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.
Read More...Tag Archives: review
Into the Lightness- Review of the Niviuk Skin 2 P and the Roamer 2
After 30+ years of testing and innovation I imagine the climbing community is getting pretty giddy. I recently received Niviuk’s new Skin 2 P single surface wing. At a measly 1.9 kg I figured it was going to feel and fly pretty weird but when I learned from Fabien Blanco at Flyeo during a recent podcast that pilots were doing 100k triangles on these certified wings I was pretty excited to give it a try.
Read More...Garmin InReach vs Spot – When your life depends on it
I get asked by a lot of pilots about which tracker, SPOT or Delorme is better. This post is an attempt at a comprehensive answer to that question. I’ve used both extensively, all over the world. I would never fly without a tracker. We all got to see the value of using one first hand at the Sun Valley PWC in 2012 when expert pilot British pilot Guy Anderson disappeared for two days after a crash in a very remote part of Idaho. The local community pulled together immediately and launched a major search, which involved 4X4 ATV’s, Dirtbikes, Black Hawk Helicopters, and thousands of man hours. The search was successful and Guy is fine. But if he’d had a tracking device on that day, the rescue would have been a much simpler affair and saved thousands of dollars (not to mention a mountain of stress). So, the moral here is that if you are doing something remote and slightly dangerous like flying, you NEED to use a tracking device, endstop. If you don’t, you’re an idiot.
Read More...Two Flights, One Opinion- a Review of the Niviuk IcePeak 7 Pro
I had only one day left in Colombia and the weather looked perfect. Jared Anderson and I and a bunch of other pilots headed up to a launch I’d never used. I unpacked the wing, and much to my amazement and many other curious pilots the first thing I noticed was the lack of lines. Only two A’s on each riser, only 6 lines in total. And the badger bars were MUCH higher than they had been on the 6. The higher aspect was evident in the wider, slimmer profile but it wasn’t until I got airborne (silly easy to launch by the way) that I noticed the absolutely tiny air inlets in the shark nose. You could see that the wing pressurizes instantly but must be incredibly efficient through the air as there must be little to no exchange of air.
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