With a forced landing, it's also a matter of safety for me to come in with speed, because you have different "pots"—you have the height pot and the speed pot. And you have to make sure that one pot is always full. So, if you're low now, you have to have as much speed as possible so that you can convert that speed back into height and land softly.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with Patrick von Cano and Lucian Haas on the mic.
If you ask experts in the paragliding scene who they would trust to challenge Kriegel Maurer's role as a perennial winner in high-and-fly competitions like the Red Bull X-Alps, one name often comes up. Patrick von Cano. The 26-year-old Swiss is almost to the day twelve years younger than Kriegel, but in terms of flight technique, he can certainly hold his own against his friend and role model. Like Kriegel, Patrick is also an all-rounder who competes as an agro and cross-country pilot, flies and runs competitions, works as a test pilot for Advance, and accomplishes all of this with incredibly playful precision. This becomes most visible when it comes to landing elegantly and precisely on inhospitable, narrow, and steep spots on the mountain.
In this 50th episode of Podz-Glidz, Patrick gives us insights into his life. Among other things, how he secretly yet very visibly completed his first flights as early as 14 years old, and how he has been constantly refining his flight technique ever since, with Kriegel as a major role model and mentor. Patrick explains how you can land a paraglider uphill and what risks are involved. He talks about the freedoms, but also some of the constraints in his job as a test pilot, and what constitutes the greatest hardship for him in the X-Alps.
Before we dive into the conversation, just a quick reminder. Podz-Glidz and the associated blog Lu-Glidz are available to everyone for free online, but they are not free of charge. As a freelance journalist, I invest a lot of work and time into both projects. In the long run, this is only possible if I get something back for it. As a generous supporter, you can help me maintain and expand this offer in its independent and ad-free form. You can find out how you can support me on the Lu-Glidz website, specifically on the Support page. By the way, you can choose your contribution amount completely freely. If you're unsure how much might be appropriate, I recommend a non-binding 1 Euro per podcast episode and 2 Euro per reading month on Lu-Glidz.
Even when calculated annually, that's far less than what a subscription to a classic paraglider magazine costs.
Patrick, what do your friends call you?
Mostly Padu.
Is that a Swiss name? Is it a diminutive? Is it a nickname? No,
that's actually just the nickname for Patrick.
So a Swiss version. In Switzerland, instead of Patrick, they say Pädel,
although it
it's not shorter, but it is the condensed version.
Exactly, right. So when you write it out, it is already shorter.
One letter, okay. If you want to save space. Since we're already on the topic of your origins—that was the origin of the name—tell me about your beginnings in aviation. How old were you when it became clear to you for the first time that you wanted to do paragliding? Yes,
That goes back quite a long time. My parents started paragliding in the mid-50s. And so I basically grew up with it. Paragliding wasn't anything new to me. And so it was clear pretty early on that I wanted to do it too. And yeah, but back in school I was still doing a lot of skiing and other activities. But then at 13, that was the point—my father was just flying in a competition and I was watching at the landing field. And there I knew, I realized for the first time, wow, what they're doing there is pretty cool.
I wanted to do that too. And then I asked the flight instructor right away how you have to do it. And yeah, from the age of 13, I basically thought, I want to do that too.
That was at 13. When were you actually in the air for the first time?
Alone? Yeah, that was around 14.
Was that during your training, or did you have a bit of...
tried it before? Well, the flight instructor showed me how to inflate the glider on the ground. Because at the flight school where I learned, they place a huge emphasis on mastering ground handling perfectly. So I knew about the ground handling, how to connect the glider to the harness, and how to start. And yeah, then came the youthful recklessness, and my parents weren't home at the time, so I took my mother's glider and did a few launch attempts on a slope next to the house where I grew up. And then I kept going higher and higher, and in the end, it was enough for short flights too.
But the landing was pretty unprofessional. I just slammed right back into the slope because I was scared to fly all the way down. That would have been a flight of maybe one minute, no, two minutes. And I thought, yeah, no, it's probably safer if I just launch out, do a 180-degree turn, and then crash or slam back into the slope after 30 seconds. Yeah, those were my first flight attempts. Did your parents find out about it? Yeah, unfortunately, there was a festival by the flight school that day and I was perfectly positioned, basically on the opposite side of the flight school with an old glider of my mother's that still had those neon colors.
So I was positioned there like a rotating light on a truck. And of course, everyone who was at that festival saw it. And they then asked my mother if she was up there flying. And she said, no, we were skiing. And then it became pretty quickly clear that I was the one...
was. And then? Did you get in trouble with your mother or did it end without any consequences?
Yeah, well, my mother wasn't happy at all. She actually wanted to forbid me from flying after that stunt.
I think it was a bit like that too. I was a bit scared because it was still too early or I don't know what, because you're not sensible enough yet.
But then my father talked to you a bit more and also said it would be better if I went to flight school instead of practicing something myself, because he was that age once too and probably already knew that I'd keep practicing in secret if I could. And that was the turning point that allowed me to go to flight school with my father's signature. And then everything actually went down safely and legally.
So that means you were already at the flight school by 14 and started flying there?
Exactly. By then, I was... that was just now, I think I was already 15.
