn around, run down the hill. And I just, I mean, left the ground. Just by this, you know, by this stage, I was a pretty experienced hang glider pilot. You know, by that stage I'd flown the Owens and flown all through, you know, tell you why that sort of stuff. So I sort of, I was pretty comfortable flying, but this thing was just a, just a joke. It was like, I didn't even, hardly even left the grass. I was just running down the side of the hill, but I did one run. Come back. You said, that looks good. I'll see you later.
So he turns around and walks off to his car and just leaves me with a glider, with a power glider. He's given me like five minutes of instruction. And he says, see you back at the shop when you finished. So, so, no, no. That's my idea. Just give me, just load my wallet up and I'll just give you the lights off and you go. Just do it, just do it. So anyway.
Gavin McClurg (42:15.6)
What, you mean that's not how you do it now? Here you go, here's your P2. Nice and up.
Gavin McClurg (42:27.512)
Hehehehehehehehe
Phil Hystek (42:30.582)
within, I reckon within half an hour, I've got the glider in a complete mess. I've walked through the lines. I've got the thing I'm ahead. I've just got it's complete shambles. Like I've got, it looks like one of those abstract sculptures, you know, like just like all this shit and lines everywhere. I have no idea, no idea what to do. So, and I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm just trying to think why I did this. I think it was one of those early, like, I think, um, ITV is to make them.
where the glider and the harness were one unit. So you couldn't disconnect the glider and the harness. The risers were part of the harness because what they used to have back in the old days, they had the thing called a speed seat. You've ever seen the speed seat? So a speed seat was where you had on the harness. So nowadays you have three risers come to a carabiner, like here, but these three risers came to the, straight down to the bottom of the seat. So the front riser went to the front of the seat, the back riser, and...
Gavin McClurg (43:15.038)
Ow.
Gavin McClurg (43:26.734)
Mitch Mackler showed me that.
Phil Hystek (43:28.742)
Exactly. So when you want to go fast, you'd lean forward. And when you want to go slower, you lean back. That's that's the trim of the glider. Right. And I think and I think this was one because I remember that it was such a mess and I couldn't figure out how to take the harness off the glider. And I couldn't figure out how to get the harness through the lines. Yeah, obviously now it would be much easier if I knew now what I knew then what I know now. But so I started undoing the quick links between the between the rise in the lines.
Gavin McClurg (43:34.938)
Ah, that's awesome.
Gavin McClurg (43:51.652)
I'm sorry.
Phil Hystek (43:56.65)
I started, I'm doing all the picnic by this. And then I got this mess where I had these lines everywhere. And I went, ah, this is not, this is not working. So I just, I stuffed the glider in the little bag, did you do this and put the harness on top of it and I put it on my back and I'm walking back like the, the probably a hundred meters back to the car. And I'm, and, and I got to think, and I thought, you know, one thing this isn't, which I thought it was going to be as easy.
Gavin McClurg (43:59.336)
Oh my god. You don't know what goes to what.
Phil Hystek (44:25.126)
I thought it was going to be really easy. And so I went and like, you know, in my life, I'm sort of attracted to difficult, difficult things. And I tend to tend to like having challenges that aren't just easy. So I thought this is pretty interesting. It's not as easy as I thought. And because I was a I'd end up in San Francisco as having ridden all around North America on a motorbike. I only had a motorbike like I was more a motorbike rider than a cab driver.
And I thought, hey, I could put this on the back of a motorbike. So I thought there may be something in this. Uh, and Andy really wants to learn how to fly. So, yeah, okay. Oh, I might have a go. So I went and bought myself my first paraglider was a Wills Wing AT125. Now, if you, if you want to do a search on that one, it was actually, it was Wills. So Wills Wing were a, were a hang glider. And then there's still are hang glider manufacturing in California. And they.
license, they built pro design on the license. So there was the AT was like a pro, there was an equivalent of a pro design, something like that. And they were absolute shitbox, but they were still, you know, that it and so I bought this thing. And what I would do is when I went to teach hang on in the down at down the coast, I'll throw the paragon in the back and on the way back home, when I sent all the students off and they all went home, I would just there's a couple of beaches down there and I just play around the beaches with the power.
Gavin McClurg (45:30.779)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (45:54.982)
And so my, my official learning, my official learning experience in a paraglide was five minutes of instruction from Andy Whitehill at the dumps in 1999, in 1991, that was it. And the rest of it was in the, we taught it, we got it suck it, suck it and see. So it's just like, I would just end up like, oh, go.
No, that didn't work. Like I get dragged over here or something. I get blown over, I was just like, thrown out of the back of like, lucky I didn't hurt myself. But I like, I got caught out. Cause I was so used to the hang glider, where hang glider is a whole different kettle fish. You know, like it's, you can, you don't, you're not inflating the canopy. So you've got this wing that does produce no drag when you walk to launch, you're not going to get dragged backwards by the inflation of the wing. You just, you can keep it in really good control and just take off. And,
Gavin McClurg (46:20.283)
It's
Phil Hystek (46:48.478)
And so I kept thinking that Paraguay is sort of like that. And I would try and take off in really strong winds and almost get, you know, I get dragged over hills and three bushes and everything like that. But I kept, but so what happened is I kept what they, you know, there were people with that were developing really good, um, techniques that techniques, cause Paraguay's would, we're developing pretty fast, right? And people were, there was some really amazingly good European pilots who were developing skills.
Gavin McClurg (46:57.341)
I'm sorry.
Phil Hystek (47:18.174)
based on the new style of gliders. And I would just watch these people and see, you know, that that's a really good looking technique that does take me doesn't look really good that one sort of OK, we could probably get that one to modify a bit. So I end up just getting just adopting heaps of different techniques from different people. And that's the way I learned it wasn't I didn't. And so probably to my, you know, I see it now as to my benefit was that I wasn't taught how to fly.
And so I wasn't indoctrinated in saying, this is the way you do it. Like it's because if you go to school now, yeah, a lot of skills. Yeah. It's like, I like open source, open source learning to paraglide. So, but you know, you go to school, even like now, when, when people come to me, I go, this is why you do it because I've been doing it long enough. And I sort of know it works and what doesn't work. So we do it like this. Uh, but, but when I, and so if anyone learns with me, they tend to have my style, that's like, and people.
Gavin McClurg (47:52.247)
Mm-hmm. You were open. You were open, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (47:59.685)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (48:16.921)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (48:17.914)
When people learn with me, they sort of I've got some very characteristic sort of very identifiable ways that people do things that they learn with me. And so people can actually see that someone's learned with me anywhere in Australia. OK, I learned with Phil Heistead because he just got that way of doing something. And but I didn't have that. I didn't have the benefit of that because no one really knew what they were doing back in the early 90s. No one really knew what they were doing in Paragliding anyway. So I was just.
Gavin McClurg (48:45.656)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (48:46.75)
It was really, it was a suck it and see and try and work out whether this worked and that didn't work. And you just got to be lucky that ones that didn't work didn't kill you. And the ones that did work, you gave you a very good time. So, you know, so. So that's so that was the long that's the long story about the fact that I was actually forced to learn to fly paraglides. And I've been running up my only form of income for the last 25 years has been teaching paragliding.
Gavin McClurg (49:00.23)
When did you go back to the guy?
Phil Hystek (49:16.138)
I've only taught that's the only form of income is teaching paragliding. So I've gone from not wanting to fly paraglides at all to being absolutely obsessed with paragliding. And, you know, like, and nowadays I do a lot of, a lot of different stuff in paragliding, you know, like, I'm, you know, I don't think the one thing I don't do a lot of in paragliding is, um, is acro. I'm not a, I'm not a real high G person. I don't, I do, you know, I like to do free big wing, that sort of stuff, but, and look, my little mini wing and that sort of stuff, but I don't, I don't.
Gavin McClurg (49:16.675)
Really?
Gavin McClurg (49:21.105)
Wow!
Phil Hystek (49:45.81)
I'm not into doing helicos or, you know, or misty flips or, you know, infinities and that sort of stuff. I just, I'm just not that kind of person. I'd like to keep the wing above my head, but the underneath it. That's, but interesting when you talked about, yeah, when you talked about, um, when I was in hang on, whether I would, whether I wouldn't try to, whether I, what sort of, um, discipline I was sort of heading towards, it was mostly, um, XC and confline.
Gavin McClurg (49:57.657)
What do you think?
Phil Hystek (50:16.166)
But I did, I actually became very good friends with John Heine. Very, very good friends with John Heine. And yeah, there's a few stories. I won't talk on this podcast about that because John is probably dissonant. But you would have interviewed John Heine at some stage, would you? I don't know. John Heine was, he was by far the
Gavin McClurg (50:21.999)
Nah. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (50:37.923)
No, I haven't yet and I will of course, but yeah, he's been on the list for a long time.
Phil Hystek (50:43.658)
Him and Mitch, him and Mitch were the two top acro pilots in Hangul. They were the top aerobatic hang glider pilots. John and Mitch were like vying all the time for the number one slot. And so I became, I wasn't, I never really met Mitch McAleer, although it's interesting one time when we did we had the manufacturers league meet, right? I don't know if I should keep talking because I just going to waste all your time.
Gavin McClurg (50:49.326)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (51:10.559)
Yeah, go ahead, talk, go for it.
