In the last few years, we've been seeing exactly the opposite. 95 percent of the participants go home with broken rigs that dematerialize into pieces during the very first flight or the first jump. So that's a very clear trend that gives me pause.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with Boris Haari and Lucian Haas on the mic.
The rescue parachute is, based on experience, the piece of equipment that most female and male paraglider pilots pay the least attention to. And that's despite the fact that this extra piece of fabric in the harness could very likely save their lives in an emergency. In everyday flight, however, it's perceived more as ballast. That's why there's also a trend here for rescues to be as light as possible and have a small pack volume. Urs Haari follows such developments with a critical eye. Urs is a Swiss aviation legend. Over the past 25 years, he has been a multiple-time Swiss champion. He stood on the podium at World Championships and Paragliding World Cups. In 2019, he won the Swiss cross-country flight XContest in the sport class.
His most significant influence on the scene, however, is hidden in many harnesses. Urs has developed various steerable and non-steerable rescues. More importantly, he has tested them intensively. There are already about 400 rescue cubes in his books, the majority of which are above ground. Most of them are documented via video. For Urs, it's primarily about better understanding the interaction between the paraglider and the rescue in a glide. In this specific regard, he is likely the pilot with the largest number of rescue glider deployments in the world.
In
This 15th episode of Podz-Glidz features Urs Harri talking about his work as a rescue tester. Among other things, he explains how surface area and shape influence the sink and pendulum behavior of rescue gliders. He reports on the advantages and disadvantages of steerable and non-steerable systems, describes the downsides of lightweight construction in rescues, and explains what important role the subconscious plays in a successful rescue throw. Urs,
you are a multiple-time Swiss champion. You've stood on the podium at several Paragliding World Cups. You were third at the 1991 World Championships. You've flown several cross-country flight records. But in one point, you're probably pretty much alone at the top of the world. I'll just go out on a limb and say you're the pilot with the most rescue throws in the world. From your perspective, how right am I?
I see it that way too. I'm completely with you, Luciano. And
how often were these rescues from an actual emergency? Fortunately, only once so far. And when was that, and what led to you coming down with the rescuer?
That was at the World Championships in Verbier in 1992.
And that was in the first run. I was at the top with the leaders in Verbier, pretty close to the finish. We were flying towards Verbier, maybe five to ten kilometers from the finish, when I flew into a lee. A strong lee. And I had a collapse with my competition glider. And from an experience just a month before this event, I knew I wouldn't be able to handle that anymore. With the remaining World Championship. And that's when the rescue throw happened instinctively. And it was also necessary because I was hanging on the rescue for about three to four seconds and was already on the ground against a rock face.
So that was your first rescue throw ever. How many more have you done since then, so that people can now say you're the rescue throw world champion? Well, up until today...
around 400 glider deployments and most of them were unexpected.
To what extent did that first experience, that first rescue deployment you made back in Verbier, contribute to your great interest in the topic of rescue gliders, or did it even lead to that at all?
Yes, that was a key experience for me. On one hand, there was this problem I had with the glider, where I realized afterwards that you really have to know your glider's behavior well, because you often don't have any time left, there isn't much altitude above ground anymore, and you have to react immediately. So that was one takeaway from that incident. And the other takeaway was—I flew on the next day at the World Championships, I flew the whole World Championships, I was there the whole time—I had to fold the rescue parachute again, and I couldn't do it.
So I was dependent on other people. And then the whole thing somehow started to interest me. My brother was working as an instructor for the Swiss Hang Gliding Association at the time. So he was training rescue parachute packers in Switzerland. I then had more contact with him and just worked my way into the subject matter together with him.
That means you first learned rescue packing. But later on, you also started developing your own rescues. Yes. And then in 1992 was your first rescue throw, and in 1995 you brought the Beamer to market as the first steerable rescue. How did the idea actually come about to go with this Rogallo design instead of a round canopy?