You probably got your license at 16. Exactly. How many flight hours did you accumulate in that time, from basically starting your flying to getting the license itself? You've probably also been getting up in the air quite a bit now, alongside school.
When I was in school, I didn't do much what we call "black flying" in Switzerland—that is, flying without an instructor. But when I started with the flight school, I was still in primary school, and we had a lot of time to fly each time. Wednesday afternoons, Thursday, and Friday afternoons. And I was able to get up in the air quite a bit then. And yeah, I was definitely one of the ones who had quite a lot of hours when I went for the exam. I don't know the exact number anymore because I didn't write down the flights so precisely. I think there were somehow 180 flights in the logbook when I went for the exam.
That's a
a lot. If you compare that to the typical German flight students and what they gather until they get their A-license. What happened next? Did you go straight into cross-country, or something else? Or were you, like many other young pilots, mainly interested in aggressive flying—where it has to be fast and with as much G-load as possible, or whatever? So...
I didn't have that specific vision of "aggro" flying right now. What I definitely have to mention is that in Frutigen, where I grew up, you have a pretty good connection with the local club after flight school. And there are many very ambitious pilots in cross-country and competition flying. Especially with cross-country, there are quite a few who are also motivated. So I just joined them and tried to keep up with them.
Yeah, every Friday evening there's this old hangar where people meet up, and then you go there to chat a bit about where it's good to fly over the weekend. And then you go along with them and can just go with the flow a bit. And I learned a lot regarding cross-country flying there. Really, I was able to make big steps forward. And then, for sure, the other thing is that pilots like Chrigel Maurer or his brother Michi Maurer are also flying in this region. And then you always see exactly what the best pilots in the world can do with the glider.
And I think if you're a bit goal-oriented and ambitious, then you want to do that too. And you saw that these top pilots don't just do cross-country flight, but also aerobatics and competitions. So I actually joined the club members, then Chrigel or Michi, and started with aerobatics or also cross-country flight competitions. And that's basically how it went from there. And I've actually always really enjoyed that. I made new friendships in the competition scene or the aerobatics scene. And so, from the very beginning, I was actually very active everywhere.
I read somewhere that you flew your first ground spiral, so to speak, very early on after getting your license, because you saw that Chrigel and Michi Maurer were doing it too. Is that correct?
Yes, that's really... Yes, as I said, you see what they can do with the glider. And then, of course, you want to do that too.
But I don't know at this point how many training hours went into it.
But I did try it in the winter with a lot of snow. And yeah, the first few went a bit pear-shaped. But in a meter of deep snow, that doesn't really matter. So, in bad weather, with a low base, there are various ski lifts where you have a difference of about 200 to 300 meters of altitude. And I spent days there, I still remember, with the Schulschirm, just practicing those ground spirals. And that's how it went on. And then you saw that they do these slope spirals on the mountain. Then you started that. You started over again, had one or two crashes again. And then it went better again.
And that was definitely a huge advantage for me, being able to see what these top pilots can do to see where the limit actually is.
But did you basically just take it as an example by watching him and say, "okay, now I'll try that myself"? Or did Kriegel come over and say, "look, let me explain to you how it's actually done"? So was he already a real mentor for you in that sense back then? Like,
Not in the beginning. That was almost ten years ago now. I can't remember exactly anymore. Because back then, yeah, he was at competitions where I didn't have any chance of participating at all. I was out more with his brother, with Michi. And then it was obvious that I exchanged a lot with him, asking how you do it? And of course, when Kriegel was there, I also asked him, how do you do it? How much do you pull? And how do you start this spiral? And how do you estimate the height? And how can I adjust the height?
And I definitely got a lot of all those tips from those two.
That means, in terms of your flight technique, Kriegel was really a flight instructor in a way for a while. Yes,
You could say that. And certainly his brother too, because I spent more time with Michi during that phase, so I must have learned a lot from him.
What does Kriegel mean to you today?
Today, yes, he's still certainly one of the best paraglider pilots, where I, how shall I put it, just marvel at how he can keep motivating himself and also participate in the smallest competitions, or competitions that the paragliding world doesn't really know about, and see there what he can improve. And this constant improvement and getting better, I find that incredible over such a long period of time. And the fact that he then manages to implement that so efficiently in the competitions, it's quite impressive to see.
Are there things where you would say, even though you've learned a lot from Kriegel, that Kriegel also picked up some things from you, in terms of flight technique or anything else?
it's still hard to say, from my perspective at least. I can remember a situation where we were training at Sechshalben in 2019 and we agreed to race. And there was pretty strong, strong Föhn wind back home. So we met in a suburb, not in Fruttigen, and I said, hey, come on, let's go fly, it might work. And he said, yeah no, that's not going to work, there's too much wind, he didn't even consider flying at all. Then I managed to talk him into it and we went flying. And it was a really interesting day, an interesting flight.
And neither of us thought it would go that well, but it actually went pretty well. And I think there might have been moments before where he wasn't thinking about flying, but yeah, because in this case there was too much wind and I thought to myself, yeah, let's just give it a try. And that way we could both benefit from each other. But I don't know of anything specific right now.
That's more like an indirect push, maybe. You're competing in the Red Bull X-Alps 2021 again this summer, and against Griegl as well. Do you think he's beatable?
