65. Der Captain - Till Gottbrath

His decision to fly doesn't depend on whether he believes he can get out and land relatively safely, but rather on whether he's convinced it will be a beautiful flight. There is an incredible distance between those two poles. And which of us normal pilots has to fly? And when I say I do it for the beautiful experiences, that's been my motto for seven or eight years now, and since then, I've had nothing but beautiful flights.

Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.

Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.

Today with Till

Gottbrath and

Lucian Haas at the microphone.

Till Gottbrath is primarily known in the paragliding scene for putting the Nova paraglider brand in the right light as a PR expert. In this role, he also played a significant part in founding the Nova Pilots team. The idea behind it was that team members should achieve not only sporting success but also perform other likeable actions, and convey the joy of flying with Nova gliders, regardless of the class. Till is the captain of the Nova Pilots team. He plays a major role in choosing which applicants are admitted to the team. How the process works, what he pays particular attention to, and what expectations team pilots then have to meet—Till tells all about this in this episode number 65 of Podz-Glidz.

However, the podcast also covers a lot more. Till Gottbrath, born in 1960, was one of the first paragliding pilots in Germany. So we also talk about how his career and paragliding in general have changed and developed over more than 30 years.

Till has also experienced many impressive outdoor adventures outside of paragliding. Why does flying still fascinate him the most? Listen in to find out.

If you enjoy this podcast, there are different ways you can support my work. You can help make Podz-Glidz better known by, for example, leaving a positive rating in audio catalogs, linking the podcast on social media, or recommending it in personal conversations with your flying friends. Of course, you can also support Podz-Glidz and the associated blog Looglides financially. Because you should know, as a freelance journalist, I also live off these projects. However, I have deliberately decided against compromising funding from advertising partners or hidden sponsors. Instead, I rely solely on voluntary contributions from my listeners and readers. You can find out how you can easily become a supporter without any obligation on the Looglides website, specifically on the "Support" page.

Till, do you know which movie the quote "O Captain, my captain" comes from?

No, but I've heard that phrase from the guys on the Nova Pilots team a lot. Just half an hour ago, I was talking to Hannes Kronberger, who also reported in with it. "O Captain, my Captain," yeah, that's "Dead Poets Society." Have you seen it? Yeah, but I'm not much of a cinephile. So I've seen it, I remember it, it's even saved because I liked it. Still, I don't really remember what it's about.

He's like a teacher who shows up at some young boarding school and basically introduces them to free thinking. Mhm. And then he clashes quite a bit with the rest of the normal establishment of this very traditional school. But there's that scene where the teacher is eventually expelled from the school, but the students still stand by him, and then one by one, as he's leaving the classroom, they climb onto the desks and say "O Captain, my Captain" and just say "So, we stand by you" or something like that.

Do you like being called Captain? I've never really thought about it. It just happened that way. I actually find it quite funny. Originally, I wasn't the team captain; I just take care of the pilots. That's how Wolfi put it. "You take care of that. You do that."

Wolfi was the head of Nova back then, and he told me I should manage the Nova Pilots team. Exactly. So how did the term Captain come about at all? Did you introduce it? Yes.

It just sort of happened at some point. I have no idea. Well, the person who used it a lot was Rinaldo from Italy. I was "il Capitano" back then. And then, during Jürgen Klinsmann's time, "Capitano" was also kind of a term. And then it became "Captain." So, that's how it is.

How did it actually come about back then that this Nova team was founded in the first place? I mean, the Nova Pilots Team?

That's actually a bit of a long story. For everyone who doesn't know, way back in the day, Nova was the absolute leading brand in the paraglider World Cup. There were times when all the other manufacturers combined had fewer points in the constructor's ranking than Nova. That

That was something like the early 90s.

Exactly, yeah. And it was also the case that the range of the individual paraglider manufacturers was so small that, in competition, the newest glider was flown for its own sake. And if not too many people had crashed with the model from the previous year, then that became the cross-country glider or the training glider. So it wasn't like there were ABCD and CCC categories; anyone who could handle it just flew whatever was available. Plus, as a pilot, you just wanted to have airtime. And if you didn't have a reasonably good glider, you'd end up back on the ground pretty quickly. So back then, basically everyone flew a high-performance glider, because there were really only high-performance gliders.

Because they were always the gliders that performed the best. That's why they were called high-performers, more or less. Yeah,

Exactly. So they were just the ones that performed the best. And everyone wanted to have one.

But did they still only have a glide ratio of 1 to 4, 1 to 5, 1 to 6 at the beginning? My very first

The glider had a 1 to 3, 86 or 87. And then it just went up bit by bit. Yes, and then came the phase where we noticed that the entire competition scene was drifting very far away from the broad mass of pilots. The gliders were becoming increasingly high-end, increasingly harder to fly. And interest in classic competition flying has declined to the same extent. Back then we'd say, "Now, go around and ask everyone at your club who is a German, Austrian, or Swiss champion, who is the world champion?" And nobody knew. So the interest wasn't that great. And in the same way, I dare say, there aren't that many people who, if Ferrari becomes world champion in Formula 1, will buy a Ferrari because of that.

So that's somehow a completely different scene. And at the same time, cross-country flying was picking up. With the first GPS devices back then, the barriers to entry were simply lower. You didn't have to use a camera to determine any sectors. You didn't have to take photos at specific angles while messing around with letting out the control lines. You just flew and uploaded it. And you didn't have to compare yourself to the rest of the world either; we cross-country pilots could compare ourselves with other people at the cross-country site. So the barrier to entry was lower. And also, if you wanted to compare yourself, you could compare yourself with your peers. And as a third factor, we noticed back then that you could actually fly very successfully in cross-country with a lower-class glider.

And that prompted us to form a team that was fundamentally different from the classic teams. Because until then, it was really like Formula 1 racing. You basically bought the best pilots, and they had to make sure you became world champion, because then your glider was the cool glider. And we—well, I think we started with the pilot team in 2006, so that was a while ago. Then, as today, we don't primarily view our team pilots as people who shine through performance. If they do, that's of course very nice. But it's not about being the best at all costs; it's primarily about conveying the joy of flying, getting others involved, and projecting the Nova brand as a likeable brand to the outside world.

And that could also be the case; we also have team pilots who are team pilots because they make videos. The next one is active on social media, the one after that gives regular lectures or whatever. So, in that sense, there are many ways to Rome, or into the Nova Pilots Team. It's not just about performance.

So you said it was founded in 2006. Was that something very quick? Did it happen spontaneously, like, "let's do this"? Or was it a process where you'd say, okay, in the 90s there were these huge, successful guys, that started to fade out more and more, and then we started slowly thinking about it, and eventually you say, let's give this a try? Or did it rather come out of a whim?

No, it certainly wasn't a whim. It was a strategic decision to say we're not building competition gliders anymore. We're completely moving away from that scene because you knew very clearly how much money was being poured into it. I mean, the pilots were sent all over the world, they had their tickets paid for, they got paid for it, and if they flew successfully, they got even more money for it. And the prize money back then was lucrative too. Toni Bender told me once that my paragliding back then was just somehow mega cool and mega different. Money really played a role there. And making the decision to say, let's say, that it doesn't really bring anything anymore if you get involved in that, was a strategic decision. But it wasn't like we sat down and coordinated and said, okay, that's it, now let's put all the effort into the new horse; it was also a process.

And we also started small. At the beginning, we were just a few exclusively German-speaking pilots. So Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol. And then, once it was running reasonably well, we kept expanding it. Then at some point the juniors joined, and then the flatland team in Germany. And the French, purely due to the language, also have a certain level of self-management. So that's like a sub-team. And then last year the Climb & Fly team, after we have two gliders with DoubleSkin and Bantam that are particularly well-suited for that. So it's an evolution.

Does this original idea for the Pilots Team come from you, or how did it come about?

Pah, I can't really trace that back. I mean, back then it was, as I said, Wolfi Lechner and Hannes Papesch was still on board at the time. And we were just always part of the inner circle. In terms of sales, it was Sylvain in France, Urs Harri in Switzerland, and Robert Kleinheinz in Germany. And somehow, we probably hatched it more or less collectively. But I can't figure out who had the idea. I mean, I could imagine it was me, but I wouldn't want to dwell on it. It doesn't matter anyway. The main thing is the idea.

was good. Yes, the idea was good, because you already built up a certain reputation with it. But was the basic idea there from the start, let's make a pilots team? We'll get good pilots in there to have it as a sort of marketing flagship, in the sense of saying, wonderful, they're flying with our gliders now and we're simply showing that you can also fly long distances with our normal 1s and 2s at the beginning and then eventually the B gliders and stuff. And to actually use that as a good marketing instrument.

Yeah, sure. I mean, that certainly plays a role. Also, what might be worth mentioning is that if you look at it, the DHV issues about 2,000 new pilot licenses every year. Currently, I think even more. It's growing a bit again. But at the same time, the number of active pilots actually remains relatively the same. That means we have as many newcomers as people quitting. Then you naturally ask yourself, why are they stopping? Private matters can play a role there, like, I don't know, having a new job, not having as much time, becoming a mother, becoming a father. I also believe that a significant number of people stop because they've had, simply, bad experiences in the air, with a total loss of control at the same time, a fear of death, and also not knowing what's actually going to happen to them.

And in the past, it was like, if you wanted to be cool, you had to fly a high-performance glider. And I can remember, it was like that for me with the Mambo Mentor 1, for like 14, 15 years, that as a cross-country pilot I realized that I could fly further with a lower-class glider, matching my skills, than with a higher-class glider. Because the higher-class glider consumed so much of my attention that at some point I made a tactical mistake and ended up on the ground. And that was also our intention, I'd say, to ensure the social acceptance of normal gliding. So that you don't land somewhere and someone looks down on you with their sickle saying, "Hey kid, you could join in today," but instead you land with your Mentor next to you and he regards you as his equal, because he knows, maybe you flew 180, but rather only 150 on his trip.

