Malin Lobb is the co-owner of Flyeo paragliding in Annecy with Fabien Blanco. He was one of the founders of the British Racing Academy, is a keen world cup comp pilot and an experienced SIV and paragliding instructor. In this information-packed episode that our editor called “One of the Best Episodes EVER!” Malin discusses wing control from A to Z- how to approach SIV; what to be thinking about when choosing a wing; the pitfalls of wing certification and relying on “passive safety”; the required skills to fly a 2 liner; the dangers of object fixation and why it occurs; why we freeze under stress; learning spirals correctly to prevent black-out; why the 360 to clean exit tells an instructor what skills you have; the 4 SIV/ piloting fundamentals (these will surprise you!); totally avoiding ALL cascading events; utilizing the FEAR acronym (feeling, eye, affirmation, relax) to decrease stress; mitigating your flying currency after even very short breaks; the reason most accidents happen; how much SIV is “right”; what makes a good pilot; NO, it’s not just “putting your hands up!”; when a pilot is ready for a 2 liner; “cleaning” a glider; efficiently clearing cravats; why you should see every collapse; building the foundation early; aggravating and cancelling roll and why it’s important; misconceptions of wing control, misconceptions of wing certification; how an ingrained culture of ignorance in our sport leads to so much mayhem and a ton more. This episode is jammed with really critical information for pilots at every level.
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The ethos of Flyeo and how Covid has affected the business and plans for the future
The art of instruction
Learning spirals
The four SIV/pilotage fundamentals- 1) trust your harness, 2) disassociate your arms from your body, 3) brake range, 4) situation awareness
The FEAR acronym
Flying currency and the dangers of even very short breaks
The most common cause of accidents
Becoming an autonomous pilot
What makes a good pilot?
There’s no blanket response
Regardless of your wing control, there are certain situations that there is no recovery
2 Liners- there’s the skill side, and the confidence side
How much bar?
Experience in wing control and experience in XC- they are NOT the same
“Cleaning” a glider
Cancelling roll and active flying
The gateway to acro- the wingover
Misconceptions of SIV and specific maneuvers
The right thing to do is the right thing at the time. ADAPTION is key.
The massive problem of relying on certification and passive safety
Mentioned in the Show: Fabien Blanco, Pal Takats, Theo De Blic, Valle De Bravo, Cody Mittanck, Jeff Shapiro, Charles Cazaux, Seiko Fukuoka, Russ Ogden, Jocky Sanderson, Stefan Bernhard, Alex Robe
Speaker 1 (13s): Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase. Mayhem one of the things that all of you who have so far done the survey and put out a survey a couple of weeks ago, after the best in show on how we could improve the Podcast. Now that we're six years in, have no plans to stop. So it just takes a few minutes. If you haven't filled it out yet, it's on the website. Cloudbase mayhem.com/survey, getting some great feedback there and, and especially on things we can improve.
So a critical feedback is of course welcome. And if you haven't done it, please do so. And there's schwag to be given out a little, a bass DNS books on the beginner's guide paragliding, and I'm going to throw a bunch of Cloudbase ma'am schwag in to that truckers hats and Padagonia and t-shirts and stuff. So thanks if you've done it really appreciate it. Thanks so much. And if you haven't, I go check it out again, it only takes a few minutes and it's pretty fun to get all this feedback and lots of suggestions for new questions and that kind of thing, which I wasn't able to incorporate into this show is that we just put that out, but definitely we'll in the future.
So thanks everybody again. Cloudbase mayhem.com forward slash survey. This talk is with a friend, a good friend of mine Malin Lobb British comp pilot, who is also the co-owner of Flyeo with Fabian Blanco, who I've had on the show there they're in Annecy. They do a ton of SIV instruction, probably one of the leading schools in the world on SIV instruction and also tandems and gear and a just general pilot instruction.
So Malin was Jason comps is pretty hard, still is a few years back in my head, up with Fabian to work on his own SIV and decided to become an instructor and has, so we mostly has written lately quite a bit about flying two liners and also the ins and outs of SIV and how it's really changed over the years to accommodate the newer, you know, shark nose, peer, middle shaped wings, sharp, sharp nose plan forms, and how SIV has really become, especially for, Flyeo not so much about checklists, but about adapting to each individual's pilot skills.
And so this is a long when we, we spent almost two hours barely touch the surface. So we will do a follow-up show with Malin. Please reach out to me after you listen to this one and please stick through the whole thing. There is a ton of really super solid advice and information here. A bunch of things that I'd actually never heard before. So a lot of stuff on safety and improvement, and just becoming better autonomous with Highland or things like not relying on a passive safety and the problems of certification and where it gets people into trouble.
So a lot of great stuff here, but we decided after the show that we really needed to do a follow-up and I thought maybe the best way to do that would be to have you listen to, to reach out with any questions for Malin after you listen to this, if there's things we missed, if there's other things you'd like to ask him, just reach out via the website or Instagram, Facebook, whatever way you like to communicate. And we'll do a, follow-up ask me anything show with Malin. And unfortunately I have to apologize that the sound quality on this one on Malin side, there is a fuzz that comes in every once in a while, and this was not something we were able to edit out as miles, our editor, who's amazing.
He can do a lot of things, but this one was just going to be something that would take hours and hours and hours to deal with. And one of the feedbacks we got in the survey was that often the sound quality is not great on the other end. And it's because we do all these via Skype. That really depends on the internet connection. And a lot of other things, we don't have the budget or the time or the ability to send out microphones as we would like to, to our guests, because they are over the world that they're in the States.
You don't hear me. That'd be one thing we could do it, but unfortunately we can't. So just bear with it. It goes to the back. You know, you won't notice it after a while. It just becomes part of the thing without further delay, please enjoy this great talk with someone who's made it, his living, a min paragliding and Free flight, really talented pot, pilot, and talented instructor enjoy. Malin great to have you on
Speaker 2 (4m 51s): In the show. I've been wanting to talk to you ever since you are very kindly trim my very out of whack, a glider after the XR this last year In and Annecy, and man much has happened in the world since then. So we'll get into some of that, but I'd, I'd love to be on before we talk to miners SIV and some of the stuff you've been writing about very well lately, it's been some great articles and thoughts on, on flying two liners is just you're history. How did you end up? You don't have the right accent for France.
How did you end up in an Annecy and how'd you end up with Flyeo and in working with Fabian. Thanks we'll have with me. So it's a bit of a long-winded story, but I'd sold my, my business in the UK and I had a bit of time on my hands. So that was around the time that we created the, the British paragliding Racing Academy for as much as I wanted more training in comps. So I kind of set up to how to train myself as well as parcel, not knowledge as I love doing.
And I'm on a bit of training Fabien before and
Speaker 3 (5m 58s): Flyeo SIV wides. And I got talking to him from point of training me to then be able to train the Racing Academy. And that year I was following the comp scene around Europe. So I've got to talking with Fabien and He he said, yeah, come along. He's trained a lot of SIV instructors. And we started our trip in Annecy and then went around Europe and ended up back there.
And the wife was, I knew I wanted to emigrate, but the wife wasn't so sure. And she kind of got into the groove as we, as we traveled around the funnily enough, she said it all the way around, like, yeah. Or I think in Portugal or the first time that she was like, yeah, I've lived here, but something about France, I want to live in for an answer for all the way around. And then we ended up backing Annecy and she was like, do you know what else is probably the nicest space we've been on the move here. So combining that with the fact that I could do some training with, with Fabien, this was the obvious place to immigrate to.
And when I started with like, I was very casual, it was basically Fabien was going to, you know, train me to, to learn dark art of SIV instructing. And then the more we worked together, the more we wanted to work together. So rather than me, you know, going off and doing my own thing, I was, I brought into the business and we've been there ever since.
Speaker 4 (7m 26s): And, and was that you're business in the UK two or is this your first paragliding flying business?
Speaker 3 (7m 32s): Yeah, it was, I've had a few businesses. My last one was in energy efficiency and carbon trading and that sort of thing. And, and throughout that business is when I was getting more into competitions and it afforded me the time off to, to do comps and do the training I I needed to do.
Speaker 4 (7m 50s): And I mean that our comp, our comp season, and you're kind of got shredded this year with, with COVID. But is that still kind of high on your priority list? I know you just added a little one to the family. You've got a little one year old at home. Is it still, is, is working at Flyeo and doing all the instructing, allowing you to still chase comps?
Speaker 3 (8m 12s): Yeah, for sure. I didn't do one comp this year. This year is actually the worst year since I started paragliding for my own personal development, with my own personal flying July and August, we were super busy doing town. Those are the 340 tandems in those two months, but He yeah, so we were doing nine, 10 times a day, but my brain doesn't compute that that's like flying. And so my own, my own personal flying, and I did less than 10 hours, like combining acro hiking fly and cross country.
So, you know, I usually do 200 or at least a 90% of that sliding in, in comps. So it's been a weird year where I, you know, I've plateaued not progressed. So having a baby, I've got a really supportive wife. She's awesome. So that just a joy to the, the, the complications when I'm at home, but I still got to go and I'm still got to go and play.
Speaker 2 (9m 15s): So this will be a question that's annoying to the listener because I know they're all scratched on the bed. They get to go to liners and comps and SIV and stuff. But I guess got to ask is when we were, we, you know, we stayed and disarmed and I I've, you know, I kind of cut my teeth and Annecy back in the day in terms of, you know, flying in the Alps is an American. That's just one of my favorite places in the world. And I think I would align with you if I, you know, just had to choose right now to live somewhere else. I think I tried to, and we actually looked at a place there a and we were kind of getting all excited about potentially buying a place in that zone, kind of the area.
Cause it's cheaper than Annecy of course. And what is it hard to immigrate there? It was that tricky coming from the UK. Is that not a big deal?
Speaker 3 (10m 5s): No. I mean, at the time we were doing our, our Europe trip when Brexit was, was voted on, I mean that's a year ago now. So we moved over, we bought a house, we bought in to the business of Laila, my uncle, a five-year-old girl as well. She's in a French school, you know, we've done all the, all the right things for Brexit it's happened. But up until Brexit, we've got the freedom to move and live here without any visas, any, any problems at all.
So it was, it was a very easy move on. Now we've got caught this seizure, which is now changing and being called a Brexit card, which is much worse. It hasn't really changed our, our status when we have to live here for five years before we can get full residency, which we like to do. But no, it was, it was a very easy move to the language. On the other hand is, is going to be a lifelong project to me
Speaker 2 (11m 7s): And I was going to stay. So how was your French before you started and how has it now?
Speaker 3 (11m 12s): Yeah, I'm a French before was like pretty non-existent and now I am a comprehension is a pretty good, but the problem is like, you can get to a point very quickly where you can go into the shops and all the things in and do that sort of stuff. But language is about conveying emotion and talking in the past tense and a future tense and, and all that sorta stuff. The reason why it hasn't progressed is if I was people can't understand how we can live in a, a country and not speak the language well, but in Flyeo everyone talks such a good English that I can, especially when, on teaching such a long days on, I just talk English all day, all day, and then I'll go home to an English wife and speak English.
Yeah,
Speaker 2 (11m 58s): You got to be forced to do it. You need a French girlfriend that you just need to get the hell.