It's very difficult to say. I mean, there's the level of, let's say, the risk of injury—you see it here and there again, that something can always happen and you just have to twist your foot stupidly during a landing. And then, yeah, that can be dumb or, in the worst-case scenario, you have to end the race. I think you have to be aware of that. And that can happen to Griegl, just like anyone else. What he has is his wealth of experience and what I mentioned earlier, the efficient execution he learned during the preparation time, and trusting in his strengths,
that makes him very, very strong. And there's no one who has as much experience as he does. And yeah, it's going to be pretty difficult. But yeah, I mean, there could be a situation where you catch it better technically or do it better and yeah, then you have an advantage.
In 2019, you did the X-Alps. You finished eighth, but you made it to Monaco and reached your goal. What has changed for you since then because of that? And how are you approaching these new X-Alps with a different mindset now?
Yeah, I don't think my attitude has changed much. I still have a lot of respect for this race. Especially the long days—17 and a half hours—and I, I love getting about 8 or 9 hours of sleep. And then it's full-on racing. With 5 hours of sleep, it's already pretty tough for me. Compared to 2019, that's definitely still the same. Maybe even a bit more pronounced now that I know what it feels like.
But one thing that's definitely an advantage is that I know what's coming my way. I know what's important for me. Before, I could only benefit from other people's experiences. Other athletes would ask how they did it. And now I know what's good for me. The disadvantage is certainly that you put pressure on yourself. Or the difficulty. I think the second time is definitely the biggest challenge because you have expectations. And you have to learn how to deal with those. But I have a lot of people around me who support me very well.
Whether that's physically or mentally. And yes, I'm actually very confident and I'm really, really looking forward to this race. It's
was your support team this year bigger than it was two years ago? Also, in terms of the preparation?
At the race itself, it's pretty much identical. But now, during the preparation period, it's already bigger. Especially in terms of endurance. In the endurance area, in training, I now have two people I've just hired. So, one friend of Urs, who writes the training plan for me. But then I also have another colleague who was once in the cycling team at the Olympic Games. And I can push myself very well with him. So I can reach my limits in almost every training session. And that is definitely a huge help. And I'm very grateful for that. And that's certainly an advantage compared to the preparation period in 2019.
Would you say that, overall, things are running more seriously and professionally for you now?
Definitely, yes. In 2019, I was also a bit overwhelmed by the whole situation sometimes. There are really so many new things to learn. Even all the sponsorships, all the conversations. You can of course still benefit from that now. What was built in 2019 can be taken a bit further now. It was like laying the groundwork back then. And now I feel like I know I can work much more efficiently because I know exactly what I need, what's important. And, when I think back to the preparation time in 2019, my head was often quite full and I didn't know whether I should do this or that.
And now I have a clear vision of what's important.
What do you find most difficult during training for the X-Hype? Where do you have to overcome the biggest internal resistance?
I think that's almost too early right now. I can hardly say that because at the moment I'm really extremely motivated. The training is so much fun. With the friends I have around me. I was able to fly quite a bit since I was still in Mexico last, so November, December. From that perspective, in terms of flying, I'm already quite good. Also, discovering new things in the psychological area, so with my head, what else I can learn there. That's mega exciting for me, all the things you can still learn there. Yeah, I think if someone had to tell me I had to train tomorrow morning at six, like go for a run in the cold, that would certainly be the hardest thing, if I had to look for something I don't really like doing.
But shouldn't you actually have to train that too? Like, trying to get by on little sleep for a while and finding a way to compensate for it somehow? I...
I've been practicing getting up early for 26 years now. And it still doesn't work. So I think I use this option where I just grit my teeth for ten days, or however long it takes. And then I'm done with getting up early for another two years.
That means, in terms of sleep types, there are different classifications, where it says there are the lark types who get up early, but you're definitely the owl who can always work later, but then also have to sleep in for a long time.
Yeah, I don't know. I don't think I'm one of those types, because I like going to bed in the evening too. No, but waking up early really isn't something I'd call one of my strengths.
Last year, you won a major Hike & Fly competition, the Dolomiti Superfly. And at the end, you had a narrow lead over Kriegel, so you actually beat him for the first time. However, before that, you were a team—Sepp Inninger was there too, he was your supporter at the X-Alps two years ago, he was still with you. And you flew together for quite a while, and stuff like that. Do you guys work together as Swiss people, do you sort of function as a team? Do you say, "Come on, we're going to finish this competition at the front as a Swiss trio"? No,
Not at all. There are just many situations that happen where we were able to land together in Veltre at the Dolomiti Superfly since the last day. So we hadn't planned at all to go together somehow, that wasn't planned either. Yeah, I might have to go back a bit, for example, I think it was on the second day of this Dolomiti Superfly, after the turnpoint Kriegel and I climbed up, started, and he just caught the thermals better and was able to fly over a pretty high ridge, and I already thought to myself, shit, now he's gone, I'll never see him again, because then clouds came, rain, and half an hour later, out of nowhere, so I just held my altitude and half an hour later
it rose again a bit and there was wind at the top, so I was able to catch up and fly over that ridge too, which was quite unexpected. Then I had a pretty good glide ratio and just landed at the top, and then Kriegel comes out of the forest running and I thought, "Oh boy, what's happening now?" I really thought he was off for good, that I wouldn't see him again until the finish, and then he comes out of the forest and we were together again, and then we climbed for the last glide. I flew out on this side of the ridge towards Meran, he on the other side, because he had different wind when starting, then I started a bit earlier, and at the landing we were at the same spot again.
and it mixed us back together again and yeah, I think that's just coincidence. In the end, it was a bit like, yeah, the one with the most luck wins—the one who saved the most thermals in this situation or gained enough height in the right place won the race this time. And it wasn't like we said, "Yeah, we want to help each other win," it wasn't like that at all.