And that was also, to some extent, from a sales perspective, about ensuring that people might dare or even find it cool to fly with a glider that matches their abilities, and not strive to fly C, D, or whatever else as soon as or as quickly as possible. And there are now a number of very, very good pilots who say, of course, the handling of a C or D glider is somehow already cool—I mean, I like it too, it's kind of like skiing with freshly sharpened edges or fresh tires on a car, that's awesome. But for me, nothing has changed in the sense that with an HIB glider—so a Mentor—that Mentor demands so much from me that even during 10 hours of flying...

I don't have to worry about the glider. It's just there, it flies. And a lot of people have reached these conclusions by now, although obviously that varies from area to area, and also from country to country. In Asia, for example, I want to represent someone who really wants to be involved, so they get a license and immediately buy a high-performance glider that they're absolutely not capable of handling. Not everyone, but that, and also, the markets are developed to different degrees. Even in Italy, I have the impression that there's a tendency for much more high-level flying than here with us. In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, it's all somehow a bit more down-to-earth, and I no longer have the impression that anyone is looking down on me just because I only fly a Mentor.

There are plenty of examples now of flights where people have flown really far with Low Base or High Base, definitely with B-gliders, and flown just as far, over 300 kilometers and so on, where you can see, okay, the difference compared to a high-performance glider is actually no longer there, at least in terms of the performance that ends up being achieved.

Yeah, although that has definitely changed a bit over the last few years. I mean, if you really want to fly a long distance, you have to fly for a long time and you should be flying reasonably fast. But on days that have the potential for you to fly 200 or 250 plus, things really start to happen in the air. And that's when—I've jokingly called these "mentor days"—when suddenly the high-performers aren't moving that much faster because many pilots just don't dare to go into the gas anymore. If you're in a mentor, you just keep giving it, and suddenly the differences aren't that big. However, modern two-liners are becoming increasingly manageable, and there are more and more pilots who are capable of pushing things for 10 hours or even longer.

And those are the zombies of this world and the Lex Robes of this world, or all the French guys, who just open up a completely new dimension where you just can't keep up with a Mentor, no matter how good you are. Because if you're on a good day with a high-performance wing and you're able to fly for 10 or 11 hours while pushing into the gas, then the difference is already massive. You have to look at that very soberly. Because

who simply glide so much better in the gas, and then you really have a disadvantage. The

I see big differences in accelerated gliding. In my opinion, absolute glide performance is completely overrated. I mean, we keep looking at tracks where we—well, the animation—are somehow on Ivory or whatever it's called, and then you see how high the wing flies, how high the wing flies. I have to say that even an AONIC now, as a high-A glider, flies so incredibly well and performs so incredibly well that most people would probably say, "It doesn't even exist," if they saw it right in front of them. But if you then get into the gas with the AONIC, the speed bar path is only a few centimeters and immediately it's roller on roller. And it just doesn't go any further. But that's why it's an A-glider. If the thing were really fast, it would build up such a dynamic that in the event of a collapse, it simply wouldn't be an A-glider anymore.

So it gets neutered.

And it's the same with the B-gliders. So I also think that there are several gliders,

who could fly faster, if the speed bar simply allowed it. But then it wouldn't be a B-glider anymore.

Yeah, because with the speed, the additional dynamics come into play, of course. Exactly. Maybe we can talk a bit more specifically about the glider types and what flying with them is like later on. I want to stay briefly with the team pilots, or rather the pilot team. At the beginning, when you said, okay, we imagined it this way, we want to switch it now, was it actually difficult to find pilots for the pilot team? I mean, did you have to convince them, saying, look, you should fly with our B-gliders now, where they might, with higher demands and a different mindset, still say they'd rather fly high-performers, Nova, what's the point of me switching to a mentor or Mambo back then or whatever?

So, nobody gets paid anyway. They even buy all their gliders themselves to this day. And we deliberately only approached people who had already flown Nova and had perhaps already realized that they could fly damn far with such a B-glider, or back then, a one or two. And from that, a kind of momentum developed. And then the two Swiss guys, Marcel Dettling and Adrian—is Adrian's last name... Oh, how embarrassing. Anyway, within two days, the two of them flew the first 200 kilometers of FAI triangles in Valais. And it was just like, wow, when someone ran under ten seconds for the first time at 100 meters. It was just such a roar, just like Bernie Pessel's 300 later on.

And then it developed its own momentum. But from the very beginning, we first approached people who had already flown Nova and who had also flown one or two. And it developed further on that basis. And then others joined in.

In the beginning, the Nova Pilots Team was always very much like the "Mentor mania" at the start, where it suddenly became, okay, there's this Mentor from Nova who flies under the B gliders. It was, in any case, always the reference for a while. But you also had very good pilots in your Pilots Team who flew accordingly, who probably always liked to team up and fly somewhere together. Then it became doubly and triply noticeable because suddenly three people had somehow made it over 200 kilometers or something. And then you'd see in all the XContest and XCDAV rankings, there were always a lot of Nova and especially Mentor pilots right at the front. That has shifted a bit by now.

or divided differently, because other companies have caught up and now there are, I'd say, a handful of companies that can all build B-gliders at this performance level. Has the work, or the purpose, or the way the Pilots Team is organized, and things like that, actually changed over the years because of that?

No, not really. What we as a team of pilots appreciate so much is this sense of togetherness. As I said, I don't choose the pilots based exclusively on performance. Someone who just wants a cheaper glider, or people who are eaten up by ambition and are in a bad mood because things didn't go the way they wanted. Or people who don't like to share their experiences and enthusiasm with others—they don't fit. It's relatively involved. We have to fill out a pretty long questionnaire because we want to ensure that the basic values and ideals of the pilots are close to each other.

And the cool thing is, they sometimes meet up somewhere in the world to fly. So we also have a sort of

internal forum and lists of who is traveling where and so on. And then sometimes people go together—I don't know, they meet up in Brazil, India, Kenya, or something like that. And it's really cool how they all somehow fit together. And then on the first weekend of October, there's always been the Nova Pilots Team Meeting since the beginning, where some people really travel from very far away and try to plan their trip to Europe, Germany, or the Alps well in advance so they can coordinate it with other things. This openness and the general sense of community is the best thing for us internally, for the team pilots themselves.

So as a Nova team pilot, you have access to cool people all around the world who welcome you and give you an introduction on-site. And that's something an outsider doesn't really perceive. And there's so much positive energy and a real sense of community there, I'm pretty proud of that. And that hasn't changed at all. From Nova's side, I mean, the paraglider world is changing overall. Like the always-flyable two-liners now. And if it's allowed soon to test with folding lines in the C-class, then the two-liners will certainly move back into the C-category. Of course, things are changing.

And overall, I'd say that higher-class gliders will certainly become more manageable, so that they are of interest to a broader spectrum of pilots. And they will probably be safer, or relatively safely flyable. But that actually hasn't changed anything regarding our pilot team concept.

Do you pick the people? So as team captain, do all the applications basically come across your desk and you say, it fits, it doesn't fit? In the end, yes.

Yeah. So I pass it on to the others, like to the Nova bosses, so to speak, I inform them, but in the end, after so many years, there's a lot of trust that I'm not picking out any clowns.

That means, in a way, the pilot team is also like the family you've put together. You can already...

I mean, yeah, that's how it is. We don't have a democracy. I'm the boss there. Even if I don't care about the Capitano or the Captain. But I do have, let's say, a structured leadership style. That's not to say I walk around acting like some huge big shot and always insist that everything goes my way, not at all. But it's just that some things are easier if you just decide and do them.

Have there ever been situations where you've said, I'm kicking someone out of the team, for whatever reason?

Yeah, we had that once when we founded the Flachland team. We had actually already accepted someone, and then I got in touch with all the pilots on Facebook to see what they were like, what was going on with them. And it turned out that he came from a hard-right political corner, with AFT and some absurd nonsense from my point of view. So I immediately said, we're kicking him out, and I only informed the Nova bosses, who all said within five minutes, definitely, because it doesn't fit with the team's values regarding openness, tolerance, and togetherness—it doesn't fit together at all. And he had barely been there for two days before he was kicked out again.

That means he hadn't even become a real team member yet, but the

only got the okay from us, and then I saw it and got a huge shock and thought, that's out of the question. The

In the first pilot, if I understood correctly, you actually selected them, or rather, searched for them and approached them to ask if they wanted to participate. Does that still happen today, or do people just apply to you and you then decide if they might be a good fit or not?

So, what we don't do, and will never do, is approach people and try to recruit them who are currently on a salary and benefits at other companies. A) I don't think that's very ethical; we're not in the Bundesliga waving around bundles of cash. B) I also don't think that's a promising path, because if someone wants to join our team, they really have to want it. So, there are also questions in this...

application form where people should become very aware of whether they really fit in with us. I see it like a relationship. If someone doesn't really like the way we do things and just says, "Hey, cool thing, that sounds right"

...casual, would love to be part of it, and wants to contribute, then he'll just be tagging along like a fifth wheel and won't have any fun. That doesn't benefit him, and it doesn't benefit us either.

That's why we try to organize it so that it's a good fit. And in practice, that actually means we'd rather

We take people who apply on their own initiative and really want it. What has already happened is that some Nova importers or flight schools suggest someone. Sometimes there are pilots who might be too shy, or it could also be that someone says, for political reasons, so to speak, because a good friend of mine is so important in my country right now, that someone has to get in this way. But mostly, it's already fairly consistent. It has been very, very rare that we've had someone where I thought afterwards, well...

