So I didn't see a flash directly, I just saw a few flashes of light, but it felt like the flashes, it felt like they were, were at most 100 meters away.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with
Emanuel Schuster from Styria, from the Schöckl.
And Lucian Haas on the mic.
Thunderclouds, Cumulonimbus, or CB for short, are the clouds of terror for paragliders—the dark side of the thermal forces.
Anyone who gets caught in a thunderstorm in a paraglider becomes a plaything of nature. Extreme lift, ascent into bitterly cold altitudes, rain, hail, icing, lightning strikes. Anyone who makes it out of such a cold hell alive and without serious damage to themselves or their glider has a massive guardian angel.
This also applies to the 45-year-old Emanuel Schuster. The experienced pilot from Styria, Austria, got caught in a thunderstorm on July 19, 2019, during a cross-country flight from the Schöckl. It was a very unstable day. When it started raining in the higher mountains, Emanuel fled into the air toward the south into the lowlands ahead, where the blue sky was beckoning. But from that large patch of sunshine, a large updraft zone developed, and finally a full-blown thunderstorm, faster than he could understand or realize. He couldn't escape it anymore. It pulled him up to 6,400 meters but eventually released him. In the end, he crashed onto a garage roof, hanging from his rescue device with hands frozen stiff. In
In this 12th episode of Podz-Glidz, Emanuel Schuster tells us why and how he got into the storm. He reports on his long, futile struggle to get out of the cloud again. He talks about his thoughts and feelings in this extreme situation, analyzes possible mistakes, and explains the limits of technology, such as GPS failure and the lack of descent options for two-liners. Additionally, he gives valuable tips on how a pilot should behave if they ever find themselves caught in a sucking cloud.
Emanuel, which do you prefer: having fellow pilots congratulate you on surviving a flight in a thunderstorm cloud on a paraglider, or having them ask how you could even go flying in such unstable conditions in the first place?
Yeah, well, the majority will congratulate me. Just like my friends already have. There are a few who believe you could objectively tell beforehand when a cloud actually becomes a thunderstorm cloud. So, I've also had some criticism on social media saying it was purely his own fault. If they say there's a risk of thunderstorms in the weather report, then he simply shouldn't take off.
What made you decide to go flying in such unstable conditions in the first place?
Yeah, probably the same thing that prompted my friends to go. It was like a typical summer day where there's almost always a tendency for thunderstorms. And like most flight paths, the Schöckl lies on the edge toward the lowlands. Up until now, we've always started calmly. And if the clouds behind us in the mountains grew too steep, turned into Castellani, or showed similar signs, then we'd fly safely into the lowlands. And yeah, we were actually sure that we were doing everything 100 percent right and weren't exposing ourselves to any unnecessary risk.
We're talking about July 19th, the day you went up flying. Could you briefly describe the weather conditions in the Graz region that day? And how did you assess the situation before your flight?
Yeah, well, Thursday is always club night at the flight school. And I got a new glider. I'd actually planned to fly it on Saturday. But my friends, of course, said, "Well, tomorrow, Friday, is the better day. Come on, let's meet up. The new glider has to get into the air." Yeah, so my preparation for Friday wasn't optimal. But even if I'd checked the weather, I probably would have gone flying pretty confidently. Because the day started out completely normal. Wonderful thermals. Right on the Schöckl at 2,000. That's the standard flight altitude. Then we flew north. Everything was wonderful there too.
Just like we always do. My friends had actually already flown ahead. I took my time a bit. But after an hour and a half, the clouds in the mountains behind us were getting too high. And that was my decision. I mean, I'm definitely not flying towards the Hochschwab or into the mountains now. Instead, I'm just flying back into the lowlands, where everything was blue without a single cloud, and see what else the day has to offer.
That means you probably wanted to fly into a kind of flat triangle. And you'd say, okay, I'll fly out into the lowlands and then back to the landing field, back to Schöckl.
Yeah, exactly. I didn't have a fixed plan for the day. Just wanted to fly with the new glider. I thought, I like flying in the lowlands too. Let's try heading towards Hungary again. That worked well too. I was at kilometer 110 when I turned over there. And I thought, well, heading back might still work. At the end, I was 1000 meters down before it sort of started to lift. Unfortunately, very slightly. Only a meter of lift, two meters. Didn't see any risk at all.