So, this last thermal that you caught better, would you also say that was actually just luck in the end, that it could have been Sepp or Kriegel just as easily?
Yeah, I think luck is certainly part of it in a situation like that, but I also think you just have to, at that moment, it's still hard to say what made the difference, but Kriegel and Sepp pushed pretty hard and I had this feeling, yeah, they're going pretty fast now, and the conditions were really very weak with high cloud cover too, and then it wasn't rising well anymore, and I thought to myself, with the next one, with the next thermal that comes, I'll just go for maximum altitude and the other two will keep going, and I told myself, now I'll just wait here until I have maximum altitude, and that's what made the difference, that's what made the difference.
and what makes it so that the others keep flying and I tell myself, yeah, I'm staying here now—I mean, the others could have done that too, but what the difference is, that's, yeah, I can't say.
Was that just a gut decision that you made in that moment? Yes. And then it worked out?
Exactly, yes, in this case it paid off and I think that's also the success factor in paragliding, if you manage to decide intuitively and with your gut feelings, which I'd say are usually not bad. Or for me, it's like, when I trust my gut feelings, I often fly pretty well.
If you were to look at your performance in competitions like these right now, would you say that in the end, the tiny margin that decides a good placement is always this significantly better gut feeling—or what do you mean by significantly—the better gut feeling you have to have at certain times is what ultimately distinguishes the top pilots, or even those who aren't quite top pilots, that it's not so much the flight technique, but rather, in some way, more intuitive flying?
Yes, I'm pretty sure I have that feeling, because in PWC flying, in World Cup flying, it's even more pronounced. You're before the finish line, let's say on the final approach, with a group of 50 pilots together, and in the flatlands, because the PWCs were often in the flats, and the best one, or the pilot who wins the task, is the one who goes first and speculates, "Yes, there's still lift, it looks like I could still pick up a bit," and that's all just gut feeling; you can't calculate that you'll fly through thermals of one or two meters in that final glide, but rather you try to analyze the flight day, the conditions, and based on that information, then say or estimate how good the flight day is, and I'd say those are all...
intuitive decisions you make there.
Can you train this gut feeling in any way, like with a tactic, a strategy, or something like that, or is it just a case of some people have it and others don't? Do you basically just have to go flying a lot to gather as many experiences as possible that can somehow aggregate into this gut feeling?
No, you can definitely learn that. I mean, what I'm constantly trying to do with my coach—trying to learn it better, even when I'm in situations where things didn't go exactly as I hoped, which always happens in grappling—is how to quickly get back to it again,
Yeah, I'd say, getting back to that good feeling—and we're extreme about that, it's intense, the kind of training we do and the time it takes—but I'm convinced anyone can learn it. Probably, like with many other things, there are people who can learn it faster, better, or who already have it more developed, and others who might need a bit longer until they learn it, but fundamentally, I'm convinced that anyone can learn it.
What does a good pilot mean to you? Someone who has already developed a decent gut feeling?
Yes, for me, a good pilot doesn't mean they're successful in competitions, so that has nothing to do with, I think, this gut feeling or this trust in their abilities. If you master that perfectly, then you can maybe distance yourself from the other top pilots by one or two percent and get better, but a good pilot for me is someone who is safe in any conditions, meaning they have their glider under control, they can assess the weather, even in the air, and just independently, not somehow through others,
who simply has his own opinion and says, today I'm going flying, it's safe to fly based on these and these facts, and I think that's what makes a good pilot for me.
So a pilot is also someone who can always assess the situation correctly, that's also a good pilot.
Exactly, and if he doesn't assess them correctly, he always has a plan B and then, eventually, a...
yeah, like how not to get into trouble somehow.
On your website, there's a quote about paragliding that says, "The more I seek the challenge, the more I pay attention to my style." What is your style?
Yeah, I think because I grew up with these two-liners, I know two-liners like nothing else, and I've loved them from the very beginning. I think my flying style has become pretty unique now because it's just...
Yeah, for me, a landing isn't just about coming in and being safely on the ground, it also has to look good. I still remember back in flight school, my flight instructor would always flirt so elegantly and then land right in the middle of the circle, and I was always so impressed by that. That's carried over now, and it starts with small things—for example, when I'm sitting in a harness, I just don't think it looks good if your feet are like, yeah, like in a V-shape, it looks like you're sitting in a wheelchair. Instead, it should be compact, sporty, elegant—those are just the kinds of things I bet on, I focus on, and I think I often look at myself from the outside or think about how it looks from the outside, and then I fly in a way that looks good. That's why there are maybe sometimes videos of me online of landings that aren't because I want to risk something or do something crazy, but simply because of my own standards for myself, that it looks beautiful, dynamic, and sporty.