Speaker 3 (12m 7s): Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12m 8s): And she's so supportive in other ways, Malin you just got to bend the curve there a little bit. Well, I mean, so, so are most of the students that fly you English speaking? I would, I would've thought you guys had a lot of French students and stuff to do is just Fabian. Just take them.
Speaker 3 (12m 25s): Yeah. So we've been a team of 15, so we've really eight or nine instructors and then the rest of the working in the office. And so we were about a 70, 30 split, 70 French to, to 30% English or English speaking anyway. It's so I, I take on everyone. That's, doesn't speak French basically. So from all over the world, we get people from India or Asians, Americans Canadians like that everywhere.
So yeah, I do with that, the other, the French instructors deal on the, on the front side, but we are changing a lot actually the next year we, since coming on, I double the, with double the size of Flyeo in the last few years. That was it. That was part of me coming on, was using my business experience from four and, you know, polishing things up. So we could, we could increase what we do and we, and Fabien, we have now decided after this weird year that actually, we, we both wanted to downsize rather than go bigger.
We just got to the point where we re-organized enough that we can do that. And, and we just thought why we haven't had time to do what we used to do. Like I used to test a lot of reserves over the Lake. We used to have like a lot of chats and meetings about pedagogy and, and how we want things to progress. And what I love about the ethos here in about Fabien. And especially when he, he was training me, it's never, he never told me how are things where it was always me discovering it for myself.
And he was eager to hear my advice as, as I was his, you know, and after 20 years and you know, he's one of the best instructors in the world. He wanted to be challenged. And, and that, that ethos is what I think makes things evolve. And there's like is so important. I think that that's why SIV is evolved here on maybe not so much in other places, because, you know, as soon as you think this is a, and this is right, you're never going to question, you know, other ways and that's, yeah, that's really important for me.
Speaker 2 (14m 43s): It seems like you too. I mean, I I've spent not a ton of time in it enough time of Fabien to know that he's just got this vicious, awesome personalities,
Speaker 4 (14m 53s): Just so magnetic and, and enthusiastic and, and inspiring. It seems like you guys have threaded this needle of getting into the business that you shouldn't have gotten into. If you love flying. I mean, we hear that all the time, right. That, you know, don't make your passion, your job, but it seems like you guys are, have figured that out. I mean, I, I love hearing that you're, you're both trying to downsize cause it's, it's certainly you could, you know, you could make it about the money, but then that road leads to nowhere.
Speaker 3 (15m 24s): Yeah, exactly. And it's gonna make us more creative again, downsizing. And we was young. We were spending so much time like managing and keeping this busy, big business going that the pedagogy kind of creative side on how we wanted to really give more back to the students. That's the thing that we've been lacking in the last couple of years. So for next year, we're dropping down to me and Fabienne and then to instructors who will help us on, on launch and they will do the initiation and a half courses.
So like a P one P two courses, and we still got some single skin mountain courses that they'll run, but it will mean that me and Fabien can work kind of a week on week off. And on the week off, we can, we can do some testing. We can go into the mountains, we want to develop some more specialist courses, mountain courses. And, but it's, it's that time that you really, you uncover, you know, new things to be able to pass on to students. Whereas if you just working the whole time, boring BombBomb, you just get into a rhythm and nothing changes.
Speaker 4 (16m 35s): I really want to get into SIV before we do is I'd love to understand is more about the business in terms of if you had, if you broke it down and in terms of the gear sales and tandems SIV instruction, pilot instruction, does, is it all pretty even, or what what's the, what's the biggest thing that Flyeo does?
Speaker 3 (16m 59s): SIV probably, and then a small margin under that tandems, but tandems are just July and August because SIV is banned over the Lake in July and August. This is no, I didn't know that there was no. Yeah, no, SIV a tool. So we switched Phil on to tandems and that is actually still going to be a focus for next year. We're still going to run a team of eight for tandems next year, but to be less involved like ourselves with it.
Speaker 4 (17m 27s): And is that just because there's just too much traffic on the Lake or there's just too much traffic in the air? Why, why did they ban it?
Speaker 3 (17m 34s): Yeah, it's both that its the beaches, a PAC, the boat's on the Lake. There's I think in August there is something like two and a half thousand takeoffs every day from four o'clock. So yeah, if you, if you add like in, in April and June, we can have up to 10
Speaker 2 (17m 54s): SAV
Speaker 3 (17m 56s): Is out there. There's too many foreign students, a lot of people coming to, to, to learn or on the courses and things like that. You can't add to groups of, of SIV as well.
Speaker 2 (18m 7s): Wow. Okay. All right. So let's, let's switch the SIV email. And then what about you, you started off by getting involved to improve your own skills and you know, becoming a better comp pilot. What have you learned between that period and now in terms of how, how people learn, what they should learn? What's the most critical stuff and we've all seen some, a Seiko and Charles is a video's, which are all done there in Annecy as well.
You know? I mean, it seems like this is something that is dynamically changing to me.
Speaker 3 (18m 45s): Yeah. What have been the hardest thing? Well, after setting up the race Academy and for me that that was really about creating and then Russell and I'm going to go involved and, and they will bring it more of the pedagogy side of the things. So, you know what? I was more of the, the pencil pusher for that, the, the hardest part for me from I shadowed Fabien from about a year, pretty much learning the ropes, which I'm so thankful for because you know, people that just, you know, good pilots that then just set up and start teaching SIV is the hardest thing for me was becoming a good instructor.
Instructing is an art in itself. And I think there's, there's a bit of a culture now where good pilots come SIV instructors. And even though they're good pilots, they're missing the art of instruction. How much
Speaker 2 (19m 41s): Just, I guess you got to cut in on this because of their eye. For me, I've never done any SIV instruction, but how, how helpful is it for your own flying to become a good SIV instructor? Because it's a, you know, I, I sometimes you're, I would be baffled trying to explain from the ground what somebody needs to do in the air that things are happening so quickly or you certainly feel like they do when you're new at it. That must be, I would imagine that really translates to understanding what you're doing much better as well, going through that process of seeing it from the ground.
Speaker 3 (20m 22s): Yeah. It's, it's a very different form of instructing to a normal instructing. So when someone is doing their French formation and they want to add SIV as a part, you know, they very good French instructors, they then come in and do that as their sites. And then you noticed the differences because when you are doing I'm a beginning, of course, and someone's gently coming, doing gentle westerns, everything's happening very slowly. And they've got plenty of time to talk to the students.
And you know, it's, it's not that quick that when the students in the box and you are doing dynamic things, you have got to be on the buttons straight away. And you've got to be able to eat, takes a lot of experience to know in what situation, what different things can go wrong, because you need to know, okay, they're doing this maneuver. So these amount of things can go wrong. So the more you do it, the more you just, you just instantly know that when the, the Wing makes this movement, that's going to happen.
So you can be bang on it straight away, because it is a much more fast paced form of instructing, but the fear comes into it a lot more as well. So the people's approach to SIV instructing should always be from understanding how we behave as, as humans under stress. And that's how everyone should, should be based on their courses. Because when you are overloaded with stress as a human, you get the tunnel vision.
There's a lot more research into this in, in skydiving where even instructors of the ground without cutting their main away. Because when you get overloaded, you got the tunnel vision, which is the same as getting memory loss because you're so fixated object fixation on something, everything else drifts into the, into the background. So if you push our students too hard, they'll end up not absorbing any of this information. So it's as much it's one of the, the skills that you could say is being, is being quick on the radio and knowing what's going to happen, but that's not, that's just one, one skill of instructing the whole philosophy behind that is far more complicated in terms of how, how to deal with humans and in that scenario.
Speaker 2 (22m 43s): So how are you, how are you able to read that on the fly? Are you able to just see that, you know, okay, so do an, do an asymmetric frontal collapse and there, they just kind of do it weekly. Like they don't, they don't do it with full authority and, and then you can kind of tell, okay, they're really hesitant. Or, or is it more, are you figuring that out on the way up to launch, you already kinda know just by reading them, by looking at them, seeing how your, how much fears is overriding their ability.
Speaker 3 (23m 15s): So In in the morning briefing when we sit down and we have a chat, if they've had any problems in the ER, how long they've been flying, what they want out of the course, that that whole part gives a bit of an indication. And then we start, we do a lot of work on rotations because unwanted rotations to the ground is the biggest killer in our sport. So learning about how to fully master rotations, exit from a rotation, it's really important. So you gently build into deeper and deeper turn and spirals and a maneuver called the rapid exit is the best single maneuver to judge your pilots proficiency.
So, you know, when I say let's do it, let's do a tight turn to the wind, gets to a 45 degree Mark. You can instantly see how a pilot's feeling by how readily they, they want to go into a spiral, how much energy they're willing to, to take on it, you know, within the first role. And you know how to measure the pilot is,
Speaker 2 (24m 19s): Are you still getting a lot of people locking in? I mean, it's, this is the spiral still. I mean, I, other instructors I've talked to in, in the past of they get, they get a lot of awareness. Isn't the word I'm looking for. But just the, the spiral is still kind of spooks them in, in terms of teaching it because people can so quickly get, like you said, tunnel vision, or even a blackout.
Hmm.
Speaker 3 (24m 51s): Yeah. It was because we, we teach spiral is very modern or differently here, but for the last 20 years or so, ASPIRA was taught that you go to the nose down, you hold it for, you know, four or five seconds. And then you come out and like what on the spot spiral was like, and no one is gonna maintain a stable knows down the spiral, any recreational car that is going to be able to hold that for about four or five seconds. So we, by the time they get to the spirals, we reteach a regulated spiral to the time they get to that point, they've done a lot of rotation.
So rotations from rapid X, it's a really learning about what brakes speeds up a spiral on which brake exits and then collapses and rotations. Cause it's the same rotational family, how to exit with a crevasse. So by the time we were doing spiral regulation, they've already built up knowledge of being in control of a rotation with the exit rate, with their weight shift. So people generally don't get out of Control by that point, because we, we don't move on to a maneuver until they've demonstrated that they have an understanding of what's going on.
So then when we do regulate it spirals, they dip in a little bit past their comfort zone, which might be a 60% angle. Then they slow it down and before they are going to get thrown out. So they've still got the trajectory of that body and enough movement drop back in a drop down, back in the past that comfort zone and to squeeze outside, rate that, release it, the squeeze it and release it. And you're try and get this rhythm going where you're going to pass your comfort zone then nearly out. So you're taking a breather and the whole time being situationally aware of how your vision's going, you know, you're tensing your leg, muscles, stomach muscles, buttocks, hyperventilating, throughout that.
And you know, people feeling Control, and that generally people are scared of spirals because of the unknown. It's like how deep does a rabbit hole go? What happens when I go nose down? And it's also a feeling of lack of control. So when you teach you right, when they've got an understanding of rotations, and then they do that and they realize how nimble the glider is and how much, if the uncomfortable they pull out on a little bit and go back in, for me, it doesn't matter if they're not going completely nose down and regulating from those down to 60 nose down, like a really high descent rate.
If they're playing at like 45 degrees, 20 degrees, 45, 20, it's not overly impressive descent rate, but they'll go and use it. And that's the key thing about SIV is for people to be able to take certain maneuvers and go and do them. Because if you do a maneuver four or five times in a, on a course, and then you don't do another course for a year, you back to square. One is if you can go on to the next day and say, Oh, I've got to be a hight to lose those spirals who are great.
