Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1189 Freedom! Hang Gliding and Paragliding with Emi Carvalho

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Ep. 1189 Freedom! Hang Gliding and Paragliding with Emi Carvalho · Adventure Sports Podcast

0:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for adventuring with us, as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts are doing all over the world.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, here's your host, Kurt Linville.
0:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever had the dream that you're running over hills and jumping off the backside?
0:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And as you jump over the tops of the hills and tumble down, eventually you jump far enough that you don't hit the ground and you start flying.
0:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had that dream my entire life, and today we find out how that dream can be a reality.
0:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We have Amy Carvalo with us, and Amy has been hangliding and paragliding now for 11 years, and he is coming to regal us with all the amazing stories of what it's like to fly under a kite.
0:57
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I'm going to say it, and welcome to the program, Amy.
1:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Hiker this, thank you for having me.
1:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you bet.
1:05
[SPEAKER_01]: You do both hingliding and paragliding.
1:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just mentioned to me before I hit record.
1:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Why you do both?
1:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you share with the listeners why you do both and what the differences are.
1:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you for the question.
1:20
[SPEAKER_03]: For someone from outside, they are too different, but somewhat similar ways of flying and one could be mentioned that they feel the same, but they feel completely different.
1:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe something closer.
1:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's more easy to understand, it's probably the difference between snowboarding and skiing, right?
1:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, they are both ways of going down the mountain with snow, but they feel completely different.
1:43
[SPEAKER_03]: One of them you can go much faster, but the other one you can.
1:46
[SPEAKER_03]: really have a very different way of controlling the way where you are going and here is a bit the same with a perglider you have a feeling of more calmness I will say because it's the slowest form of aviation except for a hot air balloon perhaps.
2:03
[SPEAKER_03]: But the third one that is the slowest way that you can be while flying, so you can really get very close to terrain.
2:10
[SPEAKER_03]: For example, you have the countless to check everything that you want.
2:15
[SPEAKER_03]: You can make it more extreme as well, but I'll start with that angle.
2:20
[SPEAKER_03]: On the hand glider, on the other hand, the logistics are, of course, completely different.
2:24
[SPEAKER_03]: But the feeling of flying is much more
2:28
[SPEAKER_03]: like a bird or like Superman or really like your dreams of flying.
2:33
[SPEAKER_03]: So you're mentioning running down the mountain, the hill and at some point flying.
2:39
[SPEAKER_03]: And although that's actually how paraglider starts, people started paragliding by using
2:44
[SPEAKER_03]: skydiving equipment, but instead of jumping from a hot air balloon or an airplane, they will open the canopy in a very inclined field and really kind of roll, run down until they were more or less flying in a very very inclined slope.
3:01
[SPEAKER_03]: That's not really probably how you imagine yourself flying in that example, right?
3:05
[SPEAKER_03]: You are probably going to be running down and at some point you will be flying more like a bird, be sure with your head forward, with
3:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe with your arms open, and that's really how hang-lider our hang-lider feels and controls the wing is with that position.
3:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And it controls the wing with its weight, so it's somewhat similar to driving a motorcycle.
3:27
[SPEAKER_03]: You really feel that the equipment is the second part of yourself.
3:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And paragliding is lovely, and actually I do much more paragliding slides and hang-liding slides.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Mmm, fascinating.
3:45
[SPEAKER_01]: People can tell by your accent that you're probably not talking us to us from the United States.
3:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So where are you talking to us from today?
3:54
[SPEAKER_03]: That's right.
3:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So I'm Portuguese.
3:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I live in Switzerland.
3:57
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm talking from the mountains in Switzerland, from the Swiss Alps.
4:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Just looking out of my window way, I have a 10,000 feet mountain.
4:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And that I can see and that we fly from there regularly.
4:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, here, this one is called Titli's.
4:18
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a very popular mountain for skiing, not so much for proglighting and gliding, because the regularly, the dimension is not everyday, but it's every month.
4:29
[SPEAKER_03]: Every month, there's a couple of days where the wind is just right and we can go there and fly.
4:34
[SPEAKER_01]: how fun.
4:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So how did you get into, I'm just going to say wing flying in general, how did you get into this in the first place?
4:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I started on gliding first in 2014.
4:48
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember when I was a child, I always had dreams of flying.
4:52
[SPEAKER_03]: Everyone that I talk about it, that as at some point,
5:02
[SPEAKER_03]: The other people but I think is a generational component because I used to watch cartoons where the characters will fly in a very specific way and they basically concentrated and they would levitate and so that's how I remember myself flying when I was a child.
5:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And I also remember vividly when I was leaving in Portugal, I must have been 6 or 7.
5:28
[SPEAKER_03]: We went out with the whole family and we went to one of our mountains.
5:32
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't have very tall mountains.
5:34
[SPEAKER_03]: The highest one is 6,000 feet.
5:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And I remember seeing someone flying.
5:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it was a hunger either.
5:40
[SPEAKER_03]: My brother says he is older.
5:41
[SPEAKER_03]: He will remember better.
5:43
[SPEAKER_03]: He says it was a paraglider.
5:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
5:45
[SPEAKER_03]: But definitely the image was in my mind and it never left.
5:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And eventually after I finished university, I graduated, I started working, I realized the work was not exactly what I had imagined it, and then I started thinking that it was a good time to get some hobbies, and flying was the first, it had to be the first.
6:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So you started with Hingliding, and then you added paragliding on top, but why did you add the paragliding?
6:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So when I was choosing what to fly, I looked into the different options.
6:23
[SPEAKER_03]: It was clear that I wanted to fly something without an engine, because it's like driving a motorcycle or cycling of both allow you to do different things, but only one of them is really connecting with the nature.
6:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Right, motorcycle is lovely, and I have my driving license.
6:41
[SPEAKER_03]: but you are not really connecting with the nature, at least not the same way as when you are cycling.
6:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And here, in the image of flying was the same way.
6:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And so for flying without an engine, you have a few options, you have sail planes, but then it's really again, a lot of equipment and to be honest, I couldn't afford it.
