Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today with Pascal Puhring and Lucian Haas at the microphone.
Test pilots play a central role in the development and certification of paragliders. They test gliders for fabric and line strength, put them into extreme flight attitudes, and deform the wings by all means necessary, just to prove that the fabric sail unfolds back into a normal flight-capable shape in a reasonable amount of time. Pascal Puhring is one of those daredevils. When he got his pilot's license at just 14 years old—which was already five years after he first took off in a paraglider—it became clear to him almost immediately that he wanted to become a test pilot. Since then, the now 30-year-old has worked in this capacity for various manufacturers as well as an official certification body. In the process, he has gained deep insights. He has learned what actually matters to be safe out there with a paraglider.
In this eighth episode of Podz-Glidz, Pascal talks about how he became a test pilot and what he has experienced during testing. He explains why a safety-conscious pilot should better invest their time in ground handling instead of studying EN test reports. He also talks about his participation in the Red Bull X-Alps and reveals how he once spent almost 15 minutes hanging under a rescue parachute.
Pascal, I read that your first flight ended on the roof of your religion teacher's house. How did that happen?
Yeah, that was a long time ago now.
It was in Bregenz. Maybe I have to start a bit earlier. My dad used to fly back in the day and in 1988 he got himself this beautiful ProDesign -Matratzenschirm and used it to... well, that's how he learned to fly. And at some point we moved from Dombien to Bregenz, just when I was about nine years old. And there, my dad just threw the glider along with the harness and backpack into the big container and basically said goodbye to it in front of his wing. And my brother and I, we pulled it out of there without his knowledge and went to practice with it secretly. That means, you have
stole the glider from the trash can, basically?
Exactly, pulled it out of the trash can. And then we just looked at what we could do with it, so to speak. And I had already been a bit infected by flying, through my dad, because he landed in our garden a few times. And my saxophone teacher back then was also Gleitschirm-Blog. And then I saw a video here and there or a paraglider and stuff. And I already had a bit of input. And I knew that in order to somehow pull up the glider or do some ground handling, we need wind. And in Bregenz, there is really, really, really rarely any wind. Very little and very little. Very rarely. And on that day, when I kissed my religion teacher's roof, it was just that we had a thunderstorm and the cold air was released.
And it was just a storm. And I thought, today is the day of days. Now I have to get out there. And finally, I can do some ground handling like I'd seen in so many videos. And of course, the risk of losing valuable time was way too high. And then, somehow, riding my bike over to the meadow. So I decided to just go to the church square, by the beautiful Gallus Church in Bregenz. And instead of a meadow, there was cobblestone. And if you want to imagine that now, the big Gallus Church is to my left. And in front of me is the beautiful old building where the religion teacher lived. It's a semi-detached house. And one half is significantly higher than the other.
And from behind. And the wind comes from behind. Or the storm, so to speak. And I thought about it again for a second. I was rather small as a child. I only grew a bit taller later. So I was always like the smallest in the class or something. In any case, I weighed at most 35 kilos. And I was out with a very old ProDesign, as I said, glider, which was built for an adult man. Without a helmet, without a protector, I set up the glider quite optimistically. And the result was that I basically slammed into the first floor of the house between two windows with my feet. And later it was said that the family was at home at that time.
She said that trucks had driven into it.
That means you were just massively levered out and then blown against it. Exactly,
smashed into it. And then it kept going. It pulled the glider onto the house roof and dragged me along with it. And I can remember trying to hold on somehow, sideways over the tiles where it was pulling me. Trying to save something. But the thought immediately crossed my mind that something stupid was about to happen. So I already realized then that I wasn't really in control of the situation. And then there's a relatively large window of time where I don't know anything. The next memory is that I'm dangling a meter above the ground in the harness, hanging from the lines that got tangled in the avalanche ladder. So my brother, who was there too and watched it, pulled me onto the neighbor's roof.
And then I somehow tumbled down, and luckily the lines caught early enough and nothing happened. What did your father say about it? Yeah, that was also very nice. My religion teacher, Simon Bertl, asked if I was going to tell my dad myself or if he had to do it. And thankfully, I was able to agree with him that I'd take it on and tell him myself. And I actually did tell him a few years later.
But only a few years later?
Well, I mean, you have to know how to handle it yourself.
Well, a few years, I think that's it now—if you say you were nine, then that was 21 years ago. You could say, okay, you've had crazy long experience with that. You already have experience with paragliding, which you do professionally today. If, let's take the example, you're at a party and a nice girl comes up to you and asks—she doesn't actually know you at all—and says, tell me, what do you actually do for a living? What do you answer then?
Oh yeah, how funny. And you ask questions. Yeah, then I say, I'm a test pilot. A test pilot for hang gliders. And then they usually look, that's just... weird.
Probably the question, "Test pilot, isn't that dangerous?" Or what comes up?