Phil Hystek (51:13.198)
So we went, so we had the, this is back in the hang gliding days. We had the manufacturer's league meet in, um, in Telluride, right. Or just, it was a flying, I think I don't, it might not have been mentioned, maybe there's something flying there, right. And you flown Telluride you've been there. So
Gavin McClurg (51:30.527)
No, I've been there a bunch. I've never flown it, incredibly.
Phil Hystek (51:34.254)
Okay, so, so there's so in Telluride, there's the main launch, which is over 12,000 feet, I think the towns at 10,000 feet. So it's pretty high up, you it's in there that sort of stuff. And most people who fly there will end up hypoxic to some degree because you know, most people just rock up to tell you why this would end up climatizing straight up to up to 80,000 feet and whatever. And so in Telluride, they've got two
landing fields, right? Two main landing fields. They've got the Leisure LZ, which is a big cow field on the outside of town. And they've got the Seizure LZ, which is a baseball diamond in the middle of town, right? Right in the middle of this Leisure and Seizure LZ. So anyway, I went to this thing. This must've been when I was, I think I've been flying for nine months, not even a year. And
Gavin McClurg (52:17.859)
Leisure and seizure. Love it.
Phil Hystek (52:34.374)
with my GTR world beater hang glider thing. I thought I was a legend, but I was still only an intermediate hang glider pilot. And I rock up there and they give us the run, they read the riot act. So you can't do this, you can't do that. Because it's a pretty big place. Like you're in the middle of the Rockies, it's really, it's big, strong thermals, that sort of stuff. They say,
Gavin McClurg (52:55.615)
Yeah, tiger eyes big.
Phil Hystek (53:02.61)
So for you dude, as you're a new pilot, you can't fly, you gotta launch before 10 o'clock, right? And you can't land in the seizure LZ. And I went, so that's what you think. That's what you think. So the first thing I decided to do is I was gonna fly in the middle of the day. No, no, don't worry about that. I was gonna go up there and I was gonna take off right.
Gavin McClurg (53:17.869)
Hahaha! Says you!
Phil Hystek (53:30.282)
before the cutoff time and I was going to stay up as long as I could. Right. So anyway, I've taken off and I just remember this actually classic thing. I've gone up there and it was actually on top of the hill and there's myself and few other people and Mitch Macaulay was up there. Right. And we sort of took off together and we're flying around and just cruising around. And this is the time where you wish you had back in that, you know, like they've had GoPro didn't have anything back in those days. But the time you wish you had a GoPro, because I'm so I'm family up above tell you, right.
above the top of the mountain and I'm probably at about 16 grand or something like that. And I'm looking around trying to think now Mitch was in the same gaga with me, in the same thermal. Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? I looked at the side, you can imagine in your angle, I'm looking over to the east and you've got the rocky mountains and everything. And here comes Mitch. He's done this loop and he's right beside me upside down. The top part of a loop, he's straight up like I'm hanging on trying to thermal up this.
and Mitch has done this big dive, he's come out of the top and he's straight upside down right beside me. And if only he'd had a camera as the most amazing shot of the Rocky Mounds and Mitch making it upside down the hang glider, like right there. And I went, what an amazing, amazing place to be. So anyway, so the league, the, ah, he's just, he's actually crazy. I, so anyway.
Gavin McClurg (54:45.655)
What a legend too. I mean, the stories about what he would do in those kinds of situations are epic. Just unbelievable.
Phil Hystek (54:56.398)
towards the end of the day, we're getting towards the end of the stay there at Telluride. And and I'd been like, I kept saying, I'm going to land the seizure. I'm going to land the seizure. I'm going to let before this finish. I'm landing the seizure. So so every afternoon, I'd go up there and I'd be watching people land, watching people land. And now the seizure is right up against the side of the mountain. So you've got the mountain coming straight down.
And I think that side, I think that side, the mountain faces, faces north. So it's, it gets like, it gets the, like, it's quite cold there in the afternoons. And so when people come in the land, um, they would come in, uh, because the wind by that stage would be catabatic. And so you come in over a little creek, there's a little creek bed and into the sea, into the seizure, LZ into the baseball diamond. And of course you're coming into a, into a catabatic wind that's coming down the hill.
You got a headwind and just coming to and land, right? So you can come over the town because the town's a bit lower than the baseball diamond over the town and just like almost laying on a like, like a little shelf, like a little aircraft carrier. So I'd been watching people all day, all week watching them land, watching them land, watching them land, picking up skills, tips where they were setting up that sort of stuff. Had it all nailed. Anyway, so the last day I'm thinking I'm gonna land in the seizure, I'm gonna land the seizure. So.
We drive up the hill and we get to the launch there. And of course what happens is a big thunderstorm setting up out to the, to the east. Right. So I'm standing there and I was watching this storm come and sort of heading in towards us. And I really wanted to fly. I really, I like, there was my, I was obsessed that I was going to land in the, in the baseball done. Right. So, so I'm standing there on launch.
And the storm is getting closer and closer. And the, you know, like the camp before the storm, there's no wind at all. And I didn't even like, you know, there's a storm out there. There's still like probably, I don't know, maybe 10 miles away, just over the top of the mountain. But, but I'm focused. I'm going to land. I'm going to take off here. And of course, I'm, um, I'll tell you why there, you've got this ridge that you launched from this ridge that go down towards the town. Right. And if you go to the.
Gavin McClurg (56:56.205)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (57:19.778)
East, when you take up, go the east, you're going out over town, you go to the west, you go out towards the leisure LZ, right? And you have to make a choice. Well, you can you can launch from the east and still get around the leisure, but you but it's a little bit more of a squeaky glide, right? So we're so I'm standing there on the launch, and there's no wind at all. But I knew if I want to land the season, I've got to go off the east side. So I'm standing there and the storm getting closer and closer. And
This guy, the launch marshal goes, he says, I'm going to close the launch in five minutes and there was no wind and we're 12,000 feet, 12,000 feet in the hang glider and you need, you really need a bit of wind to take off in the hang glider that altitude. So I'm standing, so I'm standing and I'm a big stick. Can you hear that bird swinging, swinging there?
Gavin McClurg (57:58.467)
Yep.
Gavin McClurg (58:04.979)
Yeah, well, I was going to say, what is that? Ha ha!
Phil Hystek (58:09.274)
That bird is an annoying, it's a very beautiful, it's called a butcher bird and it sits, and when it rains, it's raining here right now, when it rains, it sits out, I've got a harness hanger outside my shop here and it sits on top of the harness hanger and sings the most amazingly beautiful call, but very loud, very loud. And it's very annoying to have on the phone, I think right outside it's just, shoo it away because it's just beautiful. It sits there, sometimes it actually comes into our shop. There's, it's a little black and white bird. Looks like a magpie.
Like they're beautiful, but they're quite aggressive. They eat. Oh, it's a beautiful, it's, it, they have the most, they have the most melodic sound. Them and the magpies have the most melodic sounds of any birds in the world. I think this like really have the most beautiful vocal. But anyway, that's, that's something else. So here we go. We're back. We're back on 12,000 feet on, on the top of the mountain, on the top of the mountain about to, to take off. Right.
Gavin McClurg (58:39.499)
It's quite a nice sound. I just was all of a sudden, what the hell's that?
Gavin McClurg (59:00.365)
No wind.
Phil Hystek (59:05.546)
And the guy goes, I'm shutting the launch in five minutes. I'm waiting, I want wind, I want wind. And finally, and he's counted down. He says three minutes, two minutes, one minute. And he says, launch close. And I just took the pick the wire and ran like stink. I just ran as hard as I could down the hill, down the hill. And there's a road, the access roads, there are probably about maybe 30, 40 yard down the hill. He had to go, and I ran down and dove over the road and almost hit the ground again, running down the hill.
Yeah, by this stage, I was still, I was, I was pretty good at launching the hang gliders, but I, but I had to run so fast. So anyway, I've got off the hill and I'm flying out and I'm flying out towards the town and I'm going leisure seizure, leisure. Like, you know, you have the idea, you're going to land in the, in the, in the hard landing field, but they said, you're not allowed to do it. You're not allowed to do it. And I'm going to do it, but there's a storm and am I good enough? And.
Am I going to kill myself and I'm going to look really bad with all the people there? And I'm going to I'm disobeying their rules. Well, anyway, I'm flying, I'm flying out towards the landing field. I'm trying to was the landing field. And, um, and then I finally, I go, I'll do the seizure. So at this point here, there was no going back. I had to, you get the point. I have to land in the main, in the town. And I.
Gavin McClurg (01:00:08.549)
Hehehe
Gavin McClurg (01:00:29.922)
It's Caesar or you're landing in a building.
Phil Hystek (01:00:31.93)
I'm going to land in the middle of town. I'm going to be landing on the top of the supermarket. I'm going to be landing somewhere. So anyway, I'm flying out towards the landing field. And then, actually, so on this flight, I was using this new hang glider I bought after I was flying the, after I destroyed my other hang glider at Lakeview. I bought this new hang glider. It was called a seed wing sensor. And it had this, it had
Gavin McClurg (01:00:36.576)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:01:01.122)
The leading edge material was this very special material that was super, super smooth. And like it was like glass. And what would happen is when you went through in the rain, the rain drops would beat up on the leading edge and make the thing stall at a much higher speed, a much higher air speed. Like what you're better off to have on the leading edge is like ripple stuff, a little bit like vortex generators on an airplane. They have like they like.
golf balls have little ripples on them to make the, to keep the airflow connected to the, it makes the, it breaks up the lam, breaks up the laminar flow a little bit and makes a little bit of turbulence on the top. So this glider was very renowned for hating being flown in the rain, right? So, and it would just, even at trim speed, like you're flying trim, it's just on a stall all the time. So you keep flying really, really fast. So I'm flying out around the town.