Better not take that one. Man...

you already get a sense of that. How many applications do you get a year? After the podcast, I'll probably get another 20.

You have to look at it this way: we have about 80, 90 team pilots, depending on how you define it. Theo de Blick and Nick Donini have a different deal than the other team pilots because they're pros who live off it. They get a bit of money and they are also Nova team pilots, they belong to the group somehow. But I'd say we, the normal ones, mainly circuit flyers, we're about 80, 85. That's a size where, if it were significantly more, there'd be a risk of it becoming impersonal and maybe losing that sense of "us." That's why

Right now, it's rather difficult to get into the team. It usually happens when someone, for whatever reason, pulls back a bit and says, "I'm going to take it easy for a while" or something like that, "I don't have much time." Then there's the parking position, where the old-timers basically park, and that creates space for someone new. But generally, there are a few countries—for example, we don't have anyone from Spain. So Spain would have better chances than a German. And sometimes we have people who applied and I tell them, "No, maybe later." For example, Ferdi Vogel wouldn't have been the first choice for the Nova Juniors back then. He joined later, and if you look at how he's developed now, my god.

I would have made a mistake. You should have taken him right away. Well, but it was good that he joined later anyway. Now he's on the Nova payroll too and still works for you there. There are quite a few employees at Nova who are also in the Nova Pilots Team. Did it happen that they were in the Pilots Team first and then basically started at Nova? So there are

some who, from this Pilots Team position, entered into some kind of business marriage with Nova in the broadest sense. For example, I think of Thermik Broschardt, who worked for a large IT company and then eventually got a golden handshake from them and now works in sales at Nova, although he's no longer officially on the team. Then there's Hans Thermat in Holland, who runs a flight school and also somehow started selling Nova. Then there's Duschan in Slovenia, who was a team pilot and now sells Nova in Slovenia, and Peter Gebhardt and Heidi, our Italians—Heidi was a team pilot and Peter?

No, he only joined later. Yes, that does exist. Although we usually do it so that the people who are, for example, Nova employees...

we only really put them on the external list if they actually fulfill a function. Like Paul Nagel and Louis Depping, who are like a subteam within the Climb & Fly team, they...

...are team managers. I mean, I do work, I'm self-employed, I'm not employed by Nova, but as an external service provider, I take care of the team, the PR, Facebook, and a bit of social media. I'm also listed on it. Otherwise, most of the others I just mentioned, well, Hans is still officially a team pilot. So it depends.

You just said, okay, you don't just do this team captain work, but you're also the PR guy for Nova. This pilot team started in 2006. Since when have you been doing the PR?

I think, well, until last year I had a PR agency in Munich with a business partner, we were called Kern-Gottbreit-Kommunikation, which, in the course of the Corona crisis, received so many reductions in their monthly fees, but especially from larger companies, some complete cancellations where some controller just said, "get rid of the external service providers." And Nova was a client of several others. There was still Atomic, Arcteryx, Craft, Eagle Creek, Expat, Gregory, so all sports and outdoor brands. Mostly all with great products. So as a PR person, you're sort of a professional cheerleader. You always have to find everything the clients do to be absolutely great. But thank God, we were always in the lucky position,

that we could choose our clients and never worked for just anyone just because they gave us money, but we still had a shred of morality that made us say we wouldn't let just anyone hitch a ride. Then last July, we had to close KGK, and I kept Nova as a client. And I believe Nova joined us in 2003. We're approaching the 20-year mark.

That was in 2003, which was still before the Facebook era—definitely long before the Instagram era and all that. How has the marketing for the paraglider business changed over these last 20 years from your perspective? What have you experienced there?

Yeah, that's a really good question, because the entire PR landscape has shifted brutally. So, in the past, it was really classic, mainly press work. And if the company was large enough, then radio and TV came into play as well. But now, with social media, a completely new channel has emerged that is characterized by incredible dynamics. A good example is five or six years ago. Snapchat is the latest hack and suddenly

right now, nobody is screaming for Snapchat anymore. Instead, TikTok is suddenly the thing. And who knows what's coming in five years. And all these platforms are trying to be as attractive as possible. And we also expect now—I mean, the entire paraglider industry, it's somehow...

even on a global level, it's a joke. The entire paraglider industry is probably a tenth of the revenue of VW or something. I don't know the exact figures right now, but overall, it's really a joke. At the same time, however, we also expect a fairly professional appearance. So the website has to be well-maintained, the YouTube channel should please be maintained, and Facebook and Instagram should also be updated as much as possible every day. And the videos on YouTube, they shouldn't just be completely shaky GoPro things; given the size of the industry and the expectations placed on them in terms of marketing tools—how good and perfect they should be—there's already a massive disproportion.

But that means, because you say at the beginning it was such classic PR work, you mainly said for Nova, for example, okay, I'll write a press release, I'll send it to CrossCountry. Back then there was still Fly & Glide and Paraglider and maybe Schlechtflieger magazine still existed, and then the French and other magazines. That means you sent it around and then probably ads were placed in the corresponding magazines, and that was the main communication that actually took place with the paragliding scene. Right, it was always

indirect. There was always an intermediary. Whereas now, you're talking to your customers directly. And what's very special about the paraglider industry is that if you go to the festivals now, the founders, owners, and designers are directly on-site at many of the stands. In which sport or industry is that even possible? So, you can already see from that how small we all are. I mean, if you imagine going to a Formula 1 race and then talking to a board member of Mercedes-Benz. That's completely...

unthinkable. Yes, I mean, there are paraglider companies that only consist of three or four employees, they have their external production, something like that, but actually, it's just a very small team and then the whole team stands there at a trade fair and sells or promotes their products and stuff. Is this way of approaching the scene, do you find this development towards social media and all the comments and everything else that comes in, is that a positive development from your perspective, or would you say it's actually become much harder to do marketing in this environment? Both.

I mean, it's difficult in the sense that with limited resources, you always have more channels to manage, and if you have the ambition to do it well, you either have to split yourself somehow or you need more manpower, but that has to be paid for. So, if you have the ambition to do good work, it always gets harder due to the limited resources. On the other hand, of course, it's also great when you can communicate directly with your customers. We put a lot of effort into Facebook and also Instagram, where we get a lot of inquiries that clearly go in the direction of consulting, sales, or something else; responding to people promptly and in a really proper way, and not giving them the feeling,

...you're interrupting my normal work, just leave me alone, but rather to take them seriously or even if they have problems with something, to see that as an opportunity to find a solution and subsequently make them even more convinced of NOVA by telling them, yes, we do care.

Well, Facebook and Instagram are still relatively young channels, and I'd say they aren't well-received by every single person in the slightly older demographic, or that everyone is on Instagram or follows it and so on. To what extent is it, if you say as a paraglider brand, okay, I'm putting an incredible amount of energy into marketing, specifically into these social media platforms, because I say it's hip and you have to do it in that sector, you get immediate feedback and that's of course where you think, ah, I'm reaching people somehow, but to what extent are you actually missing out on a part of your market? I mean, if you think about it, many paraglider pilots are unfortunately—or what I mean by unfortunately, they are also 50 plus.

And those are also the people who have the time, the money, and maybe like to buy a new glider every now and then. From your experience, do you actually reach them with these social media platforms?

Yeah, the classic print media—maybe all the old markers, so to speak, which I have to count myself—they're still being read, they aren't gone. We still do classic press work and we still run ads. So that's just something that's been added to it. It hasn't replaced it. I think that's a big thing in the entire communications industry. There's always so much talk about the death of print. Personally, I don't see it that way, because the way information is prepared there is still different from the way it comes through social media. I mean, just take the whole fake news topic. Usually, there's more than one person sitting in the editorial office.

You make a plan, someone reads against it, or it needs to be researched again. I consider the quality of information in print media to be significantly higher than—well, print and public service radio and TV are significantly higher than social media. That's why I don't think it will completely disappear. And I hope it doesn't, because those internal control mechanisms and quality checks just don't happen anymore. Nowadays, anyone can publish anything, but the mere fact that they can publish something doesn't make their content any more relevant or interesting.

You can also, where you say anyone can publish something, there are also forums in the scene, like paraglider, drone, and British forums, where anyone can express their opinion and everyone reads it, and then it's asked, like, how do you like this and that glider, and then it's discussed and stuff, which on one hand can be positive if you come away with a positive impression, but there are also some who might say, I don't like Nova either, or something like that, and then they might even sometimes deliberately create a mood against a brand or against a product and things like that. How do you deal with that?

Generally, I find the etiquette in the forums almost shameful, especially in the German-speaking forum. It happens so fast; by the third post in a thread, everyone is already bashing each other and it's no longer about the actual content. I've never posted anything in the forum myself and I don't see any need to contribute my two cents. It's often so unprofessional that it's just not worth the effort. I really often get the impression that there are people with so many posts that I honestly wonder—if I were their employer, I'd be wondering if they're actually doing any work, because they post so incredibly much.

And you should also assume that the mean pilot mostly just enjoys flying first and foremost. I mean, where do they come from all the time?

To get back to the actual question, how do we deal with it if someone loses their cool?

When we do something in the forum, it's usually Pippo who tries to contribute something sensible in his objective way.

So Pippo is Philipp Medicus, the designer at your company.