But that was large-scale lift you had there. Could you already see clouds above you then? Or were you just flying in the blue and it was lifting beautifully?
So the situation was like this: I was about 10, 15 kilometers before the mountains in the flatlands. In the mountains behind, two or three small clouds had already rained out. And to my left, it was bright blue. I mean, beautifully blue. The wind was, I'd say, moderate, 10, 15 km/h in the flats. That's the normal ground wind we have there. And of course, I flew towards the blue at the edge. And I thought to myself, the next cloud will probably rise here. But I think the interaction between the rain behind, and possibly a slight cold air outflow, and the large blue field—a lot of energy must have built up there.
...which then basically merged into a single cloud, into that thunderstorm cloud. On a nice day, those would probably have become ten smaller cumulus clouds. But on that day, the cold air outflow or the shadow of the cloud apparently caused the whole field to break into thermals. And with these lift currents, I actually climbed without many options.
Over what period of time did it basically shift, so that you'd say you were flying in clear skies and then suddenly these lift currents started? And that big cloud was already growing too. Was that within five minutes or was it a quarter of an hour? How do I imagine that?
Yeah, well, I was already down at 900 meters, looking around for the nearest train stations. I hadn't really planned anything else. You can get back pretty well by train. Maybe the problem was that it didn't happen abruptly. There was no clear sign. It just started with gentle lift. But then it was the combination. The wind picked up too. And then, of course, for a while, until I had about three meters of lift, I just flew there quite carelessly. By then I was already at about 1,700. And then, of course, I started looking around critically again. And thought, well, you're going to steer a bit further south now.
But then the wind picked up again. At around 2,000, I looked around again. Then I—I had a spiral glider with me, I threw the spiral glider out and started spiraling. But unfortunately, I have to admit now that I wasn't fully aware of the great risk yet. I spiraled gently, sank a bit, but it was more of a zero-slider I was spiraling. And I only noticed that because of the wind shift, I was getting pushed further back into better lift. Then I stopped spiraling and decided on a course out into the blue, towards the south. And yeah, I actually wanted to fly out the front
fly out. What do you mean by flying out of the front? Were you already inside the cloud or did you want to fly out into the blue?
So, a cloud had already formed above me, a cloud already. Nothing huge. But the climb then increased constantly to five, six meters integrated. With that climb, and of course, it's a bit more turbulent. I was flying just south at about 10, 15 km/h. And I realized then, but it's summer. It was warm. So up to three and a half thousand meters, I didn't have any worries that this was going to become some kind of dilemma. I thought to myself, now you'll probably finally be out there soon. Out in front of this cloud.
Now describe the situation when you noticed you were actually being pulled into the cloud. What were you thinking then, and what did you actually do?
Yeah, what did I do? If I could have done anything, I would have liked to put on my mittens. But how many pilots don't have them on the front in the summer, but rather inside the gear? Because, if you're only flying at two and a half thousand that day before, you don't take mittens with you in the summer. Especially not with us in the hills or in the flatlands, yeah. Yeah, I have my instruments. I have a good Garmin device with a 3D compass and another tablet where the XC track is running. Yeah, so my plan was to get out at the front, because spirals with a two-liner aren't as effective as we know them.
So the forces are enormously high. And the last thing I wanted, because when you're in the cloud, you struggle to even control the glider anymore because you have no more points of orientation. And if you come out of the spiral into turbulence and take a collapse, yeah, I wanted to avoid that too. That was just the decision to fly out to the south. That worked too. At 4,000 I was already at the cloud boundary. It was getting brighter. You could almost see the outlines of the sun. And that happened two, three times like that, all the way to the top. I kept hitting the limit. However, the wind was already enormously strong. At times, when it turned me against the direction of flight,
Speeds around 98 to 100 km/h. And that's how it happened that I was actually always flying and climbing on the outside of the cloud. That means, you
you tried to fly out of the cloud, but the wind was pulling into the cloud so much that you really didn't have a chance at all.