Yeah, sure, yeah. So the best sentence is, "Test pilot, you must make a lot of money." Because they imagine it a bit like car test drivers, or someone asks me. That's if it goes in a very funny direction right away. And yeah, well, what else do you say? I don't know exactly.
If the questions get a bit more serious, you might get asked, "So, what do you actually do as a test pilot?" And that's a really serious question. What does being a test pilot involve for you? I mean, what distinguishes a pilot from a test pilot?
Well, the magic behind being a test pilot is simply that you get to go on or experience a very special journey. Just how it goes from a prototype on a computer until that "King of the Night" is basically there in the company and you head to the mountain. And then you just pick up a glider that no one has ever flown before and see how it behaves. And then, of course, with the goal of positioning that glider well in its class against competing products later on. And achieving the quality seal readiness is, of course, a long, spectacular path. And depending on the glider class, let's just say it offers one thing or another.
Sometimes it's quite a bizarre experience. How do you become a test pilot? Or how did you get into that? How did you manage to slip into that world?
Yeah, for me, it was like I really grew up in that world and got the chance at a very young age, back when Jürgen Kraus was building gliders at Skywalk, to basically go into training. So for me, it was like after the flight at nine years old that ended on the religious roof, I stayed fully involved. And my time there was very long. My time on the practice slope and in the field—it never became little or anything like that. It was always a lot. And eventually, funnily enough, something religious again in the altar boy camp at Aachensee, I met and got to know the Aachensee flight school. And among other things, I met Jürgen Kraus there.
So first, I got to learn to fly with Christa Vogel and Ecki Maute. And Lake Aachen was my first contact with the world of test pilots. There are still so many companies active there, testing their prototypes. And for me as a young boy, they were obviously the heroes of the skies. And I absolutely wanted to become just as good and fly as well as the test pilots. Did you
Did you already imagine back then that you wanted to become a test pilot? And how did you get started?
That was a very clear wish. That was back then, when I was 14. Then eventually, when I did the high-altitude flight training, I saw the test pilots from the companies. And I thought to myself, wow, cool, I'd actually love to do that too.
So you said you basically went into training with Jürgen Kraus. What is that kind of training like? I mean, what specifically do you get taught for the life of a test pilot?
Well, for me, it was like this back then—I was only 16. I was allowed to just spend my summer holidays with Jürgen. And basically just watch them. What does prototype development look like? And just get my hands dirty. And during that time, of course, I had my season pass at Rofan. And I just tested my Tequila XXS to the core back then. And tried to implement what's in the standard and so on. What I was told and explained by Jürgen about a collapse, for example. Tried to implement it, experience it, and basically trace it back.
But you did that...
made for yourself. So basically learning by doing. You're saying I'm teaching myself how to fly test pilots. He explained the theory to me, and now I'm just doing it all and seeing what happens.
Well, we were up on the mountain together and they tested the Proto. And I tested the production glider. It's already a well-settled glider.
And they watched you and said, "No, you have to do it differently. Or you have to pull the glider differently or collapse it or whatever."
Exactly, the experiences I just gained. We discussed the maneuvers. He often watched me, and I tried to learn from that. I just wanted to build up a wealth of experience. And what you have to say about that is, I did my altitude training at 14. And then I had to fly under supervision for two years. And I also got a great summer job at the Achensee flight school at 15. I filmed during the SIV training. So I already flew my first stolz and Satz and stuff at 14. So the technical flying was achieved by the fact that I had to fly under supervision anyway. And then I did a lot of stuff directly in the SIV training. That was already completely integrated into my flying, so to speak.
How old were you when you basically started working as a test pilot? Professionally, or also making money from it?
Well, around the internship stage. With internships, you can start earning a wage from about 16. And it just grew from there. So, I finished my high school diploma, and every free minute—every holiday and the odd day of skipping school—I was out with the Skywalk test team in Bassano and all over Tyrol. Vorarlberg, so not overseas, but everything in Europe. Wherever things were happening, I was able to be there. And even then, I was already doing the first flights on prototypes.
You just mentioned the keyword prototypes. The test pilot is the first one to fly with them. In most cases, at least, the designers aren't the test pilots themselves. How big is the role or the influence that the test pilot ultimately has on the glider that we then trigger as pilots? And that we then receive as a delivery and are allowed to fly ourselves?
Yes, so it's very significant. You can see that the paraglider companies that are successful, in my opinion, also have a good test team. So the communication interface between the designer and the test pilot is very large. And for the test pilot, it's very important to work honestly and cleanly. And by "working honestly," I judge the human factor a bit, at least mentally. That is, we take a prototype and are currently tinkering with the side collapse. Mostly, let's say the accelerated side collapse, for example. And I have to know, for instance, at the landing field, how was I today?
