Jeff Ayliffe hails from South Africa and has been under some sort of canopy for a great deal of most of his action-packed years, beginning at the age of 5 when he became obsessed with skydiving. Jeff shares his journey from a young skydiving enthusiast to a veteran member of the national team, detailing the evolution of the sport and the safety measures involved. He recounts personal stories, including the thrill of formation flying and some terrifying, and sometimes tragic moments when things went wrong. We dig into Jeff’s transition to paragliding and the excitement of a new sport and new equipment, particularly the Moustache wing. We discuss the addictive nature of flying, the fluid dynamics of ridge soaring, and the rise of parakites. They reflect on the importance of community awareness in the sport, the unique launching techniques of flare wings, and the pure experience of hang gliding. The discussion takes a poignant turn as they delve into life-changing accidents and the lessons learned about risk and consequences in skydiving, culminating in harrowing stories of near-misses and the camaraderie of the skydiving community. We delve into the intricacies of skydiving and paragliding, discussing the importance of altitude awareness, training for emergencies, and the responsibilities of instructors. They reflect on tragic losses in the flying community, the challenges of cross-country flying in South Africa, and the exciting developments in wing technology. Jeff offers insights into career choices and regrets, emphasizing the importance of dedication and continuous learning in the field.
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Jeff Ayliffe has been living in the paragliding capital of South Africa for six years. He transitioned from skydiving to media after the end of apartheid in South Africa. Jeff started skydiving at the age of 15 after being inspired by a skydiving demo. He has a background in teaching skydiving and has worked in media for many years. The evolution of skydiving has seen a shift from large formations to more solo flying. Skydiving is generally considered safer than paragliding, according to Jeff. Jeff experienced a tragic loss in skydiving, which changed his perspective on the sport. He has a passion for speed wings and enjoys flying fast but cautiously now. The Moustache wing has significantly changed Jeff’s flying experience. Jeff’s journey reflects a deep commitment to aviation and outdoor sports. Paragliding and mustaches are incredibly addictive activities. The thrill of ridge soaring is unmatched, especially in coastal winds. Community dynamics are crucial as more parakites enter the scene. Mustaches allow for unique launching techniques in strong winds. Hang gliding is considered the purest form of human flight. Accidents can profoundly change one’s perspective on risk. Awareness of altitude is essential in skydiving to prevent accidents. The camaraderie among skydivers is vital for safety and support. Experiences in the air can lead to life-altering realizations. The thrill of skydiving comes with inherent risks that must be managed. Altitude awareness is crucial for safety in skydiving. Training for malfunctions should be second nature for skydivers. Instructors must assess student readiness carefully. Paragliding can be risky, and instructors have a responsibility to ensure safety. Tragic accidents highlight the dangers of flying sports. Cross-country flying in South Africa presents unique challenges and opportunities. The development of wings is an exciting aspect of aviation. Family legacies in aviation can inspire future generations. Reflecting on career choices can lead to valuable insights. Continuous learning and dedication are key to success in aviation.
Sound Bites
“I started skydiving at age 15.” “I started flying speed wings.” “This is just so different.” “They look like a riot.” “It’s just so intuitive.” “It’s really taken off.” “They’re just so addictive.” “You need to be very aware.” “It’s like skiing and snowboarding.” “I feel safer flying a mustache.” “It’s the purest form of human flight.” “There are consequences to this game.” “You have sleepless nights sometimes.” “He put the 172 down in the dark.” “It’s been a privilege to chat to you.”
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Paragliding and Skydiving 02:58 Jeff’s Journey into Skydiving and Media 05:50 The Evolution of Skydiving and Paragliding 08:54 The Thrill of Skydiving and Formation Flying 12:02 Safety in Skydiving vs. Paragliding 14:50 Personal Stories and Experiences in Skydiving 17:59 The Transition to Paragliding and New Equipment 27:29 The Thrill of Paragliding and Mustaches 30:24 Navigating the Skies: Ridge Soaring and Coastal Winds 32:47 The Rise of Parakites and Community Dynamics 33:22 Understanding Mustache Launching Techniques 35:02 The Pure Experience of Hang Gliding 36:50 Life-Changing Accidents and Their Impact 40:03 Reflections on Risk and Consequences in Skydiving 48:45 The Scariest Moments in Skydiving 54:37 The Importance of Altitude Awareness 57:46 Training for Malfunctions and Emergencies 01:00:35 Assessing Student Readiness in Skydiving 01:02:46 The Risks of Paragliding and Instructor Responsibilities 01:04:05 Tragic Losses in the Flying Community 01:06:25 Cross-Country Flying in South Africa 01:08:30 Future of Wing Development and Personal Aspirations 01:10:48 Family Legacy in Aviation 01:14:32 Reflections on Career Choices and Regrets
Jeff, it's great to see you here. I know it's evening there in South Africa. First question is where in South Africa are you? Where's home?
Jeff Ayliffe (00:16.174)
I'm currently situated on the Garden Route, the Southern Cape, which is about four hours drive from Cape Town. I've been living here. I've been traveling back and forth for about 14 years, but I've been permanently here for about six years now. And this is really the paragliding capital over season. We are in our season at the moment with summer and we've got so many visiting pilots from all over Europe, from the US, from everywhere at the moment. So we're the, we're bang in the middle here.
Gavin McClurg (00:24.35)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (00:42.43)
Is that near Porterville then?
Jeff Ayliffe (00:46.062)
Portable is west of Cape Town, so Portable is probably about six and a half hours from here. But it's the same general area. Portable is the big cross-country site. Yeah, yeah, we headed towards the Durban side. A little bit, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (00:53.134)
So you're up the east side, you're up the Durban side, or the other side, or the west side?
Gavin McClurg (01:02.918)
okay. I sailed down that coast. It was very action-packed. Let's see, that would have been, I was coming down through Mozambique and went around the Cape and then up into Cape Town for about a month. That was 2010.
And man, we came into Durban and we were sailing bare poles doing beyond hull speed. It was blowing so hard. was cranking. And went in there at night. It was one of the spookiest things I've ever done. was, I mean, it was all lit up and it's for big ships and we were just a 57 foot sailboat. But man, it was edgy.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:30.188)
Yeah, Cape Town.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:42.946)
Yeah, Cape Town's got a reputation. Table Bay has got a reputation. We have the Volvo Ocean Race stop over there every four years and we've had some interesting restarts for the Volvo with 30 knots plus of breeze in the bay and those guys just hurtling out of there. So yeah, it's impressive.
Gavin McClurg (01:57.438)
Yeah, and Cape Town's so pretty. How did you end up, what did you call it, the garden route? How did you end up there?
Jeff Ayliffe (02:05.646)
I used to be in Durban, I grew up in Durban and I started skydiving in Durban as a young kid. But my sort part-time career was radio and I worked for a radio station called Capital 604 in Durban. And after 1994, with the new government, the arrival of democracy when Nelson Mandela became president, the radio station I was working for shut down because we were technically broadcasting out of the trans sky.
And my only other option for radio work was to move to Cape Town. That for me was the next best thing. And I was still skydiving, but not as actively as I had been. And I was starting to dabble in paragliding. So I thought, well, a move to Cape Town can't be all bad. And I moved to Cape Town to get involved with radio, to get a radio career going again.
Gavin McClurg (02:54.365)
and media has been your profession.
Jeff Ayliffe (02:58.54)
Well, for most of my life, I was teaching skydiving full time for a number of years before I got into media. Funny enough, I got into radio through skydiving. was running an AFF school, Accelerated Freefall School, out of Peter Maritzburg, and I was jumping on the South African team, and we were about to go and compete at a world championship event in Brazil. And Capital Radio, who I listened to, was my choice of radio station.
Gavin McClurg (03:09.961)
Really?
Jeff Ayliffe (03:26.658)
the sports team from Capital Radio happened to call the drop zone and said, and I answered the phone and they said, we're looking for one of the South African team members who's gonna be going to Brazil in a week's time to the World Cup. And I said, well, I happen to be one of those guys. And they said to me, great, would you like to do a little four minute radio piece for us every night from Brazil just for a little live thing on our radio station? And I said, sure. I was pretty honored that I was gonna be on Capital Radio and I did that every night of the competition. And when I got back,
Gavin McClurg (03:39.807)
You got him.
Gavin McClurg (03:53.375)
Yeah.
Jeff Ayliffe (03:56.332)
They invited me to the studio and showed me around and I, they said you're welcome to come in at any time and you know, and I gradually, I started going in on weekends and learning the trade between my skydiving. And that was my next, I thought this was a pretty cool looking career to get involved with radio. I was offered a job as a, you know, as a trainee sports presenter. And a year after I was doing that, one of the main sports presenters resigned and I was offered a full-time job as a sports presenter.
Gavin McClurg (04:22.728)
timing.
And so you present any sports or did you kind of drill into certain more aviation?
Jeff Ayliffe (04:33.23)
I presented all sports at that stage, I had to, it was all the main sports in South Africa, rugby, cricket, soccer. We didn't have a big focus of course on basketball, baseball, know the sports that are bigger in the US. when I left full-time, I was full-time in radio for many, many years. In 2013, I basically moved out of full-time radio, started a freelance media business and there my focus became aviation and sailing and
Gavin McClurg (04:44.063)
Sure.