And you can just play with that energy. Then over time you will build up more and more confidence, more and more resistance to the G-Force. So it's not about proving to me that you can go absolutely boast to the wall. It's about proving that you're in full Control and then you will go and use it as a tool.
Speaker 4 (28m 15s): What are the, what are the kinds of critical? And maybe this is just different for every pilot, but what are the critical things that, you know, when you give a high five at the end of the course, you feel like people have gotten, what are the most important skills that pilots need to get out of SIV?
Speaker 3 (28m 36s): So we teach the four fundamentals basically as well. And that is what I look for in a pilot, in a good pilot. So there's, there's those. And then the key things that they should understand our rotations on the four fundamentals for me, so that the, the first one is, is your body position. And all of these fundamentals go and they look at how we behave as humans.
And we do things instinctively on the stress that are detrimental to our flying. So our body position in a harness, a harness is a designed that you should be leaning back and fully supported and a natural instinct of ours. When we get scared is we lean forward and that completely changes the geometry of the harness. We then have a, a strap that Slack and you get this forward and backwards movement like you are on a, on a rocking horse, and that makes you much more unstable, a much more likely to lose your balance.
That leads into the second fundamental. I could go into much more detail with this bolt.
Speaker 2 (29m 47s): Great. I want to pause on that. That's actually really important because you know what, we were often taught that you need to keep yourself from getting twisted up, you know, to sit forward and put your feet up underneath you. And in you're saying really it's, it's important to keep your body. I'm assuming you still wanna do that if you're, if you're about to get twisted up, but, but it's, it's important to remain relaxed and, and sitting back in your harness, like they're meant to be flown
Speaker 3 (30m 16s): Well, even with twists, if you even in the pod harnesses these days, back in the day when there was some, some super supplying ones, but nowadays your upper body position in a pothole is actually quite similar to a seated harness and a good point. And, and when you bend your legs, that equilibrium between where your knees are, to where your head is quite is actually quite easy, the trouble when you lean forward and you get that forward and back rocking motion is, and you can try this next time. You're, you're sat in, I'm a simulator.
If you try and just twist your rises, there's quite a lot of force reacting against that. But if you rock forwards and backwards through our body and then try and twist your rises, it, it can be easier. So it's really important actually to, to, to stay lean back in comfortable. And you've got to think of it as like a rally car driver. So if you're going to rally car driver in a bucket seat that can just lean back and relax in a fully strapped in your arms are completely free to In in, in that case, driving the car.
And in our case, use the brakes. As soon as you put that rally car to drive on one of those inflatable exercise balls, as that one to drive around the track, that can be losing that balance and grabbing the door and grabbing the, the dash and things of that. And we do exactly the same thing. We try and find, usually break the pressure to catch are full. So it's the foundation really is how we use our harness. And that's, again, part of our body position is not putting our legs out because it doesn't. A lot of people get hung up on, on pods and that there are so much more dangerous, but you can watch video of students in just normal seat to Thomas's and the legs are flying over the place like a karate kid and this, and as soon as you've got a seated harness and your legs out, you're in a cold, we just haven't got that material around your legs.
So your body position is the same. If your legs are flung out, when you're in a seat at harness, then you've got that extra leverage to get, to get twisted. So the most important thing, it doesn't matter if you're in a pod or a seat at Han, is, is that the first sign of trouble, you tuck your legs in and you get your heels on the album, and then you also lean back. Cause you're, you're going to walk to try and lean forwards. And then you are much more stable. You are much more stable in your Highness. That then leads on to not losing your balance.
Because ever since we had a little toddlers, we learned that if you're stood up and you fall over, it's a good idea to put your hands out and catch your fall and not use your face. So we've, we've had a whole lifetime of perfecting the skill of putting our hands out and you see it in people that are leaning back on the chair, when they lose their balance on the, your arms, start to flap around. We do exactly the same thing in the air. If we go passed a 30 degree angle, arm started to come out and we need to dissociate our arms from our body, because you should hope in your flying career that you never actually put your hand out and find something to catch your fall.
Cause you'll be in trouble.
Speaker 2 (33m 15s): Yeah. Right? No, that's super valuable. I haven't ever heard that. I want to come back to the harnesses. That's a really important point here that you've just brought out. I mean, when, when I have seen people overreact and, and do, you know, just do way too much, it's it's because they want to start flailing. Their arms are much, much lower than they think they are. You know, you'll, you'll talk to them afterwards and they'll say, yeah, my hands were up.
There are blood in her ass.
Speaker 3 (33m 46s): But the strange thing about, about these actions, we do these, it is that they are, they are, they're not actions. We have to think about their instinctive actions and its, so its, it was such a strange thing for me to get my head around that my arm will do something that I've not told it to do. Like when you fall over, you put your arm out. We don't think that you don't have to think, Oh, I'm falling over. I better put my arm out. It does it without a conscious thought.
And in the air when you see people and you know, it's, it's all going a bit funky and they start pulling, you know, to break, they're not consciously doing it. They're losing their balance and putting their arm out to catch their food. And they're finding, pressuring them in the, in the break to try and help stabilize themselves. So you have to dissociate your, your arms from your body, heat them up to the police. And it's very strange. The first time you actually do that, you fall and you don't need your arms.
And then of course, you know, your body writes itself because we are, we're strapped into a harness, but it's, it's still, it's fighting every urge. You've got to put your hands out.
Speaker 2 (34m 60s): Yeah, it really is. And I mean, this is, this is the thing to me that I dunno. I dunno if the, if underappreciated is the word for it, but we hear from, you know, the Acura guys, you know, Powell tech is one of them on the show. They all say the same thing that you got to do at least 300 stalls, you know, before you, even that it's just got to be a non event that has to your heart rate does not in most people, almost all are never going to get that many stalls unless they're practicing acro.
Right. But there have been so many times in my own flying in cross country in really rowdy conditions. That kind of thing. If I didn't have
Speaker 4 (35m 38s): That knowing about when or Wing resets, I would sit there and look at my Wing go on what the hell is going on. What's going on with my hands are up. My hands are up, but they're not, you know what I mean? It's it. You have to make this super conscious effort to let the Wing fly again. You know, you're trying to control it. And it's only that SIV, that teaches us and we're getting way far ahead of the fundamentals here. But
Speaker 3 (36m 3s): So that's, that's the, that's the lead on from. So the first one is trusting your harness and using your harnesses it's design. And the second is dissociating your arms fall without putting your hands out in the third is brake range. And an I always start the torque at the beginning of the actually most people think about begin. A pirate is not using the full break range is in the deeper parts. But what gets most pilots are in trouble is not using the zero to 10% of the brakes in. You just mentioned Paul and his, his awesome videos, the, the mastering paragliding videos in the intro to the stool, he shows a couple of people falling out in the sky and, and uses that as an example of why people should learn stall.
But actually in both those instances, if the pilots have to put their hands, write up to the pulleys, they wouldn't have called themselves in that cascade event and the first place, right? And the way, and the majority of videos I see on YouTube where someone starts to spin it and that goes parachute or the Bubba is all going funky and it shoots, they don't catch it. It stores that all of these cascade events, because people are just putting a little bit of a break and that if you put your hands right up to the pulley, you you'll fly away.
You won't get into a cascade event which will then need lead to needing to stall. And when we get used to, as pilots pulling in a certain amount of pressure, when we go parachute, all that pressure changes slightly. And we, we bring our hands down to find that the pressure with familiar with, rather than it's all mental, it takes no more scale to put your hands up to the pulley as it does to pull them down and try and find the pressure, but to say, okay, something's going wrong. I'm going to give my glider full energy.
It's really mental to say, okay, I'm going to give it a little energy. Cause I got the power to them. But when we catch a dive and, and take that power away and the people, the natural instinct kicks in and they grab the risers or the pull to a pressure there that used to, and to get them into more trouble.
Speaker 4 (38m 7s): And the theater has been putting out great videos on this, you know, in his Nova's, you know, if you're on an ENC are lower and we're going to jump to two liners here, when we got a lot more to go with the SIV, but you know, he, he just proves it. He gets is Wing in every possible scenario and goes watch. And he just puts his hands up when you fly away, you know? And, but it's it, your, your mind is messing with you. They're in it. It really is not instinctual. It's not it's, it, it really is something
Speaker 2 (38m 36s): That has to be trained and more so you have to be able to see and to be able to look up and understand what's going on with your Wing. And th there's a, at least for me, there was a, I went through a period where there's confusion. It's like, why, why does my Wing look like that? Why isn't it going? Oh, my hands are down my hands. Aren't in the police.
Speaker 3 (38m 58s): Yep. And, and it can take very little break, very little stay in a parachute, or, you know, people think the, you know, the stored position and parachute tool too, to keep a glider entails site is, you know, carabiners or around there, but actually to stay in parachute tool is, you know, is, is nearly up to the police.
Speaker 2 (39m 17s): Yeah. Right. I want to mention one more thing about the harness aspect too. That has always been a really good signal for me that, you know, when I start feeling my shoulders, come up a little bit that, okay, breathe, dude, breathe, relax. That that's always been, that's kind of like the first signal that I'm getting tense and we don't fly very well when we're tense. So I lo I love this. The thing about, you know, the number one fundamental, make sure you're just relaxing.
Sitting back is I, I definitely do that. I start pulling forward. Doesn't matter the harness, but I start pulling forward when I'm, when I'm getting freaked out and that's just it. Okay. Four seconds to just breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, just do four of those. And I'm right back in the saddle and everything's okay.
Speaker 3 (40m 6s): Yeah. So I've got an acronym for that. The acronym is, is fear, but anxiety boat's equal or we will, but fear. So this is the feelings. So the physical feeling that you've got. So it's very hard when we're stressed to analytically, discover we're stressed. But when you realize that there are physical manifestations to our stress, it's much easier to, to identify a physical manifestation a lot. You say you, you will notice, first of all, your shoulders rather than going, Hey man, I'm, I'm stressed here.
So the feeling is first of all, and then he is eyes. So when we get stressed, we take in less information. We'll quite often get the object fixation. So to, to change what you are looking at. So if you're thermally and it's rowdy and you'll just fixate on the pirate at thermally, try and just look somewhere different and then a lot of affirmation. So like you said, just breathe four times, someone else, if they get stressed because they are low, could be feeling, I say an affirmation of I'm going to get out of there, or I'm light as a feather or something like that.
And then R is to relax and you can do all of those things. In in one motion in the second, you get that physical feeling S okay, switch what I'm looking at. 'cause that, that switches the brain into a task, switching to like a calf, just be focusing on this guy. And let's look further ahead. Let's look up to the cloud. Let's take in different information, cause that will change my brain. So the affirmation, boom, back in your harness and then you'll snap out of it.
Speaker 2 (41m 37s): So then we just got to tease that little thing between our ears. It's just about attitude in it. Yeah. Okay. Keep going with the SIV stuff. No, that was great.
Speaker 3 (41m 48s): Yeah. So the first thing is the situation awareness, because you can't use these, these new found skills. If you don't know which way is up or down. And when you've got, when you've got situation awareness of what's going on, it's like a glimpse into the future. You know that if you get this feeling, then this is going to happen next. And when you are lost, it's quite paralyzing. You don't want, even if you're kind of a think this is the right thing to do, you don't want to make a massive input in case you make it worse.
