#208 A Love Affair with Flying- Phil Hystek

November 30, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

“Flat out Phil” Hystek has been instructing free flight in Australia longer than anyone. It began with a fascination of hang gliding in the 70’s, becoming a hang gliding instructor in the late 80’s in California, being “forced” into paragliding in the early 90’s and his energizer batteries are going stronger than ever today. Phil has racked up 171,000 meters of vertical ascent in his back yard to date this year (at age 65!), just returned from a 4 weeks of vol-biv flying in Bir, India and is a story teller for the ages. We travel the world, meet the legends, pull off the absurd in Telluride, pack it hard in Bali, and find out who thrives in this sport and who should maybe take up a different activity.

#207- Behind the Scenes of the Red Bull X-Alps with Tarquin Cooper

November 16, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

Tarquin Cooper has been the voice of the Red Bull X-Alps the last few editions and this year was joined by your host and four-time X-Alps competitor Gavin McClurg to add some commentating and live footage from the air. In this episode the two of us sit down to share our own unique perspective of the race as we chased the athletes and teams around the Alps and had our own adventures (and misadventures!) in our mostly frantic attempts to keep up.

Bonus Episode! Decoding the Invisible with Calef Letorney

November 3, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

The bonus episode on leaving the nest with Calef was such a big hit we decided to do another show, call it the “201” version, or the next step. At this stage pilots are a couple hundred hours in. They are chasing cross country, getting more comfortable with bumpy air, they’ve hopefully done an SIV and are actively trying to decode the invisible. We take a deep dive into finding the special sauce of flying XC.

#206- A Walk (and Fly) down Memory Lane with Paul Guschlbauer

October 27, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

Paul Guschlbauer has been on the podium more than anyone in the Red Bull X-Alps other than of course Chrigel. He began his X-Alps journey back in 2011 when by his own account, he was a pretty beginner pilot. But that year the weather was horrific and he is a beast on the ground and he managed to nab 3rd place. This result lead to becoming a Red Bull athlete, a spot in that year’s Dolomitimann, and the rest is…well at least history in the making as Paul is far from done! This year’s Red Bull X-Alps was Paul’s 8th edition of the incredible race and a lot has happened over the more than a decade of racing.

#204 – Flying High with Martin Jovanoski

October 2, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

Martin Jovanoski has been flying his entire life. Sailplanes, Hang gliders, Paragliders- in any and all forms. He got started in accuracy, moved into cross country competitions and pretty much does it all when it comes to free-flight. He’s one of the big reasons Krushevo, Macedonia has become such a mecca for competitions, and he instructs, guides, flies tandems, designs wings, consults and more. I’ve been lucky enough to compete with Martin many times in World Cups and hands down Martin is the cream of the crop when it comes to unabashed love for our sport. He’s always got the biggest smile on launch. He’s the pilot who seems to have retained that first flight wonder of flying we all have throughout his long and very storied career.

Bonus Episode! Leaving the Nest with Calef Letorney

August 18, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

Right after Calef and I recorded the #201 Podcast he reached out to say he thought he’d missed an opportunity to talk about instruction, namely that very fragile time in a pilot’s career when they first get their license and are sent off on their own to figure it out. So here it is, a veritable primer on leaving the nest.

#201- Calef Letorney and Community, Confidence, and Cloudwhispering

August 17, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

Calef Letorney was a professional paddler back in the early 2000’s who made the switch to flying and has never looked back. When you think of places to fly in the world you don’t often put the North East US on the list. There’s a lot of trees, cloudbase is low, weather if fickle. But that’s where Calef found himself after learning to fly in the Colorado Rockies and his desire to send meant the first thing that had to happen was to get good at flying, and it’s hard to get good without other good pilots to fly with, so he had to get others up to snuff as well. So Calef became an instructor, then an SIV instructor, then a guide…and the rest fell into place.

#200- Going pear shaped in Pakistan

August 4, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

Pilots and friends Pierre Carter, Jeremy Holdcroft, Scott Baker, Richard “Barbs” Barber and legendary mountaineer Andy De Klerk set off this June to attempt to break the altitude record by flying up the Baltoro Glacier to K2 in Pakistan. Everything was going well…until it wasn’t. Andy suffers a heart attack (in the air!), and Scott breaks the rule of not making a tricky situation worse by blowing a landing on the wrong side of the river and suffers a broken ankle and leg, which turns into an epic on its own. A wild story from a wild part of the world and we break it down into everything that went right, everything that went wrong, and lessons we can all take on board to make our community safer and more prepared in the mountains.

Episode 199- A story of avoiding inconvenience with Alejandro Barañac

July 26, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

We have a saying in our sport, “never avoid inconvenience.” But it’s easier said than done. An easy field a kilometer away from the train station, or a really tricky field right next to it? Landing in strong wind across a river that means a long walk, or landing in strong wind near a road that will have rotor? In the 21′ Vercofly a number of pilots were injured. Some due to rowdy conditions, but several were just because of pilots making poor decisions. This is one of the latter stories from a first-time hike and fly competitor, Alejandro Barañac.

Episode 198- Going Big in…Israel? A flight to remember with Eliya Zemmour

July 12, 2023 by Gavin McClurg

Eliya Zemmour is an Isreali-born climber, endurance athlete, hike and fly guidebook author and…formerly incarcerated conman, but that’s another story to be told soon on the podcast! In this show we take a deep dive into his recent 228km flight from the southern tip of Israel past Jerusalem, which broke the country record.