Jeff Ayliffe (05:02.24)
outdoor sport, trail running, mountain biking. But my aviation has always been closest to my heart, so to speak.
Gavin McClurg (05:09.321)
Before we started recording, we were doing a little sound check and you were giving your quick background getting into skydiving. When did that happen and how did that happen?
Jeff Ayliffe (05:21.474)
Man, we had a show every year in my little town that I grew up in, Peter Marisburg, and it was called the Royal Agricultural Show, and I must have been about five years old or six years old, and I heard an airplane, there was four skydivers doing a demo jump into the show, and they were wearing smoke bombs, and as a little kid, I saw these guys in free fall with these trails of smoke behind them, and apparently I said to my parents, hey, that's it, this has gotta be the best thing, the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life.
Gavin McClurg (05:47.655)
That's it.
Jeff Ayliffe (05:50.606)
and I demanded a book on parachuting, which I still remember the book was by Charlie Shay Simmons from the UK, it was called Sport Parachuting by Charlie Shay Simmons. A lot of old time skydivers will remember the name. And I ended up gaining the drop zone as a schoolboy, as a young schoolboy aged 11 or 12. And I learned how to pack and I had an official Aero Club Packers license at the age of 13. And I could only jump when I was 16 years old. So I had to wait and I got.
Gavin McClurg (06:14.143)
Wow.
Jeff Ayliffe (06:17.822)
The next course was two weeks before my 16th birthday. And the Drop Zone contacted the Aero Club of South Africa as it was called then and they got permission for me to do my first jump as a 15 year old. So I started skydiving at age 15 and I pretty much picked it up from there and carried on.
Gavin McClurg (06:34.889)
What do you think it is about?
you versus another five, six year old. What was it? What was driving your interest and passion in this? mean, cause that's, you hear these stories of the hang gliders as well and in all forms of aviation where you learn, you you see it when you're nine, but you can't go until you're 15 or 16 and you just, you spend every day at the aerodrome or wherever it is and you pack and you pack and you don't get to do it, but you stick with it. What is it?
Jeff Ayliffe (07:07.47)
I don't know, know, it's interesting because I knew that that was my calling. There was no doubt. And to balance that, I never had any interest in the school sports. You know, sports like rugby, all my peers at school loved rugby, they played rugby, they all wanted to go and support the school rugby at weekends. I never had any interest in rugby, I never had any interest in cricket. All I wanted to do was to get onto my bicycle and drive to the drop zone, and ride to the drop zone and jump out of airplanes. I never had any desire to be.
I did athletics, that was probably the closest they got me to school sport. I had an uncle that was a fairly well known athlete, so it was kind of part of my genes. And I enjoyed athletics, but that was really, certainly when the weekend came, don't try and ask me to go into an athletics week on the athletics meet on the weekend, because that was skydive time. It wasn't time to be going to do school sports. It's difficult to tell Gavin, but I knew.
Gavin McClurg (08:00.511)
mean, the adults and the mentors and the people you looked up to at the drop show must have just been so excited to see you get into it after all those years of just hanging around and packing and being part of the scene, but actually doing it. It must have been fun for them.
Jeff Ayliffe (08:17.58)
Yeah, they loved it. mean, they used to regularly they used to arrange for me to go up in the airplane. It was a little Cessna 182 that the club had at that stage and they used to let me go up and I used to be tied in with a monkey belt and I used to watch them skydive maybe once a month or twice a month and they were really excited. The four guys or the three guys that came on my first four way formation skydive. It was really special for them and they were all, as you said, they were people that had had watched me grow up in the drop in the sport from a little kid. So it was really special. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (08:47.291)
And did that passion hold? Do you still skydive? Is this something you've done your whole life?
Jeff Ayliffe (08:54.016)
Yeah, did hold Gavin. I don't skydive anymore. So I skydive pretty much full time. was team training. We were on a team for a lot of my skydiving career. At one stage I was on team. We were jumping seven days a week. And then I worked for a while in a parachute factory, parachute industries of South Africa. I was in research and development, but I was still skydiving on weekends. And then I was teaching AFF for a long time. in France, we went over in...
Gavin McClurg (09:20.508)
AFF.
Jeff Ayliffe (09:22.126)
In 1984, I went to the World Cup in France, the year before we went to Brazil, fact, and I saw some skydivers running off mountains in France with their skydiving parachutes, and they called it parapente. It was called parapente or slopes soaring. So we came back to South Africa and a group of us started doing this in South Africa. There was no paragliding that existed.
Gavin McClurg (09:44.201)
Really?
Jeff Ayliffe (09:44.948)
It was chaotic days, Gavin. I don't know how we survived it. We were running off mountains and off the hang gliding sites. I once talked my way into a building. I told him I was a photographer from a very popular magazine called Panorama. And I needed to take a photograph of the ocean from the top of the roof of the hotel, which is right on the coast.
and I smuggled my glider, which I told them, my skydiving parachute, because there was no glider, I smuggled it with me and I told them I was a photographer and that was my camera equipment. The security guard came up with me, led me onto the roof. I then told them, don't worry, just stay with me, I'm gonna take time setting things up, you can go down into the stairwell and just wait for me. And he was happy to go down and have a cigarette. I then laid out the skydiving parachute and almost zero wind, pulled up and ran off the roof of this building and I landed on the beach.
This poor guy came back the neck must have walked out and I was gone and he probably to this day He probably wonders what what happened to me? but interestingly then about two weeks later, I went back at night to go and do this at night and At that stage I had managed to I didn't tell you I kept the key when I ran off I kept the key so I had a key with me and I went back at night and I had a disastrous launch. There was no wind I had to pull the the wing over in front of me. I had a big
frontal collapse on the one side and I rotated through 360 degrees. I don't know how I missed the building, but I didn't have the altitude to reach the beach. And I landed, the only option was in the swimming pool of the hotel. And I thought that's it. And the manager of the hotel the next day contacted Parachute Industries of South Africa to find me and he said to me, he's heard that I've done this before successfully and would I like to go back over Easter during the school holidays legally?
and fly off the roof every day and give the kids Easter eggs. And I was absolutely delighted. So that became a legal gig for me. yeah, so we were just those barnstorming days, man. We were soaring with skydiving parachutes for like 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. We had to land because the harnesses were cutting the blood supply off. It was crazy. And then paragliding started in 85, 86, the first paragliders arrived. And we were then basically slowly
Gavin McClurg (11:36.53)
What?
Gavin McClurg (11:42.333)
That is awesome!
Jeff Ayliffe (12:01.742)
alienated and pushed away and of course their equipment started to improve so we then joined the regular crowd of paragliders and I've subsequently carried on flying.
Gavin McClurg (12:13.865)
So these are, when you were doing that off the roof and stuff, I'm imagining that's a nine cell glider or something like they used to have these big, wide cells and terrible glide.
Jeff Ayliffe (12:19.978)
Yeah, there was a nine cell. Exactly. Yeah, it was called a Skymaster. It was a very popular student skydiving parachute called the Skymaster. I used to take the slider off. The sliders used to obviously were there to slow down the openings for free fall. So I used to take the sliders off just to sort of flatten the profile a bit. And I often used to put an extra link in the the front risers just to to what I thought was giving myself a flatter glide. We experimented with all these things. But yeah, they were very basic skydiving parachutes.
Gavin McClurg (12:50.207)
You said a term earlier I didn't know. What's AFF?
Jeff Ayliffe (12:55.254)
AFF is accelerated free fall. So when I started skydiving, you had to start doing static line jumps. Your first 10 jumps, you were anchored to the aircraft and you exited and the parachute was automatically opened. But a wonderful new form of free fall, of learning was called accelerated free fall, which was started in the US. And basically the student on their first jump, they exit from 11,000 feet with two instructors.
Gavin McClurg (12:57.683)
Okay.
Jeff Ayliffe (13:20.15)
and you do a 40 second free fall with instructors holding you and literally coaching you in free fall with hand signals. You've got to go through a series of things and you've got to do the instructors coach you telling you to arch more, to relax more, straighten your legs, bend your legs and after the third level one of the instructors will let you go so you've only got one instructor and then the fourth level you're going out with just one instructor and eventually you basically learn in eight or nine jumps
what would take you effectively about 30 jumps to learn on static line. So it's just a great accelerated way to learn to skydive. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (13:54.368)
Great way to learn. In skydiving, is the fun there, I'm imagining, I've only done tandem and I've done one skydive on my own, so I don't know much about it at all, but is the fun there, kind of like with wingsuiting, you get into proximity flying pretty quickly, and it's the closer and closer you are to terrain. With skydiving, is it the formation thing that's really fun, it's just flying with more and more people?
Jeff Ayliffe (14:20.268)
Yeah, for me it is and that's a point a lot of your current current skydivers who are listening now will say no, you know, he's old school. But I was I was old school and flat flying. We used to we used to flat fly and big formations. But my days were the 80s and the 90s. I mean, I skydived. was in Zephyr Hills in Florida, which was one of the world headquarters of skydiving. And then I worked at a drop zone called Paris Valley in California for for about a year for a gentleman called Jim Wallace and the late Jeff Jones.