Well, that was actually a coincidence. So, like you said, first I got interested in the rescue pack, learned the craft, and then kept testing rescue gliders. And at the time, we were working with a Korean manufacturer. And he pointed out a Rogallo rescue glider to us. It's not really anything new. In the 70s, skydivers were already jumping from planes with Rogallos. So they were obviously already active in this field back then. And he sent us a prototype, and we tested and further developed it, and we were convinced about the thing from the very beginning.
From your experience with your rescue throw back then, did you also think that I would have preferred one that was steerable, or were you simply convinced that steerability had to be the future of rescue construction?
So I was actually convinced from the very beginning that the existing designs could be improved. At that time, they were all basically round canopies, double canopies, they were all pretty similar to each other. And with the first Rogallo that we were then able to test and develop further, I was simply convinced that it could go in a direction that leads to significantly lower sink rates, and you still have the possibility, if you get to that point, to pull on a control line to avoid an obstacle. That was actually what motivated me the most back then to keep going with it.
You said you had a Rogallo as an example, I think it was from Korea, and you then developed it further. How many prototypes did it take until you had a truly usable model, or until you could say, "This is a product I can bring to market"?
So back then, we didn't develop the device that much. We had it built a bit larger. We weren't able to do it ourselves back then either. We didn't have production in-house. We just did tests and got the impression that it was too small. So we gave feedback to the factory to build it bigger. And then our thermal was actually, at that time, mainly determining the packing so that it opens reliably. And even back then, we always assumed that the pilots would separate the paraglider from the Rogallo rescue after activation.
So, back then, there were already those Quick-Out carabiners from Fensterwalder. And at the beginning, we were simply convinced that it worked perfectly and that the pilots could handle it. We realized pretty quickly, though, that that was a false assumption.
By now, the third version of the beamer is on the market. What has changed compared to the original version? And what did that achieve for practical use?
Yes, as I mentioned, we received feedback from the market relatively quickly that people were getting overwhelmed very quickly with the handling and the quick-outs in a dangerous or emergency situation if they hadn't practiced them beforehand. And in the connected state, the surface area of the first projector often tended to shift into a scissor position.
Can you briefly explain what's meant by "scissoring position"?
If, for example, a paraglider is fully open again—which happens quite often after a rescue deployment, a hang-up, or something like that—where the rescue device is open and starts to carry, and then the paraglider opens again and starts flying too, then the two systems position themselves in a sort of mirrored position. And the result is that the whole system accelerates downwards and sinks very quickly. And
the Beamer 1 had a tendency to do that more often.
The Beamer 1 was relatively small compared to today's designs, and with a training glider—let me put it that way—in calm conditions, when it fully opened again and accelerated forward, it could already transition into a mirror or scissor position. And with the subsequent models, we also had lighter materials available. That was actually the point where we were motivated to try out something new again.
Lighter materials. And with those, we were able to experiment with significantly larger areas that were ultimately still much smaller or lighter in total weight than the first version. And that actually led to us being able to work with 5 or 6 square meters more. We also experimented with pre-braked opening positions. So that wasn't anything new, or wasn't new at the time. That came from skydiving. On my parachute, I also had the brakes, which even today still, still pre-brake the gliders so that they don't hit the leading edge too hard after the opening process.
And with these kinds of small detail solutions, we were able to significantly improve the Beamer 1 product and also make it more suitable for wide-area use.
You said earlier that with the Beamer 1, it was actually still mandatory to have Quick-Out carabiners. Would you say that with the Beamer 3, that's no longer necessary at all?
So I do most of the demonstrations or tests without Quick-Out carabiners. We have very, very many customers who don't carry Quick-Out carabiners. You just have to behave correctly after the rescue throw. So the behavior is actually exactly the same as with a round or cross canopy. So when the paraglider starts to interfere again, when it starts to negatively affect the system by going onto the leading edge or swirling wildly, you just have to prevent the paraglider from flying or interfering. And once you've achieved that, you can still take care of the control with one hand.
Since both brakes are pre-braked, it's actually enough for me to hold the glider in one hand and release a brake with the opposite hand. And because the opposite brake is still shortened, I can actually control both sides with just one brake. So, by releasing the brake, the glider goes to one side, and by pulling down on the brake, I can then initiate my counter-steering.