Although he's also been doing less in recent years because it's

it's very exhausting and often a lost cause. Although

the paraglider dragon forum has honestly gotten worse over the years in terms of manners. And ten years ago, I think there were still some really good discussions about it, even on a content level, that weren't immediately shot down, but nowadays I agree with you, almost every interesting thread is then at the latest—you say after three, I'd say at the latest after ten—it's no longer about the content, but only about the argument between two people who then start saying things like, "but you're this" and "you're that." Man,

...is no longer a pleasure to read at all, because all that comes out of it are these personal disputes.

I don't learn anything from it. It's just people insulting each other. For example, we also have a kind of code of conduct in the Nova Pilots team; it states a wish—no one is forced, there are no contracts or anything like that—but we wish for a Nova Team Pilot, if they are active in the forum under their real name and also say, "I am a Nova Team Pilot," so that others can recognize where they come from. Besides, I also hope that in that moment they switch on their brains and don't post any rubbish. But it actually works quite well, although fewer and fewer of our team pilots are joining in for the reasons mentioned. So, per se, I think the forum is actually super cool, but what has come out of it,

is sad. Sad, it's embarrassing.

If we leave the forum aside for a moment, but look at Facebook, Instagram, and your team pilots, is there also something like that?

maybe not, certainly not as a requirement, but it's certainly welcome when we say, post something positive about our products too. So that they act as brand ambassadors in the form of product ambassadors, that they'd like to say, for example, "I just flew the new Mentor 6" or whatever it is.

Yeah, so of course we like it when they distribute a lot of likes, comment, and share and stuff like that. Logically, that's how the Facebook and similar algorithms work in the background. And if you post something and there's immediately a lot of action, so to speak, then the probability that your post is also shown to others who aren't among your close friends is higher. In that sense...

That means you post something, and 100 pilots from the team first just have to—well, they don't have to, but... No, not have to, but they can press the like button. Many of them probably do it because they see it and say, okay, I'm basically tied to Nova anyway, so they just hit like, and then you know, okay, my reach is already significantly higher than... Yeah, although, well, that

It happens very, very rarely that we do that. So maybe, if the Mentor 7 comes out soon, then we will actively ask them. There has to be something special for us to do that actively, because I don't want that to be abused, and what also applies is that... So nobody has to do anything. It's always just a request. And what we explicitly don't want, for example, is for someone to feel "raped" in quotation marks because they don't agree that the new, what do I know, Mentor 25 is now the ultimate weapon. So they don't have to hype anything up in the sense that they have to write, I think the glider is great, I've flown it, you all have to buy it.

If one of them isn't convinced by it, then they don't have to write it. They should be really honest. And if they happen to completely dislike a product, the wish is that they maybe don't put it right in everyone's face, but instead provide constructive criticism internally. And there's also a page in our internal forum where feedback on the gliders is collected. It says things like, I don't like the connection of the brake lines at the sector, it looks like a sawtooth profile. You have to do it differently. So, provide internal criticism, but no one is forced to cheer externally and find something good that they might not even know. Imagine someone in your club posts, you all have to fly Mentor XY, and then people in the club ask,

tell me, how does he fly? Then he says, I've never flown before.

So, we don't want to force anyone. I don't think that leads to anything anyway.

What's the deal with someone like Theo der Blick, Agro-World Champion, who joined you guys last year, in early 2020, and flies for Nova? You even built an extra Agro-glider for him that he flies now and stuff. He's someone who is incredibly active, especially on Instagram, basically putting out his posts and showing his pictures every day, doing Q&As, and saying, "you can ask me anything, I'll answer everything" and all that. So, a lot happens there. Does someone like that have guidelines from you on what he should write about Nova, or is he so positive for you in terms of his reach that he just says, "just do your thing, what you're doing is great"?

So, Theo isn't seen by me as a...

Nova pilot, but he's... Theo gets a salary, I don't know how much, but he's employed by Nova. In that sense, he has a different position than the other team pilots.

But it could be that there's some kind of general PR strategy where Theo is a building block, where you say, could we somehow use him as an influencer? We're launching the XY glider now, can he somehow push it with whatever?

Yeah, I mean, we already do that. One reason we brought Theo on board is simply that the brand becomes significantly younger because of him, and we're a bit more open-minded, with him doing agro-flying, even though there are still no plans at the moment to manufacture, or sell, agro gliders. But Theo has his glider, which is so radical that he himself says there are probably only a handful of pilots who can master it. Even within the agro scene, he's that radical, and the fact that we just come across as a bit younger and fresher and open up our spectrum a bit, which is certainly the right thing to do. From my perspective, I have to say that the collaboration with Theo is just really cool. The guy is incredibly nice on one hand and incredibly professional on the other.

He replies to emails so fast that the other day I asked him if he actually flies in between. Because the answers come back so quickly that I always think, there's no way. And then he replied, I just try to answer quickly, and with agro-flying, you're back down quickly too. I'm not in the air for hours, and then I try to give the answers quickly as I'm heading up. And he is extremely open and pleasant to work with. So even after the first year, he reached out and said, we need to do a summary now, please give me feedback on what went well, what went poorly, and I'll also tell you what I want. So he is incredibly professional. And at the same time, uncomplicated to work with and reliable.

So it's really great fun working with him.

That means it was a real stroke of luck for you, in a way.

Yeah. If I followed correctly, Theo I think was with Gradient before, and Gradient as a brand then ran out, so his sponsorship contract expired too, and in the end I think he was out on the market for a bit and knocked on the doors of various paraglider manufacturers and said, who wants to work with me, who wants to sponsor me now, or something like that.

Yeah, although he had already made a list of brands that were options for him. So he didn't just go to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. I would say...

probably not. Just a few where you'd say, okay, they have a market position that somehow fits your own standing.

Yes, that you also have a perspective and that the whole thing is long-term. The important thing with a collaboration like this is that it becomes more effective the longer you work together. Because then the sponsor and the sponsored are much more closely linked mentally within the scene. And you can drastically reduce your own market value by changing your sponsor or partner too often. So, a long-term collaboration makes absolute sense. That's why it also speaks to his professionalism that he took the time to think about who actually fits with him? Where can we move something forward together? It all makes sense.

Is that something that might happen even more in the future? Like, companies saying more and more, okay, we need one or two big faces who actually

maybe not the majority, but at least in this social media area already

are a real asset, with whom you can actually do a lot. Where you can say, okay, they're professional in their own way, but they also provide me with a lot of content that I can actually use.

Yes, my question isn't just about the paragliding scene. Generally, your testimonials—so, people who are, so to speak, under your glider—are important. And if you look at the football sector,

what kind of market value some of these people have and what dimensions that has taken on. I recently read how many millions of followers Cristiano Ronaldo has. I don't know the number anymore. In any case, I just thought, wow, that's just insane. It's truly unbelievable. I mean, what's happening there just blows the imagination of a normal person.

One post is then equal to the annual salary of a normal person. One of them and mine together, yeah.

But in the end, the mechanisms at play are comparable. In the paragliding scene, there aren't that many people who really—well, first of course there's Kriel, and then there are a few others who can live off it now, but it's not that many. Simply because the scene isn't that big. I mean, if you want to make a living from a sport, you'd be better off with basketball, football, Formula 1, ice hockey, baseball, American football, tennis, or something like that. Those are the smarter sports. At least you're not risking your life there, except for in motor racing, and you earn much more than if that were your life's goal.

Let's put the PR aside for a bit—the PR for Dover and all that—and look back a bit at your own story, your paragliding story. If I've followed it correctly, you were one of the first people paragliding in Germany. You could almost say that, couldn't you? I think so.

At the time, I was working at Sportcheck, Münchner Sporthaus, which was still very good back then, and I was in the mountain sports department and dreamed of becoming a really good mountaineer myself. And then we had—they also sold French magazines—and the first pictures of paragliding appeared there, and it was like, BAM! Do a mountain tour, don't have to go down anymore, that's it. And then we convinced the managing director or the department head to buy two gliders, and Karl Slezak, who is now the safety officer at the DHV or whatever it's called. And I was working there at the time and convinced the department head to buy two gliders and we said, we'll take care of it. And that was eighty-six.

I thought for a long time it was '78, but I noticed the other day while going through my slides that it was actually '76. And back then, there wasn't a flight school in Germany offering paragliding training, let alone a license. Instead, the DHV and the DAEC were arguing over who owned paragliding, so to speak. And in '78, everyone held their own German championship. So both were of the opinion that it belonged to them. And then it took a while until they finally reached an agreement.

We were already aware that it wasn't exactly harmless, and we kind of said we'd rather pull the thing off in the flatlands before we went hurling ourselves down a mountain somewhere. And we just taught ourselves it autodidactically and only got a license years later.

What do you mean by years later, when you say '86 were the first attempts on the flat land? When were you on the mountain for the first time? I mean, with the glider on the mountain, to

then to fly down? I don't know if we already dared to do that in '86. But in any case, we did a course in the Zillertal in '87, where I already had five times as many flights as the flight instructor. Because he was actually a hang gliding instructor. They needed flight instructors so urgently back then that they just said, "Hang gliding instructor, you roughly know how it works, now you do paragliding." Also. So that I somehow got an Austrian license and only years later, well, at the beginning, the recognition didn't really matter much, and then only years later did I also get a German license afterwards. But that was quite a long time later.

So that means you basically already had more experience than your actual flight instructor?

Well, at least in that regard, yes.

And he said, okay, Fliegeibeil said, you'll get the license from me, because you already know more than I actually do, right?

No, he just saw when we unpacked the glider that we knew roughly—I mean, we arrived with our own gliders—and he saw that we were proceeding quite deliberately and weren't looking at him with big, wide eyes, but were just doing it. And then he came over to ask if we already had experience. And I was just scared of being caught as a black-flag pilot, so I answered a bit evasively. Then he leaned forward and muttered that he didn't have ten flights under his belt yet and that we would have to support him a bit.