And those were the glory days. We had big airplanes and big formations. We used to regularly go and do 30 ways and 40 ways. Nowadays, Gavin, because of the cost, I think they still do great skydiving in the States, but in South Africa, the sports change. There's very few big airplanes anymore. We used to jump out of Hercules C-130s, Dakotas, Transalls. Those days are gone now. Nowadays, it's a lot of solo flying people. They fly upside down. They do sit flying. They do style. The sports changed a lot. Head down flying.
which I would be hopeless at. But my primary things were sequential relative work, formation skydiving, four way and eight way, and then canopy relative work, which was a big part of my skydiving career, where we used to build four stacks with parachutes, and then once you built the four stack, the top guy used to go over the back off the side and dock onto the bottom. And as he docks the bottom, the top guy goes again and you rotate as many rotations as you can, or speed eight stacks. That was very popular.
So, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (15:49.138)
If you ever gotten into the whole wingsuit flying without a shoot and any of that just crazy stuff that the Red Bull guys are doing, I mean I...
Jeff Ayliffe (15:58.866)
No, the base, no I haven't. The base era, think of the wingsuiting, this current wingsuit time had been around when I was in my youth, in the 80s and the late 70s. I've got no doubt I would have loved it, it started when I had really started to move out of skydiving, wingsuiting really started to become popular. When I was very active, there was a handful of guys, the late Patrick de Gaudon from France was the father of wingsuiting and he passed away.
But I've never really got into any of that. I've met, I know a lot of great, great wingsuiters. I met Jeb Corliss. Jeb had that infamous, strikey, table mountain. I was there that day and I actually, I was the first person to get to hospital. Somebody phoned me and told me, and I knew straight away it was Jeb because I knew he was in town. And the guy, Jeb, who was his cameraman, I was literally the first person to get into hospital. They let me up into the room just to see if Jeb needed anything and Jeb was there.
Gavin McClurg (16:39.871)
Yeah, and your neck of the wall is really...
Jeff Ayliffe (16:58.198)
And he said no, he was fine. He didn't want to do any media because he didn't want to make a big thing of it because he realized it was harmful for the sport. So, but yeah, that was terrible. But yeah, and we've got some great wingsuiters. JJ Jean-Jacques Vallis is a very brilliant paraglider pilot. He's a top moustache pilot, flare pilot, speed wing pilot, extraordinary. I used to skydive on the South African team with JJ's uncle.
So JJ is just doing phenomenal things with wingsuiting worldwide at the moment. He's on the World Wingsuit League and he's certainly an incredible teacher and doing some wonderful things here in South Africa. He's in fact in Thailand at the moment coaching.
Gavin McClurg (17:36.068)
You hear, of course, in our sport, all the accidents in paragliding, hang gliding, especially in the beginning, speed flying. I don't hear that much about skydiving accidents. How does it rank in there with risk and safety? Do you see a lot of bad stuff in your years skydiving as well, or is it relatively more safe?
Jeff Ayliffe (17:59.479)
Yeah
No, look, I would go as far as to say it was safer than paragliding for sure. I had less drama and saw less drama in skydiving. Obviously in the US there was fairly regularly there were accidents and fatalities and they logged them very well and there was the accidents were put out on a very educational sort of way that you could learn what caused it and how we could go about it.
But I went through a long period of my skydiving where there was very little accidents of stuff around me. And I had a very unfortunate situation which I'm happy to share on the podcast. I met a young lady and we got very involved through skydiving. And the time I was invited onto the South African team, I then had to relocate to Johannesburg because that was where the team was based. And her name was Deirdre. So Deirdre and I basically decided to move up to Johannesburg.
and she was going to find work up there and it was a big sacrifice for her because she was very close to her family. So we moved up to Joburg and our first weekend there, we got there during the week and we found a place to stay and we found a beautiful little apartment. We bought bits and pieces. We had a cat and our very first weekend we went to a drop zone called Coltonville and we did a five-way skydive with the four members of the South African team.
It was myself, Peter Lawson, Chris Dales, Huey Newman, it was Ruben, the five team with the reserve. And then we had Deidre. And she joined us on the skydive. She was a competent skydiver. yeah, just to this day, we went up and we built the formation and we all tracked off. I then opened and I saw Deidre struggling and not she was struggling to get the pilot chute out of the pouch, out of her leg strap pouch.
Jeff Ayliffe (19:55.79)
And it was a new piece of equipment for her, but I mean, she was happy with it on the ground. And I watched her going and yeah, and I could see, I was yelling, pull the reserve, pull the reserve. And eventually I saw her hand come in and pull the reserve. And as I saw the reserve come off her back, I just saw this cloud, this burst of dust, I realized that she'd impacted. And I went and landed there, which possibly I shouldn't have done. But you you say to yourself, if there was the slightest chance that she had survived that.
Gavin McClurg (20:22.002)
Any chance?
Jeff Ayliffe (20:24.334)
But obviously she impacted her terminal velocity, so it was a very quick death. But yeah, that was, and that for me, we'd been living in this job in our new house for literally two days. So that was my introduction to Johannesburg. And that changed me a lot, Gavin. That incident showed me a dark side of skydiving. And through luck possibly, I'd been through many, many years of skydiving where I hadn't lost any friends. And then that, the closest person to me was lost on a skydive with me on the jump.
Gavin McClurg (20:25.166)
Gavin McClurg (20:29.006)
God.
Gavin McClurg (20:35.472)
Ugh.
Jeff Ayliffe (20:54.304)
And after that, I started to regularly, not regularly, but I lost a few more friends in the sport and I saw another side of it. But you know, that happens and it wasn't, that's not the reason I stopped skydiving. I mean, I carried on and you know, yeah. But to answer your original question, I certainly believe that paragliding, I've seen more accidents in paragliding. I certainly believe that paragliding is at a stage where skydiving is probably safer.
I would say.
Gavin McClurg (21:24.543)
I'm sorry that is a horrible story. I'm sorry about your loss there with Deidre. That's brutal. the is our accidents typically, would you call that human error or equipment error?
Jeff Ayliffe (21:41.102)
I would probably say...
Gavin McClurg (21:45.087)
And she knew what she was doing. sounded like it was just wasn't packed. The shoot wasn't packed right and she couldn't pull it out.
Jeff Ayliffe (21:48.846)
I mean, she was confident. No, the pilot would have come out of the pocket. I mean, she pulled it out on the ground. She was comfortable with it. I think it could have been a number of things. could have been the fact it was a new drop zone. It was her first day at a new drop zone. You know, it was a new rig. And maybe there was something the way she was pulling it that unsettled her. You know, it could have been she hadn't jumped maybe for a week or two and then
something might have unsettled her and she might have just started to get more and more of a fright and became fixated to pull it out. It's very hard to say. But as I said, she was a very competent skier. I mean, she'd been jumping with me. And it was I never had any reason. And if I didn't think it was a sport that she was comfortably doing or safe doing, I would have told her, listen, I would rather you not be doing this. So, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (22:24.51)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (22:41.139)
Yeah, I it almost seems that well two things I hear of you know when the with the formation flying isn't the danger then is kind of mid-airs right or getting the timing wrong with one of the other pilots is somebody pulling when they shouldn't have or vice versa. Okay.
Jeff Ayliffe (22:57.814)
Yeah, there's not a lot of that, know, and ironically again, a friend of mine who worked with me at Parachute Industries of South Africa, a young guy called Victor Malik, Skyworm was his nickname. We were on an eight way together out of two separate, two airplanes, two Cessna 172s, and he was on the back, he was in the back plane with me. So the front plane, the base four go out and they build the base, and then the back plane are the divers and the four divers go out and we dive down to the formation, flare, and then we dock the formation.
and Victor was one of the divers on that skydive and we built a seven way and we had a six way around, sorry, flying and I didn't see Victor. I was out seventh and he was out just behind me and I didn't see him. And we built a six way and I was looking around, I didn't see Victor and I didn't see Chris Cochran who was the other guy missing. And I then saw Chris open way below us and I never saw Victor again and we landed and what had happened is Victor had miscalculated his dive and it hit Chris in free fall.
hard enough to knock himself unconscious and he rolled over onto his back and started spinning and Chris started to chase him and Chris couldn't catch him and Chris realized when he got down to about a thousand feet he wasn't going to be able to catch Victor so he opened. But as I landed Chris I ran over to Chris and I said where's Victor and Chris said to me he's dead. He said he impacted on the end of the runway. that was ironically that was a but those Gavin those kind of accidents I think are fairly rare.
One of the greatest skydivers on the planet had a situation like that, a gentleman called Tom Pyrus. And I had the privilege, Tom Pyrus was part of one of the greatest ever American teams, US teams called the Air Bears, captained by Guy Manos. And I had the privilege of skydiving with Tom Pyrus in South Africa. And Tommy had a very similar incident. That's how he passed away. And...
Gavin McClurg (24:22.92)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (24:45.364)
Really?
Jeff Ayliffe (24:47.992)
But most of the, I can't really say what most of the fatalities in skydiving are because it varies. As a skydiver, the thing we were worried about the most was aircraft problems, was an aircraft failure at a low altitude where we couldn't get out of the airplane. That was generally what scares most skydivers is an aircraft issue. But yeah.