So, was was the collapse like? Was it good because I was anxious and didn't actually make the collapse as clean as we'd heard? Or was I just being super grumpy and aggressive? Or was the collapse bad because I completely destroyed it? Finding that human, mental line to ensure consistent work is such a huge topic in the life of a test pilot. And it's not just about your mood; if I'm developing something now, I have to fly one side collapse and then the next one exactly the same if I've modified something in between. That way I can filter out whether this modification actually did anything or not.
And in that case, precise, honest work is simply very important.
Is there a lot of discussion between you guys about one person saying, let's say today, given how you were performing, we can basically throw your collapses in the trash? That they didn't achieve anything?
Yeah, I mean, ultimately in the era of GoPro, you can analyze it very well afterwards and see the collapse, what the bend angle was, and how much surface area was actually gone. And so on. So it's very helpful. You can see a lot without having to be completely honest and say, well, the collapse was like this and that.
Lucian, I just lost my train of thought for a second. That's what...
nothing, I'll pick it up again in a second. What's the deal with the topic that as a test pilot, you don't just influence the glide ratio, but you also have an influence on things like the handling—how it goes around a turn and other stuff—because you're also involved in the trimming and such. Are there things where at the end you say, like, hey, this glider got the Purin trim, so this is what you liked best?
Well, a "Purin trim," you can't really say something like that exists, I don't think it's there yet. But regarding the handling, that's maybe a great example, because the test pilot's impression is obviously very important, since that's something you can't really capture on camera, right? It's about your own impression of how the glider reacts when pressing down in the thermals, what the outer birds are doing, what the brake weighting is like, whether he presses it more steeply or flatly, or if you're just braking way too much in the middle and that disrupts the whole thing, and so on. A lot of that is just pilot feel.
giving the rhythm, because that's something you can't really simulate that easily.
Well, you've already worked as a test pilot for quite different manufacturers. I know you worked for Skywalk, you worked for Aircross, then also for Nova and AirDesign, who do follow somewhat different philosophies regarding their gliders and also have somewhat different handling, as is classic. Are there any differences, even recognizable by you, in the tasks and in the approach to these tests? Did you have to work differently, or is it all very similar?
No, it's actually quite similar because you just try to get a prototype, or you flirt it, and you see if it flirts at all, okay, and how does the glider stand? Are there any wrinkles, are there any problems? Afterwards, you see how it glides at all, what the performance is compared to the competitor model or the predecessor model, and then at some point you look at the maneuvers and see that you get it all into a balance that ultimately fits the requirements of the certification, and that's ultimately the homework that every manufacturer has to do afterwards.
Is there a point where you'd say that's the main sticking point in glider development from a test pilot's perspective, where you always say that's where the most work is done, or has to be done?
That depends a bit on the class. A huge topic at the beginning is simply whether the glider is visually clean and whether the maneuvers work, and depending on the class, figuring out the performance is then either a big or a smaller amount of work. So, with an A-glider, we don't do as many flights or as many clean comparisons as we do with a high-level B, for example, or even a
D-glider or something like that. Let's switch topics a bit.
In 2016, you basically left the manufacturer level on one side and moved to another side—you joined a testing center and became the head of the EAPR there. They don't exist anymore now, but back then, you were the head for a while. How did that actually happen?
One fine day, Guido called me. Guido
...is Guido Reusch, the managing director of EAPR. He
called you. He called me and asked if I'd like to do some testing for him. He needs a pilot in my weight class and wanted to know if I was interested. That's how it started, and of course, I was very interested—to see the other side of things and to work towards and learn that status of being a certification test pilot. It was really cool, and I basically ended up...
got into it very quickly. Aviation is another level of professional, I'd say, in terms of documentation, because the accreditation in the background clearly prescribes which maneuver, which camera angle, etc., is flown, and it was like a bit of a new world, almost a new era. Very exciting work, because you were suddenly on the other side, and it was also very difficult and mean work in some ways, because you know how the Dash pilots who are handing over the glider now, regardless of which company, are just sitting on pins and needles hoping that their glider fits and so on, and if you then have to say that it unfortunately doesn't fit at all or barely fits, it doesn't matter, it's always a bit of a stupid moment.
That's perhaps a bit of the downside of being a certification dash pilot, but I liked it very much because I learned a lot on a human level and saw it as my responsibility not just to work cleanly and fairly according to the standards, but also towards the end consumers, so that they really do have a B-glider in their hands when it says B on it. So, it was actually a very exciting time for me.
At the beginning you were a test pilot, then you were the head. Did you still fly yourself as the head, or did you have other test pilots fly for you and you just had to handle the paperwork yourself?
No, thank God, not at all. I'm just too happy to be a pilot for that, and in some cases, it wasn't even possible for me to stay out of the certification process for a glider. For example, there's simply the problem that there aren't test pilots like Sander anymore, and if Johannes Zschofen, for instance—who also works for Skyman—delivers a glider, he obviously can't take it off himself. And that's just one of many examples; it wouldn't have worked at all if I didn't fly anymore or flew much less.