7:01
[SPEAKER_03]: or you had skydiving and perhaps wingsuit associated with skydiving, but once again quite expensive if you account the amount of hours that you have to do or the amount of flights that you have to do.
7:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you are left with hotel balloons, paragliders, hungliders.
7:20
[SPEAKER_03]: So I started the hunglighter because of the body position with the first one that I tried and I loved it and I still my favorite way of flying I tried the other ones that I mentioned but that's filled one I prefer
7:32
[SPEAKER_03]: But it has a big disadvantage, and that is the logistics.
7:38
[SPEAKER_03]: If you have seen a hand glider transporting his material, you know what I'm talking about.
7:43
[SPEAKER_03]: So usually it's when it's compacted.
7:48
[SPEAKER_03]: So when you fold it completely, it's a 5, 6 meters tube, so that's what 20 feet long, 18 feet long tube.
7:57
[SPEAKER_03]: It goes on top of the cars.
8:01
[SPEAKER_03]: staircase on top of the car to transport.
8:05
[SPEAKER_03]: So you need to have a garage of course.
8:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you are naturally going to fly wherever you can drive.
8:12
[SPEAKER_03]: It's quite logistically intense to try to fly in another country.
8:17
[SPEAKER_03]: You are to go to an island to fly.
8:20
[SPEAKER_03]: Pregliding is the absolute opposite.
8:24
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's why I decided to start
8:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Whenever I travel somewhere, I could not take my wing, and the only opportunity was to try to find local schools or local pilots that could lend me Their wing and every now and then that was possible But sometimes they are not available, of course, and it's much more easy to just have a backpack that you take and that you fly with that's what paragliding is.
8:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's why I start to paragliding as well.
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
8:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So it sounds like paragliding is the most versatile.
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the one that goes everywhere.
8:59
[SPEAKER_03]: by far.
9:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And if we jump back 40 years, so in the 80s, in the beginning of the 80s, we're paragliding, we're just starting, or even had not started yet.
9:12
[SPEAKER_03]: Angliding was the easiest, most affordable, most compact form of aviation, and that's why that was the golden era of Angliding, I will say.
9:22
[SPEAKER_03]: But then it became paragliding.
9:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And now it's without, without the easiest, the most compactable, you learn quickly.
9:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And you can do more and more impressive things that you cannot do with other forms of aviation.
9:38
[SPEAKER_03]: For example, I think last year or two years ago, there were again people taking a paraglider up Mount Everest.
9:46
[SPEAKER_03]: I say again, because it was then before as well.
9:52
[SPEAKER_03]: field in perigliding that is called parahalpinism, where you actually take off from three or from 10,000 feet, but you try to get higher and land higher in higher mountains.
10:06
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a guy, that is one of my heroes that does that a lot, and all of that you can do with periglider, but you cannot with any other form of aviation.
10:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.
10:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So, how big is the paraglider pack these days?
10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I know back in the day the wings were really big in the packs where a little bit larger, how small have they gotten?
10:29
[SPEAKER_03]: A standard paraglider for someone finishing their school process and getting their license, it's probably going to be about 10 kilos of weight, so that's 20 pounds or so, more or less.
10:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Wow.
10:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And that includes the canopy that includes the hardness, that is your protection and your seat.
10:50
[SPEAKER_03]: That includes the reserve parachute in case things go off the off rails.
10:55
[SPEAKER_03]: That is very rare, by the way.
10:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's the standard one, but then you have the extreme light direction and the light is clear that you can get at the moment.
11:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It's basically two pounds everything together.
11:10
[SPEAKER_03]: No, it's a little backpack that almost fits in your pocket.
11:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, what does that mean?
11:17
[SPEAKER_03]: It means first you don't have a reserve part shoot.
11:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Second, your harness, your seat is really
11:25
[SPEAKER_03]: and your wing is much lighter and therefore less durable as well so you cannot do one thousand flights with such a wing but you can do a few hundred very impressive flights in places where you probably could then hike with the standard gear.
11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
11:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew that technology had moved the sport forward, but I had no idea that it was to that extreme.
11:49
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
11:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I just think, I mean, that's like something you could toss over one shoulder and go running up a mountain with, that's nuts.
11:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Exactly.
11:59
[SPEAKER_03]: So historically, I will say that most people that learned how to fly a proglider originally was because they wanted to fly.
12:07
[SPEAKER_03]: But very often what we see now in the school is people that just want to hike.
12:12
[SPEAKER_03]: They love hiking mountains and they want to fly down the mountain instead of hiking.
12:18
[SPEAKER_03]: So you want very, very light gear if you want to do something like this.
12:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's something that perglider now allows you to dream of that maybe 20 years ago was a bit unthinkable where 10 kilos was more the limits that you had at the moment.
12:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I answered about perigliding.
12:36
[SPEAKER_03]: If you ask me about hngliding, then you have to multiply the numbers by 10.
12:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and we want to go there because you mentioned earlier that there's something called short pack hang gliders and that that technology is also developing.
12:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine it's making it more versatile.
12:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really curious to hear all about that.
12:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think before we dive into that, I would like to hear some stories.
13:00
[SPEAKER_01]: What is it like?
13:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about hang gliding.
13:03
[SPEAKER_03]: What's it like to fly under a hang glider?
13:12
[SPEAKER_03]: not very noisy motorcycle because the way you control the canopy is quite similar you are laying in a similar position as you would lay if you are driving a heavy motorcycle and you lean to the right or to the left with your full body to control the turn.
13:31
[SPEAKER_03]: It's similar with the hand glider.
13:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Now the difference is you remove the noise first.
13:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So you only hear the wind.
13:41
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the only sound you are hearing while we fly, typically.
13:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And you also remove the ground.
13:47
[SPEAKER_03]: You are flying rather than confined to the road.
13:52
[SPEAKER_03]: And so that really gives you a freedom that
13:55
[SPEAKER_03]: It's difficult to describe.
13:56
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't think of anything else while you are flying.