Gavin McClurg (24:54.303)
Great.
Gavin McClurg (24:59.753)
Right, and that makes sense.
Gavin McClurg (25:07.535)
Interesting. Yeah.
when did the paragliding begin? And I understand that's been kind of your new drug of choice is the mustache.
Jeff Ayliffe (25:23.182)
Yeah, I mean, I started flying, as I said, we were starting running off of skydiving parachute, but I guess I officially started flying in about 2000. I did a course, I did a paragliding course, because I was running off illegally and eventually the paraglider, the population was growing. And eventually a good friend of mine, was a paraglider, came to me and he said, hey, Jeff, listen, do the right thing. He said, rather than hiding and running off and hiding, and I agreed, I said, yeah, you're right, dude. And I went and did a course and qualified and started flying.
But because of my skydiving background, I always loved small skydiving parachutes. was always, I always had a high wing loading and I love to canopy piloting and I love to swoop and I always loved. So I was, that was the way I was going to go. I was never, said to you before we did the podcast, I hope you don't want to talk to me about cross country because you're to be talking to a wall. I don't do cross country. I've always loved small, fast canopies and wings. And I started flying speed wings, know, soon as soon as.
the first range of really good speed wings started coming out. I loved speed flying. But I still also like that other side of speed flying. I mean, I'm not a youngster anymore. I don't want to go barrel rolling down these lines, these gullies. I'll keep that for the 20 year olds and guys like JJ. I'm at an age now where I love flying fast, but I'm also a little bit more cautious.
And then I discovered the Moustache, you know, and I was flying an Ikaro, a freestyle wing, a little 18 square meter Ikaro, which I really loved. It was small, it was fast, but it could thermal nicely. And then about two years ago, or three years ago, I met Amin Harik, the man from Skywalk, and he was the man who designed the Moustache, and he let me fly the prototype, and Gavin had changed my life. And I said to Amin when I landed, I said,
Gavin McClurg (27:08.766)
Really?
Jeff Ayliffe (27:09.952)
I said, I have to take everything I know about flying a paraglider and throw it out the window. This is just so different. Everything I, and in fact, think Flair actually used that quote from me on their official brochure. But yeah, I knew then, and the moment the Flair became available, yeah, that's all I fly now. I've got a little 18 mustache and I'm loving it. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (27:29.523)
Really? God, I had Armand on the show and I haven't flown one yet. I'm feeling really silly that I haven't now, especially watching the smile on your face. They look like a riot.
Jeff Ayliffe (27:45.186)
Gavin, sorry you broke up a little bit there.
Gavin McClurg (27:47.615)
Well, no, I was just saying that, you know, I had him on the show, Armin, and they just, I feel silly that I haven't tried one. They look like a riot. They look like they're so much fun.
Jeff Ayliffe (27:56.174)
They absolutely, yeah, know, it's so addictive, know, I mean, I've, I've, no, I mean, I'm in, I'm helping them with marketing with Flair here in South Africa, and I've seen so many times, people don't wanna fly them, they're just a little bit skeptical, but it's so intuitive. If you're an experienced paraglider pilot, it's just so intuitive, you know, and the moment, and most, 90 % of the people that I know that have taken the demo for a flight, they land and they come back and they say,
I shouldn't have done that. I now need to find money to buy a mustache. And it's just, it's that addictive, you know? And I mean, I met Marcus Anders just recently. The flare design team, Benny Boerle and Marcus Anders was here who does a lot of work on the harnesses. It was great to meet Marcus Anders. I mean, I follow you guys on the Red Bull X-Ops, so to have met him was a privilege. But yeah, they came out with a new range, the next range of mustaches or flares and just watching these guys fly them.
was also for me was just so special, you But they are incredible machines. Yeah, very addictive.
Gavin McClurg (28:58.958)
And are you mostly ridge soaring with these? Is that what you're doing?
Jeff Ayliffe (29:05.249)
Yeah, I'm mostly rid soaring, flying coastal winds, but we've got a number of nice sites. We've got a place called the Ball. When the wind's really up to like 30 kilometers an hour, we go and fly in the Ball and you can really throw these wings around and do tip drags and tip touches. And on the coast, when there's good winds blowing, I mean, we've got kilometer after kilometer of just cliffs with just bush and we can fly.
feels like 100 miles an hour with your feet just dragging through these trees under the flares, know, going muck too with your hair on fire. It's just for me, that's just great. And other flare pilots fly, they fly them, I know a couple of guys who fly the mustaches that fly, they fly them like hang gliders. They just want that extra safety where if a breeze suddenly does pick up, you know, they've got all that extra speed on tap.
You know, and every flare pilot's got their own conditions that they really like to fly. And a friend of mine, Jamie, Jamie and Iani come and spend swallows. They come and spend six season here, very experienced flare pilots and they do so much for the community. Jamie's loves to fly in really strong wind. know, when Jamie's, know, frothing and rubbing his hands together and packing, running for the takeoff sites, that's normally when I'm saying, you know, I can maybe back off a little bit for me because I'm a little bit lighter.
But yeah, they're just so addictive and we've got a good core of guys here that are flying them now. And what's interesting for me as well, Gavin, is to see how many manufacturers are now coming out with parakites. It's just seeming, starting to explode, you we've seen more and more of them.
Gavin McClurg (30:35.731)
Yeah, it's really taken off.
I think in certain parts of the world too, like the Netherlands where there's dunes and that kind of thing, it's just completely taken over from what I understand. I mean, you'll go down to the beach, that's all you see anymore.
Jeff Ayliffe (30:51.32)
Sorry Gavin, you broke up on that one again.
Gavin McClurg (30:54.55)
Just shoot, I wonder what's going on with our internet here. I was just saying, I think there are certain parts of the world too, you know, where there's dune flying and soaring and that kind of thing where it's just taken over. I understand that that's all you see. You know, I'm still up in the big mountains. I haven't even seen one.
Jeff Ayliffe (31:10.702)
Yeah, look, it's it's I'm going to be honest and say there was there was a fair amount of unhappiness when the first mustaches started to arrive here because you suddenly had a situation where you've got paragliders on these ridges and they're flying really slowly and and if you're flying a paraglider and the flares are flying it's scary it can be scary because the flares have got so much they they you'll look behind and you'll see a flare behind you and he'll be 40 30 40 meters behind you
and above you and you look in front and you'll fly for a few seconds and look and he's not there anymore, suddenly he's coming underneath you, overtaking you underneath you like a bat out of hell and then he's climbing up above you again. So you've got to be very cognizant of that fact. When you're flying a moustache, you've got to be very aware as well that you're flying on so many different levels because of your ability to climb and your speed. You've got to be very aware of what's happening. It's as important.
but it can be very scary for the paraglider pilots, especially the inexperienced ones. And there was a lot of guys that were just getting too many frights and it started causing a bit of bad blood. There was a lot of, I won't say fights, but it started to get quite tense and we had to pull everyone together. And now there's more and more mustaches arriving. we're gonna need to be very careful about how we monitor it.
Gavin McClurg (32:31.035)
Sounds like skiing and snowboarding back in the day, know, trying to learn how to get together.
Jeff Ayliffe (32:34.643)
That's exactly, exactly what Armin said to me. He said it's like skiing and snowboarding and it's like windsurfing and kitesurfing. The windsurfers are going crazy. You guys are gonna cut our necks off with all these lines and it's exactly the same as that. And as people are gonna get used to it.
Gavin McClurg (32:42.825)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (32:47.141)
Yeah, you almost need, like in Hood River, they ended up just designating, you had the windsurfing area and the kitesurfing area and it was, you to almost draw a line and split people up.
Jeff Ayliffe (33:00.61)
Yeah, it's exactly the same as that.
Gavin McClurg (33:03.495)
I'm trying to imagine why can you launch a mustache or flare, a parakite in so much more wind? They just don't have the power right off the ground that a paraglider would. Why don't you just get plucked into the sky and have it be all sketchy like it would be on a paraglider?
Jeff Ayliffe (33:22.52)
Well, it just basically the forward speed of these things are so incredible. The steering system works on pulleys. So when you go hands up under a para cart, it's not just like pushing a speed bar. The entire wing, the whole wing basically pitches. So you've just got, it's like de-powering, powering up and de-powering a kite surfing kite. So you've just got so much more speed and it's, yeah, speed range and it's instantaneous. It really is instantaneous.
Gavin McClurg (33:44.135)
range.
Jeff Ayliffe (33:49.56)
And I mean, I've had incredible experiences where I've taken off in strong conditions with a mustache and I've literally been able to pump it just rhythmically and I've gone up. I've been able to pump, literally pump it up. I've seen JJ launch from the ground and pump up to the roof of the hanger. You know, it's just phenomenal. And of course, because of the in-built reflex, they can't front tuck so they can dive right over you. And if you keep your hands up, they dive right over you. If you apply brakes when they've overshot you,
Gavin McClurg (34:01.886)
I've seen videos of this, yeah.