And with your old manufacturers that you used to work for, was it also a restriction that you'd say you're not allowed to fly these gliders from the manufacturers you've already worked for, or was that permitted?
No, no, that's clearly specified in the accreditation. So, during my short stint at AirDesign, I didn't actually work there for very long, but it still resulted in me being banned from flying the gliders that were submitted to AirDesign for certification. I didn't want to put myself in that kind of awkward situation at all. In the end, there was just some arguing about it, and it was decided that the other test pilots would split the work up.
Overall, during your time, especially at the testing center, you must have gained a very, very good insight into the whole topic of EN tests. Do you actually consider this testing procedure to be meaningful for an average pilot? Can you really derive anything useful from it?
Yes, you definitely can. So a glider that has passed the EN -LTF is definitely a piece of wing that is at least somewhat balanced. Not with really nasty...
...things surprise you or something. I mean, when I think about how prototypes sometimes react during very banal maneuvers, for example, if you accelerate into the brake or something, I've already experienced scenarios after that that don't happen with any approved glider. And a basic idea or basic information that it's a reasonably round product is definitely there if that's the case. But I wouldn't interpret too much. If it has B-glider three or six B-classifications, it's really hard to say if that's actually meaningful. So if you're too close...
If you zoom in too much, I think you can easily get confused.
That means this practice some pilots have, where they say, "Oh, EN-test, I'm counting the B-grades and saying he probably has it hotter than the one who only has three Bs," and so on. That doesn't actually work.
No, I mean, there are certainly cases where you can prove that, where it agrees. And some cases that prove the opposite. In the end, it's probably wiser to use that time differently and do some groundhandling or flying to get a feel for it. That's a different way of thinking.
Do these ratings that are assigned, like A, B, C and so on, actually always match the real-world behavior of the gliders in normal, real-world air? Because in a test, it's usually done in rather calm air and after a specific test maneuver and stuff like that. But a collapse, like gliders collapsing in nature, is often different. They might also have different collapse lines and such. Does that still add up, or would you sometimes have to say, for some gliders, no, it says B on it, but based on feel, you'd say it actually should have received a different rating?
That's very difficult to answer because you just can't compare things like that. A total destroyer in turbulent air—yeah, you could fall out of the sky with an A glider or have a 0-degree forward slide with a D glider. I don't think you can just answer it like that. So, in practical flying, I personally have to say, but I have it easy because I've been flying for so long and so much. But having a collapse in practice, that doesn't happen there. So in the end, it's always the pilot to look for, and I don't think it's the gear when it comes to any stupid situations. At least in most cases, of course.
So, the pilot should better invest in their training instead of worrying too much about an EN rating?
Totally, totally. I mean, if you've been flying for a long time and you're doing something like a 10 o'clock, you shouldn't be surprised if you potentially hurt yourself, simply because the gliders are so much smaller and so much faster and it's just harder. That's crystal clear. So, of course, orienting yourself based on your level regarding the gliders makes perfect sense in any case. But I'm just surprised by the pilots in general. You so rarely see someone at the landing field doing a quarter of an hour of ground handling or something like that. It doesn't always have to be windy, I understand that. But if you do a forward launch with your eyes closed or whatever. I think paragliding simply belongs to being properly trained. You can't drive a race car without having driven a go-kart first.
Or if you want a sexual comparison, first there's cuddling and then there's the actual act. And cuddling is simply ground handling. And that's the best simulator we have, and the fewest people use it. And yeah, I don't really get it in the end, because whoever does that doesn't just fall out of the sky.
What do you actually think of the DAV Safety Class tests? Do they help? There are many pilots who say, yeah, EN is good, but I still look at that Safety Class note because then I really know which gliders are the bad ones and which aren't so good. Is that actually just window dressing too?
To be honest, regarding Safety Class, I've only looked at a few pictures from Simon showing him maneuvering a collapse, but I've never actually read through it because I'm not interested in it at all. You can make any glider crash. You can cause a collapse with any glider and fall horribly from the sky. And then they also show these classifications in numbers. Whoever needs it can go ahead and look at that. But I'm more of the opinion that if someone, for example, during a large side collapse is unable to move 20 or 30 centimeters onto the brake on the healthy side, they have no place in this sport. They haven't understood it. And you can only train so much physical motor skills.
It's nothing sinister. It's simply what this sport demands of us. Either we can do it, or you're just unlucky. Unfortunately, there's no gray area there.
So, since the beginning of the year, you've had a new offer for what you do on the internet. The site is called Into the Sky, and there you offer videos where you basically test certain paraglider models and essentially fly the EN test maneuvers, film them, and say, "I'm providing this now as a paraglider manual." People can watch it and see how their glider reacts. However, it's also within this standardized range. Why do you see a market for that? By market, I mean you also offer these videos for sale, which is why I'm saying market. So, why do you see a market for that?