Yeah, well, I suspect every time I was pulled backward, the lift also got stronger. So I guess it's just like with the thermals, basically the dissipation, the supra-regional wind was also coming from the southwest. I headed south. So I think the center in the back was significantly higher. And I still think I did the right thing. The best thing would have been, of course, to do a proper spiral at 1,500 meters, go down to land, and say, I'm giving up on continuing. Yes, what's more important is that I can go flying again tomorrow. You said you were with
on a two-liner. What type of glider was it?
Yeah, so it was a Jeans glider. I don't want to go into the specific model now. But the glider was top-notch. I didn't have a single collapse on the glider during the entire ascent. It flew beautifully. But from 5,000 meters, everything started. First, of course, I got wet from all the rain and the damp cloud. Then it all started to ice up. So by the end, the thin lines we know had about a 3 cm ice trail trailing behind them, all the lines. That naturally increased the drag enormously. I think that's why I didn't get out of the cloud, because the glider was actually getting slower and slower. The glider was iced up on the inside.
It's naturally filled. The hail—those were the 20 minutes I was in fine hail, those were hail pellets, thank God only in a size of 5 to 10 mm. So the glider had already filled up quite a bit with that.
That means you had ice lines and practically an ice glider over you. What kind of climb rates did the glider still have in the cloud? Well, the climb rates,
they were constantly moving between 6 and 10 m. The sinking I had in between, I think those were only the moments where I got turned out of the wind. But yeah, the climbing was still constant at 6 to 10 m. The glider also flew perfectly. I obviously had to fly very actively to avoid any collapses, because a collapse with a strong hang, through all the ice too, if you tumble off, is 3,000 to 4,000 m. Firstly, I don't know if you're still conscious or if you lose consciousness already. And if the sinking speed is too high, then you also get that famous rescue position.
So my underlying thought was to fly the glider actively in all cases. I did put the ears on a few times in between, but that's obviously ridiculous with these climb rates. It actually just makes it harder. It's much more difficult to hold the course and fly the glider cleanly.
How turbulent was it inside the cloud? People sometimes say that very strong lift often goes up relatively smoothly in the center. Did it feel completely battered?
I don't think I've ever been in the center of the lift. I was in the marginal zone, where the wind was blowing in. It was already very difficult to fly actively, but as I said, there were no collapses. Probably because the entire air mass was rising anyway. I think it's harder to take a collapse without the... without His. But it wasn't more turbulent. If the same thermals had been in the blue, they would probably have been just as turbulent. So no, it's not more turbulent inside the cloud than outside.
What does it look like inside a thunderstorm cloud? Could you see anything at all, or was it...
already completely dark? As most people know, the higher a cloud is, the darker
it is.
Because of all the water molecules that basically block the light. So it was very dark. The problem with the rain was also those ice clouds coming in between again and again. I had to scrape ice off the goggles, I had to scrape ice off the instruments. So at times I looked upwards, I didn't even see the glider. Were there also lightning strikes around you or did you hear thunder there? Exactly. Finally, when I was at my maximum altitude of about 6.4, around 6,000, it finally started to stop hailing. And I noticed I was finally getting forward speed again. By the end, I had a speed of 20, 30, 40 km/h towards the south. And then the thunder started.
I didn't see a lightning strike directly, I just saw a few flashes of light, like a lightning flash. But it felt like the lightning, it felt like it was, was at most 100 km/h. And in that moment, for the first time, I was really at a loss and thought to myself, okay, now there's actually nothing you can do.
Did you have something like a fear of death in moments like that? Or were you so focused on keeping the glider open and flying actively that you couldn't have those kinds of thoughts at the time?
Yeah, no, I haven't had any fear of death yet. I always try to... as a paraglider pilot, you constantly end up in critical situations. And I don't have fear. It actually blocks you and makes you rather unable to act. So I've always tried to maintain my course, fly the glider actively, and not lose my nerve. Because as soon as I stopped flying in that direction, I would probably have been pulled towards the center. And so, fellow pilots who flew from Germany and Austria, they had already seen storm tops of 10,000 m. But that... yeah, I can't say. I never had a view of the outside to assess exactly whether I was in the middle or on the edge of a cloud.