That means he was a flight instructor, now officially for paragliding, but he had only jumped off a mountain ten times. Yeah. But as a kiting pilot, he already... Yeah, he

was already good too. I mean, it's not like, we had jumped down somewhere a few times, but we still had no clue. So he knew what flying was. And for me, just putting up a glider, flying down, and landing isn't flying yet. We had done that a few times, but it would be very presumptuous to say I was better than my flight instructor. I mean, he had fewer flights, but he still knew what he was doing. I didn't. What fascinated you about flying back then? Nothing at all. The idea was to do a cool mountain tour and not have to hike back down. So we didn't start paragliding because we wanted to fly, but we were mountaineers and wanted to get rid of that annoying hike down.

And then we realized that very few cool mountain tours somehow end on a summit with a nice, not too steep, not too flat slope at the top that's oriented in the direction of the wind, but then the performance was also so bad. So the most important flight instrument of my first three or four years of paragliding was the glide angle meter. Does that even exist today?

...not anymore, right?

No, well, actually just a clinometer where you look through it and take a bearing, and then you see, oh, 1 to 3.5, let's just walk down instead.

Because you would have gotten stuck on every third ridge, roughly, right?

Yeah, well, I'd say for the first two years, about 50 or 60 percent of all the tours, we'd end up somewhere up there and wouldn't dare to fly because we thought, oh, maybe a bit more headwind, the glide angle will get a bit worse again and then we'll get stuck in there. That was very formative. So, it was very formative for me to be the decision-maker from hour zero. I mean, that phase where the flight instructor knows everything and acts like God, telling you how it is and then saying, okay, now you can fly, and you just fly because he knows. We completely skipped that; from the time of my first flight, I decided, I'm flying now, or I'm not flying.

That means you learned personal responsibility from the very beginning, so to speak. Yes. As far as flying is concerned.

And what is, where I say that in my opinion, there are quite a lot of flight schools today that don't have the goal of training pilots to be independent pilots, but rather prefer to keep them dependent and try to keep them tied to the school to make money. So, they go...

...sentences on how to train flight students are very far apart.

Although from the flight school's perspective, that's not a bad idea, so

In pecuniary terms, it's an excellent idea, yes.

If you look at how many people go flying, where they say, okay, they take flying as—I'll call it—a part-time hobby, because they say I might have six weeks of vacation a year, I spend three of those with my family, another week with some motorcycle buddies or something, and then there are maybe two weeks left that I still have for actual paragliding, and for that, I'd rather do a guided tour with a flight school. But that is paragliding for them, and then it's actually only sensible to say, ah, I got along well with the school or the provider, and then I'll go with them again next year; last year I was in Bassano and next year I'm going with them to Slovenia, and then I'll try out the Sea or something else, and I always know the supervision is actually right there.

So it's also a form of flying where the school fits the right clientele, or the clientele fits the school, in a way that works for everyone.

So that's definitely the right approach for that target group. If you don't fly regularly, it can become very dangerous very quickly. So a certain level of routine—which isn't to say that routine is synonymous with inattention—but routine is very, very important.

But if you said back then, or rather, you just said that for 60 percent of the mountain tours you went up, you descended again without flying. Now, you always have this heavy glider—maybe back then the gear wasn't that super heavy because you only had very, very light short gear with you and stuff like that, but still, you were dragging maybe ten kilos of glider with all the bells and whistles up there. Didn't it eventually become a nuisance, seeing that it wasn't working, and why did you stick with flying at all?

Well, at the very beginning, the equipment was almost as light as it is today because the gliders were built so simply that they couldn't be that heavy. We flew with climbing harnesses, with climbing helmets, and without rescue gear, without a protector. That was... my first glider was really a tiny package. So, in that sense, it didn't weigh that much. I mean, we only came up with the glorious idea later on that you could also take a mountain railway up somewhere to fly down and learn flying more safely first. So, it took two years for people to be smart enough to actually go up somewhere specifically for the sake of learning to fly. Then it happened relatively quickly that the gliders just got better, and the better the gliders became... well, the beginning of my flying was

...also the beginning of the end of my mountaineering. Until I eventually realized, hey, flying is my thing now, and flying became my thing, not just falling down some really steep slopes without making a turn. If

So you're saying you started in '86, but from when would you say—how fast was that progress—that you'd reached the phase where you'd say, I'm flying to fly and not just somehow descending through the air? I

I can't tell you exactly in years, but in terms of the phases I went through, at first it was just flying at all, then getting as many flights as possible—I remember there were days when we flew off the Wallberg ten times a day, like, really

launched, shot down Stangelgrad, gathered the glider, raced to the mountain railway, up again and down again. You were cool when you had a lot of flights. Better the mountain railway and

not going up.

Then the mountain lift was the way to go, yeah. It was about staying up in the air for a long time, so not switching between many flights anymore; the next thing was staying up as long as possible. And that was a cool turning point, sometimes you'd have an hour or two or three or five or six, and I remember, at some point my first five or six-hour flight was also at the Wallberg, where then, when it comes from the northwest, the wind sweeps nicely and steadily over the lake and then you have this wide flank, it sweeps up there, then I... I was still completely unclear on how thermals work back then, but you could just soar nicely there. I flew back and forth for five or six hours, I even pissed myself because I absolutely wanted to manage those five or six hours, because then I'd be cool.

And today, if I fly around in the same place for an hour, I get really bored pretty quickly. I can maybe set myself some small tasks, like spiraling down and seeing how fast I can get back up, or flying a mini-triangle at the Kampenwand—I fly to the summit cross and then back and forth to the overhanging wall and see how fast I can do it, then I do it again. But to say I'm going to fly back and forth for six hours now, for God's sake! And then came the phase, which was almost like a new discovery of paragliding: cross-country flying. So, actually flying thermals, getting up, and then somehow flying away. But you can't really do that with the anniversary parts; those are always such fluid transitions.

But they are, in

The reason is also how a career in paragliding is today. First you learn it, then you want to get as many flights as possible, so to learn how to launch and land, then you're already proud when you can soar for a longer time or something like that and say, yeah, I've completed my first hour. Even though the steps are naturally much faster today, not with a few years in between, but for some people a few days or a few weeks. And then at some point you say, okay, now I can maybe do my first small cross-country flight, and with today's gliders it's enough to basically circle a thermal and then just fly off somewhere and say, I'm not landing at the official landing field, I belong right here next to the launch site, and already you think or feel like, ah, my first cross-country flight. Or I've completed my first valley flight or something like that.

But you basically did this career, which people can do in a few weeks today, over several years. Decades. And then decades, but also because of how paraglider development was. The technical development. So

the technical development, and I myself am not that talented, so I need much longer for many things. For example, between my... that was 2000, when was that, 2006, or 2007, my longest triangle at that time was 165 or something. And then I thought, yeah, 200 would be something. And that took until 2019 for me to manage. And other people fly 250 in their second year, so that's... I have to soberly admit that others are much more talented than I am. But that doesn't matter, because I still have my fun.

Is it always really about talent? Sometimes it's just about being in the right place at the right time, being able to take the time off, to say, wow, today is the super day, and then I just go to the corresponding terrain where you can, let's say, relatively—in quotation marks—just fly on such a super day. And where on other days, with 80 kilometers, you're actually the much better pilot because you did those 80 where others only managed 20 on a day where you have to say, someone really pushed it there. Or rather, they did an incredible amount out of the little that the day had to offer. And on other days, you fly construction sites and then you can fly 200 kilometers relatively easily.

That's certainly true. So, people who go flying completely freely on any reasonably promising day and are also willing to drive to where the conditions might be best, obviously have much higher chances of flying far than those who have a normal job and can only go on weekends or during holidays. That's certainly true. But that has nothing to do with the fact that I—I'm just not as good a pilot as many others. That's just how it is.

Does that bother you?

but you can't either, right? Or did that ever bother you? Maybe you're an older statesman now and say, that's not so important to me anymore. But was there ever a phase where you were very ambitious and realized, crap, others are progressing faster? They've already... upped it from 150 to 200 and I'm still hanging around at 165. I

I mean, of course I'm happy when I fly well and far. But I've never been the type to make my well-being dependent on that. I can also... for example, I'm not in a bad mood at all if I crash. That's just how it is. And I'm very proud of the fact that I can also say no without any problems. Often even before takeoff, I'm the first one to say, "That feels weird to me, I'm not flying now." And here at the Kammwand, during Corona, we were sitting up there once and it was gusting, and it was actually gusting quite strongly. And at the Kammwand, the air is so "egg-like." So, you can take off,

but it's not really a nice flight. And you get this feeling like the lines are made of rubber. I've never had it actually thrash me around, like a washing machine. But it's a weird, shaky feeling and it's actually not a nice flight either. And then I say, I'm going back down on foot now. Or I'll take the train. You didn't take the train. I'm going down on foot. And they say, you're the most experienced of us all. And now you don't want to fly. Yes, I fly for the beautiful experiences. So my motto is—and that comes from Wolfgang Bernhard, a good friend who used to be in the Nova Pilots team and unfortunately doesn't fly anymore after a bad accident—and Wolfgang always said he doesn't make the decision to fly based on whether he believes he can get out somewhat safely and land somewhat safely, but on whether he is convinced that it will be a beautiful flight.

And there's an incredible distance between these two poles. And I think, which of us flies because they have to? Like, a "Theodore Blick" type—maybe they have to fly. And whoever says, "I'm doing the X-Alps," they have to too—must, in quotation marks—it definitely won't be good if they don't risk everything. But which of us normal pilots has to fly? And when I say I do it for the beautiful experiences, that's been my motto for seven or eight years, and since then, I've had exclusively beautiful flights.