Whereas when you're a full situation and awareness and something's happening, that you can confidently do an input. And if you're in an aggressive situation, sometimes it's an aggressive movement you need. With that situation awareness, you will be able to do the right input at the right time. So then tying all that together is basically what we look for in the core. So it doesn't matter what maneuver you're doing. If you're displaying the fundamentals, while you're doing that maneuver, it could be a stall.
It could be a spiral. It could be frontals. It could be anything. If you got the good body position, the Fulbright green and you're inputting at the right time, then it means everything in the world can happen to you. And you'll re you know, you'd be able to repeat those, those things.
Speaker 2 (43m 8s): And the things I find tricky about SIV is you, you know, you get, you, you go and you get your brain, you know, I've done it enough now, or I'm really excited. Okay, this is great. I get to brush up on these skills. You know, I've, I've learned over the years that I don't need to be too afraid of anything. And, and you just get in this mode where, okay, stall, stall, stall sort of saw whatever, whatever you're working on and it's, and it's all awesome. And then the next day I go to fly Baldy and you know, where I don't have the water and I don't, I'm not in that same frame of mind and thinking about doing a lot of that stuff is a little scary.
It's like, gosh, I got gotta, you know, and Oh no, I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it the next day. And it's, it's funny that it's, it, it, it, it's still a ways down on me, even after all these years. I mean, it must be, how would, I would think it must be much trickier for pilots with a lot lower hours that, you know, that find this stuff pretty challenging.
Speaker 3 (44m 14s): Yeah, for sure. And, and that was a big shock actually, when I came here and I saw, you know, I joined flier with amazing instructors, you know, affinity, tumbling, flying hundreds of kilometers. And after the winter we'd go out and we'd go out to train and, and it's like, okay, now we're going to, I'm going to do some studies. And it was like, Oh, well, what does that mean? That, you know, he's on thousands of them and it, and that never changes like recreational, pilot's quite hard on themselves about that is it doesn't matter how good you get.
If you have a layoff, there, there's always an element of apprehension about doing something. So the, for the first time we were all getting back into it. And then of course he takes one or two stories. And you remember that, Oh yes, yes, the store carry on, but it's not a big deal. But you know, even when you haven't flown for six months, just taking off, there's a higher level of, of apprehension then the normal. So you're going to have that for maneuvers as well. But recreational pilots don't realize that the likes of acro pilots, if they've done a couple of months in organza and finished on twisted tricks, they don't come back to a ganja after six months off and go, Oh yeah.
Well, did I do last year? We had twisted in front of you that they have a, they have a plan this week, that week, but how do I, how do I get myself back? And if recreational pilots did that and they thought, okay, well, I ended the season with a PB of 50 K like how, rather than turning up in the first booming day in spring thinking, Oh, I need to do 60 now. It's how, how can I get back to being able to do that, that 50 cases are rather than going on in the first Best day.
Can I go out on a couple of margin days, do a lot of ground handling, try and stay in the air for an hour. Think about my body. So, you know, if, even if you're just in a, in a, a thermal stumbling, like not leaving the rich for an hour, how much tension do you have in your body is your stomach muscles like killing you? How much information you eat? Are you taking it in? Because if you go over to the back in that state and that mental state, we don't want to be the people that you're just going to land short and then kick yourself about it. So why not build yourself back up, go to the Hill, get yourself back in the frame of mind that you finished the season on.
So that doesn't mean that on the first good day, you'll have your maximum bandwidth. If the first flight you have is In when you're trying to have a good flight, your bandwidth is going to be so, so thin because you're not going to take in this information and you are going to be tense. You going to be, you know, a small bubble. You don't want me to be making a cross-country decisions because you're going to be focusing on a Wing or people that are closer to you, that sort of thing. So that's really something that needs to change our recreational products.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47m 3s): Yeah. I think, I think this is one of the reasons why places like via a bite, so many people is in its, you know, it is strong. You don't often have a ton of a, of a room between the trees and Cloudbase, there's usually some kind of wind factor, but all those things are totally manageable as you are doing that in August at home. I mean, for Northern hemisphere pilots that are listening to this, you know, you're, you're fine. No problem.
But it, usually we go down to via in January, we have flown, you know, thermals, at least I'm S I mean, some people have done some sled rides and maybe some SIV if they're lucky, but you know, they won't have been flying too much. A and then boom, you are in a calm day one. And I think we need to really respect that. I mean, I know for me here in sun Valley in the spring, you know, you're so excited to go and it's one it's freezing, you know, so you're battling really cold tamps.
And the, the thermal is a really sharp, tends to be a, we can often get these high pressure days where, you know, it's only there two meter climes and it feels like 10 meter climbs is just rowdy and a scary. It just, it doesn't, you know, you, you are not at the end of the summer, you don't have the hours, you don't have the you're, you're just, everything's spooky
Speaker 3 (48m 31s): Is that like, people don't put any sort of training in place too, to mitigate that, you know what you want to turn up on the Hill on a bank in a day and, and try and do what you did at the end of the season, rather than thinking, ah, actually, if that, if that banging day is then, then the two weeks before that I've got to try and get some flying and I've got to try and be analytical of my, my mental state, my physical state is to just try and get some, I mean, part of it's currency, but you know, a currency is going to increase your is, is going to increase your bandwidth to be able to then perform well on an a, on a good day.
Speaker 2 (49m 5s): You live in a place now. I can't remember what that you've just said some insane number, like 2,500 launches or something in a, in a normal summer day. You live in a place where there obviously a lot of accidents because it's just numbers. It's a numbers game. What, what could eliminate a lot of those? Where are they happening? What's the, what's the number one to three reason.
Speaker 3 (49m 32s): Oh, just so so many people turn up without training in France, you don't need a license to fly so that, you know, it's not regulated, but so you have people from all over Europe coming here to fly and, you know, you could have a, someone toning up from Russia who was just brought up Wing on eBay and trying to launch into five minutes of thermal. Like I've seen. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, we, we, we do like an hour rotation for tandems and every time we turn up, it'll be like a booming, there'll be like five, six meters, a second was ripping off the front and we're just, we were setting up to launch and there'll be someone in a full flight suit. Like they've stepped out in the eighties, setting up for, for launch. And the regulator has got to be like, what, what are you doing that? And it's, so you're kind of like, this is gonna happen. I don't know what you can do about that.
Speaker 2 (50m 34s): Okay. Well, what about, what about the people who are listening to this show and actually have some skills that must be pretty entertaining in a scary way, but what it, what about the Mor trying to a traditional, what is it landing or is it spinning on landing? Is it one of the more kind of the ones that you see over and over again,
Speaker 3 (50m 57s): Hear there's a lot of people getting plucked out the trees up on the, on the mountain side. Yeah. That's, that's probably that happens. You get a helicopter out once or twice a day, probably in the us, in the heart of the summer.
Speaker 2 (51m 11s): And is that just people not understanding a glide and the just spacing out?
Speaker 3 (51m 19s): It's quite a busy you've. Yeah. Just losing a short of the week, trying to question the trees and being in Therma calf, you know, it's the first time, or I want to share a thermal with 30 or 40 people. And is it, you know, it's, it's the level of the pilot compared to the conditions. That is what this is, what gets people, you know, you shouldn't, In in strong conditions. If you're a beginner, you know, it don't take off until, well, I've gotten up with a group of folks in 'em on a seat in the last course.
So that's people, who've got their licenses, but the real beginners, and I've been up on launch at 7:00 PM in July, and it's still been too strong for them. Right. You know that that's a seven o'clock at night. So, you know, take, take off if you're a beginner and you want to fly in July time, take off like at 9:00 AM or after 8:00 PM. And you'll get lovely restitution that don't take off at 2:00 PM when people are getting hoovered off launch. Right. It's it's not going to unwell.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (52m 21s): How much in, in an ideal world, you know, your, your typical kind of ENC pilot, that Scott a couple, a hundred hours, how, how much SIV is the sweet spot and how much would you like to see them come to a course
Speaker 3 (52m 41s): Until they were a good pilot? And it really, I mean, I would like to see anyone regardless of what we do when they fly, do you know what I mean? People know this is a stigma about SIV, but you know, call it an advanced training camp. We call it what you want. But I think pilots should do that until they they're good pilots. And there's such an array of people that come, you know, you, you get people full of fear, really timid that after three SOVs are gonna have progressed less than someone who's coming with.
No fear, who's young, who's eager after two or three SIV, is there going to be in a much higher level because they've, they take in more because there's less fear, but they push themselves harder. So they discover more in the first place. So there's no, there's no amount of SOVs you should do. And then the other thing is, is currency. If you do an SIV a year later, you've forgotten most of that. A bit like a bit of what we were just talking about, about having a plan to get back to where you were.
So in one sense, you do an SRD and to learn new things, but then if you leave it long enough, you're relearning the same things to get back to a stage where you can then learn more things. If you see what, if you see what I mean? Cause if you just go, Oh, well, I've finished that. And some of you on that. So I want to jump in with something else. Your visions is gonna be so small. Your bubble is going to be small. Nothing is going to be taken in and you're, you're not going to learn it. Then you're going to have to spend the time to get the feeling back and what you done on the first one to then be able to progress on to the second one.
So there's no, there's no amount of SIV is that the people need to do this. That's kind of what amazes me as well. The, the things you hear about SOV is like when someone did an SOV and then he SIV themselves to the ground, that process, a lot of these don't work or butt and SIV is like a three-day on a course or four days. If you heard that someone was doing some training or a beginner training, and they only did three days, and then they, they cocked up a lot and she wouldn't be like, Oh my God, I can't believe it is not, is not amazing launches.
This is this the same way. When Control, if you do three days of Wing Control then I've got no doubt that if something dramatic happens too, in the wild, you're not gonna have the skills to, to deal with it. Even, even after a two week, we can, of course, which is where people get their license in the UK off the two weeks, you'll still a very basic pilot. So after two weeks of SIV training, I would have more faith that you could deal with something in the world, but it's not, it's not a given.
Speaker 2 (55m 27s): Sure, sure. What you said, you said to make a good pilot. What makes a good pilot
Speaker 3 (55m 33s): Dialing in the, the, the, the four fundamentals? Basically. If, if you,
Speaker 2 (55m 38s): If you can, in any situation
Speaker 3 (55m 41s): You have control of your arms, your body, the situation awareness. It doesn't matter what situation you're in, because you're not going to aggravate the situation to make it worse. So we fly an aircraft that collapsed. So we always have events that can happen to us, but it's about not causing a secondary event through pilot action. That makes a good pilot. I mean, there's preventative measures. You can do once you get good at active flying, you're going to prevent most of these things from happening. But it's when, okay, we've had an event happening, a bad pilot will create a secondary event or let a secondary event happen again in action is just as bad as wrong action.
What's a good pilot will do the right action. Another thing you hear a lot about SIV or this, this area is about putting your hands up to do, to do nothing. Have you heard that a lot to just put your hands up? And that gets to me because in some instance that the right thing is that when people ask me, what is the right thing to do is the right thing. And in some instances, putting your hands up, it's the right thing to do.