You just said that regardless of whether it's controllable or not, you should always deactivate your paraglider if it starts to steer again. Based on your experience, what's the best way to do that?
That depends very much on the situation, of course. It's not the same situation every time. So, if we do this in a training over water, it usually happens from a straight flight or maybe from a spiral or something like that. And in those cases, I usually have the risers of my paraglider nicely in front of me, well-separated as they always are during flight. And when I activate the rescue device and it opens, I can then take care of the glider quite easily. I don't have to do much to make sure the glider is no longer interfering. So, for example, I do a B-stall or a C-stall.
There are instructors who recommend doing it via the brakes. And that usually works well practically with almost all equipment. The problems start when I have the risers twisted, for example, and I can no longer influence the glider via the lines, risers, or brake lines. Then it becomes
it gets difficult. Is there any tip or trick, anything else you can do there? Yes, last year
I had an incident once while we were testing.
I'm mainly interested in the connected state. I don't want to immediately prevent the glider from flying or anything like that. I want to see how my prototype, which I'm currently testing, reacts with the glider. What happens if the glider is still interfering? How does the rescue device behave? And I waited a bit too long with it. The glider then surged forward quite strongly—it was a Schulschirm—and then collapsed asymmetrically and started to heavily influence my rescue glider, the prototype. And since I'm doing this over ground, I can't allow the whole thing to eventually get so tangled up that I can't detach anything anymore, that I can't separate myself from the two systems.
because there are houses, power lines, and streets on the ground. And so, I decided on the spot to use the rescue knife—I can't get the Quick-Out carabiner open, I have them on during testing, or I should say, I had them on. Today I'm testing with a three-point system, which is much more reliable and effective. And then I simply used a rescue knife, a rescue knife that I always have attached to my shoulder, always in the same place, and I just cut the lines. The whole thing is documented on video; it's an action of 4-5 seconds and then the glider is gone.
Does that mean you really cut through all the lines, or did you cut the risers or the lines?
I was still able to release one riser over the Quick-Out, so it came away. Then I tried to influence the glider via the opposite side of the brake so that it wouldn't fly into the reserve parachute. That worked well for a while, and then it was no longer so controllable, I lost control, and then I cut one side through with the cutter. That went real quick, snap, snap. A riser usually works too, we've already tested that. The problem is simply that it has to be under tension.
As soon as there's no more tension on it, a quick-release cutter doesn't work that well anymore, and then I have to work pretty hard with both hands to get it off.
You just said this incident happened during testing and that the testing was over land. You also mentioned earlier that you do almost all of your rescue releases over land so far. Why don't you actually test prototypes over water? Wouldn't that be much safer?
I draw a line there. If we're testing prototypes that exceed my takeoff weight—meaning we have to fly as a pair—then we always do that over water. For me, that's far too demanding, and I don't want to take responsibility for my passengers if something were to happen. But I've developed a system where I can detach from the glider in any situation and continue flying with a beamer. The advantage there is that on a day with good conditions, I can start as early as the morning when there's no wind.
So I can see how the prototype behaves in zero wind or in sinking air masses. What happens at noon when the valley wind sets in, or in the afternoon when the thermals get stronger. This gives me the opportunity to carry out three, four, or five tests in a row in one day, whereas after a water landing I'd be grounded for a week. And then there's the disadvantage: if I'm regularly jumping into the water with a prototype, I simply have the material changes that are inevitable. The fabric changes, the lines change, and the result is no longer quite as reproducible if I then make trim changes on the same prototype.
Or make any corrections to the sail. That's a huge advantage. We've now developed a new rescue device for the steerable range up to 170 kilos. And with a prototype, I was able to
perform practically all the tests. We kept working on it and making changes. And it was definitely used over ground about 25 times, maybe four or five times in the water. And for us, in terms of development, it's very interesting to see how the whole thing behaves.
Now you're saying, okay, you've tested these steerable ones. But you also test non-steerable rescues, and you test those over land too. How do you make sure that you can still land on the right meadow?