I couldn't tell.
Were you conscious the whole time, or did you lose consciousness at some point too?
No, my consciousness was there normally. My hands, the... At first, of course, they were a bit sluggish, but you know that from long-distance flying in the spring, your fingers. By the end, it was to the point where my hands were actually almost stiff up to the elbow. I could still feel them internally, but I looked at them and nothing was moving anymore. I didn't know yet what frostbite felt like. I actually thought it would happen without much damage to the skin or anything like that.
How long were you in the cloud in total? And were you really like a plaything of the elements at that moment?
Yeah, well, I'd say from there up to 6.4. That was a good forty-five minutes of climbing. Unfortunately, my instrument was ruined during the landing—it was all finished off by the water and the impact. There's still something to see on the Garmin. But without overstating it, it was one hour and twenty minutes. From the moment I was basically sucked in until the impact. During the landing, it wasn't a landing, it was an impact.
How did you get out of that cloud? Did it basically spit you out sideways, or did you fly out sideways towards the south? Or did you somehow fall out of the cloud downwards into sinks?
Yeah, so up there at altitude, as I said, I already had forward speed heading south. I was so relieved. I was also thinking about the cloud, like internally I said, what else do you want? You've rained, you've hailed, you've lightning-bolted, you've thundered. A cloud can't really do more than that. So I thought, it has to be at the end now. And that's how it was. I flew south, but not out of the cloud. Then, since I had forward speed, I tried to set the brakes on the glider again. That worked too, only then I realized that I was actually in a deep stall. So, because of all the line drag and the ice and the weight in the glider, it was in a constant deep stall.
At first, I was only sinking at four meters because I was actually still flying in rising air. When I came out of the cloud down at 3000, the problems started from the front. Specifically, all the ice in the glider liquefied and the water flowed into the collapsed ears. More on one side, less on the other. So, by then I already had ten meters of sink. The glider was rolling slightly. The lines were so tangled by all the ice. So, I couldn't get the glider back to its original position even with slight brake inputs, up to half-brake. Yeah, at 2000 with my frozen hands, I thought, okay, the rescue must come out. Because, yeah, I'm not trying anything further with the glider, the rescue has to come out.
That took longer, of course, because of my frozen hands. I had a Rogallo, which is actually a super steerable rescue wing. It opened up great too. What surprised me was, I look and, hm, I was still sinking at eight meters, yeah. I thought, the rescue wing looks good. Okay, glider in scissors position. I also have Quick-Cut carabiners. Okay, opening Quick-Cut carabiners with frozen hands. You notice right away that takes a lot out of you. It takes time when you basically only have your thumbs left to operate anything with. I managed to detach one side. I was still at seven meters of sink. Why, I'll explain in a moment. Yeah, I didn't manage the second side. The whole thing is pretty certainly, or probably because, I naturally descended with the rescue wing in sinking air.
Still with the settling from the rain. And the main glider was, of course, completely full of ice and water. So my friends, who retrieved the glider, said that there were still about a good four, four kilos, five kilos of water left in the ears on each side. Then I tried to unhook the second side. I thought maybe it was the scissors position that was causing the heavy sink. But about 200 meters above the ground, I gave up on the whole thing and looked. Okay, where am I going to land? Everything was there, of course. Forest, meadows, meadows with power lines. And a village. And in the last 100 meters, I prepared myself, feet out.
You never know, maybe there was still some ground effect or good effect. Maybe I didn't just have bad luck for the entire last half hour. In the end, I did a 180-degree turn and was blown into the village by even more crosswind. And I just landed wherever God willed. Thank goodness I hit what was basically a soft tiled roof and detonated.
Well, you said you had a Rogallo rescue, so actually a steerable rescue. Could you not operate it with your frozen hands? Or did it just never occur to you, out of the stress, to say, oh, I could still steer that? Or what happened there?
Yeah, no, well, I had already planned to steer the Rogallo, because I already had it out to about 1,500 through the main glider. But it was just that I was twisted under the Rogallo. Now, I had the right riser, I could see that one clearly. I managed to get the loop out of it, despite the danger, because the front four fingers were stuck together. I couldn't get them apart or anything. And the riser on the left side was somewhere behind me. And without any feeling in my fingers, I couldn't grab anything there anymore.