Jeff Ayliffe (34:18.06)
If you then apply a little bit of brakes, then you'll get a front tuck. But I mean, they're tremendously safe in terms of the reflex stops them. And they do collapse. I mean, we've seen videos doing the rounds of mustaches that can collapse. You fly anything into turbulence. If it's a soft wing, it's gonna collapse. So you've got to be aware of it. Speed wing pilots, I've always said they need to be way more aware than cross country pilots for turbulence because a speed wing collapses in turbulence, things can go south very quickly. And I think the same with a mustache. But generally,
Gavin McClurg (34:43.967)
Yeah.
Jeff Ayliffe (34:45.182)
I will go out as far as saying that I feel safer flying a mustache than I have under any other glider. I've had an turbulence, it just feels so solid. I've got the speed to get away if the wind picks up. I've never had any issues.
Gavin McClurg (34:52.969)
Really?
Gavin McClurg (34:58.373)
Ha, fascinating. Did you ever spend any time hang gliding?
Jeff Ayliffe (35:02.358)
I did a hang gliding course with Johan Andersen, but I can't, I did about seven high flights. And it's true to me, hang gliding is the most, still the most pure form of human flight, I believe. It's the purest form of human flight. And whenever I see a hang glider, you know, especially one of the modern gliders, these beautiful new Moyes, the toplesses, I mean, they, to me, the big issue was just the rigging and the derigging and carrying it up and carrying it down.
Gavin McClurg (35:14.621)
Yeah.
Jeff Ayliffe (35:30.86)
Yeah, and I mean my friends always used to tell me that's part of the game. You you're gonna have the, you'll have the reward. Get involved in the sport and you'll have the rewards. But yeah.
Gavin McClurg (35:31.113)
But I...
Gavin McClurg (35:38.405)
Yeah, I I just think being prone makes so much sense. know, it's the form of aviation where you're a bird rather than just sitting there in a couch. It doesn't make any sense how we sit in a paraglider, you know.
Jeff Ayliffe (35:50.603)
I agree.
Yeah, I agree 100%. That's what makes, that's why I say it's the most beautifully natural form of free flight. And in fact, before I, think before I'd even got 100, I had 100 jumps, not even 100 jumps. And I went and did a hang gliding course. I wanted to go and do, I wanted to go and do a hang gliding course in Natal, but it never happened for some reason. But I was as attracted to hang gliding in the early days. And I think it was a pure balance. If I'd started hang gliding before I started skydiving, I think I would have gone the hang gliding route.
Gavin McClurg (36:22.601)
would have been that. Yeah, that's interesting. I think I missed an opportunity to ask you about something, not to take us back to the darker side of these sports, but you said when the accident happened with your partner with Diedre, it really changed your perspective. Can we dive into that a little bit more? How did it change your approach? How did it change, I don't know, in a sense, who you are?
Jeff Ayliffe (36:23.534)
Yeah, but anyway.
Jeff Ayliffe (36:40.152)
Yeah.
Yeah, we-
Jeff Ayliffe (36:50.058)
Yeah, Gavin, so I, my background in skydiving, was, there was a group of two of us, myself and a very good friend, Norman Girdwood. And we were very influenced by two other young skydivers, Eddie Minkes, who's also no longer with us, and Alan O'Gorman, who remains a good friend of mine. they were really, Eddie and Alan were very much the people who influenced Norman and I as youngsters, as schoolboys.
And Eddie and Alan used to see how low they could open and they were getting grounded all the time and they were naughty boys. And my skydiving career started off like that. I mean, we've got stories. One that comes to mind is still a jump that the Maritzburg, it's still people still talk about it in Peter Maritzburg and nobody knew for a long time whether it actually happened or whether it was urban legend. But five of us.
basically stole the aircraft out of the hangar at 3 a.m. in the morning after an entire night in the bar drinking. And we then took off and there was a dingy little fast food restaurant called the Pie Kott in Peter Maritzburg, which was in downtown Maritzburg in the bus depot in the taxi ranks in downtown Peter Maritzburg. And we always one night at about seven in the evening, we decided tonight would be a good night to go and skydive into the Pie Kott, which we'd been wanting to do for many years.
And the more beers we had, the more this idea appealed to us. And eventually we got rid of all the safety officers and the instructors. And at 3 a.m. in the morning, told, in fact it was about 2.30 a.m. We took off in a Cessna 172. We had no lights, no torches. I think one person on the load had an altimeter. And we took off and we flew to 7,000 feet and we exited over the middle of town and we built a five way round and we landed.
Tractor, it was a beautiful skydive. By the time we were in free fall, we were all sober, I'm pretty sure. But it was this most beautiful skydive. We sitting there, could, yeah, so we thought. And we all landed in different spots in the city. Went back to the parachute club. We packed our equipment at the clubhouse, not at the hangar, so the guys wouldn't find out. But we made the mistake the next morning, the guys, planned the jump on the hangar floor with chalk, and we had a big cross, we had parkot.
Gavin McClurg (38:44.157)
Or so you thought.
Jeff Ayliffe (39:06.092)
and somebody had heard the airplane take off and saw us going and they saw an empty airplane come back but there was no parachutes at the airfield. So they knew we'd done something crazy. And the next morning we got back to the hangar smiling, we got away with it. But all the instructors were looking at this pencil mark on the floor with all the names, this is where Jeff lands, this is where Alan lands. And yeah, we denied it and I was the youngest in the jump so they try to pull me aside and grill me and get me to admit.
but we flatly denied it for years and years and years and eventually we all agreed about a year ago to write the story which I wrote and yeah, and that was the first time that the story was actually put out there. So I mean, that was just an example. we did night jumps, my friend went to the army before I went to the army and my friend went to the army. We did crazy night jumps, were opening low and I just, I believed I was bulletproof. My skydiving career, I got away with so much that I shouldn't have got away with and
Gavin McClurg (39:46.078)
Wicked.
Jeff Ayliffe (40:03.694)
De Andres accident made me realize that there are consequences to this game and you can never, I was about 24 at that stage. 20, 25, yeah, it was pretty early. I'm trying to think how old I was. I was about 20, I was about 26, 26 thereabouts. Between 24 and 26. That was 1985.
Gavin McClurg (40:09.663)
How old were you then?
Gavin McClurg (40:14.138)
pretty early.
Gavin McClurg (40:27.303)
Is it, am I jumping to too much of a conclusion? Do you ever look at these things and go, man, she might've saved my life?
Jeff Ayliffe (40:38.07)
Yeah, you know, I mean that's in a way, I mean I haven't actually looked at it like that, but the way you say it now, yeah, and what I've just said to you, that makes perfect sense. You know? Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (40:49.503)
I often think that for me and listeners who listen to the show have heard this one before, so I'm not gonna get into it, but the incident in a sense that I'm pretty convinced saved my life was basically dying in a river. My previous life I was really in the rivers and paddling and.
and did a lot of scary, really stupid stuff. And we were doing a bunch of first ascents down in Central America. I was down in Mexico doing a first ascent and got eaten in a waterfall and I think properly literally died. And by a combination of miracle and luck, came back and...
It just forever changed me because before that moment, same as you, I was invincible. I was gonna get through whatever it was. And after that it was, there's consequences. And of course, I knew there was consequences before that. I'd lost friends, we were running really hard stuff. I we talked about it all the time, but it hadn't really hit home.
Jeff Ayliffe (41:58.946)
Yeah, yeah. No, it's an interesting point, know, that incident, the tragedy with Deidre could well have been the catalyst, well, it was the catalyst that made me realize, you know, that could well have saved my life, you know. So yeah. I mean, my scariest moment in skydiving, the closest I came to fatality in skydiving was in Canopy RW. We had a horrible rap, parachute rap, all four of us, or three out of the four of us were involved.
Gavin McClurg (42:15.017)
wasn't very cheap.
Jeff Ayliffe (42:27.182)
And I was wrapped up in all the lines in the middle of all of this and the other guys, when she cut away, and I then had to get out of all the lines before I could cut away. And I wasn't even sure by the time I'd got too low and I wasn't even sure whether I was still attached to their three parachutes. But I didn't have time anymore to keep trying to find lines. So thought, well, I'm too low, I've got to cut away. if I've got the grace of God on my side, I'm gonna be clear and I'll get my reserve. And if not, then that's it. And I cut away and the...
The most beautiful thing I ever saw was seeing three parachutes as I pulled the cutaway handle, going back into free fall, seeing three parachutes disappearing. And I've rolled over, pulled the reserve. I was under reserve really low. Yeah, I mean, that was lucky. But apart from that, I... So we were doing rotations. So we build a force stack, a speed force stack. And then as the bottom guy hits, the top guy then used to stall, full stall over the back of the parachute and go down and...
Gavin McClurg (43:09.823)
How did you, what happened? How did you guys get all tangled up like that?
Gavin McClurg (43:19.016)
right, OK.
Jeff Ayliffe (43:26.168)
dropped down in the burble behind and then hit the bottom. And as he hit the bottom, the next guy goes and so it was a high speed. And we were two weeks out from the competition and we were favorites to win the Nationals and we were two weeks out. And Henny, the Seidenloot, was it Henny, one of the guys, the top guy went over and got caught, the pilot chute, the bridle caught in the pilot chute, tracks behind.