I fly over the landing field, check the wind—I have a windsock at the landing field. I don't have much area available. So, it's culturally... finding an open piece of farmland here in Switzerland near a slope or a launch site is very difficult. But I have about 500 by 500 meters. By now, I have it in my blood how the drift might turn out roughly. Then I start with my procedures. I throw the prototype, wait until it's open. Then I see what happens if I do nothing with the paraglider. What happens if I do a pistol on the paraglider.
Once I've tested all of that, I take the paraglider down. Then I get into the area that's interesting for the certification. They only test it in a separated state. That's actually something that interests me less, but it's important for the certification because, from my perspective, it's very impractical. And if that's good and the drift is still right, then I move on with the Beamer. And I can control that and land it in a safe place.
That means you then throw the beamer in as a steerable one, and the beamer is then virtually more dominant compared to the canopy. Or do you even detach the canopy itself then? How am I supposed to imagine that?
I detach the canopy. I detach it. It's usually still secured by a line. I can't just bombard the whole area with the glider and the rescue glider, there are people living nearby. Or it might be a road that's frequently used. And the glider, the prototype, I pull that along behind. It's attached to a line and the whole thing collapses into itself and doesn't disturb anyone anymore.
We just talked about steerable and non-steerable rescuers, which you use in both cases. That's always a bit of a debate among paragliders. Do you need a steerable one, or is it actually way too complicated? Shouldn't you rather go with a completely normal canopy rescue or something like that? What's your take on that?
Yes, of course there will always be—and probably still will be—discussions about that. It's just that the market mainly relies on cross-canopies. They are easier to handle, take less time to pack, and the market is already, let me put it this way, a bit comfortable with them. And the steerable ones—now, I can judge this better from Switzerland—but the steerable ones have actually been the primary rescue system, the primary rescue system, for acro pilots since the very beginning.
And for cross-country and competition pilots, the Beamer probably makes up the majority of the systems used. So anyone who has experienced more than one opening over ground will eventually land on a steerable rescue. And
Is there a point where you would say that, during an operation—not when packing, where the steerable one is probably a bit more complex—the steerable rescue is actually at a disadvantage somewhere during the actual use?
With the light rescues, the conventional systems are still certainly lighter, especially for all those hike-fly missions or flights. Anyone who takes a rescue device with them at all will, of course, optimize with a very, very small rescue, which might sink a bit faster or something. But in that case, a steerable rescue with the risers, which are also special here, certainly wouldn't make any sense.
Let's talk a bit more about these non-steerable rescues. There's been quite a bit of development in recent years. Originally, there were only these round canopies, then there were these square cross canopies, then came Round Squares, then there were triangular canopies—you have one canopy, which is a pentagon rescue, that's called a Pentagon. Is there any of these shapes that you wouldn't fundamentally recommend anymore today?
No. I'm still very convinced about the round canopies. There are very good round canopies and there are less good round canopies. And from my point of view, that applies to all the systems that came out after that. So whether it's a cross canopy or a cross-round canopy, whatever it is, there are differences in behavior in the connected or disconnected state, and there are exactly the same number of differences when packing. There are new modern systems that are very easy to pack, and there are cross canopies that are almost as easy to pack as a Rogalo rescue device.
A lot has changed, but I am still convinced that it is certainly possible to build a very good, functional canopy that is very easy to pack, even according to today's requirements. There are
Is there any way for an average pilot to recognize if a rescue system being offered, regardless of its form, is one where you can say, "That's a mature, good rescue system"? Are there external features that make it easy to tell?
Yes, I think we already have a lot of experience from the trainings conducted over water. You can find that on the internet, you can Google it, there are dozens of videos on YouTube. There are also a lot of videos on YouTube
...of real openings that didn't take place under quasi-laboratory conditions over water, where you can see how they behave, what happens if parts of them get caught in the lines of the paraglider, if the pilot does nothing at all, whatever. So yeah, you have to take a bit of time with the matter. It just takes time.