And in others, it's exactly the wrong thing to do. If you've got a crevasse and you are winding into a spiral, putting your hands up is exactly the wrong thing to do. So there is there's no, there's no blanket. One thing it's in every single situation, you need to do something different. And being a good pilot is, is not only not aggravating situation is being able to adapt quickly. So really a good pilot can look at this situation.
And as it is changing react to those different changes, rotations are a great one for that. Where quite often people will have a preconceived idea of what they have to do. And when, when they do that and nothing happens, they then don't do anything else. When we have a, an action that we used with a brake, we should get a reaction from the glider. So if you're in a rotation and you pull some brake and he was still in a rotation, you need to put more to keep pulling, keep pulling until something happens.
But like, if you're flying towards a tree and you call some break and you still find towards the tree, I'd like to think of, you'd keep pulling that break until you avoid the tree. But when it comes to other maneuvers, they don't, they don't do that. They think if I do that that'll happen when it doesn't they're then stuck. So to be a good pilot is to adapt to the situation. If it gets more aggressive, be more aggressive, as things start to calm down, then we need the subtleties of, of a difference of reacting. But you you've got to know the whole, a whole range of what to do and when to then be able to adapt to those different situations.
Speaker 4 (58m 30s): One of the, one of the things that I came away with In in one of my earlier SIV is that I wasn't, I guess, anticipating was that, you know, all the, all the collapses and the reactions and the thing that all of that's really good, but what seemed to be the most valuable to me, certainly when I started flying a, you know, higher end gliders and, you know, put it in myself in places that are, you know, with the less escape was knowing when things went wrong, knowing how long it took to deal with that.
And that, that, that seemed to be one of the more valuable takeaways early on in my SIV practice that I still use all of the time. Now I'm constantly thinking, okay, if in a knot, a negative way, but I'm constantly thinking about margin and height. And if something happened now, how much time would I have? Because there are certain configurations in this really came from heli practice, you know, getting all spun up, gone, okay, this is going to take it a thousand feet to deal with.
And that becomes really handy in combat, in real combat exi situations. You know, when you're not over the water and you're not in a real, kind of a protected environment, I found that that was really one of the most valuable things is, okay, that's going to take X and that is going to take this much height, and that's going to take this much time.
Speaker 3 (1h 0m 3s): And when you've done only one or two SIV is you've got no idea what a little height loss. And, and that's the thing again, of how many SIV should you do? Well, if you've only done one, two to three SOVs, there is still a chance you could SIV yourself to the ground because you haven't your situation awareness. Isn't that the point where you're doing stuff automatically looking around, like, if you, if you can't be an, a, a nice tail slide and just looking around and checking your height and, and you're still just completely fixated on the Wing then, you know, of course that could happen.
So yeah, that, that sort of awareness takes time. And that can only be built through training. You've got, you've got to train to then be able to deal with something whilst check in the way in and check in on the ground, check in the Wing and, and deciding if its time or not. What you've just covered on a piece of like Heitz to deal with when, you know, is, is just the fact of our sport that actually, we quite often fly below a height where if you take an 80% whack and you know, you're going in, and that's why you are, and you are never completely safe from, from a however good.
My Wing Control ever got, I know there's a certain configurations I could get into within a certain height. You just, you're just in trouble. Like I've, I've had fun skills and competence before where, you know, I've been really low a hundred meters and got away with it. How would I been half of that height? There's just no recovering from, from it. That's just a fact of the sport, but your, your red zone, your, your, the better you get as a pilot, the more that high is squished and squished and squished on the opposite side of things.
You see the videos on YouTube of people at Cloudbase and that they've got, they've got thousands of meters and it's still not enough,
Speaker 4 (1h 1m 54s): Right. That that's a good segue. I mean, we could just leave the whole show to SIV. We could keep going with that because you've got so much knowledge there, but you've written, I'd like to switch to two liners a bit just because you've written about them quite a lot. And I know you're, you know, a big fan is I am, I haven't flown something other than the two liner In acro stuff in years and years, sexy wings, wonderful wings, wings, what they can do. Talk to the audience a little bit about what you've been writing about and your thoughts on them.
And I guess the biggest one is, you know, when it, when a pilot is ready to make that switch.
Speaker 3 (1h 2m 37s): Yeah. I think being ready as in having the skills to be ready and be mentally ready to go to the two different things, because I can train, you know, if you give me a student for three weeks, I can get them to the point where they're doing in a nice back to a fly on a two liner, but they wouldn't be able to control it in a thermal. So it's all, once you've got the skills to fly paragliders, then it's all in the head and people can get the skills quicker than they can get the confidence that that is the right wing for them to get what I mean, because it's a very different being in rough hair and being completely like a mother to, you know, that there's, there's, there's a, pilot's like, no, we would have the skills to deal with things on that type of Wing.
But I just know haven't got the, the mental, you know, they haven't told themselves yet that they're actually ready. So yeah, the moment it's just powerful gliders that our two liners, and it would be nice to have that technology kind of bled down more. So there's a limit to how low it can go. When you haven't got that many lines, you are much more prone to cravat and Corvettes follow and pilots is not something that we want to be getting, but they were amazing machines. I think flying on the bees is far safer than, you know, the, the, the, the kind of three liners now that are kind of joined with the bees is getting better.
It's getting there, but there's nothing like the command you have when you're flying at speed, by having some bees in your hands, like you can call that you can use them as an extension of your brakes. You can catch collapses on them. On a couple of years ago, when I first got onto the Enzo two, I thought, how far could we push it on the BS? And in that year, I never had so many fun tools, but I basically coined the phrase of pussy footing around where I do everything on the bees.
So once if I'm over at half bar, a full bar, once I've locked my legs, I do nothing with my legs and everything with my hands. And I noticed that I would come off bar, like when I got that feeling of lightness or the, or I could see the front going and I'd come off bar and use the BES. And I realized that I was just all in the head because I can do it all on the bees. So I really kind of pushed the limits of how, how far you can go just with the bees. And I was getting collapses and a lot more because it was, I was, I was refinding the limits of, of what was possible, but it's exactly the same.
You can come back to trim speed on the bees. You can go right back to full bar and you can regulate fully with arms. And to me, it was fear that was then, you know, coming off the, the legs, as well as the, the hands and over time, my efficiency just got much, much better. Because once you come off with your legs, you then got push back on an and balance that with hands it's much easier to just do everything on the, on the beach. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 5m 37s): Yeah. It was something that, it, it first, I, I, I didn't really get my head around until I washed it and then went out and did it a bunch. But, you know, Kriegel put out that video that basically said, you know, in a two liner, you should just be flying around a full bar all the time, and then just totally regulate everything with the bees, you know, just make your canopy efficient with your hands. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (1h 5m 60s): And when you, when you ended up trusting the bees, even just cruising slowly along a, a rich using all the little bubbles, you know, I will, I will, from the brakes to the bees and just to be piloting with the bees, even if I'm not using steeper. So it's, yeah. Once you get that connection with the bees, you, you don't want to turn back, you don't want to lose that connection with the wind.
Speaker 2 (1h 6m 22s): Yeah. And I would, I would say, I think that this is the biggest learning arc for people that are switching to two liner, is that takes some time to earn that trust is that the, the, the glider just gets more and more bomb-proof with more bar. But man, it's hard to convince your head of that. Is it, at least for me, it took a while. And, and in every spring or when I'm flying and rowdy conditions, if I'm not Racing, I I'm never using enough bar.
I know I need to use more and I can't make myself do it. Cause you just feel like something is going to go and do it. But you know what you learned, you learned this, this is an aspect of two liners that I think really comes from Racing, you know, you just have to use a lot of borrowings at Racing and get dusted and, and you learn when you are using a lot of borrowings. Wow. This thing is really good.
Speaker 3 (1h 7m 13s): Yeah. Yeah. And, and quite often, when you, when you reach a Ridge and you know, you've been on bar and you reach a red and you come off bar, you realize how rowdy of the air is right. When we get back on the brakes is all squirrely. And you're like, Oh, I'll get back on BARR. Cause this is no, this isn't, this, this isn't a stable and, and all of this. So then you just push a bit about it and then it becomes much more solid again.
Speaker 2 (1h 7m 34s): Mmm. Talk about the skill side of it that, you know, like you said, you need the confidence side of it. I would totally agree with that. But the, I don't know if this is backed up in the data at all. Maybe you, because you see so many more people flying, but one of the things I've always been a little bit concerned with just as a, as an observer is that two lines are just way more collapsed resistance. So I think a lot of pilots that make that jump, it's easier for them to get a little bit too complacent that, you know, in other words, you jump to a Xeno, Oh my God, this thing never blows out.
But when they do, they are you, they require a active piloting as opposed to what we were talking about before, where you can, you know, One and B usually can get away with doing very little. Is this something you worry about? C talk about with Fabien.
Speaker 3 (1h 8m 31s): Yeah, of course. Yeah. And Free training. Yeah. He's, he's training a French team. A lot of, we get the, the, the race Academy guys out, you know, British team members out here and any, any training on TuneIn as we see, like I can, if I know pilots or like, I know people on the most Academy, I know the people who are like, I could write a list of who, where we find the next big collapse they have a need and who won't, because you need a certain amount of scale to, to deal with the energy they have.
And it's amazing the amount of the pilots fly those level of wings and they don't have the, the scale and every, every now and again, 200 hours per a hundred hours, they have a big blow out. And it's, you know, it's reserved time or, or worse. There's been quite a few accidents this year. I think we have lack of currency, but it's all, you know, it's pilot's that you can honestly say, well, whether it was this year or another year, you had a big blow out, did they really have the scale to, to deal with it?
So, yeah, I can, I can see it from, from a mile away, the, the, the lack of training, the, there was quite an interesting video recently on a Facebook group of the paragliding form of, of a pilot doing SIV and in another country, on, on an end zone, I don't know if you saw it and he got a little Chromat and went into a spiral and, and hit the Lake hard. It was really interesting because it was complete lack of control. But what was interesting was the chat afterwards, people obviously saying, Oh, he shouldn't be flying that level of Wing.
And then his friends trying to back him up saying, well, you know, he's flying for a hundred K and in presenter and, and blah, blah, blah. He's a really experienced pilot. And that, that really, that culture is kind of ingrained in us is that we will call it a pilot experience because they can fly a, a a hundred K even if they have got far less SIV or Wing Control experience. And someone, if I have someone whose got started the hours and I can get them to the point where they're doing nice backslides, and you've got someone that's been a five to 10 years and can do a a hundred K, but has never done an SIV that to me, they're not an experienced pilot.
They are just an accident waiting to happen. They're just very good at keeping that Wing open, but the next big thing that happens, you know, that going in, and then it's not a big shop in the community. So I'm a gardener. That experience is to be fined for 15 years. He's just done an amazing 200 K five. And it's like, well, what w what does that mean? That it's not, that's not experienced because he's got zero experience when it comes to the wind. Control
Speaker 2 (1h 11m 7s): This is a big One to me. I mean, and not to knock the flatlands too, but, you know, I, my, my buddy Cody In, and he's not the only one that has said this. I mean, I think Rafael Salud, Nini, or Frank Brown, or any of them would say the same thing. You know, these big days that we see, you know, 400, 500 K is 85% of the day. I mean, there are a lot of pilots in the world that can make that happen. And again, I'm not knocking it I'm, you know, but, you know, I've flown the, SureTel a flow in Texas, you know, it's, it's really, the day matters at a TON doesn't necessarily mean you are a very good pilot, cause you could fly for a hundred K obviously you've got some skills, but, but yeah, that you could, you know, a pilot could have done no, SIV, EVER not won in and do that in, like you said, that doesn't mean you're necessarily a very skilled, you know, that, you know, you're flying really good days.