Gavin McClurg (43:32.828)
Wow, cool.
Jeff Ayliffe (43:54.988)
And for some reason on that rotation, the guy got his foot, his ankle caught in the pilot chute and collapsed the second canopy as he was going. The second canopy then collapsed into the third canopy, which pulled me into the canopy and then she, we were all just in, we were all in chaos. That was a mess, man. And yeah.
Gavin McClurg (44:08.467)
Holy God, what a mess. Ugh.
And everybody got out of it.
Jeff Ayliffe (44:17.034)
Everyone got out of it, yeah. And the most surreal thing for me was the guy who was the second to last guy to cut away, he had lines wrapped around his feet and the only way he got out was by pulling his shoe off. Got the line off his feet and then he cut away. And I remember all this chaos and mayhem and then I cut away and I had a round reserve then, I didn't have a square reserve. Cut away, back into free fall, round reserve opens up, I'm under this round reserve and it's absolutely silent. And I'm still sitting there thinking, I can't believe I've just got away with this.
And there 20 feet or 30 feet from me comes past me this shoe with two laces, perfectly stable, the two laces and the shoe is just wafting past me. And it was just the most surreal moment. I remember looking at this being fixated on the shoe thinking, well, yeah, crazy. The things your mind remembers, you know, when things like that happened. But yeah, we won that nationals. I'm very proud to say we.
Gavin McClurg (45:07.825)
Yeah. Did you guys win?
Jeff Ayliffe (45:15.458)
We're very average drop. had two more weeks to train and we went back. We took the next day off and we came back midweek to start training and our average went down a lot. But we came back and we won that nationals by two points. It was very, very close, but we brought it out the bag and we, Yeah. And I think Gavin.
Gavin McClurg (45:28.959)
Whoa, that's pretty impressive that all four of you were able to hold it together. You'd think somebody, one of you would have been like, I don't know about this.
Jeff Ayliffe (45:38.54)
Yeah, and Gavin, think that is probably the proudest achievement of my skydiving career was that competition, was winning that four-way rotation nationals. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (45:48.416)
I bet. Wow. You got any other stories like that? That was a ripper, Jeez. I'm just envisioning this shoe going down in front of you. That's wild.
Jeff Ayliffe (45:54.64)
Hahaha
Jeff Ayliffe (46:02.958)
Yeah, I it was. But I mean, we we've had, know, we were doing four way training. Another funny story is we do, it wasn't funny at the time, we were doing four way training and there's a drill, we call it a drill dive. We were just doing donut 360 donut. The donut's called the formation. Donut 360 donut and the other way, donut 360 donut. And there were two layers of cloud that we went through in the aircraft on the way up. And the bottom layer was at about 3000 feet. And the top layer was at about five and a half thousand feet. So we figured.
We just, and it was with Alan O'Gorman and Eddie, the two bad guys, and myself and Norman. And we were on a team with them at that stage. And the team was called Re-Entry. And we figured the bottom clouds at 3000 feet, so we're not gonna worry about looking at altimeters. We're gonna go, when we break the bottom cloud, that's our cue to track off and open. And we just carried on doing donuts. But in the interim, while we continued our climb to altitude, the cloud base had changed dramatically. And the low cloud was sitting
Sitting at, I can't remember, I'd be lying, but I'm guessing probably about 1,500 feet. And we burst through this low cloud, the bottom cloud in free fall. And we looked down and we just see these houses that looked like buildings, these little houses. And we realized we were low. And I think the four of us just literally, we hardly even tracked, we just kicked away from one another and four parachutes opened. We were very lucky. We were very lucky.
Gavin McClurg (47:24.735)
What do you need in a skydiving rig? What's really low? Because know, base jumping, can base it from 400 feet and do it.
Jeff Ayliffe (47:30.21)
Well, you want to be, yeah, no base, babe, no base that's not low for base. mean, base that would be starting to get ready. That would be a high base jump. But in those days in sports car driving, want to, the technical rule was to break off the formation at three and a half thousand feet track. And you want it, you had to be under an open canopy by about 2,200 feet. So yeah. Yeah. So you've got time. And that was really just to give yourself in the event of a high speed malfunction, you want to give yourself time to, you know, to cut away, to get away from it.
Gavin McClurg (47:48.969)
So a lot of time. I mean, that's not that much time, but.
Gavin McClurg (47:59.616)
I can say I did some acro training a few years ago over the desert. So instead of over the water, I was doing it over the dirt. So we were towing up. I was doing it with my friend Cody and our kind of hard stop was a thousand feet. But I can tell you, if you're having trouble at a thousand feet, you don't have much time. That thousand feet goes real quick.
Jeff Ayliffe (48:19.266)
Yeah, that's it, and I think Gavin, the scariest skydive I was ever on is our parachute club got together to try and break our club record, which I think was a 35 way or 40 way or something like that. And it was being filmed by the grand master of free fall photography, a guy called Norman Kent, who's from the United States. And Norman Kent was filming the skydive. And I was.
Myself and Paul Izzy Smith were the last two skydivers to dock so we were going to dock like 39 and 40 and for some reason the base had the responsibility of looking at the altitude and they just didn't check the altitude and I first realized something was wrong when I looked and I saw Norman Kent opening and I thought why is he pulling out and then I looked down and I saw man these guys were low and Paul and I were open we were the high people on the load and I remember
this formation going through three and a half thousand feet with 30 skydivers or 40 odd skydivers still in free fall. And it was the scariest thing I've ever seen. And the lowest people were open below 400 feet.
Gavin McClurg (49:34.407)
I don't know if you can hear me, but we've it's gone completely. Yep, I lost you if you come back Miles at about 49 minutes. I lost him. I'm assuming the audio is okay, but we'll pick up where he stopped there
Gavin McClurg (50:03.805)
I'm going leave everything going. Hopefully we can just pick up. He's gone from the recording here, but hopefully he'll come back in.
Jeff Ayliffe (51:45.986)
Hey cool Gavin, just not getting any, I'm not able to upload at the moment. I don't know whether just to refresh this thing.
Gavin McClurg (51:59.68)
Thanks
Gavin McClurg (52:14.909)
There we go. Now I see ya. I'm gonna leave my video off just to reduce our bandwidth here a little bit.
Jeff Ayliffe (52:18.815)
Okay, sure, yeah, I don't know what happened then.
Gavin McClurg (52:27.857)
It stayed recording the whole time, so I think we're fine.
Jeff Ayliffe (52:27.925)
Okay.
Okay, I'll just pick, shall I just pick up where you said he was second to last?
Gavin McClurg (52:35.539)
Yeah, exactly. You literally just said, yeah, so I can't remember, but he was, I think, second to last, I was last, know, 38th or 39th and 40th or something like that. So you can just pick up right from there. Repeat that part and Miles can use that. And then we'll just go from there.
Jeff Ayliffe (52:47.083)
Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Yeah, okay. So Paul, Lizzie Smith and I were the last two to close. was like 39th I was 40th, if that was the number, but we were second last and last. And I was still sitting in position watching this formation building. And next thing I looked across and I saw Norman Kent open and he was gone. And I suddenly realized, well, there's only one reason he's going to go. And I looked down.
at my altimeter and I was passing through three about three and a half thousand feet and I then I opened and Paul Izzy Smith opened as well and the most terrifying thing we we were sitting in freefall watching this huge formation of about 35 or 40 skydivers just disappearing and blending into the ground still in freefall and eventually people started people realized what was going on
and there were people pulling out of the formation, opening, throwing pilot chutes out of the formation. I think the lowest people on that load were under canopy, probably about 400 feet or 300 feet. It was terrifying and how nobody died on that jump, nobody to this day actually has any idea. I mean, it was crazy. And that was just, yeah, it was just a human error from the group in the base who were monitoring the altitude.
And I can say that but then it is every skydiver's responsibility to to monitor your altitude and monitor your own Be aware of your own altitude, you know, so you can't put the whole blame on the base, but we almost lost an entire club And I think Norman can still remembers that vividly to this day, know, he he's spoken about it a number of times That was probably the scariest got out that
Gavin McClurg (54:26.175)
Whoa.
Gavin McClurg (54:32.041)
So he was, Norman was the photographer.
Jeff Ayliffe (54:35.371)
Yeah, he was the videographer. Yeah, he was he was filming it.
Gavin McClurg (54:37.267)
So he was the one that really the first one that noticed he was above everybody. Wait a minute, we're way too low.
Jeff Ayliffe (54:40.437)
He saw, yeah, I think he had an audio altimeter. Yeah, he had an audio altimeter which just started pinging in his ear. And then he realized, man, these guys are just overdoing it. And he opened. And yeah, unfortunately it took the majority of the jumpers a lot of time. But I was convinced, I was sitting under the canopy at the height that I would probably normally be open at with everybody else. And I saw this, literally this entire formation just.
blending down into the earth in Mubatu. And when they started to break, there people tracking and I just saw pilot chutes coming out and canopies opening everywhere. And I was like, okay, this is gonna be not a happy ending to the day. And miraculously, nobody was killed, you know?