By "taking care of it," I really mean, okay, I'd have to pick out different videos, then figure out what kind of rescue parachute it is. But actually, I'd also need to know how big it is, how heavy the pilot underneath was. There are so many factors coming into play that it would be very difficult for me, as a normal pilot, to really decide which rescue parachute might be good or not. Because every manufacturer, of course, promotes their rescue parachute as pendulum-stable, super-fast opening, and all that.
Exactly, so basically I recommend every pilot to engage more deeply with their rescue device. In my view, it's being seriously neglected, generally, everywhere. And then
the best thing is to try it out yourself. So I recommend every paraglider pilot or pilot to trigger the rescue device over water during a training session and to
to have someone brief you, to inform you on exactly how it works. And then you realize relatively quickly whether you're hooked up to the right rescue device.
Are there many canopies or how many, I don't know, but there are some canopies where you say they actually work very well. In what respect do you still see development potential in such rescue devices today? Or is development actually mature by now, so you'd say the good systems on the market do their job and there's actually nothing left to develop further?
So I see development potential primarily in the approval process. In my opinion, that's the biggest drawback we have in that area. So as of today,
In 2019, all rescue devices are tested over water. So, here in Switzerland, Alain Zoller's certification body—in the meantime, I would say 95 percent of all rescues are tested here in Switzerland. So the practical test takes place over water. No test is carried out in a specific condition. The glider wing is separated immediately after opening. And so, only the pendulum stability and the descent on the rescue device...
measured and judged. And from my point of view, that is the biggest deficit we have in that area today. Because I am convinced that with a reference glider—the size of which depends on the takeoff weight or the harness weight—one could better simulate these disturbances that the paraglider produces in between, and then the wheat would be separated from the chaff regarding today's rescue devices.
separate significantly faster. So when we participate in the tests, we are often on-site in Villeneuve and we simply see that after separating from the wing, the rescue device oscillates extremely strongly, continuing to oscillate for a very long time. This deployment takes place 500 or 600 meters above the ground. I mean, over water, sorry. And then at some point the system calms down and the pilot lowers a buoy on a 14-meter long line, and the time from the buoy touching the water surface until the pilot touches the water surface with his legs is then stopped, and that is the sink rate that is ultimately used to judge whether a device
...whether a device is certified or not. And from my point of view, that's simply the Stone Age method. I mean, we could do that much better today, and we still have quite a bit of potential to improve that. But all in all, I'd say that with rescue devices that are large enough—where the surface loading isn't so high—the modern designs, like the cross canopy, cross-room canopy, or now a pentagon shape, whatever it is, and even with Beamer, if the surface area is large enough, I basically have fewer problems when the glider starts to interfere significantly.
So, from your perspective, does surface area mean safety?
Absolutely. So we have to keep very clearly in mind that, for example, the reference values for the army's round canopy parachutes—those T10s from back then—had surface areas of 72 square meters for a weight range of 100 to 130 kilos. And they had very clear specifications that at a landing altitude of 1,500 meters at a temperature of 29 degrees, such a round canopy parachute must not sink more than 5, 5.5 meters per second. And we believe in the paragliding scene that with 25 square meters, we can achieve reasonable values in the terrain.
That is a complete misconception. I mean, the tests, they are...
calculated based on the local atmosphere, so the payload. In Villeneuve, we are at 370 meters above sea level. If I want to get a rescue device certified there with a payload of 130 kilos, then the whole thing is calculated with the
temperature, humidity, and air pressure parameters
calculated. So in that case, I might have a payload of only 127 kilos. And that's how my rescue device is tested over water in calm conditions. But none of us will pull a rescue there, except maybe an acro pilot. So for us, the rescue descents take place at 2,000 or 3,000 meters. And if you apply the same shape as the EN or LTF standards...
...needed, then in this example, if we calculate it based on the local atmosphere, we have, for instance, at Grimsel Passhöhe—which is a well-known spot for cross-country pilots—it's 1,980 meters, there we can still hang 108 kilos for the same sink rate. So we're already almost 20 kilos under this test load to achieve the same sink values. And if I, for example, have to activate the rescue device at 3,500 meters, I can still hang 92 kilos with the same surface area. And in all this calculation, we haven't included the wind—and thermal influence yet.