So, flying has something to do with aesthetics for you as well?
Aesthetics and play, yes.
You just mentioned top landings and the films you make—you even launched a top landing challenge on Instagram recently, where you posted some of your videos and then a whole series of other pilots added their top landings, and it's always about who can land most gently at the top. One specific technique you show every now and then is landing with a lot of momentum, basically against the slope. Things that Kriegel has also shown quite often. It's a technique where people used to say only kites could do that, not paragliders at all. Now they say no, you can also build up so much momentum with a paraglider that you can do it. What does it actually involve? Describe this technique—what do you have to master to even dare to do something like that?
Wow,
That's a good question. It's extremely difficult for me to answer, of course, because this landing is a process that I've built up over x years. So in the beginning—actually, now, yes, we practiced these flair landings in level flight during the training—and that is actually the foundation for this landing. So you could say I've been practicing for this for almost 10 years now. But I do believe that you have to master your glider, that you know how stable it is when you go full throttle. So that actually already means that you can master your glider at full acceleration.
And then, I think, as I said earlier, it basically starts in level flight, maybe with little speed, but just braking with the brake, letting it ride and seeing how much dive my glider has, how much it converts back, and then slowly helping it along with the speed bar. But that is, well, it's really very difficult to say what it actually requires exactly, because for me it took such a long time until I learned it.
But in terms of technique, just so you can have a rough idea, it's always said that you definitely have to build up speed so that you can convert that speed back into altitude. And building up speed actually also involves you pushing the speed bar and really flying accelerated towards that slope. Exactly. Which is something a normal pilot wouldn't imagine at first—oh shit, if I fly towards the slope at 50 km/h, my ass is going to hit the ground pretty hard. You have to be able to handle that first, too. It takes real experience to know that you can also take that momentum out of the glider at the end, just like you pumped it in.
Yes, exactly. You can think of the technique like this: for a slope landing, it's also a matter of certain safety for me to come in with speed, because you have different "pots." You have the height pot and the speed pot. And you have to make sure that one pot is always full. So, if you're low, you need as much speed as possible so that you can convert that speed back into height and land softly. That means if you still have a lot of height, you can fly slower, and it's only when you get lower that you need to have speed.
And the more speed you have, the more energy you can convert and land more softly. But for me, it's also just that if I have more speed and I see, oh, I'm a bit too low—because you can see that—then I can ease off the throttle a bit, and it reacts so quickly that I can easily adjust by three, four meters or even more if I misjudge it, and say, yeah, now I'm easing off the throttle until it fits again, then I press the throttle a bit again or I hit the brake and land. If I'm braked into a slope, then there isn't that much energy left and you just slam into it. And that's basically the speed
...how my safety in that sense.
Well, you usually fly these maneuvers with a two-liner, where you can build up a lot of speed, and secondly, you also have direct angle of attack control at the back via the B-line, which you can then control even better with the toggles. Would you dare such landings with less sporty gliders? Now, if you stay in the Advance range, with a Sigma or an Iota, would you fly that even with an Alpha?
Yes, because we also do it with the Alpha, it's just that we usually land up the slope from some kind of spiral. Because otherwise, it doesn't build up enough speed at all.
or why?
Yes, exactly. But that is, that's really, yeah, what's the hardest thing for me with the Alpha, making such a dynamic landing. No, but basically it works with any glider. Now, in the C-class gliders, there's this new C-pitch control where you also pull the B at the same time. So that it gets a bit closer to the two-liner feeling. Exactly, right. And that already gets relatively close to the two-liner. And from that perspective, it also works excellently with the C-gliders, yeah. You can also do that with B-gliders. It just becomes more difficult because you can't build up as much dynamics as quickly.
But otherwise, it's actually possible with any glider. So when we're doing the tests, we always land dynamically like that.
Partially, you also show incredible precision in this landing. There's this one video where you're on a very narrow mountain ridge—it looks a bit exaggerated, like a knife's edge—and you set up for a top landing by building your swing from deeper behind, then converting that swing into height and landing so light on the Babs right on that narrow path running along the ridge. Is that just in your blood, like you just say it works? Or did you maybe take five tries at it and then only put the video online where you say it worked out just as well and that it's great?
Most of these videos don't happen because I want to do it like that; it's just... in this case, we could soar on the sunny side of this—well, if you've seen the video, the sunny side—we could soar there. And I was just playing around. So, we were there with your friend, I was taking photos, and I was just playing around, flying around this peak, and then I landed back in. I definitely did that two or three times. It worked pretty well, and there were probably one or two times where I was maybe a bit too high, because it's still difficult when you go into the shadows in the back, into the lee, and then come out into the light in the front and still have too much energy, then yeah,
you just climb up two or three meters again and try one more time, but in that case, the conditions were so good that it was relatively easy to land so precisely.
But you've never misjudged a landing so badly that it became, let's say, very hard.
No, luckily, yes, I've been really lucky until now and I had a work accident back in 2011 when I was still in training, but I've never had an accident while paragliding.
Work accident doesn't mean work with the paraglider, but your normal job that you were doing.
Exactly, at that time I was still in training to become a forest ranger, and a hydraulic cylinder crushed my knee. Back then, it was simply an industrial accident.