Gavin McClurg (01:01:30.979)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:01:39.099)
Mm-hmm.
Phil Hystek (01:01:55.49)
thinking now, OK, I've got the landing field or sort of I'm just I'm not I'm just going to go in and land. So I'm flying around and suddenly I guess it starts raining on me. And I'm in the I'm flying over Tereide at 11000 feet in a guy that wants to stall at about 45 mile an hour. Right. And so I'm. So I'm thinking, OK, I've got it. I've got to get a source. Then I realize that the that this storm is pushing a gust front
Gavin McClurg (01:02:12.145)
Mmm.
Phil Hystek (01:02:24.982)
the valley towards the town, rather than the catabatic coming down the hill. So now rather than having to have the landing that I'd worked out for the last week is pretty blown out the water. Now we've got to approach from the side of the hill and the and the landing field, the baseball dom is really small and right against the side of the tree covered. It's pine tree covered mountain. Right. And I'm going around and thinking, you know, like at that point there, I
Phil Hystek (01:02:54.794)
You have to take control of the situation because no one's going to help you. Like no one, you just there and you've made the decision and you can't do anything about it. You just, you like, you're in the middle of the ocean by yourself in the canoe. And that's it. And you just got to go, what am I going to do? I've got a panel and stay alive. So I, so, and there's this other guy. So, and I just ended up in the landing place with some other dude as well. And I'm thinking that's all I need is someone else. And we're both at the same altitude and we've got this tiny little field and we can't extend our lives at all. And so anyway,
Gavin McClurg (01:02:59.145)
No.
Gavin McClurg (01:03:09.903)
Ha ha.
Phil Hystek (01:03:25.014)
this and it's getting quite heavy rain. And so I can't, so I've like, I was smart enough to go like right in digging into side of the hill, a big cranking turn against the side of the hill with wind tip like right almost on the, on the baseball diamond with a diving turn back into the, into what wind there was now because the wind had touched and backed off a little bit. And I was coming across the baseball diamond, this other guy came screaming from my left.
plowed into the ground in the baseball diamond and just wiped these gliders, skidded across on this wet grass, right across in front of me as I'm coming in, I'm coming in, setting up, trying to be all like really, really calm and this guy can just wipes out across the field in front of me, you know? And so then, and so, but I did this most amazing, so like I'm just, I just land and I flared the glider and I just dropped the wingtip a little bit and I was so happy that I
Gavin McClurg (01:04:07.93)
Hahaha!
Phil Hystek (01:04:23.134)
I've got to land the seizure. No, I'm carrying glider back over and who should be standing at the, at the, um, at the, uh, the grandstand right next to the grandstand of just the baseball dimes, got the grandstand there and you have to walk the glider out. John Hiney stand there and he goes, not bad. He just says, he just says, not bad.
And like, I wasn't, I wasn't, at that stage, I wasn't really good friend of John's. I just, but I just, John was like an idol to me, you know? And he was like the most amazing acropilot. And he goes, not bad. And I went, wow, like not only have I landed in the seizure, I've flown this bloody sensor through all the rain, but John Hiney's told me that I'm not bad. I think, wow, like I have, I have made it. So, so anyway, after, and then, and then, and then.
Gavin McClurg (01:04:56.296)
Ah, nice!
Gavin McClurg (01:05:09.623)
Now I really am a legend.
Phil Hystek (01:05:14.43)
And then just the last icing on the cake is where we had this like a, it was a prize giving thing, you know, like for the after this competition sort of thing, you know, and, and so they gave me the rookie of the year award, right. Because they, yeah, so, and so I walked out, I had this, I was feeling chuffed, you know, and I walked out and I was standing next to the front door of the little, of the room where we're having the prize giving and Mitch Mackley walks out and he goes,
Gavin McClurg (01:05:30.972)
Ah, nice.
Phil Hystek (01:05:43.978)
He goes, nine months. Said, yeah. And she says, wow. And just turns around walks off. He just goes, he goes, wow. And then walks off and I went, well, I get, I don't know how to take that. But I know, I know John Heine said pretty good. And, and Mitch McAleer goes, well, that he has, wow. And I thought, well, yeah, I made me. I'm pretty good. I don't know. But then.
Gavin McClurg (01:05:57.071)
Ha ha
Gavin McClurg (01:06:04.835)
Said, well.
Phil Hystek (01:06:13.314)
But then I proceeded, I proceeded to. Uh, that, that I proceeded to, to get myself in a lot of shitty places after that, because probably because I thought I was pretty damn good. Um, and I end up like getting, yeah, getting, getting myself. I was very lucky. I was after that, I was pretty lucky to survive. Um, what I was doing because I was, I wasn't being really stupid, but I was flying in places that were
Gavin McClurg (01:06:14.404)
dangerous words to hear nine months in isn't it
Phil Hystek (01:06:41.226)
that were really radical for my skill level. I still didn't know enough about the atmosphere, which is what's really important when you're flying a paraglider or a hang glider is to know more about the air than it is about how to fly the glider. That's the most important thing is understanding the atmosphere. That's what I said to more of my students is that the number one skill you need to develop in paragliding is to understand where you want to be and where you don't want to be. And that's how to understand what the air is doing and what the air is going to do. So anyway, that's, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:06:53.26)
Yeah, sure.
Gavin McClurg (01:07:09.195)
Question for you that's totally left field here, but before we started talking, you said that you actually instructed, and I remember Nick telling me about this, but you instructed Nick Nainans, and you went to beer together back when he was a total newbie flying the Bolero. What makes, I would imagine Nick was a terrific student. We went on to see.
Phil Hystek (01:07:13.25)
I'm sorry.
Phil Hystek (01:07:18.594)
Yeah, I did. Yes, yes, yes.
Gavin McClurg (01:07:32.339)
all his incredible accolades and flying all over the world and all of his bivvy expeditions and incredible exploits. And, you know, what makes, let me try to rephrase this. You know, you have taught a lot of people for 30 something years. You've taught everybody.
Phil Hystek (01:07:38.374)
Ahem.
Phil Hystek (01:07:44.154)
So, yeah, I've taught a lot of high level. I've taught actually a lot of people who've become really good at flying. I know if you've interviewed Wally, actually, I don't know. Yeah, Wally, I saw he was my student as well. He was one of my students. So Wally is a little different than Nick. Nick just, Wally's very organized, very, Wally's an amazing pilot. Like he's so.
Gavin McClurg (01:07:57.619)
Yeah, while he was on the show about a year ago, he's amazing by the way.
Phil Hystek (01:08:13.662)
And he, I admire him so much for how his ability to organize things and to be so, you know, so good at flying, but so good at teaching and so good at everything. He's a really, he's amazing. He's a really good mate of mine too. But with Nick, with Nick, he, the thing that I really, I really learned from him, because I did, I've done quite a few Volbis with him. We did, we did quite an amazing.
A few days down in Tasmania, probably three years ago, just him and Nick and myself, we went down there and did some Volbiv through the ranges down there in southwest Tasmania in absolute tiger country, like crazy stuff. But that's for another time. But and then I did a Volbiv with him in Pakistan, just a really nice one up towards Hispanic.
Phil Hystek (01:09:13.518)
that I learned from Nick was Nick's amazing ability to not get stressed in stressful situations. That's what made Nick the pilot he is. What most people do is they have a plan A and they have a plan B in the back of their mind. They go, well, it doesn't work. Nick would always have a plan B that was just as organized as the plan A.
Gavin McClurg (01:09:24.336)
Mm.
Phil Hystek (01:09:43.978)
But the thing what happened, what happens too, is that sometimes when it goes from plan A, plan B, if A is not going to work, plan B is going to, it has to work. If that goes pear-shaped, because the conditions change completely, most people lose their shit. Most people just, they go, oh, like, suddenly the stress comes up and you don't think straight and you start making really, really bad mistakes, right? The one thing Nick always did,
Gavin McClurg (01:09:44.131)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (01:10:01.313)
Yep.
Phil Hystek (01:10:13.894)
is he was able to just think completely clearly about the next step to not get himself into trouble. And because, you know, with flying, it's so much a mental game. Like it's an amazing mental game. And if you don't, and most people can fly in a lot of conditions if they keep their mind on the job.
Gavin McClurg (01:10:22.988)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:10:44.35)
Right. And the thing with Nick is that even if things were going wrong, he was able to keep yourself completely focused and work out a plan, like work out a plan. And so like there were big times when I was flying with him and I go, what are you doing that for dude? Like, what are you, why are you going over there? But he'd go over there and work out because I would get really stressed. I remember we were in Pakistan doing a doing a Volbiv and we were flying back towards
Phil Hystek (01:11:14.654)
Carrabad, which is where we were staying. And after we'd done the volume that night, the night before, and we miss I sort of miss read the valley. There was a big stick gorge. We had to fly down to get out of this valley. And Nick was Nick ended up like really low in this valley getting trash. I was so happy to get a good climb. And I was way up on top of the mountains. I was looking down. I'm thinking, what's he going to do? What's he going to do? So I didn't want to let him. I didn't want to leave.
I didn't want him to leave me behind. So I just, you know, even though he's down low, I pushed it ahead. I pushed out and sort of got down to where he was, but we both got stuck in this quite strong Valley wind. And I was looking, I thought there's just a, just rocky, rile, rocky gorge down below, you know, this glaciated river of just massive big bowls and sort of stuff. There was a landing field that we could take and go further back down the Valley and land. There was still big boulders. And I.
