#234 A lifetime in the clouds with Chuck Smith

Free flight tends to attract some rather big personalities to its crutches. And among its most interesting and passionate devotees is American pilot and pioneer Chuck Smith. Chuck learned back east on the dunes in the US with his brother in the late 80’s under the tutelage of climbing legend John Bouchard. From there the search for airtime and the love of the flying community brought him all over the world. The people he’s impacted or been impacted by is an impressive rolodex of the history of flying.

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Episode 145- Standing on the shoulders of giants with Mitchell McAleer

Mitchell McAleer properly crashed a hang glider on literally his first flight in the early 70’s. But he shook it off and was in the right place at the right time and had the right mentors and right attitude and eventually became the winningest aerobatics pilot in history. Southern California was one of the true meccas of hang gliding in the 70’s and 80’s. It was the home of UP during their reign with the Comet, remains the home of Wills Wing and was where Mitch took on the sport in his teens and remains today after nearly 45 years of obsessed flying. Mitch has an encyclopedic memory and this podcast is a fascinating and at times totally unbelievable stroll down memory lane.

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Episode 122- Storytime with James “Kiwi” Oroc

James “Kiwi” Oroc is a journalist, photographer, artist and pilot born in the small South Pacific nation of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Since 1998 he has been pursuing and reporting on the cutting edge of extreme sports in more than 40 countries around the globe and has written three books- the non-fiction cult classic Tryptamine Palace, The New Psychedelic Revolution and the just-published fictional Under the Influence, 20 Tales of Psychedelic Noir and has been flying paragliders since the mid 80’s, when gliders had 7 cells!

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Episode 66- Andy Hediger and becoming an Airman

If it flies, Andy Hediger flies it (or jumps out of it!). Sailplanes, trikes, hang gliders, light-weight airplanes, wingsuits, Swift, Archaeopteryx, Virus, but he rates the paraglider as the king of them all. The developer of the D-Bag, Andy was there at the absolute beginning of Acro and cross country, sewing some of the very first wings and his passion and love of the sport is as strong now as it was in the beginning. The “Airman” has pushed the limits of flying, safety, instruction and certification from the advent of the sport and was one of the first pilots to develop SIV to help make the sport more safe, and why most schools still get it wrong and why so many accidents keep happening.

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Episode 41- Chris Santacroce and Set Ups for Success

Chris Santacroce has been a pillar in human flight for nearly thirty years. A long time Red Bull Air Force athlete; co-owner and founder of Superfly Paragliding in Utah; founder of Project Airtime which allows the disabled to fly; total air Jedi on anything that flies- from powered trikes to wingsuits and everything in between, Chris has been one of the most requested guests for the show and now here it is.

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Episode 29- Larry Tudor from Scary Origins to Radical Records

Larry Tudor was known as the “Dark Prince” back in the day. We roll the clock way back to 1973 when Larry learned how to fly his first hanglider in the seated position (yep, pre-prone days) on a wing that got a worse glide ratio than today’s smallest speed wings. The stories in this episode are going to make your head spin. Remember when hangies flew the Owens every day in the summer? Guys tumbling out of the sky and not using reserves? Flying without instruments? Larry was the first person to fly over 200 miles (in 1983!) and was the first person to fly over 300 miles. His 308 mile record from Hobbs, New Mexico in 1994 wasn’t beaten for a decade. In the mid 80’s Larry was widely regarded as one of the best hang gliders in the world and this conversation covers a lot of awesome ground. Scary close calls, whorehouses, guns, cowboys, flying in tornados, trouble with the police, flying with air force bombers and early towing nightmares- this podcast is a glimpse into a crazy world of the pioneers who laid the ground in free flight.

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Episode 5 Nate Scales and Staying in the Game

Nate “Papa” Scales got his first flight in 1991 on a glider that had 11 cells in Sun Valley, Idaho. The next day he moved to Utah to learn how to fly and hasn’t looked back since. I’ve never met anyone as passionate as Nate is about flying nylon and string and he’s even more psyched today to go big than ever. We cover a LOT of ground in this hysterical episode. Nate discusses the value of competitions; his only (and very wild) reserve toss; risk and safety; his recent decision to step down to an ENC glider after flying comp gliders for more than 15 years; his “dream” line; learning from failure; and we go way back in time and talk about the days of taking pictures of waypoints before there was GPS; his 2007 X-Alps campaign and much more.

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