Gavin McClurg (55:26.665)
Cause that's the worst case scenario, right? When you're not allowed, you don't have enough time to track away and get away from somebody. Everybody's just opening cause they're panicking. man, crazy.
Jeff Ayliffe (55:35.209)
Exactly. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (55:41.535)
That was your scariest. You got any other scary stories?
Jeff Ayliffe (55:46.093)
No, look, I not, I mean, I've had malfunctions. I've had a bunch of cutaways, but those happen so quickly, you know, you have a malfunction, you realize you've got trouble, you don't even think about it. You automatically took, you know, pop, cutaway, pull the reserve. But yeah, that canopy entanglement was probably my scariest thing in skydiving. Yeah, and paragliding touch would.
Gavin McClurg (55:55.263)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (56:09.001)
Do you train really hard for those malfunctions? Is that kind of part of the training when you're coming up through it? Is that something you can expect sometime in your career, things not gonna open?
Jeff Ayliffe (56:18.917)
Yeah, it malfunctions. As the saying goes, it's not a case of if, it's a case of when. You're going to have malfunctions at some stage. And I think every skydiver sits in the aircraft and you go through the skydive in your mind, but you also you'll see the guys just going through their cutaway procedure. Just OK, right hand on the cutaway puff, left hand handle, cutaway. You go through that in your mind all the time. You're constantly aware of it.
Gavin McClurg (56:26.814)
Yep.
Jeff Ayliffe (56:47.223)
So when it happens, it effectively is second nature.
Gavin McClurg (56:47.955)
I did it.
I was doing a little...
shoot called Locals for outside, this was quite a few years back, and you've heard of the Perron Bridge probably at Twin Falls. It's one of the legal bridges to jump off in the States. know, people, when the weather's decent, people are going off that thing all day, every day. you know, Miles Dasher is one of the Red Bull pilots and has made it very famous. He lives there in Twin. And we went down for this
Jeff Ayliffe (57:03.209)
Yes.
Gavin McClurg (57:24.467)
film, the short film thing I was working on and they wanted to hook me off the bridge and I had never done a base. so he packed my shoe and said, hey, listen, this will open. But what he was nervous about is, I hadn't done any skydiving. And he said, just...
The only reason I'm letting you do this is because I know you've got a lot of aviation background and you're not gonna panic. You're gonna jump off this bridge and you're gonna grab the pilot and throw it. Because most people, if it's their first time and they haven't done a bunch of skydiving, that's why they do so much skydiving before you start base jumping is because people lock up.
Jeff Ayliffe (58:07.297)
Yeah, exactly.
Gavin McClurg (58:07.357)
and they just plummet to their death, they're not gonna grab that thing because they just panic. And I said, listen, I'm not gonna panic, it'll be absolutely fine. And it was, it was a thrill, it was great, it was a ton of fun, and I grabbed it. But is that a big thing? Do people just not throw?
Jeff Ayliffe (58:27.607)
Man, I haven't, to be honest, I haven't come across that type of thing. I don't have any base jumping background, but certainly in skydiving, I haven't seen, I've seen people that certainly lose track of altitude and lose track of time, where I've had to, in my AFF career, I've physically had to open a number of students. I've been giving them the signal to pull, to pull, to pull. They haven't pulled, and you give them as much option as you can safely within the parameters.
And then eventually if you're the main side jump master, you then take the decision, you take the pilot shooting throw it. So I mean, I've had that on a number of occasions, but yeah. And for me, some of the scariest jump mastering or instructing that I've done is people on first free falls, because they've done 10 static line jumps and their static line jumps go well, they relax, but their first free fall, something in their brain tells them that they are no longer attached to the umbilical cord. That when they step off that step,
Gavin McClurg (59:05.34)
wow.
Jeff Ayliffe (59:26.621)
they've got to make the physical action of pulling that rip cord. And summing in their brain fries and inevitably they often will go unstable. I've seen very few perfect first free falls, you They'll do perfect static line jumps but the moment the first free fall, psychologically you know you're on your own, you no longer have that umbilical cord and they, you know, the static line's not attached. And I've had some horror things where I've seen them go unstable and roll and eventually get the rip cord out.
Gavin McClurg (59:38.964)
Really?
Jeff Ayliffe (59:54.286)
Yeah, you you have sleepless nights sometimes. But as an AFF instructor, you learn very quickly to analyze what you've got on your plate in terms of a new student. And there's been a time in my career as well where I've had to go to somebody after three levels of AFF and say to them, with all due respect, this is not really your thing. And the people there have actually realized, they've obviously intelligent enough to know, okay, I understand. I can see that I've really been battling and I agree with you. They're almost happy that you've given them an out, you know.
But there's been just a handful of times where I've had to go to my students and say, listen, Guy, know, this is, I know you love this and you're trying, but it's just maybe not your thing, you know? Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:00:35.911)
What, now we're in some pretty serious crossover with paragliding, I'm sure, hand gliding as well. This has come up on the show quite a bit, but I haven't heard many instructors have to do that in paragliding, but I feel like it should. There are definitely people that get into this sport that should be doing something else.
How do you approach that? do you deliver it? I would imagine they would be very thankful that they've gotten out, but there are people that shouldn't be doing this.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:01:10.293)
I agree with you, Gavin, 100%. And I've never did my instructor's rating in paragliding. I was always just gonna fly for fun. And obviously, I see somebody, I'm always available to offer advice on if I see somebody landing and struggling with a landing approach or something, but I'm not a certified instructor. But I agree with you 100%. I've seen takeoffs and people flying in strong wind conditions here where...
I've seen people getting thrown off the mountain where literally the instructors have done everything. My first belief is that if you can't take off and if you can't launch on your own, pull it up and launch on your own, then you shouldn't be flying. And I can understand your first flight if it's a bit of nerves, but I've seen repetitive cases where people are having to get babied through. I, yeah, in certainly more cases in paragliding, I've seen people that I just wonder, man, maybe this is not for you.
But you've got to respect for me, the people love what they're doing and they want to fly. I always say, you if I see somebody blatantly endangering themselves, of course I'm going to go and say something. But yeah, we've we've we see crazy times, especially this time of year, you know, at our our local flying site here in the Garden Route when we've got strong winds and we've got a lot of visiting pilots, a lot of them aren't used to launching in high wind conditions. A lot of them are used to Alpine type launches with flat
light wind grassy slopes and we see some crazy stuff going on man you know and yeah but anyway
Gavin McClurg (01:02:42.207)
Not to continue to pull us back into dark stuff, but I understand you guys lost somebody recently in Porterville. Did you get any more details?
Jeff Ayliffe (01:02:54.347)
We did. Yeah, look, we still don't know. And sadly, he was one of our one of our most experienced pilots, a gentleman called Josh Deganaga, an absolute legend in the sport, a full time tandem instructor and a cross country absolute addict. I think he would like to be known as Josh. Whenever he got the chance, he'd go into the big mountains, into the flatlands and tow. That's where all the records were broken. And he used to go and winch up and.
Josh's great joy was going out on his own and getting towed up. then, you we've seen videos that he used to post of just flying this bucking Bronco in crazy thermals at like 3000 meters and he's still going up and riding the smoke from fires. And he was just an absolute legend. yeah, sadly he was on holiday with his wife recently and he took off and nobody knows what happened.
He was found at 3 a.m. in the morning by a rescue team and he was found in a river. I don't know the details whether he drowned, whether death was by drowning or whether, but his reserve had been thrown apparently and I know they are busy doing the accident report at the moment. Josh's funeral was in Cape Town just a week or so ago. So it's a huge loss to the flying community. know, and yeah, that was a very sad thing. unfortunately we don't have any details as to what.
Gavin McClurg (01:04:01.791)
know.
Gavin McClurg (01:04:05.065)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (01:04:18.783)
You don't really know. Huh, interesting.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:04:19.341)
what happened. And we in fact lost, there was another pilot that died about two months ago in Portable as well. Also flying, crossing over into the Tulbagh Valley. Also an experienced cross country pilot and he was found, we don't know what the situation was there. Portable, unfortunately is big sky country and it claims lives. A lot of people have lost their lives in Portable. And for me, I used to fly there when I was filming cross country, I was doing media. I used to go and
you know, scratching a flight before the window opened for the cross-country pilots. And that was always, I mean, there were days at Portable, I remember I was struggling to land, I was battling to get down, to get back to the takeoff, to film the start of the task. And I was just like, you know, why am I flying in this place? But anyway. Yeah, it's it's it gets very thermic and the sea breeze pulls through in the late afternoon. So you want to get your flying done before the sea breeze comes in.
Gavin McClurg (01:05:04.743)
It's windy, yeah? I haven't flown there.
Gavin McClurg (01:05:12.475)
Okay.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:05:15.661)
But there's sometimes, if there's a little bit cross, know, competition tasks, sometimes they take a chance and they'll send a task off with a little bit of a crosswind and big strong thermals, you know, that can cause chaos. Yeah, and I take my hat off, you know, to the cross country guys who go and fly there, but that's not really my thing.
