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

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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Episode 111- Steph Davis and the taking the road a LOT less traveled

Steph Davis is a professional climber and base jumper who lives in Moab, Utah. Steph grew up on the east coast and originally pursued music and literature. Then she moved out to Colorado to get her Masters and briefly pursued a career as a lawyer before climbing pulled her onto a totally different life path. She’s been a professional athlete and has made a living through climbing since 1996 and later skydiving and base jumping.

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The Flying Gear Post

As 2019 comes to a close I’m trying to wrap up some loose ends. One of them is to fulfill a request from many of our podcast listeners to review and talk about the flying gear I use and why.

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Episode 91- Rick Heatley and the pucker factor

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

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Episode 76- The Ask Me Anything show! And a fun little story of a Big day:)

It was a remarkable week- nearly 1,000 km in three flights, all of them one personal best after another. But the big one is a pretty wild story in extreme conditions in huge terrain on a very marginal day at best, and one that probably should never be repeated. Top speeds of 115-120 km / hr in the flats is one thing, but flying over 6 major mountain ranges from Idaho deep into Montana at that speed is certainly living on the edge!

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Episode 57- Phil Glutz and Confidence, Complacency and Chasing it

Phil sends big lines in the biggest terrain in the Alps and decided a couple decades ago to ditch his engineering career because the sky was calling. An Australian native, Phil discovered Zermatt over twenty years ago and made it his home. We discuss the business of tandem flying and the inherent risks involved; the importance of confidence when flying XC; how to “own it”; the best flying sites in the Alps; the call of the big mountains; how to make a career in flight; what makes the “perfect” student; and how to always be wary of complacency. Enjoy! 

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Garmin InReach Best Practices for Adventurers

In the past couple years it’s been really heartening to see pretty much every pilot on launch use an InReach or a SPOT satellite tracking device. And I’m seeing them more and more in the backcountry with skiers, mountain bikers, climbers and people playing in remote areas. This is a very good thing. What isn’t great is that many people are not really familiar with their device and not utilizing them properly for messaging, maps, and hardly know how powerful they are, and this can become a serious problem when things go wrong, which is when an InReach immediately becomes the most valuable thing you own.

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Unscrambling Insurance- Are you covered?

If you go in hard paragliding, hangliding, speedflying or skydiving are you covered? Many, many people find this a very murky subject. Traveling abroad? What about medivac? What if you need a heli rescue? Repatriation to your home country for care? This article should help you out.

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Behind the scenes- Preparing for the Red Bull X-Alps

This post is about some of the random but critical things that go into the lead-up to the event. Obviously you fly as much as you can and when you aren’t flying you’re pounding your body. I’m not going to talk about that aspect as that should be pretty obvious, and the physical training I do would be five blog posts just to touch the surface and probably of very little use for 99.9% of pilots so we’ll leave that a mystery. And lets face it, you would have to be pretty twisted to want to do it! What I thought might be interesting is all the side stuff that is so critical when it comes to having a successful campaign.

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