I had this idea. I said, I'm going to push down the valley and try and get out through the end of this gorge to a big open river flat. And Nick goes, that's going to work. That's not going to work. He said the wind system. He said, we're just going to land here on the side. This like this screech like was so steep that when you stood on it, you just couldn't even stand to slide down the steep down the screech like that to him as a landing field. And I didn't even look at it as a landing. I was I was getting stressed because I because I was, you know, it wasn't what I thought was going to happen.
Because I, you know, like the conditions weren't as I thought they were going to be. But Nick goes, Nick currently goes, no, we're just going to land over here. And we just went landed on the side of this scree slope, sort of slid down to the little right at the bottom and packed up and walked out. And that's the sort of thing when, when you fly with Nick, he, he would just, he would always have another plan. Always. And he would never get stressed and very, um, totally independent, totally self-sufficient.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:55.611)
Cool cucumber.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:00.922)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:13:09.406)
He would, he would never need anyone to do anything for him. Like as far as, as far as, you know, like he would be happy to go. Like when I first taught him, the first thing he did, he went back to New Zealand with his little Bolero and started flying in, uh, you know, doing the hike and fly and trying to evolve live up in the mountains. And he'd only been flying for like a month and two months. He come back to me. He says, how come I go backwards in valleys? How do I go?
Gavin McClurg (01:13:15.34)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:35.547)
Yeah
Phil Hystek (01:13:37.322)
Why you got the wind to be too strong for your Bolero? Oh, okay. But I didn't face it. Didn't face him at all.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:39.087)
Hahaha
Gavin McClurg (01:13:44.515)
Yeah, amazing style. I mean, I think he was the first one that I heard say, I mean, we all think this, you know, when you're talking about plan B, plan C, that kind of thing, but his whole thing for, you know, when it gets rowdy or stressed, he's got kind of a series of things. One is just turn your varial off, you know, that reduces a lot of stress because it's making all these crazy noises, you know, screaming thermals and massive sink, and well, just turn that off.
Phil Hystek (01:14:04.094)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Phil Hystek (01:14:11.62)
Mmm. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:14:12.715)
And then the second thing was, if it's gnarly where you are, go fly somebody else, somewhere else. You know, which in other words, it may not be really great to land because the valley winds are cranking, or like you say, you're in a storm, that kind of thing. Well, just go to another valley, you know, fly somewhere else. It's gonna be better somewhere else. Ha ha ha.
Phil Hystek (01:14:18.358)
Yeah. All right. He's like.
Phil Hystek (01:14:25.73)
Mmm. Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:14:33.362)
Yeah, no, he is amazingly centered when it comes to stressful situations. And, you know, I remember we were in Tassie and I won't tell you all this old story, but I happened to get helicoptered out off the mountain. I got stuck in an impenetrable, inescapable scrub. I was walking. But I'd...
Gavin McClurg (01:14:40.219)
Yes. Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:14:59.574)
We were flying together, we were heading towards these mountains towards another range and I ended up just making a wrong decision. I thought I'd just land and relaunch when they got better because the thermals weren't as good as we thought they were going to be. And I ended up just landing in the totally wrong place because I thought that's what Nick would do. Nick goes, no, he just kept flying. He went over the mountain, over down this valley, got a climbing and went over to another mountain about five miles away.
and just ended up over there and ended up landing there, walking up the hill and taking off. And because he went to a hill that was that he could see it was a better proposition for a thermal, even if he got over there low. But I just thought, well, I'll just land here because I'll just wait, I'll wait it out here. But he just he doesn't think that it doesn't get in a stressful situation. He would just go, well, I can see a hill over there. It's going to work. Like, it's not it's not that I don't. It's not that I don't know that is going to work. It's that when it gets stressful.
I don't think of all the options. I don't allow my head to think all those, all the options. But Nick had that ability to do that.
Gavin McClurg (01:16:01.057)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:16:05.899)
And I don't know, I mean, I mean, in your experience teaching all these people all these years, I mean, that doesn't seem necessarily like something someone can learn. You know, that's just who Nick is, you know, I mean, that's, that's not, that's intrinsic to who he is.
Phil Hystek (01:16:17.622)
No, no, it's a very, it's, no, it's, it's totally, it's a, it's a, by, by a long shot. It's, it's like you can, you can have all the skill in the world. You know, the interesting thing is that, you know, I don't think Nick would mind me saying this, but, you know, there, Nick isn't the best, the best part in the world. But what makes him vastly better than the majority of parts in the world is his ability.
Gavin McClurg (01:16:28.258)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:16:46.498)
I had to fly the glider. He flies pretty damn well, but his ability to think clearly in stressful situations, that is, you know, and you've just, you know, you watch what he's done since he since he has accident and broke his back. He does. He does. He's just completely calm and accepting of where he is, what he's doing and moves on and just does something with he doesn't he doesn't dwell on things that are that are possibly going to hold him back. He just goes, well, there's an option. There's another there's an opportunity. I'm just going to take that, you know, and that's.
Gavin McClurg (01:16:53.016)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:17:15.683)
Mm.
Phil Hystek (01:17:15.798)
That's incredibly inspirational when you see people like that. Like that does, you know, he inspires me and he's by a lot of people in the world. Yeah, Nick, he's an amazing man. Really, really is. You know, and I'm
Gavin McClurg (01:17:26.331)
Yeah, yeah, truly. Phil, another thing, I know you're super into hike and fly. Craig was telling me you're breaking all these records. You're 65, and you're just chasing it super hard. I can tell the way you talk. You've got an insane amount of energy. But at the same time, all these years of teaching, and you came up through the sport when the carnage was massive. And then, I don't know, is it backed off? Is it worse? But you've seen a lot, a lot of good, a lot of bad.
Phil Hystek (01:17:41.838)
Hehehe
Phil Hystek (01:17:48.845)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:17:55.887)
How have you maintained the level that you've got for it? The passion, the energy, the stoke.
Phil Hystek (01:18:04.182)
Well, yeah, well, I suppose the good thing nowadays is that there are a lot of there are a lot of facets to fly a lot of offshoots to parry what you can do. And I think now those are just a lot of top of the arm just gliding the bottom and got pretty boring after a while. But now you can do you can do high-configurated, acro speed wing, mini wing, XC. You can do so many different things. And, you know, I do have a bit of a I some people say I got ADHD. I don't I don't know. I don't think I do.
I do tend to go from one thing to another thing pretty quickly. So what I do now, I was a comp pilot for quite a while. I flew a lot of comps. Never won. I was never Australian champion because I don't have the mindset to be a champion.
competition pilot because I'm just not anyone who knows me. I'm not organized at all with instrumentation like instruments and me just don't mix at all. I just I go I have no idea. Like I'll get on I'll get on launch in a comp and I'll go. How do I even turn the very own, you know, and I have no back in the old days when you have to enter your task, your route manually on the on the fly master. I have no idea what to do. Nowadays is great. Just QR code scan the game. Bingo. Off you go. Off you fly. So.
I sort of lost, I lost, I was comp, I lost a bit of touch with comp time, but I've got myself back into comp flying now. I got myself a boom 12 and I've been flying that I did pretty well last year in the Australian nationals and that fluid over New Zealand come third in New Zealand last year in the, in the nationals on the boom 12. So I'm really like, I, I love, I love pushing myself to extremes, um, to doing things like, you know, like flying.
Boom 12, it's a pretty high end lighter. So I'm sort of, you know, I'm using that as a bit of a challenge. But when it like, I love one of my passions, hike and fly. So this year, I've done 171,000 meters vertical this year in since the beginning of the year, 171,000. So that's not
Gavin McClurg (01:20:25.347)
Holy shit, dude. Are you kidding? You got 171,000 meters. You're doing 1,000 meters almost every day.
Phil Hystek (01:20:32.36)
171,000 meters. Yeah, well, I'm in some days I'll do 2000. Yeah, I'll do 2000 some days. Like, yeah, yeah. So I know. And so the thing is, interestingly, I know. So interestingly, so
Gavin McClurg (01:20:37.911)
Ah, let's see, it's November. Okay, okay, but that's a pretty good average.
Gavin McClurg (01:20:51.647)
You gonna sign up for the X-ops next year? Heheheheh!
Phil Hystek (01:20:56.486)
I wish, I wish, I wish there's a couple of things I wouldn't do the reason I couldn't do the except I can't run because I actually have a fused ankle. Right. So so one of my ankles is fused for a motorbike. I had a motorbike. I got hit by a car when I was when I was 15 on my motorbike and it smashed my leg up really bad. So my ankle has actually been fused. But I've got fused my ankle was fused between the tib and the tib and the talisman. So it's the main your main ankle. So I can't bend my foot up and down. So it's I can roll it side to side with the
Gavin McClurg (01:21:24.333)
Mm-hmm.
Phil Hystek (01:21:25.738)
with the lower joint, but I can't put up until about four years ago. My ankle was getting progressively more and more arthritic because I, you know, it had been, I broke my ankle in 1975 and by 2000 and 2019, 18, my ankle was really arthritic, like so bad. And I couldn't walk more than.
I couldn't walk more than 50 meters without being in severe pain. I was I was taking painkillers every day, three or four times a day. Just continue feeding myself with Panadol and whatever. And the reason I didn't I've been told by a doctor years ago to have my ankle fused, but I didn't want to have a fuse because I thought it would stop me from walking. You know, I could still walk even though I could still walk, but only 50 meters or so. So.