Actually, it's quite simple, because my girlfriend also flies and I co-developed the glider back then, so I had a lot of video material of the thing, and then I just explained her glider to her based on the videos and told her what it should look like when she puts on ears. And if you put on ears at full acceleration, the ears might flutter a bit, but that doesn't matter at all. And if she wants to do this or that, then it looks like this. Afterwards, she already had a picture in her head, which is a great solution. So, how should I put it, she already had the image of the maneuver in her head of what it has to look like. And then it was very easy for her to find this way,
to do it yourself, so that it looks exactly the same. We both found that very valuable, and then I thought, the manufacturers, the certification, the safety class—they all just give you letters and numbers, so regarding flight behavior, but please, how can you show it better than in a video? And then I can actually see how my glider reacts after an accelerated side collapse or not. And then I also show much more on how you can stop a trim or a full-acceleration side collapse, if we stick to that example, if it happens. And for me, those are actually the real hard skills, because an A-glider, for example, that can be interpreted completely differently, that it's actually the most dangerous aircraft that always flies.
Because an A-glider has to turn away after 90 degrees and fly again, and if I have the rock wall to my right and get a big collapse to the right, then after 90 degrees I'm right in the middle of the wall. It would actually be much safer to fly a glider that turns away 180 degrees. So the real question is, can I stabilize a glider when it's being blown away? And I show that in that video, among other things, because it's relevant in practice. Now
you're selling them, but wouldn't it actually be much more sensible to say, hey manufacturers, actually that's your job, or at least it should be of interest to them, for them to be able to say, hey, for our glider, if you buy the glider, you also get these professionally produced videos included, where we show you how it works.
Yeah, well personally, I do think it would be the manufacturer's job to just show an authentic, honest video and say, hey guys, look, this is how our glider flies.
I've already brought up the idea with the manufacturer, but by the time there's the time, money, and resources for it, the year is over again and you've got different stresses and so on—it usually just gets lost. And that's why I thought, I'll just do it myself now and see if it helps the pilots. And the feedback so far is that it's actually quite cool and that it definitely achieves what I actually wanted to, with people having a good feeling, a good picture in their heads of how something works, and simply feeling more comfortable in the air. Because a glider, for example, or if it makes some kind of glitch now during the
Front collapse, for example, doesn't matter at all. If he actually does it once and turns so deeply, after watching one of my videos for example, yeah, then bam, I grab the brake and the thing is open again. And if we could work a bit in that direction, I think we could also work on the wing again, a bit again
develop in a pilot-group-oriented way. But that's still a long way to go.
From your perspective, which test maneuver is essentially the most important or meaningful regarding the safety of a glider? What should one look out for?
Well, I think it's more about collapse maneuvers. Backwards flight, large angles of attack are a big topic for me. And low-speed spin tendency—so, 50 percent brake, then 75 percent on one side, and then just going beyond that to see where the glider collapses, because as certain statistics show, people don't usually crash because they had a big collapse, but because they accidentally collapsed it. And yes, I think that's so relevant in practice, especially if the glider is a bit older. Very, very interesting.
Well, those kinds of gliders, which might be prone to collapsing relatively easily, are also gliders that might be flown with less load, but they're also gliders that often perform relatively well in the DFT Safety Class, because otherwise they exhibit a very, in quotation marks, harmless collapsing behavior, for example, or something like that. How could we simply educate pilots more about these kinds of things?
Educate them by saying, hey, the glider has a bit of a quirk or not enough air, or how do you mean? Yes, for example,
or to understand these connections better.
Yes, the same answer again, ground handling. You do that 20 times in an hour and then you feel 20 times what it feels like when the glider collapses to one side or falls back again and so on. And it's exactly the same in the air. You don't need to read a book, you don't need to buy a review, you just have to
...assume ground handling. Is there one of these test maneuvers you fly where you say, "I like doing that the most, that's just the most fun"?
Oh yeah, I love
accelerated front collapse, I really hate.
Even though it's like that
gets down to business, do you enjoy that?
Well, I'm much more afraid of accelerated side collapses. But accelerated front collapses are funny in a way, because you're already moving a bit faster and then the boxes just fold, it bangs, you rock forward quite a bit, and actually, something stupid happens very rarely. I mean, I once went down the rescue sled with a high-performer after an accelerated front collapse in my test pilot career, but it's never happened otherwise. So it's a good...
balance for accelerated front collapses. That's as far as it goes regarding safety. Did anything else unusual or really surprising happen to you during testing?