14:00
[SPEAKER_03]: I think this idea of being in the zone is common with other sports.
14:03
[SPEAKER_03]: When someone of the sport anyway, they get into this space where, while you do it, you completely disconnect with any other problems that you might be having in your life at work.
14:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Whatever you are just in the moment that happens with flying as well.
14:17
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, ultimately, for me, it's the most fun way of spending my time that I have found so far.
14:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe there's something even more impressive, but I'm yet to find it.
14:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I didn't try everything yet, so I'm sure that there might be something even more extreme.
14:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It just sounds amazing, like I said.
14:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I've had that dream of flying off of field tops, my entire life.
14:41
[SPEAKER_01]: That's one of my favorite dreams.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the feeling of, oh, I'm not stuck on the ground anymore.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And the closest that I've ever experienced to that, outside of skydiving, I guess, is scuba diving because you get that feeling of flight and weightlessness when you're under the water.
14:58
[SPEAKER_01]: But then it's slow, and you have a lot of equipment and you're breathing through a hose and it, you don't have the same lightness and freedom that I would assume that you would feel it with a hand glider.
15:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I agree, I've tried scuba diving only twice.
15:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Both of them were activities that made me feel more connected with nature than usually.
15:25
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, if you are just skiing on a pist, for example, where it's very fun, but it's not really a moment of connection with nature per se.
15:35
[SPEAKER_03]: And like, for example, if you are ski touring or if you are off pist, or if you are hiking in a place where no one else is, right?
15:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I think both with the scuba diving and with flying you quickly get that situation where you are in a place where everyone else is quite far.
15:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
15:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not exactly like an astronaut going around the moon.
15:56
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't remember his name, but in the Apollo 11, the first trip to the moon.
16:04
[SPEAKER_03]: There was a Armstrong, but all during that day where
16:08
[SPEAKER_03]: in the moon and there was the third guy that stayed in the capsule, I don't remember his name, apologies for that.
16:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And he was the human in history that was the furthest from any human ever when he was on the other side of the moon.
16:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think that's a bit of what you get there when you are providing hand gliding, scuba diving.
16:29
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really this sensation of you are away from
16:38
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel it more with hunglighting and paragliding, but that's also because I've progressed it to a more advanced level there than with two scuba diving days.
16:47
[SPEAKER_03]: I will be measuring that maybe there's some connection there as well.
16:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Interesting.
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Will you describe for us one of your favorite flights on a hang glider?
16:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Just take a step by step from launching from the ground until you land just so we can get a feel for what it's like.
17:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so my, probably my favorite site happened four months ago, three months ago, in October, in November, beginning of November.
17:14
[SPEAKER_03]: It was a place where I have lived for many years.
17:19
[SPEAKER_03]: That's actually where I started my paragliding school.
17:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And I have flown there with a paraglider very often, but not with a hand glider logistics.
17:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, we will get to that.
17:29
[SPEAKER_03]: but this time I'm not leaving there anymore and I made a trip there and I really wanted to fly on glider.
17:35
[SPEAKER_03]: So I took it, the wind was not exactly right to the place where we were planning to fly so we had to find an alternative location that was funny because I knew to place very well and they have never flown from these other locations.
17:51
[SPEAKER_03]: I had to take off in a different direction than where the landing was, because we always take off and land against wind, that's really our driving force, the wind.
18:00
[SPEAKER_03]: So I, in order to make it to where I wanted to go, I had to take off, gain height, and then make a transition with gaining height along the way until I got to the landing area.
18:13
[SPEAKER_03]: I had the landing options.
18:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I could just fly forward and land far away.
18:18
[SPEAKER_03]: But those landing options would be an logistical nightmare because then there were no roads.
18:22
[SPEAKER_03]: So I will have to hike for one day or something like that to be bad luck.
18:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh goodness.
18:26
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
18:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Into an easy place.
18:29
[SPEAKER_03]: But the wind was just right.
18:30
[SPEAKER_03]: It was really perfect.
18:32
[SPEAKER_03]: I had my original hand gliding instructor there with me as well.
18:35
[SPEAKER_03]: We both analyzed it.
18:36
[SPEAKER_03]: We both thought that the conditions were perfect for soaring.
18:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Soaring is when you have strong wind coming against a hill or against a mountain.
18:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And as the air is rising, because the wind is going up the mountain, you can take a ride and you go up as well.
18:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So we both thought that those conditions were perfect for our plan.
18:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I took off, I had to go in height, it was difficult in the beginning.
19:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I definitely thought about, oh, I'm gonna have to land there, where's the best place to land that is not the worst logistical option ever.
19:13
[SPEAKER_03]: we like have to carry the hanglider back.
19:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I was already thinking of that.
19:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That was the worst part.
19:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Luckily, I will explore the little bit the area to find some areas of the mountain that were more inclined, because those ones often where you have the best lift and you go up more easily.
19:33
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was able to gain the height and then start making the transitions to go to the to the standard place where I was going to land that is a quite a large beach over.
19:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It's almost one mile, so it's super easy to land.
19:46
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no one there as well.
19:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And then it was thermic in that region, like it's very common.
19:52
[SPEAKER_03]: So thermals are basically bubbles of warm air and warm air goes up.
19:57
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, we catch a ride.
19:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Any air that is going up, we try to catch a ride.
20:02
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was able to keep flying for quite a bit longer and eventually I got a bit scared because I got into a situation where I had one thermal on my left, one thermal on my right and when the but I was not in it and when this happens basically both thermos try to push you away from them because the inside of the thermal rises
20:26
[SPEAKER_03]: faster than the side of the sermon and so that makes your wing tilt a bit to one side and I will tilt from one and tilt from the other and then I felt oh I don't really have the full control of direction here that I would like to have so then I pushed a little bit more inside into one of them and then I thought okay I had enough time to go land, landed on the beach, went
20:55
[SPEAKER_03]: The pleasure was so intense, it was completely non-sexual, but our gas making in the sense of how pleasurable it was.