Did that teach you anything that applies to your flying as well?
Yes, I'd say my patience, my patience was definitely strengthened a bit, because I had to—during my first flight summer, I had to, how do you say that in German, I call it the "crutches," you know, I had to go through the summer with those, somehow for four or five months, and I watched the gliders fly and that really tested my patience.
So that means, that was the only time you actually had any downtime since your training, where you're saying you couldn't go flying for those four or five months.
Yeah, exactly. There was also some time in between, maybe two or three days because of the flu or something like that.
Let's go back to the top-level wings for a moment. There's another video that I haven't seen before. It's a so-called Swoop 180, and it's actually a very short video—only 15 seconds—where you can see how you dive toward some mountain lake at super, super high speed, just barely above the water's surface, then let the glider rise, pull the curve during the rise, and then actually do a 180-degree hook turn, fly back to the lakeshore, and just land there. Is that something you'd say is a skill that no one else has ever done before?
Yeah, maybe there's someone who's already done it, but I've never seen it exactly like that before. But the thing was, as you said earlier, people used to say you can only do those kinds of slope landings with a kite, and that was kind of a reason why I started flying kites. When you see those landings, where they just flare for a mega long time, then pull up at the end, do a 180-degree turn, and fly back and land again, it just—yeah, for me, I could watch those kinds of landings for hours. And yeah, then it came—I think that was even at the Tolomiti Superfree, when we were at the finish line,
my supporter, who also accompanied the thermals at Sixth Half, Andi Jäcki, we were philosophizing about ideas there, like what else we could do or how it works, during dinner, and then this idea came up, yeah, we could try what the gliders can do, maybe we can do it with the paraglider too, and I thought to myself, yeah, that would be cool, we could try that, and then I went out to try if it even works over land, and it worked pretty well quite quickly, and then we said, okay, let's try doing that over water.
But you first tried it over land at a greater height to see how to execute it, and then you tell yourself, "Okay, I'm working my way closer to the ground," and finally say, "Okay, I can do it over water too."
Exactly. I tried it at altitude to see if it was even possible, and I looked at reference points on a slope. The difficulty is that you can't gain enough height and then you actually slam into the ground during the turn with the pendulum, and I didn't know at the beginning if it would be enough, if I could gain enough height to finish the 180-degree turn. And then I tried to really fly, pendulum down under the glider and then fly along the ground, and I did that first a few hundred meters above the ground, then 20 meters above the ground, 10 meters above the ground and so on, getting closer and closer until I finally went right down to the ground.
and I tried to do that. But I still remember the first time I actually went down to the ground, because then I really go down 20, 30 meters, 30 centimeters above the ground, let the glider climb fully again, I mean out of the speed, and that was already such a thrilling feeling because you see the ground and you know, now I'm turning away and I'm heading straight towards the ground again, but it always worked out pretty well, yeah.
What would you call your most daring project, flight maneuver, or something like that so far?
So, everything I do with the paraglider isn't a limit for me personally. I also made a video where I, with the bike,
I flew. You started on the bike, on the mountain bike, and then you basically just took off, the glider came up behind you and that's how you launched.
Exactly, right. And even there, you feel your way into it, you try to practice it in a safe space, and as you said earlier about the videos, you don't see that part. So even with the bike, I invested the whole afternoon. I took off, climbed in the thermals, adjusted the lines so the bike hangs nicely under me, then landed again, looked at how I can land best. So the whole thing took quite a bit of preparation time. And that's why it's not actually risky or reckless for me, because I've already done it. But I think when you're out there, you know you have someone taking photos, someone taking videos—they're all friends, but they're also working otherwise, so they're investing their time, coming with you to experience something, but still, you want to capture the shots, and if then one factor isn't right, whether it's the weather, the wind is bad, or something else, and you can then say, hey guys, it's not working, we don't have good wind,
let's call it off. For me, the difficulty is staying cool and being able to say, hey, it's just not working today, that can happen, we have to try a second time. And dealing with that pressure—I think that's the hardest part for me.
Let's switch topics a bit. You've been working as a test pilot for ADVANCE for five years now. What's the biggest skill someone needs to have as a test pilot?
I think being honest with yourself is pretty important—that you can give really precise feedback and be honest with yourself. You have to fly a lot and enjoy doing it. I think I had to learn that myself first: if it suddenly means flying every day, it can eventually become a job. There are sometimes months, like in the summer, where you do 80 flight hours in two or three months, which a normal average pilot here in Switzerland might do in a year. And staying motivated and sticking with it through that is key.
Now we're going up with the train again, trying out new settings. It's important that you actually enjoy doing it and that it's not just superficial, but that it comes from within. Yeah, I think those are the most important basic requirements—that you don't just do it because it might be cool or something. Yeah. Then, when you really do it from the heart, you fly a lot, you enjoy flying, and you can also really give your feedback based on how you actually feel it.
Do you basically test all glider categories from ADVANCE? Like the A, B, and C gliders too?
Yes, we don't have some kind of cutoff; we test all the gliders. We have it set up so that, for example, I was responsible, together with a project manager, for the OMEGA X ALPS 4—so we have these divisions where one of the test pilots always has the overview of how each proto is. But basically, I'm also involved in the J-flying; I was fully involved with the Alpha as well.