That comes into play as well. So, I actually see that as the biggest problem, or rather the most important decision: buying surface area—that's ultimately what matters most.
If you think about it that way, there are people who go flying in the Himalayas, where it goes up to 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 meters, and who sometimes do hike and fly as well; they should actually be taking a rescue parachute that probably has well over 40 square meters of surface area. But most of them probably don't have one at all because they say, "I have to save weight, I want to fly around." That means if they actually had a rescue deployment up there, they would probably slam into the terrain in a terrible way.
I think so too, but I believe most of them are using ultralight concepts, single skins, or whatever. And in that case, the rescue device—a normal rescue device is heavier, like the paraglider itself. I don't think they carry large rescue devices up there.
Let's talk a bit more about the factors regarding rescuers that also play a role in the EN standard and similar regulations, and which are somehow taken into account when choosing a rescuer. You can tell me how important you consider them to be in practice. Let's just start with the sink rate. The EN standard says 5.5 meters per second is the maximum at the maximum payload. Is this value actually okay in itself?
We keep hearing about
rescue parachute deployments, especially in cross-country flight areas during the peak summer months.
What's interesting is that people who actually deploy the reserve parachute usually hardly get injured. So I assume that as long as the glider stays on and doesn't interfere too much, these values work. There are minor injuries and such, you can't rule that out. But overall, it works surprisingly well, and for those where it doesn't work, you rarely hear about them.
Second point, the подвес weight. Those 5.5 meters are always specified for the maximum подвес weight. Now you're saying, okay, the higher you fly, the faster you sink, so you actually have to stay further below that maximum limit with your подвес weight to achieve a somewhat usable or somewhat safe sink rate of around 5 meters per second or something like that. What would be your recommendation for a common, typical old wing? How much should one stay under the maximum подвес weight with their own equipment in total?
The EN says 5.5 meters per second of sink. The LTEV is at 6.8, and the LTEV or the DFA, for example, have always recommended staying about 20 to 25 percent below the maximum payload. So, not pushing it all the way to the limit. And by now, through my many tests, I've actually come to the conclusion that I recommend this to people for the EN standard as well. And I apply it myself too. So I
I hang on my reserve glider, the reserve glider I carry that goes up to 130 kilos; I'd hang about 100, maybe 110 at most, but no more. So, don't push it all the way to the limit. That's my recommendation.
Next topic, opening speed. That's always something where it says, okay, at least in the ads it always says our glider opens particularly fast. Does what is tested in the EN test actually have any relevance regarding how fast a glider really opens in practice? That also depends on throwing technique and all sorts of other things.
Exactly, so the most important factor is clearly, as you mentioned, the user—the pilot—when they...
just drops the rescue device—you can see that very often during training—then it can take significantly longer than if someone really whips it out with a lot of force; those are essential differences in the opening behavior, in the opening time.
That means that these opening speeds, as they might be stated in some advertising brochures or something like that, have relatively little to do with practice. You shouldn't necessarily take that as a selection criterion for buying a rescue glider.
I see it the same way, so for me, that's not a criterion.
You've mentioned several times that rescues have become lighter over time. If I had two rescues to choose from right now, one being heavier and the other lighter, with all other factors being equal, would you say I should go with the lighter one? No. Why not?
From my point of view, this whole obsession with lightness is slowly taking on some bizarre proportions, and we've been participating in the load tests at Alazor in Wilnofen for years now. So, there, the rescues are rigged with the helicopter's total payload. That
means that it's from high speed, and because of that, the opening shock is particularly large.
Exactly. So, with the same single piece of equipment, you have to pass this test twice. The glider must not break during the process, and no lines may snap during this test. A few years ago, you'd go there and drive home, and 95% of the gliders had passed. So there were practically no rescue devices that had a problem during this test. For the last 3 to 4 years, when we go there, the number of participants has increased exponentially. There are incredibly many new products on the market; manufacturers are pushing a huge number of rescues into the market.
