Author Archives: Gavin McClurg

Episode 162- Clemens Ceipek and Flying Gliders, Seeking Understanding, and playing Chess in the Air

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Clemens Ciepek is an Austrian Sailplane pilot who lives in Boulder, Colorado. He’s the president of one of the premiere gliding clubs in the world and runs a website dedicated to spreading knowledge and improving pilot ability called “Chess in the Air” that is filled with fantastic in-depth articles that cover the full gamut of flying. Why do some pilots improve very slowly and others get good really fast? Clemens says it’s in the approach. We cover the value of using the Condor flying simulator, studying theory, understanding forecasting as well as many of the topics Clemens tackles on his website: assessing risk, complacency, using the correct bank angle, thermal entry, identifying triggers and convergence, the most common mistakes that end badly, and a ton more.

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Episode 161- Peter Zaccagnino and Adventure, Aviation, and taking risk

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Peter Zaccagnino is an aviation Hall of Fame pilot; 4 X Air Racing Gold Champion; has flown over 23,000 hours in more than 270 aircraft, flight tested more than 685 and even built three of his own. Peter’s company, High Performance Aircraft Group manages several corporate jets, provides his clients with custom-tailored, high-intensity world tours, and performs flight test services for several manufacturers, including the U.S. and foreign militaries. He’s also the film producer of multiple Discovery Channel productions and starred in a lead role in the “Dangerous Flights” series.

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Bonus Episode- Gavin McClurg interviewed on the Soaring the Sky Podcast

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st of the “Soaring the Sky Podcast” dedicated to sailplane flying, but he reached out to me recently to talk all things flying to get a paraglider’s perspective on doing what they do but with a very different aircraft. We had a blast and the conversation went into some really fun directions, including the Red Bull X-Alps, Alaska and a few scary moments I’ve had over the years.

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Episode 160- Soaring Birds with Hannah Jane Williams

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Hannah Jane Williams is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz, Germany. For eight years she’s been studying soaring birds across the spectrum to figure out why birds do what they do and when they do it in the air. For birds, soaring is a delicate game of balancing energy and reward. Flapping takes energy. Energy requires food and getting food has risk. Do birds practice? Do they every soar just to play? How often to birds make mistakes? How do they map the sky? Do they use other birds to evaluate climbs, find lift bands, and take better lines, or is it all instinct?

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Bonus Episode- Mitch Riley tells a paragliding story

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Logan Walters (creator of USAHIKEANDFLY.com) has been sitting down with pilots who have good stories to tell in a YouTube series we are going to release as bonus content for our subscribers. His latest is with Mitch Riley. Mitch raced in the 2019 Red Bull X-Alps, represented the US in the Worlds in Macedonia in 2019, is an Ozone team pilot, and is an excellent advanced paragliding instructor and very passionate pilot. Enjoy this fun talk!

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Episode 159- Visualize the day

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This week we’re doing something a little different. It has been proven that our minds don’t know the difference between a real experience and visualizing an experience. Olympic athletes, race car drivers, elite ski racers, golfers- you name it, the best of the best across the sport gamut visualize themselves doing their thing. It takes practice, but the results are proven. Going out and flying to improve is still the best way to get currency, but if you’re hurt, or the weather is bad, or you just don’t have the time to go flying, doing a little visualization is nearly as good as the real thing. In this episode I take you through a very simple 20 minute visualization practice that I hope helps you achieve safer and better flights. Come back to it often and see how training your mind helps you achieve your goals.

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Episode 158- Kirsty Cameron and Stacking the Odds

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Kirsty Cameron has been a member of the British team many times. She’s been flying high-end 2 line gliders for over 10 years and put a ton of energy and time into competition flying since she began flying in the late 90’s. This year with travel being difficult and her 4 year old son vying for more her time Kirsty decided to dedicate her flying time to chasing big distance at home in the UK. She nabbed a couple records this year (see below for the links) and has found a new, super fun outlet for getting her flying fix.

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Episode 157- Jonny Durand: riding Tsunamis, chasing records, comps and learning

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Jonny Durand is a long-time Red Bull sponsored hang gliding pilot who’s been ranked #1 in the world multiple times. We’ve all seen the incredible footage of Jonny flying the “tsunami” morning glory phenomenon that sets up in Northern Australia, but Jonny has been chasing the sky crack in many different ways since his early days more than 20 years ago. He’s chased the world distance record in Texas and Brazil and came up just shy of the record from Zapata on that fateful day back in 2012 flying with his friend Dustin Martin, who still has the record at 761 km; he competes in race to goal comps regularly around the world, and has recently taken up paragliding.

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Episode 156- Eduardo Garza (Team Mex 1) and into the Crazy

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Want to listen to some crazy stories? Eduardo Garza (Team Mex 1) competed in his second Red Bull X-Alps this year. Eduardo has also competed in two X-Pyr’s, and he’s done all of it while working full time in a very intense and demanding engineering job. Most X-Alps pilots are full time, sponsored professional athletes. Their work is flying paragliders. And most of those who do well in the race also live in and regularly compete in the Alps. How does Eduardo go about finding an edge against the best in the world given limited time and resources? Eduardo takes us well beyond the live tracking so we can see, feel, and hear about some of the madness of the 2021 race.

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