Speaker 3 (1h 12m 3s): Yeah. And well, it's one thing being an experienced pilot in cross country, but it's another thing being experienced in wind Control. And if you've got to that level in your across country and you are not as experienced in wind Control, then you are an accident waiting to happen. And it's, you know, we just shouldn't even be calling those pilots experience until they've got that level of, of what we can follow up each should be much more frowned upon in our community to be that level of pilot and not be the same when you're, Wing isn't flying, you know, it should just be like, I can't believe you're doing cross-country flights on a hot, a Wing or on any Wing and not know how to recover it.
That should be a taboo. And yeah, it's not, it's really quite ingrained in us, in our culture. And I think certification and I got a lot to play in that through no fault certifications. Folks has got a lot to blame for that, for the, how this culture has evolved.
Speaker 2 (1h 13m 1s): Hmm. I remember the, the first time I was really struck by the whole, you know, a glide ratio and Spann and, you know, it was the first time I did a, an, an ECC with Nick Greece and a couple other really good pilots. And in Europe, I can't even remember now. And we took off from one of the sites South of St. Hilaire. And, you know, the goal was to fly up to Annecy, which was back then for me, I was, I was on the Arctic, this was a year that was a long time ago, but it was just a super exciting and you know, the other pilots we're on Enzo ones or the, I think it was the ice peak six.
And we got to that, you know, St. Hilaire to the next, or is it over Schomburg? And, you know, we all left Cloudbase, there was a beautiful day and, and I'm on the Arctic. And when we got together side and they were gone and, and, and I was down below the cliff and I had to dig out and, and they just glided right across it, you know, it was, there was no big deal. And I thought, Holy cow, you know, it was, it was just so in some ways, so discouraging, but at the end of the day, you know, I made it all the way to Annecy it, it was, you know, it took me a lot longer and it was just incredibly rewarding.
It was awesome. But that was the first time where I was like, Whoa, even though we weren't racing, we weren't on a comp or anything. But I think that that really gets people, especially when they start flying their first comps is just, you know, getting dusted on glide. And so you have this real itch to, Oh, well, that's Wing, I need to, but you know, like my buddy, Jeff Shapiro always says, you know, getting a better Wing, doesn't make you a better pilot. This is a, that's a really good one to me is that you have to, you do have to go through that process and that, and I'm not trying not to be preachy here, but it's a, the, you know, the, the, the urge is strong to move to that.
Wing I think, to fast.
Speaker 3 (1h 15m 4s): Hmm. Yeah. I mean, it depends on how you approach it, if you, if you want to move up through the wings and do a lot of wind Control and you'd be there, but then you might still cook yourself in a really strong conditions. If you haven't at least spent the time. Like, I, when I first started flying, I moved up through wings really quickly, but then I focused all of my attention on Wing control. So the first time we saw the two lines and I had like 85 hours, but I was already tail siting and managing the span and, and I'd full understanding of that.
But I had to be really careful of then when I flew in terms of the care, like, was I okay with it? And I was always really mindful of moving up too quickly in terms of that mental aspect. And so, yeah, it all depends. Some people that have got Free 400 hours and then I'm going to be ready. Are there other people, if you put the time and the training, at least you're going to be safe, we're on it. Whether you can then mentally handle it or not as a, you know, there's a number of thing, but yeah, when you, when you, if you start doing concert, if you go out and people with high performance, what does it, it suddenly becomes very obvious on those long glides.
I remember my first comp One yeah, you just get left the dust and you're dropping and they're just, they seem to be going straight. And when, when you do comms, it does become really important. So like through the Racing Academy, try and get people up to they're flying up to a level where they can handle a complaint because you can be as good as another pilot. You can make exactly the same choices as the other pilot. And if you're on a low rated Wing, you're going to come for years and they could come first through no fault of your own.
Through literally every guide, you lose 20 places, new to many places. And especially the higher the level you go, the more places you lose, purr, purr applied. So it's a fine balance between moving up too quickly, especially if you don't have the skills to control it. But yeah, it's, it's going to be through no fault of your own that you ended up losing places in comms because of your Wing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 17m 16s): Malin I want to be mindful of your time. And I know you've got to a one-year-old at home who a mom wants you back here at some point. So I'm going to ask this last question. Isn't probably great for the full audience, but it's something that I've wanted to ask you about. You know, I started doing the, you know, kind of like the double move stall after watching Charles and Seikos videos, which is important on the, on the, on the two liners, but I've never done it in combat. And I just can't imagine doing it that way in combat, because it would be just be such a mindful boom, boom.
You know, I would, I would imagine in combat, I'd still just do a quick acro Stahl and get out of it. What's your thoughts on that is, is, is that wrong thinking? Is it something I just really need to get down the double F and for those that are listening, who don't know, what I'm talking about is basically, you know, you're, you're, you're almost getting to the stall point with the glider and you're letting it fly again and then going down. So it's basically keeping your tips from , you know, done sexually.
I'm not sure that's a word, but done, done correctly. You're you're going to stall the glider much more symmetrically and keep your tips from collapsing. We have that, right?
Speaker 3 (1h 18m 34s): Yeah. It's just spam management, basically at the end of the day, it's an, especially on the high rate of wings, it, it becomes more and more important. It depends on what dynamic's situation and you've got yourself into umm, and how much situational awareness you've got. So if you get a big boom, a big frontal on a comp way, and you've just buried the bit fees as far down as they'll go or even switch to the break and just very, and then put your hands up and it's behind you, you'll get a shoot like a rapid exit. In which case you can just catch deep and, and fly away.
Or if you've buried the brakes and it's come back over your head more and like a stool configuration, as soon as you feel it hunting in front of you and you get that a pulling sensation, you need to be resisting and then releasing, if you haven't got that and you've got that feeling of flying backwards quite fast, like in the tail side, then you need to start aggravating that, that exit window. So it's, you know, a stall is not just a mechanical uptown here. It's again about being an active pilot. If it's all going crazy, its having a glimpse of light is going crazy, but it's behind me.
So the next thing is going to happen is, is going to shoot. So do I want to put my hands up now and let it shoot because actually letting the glide of shooting aggressively is good, especially in the two liner, because quite often you'll have Corvettes that by air brakes so you can let it dive. You can further and they are doing most of the break-in and then you over-exaggerate the catch and it's that over-exaggeration that will pop the tips out. So you can fly away with a teen glider. We call it cleaning. Or if you've really noticed this all is all going funky, but then the glide is on the horizon.
And your trying to reign in a while now is more an opportunity to just release in flight away. So, you know, the store is going to look pretty when you do it in the world and it's not going to be a mechanical on or off. It's going to be a looking at the glider, umm, and deciding what you do from there. Like you're not going to want to just bury it. The, you know, even if you're in tail side, you don't want to the stool it because then you got the really big back is, and with the, the ends of three in the Xeno, you can actually get this, you're a recoverable situation.
If you still want it to deep and you get, these really is. If you put your hands up to quickly, the trailing edge flicks over and acts like an air break and then the air come in and rest in the lines and then your brakes don't do anything. And you'll come down in kind of like a parachute tool where the glider won't go forward because of the Corvettes at the front and it won't drop back. 'cause the trailing edges is flicked over and you could get this kind of like a stable power of futile,
Speaker 2 (1h 21m 14s): So Oh wow. And you can't get it restarted.
Speaker 3 (1h 21m 18s): Yeah. Yeah. We've got quite an interesting video of that. That's that, that takes a real over-stored and then a very quick hands up and the glider starts to die, but the ears clunk back in, and of course the hands have gone up so quickly to the trailing edge flips over to the, the rear beer is beer attachment point basically on any of that. So yeah, as far as like, I haven't stole my guide for a long time, even with frontals and stuff, because the second I get a phone too long and watching it, you know, you're, you're just, you're buying in the breaks or the B's to keep some sort of span, but then I favor it.
If I've caught enough spam to letting it shoot and then cleaning it in front of me, if I've caught it late and then you've got to, to, to deal with that energy a little bit more efficiently. And then we've crevasse. I, I like to teach on the course of Corvette. Clearing is also a spin appreciation or collision avoidance where you Barry One break. There's a maximum as that will go. And you're Wing first of all, you get this pealing and then you get the wings starting to apply that to you basically stalling on one side, you're spinning one side.
And that for me is far more effective at clearing a Corvette than a stall because quite often people go through a whole SIV Nevin getting cravat and then they get to the stalls and then which people think is what you need to clear off the bat. And then they start getting caught that all the time. It's not the most efficient way of clearing on a Corvette.
Speaker 2 (1h 22m 52s): Yeah. I just did this really for the first time. This was a, In just recently doing some SIV training with, with Cody down in, in Utah and it's incredibly efficient and really mellow,
Speaker 4 (1h 23m 7s): You know, I was doing it on the Eve box and I just found it was lovely. Just spin it hard. And then as soon as it kind of dives, let it go and you're away. It's really, it's a, I, I didn't have the right appreciation for that before. I'd heard about it a lot, but until you need to know how I started doing it, I was like, Oh, this is great. This is terrific.
Speaker 3 (1h 23m 28s): And, and if you have to get a big whack, if you do that same movement before the cloth has even touched the line. So if you can see what you should see, every single collapse you ever have. Sure. That something that's a thing. Russ Russell and taught me when I was teaching me SIV years ago is that you have a word of yourself, of you ever have a collapsed that you don't see the word of yourself because it takes a split second to look up. So if you're flying a Wing and when you are looking up and you see a curling down and it's gonna get on the lines and crevasse, if you bury your break, boom, a hundred percent and then it won't happen, it's gonna, it's gonna hit the lines.
And then you feel it kind of going off of the lines and the curling back out, and then you release in its gone. So you will like when I learned that, that not only this, the spin to get rid of them, but that kind of, I mean, you'd spend something if it was there, but it's collapsing, but actually you then limit the size of the cover or you just get rid of it completely, that that kind of changed by a crevasse experience. Right. Right. And you certainly don't need to be stalling out of the grass. You probably just end up with one on the other side,
Speaker 4 (1h 24m 38s): Change your angle of attack real fast. And it would probably be okay. So Malin tell me about, you know, you kind of had this list of things you wanted to go through with, with SAV and I'm sure we missed a ton. What haven't we talked about that you want to,
Speaker 3 (1h 24m 58s): So that kind of culture, all of the, the kind of what people think about SIV, it's quite a strong culture in the UK, or that is really changing. I think that would across the world about, you know, whether, whether you should do one or not, or when you should do one. And, and for me, when you have a course like ours, where it is completely tailored, like I, I'm happy to take students just out of, of, of, of that course, because there's, there's a kind of a gap at the moment where you get your license and then you start doing your Hopps, that you are, you training through it.