Yeah, well, once I had a really, really brutal guardian angel. That was, funnily enough, even before I took off, my last official test flight for Aircross. That was during the transition to Nova, and I didn't promise that, I'm flying it over and over. We did the U-Cruise and had a problem with the steep spiral, and then overnight—mostly the designer—they changed the pilot position, meaning they made it 20 cm shorter, and then I took off and flew in Annecy and had a line release 1,000 meters above Lake Annecy, and every single connection to the paraglider was suddenly gone during the spiral movement, and I was really in freefall. I managed to get the rescue chute out right away, it opened immediately, everything fit perfectly, but I was then hanging on the rescue chute for almost a quarter of an hour, felt like an eternity, until I eventually ended up in the lake.
And yeah, that was definitely a test flight I won't forget anytime soon.
you said you spent fifteen minutes on the rescuer—what kind of rescuer do you use when you go for testing?
Ah yes, by now I've also switched to the quad, and I've also been showing a test harness. That's my plan for upgrading now for the new year; I'd like to have a separation carabiner, a controllable rescue, and then do a quad as a second.
Let's switch gears completely for a moment. You've already achieved quite a bit and have some successes to show in the sporting side of your paragliding career. In 2015 and 2017, for example, you participated in the X-Alps. If I saw correctly, you even finished in sixth place two years ago. Did you actually apply for 2019 as well?
Well, we wrapped up the X-Alps thing in 2017. Why? Simply because training six days a week and basically begging for sponsors, then busting your ass for the Red Bull can, and exposing yourself to that kind of risk, only to walk away with a zero if things go well... that was funny twice, but I don't need to do it a third time.
That sounds a bit critical in hindsight. But back then, when you applied, got accepted, and flew along, what was the appeal of X-Alps for you as a pilot at that time?
Well, for me personally, it was a bit like a bachelor's thesis or something, because I finished high school and was only doing soaring, and my school friends and all that—they all have their bachelor's and master's degrees and have something real to show for it now, and somehow the X-Alps thing was a bit like a final exam for me. Like, yeah, to make sure that I actually learned something over the last 10 years or whatever.
Something like a rite of passage. Anyone who has flown the X-Alps has really achieved something as a pilot.
Yeah, I don't know, maybe, but in the end, I'm more of a...
athletically, I'm mostly a very lazy person, but I absolutely loved it—the training, with a training plan and a goal, I just really trained and spent so much time outside and on the mountain. That was definitely also a motivation to do it back then, because I just had a blast and it was a way for me to really get out there and push through, because it was important and it was about something. Preparing it properly is...
And O. How dangerous is this participation actually? It's often flown in very marginal conditions, even in the X-Alps, the pilots are over-tired and so on. Is it actually also luck that no really serious accidents have happened so far?
Yes, definitely. There's certainly a good amount of luck involved. I mean, over ten X-Alps runs, there have never been any completely serious injuries or deaths. That's for sure, yeah, that's what you hope for. But there are surely many stories from many X-Alps runs by many pilots where you think, wow, I'm lucky. So thank God that nothing...
happened. What hair-raising situations have you experienced during your X-Alps?
I have to say, especially with my second X-Alps, it was simply a case of learning from the mistakes of the first X-Alps, really; it went perfectly from start to finish. So, from the...
In terms of physical performance, how I felt physically and mentally, it was always in the green zone and I had a great time. It actually never hurt, which really surprised me, and from a flying perspective, it just worked out. I can say that in my 2017 X-Alps, I had a very dangerous situation. That was really sketchy. So, it was certainly down to a lot of luck and whatever else accompanied it, but I had a fantastic X-Alps.
In June 2016, while you were still preparing for the X-Alps, you also set a Hike-and-Fly altitude world record. An unofficial one, as you say. You climbed up 9,460 meters in a single day in the Stubaital and then flew back down. How do you come up with the idea to do something like that?
Yeah, that's a good question. But it was quite simple. Just to keep the training up between X-Alps 15 and X-Alps 17, you need a cool training goal, and we basically built this event around that, and at the time I also tried to somehow
to make an event out of it with sponsors, to somehow fill the X-Alps coffers for 2017. It didn't work, but it was a cool day and I have to say, all the X-Alps, even if they don't look like much in terms of coal, are priceless to me because of the adventures I experienced there and especially this mental work I was allowed to learn—that brings me so much now in normal life, and especially when testing, for example. So, if I may tell an anecdote, in 2015 X-Alps went completely wrong and one factor that blocked thermals very much was the live tracking.