And in the last few years, we've been making exactly the opposite observation. 95% of the participants go home with broken rescuers that dematerialize into pieces during the first flight or the first deployment. So that's a very clear trend that gives me pause. We also notice in our daily packing routine—we pack a lot of rescue devices from customers, including customers who were in training and performed a rescue glider opening over water—and we actually find that
just from the ground handling, the materials are sometimes already damaged after one throw
are damaged. Or the descents we have in the valley where we live—we live in the Engelbergertal, we have a business in the Engelbergertal—there's a real descent over ground here and there. And the disposable rescues, the lightweight ones, they practically pass as disposable rescues for me now. So if they come into contact with any shrubs or bushes in the terrain, let alone something like a tree branch or whatever, that's usually the end of them. And yeah, they cost a decent amount of money. And as a customer, I'd think long and hard about whether those three or four hundred grams less in weight are really worth it.
What about a normal pilot who takes off with, say, 100 to 110 kilograms in total? They probably need a rescue canopy somewhere between 36 and 40 square meters. What's the weight of a canopy there where you'd say, it's lighter than it used to be, but it's still a stable canopy nowadays and not some extreme lightweight construction? So...
For a normal pilot taking off with, say, 100 to 110 kilograms total, you probably need a wing somewhere between 36 and 40 square meters. What's the weight of a wing where you'd say, it's lighter than it used to be, but it's still a stable wing nowadays and not some extreme lightweight construction? So,
That means anything significantly below that, around 1.2 or 1.3, those are rescues you'd have to count more as being in the ultralight category, and where you'd say those are most likely the kind of rescues that
are one-time-use rescues that might work well once, but then maybe not the second time.
Exactly, so during training, you just have to handle them very carefully—the whole ground handling, when you pull them out of the water, hoist them into the boat, bring them from the boat onto the dock, and then dry them off in the terrain. Even when folding them, we already had feedback from the packer in Switzerland that they might have stood on the fabric with one foot when picking them up, and that just caused the rescue to be ruined. That doesn't happen with a normally constructed rescue made of robust fabric.
I'm jumping back into the topic now—you yourself developed or were involved in the development of a non-steerable rescue, right? That's this pentagonal Pentagon. The Pentagon is considered particularly pendulum-stable. Normally, this pendulum stability—or very often, this pendulum stability—is always bought at the cost of a certain forward speed from the canopy. Because it glides in one direction, it just can't pendulum as much. Does the Pentagon also glide unilaterally, or how does that work?
So during the development of the Pentagon, we also looked very intensively at the latest rescue canopies on the market. We tested them all, including over ground. And the findings were huge "aha" moments. We found during the tests that all rescue canopies, whether symmetrical or asymmetrical, glide in the range of 12 to 14 km/h. The Beamer, by the way, is at 17 km/h in a pre-braked state. So if I throw the Beamer and do nothing, I'm 3 km/h schneller. Understandably, always in a separated state. If there's a paraglider attached, it all looks different.
But that was actually a very interesting finding. Such small areas—we're talking about areas of 25 to 30, 35 square meters—don't reach even 5.5 meters per second of sink rate if they aren't drifting. It's aerodynamically impossible. They don't build up the necessary drag to be able to sink for that long. So they fly in one direction. From my point of view, that's not a problem at all. The problem only begins when a paraglider is attached that causes interference. Then it depends on whether the rescue, which might be too small or have too high a surface loading, whatever it is,
then enters an acceleration phase and then just goes over the nose and pulls down, or goes into a shear. Or do I have a rescue device that dominates the paraglider, even if it's interfering massively or reopens and goes into a shear. That is the central point, the central argument of a good rescue.
For a while, forward flight was actually kind of demonized or always spoken of negatively in the scene. But actually, you could say that if all rescuers do it nowadays and most rescue deployments that are still pulled at normal altitudes and so on often end harmlessly, then forward flight itself can't be all that bad.