And that meant the rescue firm wasn't controllable for you either. You just had to take whatever came your way, so to speak.
Exactly, it wasn't controllable. I was really lucky because if you hit a house wall or the roof truss at a corner, even trees would have been okay. So on a meadow, that would have definitely been a very hard landing. I can't say for sure now, but seven meters per second is definitely a jump from at least four meters, if not five. And yeah, so I was glad. This tiled roof, it was like a barn. And it obviously didn't have a very sturdy roof truss. So I think that cushioned everything. And the fact that I landed wrong, I see that as an advantage now because the harness naturally had a great foam protector at the back and actually absorbed most of the impact.
What physical damage did you end up sustaining from it? Yes,
So the landing went very well, as we expected. I only had a laceration about a centimeter long on my elbow. One rib still hurts a bit; it might be slightly cracked. But basically, it's something you wouldn't even have to go to the doctor for. So the landing worked out well. The problems I'm still going to have for the next two or three weeks are my front eight fingers. They were frozen all the way to the inside. And yes, when water freezes in the skin and tissue, it destroys all the cells. So my eight fingers actually had to be saved with infusions in the hospital.
The circulation in my fingertips is currently at about 15 percent compared to my thumb. And to what extent? Well, I've already spoken with many friends who also had mild frostbite, either just from flying in the winter or for other reasons. That feeling in the fingertips, it actually almost never comes back. And they have the problem that if it's even a little cool somewhere, those fingers become ice-cold immediately because of the poor circulation. It's going to be difficult for me to fly at all in the winter or anything like that, and if I do, only with heated gloves and other aids.
What lesson did you learn? What lessons are you taking away for yourself from this incident? Do you want to quit flying altogether now?
No, I'm certainly not going to quit flying. For most pilots, flying is one of the most beautiful things you can do, I think. I thought that if the cloud came, I'd recognize it as a thunderstorm cloud and that it wouldn't happen to me. Yes, I believe that. Unfortunately, it can happen to anyone. Especially if it happens where there isn't even a cloud yet, you can get sucked in there too. I think that was also the cause, because on some unstable days, 80 or 90 percent of the area is shaded, and there can't really be any strong lift anymore if no front is moving through.
But it was like this there: the huge blue area allowed for 100 percent sunshine. And then the whole thing turned into a large cloud, which is often the case in the summer. It's bright blue everywhere and there's a CB standing somewhere.
With accidents or near-misses like these—depending on how you count them—they happen, and people often say it's always a chain of many small details. Is there a point in the flight, or something, where you would say looking back today, "That's where I made the decisive mistake, I should have reacted differently, then everything would have gone completely differently"?
Yes, what was it? It was, of course, as you already said, several circumstances. For one, the euphoria—you have a new paraglider in the morning,
my son, who's only three weeks old, just quickly took care of him, then spent two hours at the company, quickly got everything done. Yeah, and then bam, off to the mountain and off you go flying. So the preparation certainly wasn't optimal. But as I said, I probably would have gone flying too if I'd looked at the weather report.
If you wanted to give other pilots a tip based on your experiences, to ensure they don't suffer the same fate, what would you tell them to pay the most attention to?
Well, I can only recommend that other pilots remember that our paragliding sport is actually a hobby for most pilots. And the best thing about it is being able to go flying again the next day or the months after. And everyone has surely had critical moments regarding clouds, lift, or rain nearby. Just being able to say, I'll skip that, maybe go another 50 kilometers, and I'll choose a safe landing so that I can go flying again tomorrow. Yes, that's what I'd wish for, if we all took that into consideration a bit more.
Well, you were inside the cloud too. It happens to all kinds of pilots from time to time, getting sucked into clouds. Some even fly into clouds intentionally sometimes because they want to gain a bit more altitude. Is there an important takeaway for you from your long flight in the clouds now, where you'd say, "this is what you should know," how can you still orient yourself, or what problems might you have to expect that you wouldn't have on your radar at all?