Gavin McClurg (01:05:36.178)
Last thing I wanted to ask you about is, and I know you just said cross-country is not your thing, but South Africa, it's had, since Neville, it's put its stamp on the big distance. There's Texas, there's Brazil, there's South Africa, those are the big three. And you mentioned Marcus Anders, they were out there recently going for it. We still think we've got the biggest potential here in the States with Texas, although it's, man, I went down there a few years ago.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:05:52.94)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:06:06.131)
to try it. a battle. You're hanging out in a very hot place in a ton of wind day after day after day and you're off and back at the camper at 8 a.m. going, well, try tomorrow. It's kind of a job. I wouldn't call it that much fun, but it just seems...
Jeff Ayliffe (01:06:08.939)
Yeah, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:06:25.457)
incredible to me to do it across South Africa knowing, you know, I've driven across South Africa, I've been to Joburg and I've been to, you know, I've been north of you, Namibia and a bunch of countries up there and Malawi and stuff. It just would be incredible to fly across your country. I mean, that's kind of what they're doing, right? They're almost going coast to coast.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:06:38.806)
Yeah.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:06:47.603)
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. you know, and because the wings as the gliders improve and the performance improves and the standard of flying improves, it's becoming more more difficult to find because there's certain areas you can fly up to the mountains at Lesotho from as far, you know, from the one side, but you don't want to go over the big mountains into Lesotho because that's pretty inhospitable terrain. So I don't follow that closely, but I mean, I know that the guys have been struggling. They used to start from a place called the R.
But now they've covered that distance. Now they're needing to find places further and further away, you know, to make that gap longer and longer. I had a really interesting trip about 2010, I'm guessing, but Ozone came out, Mike Kavanagh and Dov DeGaulle, the test pilot and designer from Ozone came out and they had all the new Ozone wings. And I was pulled on board as a media guy and they were towing every day. And basically the plan was we started off in Swakopma, right on the West Coast.
as far west as we could go in a place called Springbok and the plan was just to fly and follow the dirt roads and winch up and whoever lands the furthest that was we camped for the night and then we took off the next day and we carried on going and that was an amazing trip and there was my exposure to some top cross-country guys these guys used to get winched up and just thermal and just disappear and then they used to radio us from another town and so I landed in a small little town you know here I am yeah you know it's a
A part of the sport, Gavin, even you guys, the X-Helps, that's a part of the sport that's very alien to me. I have huge respect to anyone who can fly in those conditions day after day. Man, must take some doing.
Gavin McClurg (01:08:29.055)
What keeps you up at night in a good way with this sport? What's in your future? What are you excited about?
Jeff Ayliffe (01:08:37.965)
I'm excited, I would just love, I'm excited about the development of the wings and the gliders. You know, and I was saying to Amin the other day, know, the very first square parachute was a, well technically, the first popular square parachute was a parachute called a Stratostar. And that came out in 1976 or 77. And my very first square jump was with a Stratostar. And I had to have 72 jumps under a round parachute before I was allowed to jump a Stratostar.
And I then jumped to Stratostar and in my career, I then followed the progress of square parachutes from seven cell, five cells to seven cells to nine cells to elliptical wings to, and I've jumped and because my passion was the parachutes, I've jumped all the latest designs and the newest designs. And I remember the wing called a canopy called a stiletto by performance designs was my favorite. And I remember being overawed with jumping the stiletto. And for me to have
done that and now to have reached the stage where I'm now flying a parakite, which is the latest. And for me, you know, the interesting thing is just to see where the development of these wings are going to go. You know, and that's what I think about whenever I get an opportunity to fly a new design wing. I love it just to feel what it's like. And at the end of the day, the skill set to me feels the same. It's just it's the ability.
that you have to become one with the paraglider, not to have to think about what you're doing, but you feel, you take off on a glider and you can feel very quickly, okay, this is how this wing's responding. And you can just change your, subtly change your style to fly a new wing. And that's what excites me, is flying new wings and feeling the differences, the subtle differences. I mean, I'm 62 now, so I'm not gonna be competing anywhere. I don't think I'm ever gonna get, I'd love to end up in an instruction world with parakites at some stage.
and certainly in a marketing and a media role with parakites if I can. But for me the exciting thing is just to follow, to see where the new gliders, the design of the wings are going and to hopefully to be healthy enough to keep flying them for as long as I can.
Gavin McClurg (01:10:48.103)
Hey, I lied, I do have two more questions actually. Your son, tell me about your son.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:10:54.017)
Yeah, my son grew up around skydiving and around paragliding and he was flying my speed wings. He was ground handing my speed wings when he was seven, six years old, seven years old. And he was in fact running off dunes with my speed wing when he was about 12 and very natural little pilot. He did a paragliding license about four years ago and he was a very gifted pilot. He took to it straight away.
But when he left, when he was in his last grade 12, his last year of school, decided aviation was gonna be his thing. And he wanted to become, he decided instead of going my route into free flight, he wanted to fly real airplanes, which I'm not gonna say I was too disappointed about. It's an expensive route, but yeah, so instead of going to Vasti or college, he then went straight to aviation school in Durban and did an aviation, private pilot's license, then went on to become a commercial pilot.
Gavin McClurg (01:11:38.879)
No.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:11:52.28)
then instructed in Johannesburg and he had a terrifying incident. He was teaching a student and they were flying a 172 back from the general flying area on a night flight. They were actually flying to the general flying area and the aircraft engine started to vibrate. So, Taylan is his name. Taylan told the student, listen, it's my airplane. The evening's over, we're gonna go back. Something's not good. Turned around, he made a, he made a just.
think they called it a pan call just to let people know that there was potentially a problem. And he was put into a pattern for Vonderburen airport and he was probably in a long downwind leg in a queue and the aircraft suddenly started to vibrate really, really violently. So he then called Mayday and he peeled out of the pattern to go straight for the airfield. And at that point the engine cut and there was absolute pitch darkness underneath him. It was pitch black.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:26.717)
pan.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:48.765)
Whoa.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:12:51.541)
and he saw what he thought was a street lamp, which was in fact a street lamp. And it lit up a small little piece of road. And he, by the grace of God, managed to put the 172 down in blackness with this little piece of road. And it turned out to be the road in a little location, a little township location outside of Pretoria called the Moloto Township, Moloto Street, sorry. And he landed this road with telephone wires. It was a small road and poles and houses.
He put the 172 down in the dock. By the grace of God, they were absolutely fine. The aircraft was undamaged. Yeah, and that was terrifying, man. But anyway, I'm happy. and somebody said to me, his gloss, they say you get two glosses, one gloss of luck and one gloss of experience. I think he used up a lot of his luck gloss there, but you know, he did an amazing job. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:28.713)
Whoa! Whoa!
Gavin McClurg (01:13:40.946)
Yeah.
Yeah, took a few coins out of that one and put it in the other one for sure.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:13:48.045)
But he's now, I'm proud to say he now flies PC-12s and Grand Caravans for a company called Federal Airlines. He's now flying into Africa, into Zambia, into Botswana. And he's flying, he's flying captain in a beautiful PC-12, so he's doing extremely well. And yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:14:04.887)
Awesome, that's great. Jeff, if you could rewind the clock to your kind of 50 hour self, which was, you you were probably 10. That was quite a while ago. what would what would your 62 year old self tell that 50 year old self? You could say one thing to that self and say, hey, know, here's something I've learned. Here's what I want you to know going forward.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:14:15.265)
Yeah.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:14:32.333)
Wow, that's a tricky one. I would certainly have, I would say spend more time in the industry if I had done that. I mean, I'm at a stage now where I'm freelancing, but I would have said to myself, spend more time in the industry getting qualifications. I often look back and, know, I should have gone and become a master parachute rigger and I should have set my goals higher into getting into the design side. My interest-
purely because of my design and wings now. You know, I'm disappointed that I just wanted to jump out of airplanes and I wanted to cause trouble and I was just, you know, I was young and inexperienced and I just wanted to have as much fun. I would tell my young self, I wouldn't have changed that lifestyle and what I chose to do, but I would have gone about it with a much more dedicated look as a career. I would have gone and said, get as many ratings as you can, become a master rigger.
Maybe even get a private pilot's license so you can fly as well, become a master parachute rigger, become a designer, learn about the design stuff, and spend more time in the factories with the guys learning that side of the sport. That's probably my biggest regret. Otherwise I wouldn't change a thing.
Gavin McClurg (01:15:33.439)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:15:43.232)
Good advice. Yeah, good advice. Just more balanced, more thorough, more foundation. I like it. Jeff, you're a treasure, man. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. This has been a real thrill and a real joy. And it's fun to hear about a side of the sport that I really don't know much about.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:16:04.334)
Yeah, Gavin, thanks very much. It's a huge privilege for me. When I got your message saying, Eddie, you want to come on my podcast? I was like, this is the Mayhem podcast. You've got the right guy. I sent you a message. I think you may remember. I don't know if you've got the right guy, but it's been a privilege to chat to you.
Gavin McClurg (01:16:13.119)
You
Gavin McClurg (01:16:18.463)
I definitely got the right guy and you've got students and people around you who are going to be thrilled. They've been asking for you for a while so they'll be thrilled to hear this one come out. I appreciate it, Jeff. Thanks a lot.
Jeff Ayliffe (01:16:32.134)
It's been an honor. Thanks a lot, Gavin. Ciao.