Anyway, and because I thought I had an internal, I thought I had an allergy to titanium, internal titanium, because when I first broke my leg, when I got hit by the car, they put plates and screws in my leg, which all got rejected, my body rejected all the plates and screws that all end up coming out infected and everything else. So I thought I had this real fear that if they put anything in my body, plates or whatever, that fears my ankle, I'm not going to say no, I've cut my leg off. So I end up
Gavin McClurg (01:22:41.227)
Your body's gonna say no.
Phil Hystek (01:22:46.23)
getting an internal, I found there was only like four places in the world you could get an internal allergy test for titanium and one of those was in Geneva. So I was over there for a, I used to go visit a good mate of mine who lives in Geneva, Patrick Rosa, and he lives just down the road. You know Patrick? Yeah, Patrick, he's a really good mate of mine.
Phil Hystek (01:23:12.146)
Yeah, he is. Yeah, he's the he's the new big man. Patrick and I are really long time good mates. So anyway, I was saying to his house and I found that the place was just down the road from his house. I went down there. I was staying there one year, went down there and got the test. And they said, you completely free. You're completely OK for titanium, pure titanium. Put in your body. You own a proper at all. So as soon as I found that out, I went straight to the surgeon in Australia. I said, here's my ankle. And even though. Even though I felt that that.
it would rob me of my ability to walk up hills, I knew that I would be pain free. So I did it. And then I found out that I could walk up hills without any pain, no pain. So suddenly, I went from not being able 50 meters to walking up hills without any pain at all. And because I use poles to help me a lot. And so the reason I walk up hills now, the reason I did bob is because I can, not because I, it's not, it's not because I want to.
Gavin McClurg (01:23:45.85)
Mm.
Phil Hystek (01:24:10.402)
But if you're denied the ability to do something and suddenly, and they'll say, well, you can do that now. If this happens, you just do it. You take the ball and run with it. And so I've just, I've gone from not being on a walk at all to walking up mountains and like, I'll walk a thousand meters up the side of a mountain without even thinking about it. The good thing about doing high-end flight here is because the mountains are all small, you do get that...
Gavin McClurg (01:24:23.099)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:24:39.874)
five, three or five minute break between your hikes to fly down and then walk up and fly down, walk up, fly down. So like I'll do my normal hikes will be, so I've got a, I've got a flying site in my property here. So I live in town, town called Conungra and I live on 60 acres with my 60 acres goes side of the hill. So it's a long thin block right
Phil Hystek (01:25:07.094)
door of my house, walk straight up to my launch site and fly down to my front yard. And the hike up is 270 meters high. So I did 270 meters. So I just did this morning. I walk up, fly down, walk up. Now just I'd bum on the glide into a little into a, into a like 80 liter bag. I just apply a little gin Griffin 14 and I just got woke up pretty fast. I'm not, I, again, I can't run. I just like, I can run the launch so I can, I can launch a, I'd fly an 11 meter.
Gavin McClurg (01:25:32.492)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:25:36.798)
I weigh 90 kilos, I fly 11 meter ginn fluid when I'm flying, when I have the sights to fly it. But normally I just fly 14 Griffin here because it gives me a good glide. And so I'll walk up, set up, fly down, walk up, set up. So this morning I did three of them. There was a lot of cloud around just as rain was just coming in. So I got three before it started raining. Yesterday I did six off another hill that's about 350 meters high. So I did six in the morning on that one there.
Gavin McClurg (01:26:07.235)
Jeez dude, you've taken that ball and run really far with it. That's amazing.
Phil Hystek (01:26:07.522)
I just...
Phil Hystek (01:26:11.746)
Well, well, again, if you can, like, you know, honestly, like there, I remember this, this ex girlfriend, I had this son who was really nice kid, he was autistic. And so and so he had, yeah, he's same height as me, everything had the like, he was only 1718 had the like perfectly physical, able bodied.
And he wouldn't want to do anything with his body. He just sit in front of the TV and watch and play games. And I'm thinking, dude, give me your ankle. Give me your ankle. Cause I'm just thinking, yeah, if, if he was, if he was robbed of the ability to walk, I'm sure he, and they'd said, you can walk now, then you would just start walking, you know, because you just go, well, I've been given that opportunity to start doing it. And so that's why, like, you know, even though I've been told by a surgeon, she'll have me knee replaced because my knee is pretty stuffed.
Gavin McClurg (01:26:44.019)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're wasting it.
Gavin McClurg (01:26:55.707)
Mm.
Phil Hystek (01:27:04.33)
I'm using it from when my ankle was pretty bad, the other knee, just stuff, but I don't want to stop because if you stop, you can't start again. And because you've got given this gift of being able to do things, then why not do it? Why not do it? But I am lucky. I'm lucky I live. I live like so I can do hiking. I can do like two and fifteen hundred meters hiking and flying. It might probably be without even starting a car. I just walk straight up and fly down.
Gavin McClurg (01:27:18.278)
Yeah, I mean, they...
Phil Hystek (01:27:33.106)
I can all the sites around here within five, maybe 10 minutes drive or motorcycle ride from my house. So I can just go to one. If it's east, I go over the back of it to another hill behind my property. And that's only a 10 minute ride on the motorbike. So I'll go over there and I can do, you know, so I don't have to worry about driving from Brisbane down to here, which is like an hour's drive. So I'm sure if I lived in Brisbane or if I lived an hour away from here, I probably wouldn't do as many hikes. But, you know, I'm in a place, I'm in a place where I can do it.
Gavin McClurg (01:27:33.434)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:28:02.599)
I've embodied it, you can do it, and I think, well, why not do it? Why not do it?
Gavin McClurg (01:28:07.299)
I mean, my wife's a personal trainer and she has this saying, if you wanna be going upstairs when you're 80, you go upstairs when you're 50. You gotta be doing it now if you're doing it, to do it then. You wanna dance, you gotta dance.
Phil Hystek (01:28:14.998)
the exact exactly. And, you know, and I do. I do enjoy I do enjoy the challenge of keeping up with people or beating people of half my age. So I like up the heels. I do. I do tend to push it a bit. Everyone knows me as a bit of a mountain goat. So I did push it a little bit. That's not it's not because I want to beat them. It's just maybe because I just don't want to come second. I know. It's not.
Gavin McClurg (01:28:30.746)
Oh yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:28:44.558)
I don't...
Gavin McClurg (01:28:47.263)
Okay, so hey, I wanna ask you a few questions that are shorter just because my editor at some point, he's gonna say, dude, we can't just do a three hour show. Yeah, exactly. But you've, no, this is awesome, man. But I wanna know a few things. Best place in the world to fly, because you've been all over the place. When you're sitting there in Kanungra, tomorrow you wanna take off and go somewhere. Where would you go?
Phil Hystek (01:28:54.751)
Yeah, it's gonna cut me off. Sorry, I'm sorry.
Phil Hystek (01:29:15.338)
Well, if it was closer, if it was closer and it wasn't such a drag to get there. I love Iceland. Iceland is amazing. Amazing. It's not such a, it's a, if you can do XC there, it's amazing for XC, but it's not, it's not, it's definitely not a good, it's not a good XC place, but if you can get XC there, it's great. It just, it's, it's a wild windswept adventure paradise for, for coastal soaring, for strong wind stuff with small wings. It's just, no, it's not a.
Gavin McClurg (01:29:23.849)
Oh wow, okay.
Gavin McClurg (01:29:40.131)
Mm.
Phil Hystek (01:29:44.354)
It's not a, it's not a, it's not a speed wing place, more of a mini wing place. Um, it's just because it's the whole place. There are no trees, you know, just, just look up a hill. You've walked up here and take off and fly. It's just, it's quite stunning. I saw, I love Iceland. I really, really love it. Um, I certainly, I certainly love beer, but you know, beer has the problem of being like, I don't take this the wrong way. Indians, but it is in India and India is a. Shithole for people with.
Gavin McClurg (01:29:52.28)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:30:13.742)
It's so full of rubbish, it's so polluted. It just, it's, you know, but if you get the beer and you get the mountains and get out of the back, out towards Manali, it's the most amazing parrot playground for doing ball bid. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. I do, I do like, I've just, I spent a little bit of time in South America last year, or this year, early this year, in Bolivia, and I'm gonna go back to Bolivia there. I've found that, like, I really, really enjoyed that place.
Um, because it's, you know, I love, uh, big mountains, you know, the Andes are amazing. Um, I just, you know, I like, I like places that people don't go to. That's, I sort of prefer those places. That's why, you know, not like a lot of people go to Iceland, but they don't go there for flying, they go there just to look around. So you, when you fly there, there's honey one there. Beer, the same thing when you go to back, there's not many people flying at the back of beer. Um, in Bolivia, there's only like, I think there's 20 piles of the whole country.
Gavin McClurg (01:30:42.959)
Those are big mountains too. Those, you know, there's a lot of big peaks out there.
Phil Hystek (01:31:09.822)
Like it's, it's an amazing place to, to fly them in a volcano as you get, you know, like launch heights of four and four and 5,000 meter altitude, that sort of stuff. It's, it's, it's quite a stunning place. Um, I certainly, you know, I like flying around Kanunga. It's a, it's a, it's a beautiful area flying in my local area has real challenges. Um, you go from small hills to flatlands to back the hills, to flatlands again. That's, um,
It's great for triangles. It does. Canunga is a little bit of a problem with sea breeze comes in the summertime, pretty sort of early, two or half in the afternoon that, and that stops you from getting back here, uh, back to Canunga. Cause you mostly go west and you have to come back towards the coast to do it at return, but it's got some amazing challenges. It's, it's like a, you know, everyone goes to Manila for when they come to Australia, they tend to go to Manila, but, um, you know, Canunga, it's just, the launch is not very high.