21:03
[SPEAKER_03]: It was, yeah, I imagine I've never hiked.
21:07
[SPEAKER_03]: incredibly high mountains, but I imagine that it's a similar feeling when you get to the top of a mountain that you have really dreamed about getting there, maybe you attempted it and you failed the first time.
21:20
[SPEAKER_03]: So it was a similar very intense feeling of pleasure and of accomplishment as well.
21:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Funny enough, I have only a small video recording from my instructor, from the ground,
21:37
[SPEAKER_03]: that I was taking with me.
21:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So after landing when I realized, I relieved it in my mind twice again.
21:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I remember every detail of it, every transition.
21:48
[SPEAKER_03]: And to be honest, every now and then, I go back to it because again, it was a special flight.
21:54
[SPEAKER_03]: There were more, but that one was maybe the most special I had.
21:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I love what you just said about replaying it in your mind a couple of times so that your memory could stick and you could hang on to that.
22:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's so important that people often forget to do that.
22:09
[SPEAKER_01]: They have a very unique experience and they're overjoyed, they're excited, they're like, yeah, that was a awesome, and then they forget it.
22:17
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm fully agree and I think that the typical approach that we have to try to avoid that situation is recording, right?
22:25
[SPEAKER_03]: But there's also misses it, you do forget the details, of course.
22:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And sometimes we, and I find myself in that position all the time, unfortunately, of recording so that I will remember the moment, but that also changes how you live the moment.
22:41
[SPEAKER_03]: The fact that I realized early on that the camera was malfunctioning and then just forgot about it and focus on the flight and the fact that I knew that the only way to remember this to keep the memory of it was to really relieve it, visit every moment because if I didn't, I would forget details very soon, maybe that also contributed to making it more special.
23:05
[SPEAKER_01]: There's been a recent development that has changed the way that humans can see nature.
23:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But prior to this, you almost had to have a wing, and what I'm talking about, of course, is drones.
23:19
[SPEAKER_01]: You see videos now, and the video is not glued to the ground anymore, right?
23:24
[SPEAKER_01]: People can fly around and show you the bird's eye view, and I just think it's so breathtaking to see what that looks like.
23:36
[SPEAKER_03]: It's quite interesting that you are just before answering, that's exactly what my, I don't remember the right word in English, but the I doctor, after I just, exactly what he used to tell me that he doesn't see the needs to go on a flight because he can see all of those images, right, but how do I, how do I phrase it?
23:59
[SPEAKER_03]: If you love a specific sport, let's imagine football, soccer.
24:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's very different to score a goal or to see someone scoring a goal.
24:09
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it's very different to score a goal in the final than to see someone scoring a goal in the final.
24:14
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's, of course, true for any other sport.
24:16
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very different to see it than to do it.
24:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And here, completely as well, of course, with the drone, you are seeing it.
24:22
[SPEAKER_03]: But leaving it being there,
24:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, it's a whole other, um, whole other thing.
24:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So the scenery in that one was, uh, a friend of mine that was that was around as well photographer, he called it Martian like because, um, and so the flight was in Cape Verde, Cape Verde is, um, we often call it the African version of Avai.
24:47
[SPEAKER_03]: It's very mountainous because it's volcanic.
24:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It has much less rain than a vice, so as a consequence it's much more dry and you don't have a lot of vegetation.
25:00
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's quite impressive in terms of the landscape forms that you can see the extreme peaks that seem to come out of nowhere.
25:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's incredible what volcanic islands can look like.
25:13
[SPEAKER_03]: The beach was like I mentioned about one my long of dark sand, wide hot, once you landed the afternoon and that's why it's very thermic.
25:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And it was a small town, there's a small town nearby of maybe 100 people living there, it's really small, so it also feels quite exclusive in a way, not in terms of being expensive but just in terms of being difficult to get there.
25:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And while I was flying, of course, at some point I was flying over the ocean as well.
25:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So you could imagine the full blue of the ocean all around you at some point, that was quite impressive.
26:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's a question for people that are afraid of heights, and being afraid of heights, by the way, is completely natural.
26:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Matter of fact, what are they in psychology?
26:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I learned a fear of heights, fear of being alone in a fear of loud noises.
26:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are the three, the three fears that every baby is born with or innate to what it means to be human.
26:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But you're overcoming one of the biggest ones, which is the fear of heights.
26:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm just curious, how much that played into the sport for you?
26:29
[SPEAKER_03]: For me, I didn't have the fear of heights to as a child when you do that game The children like to do off pretending to be an animal or imagining which animal will you be right?
26:42
[SPEAKER_03]: I will be a dolphin though those type of questions and I always imagine myself as a goat Not really a bird funny enough because I love to jump from rock to rock and that's still your my favorite thing So the fear of heights was not very present for me that being said
27:00
[SPEAKER_03]: In the paragliding community, not so much on the hangliding community, where also people usually are not afraid of heights, but in the paragliding community, you will find a significant number of pilots that are afraid of heights.
27:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know how scientific this is, but it's certainly my intuition from talking with several people that have that reflect that type of fear.
27:22
[SPEAKER_03]: One thing is being afraid of heights and another thing is being afraid of falling.
27:25
[SPEAKER_03]: You are usually talking, I will say about the fear of falling.
27:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And on the hand glider, if you are afraid of falling, you shouldn't do it.
27:35
[SPEAKER_03]: I think because of the way that your body is, you feel less protected.
27:41
[SPEAKER_03]: In a way, you feel more exposed.
27:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Because you look down and you see nothing there, right?
27:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And while on the paraglider, you are seated.
27:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It feels a lot like things seated on a car seat, but we are driving wheel.
27:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And you can look underneath, you can see there is nothing there, but you feel really quite, it's quite a comfortable and common position to be in that you have it already from somewhere else in your life, again, like driving your car.
28:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, because you are so well connected, so well attached, the fear of falling goes away.
28:17
[SPEAKER_03]: If you are afraid of heights, you are still afraid.
28:19
[SPEAKER_03]: But if you are afraid of falling, typically you are not afraid when perigliding.
28:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's an experience that lots of passengers that came to fly with me on tandem flights have reported.
28:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes they are afraid of height, sorry, of falling.
28:40
[SPEAKER_03]: and they are very nervous before we start and then the way a perglider takes off or a hand glider by that matter is we do a small run on a hill typically and then we are flying.
28:51
[SPEAKER_03]: So before starting they are often quite nervous but after five seconds I'm not exaggerating when they are seated, usually they get much, much more calm or maybe after two or three minutes if they were more nervous when they realize how
29:07
[SPEAKER_03]: call a paragliding flight can be, then they really move into a situation where they are fully relaxed.
29:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I used to teach sport repelling, and I don't know how many dozens or hundreds of people I've shown repelling for the first time, but that's a similar effect happens when they're on the lip of a cliff, and they have to lean back over the cliff on the rope, and that's where the fear moment is.
29:33
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels too awkward to lean over the expanse.
29:37
[SPEAKER_01]: But as soon as they take a step down the cliff, and they realize the rope is truly holding them.
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: The exposures the same, but the fear goes away.
29:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Then they just enjoy the experience of working with a rope and going down the cliff.
29:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So I imagine it's something similar to that.
29:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I experienced that skydiving too, accelerating to terminal velocity before we pulled the shoot, felt like falling, but then when you feel the air cushion under you, even though you're still dropping, right?
30:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You feel the air cushion, you feel supported.
30:07
[SPEAKER_01]: then suddenly it was much more stable and it didn't feel like falling anymore.
30:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And then of course when we we pulled the parachute and the wing was over us and I felt the wing holding us and that was another feeling of even even more security, you know, and it no longer felt scary like I was going to fall.
30:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Does that make sense?
30:27
[SPEAKER_03]: It doesn't, I don't know if she's
30:30
[SPEAKER_03]: If it's a biological connection, but this idea of I'm a young father, so maybe that's why I'm thinking of that.
30:37
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, this feeling of something holding you might just come from the fact that we always felt safe when we were being held right here like you are saying it's not your feet it's not that in your feet your feet are standing on solid ground and that they are giving you support usually that's the support that we get.
31:01
[SPEAKER_03]: It's the thing above you that is holding you are feeling held more than just feeling that your feet are are on solid ground.
31:08
[SPEAKER_03]: And indeed, once you have that feeling, if your fear is falling, now you intuitively know, maybe do research part of the brain inside of your nose, that, okay, I'm not going to fall anymore, and then that fear goes away.
31:26
[SPEAKER_03]: That being said, I have to say that I also had the experience of taking people to fly that were definitely afraid of heights.
31:35
[SPEAKER_03]: One was my mother.
31:36
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we went on a paragliding fight.
31:40
[SPEAKER_03]: She will never have the negative, if it was not with me.
31:42
[SPEAKER_03]: She just wanted to please me, I guess.
31:45
[SPEAKER_03]: But we both went for a paragliding fight and I wanted to make it very special for her.
31:54
[SPEAKER_03]: So I took off.
31:55
[SPEAKER_03]: And then after taking off I started trying to find the thermal and I climbed with a little bit
32:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And I call censor being a little bit stressed, but she didn't say anything, so I went a little bit more.
32:07
[SPEAKER_03]: And when she realized that we were higher than the takeoff, the takeoff was at the top of the mountain.
32:13
[SPEAKER_03]: When she realized that one, she told me, time to go down.
32:18
[SPEAKER_03]: And so I started pointing to go down towards the valley.
32:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And she was so afraid that it was clear that that was going to be a lot of suffering.
32:27
[SPEAKER_03]: We were really high.
32:28
[SPEAKER_03]: I think about...
32:29
[SPEAKER_03]: 4,000 feet higher than the landing.
32:32
[SPEAKER_03]: So then I just ended up landing on the take-offs, sometimes we can do that.
32:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So I just landed on the take-offs, so a few minutes later, she was on solid ground, and I realized that people are also afraid of heights.
32:44
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not just a fear of falling, sometimes it just don't want to be very high.
32:48
[SPEAKER_01]: interesting.
32:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a theory having interviewed a lot of people about a lot of different adventure sports.
32:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the people that get really really good at something usually don't have as much fear about it.
33:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But people that enjoy something in a simpler way often have a lot of fear, regarding whatever the sport requires.
33:09
[SPEAKER_01]: For instance, I think the people that enjoy scuba diving the
33:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's exciting, it's exhilarating, they're overcoming something and they feel they feel like they're accomplishing it, you know?
33:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And I suspect that depending on how severe your fear is, but a fear of heights or a fear of falling, if you're able to manage it, and maybe paraglide, I suspect it would be very, very rewarding to feel like you conquered a fear.
33:39
[SPEAKER_03]: I think you are touching a bedrock of humanity, probably.
33:43
[SPEAKER_03]: We, the way that we see that phenomenon that I think you are describing is
33:51
[SPEAKER_03]: how we felt on the first flight.
33:54
[SPEAKER_03]: The first flight was always different than all the others.
33:57
[SPEAKER_03]: My first flight took five minutes.
33:58
[SPEAKER_03]: My instructor told me it was gonna be just two.
34:01
[SPEAKER_03]: It was five and they were both the most terrifying and most exhilarating five minutes of that year for sure.
34:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, before you do that, those steps to make what you know is gonna be a long flight, not just hopping
34:21
[SPEAKER_03]: you know that something unknown is going to happen and your adrenaline level is through the roof, I'm sure, and the fear is quite strong, but then all of that is somehow I don't know the biological process behind it, but somehow that kind of
34:39
[SPEAKER_03]: either transforms or leads to just pure happiness and again this feeling of pleasure and of enjoyment that you immediately have and you see that if you are doing tandem fights and I'm sure it's the same with skydiving and scuba diving as well.
34:58
[SPEAKER_03]: You see that the first time that someone comes to fill it is also why
35:03
[SPEAKER_03]: a good experience for the tandem pilot, for example, as well is the fact that we kind of get a little bit that feeling of the first flight by the fact that the person is doing
35:15
[SPEAKER_03]: The passenger is doing their first flight and that joy wraps on us a little bit, passes through a little bit.