Most people know this, not just hobbyists—I've even flown along for fun at BWCs and such. So, all pilots, no one keeps a distance from the clouds. If you're lucky, you can still see a contour in the veil of the clouds, so everyone flies along the edges of the clouds. What happens during strong climbs in clouds, I noticed that as the climb got stronger. Electromagnetic tensions are created in the cloud by the climb, and the compass starts acting up because of that. Of course, it points to the strongest magnetic field, which is normally the North Pole, but if a magnetic field is created in the cloud—an electromagnetic one—then you can forget about your compass, because it just goes haywire in there.
So, the idea of grabbing a large ball compass for the cockpit to fly into clouds and know where you're going—that can actually backfire?
Yes, that works. If it's a gentle cloud with 5 to 7 meters of lift, it still works. But as soon as the cloud has a lot of water molecules—meaning it's a very humid cloud—then the compass becomes useless pretty quickly because everything gets shielded and electromagnetic voltages are created by the lift.
And what about the GPS? Have you...
did you still have reception with it? I always intentionally had the Garmin with me, because the Garmin is such a powerful device. So, I have an extra battery with my flight tablet, but even with the extra battery, as soon as I was in the cloud for the first 1,000 meters, the GPS signal was already gone because humidity shields signals. And yeah, the cloud was pretty damp. So that didn't work at all, because a tablet never has such a powerful GPS receiver inside as, let me say, original flight instruments or the Garmin. The Garmin usually still worked, but it also had dropouts, especially after it had rained, because the signal would be lost there too.
I basically just oriented myself by the glider. You can tell if you're flying into the wind. Or if it's turning you around. So, whether you're flying with a tailwind or into the wind, you can feel that on the glider too.
That means, for orientation purposes, the most sensible thing would be to say—even if it sounds stupid at first because you obviously won't make much forward progress—to fly against the wind, because the wind is probably pulling into the cloud, and flying against the wind might somehow get you to the edge of the cloud.
Yes, that's how I see it. Let me say, once I've entered a cloud, I always practice that because it's more energy-efficient. And doing spirals out of the bottom, I find that rather uncontrolled, especially if several people are flying and everyone is climbing in the same thermals and you're spiraling down there. So the risk of someone coming towards you at the bottom, saying, "I'm taking exactly the last 50 meters below the base," I also see that as very risky, and that's why I tend to prefer flying out of the cloud instead. And actually towards the flatland—that's what I've seen as the least risky so far.
How would you assess the role of two-liners here, or rather the role of the two-liner you'll be flying with? Two-liners sometimes can't be brought down as easily with descent maneuvers. Would you say that flying a two-liner in these weather conditions is actually even more particularly dangerous?
Yes, well, I've flown all the paraglider classes. And as most people know, a three-liner is more maneuverable. You can easily collapse one half down and use that to get yourself down. Creating ears is more effective, easier to control. So with the two-liner, it's definitely much more difficult. Also the spiral—the spiral has such high G-forces and sometimes the sink is simply way too little. So I don't think I could have handled a spiral lasting longer than two minutes that sinks over 10, 15 meters under any circumstances. Would you then
Based on this experience, would you say you're not touching a two-liner anymore because they're just too dangerous for you, even if they are so great to fly?
No, not that. I mean, they fly wonderfully. But I think it would be nice if the manufacturers would come up with something—I don't know, like how they use the folding line during testing—if they could somehow attach something where you could, for example, hook the ears onto the riser, like many tandems have, some kind of helpful descent aid on the wings. Because even just hooking the ears, the lines are so thin, they cut into your hands, and in that strong lift, the ears were simply always ripped out of your hands.
It's often the case that the ears on two-liners flap around terribly or something like that. How was it with the model you were using?
Yeah, well, he also had continuous rods in the ears, and those ears, of course, don't just stay nicely inside when you fold them down and back the way we'd like them to; they keep ripping out of your hand, and it was obviously insanely difficult to hold any direction at all. And whether I was climbing with seven meters or six meters, I don't think that was relevant in that case either. It might have taken longer for me to get there—until I'm at the top. But it wasn't helpful at all. Ripping a collapse, I didn't dare do that either, because I already had friends who had ripped collapses on the two-liner itself, and that of course resulted in negative oscillations and maneuvers like that immediately. And doing that in a cloud, no, I couldn't bring myself to do that.