Because on the days when it might not turn out so well, you say, I'm not flying at all today. I do something else from the very start. Yes, so

I have significant concerns, for example, about the threshold for many pilots who fly in Föhn, or light Föhn, or slightly Föhn-y—whatever the gradations are, I don't know exactly what they are. One major characteristic of Föhn is that everything can change very, very quickly. And we had a team meeting—I still remember this—we were at the Pencken in the Zillertal and sat in the Geschösswandhaus, and it was Föhn-y. All the gear is, of course, incredibly flight-ready. The wind speeds aren't that high, and the Zillertal as a Föhn corridor is, of course, famous, notorious. And we were sitting on the terrace, and there were three people there over at the Pencken just soaring back and forth. Always, practically only oriented towards the south.

And suddenly the wind picks up, and they just took off forward and blasted out north of the Zillertal at, I don't know, 70, 80, 90 km/h. And I just thought, my god, I didn't want to be in their shoes right now. That didn't look very comfortable. And when people say, yeah, the Brauneck is so well-protected—well, it is relatively well-protected and you can fly longer than elsewhere. But I'm very consistent: if it's Föhn, I don't fly. There's always a certain residual risk, and it might go well locally sometimes, but no, I'm not doing it. Or also if the overall wind speeds are just so high. There are great pilots who then let themselves get blown from one soaring spot to the next in a west wind until they're somehow in the Enztal or something.

That's a great achievement. They have their gliders well under control. Still, that doesn't mean I want to or have to do that because of it. So if it's just too windy, I just don't fly. At most, flatland on the winch, but that's something else entirely. I don't have any lee there.

Do you fly less today than you used to? I mean, if you look back at your years and say, okay, ever since I decided I only fly when I know it's going to be a good flight, do you actually end up saying you only get about half the flight time you might have had before? Even when you look at how the weather and climate are changing, where you also say there's more high wind, it switches back and forth much faster, where one would naturally have to say much more often that there are many more marginal days, where you might be able to say you can go flying, but it's not that clean. You could just stay on the ground.

So I get less airtime mainly because of that, since flying far out from the northern edge of the Alps, like the Hoch Velln, is just... we have a chance there, but it's already significantly harder to fly 200 from the Velln than at the border. It's just like that. And generally on the south side of the Alps, because unfortunately, flying on the north side tends to always be a lee-side flight. And in the south, it's not.

Although, in the south, they also often fly in a north wind, and then you get cross-country flying there too. In a way. That's true.

But I'm not ready to drive to South Tyrol just for one day. There are people who do that, but for me, it's too stressful, and it also doesn't have to be environmentally friendly to really blast down to the border for just one day, which is why I haven't been down there a single time this year, because it would always have been just for one day. And obviously just for one day. And so, I mean, this year didn't go particularly well for me. But overall, I don't have less airtime than before. What's added to that is that since we closed the agency, I just have a lot more time. So here in Priental,

I can just walk out the front door, go up some hill, and fly down quickly. It's only about 12 minutes or something, but I still flew. So, I've definitely had many more flights in terms of numbers this year than in previous years. But on the other hand, the longer flights are missing. I completely blew three good days with the maximum penalty, getting washed out up on the Steinplatte and having to hike down into the valley. Even for two days in a row. That's just how it is.

Where do you see the

What are the biggest dangers in paragliding for the average pilot? Not people who are throwing themselves into the Alps conditions now, but like this?

It's always difficult when the skill level and the conditions don't match up well. In whatever form that may be.

Would you say that pilots today take this risk more often? Or rather, that there's a tendency to fly in more difficult conditions? That while maybe gliders can handle it a bit better nowadays because they've become more stable—or because they haven't become more stable and therefore don't encourage the pilot as much to fly so actively themselves, because the glider already does so much—but that the risk tolerance among pilots has actually become greater?

Maybe not the conscious willingness to take risks. I don't think that has actually changed. What there's relatively little of—what put us in danger at the beginning—is the disappointment from lack of knowledge and ignorance. So, if you don't know at all what kind of danger you're putting yourself in, that's of course extremely dangerous. And that was the case for us at the beginning. That means, for example, you didn't know what Föhn is?

I knew what Föhn was,

but I haven't put that into any proportion to my own lack of experience. I mean, I was looking at old slides the other day and there was one picture. Wind coming from the front, the windsock is also in it, it's standing perfectly still, radiant blue sky. I'm ready for takeoff in some parrot-colored clothes, and there's this monster-sized lenticularis in the sky, where I just thought, holy crap, man, you've got the... I mean, today I wouldn't even think about launching a glider in the valley. And you just flew out there, stone-cold. We really had no clue, and we weren't aware of it. And not getting seriously hurt during that time also had a non-negligible amount to do with a lot, a lot of luck. Did you ever get hurt?

No, not at all. Zero. So, you were lucky? Yes. Especially regarding that initial period. And by now, there's... I mean, the training has become much, much better. There's just so much more knowledge and experience available overall. If someone isn't completely stupid, they can learn a lot from the mistakes others have made. The critical thing—and I know this from young team pilots at Nova too—is that we often have this second generation of flyers now, the children of flying parents, who started ripping around on some glider at eight, nine, ten, or twelve, were already groundhandling, then started their training at 14, got their license at 16, and

fly 200 kilometers for the first time at 17. So there are already some who just... I mean, when I watch them handle their gliders so playfully, I really feel like an elephant in a china shop, and these are all like ballet dancers who... I mean, it's great, I really admire that, both in terms of ground handling and just how incredibly well they master their gliders. And then often comes this phase where they have their first successes, then maybe in some kind of

in a social environment where there's a lot of "applausen," as they say in Bavarian—where they do a lot of things together, push each other, and then have early successes, fly far, and then reach that point where they feel immortal. That can really backfire. I mean, quite a few people fall and hurt themselves because of that feeling of immortality... I mean, someone doesn't have to die right away, but they can definitely get seriously injured.

That really hurts me. I'm always the one acting as the brake with the younger ones. Sometimes I feel like Waldorf and Statler from the Muppet Show, those two old guys hanging in the balcony who think they know everything and always say, "Kids, please always fly with a protector. Even with Hike and Fly. Put on proper helmets and take a big rescue parachute with you. And land sometimes." Some people listen and others don't. But that doesn't just apply to the Nova team pilots, or to the young Nova people, it ultimately applies to everyone.

Well, you've been flying for over 30 years. Are you... or was there ever a phase in between where you got tired of flying?

No. There were phases where it was difficult. For example, the nearly two years I lived between Hamburg and Lübeck, that was just kind of wandering around the coast and dealing with some Muggles and stuff. And back then, towing wasn't that popular yet. And I have to say, it didn't really do it for me either. So there were phases where I didn't fly as much. But I'm not actually... I've always flown and I've always enjoyed it. And I still do... I just have an incredible amount of fun. Even at KGK, I managed to get the right to take a day off on short notice between April and August, as long as everyone didn't suffer too much from it. And then I'd send an email and then an employee...

replied to everyone. But I wasn't actually supposed to be there. It just said, "hopefully he has a great flight, then he'll be in a good mood for another week."

And that's still the case. I mean, flying is just my thing. It makes me... I can also get so... There's a mountain over there, it's such an unassuming muggle, but a few years ago a hurricane ripped the trees off the top and since then you can take off from up there too. And at some point, I took off one evening just before sunset. There's a small rock face down there. And that rock face radiated enough heat that I was able to gain about 50 meters of altitude over the summit and flew there for about forty-five minutes. And I hadn't expected anything at all. It was more like, instead of jogging up there quickly, putting up the glider, gliding down, landing, and showering. And then I take off from there and the vario beeps. And then I flew until the sun had actually set and the thing was still radiating a bit of heat.

Then I landed in front of my front door and was just so euphoric. No heroic feat, nothing special, but it was just such a huge gift. And I remember that way more intensely than, I don't know, some 130-kilometer flight from Speikboden where you just sink and then just trudge along the standard route trying to make the best of it. So my well-being doesn't depend on the numbers I achieve with my flying. I think anyway that very many pilots only define themselves by numbers, and in the flight schools, they convey to you that it has to be the stated goal—that if you're good enough, then you can fly a C or D glider or whatever—and everyone is always just, like, that obsession with performance, even in relation to one's own performance, I find that somehow a shame.

So it should be much more about finding out, each for themselves, what their personal style of flying is and what makes them happiest. And I also find it a shame when, in quotation marks, "good" pilots—meaning those who either fly competition successfully or are successful in cross-country flying—look down on others just because they don't fly as far. If they're content with being happy, then that's great. Also, I think in training, you should go into these backgrounds much more and convey the joy of flying to people, rather than always just focusing on who flew the longest.

But somehow, many people—or maybe it's just human nature—tend to compare themselves. And especially with paragliding, I mean the beauty of a flight or the euphoric feeling you have yourself, there's no benchmark against someone else where you can say, "But I was happier than you." It's nonsense to argue like that, but somewhere it exists, and in the end, that XC number or the points in XContest, or whatever, is one of the few benchmarks where you can actually say, "This can be compared." Or you can just say, I was at 1,600 and you were only at 1,400 meters; that can be compared. Or I flew for two hours or you for five hours on the Walberg—you even wet your pants, but you flew for five hours, while the other person only flew for three.

Back then, you were probably the cool one. I'm not free from that either. I was better or something like that.