How well can an extremely experienced pilot like you, who obviously has an insane amount of technical skills and all that, actually still have a feel for a beginner glider and translate that to say, "this applies to a beginner"? Because with your experience, you can naturally compensate for an incredible amount of things. So how can you say, "this glider is still suitable for a beginner"? Can you even still put yourself in their shoes at all?
That's a good question. And it's a huge challenge for all of us test pilots, because we do these rolling movements, for example, which you correct automatically, and it's really difficult to recognize whether it's better or not. But for that, we always have reference equipment. That means you can compare it in black and white, and it just becomes obvious to us. And then we sometimes actually do tests where we act as stupidly as possible during the launch. And yes, as I said, if you compare it with the reference equipment and it's better, then it is better.
And it's also good for the student pilot in the end, because the Vorheckgängermodell was already very successful, and now with the Alpha.
Is testing an ENA like that more boring for you than testing an OXA 4?
No, definitely not the same challenge. It's different with the OXA. That's also cool because the primary use there is cross-country flying. So you also do cross-country with the glider, which you don't do with the Alpha. With the Alpha, you mainly do maneuvers, take-offs, and landing exercises. And because of that, it's certainly more exciting for me with the X-Albschirm. But as I said, you also learn quite a lot on the Alpha. You have to fly completely differently because the glider is sluggish and has little dynamics. And you learn how to do that too. And in the end, it's our job. I mean, in every job, there are things you like doing less than others.
And we're allowed to fly both. So for me, that's pretty okay.
But are there situations where you say, today we're going to Alpha 4, not 4, Alpha whatever, 7. Where are you now? You're Alpha 7, I think, right?
Alpha 7. Yes, we
we're going to test Alpha 7 now. Where you're like, oh, not Alpha again?
Yeah, just now with the last Alpha, it took us quite a long time until we finished building the successor. It kind of messed with us in Bernese German. And there was a point where we all said, it would be nice if the glider was finally finished. But still, there's that personal ambition to really make the glider better than the predecessor. And so it was a bit easier to say, yeah, hey guys, come on, let's go again. We have to finish it. Then we can, as our boss says, go back to building our toys. Like
How much effort goes into a glider like an Advance? Can you quantify that for yourself? Or are there specific models where you say, hey, it does it like this now, that was me?
Yes, in an Alpha it's really difficult because, well, that's not our target group or my target group. And there we really try, so to be better than the reference wing. And we're actually in agreement on that. But now with the OXA, there are already things where I made sure they are present. For example? What could that be? Those can be external details, like brake attachment points, line concept. But even then, that goes a bit deeper into the wing, into the character of the wing. Yes, I don't want to say any more about that right now.
Okay. What can the OXA 4 do better than the 3?
More performance, of course.
Well, that means for every model, which always has some higher number than the one before, the manufacturers always say, yes, the performance has definitely improved. Then I'll ask it differently: how much can the performance of paragliders even be increased anymore? Do you think bigger leaps are still possible? Or are we slowly reaching a plateau where you could actually say you can maybe improve safety or something else, but in terms of performance, it might eventually not be possible to do much more with such a flimsy fabric as we have. I'd say you might have to use completely different materials.
Yes, I think if you listen to the pilots who have been flying for a long time, they always say, yeah, they said 20 years ago that it's finished now. From that perspective, I'm sure it will continue, maybe not in the same leaps as it used to. But I do believe that the performance increase—well, I still see potential in our gliders. It's there. And that it will certainly continue with every glider model. But I do think that, as you see now with the X-half-gliders, especially with our X-half-glider or also the Zeolite, if you think about the R10 from back then, the first two-liner, the official two-liner, how it felt to fly and the performance it had.
And now our X-half-gliders, also two-liners with better performance, but which feel like a real school glider to fly. I think this character type will become even more pronounced and maybe even drop down a bit further at some point. I don't know. I think it would be really exciting if you could suddenly incorporate the two-liner advantages into other glider classes.
When you test this much a year, how many flight hours do you end up with? Do you even manage to keep up with it?
No. I'm not really a numbers person and also not, how should I put it, I just can't... I sometimes forget those kinds of things and then I think, okay, I'm not doing that again. I tried it once,
Keeping track of hours, I managed that for half a year, and in a year where I fly a lot, I end up with around 400 to 500 flight hours accumulated.
You're employed by Advans yourself. Is it like, you have to do at least a certain number of flight hours for us per year, or how does that work? For a normal employee, it's like, okay, you have 40 hours a week or something, but what's it like for a test pilot?
The product just has to be finished. No, in that sense, we don't have anything saying that we have a test pilot who has to fly so many hours, because that wouldn't make sense, because with some gliders you're done after 2 to 3 hours, while with others it takes 20 to 30 hours until you know, or until you really know, what they're like. From that perspective, it's very difficult to say, and now with the OXA 4, for example, there's already a lot of my own blood and sweat in it, because it's also a part of me personally. I want to fly a good glider myself in the X-Alps, and I've invested a lot of time, and I'm happy to invest time, into this glider as well, and that's not going to be strictly laid out in a contract.
The products just have to be finished.