And then you, you get some flights on you about what you do, 50 to a hundred flights, but you'll, you'll get, you're getting ingrained bad habits, like bad body position. And then you kind of start flying at a different time of the day and that gets a bit more rowdy and then you'll scare yourself and then you might even start going across the country. And then usually people come to me then once they've got these ingrained part habits and they've been in Therma care maybe, and they're bound, which is just fully taken up with a Wing cause it's doing things that they don't know about.
You briefly cover some Wing movements in when you get your license, but you don't really understand it fully. So for me, if I can take a student straight out of, of learning their beginning, of course, how early it's too early. Well, if Best see if there are still really stressed out about taking off and landing, it's not a good time. If they've got to the point where they've done some flights and, and now they can take off to the landlord autonomously, they're happy with that. Then at that point you should come and do it would be kind of even pre pilotage if you see what I mean.
So there's so much to learn about roll pitch, your break range, body position, and all that stuff. Doesn't get focused on enough because if you build that foundation early on, you just become a much, much better pilot. Like I've got people that have come to me on SOV and they've, they've been in the Annecy era and they're just on a, a a hundred K flight and they come to me and we'll be doing some maneuvers and they'll have no idea about how Control. And it's like, if you can do a a hundred K and you don't fully understand role, you probably could have done a 120 K in the same time.
Like it's been hindering you your whole flying career. Whereas if you're a more of a beginner pilot, and you learn that, you learn about how to aggravate cancel role. If you learn about pitch movement and the brake range and your body position, then you go away and you start doing the top to bottom flights, you're going to get in some rough and you're going to instantly, Oh, I'm always done that before. I like, I know how to cancel. That is not going to start to freak you out. And, and part that seat of fear, fear of the unknown. So then you'll start venturing into ad that is going to cause those movements, boom, boom, you'd be canceling them out.
You, you are taking the first steps into your act of flying. And then there's just a big gap at the moment where people do in the opposite way. And they, they know nothing. They've learned essentially how to take off and land. Then they build up a bit of fear and then they'll do an SIV, but they've gotta kind of like get over all of that again. So I think if an SIV or cooler, an advanced training, a course or whatever is done, right, and you're a beginner pilot, and it's not even about collapses is just about learning a bit in the middle of between takeoff and landing.
You'll build a really good foundation to then go on, to start doing some collapses and rotations and, and all the others, things that you would think of as a, as a traditional course. And on that beginning, of course, as well, you can learn about how you work on the stress and all of the other things we teach. And I think that will really Excel you project you onto learning the rests down the road and much quicker.
Speaker 2 (1h 28m 50s): This seems like a massive gap in a night. I realized there there's probably different systems while the not probably there are there's different near there's Abby system. There's the, every country has its own licensing thing. But I mean, here in the States, you know, you get your, you get your beginner's license, you get your P to, so you're now a solo pilot and you're kind of kicked out into the world. And you know, if anything SIV is even discouraged, it wouldn't be by the instructors, but it is by are by Mayhem by the way, because they see it as, okay, it's potentially dangerous.
We're going to stick, what are we going to stay away from? Anything potentially dangerous. So, you know, it's not part of the licensing system. It's not part it's not encouraged. And it's just seems like there's this. I mean, I'm remember it in my own, you know, in my own learning that you get your P too, and then, okay, go have fun. You don't know. Is that like
Speaker 3 (1h 29m 44s): Exactly. Yeah. Because cause you get taught, it's so focused on the takeoff and landings and a bit in between is, is actually a really important part. And there's, there's nothing at the moment to, to deal with that. And it was the same in the UK. Like it was very much doing a SIV if you will, on or not. And I think the old school method of SIV of the day, one big is day four. Stools is completely the wrong thing to do if you've got five or 10 hours. And even if you got a thousand hours and you are a timid pilot, you know, it could be, it can overcook you, right.
But that's why being a good instructor and really figuring out what that pilot needs and when, when to push them on when to, when to come off a bit is really important that I created these, these levels, a pilot proficiency level, because I saw that there are such a difference in, in teaching in different countries. And, and it would be good to have a more uniform level of going back to that thing of when is an experienced pilot, an experienced pilot.
If you have a proficiency levels of like, I'm a, you know, I'm a level two or level three that you would instantly understand actually how good they are at winked Control and on the different levels, our, the movements of the gliders. So the roll pitch to your then level too, is more where we come in with SIV. This is the, the fundamentals of body position, the break range level three of them moving on from the party, from flight in the stores, in your more dynamic situations and level floor is the kind of a gateway into mastering span.
Like if you're going into two liners or the gateway into acro a and that sort of thing, and the hardest thing about those levels, it was easier to create. The hardest thing would be if other instructors wanted to do it, the training, the instructor would need to be able to tease out the different levels of the pilots. So like, okay, do they fully understand the roll movement? We'll give them this material to do that one to do, and then combine it with this, to see if in these different situations they can cancel the roll or aggravate the roll, or are they a master of rotations this year?
You can do this and then this, and it's, it's a really complex to teach to it, but it would be a pilot focused. So they would have to prove that they could pick that level.
Speaker 4 (1h 32m 11s): There is a real stepping stone here that, you know, and you, you go through this to get to this, to go through this, to get to this. I remember, I remember Fabien saying that on his show that, you know, he's taken like veteran rural cup pilots and they can't do a clean three 60 exit, you know, they're just like, they've skipped a whole bunch of those levels.
Speaker 3 (1h 32m 32s): Yeah. When I, when I, you know, when I got here, they're in a big, big Wing overs, but I had no idea how I could do them. And it took becoming a good instructor to be able to break it down to the point where I could then describe a bit, but then you've got to also add a level of complexity to, okay, the student is going to have tunnel vision when they get to this size. So how much information do I need to give them to start with? Because the rest of the information is going to be a relevant.
So you need to get to a certain size of Wing over before you then give them a extra bit of information then that bid and like, okay, now you've felt that, well now let's try this and, and, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4 (1h 33m 16s): Yeah. The Wing over is a really critical one. Isn't it? I mean, that one, that seems to be one that the veterans bring up a lot, you know, Russ Auden and baby, and, and you know, that that's a very good sign, have a good pilot is doing a really nice, Control big, proper Wing overs. Is it that those skills translate into everything in the Wing management in the thermal sling seems to be that one comes up a lot.
Speaker 3 (1h 33m 44s): Yeah. And it's, so it's also the gateway to so many acro maneuvers to have that straight entry gate. So when you're Wing level with the horizon, when your body is swinging through it's, that is the gateway to a lot of back removes and it is a dynamic situation. So if you are fully in control of that dynamic situation, then it leads on to yeah. Being much more aware of when you, when you get into a dynamic situation in the world. So it's a really, it's a, it's a good, is a good thing to practice you.
Speaker 4 (1h 34m 16s): You mentioned. I mean, I remember jockey saying that a, this one, I was surprised by this, but it sounds like you, you maybe agree that, you know, maybe SIV is not for everyone. Is there, it can, can you be a pilot and, and not do it and, you know, enjoy flight safely?
Speaker 3 (1h 34m 35s): No, I think old school SOV is not for everyone as in that, because yeah. Yeah. The checklist, the being pushed because you know, some it, if you've just got a sundae flight full of fear, you know, you've got to do multiple courses with them and you, you've got to bring out that courage in them. And that only comes from them knowing that they're safe and fully understanding the situation. And they only do that through repetition and, and time.
And they get that a little deeper and a little deeper and a little deeper. And over time they will become better pilots. Like there's, there's no doubt that you will, you be like I could, I could create a course that would make you a bit of a cross country pilot and not bring safety into it at all, just through about your body position and understand the whole picture of your, if you are an efficient pilot, if you're canceling roll in and pitch efficiently, your cross country is going to get better.
And that's before we've even delved into that. And perhaps Control and all that other sort of stuff. So that stuff you can learn on a tailored course, that's going to directly translate to becoming a better pilot without pushing you into dynamic things like stories and sets and all that other stuff.
Speaker 2 (1h 35m 54s): Let me ask you something, I'm going to take you off, take us off left field to hear a little bit our community, as you know. And I, it seemed like this is just always now, but it seemed like it's been a really rough year in terms of accidents and bad accidents. You've got a one year old at home. I've got a three-year-old I get asked this a lot. Is this, how are we all kidding ourselves? How can this be done safely for a lifetime?
Speaker 3 (1h 36m 25s): Yeah, that's a hard one to answer that, like we were talking earlier, you know, the kind of red zone, the, the height, your app were, there are certain things that will happen that you, you just don't have the hype to recover from. If you're coming into land on your 10, 15 meters, and you get a full frontal or an 80% collapse or whatever, it doesn't matter how good a pilot you are. You can mitigate that too. So the best that you are going to have a hard landing or, you know, or worse.
So, but it's, and then, but the things that really get people that are also, it's just sometimes you just make mistakes, you know, you're flying along and you may be the sun is behind the scenes squinting to look into a GPS and boom, you hit a power line or just, you know, that there's some things that sometimes is just like, and, and that was just a, an accident literally, and accident, right? We had Wayne Seeley recently and the UK, and perhaps the way by hitting a power line at his local sites that he's phoned thousands of times.
And there was a massive shot to the community and such, such a nice guy. And it's just what I said. Like, it's, it's a very unforgiving school. When you have something like that happen, you could be the best pilot in the world, and you can just take you off the ball for one second on the, it can lead to fatal consequences. So none of us are immune to that. I say to my students, it's not a very good sport to be better. And, and that's taught, that's talking about skill level, but you can have the best skills in the world and you can still take your eye off the ball for a second.
So do you turn, you, you get, you get into the counter-argument of, yeah, you can get run over across the street. If you take your off the ball and then the next year sort of stuff.
Speaker 4 (1h 38m 16s): Do you guys talk about that? Do you ever have people that come that are just clearly shouldn't be taking on this sport? And when do you have the Frank conversation with, with people that like, Hey, I, you know, you should probably play golf.
Speaker 3 (1h 38m 30s): There's been maybe to, to students in the last three or four years, that that has been that level of, of, of complete lack of understanding and complete lack of funding of, of, of, of, of knowing that that is not bad. You know, because I mean, you don't know what you don't know. And in general, that kind of what, I mean, the fact, but yeah, that, you know, just people that are clumsy a trip a little time, no coordination, that it was just completely unaware of it.
And then you have all of those combinations and it's, it's not a good thing,
Speaker 4 (1h 39m 9s): Boy, that'd be a weird comment. That'd be an awkward conversation to have.
Speaker 3 (1h 39m 14s): Yeah. But that is the thing that usually people understand like, Oh no, I'm not, I'm not very good at it. That is when that they completely blahzay and the land that I am awesome. So that's when it becomes interesting.
Speaker 4 (1h 39m 32s): Okay. Well that back to your let's, let's spend a few more minutes on, on some of your SIV stuff. Like I said, I know you've got to a long list there and I think there's, there's endless learning, right?
Speaker 3 (1h 39m 44s): Yeah. One of the big thing, when talking about kind of misconceptions or, or things, you hear another one that about what to do with an asymmetric collapse and people who've got all sorts of different ideas about, there's a lot of talk about not over-controlling the open side, because you'll pull too much break and you install the open side. So you can deal with that by grabbing the riser or weight shift alone is enough, or they there's a lot of these blanket statements.