That's right, you're correct, that's already in human nature. To some extent. I can only advise everyone to actually question themselves, what they actually want from flying, what kind of

...what makes flying the happiest for him. And then he should just do that. Back in the day at the Brennkopf at Walchsee, now towards Kössen from here, there were these three older gentlemen—well, the mountain is unfortunately closed as a flight site now because there were disputes between farmers and paragliders, and the farmers held the upper hand. But back then, there were these three guys, three retirees, as they say in Austria, who were practically up there every flyable evening. And I was usually there in the mornings, because the Brennkopf is a good thermals mountain, but sometimes I'd also just zip up quickly in the evening and do a flight. And every evening they were there when I got up there. And then at some point I asked them why they weren't starting, since the thermals were about to end. And they said, yeah, we always wait until the thermals are finished, because we're old and we don't want to fly thermals anymore; we come up here comfortably in the evening, then we drink a bottle of wine between the three of us, and then we fly down and land at the bottom.

And that makes us happy. That's really cool. And those guys, they were having a blast.

Is that your dream of getting old, that you'll eventually say, "Wonderful, I can still go up a mountain comfortably behind my house every evening." I don't necessarily have to drink a bottle of wine at the top, but at least say it. If you split it into thirds. Then I'll glide back down and that's actually enough for me.

Yeah, well...

...the goal is to keep flying with joy. What really strikes me in this regard...

has kept me positive is that I flew the Stubai Cup last year and then again in the autumn with the AONIC. That's the High A glider from Nova. And that's not the only glider of this type, but there are now A gliders that don't fly like a tractor anymore, but are actually really nice to fly and are also really fun. And that was really like, because the normal training gliders from ten years ago, that was really like you'd think you have to apply for that in writing, that's flying around the corner. They were built so idiot-proof that pulling on the lines in itself didn't really have any influence on the glider at all, unless you pulled really hard.

And there were some things where I thought, sure, it's safe, but it's not fun. And now with the AONIC and also from other brands, I've heard there are corresponding gliders that are incredibly safe in terms of their passive safety, but at the same time are fun and perform surprisingly well nowadays. And I thought to myself, that's cool, when I'm really old, there will be a glider that still gives me joy, but that might compensate somewhat for my declining reflexes and my declining routine. So I see myself, and if it fits, I see myself still flying cross-country. So, if it's possible and it feels good.

Because you just said there might be other brands that have something. Do you still fly other gliders sometimes as a Nova guy, just to see how they actually fly—how does a Swing fly, how does a Rush fly, an Ozone or whatever? Or do you say I don't need to, because I'm happy with what I actually get from my brand?

No, I do do that if the opportunity arises. It's not like I actively do a lot for it, but if it happens with people who fly the same large area as I do, that we swap once in a while, yeah, I do do that. I find it interesting and I also think that the gliders differ quite strongly in character.

Now we're getting towards the end, but I'd like to highlight one aspect of your life that doesn't have anything to do with flying directly, but where you can just see how multifaceted you actually are. You do an enormous amount of other outdoor sports or other types of outdoor activities as well. You've participated in all sorts of expeditions and things like that, so that people can get a bit of an impression of what else you actually do—we could probably talk for six hours about the different things you've done. I'll give you a few keywords, and then you just tell me briefly what stands out as perhaps the most formative experience for each point that just comes to mind.

Okay.

Expedition

with Arvid Fuchs.

A gift that it turned out that I joined the team with a person whom I value very, very, very much and who is an extremely fine guy. Was that

short enough? You can also talk about it longer. Where did you go back then? Where did this expedition go? I was

on several expeditions with him. On his old sailing ship converted for expeditions, built in '31, the Dagmar Horn. I was on

took part in IceSail. That was the successful attempt after four years to sail through the Northeast Passage and the Northwest Passage. Although I wasn't on board the whole time, because you have to find a way to earn money in between. Then I was part of Sea -Eisen Mountains.

I was there for the leg from Hawaii via French Polynesia, Pitcairn—that's the island where the descendants of the Mutiny on the Bounty still live—Easter Island, then Chile, sailed around Cape Horn, and then did a 55-day expedition on the Patagonian Ice Field, trying to cross it completely from north to south. We failed, like everyone else before us, but at least we got further than everyone else before us. And then, what was it called when I was on Svalbard? Anyway, several expeditions over several years and we're still close friends, and I'm actually thinking right now, since I have more time again, maybe I'll go on board with someone again if the opportunity arises.

Yeah,

It was its own expedition with three people I barely knew beforehand. It was relatively exciting. Yes, I mean, I'm generally fascinated by the high latitudes. Because of my metabolism, I'm someone who prefers going into the cold rather than the heat, because I can protect myself from the cold, but not from the heat. And I don't really like it physically when it's hot. And it was my first time in Greenland with Arved, and I just find Greenland stunning in its... it's majestic and everything, like this clear air and the ice and the purity, and also people always underestimate the distance; everything looks so close and then you hike toward some mountain and you hike and you hike all day, and at the end of the day, the perspective hasn't changed at all because you're not any closer, even though you've been hiking all day.

I also find the Greenlanders to be an extremely pleasant people, as long as they aren't, well, unfortunately, a lot of alcohol is consumed, but when they're sober, they're somehow good guys, I mean I like them, they're so, they're cheerful and in a good mood, so you could say, negatively put, childish, but yeah, Greenland is awesome. And then, as someone who also read adventure books as a small child, Friedhoff - Nansen on snowshoes through Greenland, that was somehow always in the back of my mind and then we just did it.

You just felt like it and said, I want to do this, right? Yeah. Great. Another cold adventure, I think it was cold, Lake Baikal.

Yeah, so we were there in the winter and wanted to cross the lake from south to north on mountain bikes over the frozen surface. Wanted to—so you didn't make it? We were there in the year when Lake Baikal wasn't completely frozen for the first time. Oh, I see. Then, well, you keep running into fishermen on the ice along the way, and more and more people advised us, "Hey, don't head north, there are a lot of open patches and cars regularly break through the ice." I mean, way back in the day, the ice cover was so thick that when the Trans-Siberian Railway was built, they actually pulled entire railway wagons on tracks across the lake. That's just not the case anymore. So the lake, the winter paths, are warmer; the lake doesn't freeze as thick as it used to.

Plus, it's the deepest lake in the world, the most water-rich lake in the world. It actually has tidal effects and underwater currents, so especially at certain points, warm currents often come up. We actually had one of us break through the ice with his bike. I was filming and said, "Ride along there past that crack, it looks so cool." Whoosh, he was gone.

Yeah, but you got him out again. Yeah,

Thank God, yeah. And did you guys camp on the ice or how did that work? We rarely camped on the ice, mainly because it's so loud. There are such tensions in the ice that it really thunders like cannon shots under your sleeping bag. It always goes like... it's not cracking. It's a really loud booming. I mean, those are insane tensions that develop there, and if a crack then goes through such a huge ice floe... So we mostly went onto land. Simply because it's more pleasant, because it was always for sleeping. I

I saw a picture, well, a short video clip of this expedition in some BR report once. And you can see you riding around there with your mountain bikes. I think one of you still had a trailer with you, and the trailer just wobbles terribly back and forth on that ice, like it's constantly sliding side to side or something.

Yeah, well, there were nine of us and I think we had five trailers with us because we just had so many thick sleeping bags and expedition-grade tents and stuff like that. And it was actually like, the bikes were equipped with spikes back then, but there weren't any for the small wheels on the trailer. And it was sometimes so incredibly slippery that the wind kept blowing the trailer to the side and it wanted to overtake us. And what was really stupid was that when the wind came from the right—no, when it came from the left, the trailer's tow bar would always hit the spikes and then start sawing through the tow bar. And then at some point we wrapped the trailer's tires with cable ties and wire so that it would stay somewhat in the lane, so that the spike tires with that sharp stainless steel wouldn't eventually saw through the soft aluminum tow bar.

Let's just leave it at that. Next point is the Nordenskjölloppet, a 200-kilometer cross-country ski race. Is that how you say it? Cross-country ski race?

Cross-country skiing, yes. I mean, I'm an endurance athlete too, I like running, and since we moved out here, we have the cross-country trails right on the other side of the street. So in the winter, you can't go jogging here in the valley, there's just too much snow, there are no more jogging paths since they started running on the main road, so it's kind of obvious to put cross-country skis on your feet. And I had so much fun with that, and what most people know is the Vasaloppet, which is 90 kilometers of classic skiing in Sweden, and I've done that a few times and it went quite well. And then at some point, during the winter, I heard about the Nordenskjölloppet in Swedish Lapland; there's a historical story behind it, but that's a bit outside the scope right now, but anyway, it's the longest...

cross-country skiing races, and I thought, I'll give that a try. Just to see if I can do it. You run it all at once in one day, right? It

it's nonstop, yeah. Basically 100 kilometers. Probably in one night, because it's polar night up there or something. No, they do

at the end of March, beginning of April, so it's already very, very bright for a long time, longer than here because it goes pretty fast. I was just interested in the question of whether I'm capable of it, and my only goal was to make it. We have Swedish friends and one of them is an excellent skier, they're both very good, but one is really good; he said to me beforehand, "Oh, I know everyone on the start list," and there were only about 400, they're all former pros and such, it's a high-caliber field, there are practically no recreational runners here and I'm a recreational runner. I mean, I only started cross-country skiing at 40 or something, I think 42. My style is also bad, so when I talk about the Sachranger club and the...