How do you balance the X-Alps and all the training and time you have to put in now with your job at Advanced? Are there specific agreements, or do they just say, "No, the paddle is our test pilot and it's also marketing if he flies for us in the Red Bull X-Alps," so in a way, that's also part of the job?
So X-Alps isn't work in the sense for Advanced; it's for myself, and I do it for myself, and I think that's good because in the end, I don't want things like this to suddenly turn from a "may" into a "must." From that perspective, I do it for myself, but what is certainly an extreme advantage is the commitment towards X-Alps is just really cool at Advanced—I can train a lot and, now that the glider is finished, I have very, very generous freedoms. I can really shape my training plan and follow it, but of course, it's also in my interest to keep testing it at ADVAS during the preparation time too, because we have quite a lot of work at the moment and every man is needed.
The X-Alps starts in June. Once that's over, do you go straight back into full-speed work, or is it more like, "No, after something like that, I actually need a vacation first" or "I need to come down from such an, in a way, really extreme situation that lasted for two weeks?
That's still pretty hard to say right now; I'm planning until the end of X-Alps and then I'll see what happens quite spontaneously. Last year in 2019, Chrigel and I went straight to the Eiger Tour after X-Alps because we just felt pretty fit at the finish, had no complaints, and I leave things like that open depending on my mood and, of course, how my body feels, and then of course test it again, because we have quite a few cool projects that we're allowed to start and tackle again.
And in the autumn, I still have a few plans that I hope to carry out, hopefully with Corona helping out a bit, but otherwise I don't have anything fixed after the X-Alps.
Are you going to do as much as Chrigel to become a regular X-Alps participant?
I haven't looked that far ahead yet. I started flying helicopters about a year ago and got a glimpse into that world, which is also very exciting. Right now, I don't know how I'm going to proceed with that; Corona makes it a bit difficult, or rather, makes it difficult to plan there, but basically, I still enjoy flying just as much as I did during my first high-altitude flight. The X-Alps is a mega exciting competition—it's not just the competition itself, but also the preparation time, everything you experience with friends, all the cool things you can do, allowed,
how you can develop yourself, that's really cool and yeah, I've never had it that intensely before, because you've never prepared so intensely for a competition, and that's why I don't want to rule it out now, but yeah, it's really too early for me to say something like that at the moment, because as I said, right now it's really only until the end of X-Alps and then we'll see what happens.
After the 2019 X-Alps, some of the media wrote things like, "Ah, Petel, he's basically the crown prince of Kriegel and you might inherit the title someday." What does that do to you? Do you see it similarly, or do you think, "Oh, they can write whatever they want," or what's it like? Yeah, I don't even know anymore. Phew. Or would it be a goal for you to say, "But at some point, I can..."
Inherit Kriegel's throne? Definitely not a goal, because I really love doing these kinds of adventures with friends, like going kitefoiling on a mountain lake sometime. There are also other projects, and for me, I see myself more as someone for whom the adventure is the primary focus. Sure, I'm ambitious and want to achieve a good position or a good rank, but I know that if I hold onto that, I won't perform well, and for me, the adventure is what matters most.
In that sense, I don't see myself at all as someone who will, like Kriegel, yeah, take the win in almost every competition. I don't have that ambition either. And I think it's also going to get harder because the competition is becoming more professional. The top is getting much broader. Yeah, if you compare that to the World Cup back then,
So, not to somehow estimate the performance or anything, but back then they really had gliders that simply flew much better than others, and nowadays, where everyone has the best glider, the field—well, the top—has simply become much wider and it's much harder to win, and as we see now with the X-Half, that will probably be the trend too, and I believe it certainly won't get any easier.
The bearded vulture has a nickname or something, the eagle of Adelboden. That means it has some bird-like qualities. If you could be a bird, what kind of bird would you like to be?
Yeah, I'd rather not be an eagle, because they can't do loops and stuff like that, they're more of a relaxed flyer. I think those mountain choughs are pretty cool, though, because I believe they're the only ones—or at least not many—that can do stalls, and it's pretty cool to watch those birds playing around and snatching the bread right out of your hand. That
So, you'd mean the Bergdole from Frutigen?
Maybe, yeah. No, it's still difficult to identify what one really associates with that name.
Let's leave it at the mountain doll. That's perhaps a nice image to end on anyway. The pilot who doesn't just want to fly around in great distances and expanses, but who definitely wants to keep that playful element with them as well. Patrick, I thank you for this very interesting, behind-the-scenes narrative from X-Alps all the way to your existence as a test pilot, and above all, your super skills in top landing as well. I wish you very, very much success with the X-Alps. When they come up, probably very many people will watch and follow the whole thing, and probably especially all those little films again where it says, at what weird spots did some X-Alps pilot—and especially probably some Swiss top-landing-trained X-Alps pilots—manage to scrape by again in places where you'd never believe you could get down with the glider at all.
I wish you all the best with that, and that all your top landings continue to go well.
Great, yeah. Thank you so much, Lucian, for the opportunity to talk a bit about my life, and also many thanks for your commitment there, for your podcasts and your blog. Really super cool.
Yes, of course. Thanks.
That was Patrick von Kähnel in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you want to learn more about the topics and techniques discussed here, you can find several links in the show notes for this podcast episode on Looglides, including videos of Pädels spectacular top landings. You should definitely check those out.
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