Forward motion doesn't have to be bad per se, as long as the rescue isn't thrown off balance by the paraglider. So as long as the rescue dominates the paraglider, I don't care about the forward motion at all, because if I'm connected to a paraglider that's tumbling wildly or interfering, or one that's coming in nice and tame in a pistol,
then I'm moving anyway, especially with the air mass, so that speed is already significantly reduced.
A difficult point for the rescuers, which is actually very little discussed or talked about, is also the psychology of the pilots. You have to let go of the rescue craft for it to be able to rescue you at all. From your perspective, what is it that stops many pilots from actually pulling the rescuer in early enough?
I think that's very much related to the subconscious. I've simply made the observation for myself that it's very important that I know, or that my subconscious knows, what's happening in a dangerous situation—that it's recognized what's going on and how it needs to react—because in that situation, the head often can't think clearly anymore and act accordingly. You know this a bit from the parachuting scene. They talk about this sensory overload or about this
Overstimulation, also when a jumper
realizes my glider isn't opening or I have a line overwrap or whatever, and you're spinning through the air, then so many messages flood in at once that they simply lead to a mental block. So overload and a block, nothing works anymore. And if my subconscious can't pull any alternatives from the drawer, from the file—it has to be able to retrieve something from the past. Whether it's a reserve parachute opening, a throwing drill, or just the feeling of being on the reserve parachute.
having been there, it goes off much more smoothly than if I've never experienced it before. I'm strongly convinced of that. I need to know when my glider is no longer controllable. In that situation, the next thing I have to check is the altitude above ground to see how much time I have left, or if I still have time to try something out. And then all the subsequent steps actually have to be anchored in the subconscious.
That means even those dry runs you do in gymnasiums or something, where you just hang from a rope and pull the rescue, is useful from your perspective just because of that alone—maybe not even so much to have the technique down perfectly, but perhaps to push the psychological block a bit deeper or to dial it down so you can say, "I've done this before, so I'll do it in this case similarly to how I did it there." Absolutely. That means muscle memory is always required. If you go out to test it yourself now and you've already done over 400 of those rescue throws, is that routine for you now so that you don't get nervous at all, or does your heart still start racing and you notice your heart rate is really elevated before you throw out a new proto?
Yes, it's started to become a bit of a routine, but it's not like when I've been paragliding for almost 30 years, where I don't feel any emotions anymore except joy, and even during a test flight over ground, I still have a bit of what we Swiss people call the "muffensausen" – those butterflies in your stomach. So, I'm never completely, completely relaxed. I manage it a bit better at times, but in between, I get really scared, and it gets really, really difficult when I have a passenger with me as load, even if it's over water.
Well, water—there are no roads, no obstacles, nothing, but it can hurt just as badly as the terrain.
Did you actually have any really bad experiences during testing as well?
No, never so far. I mean, I've experienced a few situations that weren't great, but it's only in hindsight during the video analyses that I realized, man, you really got lucky there. But I actually attribute that to my experience—that I just stay calm in a situation like that and can simply recall the next steps. It happens almost automatically, and that feeling of fear doesn't kick in.
Alright Urs, then I wish you the same for all the remaining rescue deployments to follow. And for the rescue throws that will follow for testing, that they end just as smoothly and always bring a good result for you. And thank you for those nice explanations regarding the whole rescue topic, which is, as you yourself say, something that should actually be paid much more attention to in the paragliding scene and considered much more by every single person—what kind of rescue gear you take into the air with and how you should perhaps operate it.
Thank you very much, Lucian, for your questions.
You're very welcome. That
was Urs Harri in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you want to learn more about the rescue gliders developed by Urs, especially the Beamer, you can find the information on the website www.highadventure.ch. A look at Urs's YouTube channel is also recommended. You can find it on YouTube by searching for Fly High Adventure. All in one word. By the way, on my blog Lu-Glidz, there is an entire series called Retterwissen, where you can read a lot of information regarding construction types and the significance of sink rate, opening time, size selection, etc. The relevant links can be found on the page best of Lu-Glidz. Podz-Glidz and Lu-Glidz are available online for free, but of course, such a professionally made, diverse offering isn't free.
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