WSV Aschau's junior runners, they're zipping between my legs, and I'm just standing there like a pillar, but I just wanted to see if I could do it. And then, what I found really crazy was that I knew I could maintain a heart rate of 140 for a very, very long time. And I thought, well, I think the maximum time was 22 hours or so, or 23, and I thought, well, for 200 kilometers, a 10-minute pace with breaks and such, I'll aim for 20 hours. Or rather, I can maintain a heart rate of 140 for that time, so I strapped on the heart rate monitor and just started running, and then they all took off at full speed, I think after 5 kilometers.

more or less alone on a lake, the other 490 people were all already ahead of me, behind there was still an 80-year-old accompanied by his 60-year-old son, who was looking after him, and otherwise we were alone on the lake. And that's when I thought, oh my god.

But don't let it get to you, just do your thing, you'll make it. And then I even overtook a few people towards the end, but I don't know, was I 10th to last, 20th to last, or something like that, but I didn't care, I made it. It was very satisfying.

If you look at it in comparison to adventures and expeditions like that, how adventurous is paragliding to you today?

Wow,

So those are different things. If you take part in something like a North Shield trek, the trail is laid out, and every 10 or 20 kilometers there's a supply point, and if you can't go on anymore, you just sit down in a heated tent and eventually someone comes by on a snowmobile and takes you home. The Greenland expedition was a different thing entirely because that was back in the days before satellite phones and all that, and we had also agreed that we wanted to do it by fair means—meaning we weren't going to let anyone help us under any circumstances—and that's already the moment you set off, you're breaking contact with the environment, more or less. So the essence of an expedition is also that the question of whether it works remains open.

So, everything where you think, yeah, going across the Greenland ice cap—I know so many people by now and that kind of attitude has spread—now we're going to head out and if it doesn't work, we'll just call for help on the phone and they'll get a heli and pick us up. That's what led to the costs for an expedition—for the permit and the insurance—being so absurdly high, because just so many people have abused it, and I think there's even some kind of clause now where you even have to put up a guarantee, that one of those who rescues you has to confirm that it was actually necessary to rescue you and that it wasn't your own stupidity that you had to be rescued. Yeah, because simply way too many people say, I'm going to do this now and

if it doesn't work out, they'll just get me out of here. And even on the Patagonian Ice Field, we hit a key point and got stuck in a blizzard for nine days; we couldn't find the supply depot anymore, and then there was a two-person group and a three-person group—the two-person group had climbed up below, and then their light tent got shredded, so we were stuck in a three-person tent for nine days, knew we didn't have enough food with us, and at the same time, the radio broke. And that was real expedition stuff. Where you're already thinking, how is this going to end? How do we get out of here? Is someone coming to help us? We can't let anyone know that we need help. In that sense, paragliding is,

that's something else entirely. I mean, I see it now, okay, you can go to the end of the world and say, I'm not even out there solo bivouac-flying, then that's also an expedition. But at least in the Alps, you're not so far off the beaten path that there are so many unknowns lurking for you. It's different. So I wouldn't compare them. That means it is

not adventurous for you?

Yes, it's adventurous in the sense that the outcome—like how far I'll get on a cross-country flight—is very uncertain. So if a criterion for adventure is not knowing how it's going to end, then it has a lot in common with that. But in terms of the overall logistics, I mean, if I say, let's go flying tomorrow, then we can go flying tomorrow. But you can't say, let's go to the Patagonian Ice Field tomorrow. There's still a bit more organizational effort involved in that.

Would you say that flying is, how shall I put it, your favorite motor sport or motor activity that you do?

Yes, absolutely. Why? It simply gives me the most joy. And the greatest inner satisfaction. And maybe it also plays a role that you don't just... If every day were a super awesome flying day, then the really good days wouldn't be so special anymore. It's just like if you always flew 200 kilometers, then it's nothing special when it actually works out. It's just the fact that you have failures that makes these successes so special. Or simply the beautiful experiences. The unusual flights. Like what happened to me four or five years ago, I started later in the evening at the Kampenwand and thought, this is just going to be a simple evening glide. Took the last lift up, launched, flew out, and then it was just Magic Air.

And then it just kept carrying me. No risk of thunderstorms or anything like that. It was a beautiful summer day. The shadows were already long and I flew to Prien without losing any altitude. So out to Chiemsee and back, and I arrived at the same altitude. And it carried me everywhere. I have no idea how to explain that meteorologically. But... and it was also very calm in the air. As if there were huge inversion thermals across the entire Alpine foothills. But no matter where I flew, it didn't drop anywhere. It just carried me. Like I had an invisible motor. And that was... I found that to be a completely, completely insane experience.

That means the appealing thing about paragliding for you is also that you say you can't predict what kind of experience you'll ultimately have.

Absolutely. So the... the fact that no flight is the same. And also that you're always still learning. It never really ends. So you know more. And I have the impression that the more I know, the more I realize what I don't know. So there's still an infinite amount I can learn. And that's also kind of cool.

Is there a particularly appealing flight, a special technique, or something else in terms of paragliding that you'd like to do or learn?

Well, there are some flight areas where I'd love to just go flying sometime. Like, in combination with traveling. Traveling is also a huge passion of mine. So, I'd love to go to Birra, in the Indian Himalayas. I haven't been there yet. But there are endless regions where I'd love to go flying. And as for goals right on my doorstep, completing the round of Chiemsee. Unfortunately, I'm missing eight kilometers. I've almost made it. But it's only finished when it's really finished. Then we also have a house in Osttirol. Flying from here at home to Osttirol or back. Or better yet, there one day and back the next. How far would that be?

As a route?

Not that far. It has to be along the main Alpine ridge. So that's just before Lienz. I don't know. As the crow flies. It's not that far. Maybe 100, 120 kilometers. So I can't tell you exactly. In any case, what's doable isn't some absurd dream. Yeah, those are the two concrete things right on my doorstep, so to speak, where I say I'd like to do that sometime. Those are also

so goals that can still motivate you. Where you say, okay, you've managed the 200 at some point. And topping that big one might not work out anymore. But where you say, okay, these smaller things like finishing the Chiemsee round or flying to East Tyrol and back again. That would still be something.

Yeah, well, I wouldn't say I have no chance of topping my 218 or whatever it was at some point. If it's the right day and everything lines up, then maybe it's possible. And I'd love to do that, but I'm not ready to put myself in danger for it. So, I'm very proud of being able to say no well. We already touched on that earlier—not just at the start, but also in the air. So, several years ago, we were in the Standard class in the DHV XC; we were pretty much at the end of the season, four people quite far ahead. I could still be way out front because the level wasn't that high back then. And out of those four people, one was a bit ahead and the next three were pretty close together. Then, all three of us were at Speikboden at the end of August. And it was somehow clear: whoever flies the furthest today will probably be second and third.

And the one who wasn't as good ended up fourth. It looked a bit stormy there in the Dolomites. I didn't feel comfortable with it. Screw it, I'm not flying there now. I'll just be fourth. So what? I made that decision consciously. The other two kept flying and ended up second and third. But I was proud and satisfied that I had the inner strength not to put myself in danger. There was no storm and everything turned out okay. But even so, I viewed this "failure" as a success for myself. I talked myself into it and said I was being sensible. The others were being unreasonable. No, that's putting them down. But for me, it just wasn't entirely certain, and in hindsight, I was very happy with it. It's exactly like my wife, who also once did a 100-kilometer mountain run with the Zugspitze.

And she got out after 90 kilometers. Because she had already done a Chiemgauer 100er here once and finished it. So she knew she had what it takes. And then after 90 kilometers, she felt her knee and thought, well, what's it called in Garmisch, above Greinau, I can't make it. In any case, there was an 1,800-meter or something descent, and she thought, if I do that now, of course I can manage it. But then maybe my knee will hurt so much afterwards that I won't be able to run for three months. It's not worth it. And she got out. And then she arrived at the finish line an hour later in a mountain rescue vehicle in a great mood. And she was at peace with herself and the world. And then a lot of people say, but you would have made it. And you say, yes, of course I would have made it. But the price would have been uncertain. And that's why I got out. And I can live with that very well.

And she did too. That means you're a mature pilot. Well, that's always been the case for me. I used to fly in competition every now and then, and there were situations where you'd fly behind a valley and know exactly that the thermals should be over there. But you're so low that if you fly behind it and find nothing, you won't be able to get out of the valley, and there are no landing sites in the valley. Then you have the choice of getting stuck in the rocks higher up, or crashing into it, or somehow ending up on the valley floor between trees. And I've always said, okay, here is the point of no return. And if I don't find anything by then, I turn around. And if I crash in the main valley ahead, then I crash. So that's my

Ambition never becoming too great, being great enough to put myself in danger. Which is certainly one of the points, that nothing has happened to me while paragliding. So, the lack of ambition. But that's not some old-age wisdom. I've always handled it in a way where I can also say no quite well. A lack of ambition is

...is also healthy for paragliding. For sure, yes.

Till, I'd say let's leave it at that. A lack of ambition is healthy for paragliding. That's a nice closing word. Maybe some of the listeners can take that with them and rethink their own ambition—where it's still healthy or where it isn't anymore. Thank you for the many lovely stories from all the different areas of your very rich life that you've led. And here's to many more lovely, healthy, or rather safe flights with great spontaneous experiences that can sometimes unexpectedly occur in the evening against some warmed rock faces. Thank you very much.

to you as well, and to all the listeners too.

That was episode number 65 of Podz-Glidz, featuring Till Gottbrath in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you want to learn more about the NOVA -Piloten -Team and some of Till's other projects, take a look at the show notes for this episode on the Lu-Glidz blog. I've put together a series of further links there. You can find the Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz, which Podz-Glidz belongs to, online at www.Lu-Glidz.blogspot.com. Lu-Glidz is spelled L -U minus G -L -I -D -Z. Do you want to hear even more interesting stories from the cosmos of paragliding? You can already find more than 60 hours of talk about the various aspects of

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