They're not very big launches because we try and keep ourselves sort of low key as much as we can. But it's an amazing place for challenging yourself to fly cross country here. It's really nice. And I do like Coriang as well. Coriang is a really nice place down just above Bright in Victoria. That's a nice place. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:32:31.703)
Yeah, and they have good comps there, well, both those places. Okay, how about this one? When you look back at your long career of flight and passion and just being in the air all these hours, if you could rewind the clock, go back to that, either the late 70s when you first got into hang gliding or early 90s, you were forced into paragliding. What do you know now that you wish you could have
Phil Hystek (01:32:45.669)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:33:01.551)
known then? What could yourself go back to, you know, your 30 year old self and go, dude, this is what you need to know. Would you change anything?
Phil Hystek (01:33:13.531)
Probably not because I guess well, you know, I suppose because I didn't really hurt myself that bad. I did have a major accident in Bali. That's another epic that I could tell you about. Have you ever been to Bali?
Gavin McClurg (01:33:33.883)
I have, yeah, many times.
Phil Hystek (01:33:35.006)
Yeah, so I crashed on Timberspeed really badly, really badly. And then up to six weeks in hospital on the flat of the back, breaking the pelvis and sproking the back of my pelvis on Timbers. And his. So you want to do a quick little quick story about that? That was a bit of an epic. I just been over to Indowen and we'd done the Indonesian Nationals.
Gavin McClurg (01:33:52.478)
Oh.
Gavin McClurg (01:33:57.344)
Yes.
Phil Hystek (01:34:04.498)
and Java. We're on our way back to Australia and I thought I'd just drop in and see a few people I'd taught them how to fly. They lived in Bali in Cuda but I taught them in Australia how to fly. And so we came back, this is in 95, so there's hardly anyone flying paragliders in Bali at all. Timbers Beach, you get Timbers and there'd be no one flying.
Gavin McClurg (01:34:33.56)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:34:35.843)
I was spending about three days in Cuda and I didn't find a Timbers a little bit, just cruising around. I had an Adele Energy. I don't know if you've ever heard of an Adele Energy, but they were one of Mr. Jin's last designs for Adele. Anyway, so I'd heard about this site called Channy Dessa, which is up the coast.
Gavin McClurg (01:34:52.385)
Yep.
Gavin McClurg (01:34:58.287)
Yeah?
Phil Hystek (01:35:01.522)
Got there. No one flying there. Found where the Lord found when I'm not just a side of a hill. There was some old rice, old terraces took off. Had a beautiful flight there. The last day of my train. The last day is my stay in India. Right. And so I was flying there the day before. And I had to get back to CUDA to get my flight at 11 o'clock that night to back to Australia.
And I'd rented a little motorbike and I was, I was a Chandy Dassa on a motorbike. So that morning I got on the little motorbike and I was chuffing back down to, to Cuda. And I get, I come in into Cuda about two o'clock in the afternoon. All right. And I was coming in there and this is a good story about, um, about listening to yourself and what you should do and what you shouldn't do.
So I'm going on the motorbike and I'm coming towards, and so like I'd come second in the Indonesia nationals, second to Charlie Folay, a good mate of mine, at that time. And I had this paper bag full of rupiahs. Like the amount of money they gave you for winning this, for coming second to top was, I had this massive bag of money. And so I'm coming in and so I was, that
bag had been left at my friend's place in Cuda where I just I was staying there for a couple of days and I'm riding back into Cuda on the motorbike and I'm thinking I've got my glider in back I might go and have a quick flight Timbers before I go back to Cuda and I'm thinking I should go and buy me girlfriend some presents with the money I made I think I should go flying I think I should go and back and back and buy some presents
Maybe I should go flying. I'm going towards a point where I'm going to do a right hand turn to Cuda or go straight to Timbers. I'm going along, going along, going along. And it's getting more and more intense. Do I go by presence? Like the aeroplane is leaving at 11 o'clock. Like, and so I made the choice, I'm going to go fly. So I ride up to Cuda, I mean up to Timbers and I ride the Lamada by across the dirt to Timbers. No one there, of course. This is 95. No one flying.
Gavin McClurg (01:36:51.788)
I'm going to go to bed.
Gavin McClurg (01:37:04.183)
Hehehehe
Phil Hystek (01:37:19.51)
perfect on like a train. So I get me and by the size, I've been teaching for five, four, four years, three years. I was reasonably skilled at flying a paraglider. So I take off from Timbers there and I'm going left along the ridge there. The wind was a little bit cross from the left. So I'm pushing along the left. And yeah, when you go the left, you go along and the ridge cuts around a little bit. There's a bit more of a bowl that faces more into that.
Gavin McClurg (01:37:46.815)
Yep.
Phil Hystek (01:37:48.542)
in that left wind. So I'm going along there and I'm and it's a little some little temple up there and I'm cruising around by myself having a fat old time like cruising around enjoying it and I'm looking at my watch and I'm thinking yeah I really should need I need to go back I really didn't need to go and land and go back to Cudo so this is the last day of my of my last flight of the last day of my the comp where we had won all this money I'd have these really good flights right.
Gavin McClurg (01:38:09.059)
Last second of flying, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:38:17.909)
It always is.
Phil Hystek (01:38:17.994)
And I'm flying and I'm flying and I so I flying back towards the launch and I'm going to top land and I've got this glider has got it's an old the old the deal energy is an old complex. You have trimmers and a speed bar, the trimmers and a speed bar. So and I'm an old hang glider pilot. I like I like the speed rush you get about doing a fast run along a ridge. You know, so I've got a slight tailwind.
because the wind's coming up my arse a little bit. And I'm flying down the ridge and I've got the bar full on. I'm flying really close to the ridge, streaming along on this energy, getting a good ground rush because I'm a little bit tailwind. And then I decide, had no idea what I decided to do, I let the trimmers full up, full open. So I've got the speed bar full on and the trimmers full open, which doesn't do anything in coastal air until I go just past launch when...
They've now got that big hotel complex down the bottom below the right hand side. But back in those days, it was just it was seaweed farms and some little paddocks down there. And this kickoff thermals there. And it was still a bit thermic. And I went and I went past launch and Charlie was on launch. Charlie Flau who was he been traveling with me. We had we had a little bit of argument and that's why we didn't turn up on the hill together. We I didn't want to know about him anymore.
Gavin McClurg (01:39:20.036)
Yep.
Phil Hystek (01:39:43.798)
But I went past launch and he's standing on launch. And I just waved at him and passed launch. All I was going to do was go down the ridge. I was going to do a left hand 180, come back and land. And I went down and I went about probably 300 meters past launch. And he got his massive asymmetric on the right hand side and went straight into the hill, straight into the side. Like it was more, actually sort of a bit of a glancing blow as I went into the hill. I sort of hit sort of on my.
Gavin McClurg (01:40:04.545)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:40:13.614)
left side in a glancing blow into the side into rocky shitty cactus covered side of a cliff right and Charlie saw me he saw the big collapse and just saw me disappear so luckily and I'm lying on I'm just lying there and I'm trying to feel my feet and I can feel my toes which I think well that's good and I move my move my right leg well that's good
Gavin McClurg (01:40:24.155)
Ugh.
Phil Hystek (01:40:42.962)
I couldn't move my left leg at all. Like my left leg just wouldn't. I could move my foot, my left foot. I couldn't move my left leg. So I ended up, um, I was lying there thinking that was really stupid. That was really, I'm in a lot of pain. And then, um, so Charlie takes off cause he couldn't get to where I was by walking. So he took off and flies across and lands right where I was. And, um, yeah, he runs the power gardens, given under 10, he runs a tandem business there on, um, on Timbers. Anyway, he's been.
Gavin McClurg (01:40:49.641)
Oh.
Phil Hystek (01:41:12.694)
He's been there. He started his business that year that I cashed. He was actually there as well. So could took and Charlie turn up with me. I'm lining the harness on the side of the hill. So they picked me up in the, in the harness and throw me in the back of a little Suzuki Jeep and I'm just like, just throw me the back of the thing and then dancing down the road, bam, bam. And we get out. I have no idea what's wrong with me.
Gavin McClurg (01:41:12.867)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:41:38.344)
Uggh...
Phil Hystek (01:41:39.242)
I have no idea what's wrong with me. Right. So I just, I know I've got this appreciating pain in my, in my groin. I thought I'd just torn ligaments in my, in my groin. That's what I thought I'd done. Because I couldn't read my leg. I thought I'll probably, you know, torn, torn tendons or ligaments or something. But anyway, take me to a doctor on the way back to Cuda. Doctor goes, I think you should go to hospital. And I went, I'm going home. And now, one thing you learn about when you go overseas, it's good thing to have travel insurance, which I didn't.
I tell you, I'd admitted to traveling shows. So I had no way, I had no way. I wasn't about to ring up travel shows company. So get me home. So I, so the guys got me in the back of the little Suzuki and they said, what do you want to go to hospital? I said, no, I go to my mate's place. So they drive me to a friend's place in Cuda and I'm lying there on the bed. Still having any painkillers and, um, and the, the girl, so there's a guy and his girlfriend who I taught how to fly.