That means that with today's two-liners, you're definitely facing a greater risk in such conditions. Or is it simply, as far as that's concerned, a matter of potentially being sucked into such clouds?
Yes, definitely. Everyone who flies stuff like that knows. It's also the spiral fall gliders that have only come out with the two-liners, which I mean, I've had for two or three years now. I spiral with it every now and then when I want to go down. But under a thunderstorm cloud, it all looks different again. The spiral glider actually centers you towards the best lift. The sink is not as good as you'd like it to be. Yes, so it actually becomes a distraction. And maybe if you consciously train it during SIV training, you'd master it better. But that wasn't the case.
You mentioned that you also threw out the spiral glider and started spiraling with it. Did you pull it back in afterwards, or did you fly through the cloud the whole time with the anti-G glider hanging out?
So, the anti-G glider had a Kittle line in the middle. I pulled that in and wrapped it around the riser. So the anti-G was actually out the whole time. And it was probably iced up pretty badly too. But I basically stopped thinking about it being out, I'd guess from about 3,000 meters. Even though, if it was being pulled without any effect, it doesn't actually have any major disruptive influences.
Let's shift the perspective back to the end here. And the topic—you mentioned yourself that you recently became a father, just before this flight. That's a huge responsibility you have and certainly feel. Did you feel that in the air when you realized, shit, I'm in a really shitty situation? And did you still feel like you could handle it?
Yeah, well, I've actually been on a high for the last few weeks. My son's birth, everything's great. A really sweet kid, the family—everything's perfect. The new glider. And yeah, it was like, at some point from 4,000 meters, I thought to myself, what are you actually doing here, you idiot? Why aren't you landing? Why aren't you just flying tomorrow, when the weather was forecast to be a lot more stable? Yeah, I already had some self-reproaches and thought, what's the point of the flight if you might crash, get injured, and not be able to go flying for weeks or years. And yeah, basically leaving your family at home in the lurch.
And how did
how did your wife and the young mother react to the whole thing? Did they blame you?
Well, my girlfriend has been like that so far too, in that she hasn't made any accusations against me. She was of course anything but thrilled, because she could have definitely used the support at home. But I, myself, see myself as being responsible now, so I won't be tackling a paraglider for the next two weeks either. Now it's off to the sea, to make amends with the family again. And yes, then I'll do some repair and pleasure flights again to regain confidence in paragliding as a whole. And then, well, the season is already coming to an end.
Then winter comes, and you'll probably have to give up flying for a while because of your hands. But I hope you manage to get back out there and have some great flights next year. Thank you for this amazing description of such an exciting, adventurous, and for you, life-threatening, but ultimately successful story. I think some of the people listening to this might be able to take something away from it and learn something. Thanks for the description, and all the best for your future flights, and have fun with your son and your girlfriend.
Thanks, Lucian Haas, I was also very pleased. Take care. That
was Emanuel Schuster in a conversation with Lucian Haas. One important point didn't come up during the recording. But Emanuel told me about it later. During the entire flight, he had live tracking running. That way, his flying buddies could constantly follow the drama and his position, and they were already on site shortly after his crash landing on the garage roof. If he had gone down somewhere in the forest, they would have been able to initiate the rescue chain with exact position data. In other words, live tracking becomes a real safety feature in an emergency, and that's exactly why it's recommended on XC flights. If you enjoy this kind of information and the entire podcast, then feel free to recommend Podz-Glidz or the associated Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz as well.
Or even better, become a supporter of Lu-Glidz. Because the entire project is independent and deliberately avoids influencing cross-financing through advertising. However, I do rely on contributions from readers and listeners to be able to offer this scope and depth in the reporting. You can support Lu-Glidz very simply via PayPal or bank transfer. You can find the necessary details on the Lu-Glidz website. You decide the donation amount yourself. Now, I'll just say, thanks for donating, thanks for listening. Until next time. Ciao.