It just stressed me out that so many people were watching, and every time I had to crank it somewhere, I'd have this thought afterwards that someone at home was hitting their head against the computer and thinking, "Well, what is he doing now again? What is he doing now again?" That really did me in, honestly. And because of that, nothing came of it at all. So for X-Alps 2017, I took out that "blank check" you sort of have as an X-Alps participant—since we're all crazy dogs anyway—that I can behave however I feel like. And I only do what I feel like doing, if it suits my mood and if it gets me motivated for the next mountain again. And with the live tracking...
so I just reprogrammed it. I put on a live version of Michael Jackson, where he sings Heal the World, Make it a Better Place, live, and the
a huge audience is singing along, going wild, and having a blast. And I mentally put myself on that stage, and every time I was cranking it somewhere, I'd imagine the people at the computer—they imagined it as if they were cheering just like the people in the stadium where the concert was. And I'm telling you, it was a party, I mean, for me personally. That made such a huge difference for me. And yeah, it was just fun. And that's also what I always tell my flight students or discuss with my partner. Hang gliding is simply at least 97 percent a mental sport. And
Running, training, hiking, and stuff like that help you out a ton.
Going back to your hike and fly. Your record of 9,460 has been completely surpassed by now. Since last year, it's been at 13 kilometers, so 13,000 meters of vertical gain in one day. I think Lukas Hofer did that on the Kronplatz, I believe he climbed up 13 times or something. Isn't a feat like that almost superhuman?
Well, for my one, I had to wait at the launch site for over an hour and a half until the thunderstorm had passed. That was a real blow for me. And at the end of the day, because my last ascent was the fastest time of the day, we concluded that you can actually approach this quite differently. So 13,000 meters of vertical gain is a lot. I think with a different tactic, I probably could have managed one more ascent, especially if we hadn't had the weather issues with the Becher. Or maybe even one and a half more ascents. But I wouldn't really call it superhuman. Where
do you see a limit in competitions like that? In quotes, the competition is just the individual against another individual who says, I want to set a great record here now.
That depends on how crazy the athlete is, mentally and so on. I think, I mean, with the ski touring peaks, the world record for 24 hours is well over 20,000 meters of vertical gain. As for where the limit is for hike and fly, I have no idea. It will surely come when someone hits 14,000. It's just a matter of time.
Well, you mentioned earlier that the X-Alps was like your graduation, that you've completed and all that. Now that you've got those in the bag and you're making your videos, what's the next big goal? Or do you have a next big project where you're saying, "In this direction, I want to develop myself even further now"?
Well, those are more like private goals that are at the forefront right now, and so on.
In terms of flying, I simply want to make the services I've done so far for a manufacturer or for certification accessible to the end consumer, grow a bit more into teaching, and do some training. But anything sporty or like that, where I'd say, I'm going to fly PWC or something like that, isn't really on the list at all right now. I'm not really the competitive type, I have to say, personally. If I'm climbing a mountain somewhere and someone faster comes from behind, I'll pull over to the side and let them pass, and then I'll go back to my thing—I just have no desire for competitions at all right now.
When you say teaching, what would be something you'd perhaps want to give your flight students most urgently?
Ground handling.
That's really the magic word for you. It's already come up several times today. What's the best exercise you can do with ground handling?
Being creative. Everything. With eyes closed, with a harness, without a harness, barefoot, depending on what you can do and how you're feeling. But I see it in myself, I still have a blast even when I'm playing around a bit with some glider, it doesn't matter which one, a bit wind-shy; it's a total blast and you can go from one hundred to a thousand. I once had this "I bet" idea that I'd somehow mount a pen on the trailing edge at the bottom center and then just write something with the glider, balancing it just barely above the ground without it touching the floor—don't ask me. I never tried it with a piece of paper and a pen, but I did a lot with the glider, just holding it in position or at a position, somehow jumping around with it or whatever.
Ground handling stuff, ground handling is the be-all and end-all. Especially when you see it in the accident statistics, and no matter where I am flying, when I often watch others taking off, I find it irresponsible afterwards and almost forbidden. Forbidden, how you can put yourself in such danger with so little training. And you probably have kids at home or a wife at home or whatever, anyone who wants to go paragliding should practice on the field and be able to take off, and then they should go to the mountain and experience the magic of flying without getting hurt. And that's simply all about ground handling.
Maybe we don't just need a pilot's license, but also a ground handling certificate?
When I do a B-license course, my first slide is: what is the progression from having a B-license to being a B-pilot? Yes, because this license is just a piece of paper. It's just a slip that says, "Yes, you did the course." But which skills do you actually need to be able to fly safely? That's a completely different piece of paper. And I always try to be honest with people about what they're getting into so they aren't surprised. That's what I'm about. Honest communication. Yes, that's how it is with my flying manuals, that's how it is with my training. I just want to give it to them straight.
Is there anything about flying that you'd say can only be learned in the air and not on the ground?
Any skills?
I mean, drone handling is the basis, and then it starts to get really deep. I mean, you probably won't be able to do rolls to learn on the ground. Or a saddle flight or a tumble or whatever.