Gavin McClurg (01:42:09.458)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:42:35.346)
and his girlfriend had some period pain tablets. And she gave me a period pain tablet. She said, that's all I've got. I don't have anything else to give you. So she gave me this one tablet. And I'm lying there on the bed, I'm lying on this bed and the pain's getting worse and worse and worse and worse. And the time's getting closer and closer to the time I need to go to the airport to get in the airplane when I'm going to get home. And I'm thinking hospital, airport, hospital, airport, hospital, airport.
And then finally I go, finally I go, take me to the airport. So I, so I get up and I hobble out to the car. I went out of the car and they throw me back in the car and they take me to the airport. And they and I said, I can't walk. So they get a wheelchair and they take me to the to the check in desk. And so that and the lady goes, the lady goes, what's wrong with you? And I said, I've just heard my ankle. She said, oh, it's OK. You can get on the airplane in the airplane.
Gavin McClurg (01:43:06.436)
Good.
Gavin McClurg (01:43:11.404)
Oh, God.
Gavin McClurg (01:43:16.283)
Ugh.
Gavin McClurg (01:43:24.812)
Oh god, no way.
Phil Hystek (01:43:34.774)
but you can't take the wheelchair in the airplane. So it was a 747, it was a red-eye flight back from Bali, and leaving 11, I was gonna get back in Brisbane at like eight o'clock in the morning, something like that. Anyway, so I get to the, they pushed me to the front door of the airplane, and now I've gotta get out of the wheelchair. I still have no idea what's wrong with me, right? I've just got, I can't move my left leg. So I use, no, I have no idea. So I'm using the seats like crutches, they get down the, down the,
Gavin McClurg (01:43:46.223)
Oh my god, no way, there's no way you did this.
Gavin McClurg (01:43:56.599)
You don't know you've got a broken pelvis and a broken back.
Gavin McClurg (01:44:04.371)
Ugh.
Phil Hystek (01:44:04.394)
And I, and luckily, they gave me a merge the action road, which I don't know how they do that. But they gave me, so I lay back, put the seat back and actually went to sleep. And I actually slept almost the whole way. I don't know why I must have still been a lot of adrenaline going on. And so I get to I get, I get home. And I bring my it's the people who come and pick me up with my girlfriend's parents. And my girlfriend at that time, she was paragliding in Europe. She was doing a trip in Europe.
She was in Spain somewhere paragliding. So she wasn't there to meet me, but her parents were, and they're very, very hospitable Germans, right? And so I said, don't be surprised if I come out in the wheelchair. So I've hurt my ankle, but I should be okay. So I didn't want to worry, you know? So, so they turn up, I come out to the car park in the wheelchair. I jumped in the back of the car and then we go back and they said, Oh, you want, you just come on the airplane. You want some breakfast?
Gavin McClurg (01:44:49.763)
Mmm.
Phil Hystek (01:45:01.762)
you want to come home and have some breakfast. And I'm going, oh, you know, like, cause they're really hospitable. They really wanted to look after me. And I go, um, okay, okay. So we go back to their place and I'm sitting at their, so I'm sitting, they've given me a little bit of a help to get into the house. I'm sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast and the pain is just getting so bad in my groin. And I'm thinking, and I say to them, I need to go to the hospital. And they said, we'll drive you. I said, uh, I'll drive myself. It'll be fine. I'll drive myself. So I,
Gavin McClurg (01:45:21.792)
Oh my God.
Phil Hystek (01:45:31.454)
I call out to the car, I get in the car and I drive to the hospital and I get to the car park, right? And I'm in the car and then I think, I can't get into the hospital because I can't walk. So I find an umbrella in the back of the car and I use it like a crutch and I walk across the car park into the emergency with this umbrella and I get into the emergency and the lady goes, so what's happened with you? I said I had a bit of a crash.
said, she said, well, fill this paperwork and don't sit over there in the waiting room. And I said, I'm sorry, I can't sit anymore. I said, I've got to lie down. I got to lie down because I'm in a lot of fights. Yes. Oh, yeah. Okay. So they get it. They get a little trolley out and put me in the trolley and it puts me into the hallway and I'm lying in hospital and then they take me into the x ray and do all the x ray stuff. And they come out and I'm lying in the line and I'm just lying there. I think they've given me a little bit of painkillers by now.
And I'm lying on the bed. And then I remember the surgeon, the doctor comes out and he says, I'd make myself very comfortable on that bed if I was you. I said, Brian, you're gonna be there for six weeks. I said, six weeks, what's that? He said, well, you're breaking your pelvis in two places and breaking your back. And I said, what a cock of shit. I said, I walked in here, I'm gonna get myself out. He said, no, you're not, you're gonna be on that bed for six weeks. And it turned out that I was...
I was flat on my back for six weeks. I wasn't even able to sit up for six weeks until, and it was exactly six weeks from the time that I went in there, the time I was actually sitting up, six weeks. And if I, so like, I don't know if you know about breaking pelvises, but, pelvises, so, but breaking pelvises quite often serve ephemeral arteries.
Gavin McClurg (01:47:12.587)
You're freaking crazy. You're crazy. I can't imagine the pain. You must have the highest pain tolerance in the world.
Phil Hystek (01:47:25.014)
Quite often a lot of people bleed to death by having ephemera arteries severed by a broken pelvis. I am so lucky I didn't do that. I have no idea how I did, but I broke through the hip joint, right through the middle of the hip joint and through the bottom of the pelvis were broken. So I'm lucky it didn't displace. If it displaced, I would have been dead. But anyway, so that sort of, so since then I haven't had an accident because I learned from that one that you don't use chimneys and speed bar at the same time.
Gavin McClurg (01:47:25.571)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:47:44.42)
Game over.
Phil Hystek (01:47:55.402)
But also, but also, also if your head's telling you don't go, don't go. If you've got to go and buy presents for your girlfriend, do that. Exactly.
Gavin McClurg (01:47:55.646)
That's the takeaway.
Ha ha ha!
Yeah, no, go by presence. Go by presence.
Gavin McClurg (01:48:10.363)
You're a long time hurt or dead. That's amazing. And an amazing place to stop. That's incredible. So you did like a tuck-duck drive and you lay down in the thing and then back to the airport and then a red-eye flight and then the breakfast. Then go have some breakfast before you go to the hospital. Jesus.
Phil Hystek (01:48:17.564)
uh so but so I must admit
Phil Hystek (01:48:24.426)
Oh, then the breakfast, then the breakfast and all with a break, all with a broken pelvis and a broken back. But, you know, interesting that, that a good mate of mine, a good mate of mine, Alex Yashenko, who still has the Australian distance record. He was one of my team pilots, my gin team pilots. Years ago, I was flying with him in
Gavin McClurg (01:48:31.376)
Ha ha!
Gavin McClurg (01:48:39.3)
Yes.
Phil Hystek (01:48:49.058)
in Pakistan when he hurt when he broke. Yeah, I was there. I was there with him on that day. Yeah. And that was that was another one of those things where all the Swiss cheese was coming together. That was like, because they'd had, you know, there was no, I'm not going to say too much about this, but there was so many things that were that were red flags. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. And then it happened. And, you know, like, and a big part of it was just
Gavin McClurg (01:48:50.315)
In Pakistan? Oh wow, you were there. Oh wow.
Gavin McClurg (01:49:09.263)
Little red flags.
Phil Hystek (01:49:18.626)
hit the ground the way you hit the ground, which caused him to break his neck. But you know, like, when those, it's really, really hard, it's incredibly hard to see those red flags yourself. And it's even hard for people who are around you to see them until after the fact, and you go, you know, that was so obvious. But at the time there, then they're not obvious to a lot of people. But if you, but certainly, I've known a lot of people who've had accidents where all those
all the whole Swiss cheese all lined up and bang, they went and it's, you know, and it's sad, you know, cause Alex is a really good mate of mine and he's, you know, obviously he's in a really bad way now. And he just think if only one of those things hadn't happened, he would still be totally fine. You know, so it's, yeah, that's the one thing about flying that I, whenever I take off in the paraglider, I'm still always, always
Um, uh, like I keep in mind that if I do it wrong, it could be so like it's, and I just feel, I feel that a lot of people that fly don't fully appreciate how much they're putting themselves at risk in when the flying power goes. Cause power gliding is the most amazing thing. I like, you know, as I said, I've been flying for over 30 years and, and love, love the sport. I like the challenge. I like the rewards, but I'm also really, really mindful of.
Gavin McClurg (01:50:24.574)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:50:48.602)
how fast things can go wrong and how little control you have over the environment you're in. You have no control of the environment. You haven't got where you want to go in the environment. But a lot of people, I know they just fly around with their head in the clouds almost. Basically, they just cruise around. And that's why a lot of people have accidents in paragliders. It's because paragliding is so easy to do. If you can't fly a paraglider, you won't fly anything
Gavin McClurg (01:50:55.598)
Yep.
Phil Hystek (01:51:18.17)
to actually take off and fly in a straight line and takes no skill at all, pretty much. Well, take no skill to fly straight. It takes a bit of skill to take off. But when things go wrong, they go wrong really fast in paragliders. And luckily that, you know, I've known Jin for many, many years, you know, almost 30 years. And I take my hat off to guys like Jin who were able to design. They've...
Gavin McClurg (01:51:26.232)
Yeah.