35:23
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember maybe one of the most interesting ones was flying with this lady that had, I think the condition is called the WLS.
35:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's a debilitating health condition where you lose control of your muscles with time.
35:37
[SPEAKER_03]: I think it's called the WLS.
35:40
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not sure.
35:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe it's ALS.
35:42
[SPEAKER_03]: ALS, that's the one.
35:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Thank you very much.
35:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And she came for a paragliding site.
35:48
[SPEAKER_03]: We had to take off with adapted gears, so there are some wheelchairs that you can use for paragliding.
35:54
[SPEAKER_03]: They are specifically conceived to be paragliding harnesses and use for paragliding.
35:58
[SPEAKER_03]: And we were in the air for maybe one hour.
36:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And then you could feel it.
36:03
[SPEAKER_03]: So that was maybe my most enjoyable tandem paragliding site was the first time that this lady might
36:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Again, all of that happiness that she had fear, and happiness, probably exaggerated by the condition and by knowing that this was rare and that probably she had not dreamed that she could do it, also passed to me.
36:27
[SPEAKER_03]: And I still enjoy seeing those pictures actually of that slide every now and then.
36:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
36:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we really need to talk about the future of the hengliding wings.
36:45
[SPEAKER_01]: What's happening with making them more compact?
36:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so funny enough, the most used compact hengliders, the shortback ones, they are models that are 30 years old, 30 to 5 years old.
37:01
[SPEAKER_03]: They are not exactly new, but they are somehow making a comeback.
37:09
[SPEAKER_03]: of where the future is.
37:11
[SPEAKER_03]: So looking at the hand-lider community as a whole, we have less pilots every year because pilots are getting older eventually they need to stop it's a little bit of a physical sport and there's not a lot of new pilots.
37:26
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a decline, there's an increase age, there's less schools than there were 20 years ago, there's less new pilots,
37:33
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reason for that is perigliding, because in my opinion, because like I mentioned in the beginning, hanglider, and gliding used to be the easiest, most affordable form of evasion, and now it's not that's perigliding.
37:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And gliding is still as close, but perigliding appear.
37:50
[SPEAKER_03]: And they are quite comparable in terms of performance, as well on how well they glide.
37:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Hangliders are still better.
37:58
[SPEAKER_03]: But the logistics are completely different
38:03
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's this discussion of how could we keep the sport alive because if we don't do anything, it's going to eventually old people will die and the sport will kind of disappear.
38:16
[SPEAKER_03]: We see manufacturers going out of business.
38:19
[SPEAKER_03]: The schools are less and less and there's two or three different ideas.
38:25
[SPEAKER_03]: All of them are attempted somehow.
38:27
[SPEAKER_03]: So one of them is that we should just have more visibility so do more introductory classes just to have more visibility because you see paragliders everywhere in every mountain that you go.
38:41
[SPEAKER_03]: But you don't really often see hangliding pilots and maybe bringing it.
38:46
[SPEAKER_03]: to a park in a city where people can do a small hop and just be flying for two or three seconds, but have a very unique experience that they will otherwise have might be a way to grab some of those people to start and hangliding.
39:03
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's one of the directions.
39:05
[SPEAKER_03]: The other direction is performance, that's the historical direction that hanglider and lighting went with.
39:11
[SPEAKER_03]: That's still what makes the difference between hangliding and paragliding.
39:14
[SPEAKER_03]: while a high level competition periglider, if he is one fall, I'm going to say, yeah, I'm going to
39:22
[SPEAKER_03]: talk with the numbers 1 to 10 and 1 to 11 instead of distances because then it's difficult with the American Union, so if you are 10 units of altitude with a high competition perglider wing you might fly forward 120 130 units, so this is easier again.
39:47
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's a glide ratio.
39:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Correct, exactly.
39:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So if you are actually if you are one mile above the ground, you can go forward 11-12 miles or so with a high-level competition Periglider while a standard beginner level wing.
40:02
[SPEAKER_03]: It's maybe just out of that
40:05
[SPEAKER_03]: On the hanglider it's about 18 to 20, it can get even a little bit higher with some rigid wings that is format as well, where the sport has evolved.
40:16
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's a big difference there, and there's still some hope from some of the pilots in the community that that's the direction to keep going.
40:25
[SPEAKER_03]: As long as we have higher performance, some people will always want to
40:32
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there's a third vision that is we will never in the Hengliding world have more compactable wings than pergliding.
40:43
[SPEAKER_03]: That's impossible.
40:43
[SPEAKER_03]: That's never one is aluminum and the other one is plastic.
40:48
[SPEAKER_03]: So I think that answers it straight there.
40:51
[SPEAKER_03]: But if we get some very compactable, easy to assemble Hengliding, we will get suddenly a lot more people flying.
41:00
[SPEAKER_03]: And the reason for that is because it's going to be easier to transport is going to be possible to go to different places that you could not otherwise do.
41:09
[SPEAKER_03]: There are slides that you cannot do at the moment that or you cannot with a standard wing because of the difficult to access it that you will start being able to do it is compatible once.
41:20
[SPEAKER_03]: And so suddenly you are opening up new worlds, even places, even things that you might not be able to do with a
41:29
[SPEAKER_03]: at least five years ago.
41:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Now there's another provider model of wings, the parakites that are maybe also going to threaten that option.
41:38
[SPEAKER_03]: But in any case, I strongly believe that that's the direction that hanglighting should go in order to get more pilots.
41:45
[SPEAKER_03]: So instead of just making wings more performant is making wings easier, make it so compact that I can put it under my bed and that I can take it inside of my car.
41:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I can take it up in any cable car, I can take it in a boat, maybe even a kayak, if I want and then suddenly there's a lot of new things that I could do.
42:06
[SPEAKER_03]: I did a few adventures recently in the last 12 months that I couldn't have done with a standard hand glider.
42:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm an experienced paraglider pilot, but in terms of hand gliding my level is very intermediate.
42:20
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm not a full beginner, but I'm not a very experienced pilot either.
42:25
[SPEAKER_03]: All of those flights that I will mention, I am sure that I was either the first or one of the first pilots to do, and they were only possible because of the compatible nature of this hanglighting.
42:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So how do you make a more compact?
42:39
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you'd have to put joints in the longer members.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Some sort of a joint to you click together or something.
42:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So there's some steps being done by different manufacturers at the moment and British one that didn't announce yet.
42:55
[SPEAKER_03]: But we know that they are working on a more compact version of Hangliders.
42:59
[SPEAKER_03]: There's also a Swiss pilot that has created a more compact demo.
43:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not really ready for production.
43:09
[SPEAKER_03]: initial stages so we might hope that in a few years that might be a production ready hang-lighter and they use different strategies.
43:17
[SPEAKER_03]: The one that seems to be the most maybe industry ready is the strategy that that model that is the third year old model does that is basically
43:29
[SPEAKER_03]: the aluminum tubes, they are compatible or separatable into three different components.
43:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So basically instead of having the six meters one, you get two meters.
43:41
[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry, 30 feet, you get 10 feet.
43:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Sure, that works.
43:45
[SPEAKER_03]: And I got the numbers wrong, 20 feet, you get six feet, sorry.
43:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And then suddenly it's more easy to transport it.
43:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Now it takes much longer to assemble it.
43:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So that's the pain, the current pain, the hope is that with the new developments that assembly will also be faster, so at this stage to give you some numbers, if I have my perglider, I get to the top of the mountain, I get it ready in less than 10 minutes, that's standard.
44:16
[SPEAKER_03]: If I have a standard, I'm glad it takes me maybe half an hour.
44:20
[SPEAKER_03]: If I take one of these compactable hand gliders, a short pack, and glider, it will take me about one hour.
44:27
[SPEAKER_03]: So it's more and more.
44:29
[SPEAKER_03]: So getting something that is faster to assemble faster to the assemble less prone to human error, but still keeping the mentality and the vision of having it a short pack, this possible that will really, in my opinion, make it much easier to be practicing this sport and therefore many more people will do it.
44:50
[SPEAKER_01]: You know in my mind, I'm thinking about tent poles and the shock cord that holds them together.
44:56
[SPEAKER_01]: do they do the use shot coordinates, hangliders, to help get the pieces together quickly?
45:02
[SPEAKER_03]: We don't, I know that that was a direction that design had about 30 years ago.
45:11
[SPEAKER_03]: We had something called bow gliders.
45:14
[SPEAKER_03]: Of course, I wasn't flying.
45:15
[SPEAKER_03]: I never flew one of those.
45:16
[SPEAKER_03]: But those were gliders that would basically have a very strong line that went much further
45:24
[SPEAKER_03]: typical front of the glider is and from that one from the very front you will then have some cables connecting to the side of the wing and that was keeping it under tension and then you will have that system in the in the in the main aluminum process that that's an interesting option
45:46
[SPEAKER_03]: or how to integrate that one, because, for example, with the aluminium, we want to be quite sure that every time that we are assembling, we are not creating small deformations, because the small deformations have an impact if we are relying on it to fly.
46:02
[SPEAKER_03]: But I'm sure that this could be developed in such a way that you've put the necessary protections on the extremes of the aluminium, right, to avoid the smaller formations and you could still use it.
46:14
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's an interesting concept.
46:16
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to propose it probably to Swiss pilot that is working on it to see what he thinks.
46:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, take it and run with it.
46:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, if all the pieces are already tied together with shock cord, and they fold up, and all you have to do is just pull them out and then they'll snap together.
46:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Then, of course, you have to have the locking mechanism that makes it secure, but that could be external.
46:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
46:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Just a thought.
46:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It might get my speeded up.
46:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely.
46:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I agree with that.
46:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Currently, we have locking mechanisms.
46:47
[SPEAKER_03]: in all pieces, right, all of those pieces that are not together, they each need an individual lucky mechanism, right?
46:54
[SPEAKER_03]: With some redundancy as well, as you can imagine, since it's aviation and you are flying.
46:58
[SPEAKER_03]: So actually with your system, we'll need much less.
47:02
[SPEAKER_03]: We did concept now how to make that happen.
47:04
[SPEAKER_03]: It's certainly a discussion and probably in the industry, maybe people that are already thought about it.
47:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, I'm not in the industry of designing
47:14
[SPEAKER_03]: But that certainly rings to an element of little secret sauce that might be there and might be the way to get it fast.
47:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Because the issue or...
47:27
[SPEAKER_03]: the strongest complaint I have with my gear, it's how our long it takes to prepare it.
47:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, the benefits are worth it, I will say, but it does have that limitation.
47:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, people would think, well, man, you're getting ready to fly.
47:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do it?
47:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Why does it matter?
47:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But think about your mountain bike that way.
47:48
[SPEAKER_01]: If you had to put your mountain bike together from scratch, every Tony won on a ride, how many rides would you miss?
47:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And ultimately, let's be honest, we don't live 30 or 40 years ago.
47:58
[SPEAKER_03]: We live in the world where everyone likes to be more comfortable and likes things to be easier, right?
48:04
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just the reality.
48:07
[SPEAKER_03]: If we are hiking up a mountain, we are not going to take standard gear.
48:11
[SPEAKER_03]: We typically try to get lighter gear, right?
48:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Because it's more comfortable, so it's the same here.
48:18
[SPEAKER_03]: If we are
48:19
[SPEAKER_03]: If I'm carrying a 20 or 50 pounds equipment up the mountain to fly, it will be nice that if it was 40, if it takes one hour to prepare it, it will be nice that if it was 40 minutes.
48:34
[SPEAKER_03]: So anything there that we can improve.
48:36
[SPEAKER_03]: will make the sport more easy, more accessible, and therefore more people will be interested to practicing naturally as long as it doesn't suddenly become ultra expensive because then of course that will be a limited on itself.
48:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, sure.
48:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, Amy, I tell you, if you were in a park with little hillside and you were letting people enjoy three seconds of flight, I would line up for that.
49:00
[SPEAKER_01]: I would be all over that.
49:01
[SPEAKER_01]: That would be so much fun.
49:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I know that most of your listeners are from the United States.
49:07
[SPEAKER_03]: So I have to shout out to the USHPA that is the United States and gliding and providing association.
49:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And they have, you can go on their website and you can quickly get familiar with all the handwriting schools.
49:21
[SPEAKER_03]: I think if you just write on Google also, hand-glighting map, USA, or hand-glighting map world, you find very interesting map with all of the schools around the world, or at least many of the schools around the world.
49:35
[SPEAKER_03]: This was developed by American pilot.
49:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And therefore, it's much more thorough when USA, so that's quite a good source to start.
49:43
[SPEAKER_03]: and in California, for example, where one of the most active schools is in, they are often doing this type of small-dune flying.
49:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I could even say that they are in a way the
49:59
[SPEAKER_03]: the next generation of the right brothers since that's also how they started to fly in the dunes so it's the same type of flying that they are doing there and to a few seconds flight you do it on the first day so you can just go you have one class you don't need to take the full license you have the full support of the of the school and it's not very difficult
50:22
[SPEAKER_03]: It's long to get the full license, but with the support of a school is relatively quick to do your first hops.
50:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And again, it's a different feeling.
50:31
[SPEAKER_03]: It's an... You should try it if you can, at the time, and I recommend everyone that might want to try that might have dreamed of flying.
50:40
[SPEAKER_03]: This is... this is possible, of course.
50:43
[SPEAKER_01]: You also are a paraglider instructor, and you have a school, so share that information with us.
50:50
[SPEAKER_03]: So I have a school that operates in Switzerland in the Swiss Alps.
50:54
[SPEAKER_03]: It's also certified under the British system.
50:57
[SPEAKER_03]: So that means that we give both Swiss licenses and British licenses.
51:03
[SPEAKER_03]: For someone from the United States, if you come back, then you need to convert it to the USHPA system.
51:09
[SPEAKER_03]: That is an easy process as well.
51:11
[SPEAKER_03]: We need to do a theory exam and a practical assessment.
51:15
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we operate in Central Switzerland in the Swiss Ops near Angleberg near Interleacan.
51:23
[SPEAKER_03]: Those are maybe some mountains or some towns that people might have heard of, maybe not, but they are both quite famous for perglighting.
51:33
[SPEAKER_03]: We also do paragliding trips worldwide.
51:37
[SPEAKER_03]: My favorite thing about paragliding is how easy it is to fly anywhere that you go.
51:41
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's really why I started paragliding, like I said, and gliding has that difficulty and that's why I also started paragliding.
51:49
[SPEAKER_03]: And we do trips across Europe, to the Middle East, to Africa, to South America.
51:55
[SPEAKER_03]: I've never done a trip in the US fun enough.
51:58
[SPEAKER_01]: What's time?
51:59
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's certainly on the list, exactly.
52:03
[SPEAKER_01]: would be fantastic.
52:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, how long does it take to get a license?
52:07
[SPEAKER_01]: If someone said, this is it, I'm going to the Swiss apps, I'm going to get a license, I'm just going to stay until I'm done.
52:14
[SPEAKER_01]: What would that be?
52:15
[SPEAKER_03]: So the British license, you can get it roughly in two weeks.
52:19
[SPEAKER_03]: So 10 days, you do about 20 flights and you get your British license in the
52:26
[SPEAKER_03]: North American system that's equivalent to the P2 license, and that means that you are independent pilot and then you can fly on your own.
52:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, like in most sports, there's a lot of further progress after you finish your basic license that you can do, and certainly once you have it, you are not ready to fly anywhere at any time.
52:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, at any time, no one is ever, because we are always dependent on the weather, but even anywhere.
52:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Because some places will have the characteristics that you learn with, and that's where you are capable of flying.
53:01
[SPEAKER_03]: But it's very different to fly in a high mountain with light wind, or in a valley where you know that when you are going to land, it's going to be windy, down in the valley, or to fly on the dunes, or to fly in.
53:16
[SPEAKER_03]: volcanic islands, again like a wife for example, and so wherever you learn that's where you are more comfortable and the type of conditions that you are more comfortable and if you want to expand, then you need to really go and find different places.
53:30
[SPEAKER_03]: That's also why I like to go and find different places because it also makes me a better pilot and it allows me to to see or to be a tourist with a different angle of view.
53:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Well that's awesome.
53:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So you lead trips, can people join your trips?
53:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, you can go to the website altitudetrips.com or you can find us on social media with the same name and you will find the trips that we do, you'll find also the classes that we do or just
54:04
[SPEAKER_03]: in the area on the trip and you'll like to try a tanam flight that's possible.
54:09
[SPEAKER_03]: For example, this last week and I did a tanam flight on a hot air balloon festival that was quite an interesting one where we had to hike up the mountain because there's no cable cars there anymore or they are but they are closed for many years.
54:23
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we hike up to beyond the top of the mountain we started at 4am
54:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Because the hotter balloons start at 9 a.m. and we wanted to be in the right place at the right time to fly with them and then we could fly in the middle of the hotter balloons was quite a beautiful unique experience.
54:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow, sounds like so much fun.
54:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Amy, thank you so much for sharing your passion.
54:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a dream.
54:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I would love to experience what you experience.
54:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm sure that many of the listeners feel the same way.
54:52
[SPEAKER_01]: The website again is altitudetrips.com and Amy Carvalo, did I get that right?
55:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
55:02
[SPEAKER_03]: Good, good, excellent.
55:02
[SPEAKER_03]: You could come to Portugal.
55:04
[SPEAKER_03]: You have the language, Shady, very well marked.
55:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that was a lucky one, but contact any, find out how you can learn how to fly, how cool would that be and until the next show make sure you do get out there and have some fun.