Accelerated flight—now, on the ground, you can already do a few exercises, but
Downhandling is the foundation, knowing your way around, and then you have to fly. And that's maybe where you're getting at with the next topic: in winter, I see the pilots out there in Carinthia now, and it's probably the same everywhere else. Why don't they go and train a bit in the winter and get warmed up for the spring, and just stand in the speed bar once and try out what it's like with the glider, with the rear risers for example to steer. Or just fly straight ahead cleanly in the wing or in the speed bar. I mean, there are a hundred thousand things you can train, but you rarely see anyone doing it.
That means, in the winter, you think it's just dead air, and you only do one glide, like saying, I'm not just gliding now, but this is really my training project for today. Today, I'm working on this and that.
For example, yeah. Yeah.
Do you still do that for yourself? Like, saying "I'm going flying to train a specific thing"? Or has it all become so solidified over the years that you'd say, except for ground handling, because that's still fun, but in the air, I don't really have to practice anymore?
Well, in any case. I mean, right now I'm really at a level of testing, especially after the time from the certification office, where I'd say I really know my way around. And when I make the videos for the Flying Manual later—now I have six gliders on the homepage, four new ones were just filmed—it looks like this: I'm at the launch site at nine, and by one o'clock I've already done six flights at the Elfer an der Schlick, each full of maneuvers, just documenting the gear in my case, but I've flown it all and trained, practiced, practiced, and practiced. For myself, for example, if I take a glider privately, as a competition pilot, or as a
...for a competition wing, for example, I have to know where the limits are, how far I can push it and so on, what it's like with the speed bar, and there are so many questions I have to answer for myself before I go full out with the thing; without that, I wouldn't dare.
We can also talk about glider tests—not about you, but about the pilots who say, "I want a new glider, I want to test it now." Most of them say, "Maybe take a glider at some test site, fly around for an hour." Is that actually enough to get a sense of a glider?
Well, yeah, and yes, that's really difficult because after a test flight with the manufacturer's team, there's always a question when you sit down at the landing field: what do you think of the conditions, how do you find the air today? And today's air is often so different from yesterday's. So if you go to a test field now and you fly glider X on Saturday and glider Y on Sunday and say one is de facto better or something, afterwards, in the opposite order, it could yield a completely different result. So yeah, it's very difficult to answer, especially for me, because a pilot who flies 50 times a year, I don't know anymore what that feels like and how they're supposed to test a glider at all. In that case, maybe it's wiser...
he talks to people he thinks know their stuff or something like that and naturally gets his feeling from them, so flying a glider is always important before you buy it to see if you have a good feeling and so on, but comparing gliders in different air conditions and such is, I think, a bit much for the average pilot, where he might be pushing his luck a bit. What
where would you recommend a normal pilot go to get information?
Yes, in that case, on my homepage and watch the video. Well, no, you're asking the wrong person, I don't know. Because, what do I know, I've always dealt with manufacturers or prototypes with gliders, they bring a glider for certification, but as for the path a normal pilot takes to get to his glider, I've never experienced that at all, so I can't really answer that.
So, in that case, you're just not a normal pilot?
Yes, I'd say so. Or if you say, okay, talk to the flight school or the dealer, it's always difficult because they want to sell something, they want to clear out their warehouse, right? Whether he's actually honest and says the glider is great for you or you should take the other one, but he'd make 200 euros less on that—ah, it's all a bit tedious. So, it's difficult, difficult, where you get your information. What I definitely wouldn't do is, um, focus too much on letters or safety class numbers, I wouldn't do that. I'd look at the people who built the glider. I find that personally very interesting. I also thought that was so cool at the certification office, because you see the test and development teams from UP, from Swing, from Nova, from Skywalk, from Air Design, blah blah blah, you see so many different teams and I find, personally, I find the personality, the vibe of the people who develop the products, you can still feel that somewhere in the
flight behavior or something like that. That is to say, if you're dealing with honest people, do you think they'll also provide you with an honest product?
Yes, an honest person can't morally justify releasing a glider that's only half finished and is actually unsuitable for the class.
That's maybe a nice closing word. I'd say thank you very much for your honest answers to my many questions that I had here, and I wish you lots of fun with your further test flights and ground handling and anything else you'll be doing over the course of the year.
Yeah, great. Thanks a lot. Thank you for letting me be a part of this.
That was Pascal Purin in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you are interested in the independent test videos of various paraglider models mentioned in the talk, you can find them on Pascal Purin's website, www.intothesky.at. More episodes of Podz-Glidz are available on my blog Lu-Glidz and on Soundcloud. You can also subscribe to Podz-Glidz via RSS feed or through well-known podcast catalogs like iTunes, Spotify, TuneIn, or Podcast.de. You might have already noticed while listening: Podz-Glidz is not funded by advertising. This applies, by the way, to all Lu-Glidz content. In order to continue reporting independently on the paragliding scene, I rely solely on my listeners and readers. You can also easily become a Lu-Glidz supporter via PayPal donation or bank transfer.
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