Phil Hystek (01:51:47.318)
they perfected the design of paragliders, so they are so forgiving. The new paragliders are just so amazingly forgiving. And it's to the full credit of people like Jin and like the other guys, all the designers, Hannes and those guys, that who just designed the most amazing gliders that are so forgiving now that weren't that way back in the old days. But what it's done is it's let people who have no skill and almost...
I shouldn't be like this, but have no right to be in a paraglider. That's the one thing I, it's almost, it's almost, if I don't, if I don't like paragliding, it's because paragliding makes it too easy for people who shouldn't be in the air to be in the air. And it's not a sport, it's not a sport.
Gavin McClurg (01:52:36.715)
Yeah, Russ Ogden has a saying about that. Yeah, Russ Ogden has to say about that, that it's incredibly easy to fly a paraglider. It's incredibly difficult to fly it well. You know, it just...
Phil Hystek (01:52:47.85)
Well, it's incredibly easy. Most people are being carried by, just carried as a passenger in the glider. They're not they're not they're not integral to the glider, because the thing with a glider, as I try and make my students understand, is that the glider is you are part of the glider. Like the glider is the only aircraft in the world that will not fly without the pilot. Every other airplane in the world, you can jump out and fly by itself. But a paraglider is completely not an aircraft if you're not in the in the seat. So you are not just the pilot, you are integral to the glider's ability to fly.
And so you need to think you need to think of yourself as being part of a machine in the air, part of the device in the air, rather than I'm just flying this glider. Right. It's like and you watch people who are really good. It's an extension of their body. You know, it's and it just it's the way they move with the glider. It's like watching someone who knows how to ride a horse really, really well. They don't look like they even ride the horse. They do. They're part of this big animal that's riding around. And the thing with paraglider, paraglider is so big and so light.
Gavin McClurg (01:53:17.464)
Yep.
Phil Hystek (01:53:46.158)
so powerful, but you're a big part of it. You're 90% of the aircraft. A human is 90% of the aircraft.
Gavin McClurg (01:53:55.843)
You know, the thing that has, I've never been able to totally wrap my head around is something we talk about on the show all the time, is what you talked about with red flags, right? That your ignorance in the beginning, you don't know what you don't know, but it happens at every level. Expert intermediate syndrome, expert halo syndrome, the beginner, because you don't know what you're doing, but it's the...
Phil Hystek (01:54:09.035)
Mm.
Phil Hystek (01:54:16.29)
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:54:23.527)
When you dissect it, when you look back at the accident report, it's just the same as ski and backcountry. There's always, there's always, if you could just take one thing out of the equation, the accident probably wouldn't have happened, right? So there's always these things. But like with you, if that hadn't happened, you know, we all need cheat mistakes. Hopefully we don't have the big asymmetric collapse and smack into the side of the cliff and break our pelvis and break our back. But if that hadn't happened to you...
Phil Hystek (01:54:35.636)
Exactly.
Phil Hystek (01:54:43.49)
Hmm. Hmm, hmm, hmm.
Mmm, mmm, mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:54:51.523)
it'd be hard for you to recognize the next time. You know what I mean? It's how the frick do we teach people, recognize the red flags? Well, is this a red flag or is it not? Or is it, you know, I mean, you gotta listen to that little devil and the little angel on your shoulder. But I can tell you in the ex-Alps, there's all these times where it's really intense and, but you just got it.
Phil Hystek (01:54:53.866)
All right, totally, totally. And that's the problem is that most that... Exactly.
Phil Hystek (01:55:09.464)
and
Phil Hystek (01:55:18.234)
Exactly. And you don't... Yeah, exactly.
Gavin McClurg (01:55:18.739)
You can't listen to the devil because you got to fly. You're going to deal with this. And you do. But anytime outside of the race, that would be a massive red flag. Dude, this is not a day to go tempt fate. But I don't know how to teach people that. It's impossible. I don't know. Is it? I don't know. What do you teach your students?
Phil Hystek (01:55:33.818)
And it is such a...
Phil Hystek (01:55:39.33)
Well, certainly with my students, I tend to say to them that everyone, most people will have an accident. The accident is the thing you learn. That's what it takes to learn. Because, you know, certainly some people are a bit more risk averse and less inclined to push themselves to that point where they will have an accident. Some people have an accident because they're just like total bozos.
If an accident is going to happen, they're going to have an accident, but they may be lucky enough just not have an accident. But some people put themselves will put themselves in a situation. They just don't see the flags and they don't see the flags because they've got the blinker. They've got the flag blinkers on or they've got the they've got the little devil and angel earplugs in. So they can't hear the devil and angel. And it takes the accident to pull the earplugs out of here. And it takes the accident to take the blinkers off to be able to see.
Oh, I should have seen those things happening, you know. And so like, you know, I've got a, I've got a very, very good friend. Uh, this lady pilot taught, um, a while ago, a couple of years ago. And, and she'll know when she listened to this podcast and she'll know who I'm talking about, but I've told her numerous times that if she survives, she'll be a very good pilot, she'll be one of Australia's best female pilots if she survives and I'm really concerned. I've always said that, you know, I can see.
You know, I watch, you know, I've seen, I've taught so many people, I've watched people move through the sport and you can see who's going to have, you don't have an accident. And if they don't have an accident, it's probably because they were lucky they didn't have an accident. But a lot of them will have one and you can tell them to your blue in the face and they, some will listen like this girl's listening. She listens to me now, which is really, really good. And I, and I think she appreciates that I'm saying the things because I'm looking after. I don't want to see her hurt herself, but
You can sort of sense that other people that I talk to, that just, they just, it just goes in one, even out the other and it will take them to have an accident. All I hope is it's not going to be a bad accident. It's just going to be a small, a small incident, a small incident, you know? So I don't know, it's really hard.
Gavin McClurg (01:57:45.235)
Yeah, we need to cheat mistakes, don't we? Yeah. Well, I like what you said. Jeff Shapiro was one of the first people I interviewed on the show. I've had him on a couple of times. He comes from a, well, a hang gliding background as well, but a big time base background and wingsuit background. And wingsuit pilots have a saying that this...
Phil Hystek (01:58:08.654)
Ahem.
Gavin McClurg (01:58:10.331)
flight, this one flight is the most important flight of your life because it is so radically dangerous. You know, there, there is no margin in wingsuit, you know, in, in proximity flying. And so I like what you said about, you know, that you just have to be constantly in the frame of mind that this is, this could kill me. This, this could hurt me real bad. This, this very basic speed flight off my home hill and benign conditions, it's 8 AM could kill me. And I, and if I, if you have that in mind, then
Phil Hystek (01:58:29.45)
And that's, and I said that, exactly. Yeah. And that's, yeah. And that's what I say. Like, you know, when I get on the launch and like the launches around here are quite like what touristy, a lot of tourists there. And some of them are my students. And how do you take off with all these tourists around? I said, I don't even know they're there because I get so focused when I'm doing tandems there, I get so focused on the job at hand.
Gavin McClurg (01:58:39.535)
you're going to respect it every time, right?
Phil Hystek (01:58:58.338)
that and Tommy Bomke gulf is I mean, I wouldn't even know because I'm so, so focused on what I'm thinking about all the things I've got to do. And, and so I, and I try and I try and impart that to my students too, that, that you just get focused on the job at hand, you're focusing on the situation you're in and what you're going to do. And that's why, you know, I, I spend a lot of time with my students, getting them as good as I can on the launching. So that there's one thing that I had to think about when they, when the flies, what they're going to do to take off. Right.
The takeoff should be should be totally like it should be just an instinctive thing to do. You don't even have to think about what you're doing with the takeoff because if you're not thinking about the takeoff, you still think you know, obviously, it's you still think about what you're going to do with the takeoff. But that's not taking up a huge part of your focusing. And I've got to try and get off this whole safety because that becomes just a natural thing to do. And then you can think about the stuff you got to think about in the air.
And you got to think about as far into the future as you can in the air for the time you're going to be there. Exactly. Watching, looking at all these other and you're open to seeing the signs that you might not see. You're seeing the warning signs you might not see if you were so focused on one other thing. So that's one way to do it is to get people really good at some of the base things. Not so good that they're that they become too soft, too cocky.
Gavin McClurg (01:59:59.767)
Yeah, you're open to observation then. If it's instinctual, you're open to noticing everything.
Phil Hystek (02:00:24.95)
that allows them to free up their focus to look for other signs that will be, that could be warning signs. If that makes sense.
Gavin McClurg (02:00:34.367)
Yeah, totally. Phil, you're a treasure, man. I appreciate what you're doing for the community and the Stoke and the Bivvies and the 171,000 meters this year. I know. We'll come back to we'll do a part do for sure. Otherwise, my editor will kill me if we keep going. But no. We do.
Phil Hystek (02:00:44.254)
I love there's so much there's so much more. There's so much more I could have told. But anyway, we're doing the non-stop reporting.
Phil Hystek (02:00:58.018)
Just don't get me talking. Don't get me talking, I don't stop. Sorry.
Gavin McClurg (02:01:02.723)
No, we got to let you talk. You're good at it. My dad would love you, man. He was Irish. He loved a good story. But I appreciate you, buddy. Thank you very much. And thanks for sharing all this knowledge and some great stories. And we'll come back and get some more at some point. Thanks, bud.
Phil Hystek (02:01:06.23)
uh
Phil Hystek (02:01:09.706)
Wait. You're done yet? Now I'm ready to go.
Phil Hystek (02:01:21.934)
It's been a pleasure talking to you, man. A pleasure.