And again, it comes back to being adaptive as a pilot. But if you try and I think most things were flying, you can translate to a car. So if you ever said to someone, how do you turn a corner in a car? But just once that you got to turn it like maybe 20 degrees, like, what is that going to deal with every single corner you ever come up? And that's of course it would be, it would be completely stupid to go like, Oh yeah, corners. Yeah. I've got this here. Just turn it 20 degrees.
Boom. You'll be around the corner. It doesn't relate. But in our sport it seems like, Oh yeah, you just grabbed the, the riser or, Oh, you just pull 25% and it'll be fine. You know, if you're having an 80% collapse in a five meter or a second Thermo, when there's five meters, a second downdraft, this is going to be a very different action. You need to, if you're in a two-minute or a second Thermo, and you just have a little sheer layer, or if you're already leaning one way or the other. So you've got to assess the situation and react just like when you're driving a car and you go around a corner and then this corner straightens out a little bit and then goes tighter, which is driving the car, you're moving your hands.
And the same thing in a collapse. If it's shooting aggressively, you pull aggressively. If it's not you don't, but there's no, there's no one thing that you can do. You have two, if the guy who is threatening Bobby Head and he hasn't even started turning yet, of course, if you Barrie the brakes, you're going to stall it, but it's not the right thing to do. But if its at the horizon and ramping into an altar, a rotation, then you're going to have to pull the brake really hard. So there's no, there's no one thing that you can do with that. So if people have a se, there is a blanket thing that you can do with collapses, ask them what type of collapse you're going to have.
Cause there's a million different varieties.
Speaker 4 (1h 42m 6s): So it sounds like the answer is, it depends.
Speaker 3 (1h 42m 10s): It depends on the, you know, the right thing to do is the right thing. And that changes with everything that happens. Like, like we said before, putting your hands up is exactly the right thing to do in some instances and not in another, but just adapting to the situation is the, is this is the most important thing. And the, the other thing that really shocks pilots is, is certification. And it's unfortunately read a culture where it's acceptable to be, to not have the skills to find the, the, the aircraft because, but when was the last time you flew a, a, a low-end Wing an a or B that have been a while
Speaker 4 (1h 42m 51s): 10 years. I mean, unless the, unless you count like an acro going or a single surface or something, but X ECC, I haven't flown a see in 10 years.
Speaker 3 (1h 43m 0s): Yeah. I mean, for me a lot, when I get back on a knee or I'll be Wing and try it, it's horrible. You know, you've got these big rolls on the brakes because they've got a big sell out means they breathe more like you're just wallowing through the sky on a big potato. But certification is it's, there's loads of skilled people that have got it to where they are today or the test pilots were amazing. But people say that they don't need the skills to fly the aircraft because they have a safe Wing.
And I think that has been really detrimental to our support in the way we should view wings is that an ENA is dangerous and an EMD is even more dangerous rather than this is a little fluffy kitten. And that is an aggressive line. It should be like, that's a Lynx that would still a U and that's a that's aligned sort of thing. It's not, not from a position of fear because there's all, there's a lot of like, you know, like, Oh, you shouldn't do that. You should use the bar in this.
You shouldn't go in termination, not from a position of fear, but just like, Oh, you are joining this amazing sport. Like this is the safest Wing that we do, but get your skills up and, you know, learn to fly it quick because their sport is going to open a whole new world for you. So in a positive way, like, and that's the most people die on me and a and B wins and they relying fully on the passive safety. And it's not, it's not going to re produce the, the certification results you think in terms of care,
Speaker 2 (1h 44m 36s): God is just such a critical point. I'm glad you brought this up, Alex Robey and both Stef and Bernard, and I'm sure others brought this up, but you know, like step in. And it was a while now he's a commercial pilot, but he was a jet pilot and flew for the German air force. And he talks about that. And, you know, write from the beginning, they teach autonomy, you know, they, they teach, they don't teach this passive safety end of things. And all they show what these, that these aircraft can do and how they can pull you and this relying on passive safety thing that, I mean, I think it goes opposite of what we're all trying to achieve.
Speaker 3 (1h 45m 19s): And in most other, I mean, in the, especially like every other aviation there's, you know, it's like incompetencies is just widely accepted in our sport and in other forms of and they'd be, you know, they think, they think is mad
Speaker 2 (1h 45m 35s): And aerology, and you're, you're you're minted. Yeah. I mean, look at helicopters, you can't fly a helicopter in LA until you can do the what's it called the where you shut the thing off. I mean, it's, it's insane
Speaker 3 (1h 45m 49s): Life, you know, flying and planes. You've got to Stoller and even glider's and stuff like that. You've got to have gone through all of those, those things. And I think people are shocked that the glider would behave out of certification. And if that was more widely known, I think it would completely change people's attitude towards it. Like if I gave you an EMP or when I took the out right now, I could get an EMD result out of it all day, just by doing a small movement or a small movement with a glider or a breaking point of the wrong time.
I, I can give you a and D results from one in AEM, but you got to do the same. And in fact, I've people on my course, I had to go last year, we were trying to do all of the rotation just from straight and level flight, putting a clap. She was leaning in. So it was karma certification collapse. She landed such a safe guider. And that roughed me up. So I was like, okay, next, next flight. We're going to do a roll away. And you're going to pull the same flaps lean and do the same thing. And she nearly tumbled the glider. It shot underneath her. She did a full rotation.
I would have to send you a video. And that that's, that's more than the, and D just from a slight roll movement away from the claps as she called the collapse. And it's a bit like people couldn't imagine a kayak if you're in a glassy Lake early morning, and you've got this expert kayaker and he's rocking the clap left and right left and right with a really good balance slinky hit. And then he says, Oh yeah, that's a really stable kayak. I've got to up to 45 degrees or something like that. And that's good if you put a beginner in that kayak, and then you put them down, some whitewater Rapids there going to capsize, they're going to, we're going to fall over.
And it's the same way that you put a beginner on an ENA glider and you put them in turbot and air is just like being in what, what Rapids you're going to get a very different result from that glider than an expert in their field in karma. And then there's really three parameters being a test pilot, there's pulling a collapsed. That is the certified collapse. So the right thing Kangle, and you know, between two, two lines, and then there's not doing an input. And as soon as you're not a test pilot, or you're not in karma and do the wrong thing, you can get easily.
And the result you can get on, you know, you can get failure, results. How have your ENA Wing. And I think that people just think that any DNAs and DNA and that's it it's got me, whereas quite easily where the wrong input or the movement from Therma care, you got much more aggressive results. Is that it was more well known. I think people would take it more seriously.
Speaker 2 (1h 48m 35s): Yeah. I want to run this at that. I want to read this last segment right at the top of the show. I think that's super important. That's an interesting, I mean, it's, is it culturally, are we doing that? Because people want to sell gear it like it's it seems like we've almost got everything backwards. You know, that, that, like you said, that's not what you learn when you go to learn how to fly an airplane. They're not, they're not going to go. This is really safe. This plane has you, you can't fuck this up.
Speaker 3 (1h 49m 2s): Yeah. It's yeah. It is. Imagine that you got to go, you're doing a course to learn a thing of like, Oh yeah, we've just fitted some stabilization to there. So we're only gonna teach you half the course. You don't really need to fully learn how to fly it, then worry. Cause you know, we've got some software or on the plane. They'd never say that we like and never it's crazy. I think it's a whole thing of the way sob used to be taught it wasn't for everyone. Therefore you can't recommend everyone does it. It's marketing.
Every, every advert is now this is the safest glider we've ever made. This is right. And, and that should be governed by someone, you know, they should be disclaimers on a date on things saying like, you know, in brackets, the can still produce in the results or there's this passive safety by no means to some sort of safety caveats of the whole thing. So it's just a completely spread through. And then it's culture, you know, you go to a club when you've just learned and they will just tell you, yeah, you know, this Wing and safe to do that.
It's just, it's just ingrained this and that. Then seeing a change it's slowly changing. But I think it's, most of it is, is ignorance. It's it's that you can call a Wing safe rather than saying that we know that anyone will easily kill you and does so don't not fly, but just learn how to fly. If you're going to fly, then learn how to fly. And then, and then the beauty of that is wings just become tools. Once you become a good pilot.
Like, I can't remember the last time I looked at a certification of a glider. Like I fly single skins here. I've got an app for a glider, a fly, my two diners. I've just got to see a light bulb and stuff. But I can't remember the last time if I, if I want to try a different single skin or whatever, I will pick a glider because of what I want to use it for. I haven't thought, Oh, I wonder if he's not being certified or is that it's like, Oh, I want to do a hike and fly bam. I'll, I'll take a single scan or like, I want to do a comp or grab them a comp way.
And they become tools. And because you soon realize if you're not, if you're not a test pilot and you're not in karma, then that that little letter on a bit of paper somewhere is completely irrelevant. It's, it's how you deal with it. That is the important thing.
Speaker 2 (1h 51m 28s): Yeah. I, I almost think, you know, if we pull back even farther from, this is like, you know, we all have it at every level. If the instructor's the, school's the gear sales, the shops that the certifications, everything, we have to stop kidding ourselves that you know, is an amazing sport. And that is awesome. But you know, we don't want everybody to get into this sport. You know, it's not for everyone and we have to stop kidding ourselves. That is fucking dangerous at every level, you know?
And we see that, you know, so we S we obviously wings are getting better. Wings are a quote, unquote, getting safer, but the accident don't change. You know, I don't think the data backs it up. Right. And so, you know, still people do make mistakes. People are stupid, we are human. We do forget things. And we're flying aircraft.
Speaker 3 (1h 52m 23s): Yeah. It's an unforgiving. Is it? I think it's dangerous. If, if you've got a lot of people flying around that can't recover from even quite basic situations, then it's statistically becomes a lot more dangerous. If every single pilot was really hot on that wind Control I think we do have lot less accidents. We you're still, we're going to get all the mistake ones, but you're not going to get the accidental spins. Right.
Which, you know, you're not going to get the pretty benign situations that then end up in a cascade, which ended up and throwing a reserve or crashing into the health of all of that stuff. It would be, would it be wiped out? And then you're just going to be getting the things when you misjudge the landing and you know, that is not going to help sort of those sort of things or misjudging the, the MFCEO conditions or whatever that, you know, that there's other things we can get you, but yeah, just be being a good pilot, regardless of what Wing, you're on deals with a lot of the horror horror shows you see on, on YouTube, lots of shows,
Speaker 4 (1h 53m 30s): Great stuff. Malin, we're going to leave it there. Cause my three-year-old's certain to bang around. Pretty good back here. We're going to have to do a part B of this, for sure. I know you got a lot more to say this has been super informative. Thank you very much. And keep up the good work with their Flyeo and it's you guys got a great thing going in a beautiful, amazing credible part of the world and wish you all the success. We didn't get to talk too much about COVID, but I know that's been a big hit for you guys this year, and hopefully at some point here, we're all gonna get to go back to what we love to do in a, in a more normal way.
But thanks. Malin thanks so much for helping me turn my glider last year. I really appreciate that. Oh, so much better and a half. And also just sharing all this with us. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (1h 54m 23s): Well, it's a pleasure in the area. You could see again,
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