The biggest mistake beginners make when they can't climb well is that they turn way too wide.
That's actually thermal tip number one: turn tightly. Most people turn way too wide to climb effectively.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from the
paragliding universe.
Today with Burki Martens and Lucian Haas at the microphone. If
If you ask a paraglider pilot which books about flying must definitely be on their shelf and should ideally be read, two titles always make it to the top of the list. The Thermals book and the Cross-country flight book for paragliders and hang gliders, written by Burkhard Martens, known generally in the scene as Burki. Burki has achieved something that at first glance would hardly seem possible. On the one hand, he has broken down the topics of thermals and cross-country flying so understandably, explained them so clearly and illustrated them so well, that many pilots - across many different years - were able to make much faster progress in their flying thanks to reading his, one could say, standard works. On the other hand, he has created world bestsellers, even if only within the cosmos of the paragliding scene.
His books have already been published in twelve languages in multiple editions. Burki can make a living from them today. In this episode, number 66 of Podz-Glidz, Burkhard Martens tells his story. How he initially just wrote down his flight tips on slips of paper and handed them out to club colleagues, how that became the thermals and later the cross-country flight book project, and how it achieved worldwide distribution. Of course, the podcast covers more than that. Burki also gives tips on thermal flying, talks among other things about his ambitious pursuit of various records, and explains why he has been taking it much easier in his flying for a few years now.
If you enjoy this podcast, you can support my work on it in many different ways. You can help make Podz-Glidz better known, for example via links on social media or by recommending the podcast to your flying friends in conversations on the way to the launch site.
Of course, you can also support Podz-Glidz and the associated blog Lu-Glidz financially. You can find out how you can easily become a supporter without any obligation on the Lu-Glidz.com website, specifically on the Support page.
Burkat or Burki, which do you actually prefer? I prefer Burki. Where does this short form come from?
Burki?
People always called me Burkat, but I don't really like the name that much. And then at some point, someone came up with Burki and I said, yeah, I actually prefer that over this long Burkat. Besides, they always mix me up in Bavaria anyway. If I say I'm Burkat, they always think that's my last name. And I see them immediately. Okay. Using the informal "du" with Burki is just easy.
Did you only get called Burki once you were already in Bavaria, or was that much earlier? You're originally from Lower Saxony, after all.
Yeah, that only started happening in Bavaria.
That means, like, a Bavarian who says, "Burkat is a stupid name, I'll call you Burki," at least everyone here understands that.
Oh, I don't know anymore. That was so long ago. I've been in Bavaria for almost 30 years now.
I've been asking myself this question. Which do you prefer? I have another one right away. Which do you prefer? The question: paragliding or mountain biking?
Right now, it's hard to answer because mountain biking has become more and more of a thing. But for the last 30 years or so, it was paragliding. That was the most intense thing I've ever done in my life. And I still love doing it. But
You've mentioned yourself lately that you've been out on your bike more often. Yes. That means you're starting to prefer it more and more. Why is that?
Yeah, that came about because of my wife. She's a midwife and she became unemployed because the maternity clinic closed. And then she had the idea that we should do mountain bike guides. And because of that—if you want to write a book, you have to do research. And if you're researching all summer, you hardly get around to flying. And we always said, but next year we have to fly more again. And because of that, I've been mountain biking incredibly much. And yeah, it's becoming more and more fun for me now. Have you
have you actually ever tried to combine both somehow? There's even, as far as I know, a manufacturer, Skybean, that has a bike-and-fly harness where you can say you can clip your bike onto it at the back. So he built it specifically so that's possible. Have you ever tried that?
No, no, I'm not interested in that at all. I mean, the bike is great, of course, if I drive up to the launch site in the car and then use the bike to get the car back down. That's bike-and-fly.
Okay, first go up by car, fly down, but you left the bike at the bottom and then you ride back up to get the car. Yeah, we do that quite often on vacation too. It's actually a clever technique. Yeah. Now you said that you write these mountain bike guides with your wife, where you really say, look, we describe the routes and it's mainly e-mountain bikes. Are you actually as well-known in this mountain bike or e-mountain bike scene with your guides as you are in the paraglider scene?
No, no, not by a long shot. I mean, in the scene, I know a few people there now, but that's very, very few. And the sale of such guides for mountain bikes happens in 95 percent of cases through bookstores. But with paraglider books, it happens in 95 percent of cases through paragliding schools, through the DAV paragliding shops, some large flight schools. But that's a completely different clientele.
I would argue, precisely because it's about this level of recognition, that you have certainly become one of the most well-known, or at least most well-known by name, paraglider pilots in the world through your books. Does that make you happy? Yes,
Yes, I do like that. I mean, it might sound a bit conceited, but it's somehow nice. When I was just in Tuscany, Italy, we were flying there and the club people always recognized me. That's really, really funny.
Your books, you just mentioned Italy, your books—so the thermals logbook and you wrote the cross-country flight logbook,
How many languages are they actually available in now?
The thermals book is now available in eleven languages. The cross-country flight book in eight languages. You get
you mean all of them together, like the languages?
Well, it's hard to list them all off the top of my head that quickly. So, the thermals book is basically quite simple. It's all the major European languages.
So German, French, Spanish, Italian, and of course English as the international language.
Portuguese and then the Eastern languages, Czech, Polish, and also in Asia. There's Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. So Russian. Yeah, it's really funny how that's developed.
Now, the examples you frequently mention in these books, or the places where you've flown and from which you derive all your knowledge, are specifically related to the Alps. You also describe phenomena like the Bavarian wind and stuff like that. Can a Japanese or Vietnamese person actually do anything with that?
The valley wind system is specifically related to the Alps. But valley wind systems in themselves occur in all mountains. And if you adapt that to your own terrain, to your own mountains, then you can very well take it into account or adapt it accordingly.
Who does the translations for these other languages, like Chinese and Vietnamese? Who handles that? Did you find someone, or does some pilot just come to you and say, "I read this book in English or whatever, and I'd like to get it out for our pilots in Vietnam. Can I translate it?" How does that work?
Yes, that's exactly how it works. I did the English version myself. Mats Sindergaard translated it for me. I did the typesetting, the layout, and distributed it through my own publishing house. And once the English book was out, people from the countries just approached me on their own and asked me if it was just as you said. They think the book is great. They want
...to translate it for their pilots. Are there then sometimes additions in these books, like local additions, where the Vietnamese person says, and I describe again special phenomena that occur somewhere here?
In many translations, they've used a lot of local images, so they took out the pictures of the Alps and the scenery. They've adapted the advertisements included in them by asking their manufacturers if they could do something. And also, for example, regarding the weather—if I described the Alpine weather or the forecast, they usually adapted it to their own weather forecasts, to their specific regional details.
They also integrated their websites, where you can probably then look up the corresponding information for Vietnam or Chinese weather services or whatever else.
Yeah, exactly. Or maybe even done an interview with a pilot from that country.
When you first started writing this book about thermals, did you ever think it could become such a success, even a worldwide one?
Success? No, I didn't think about that at all. My goal was to write a book the way I would have liked to have it when I started flying. Simple, with lots of pictures and things explained clearly. The literature that existed back then was too complicated for me. There was an incredible amount of text and very few pictures. That's hard for me to learn from. I learn more easily when I have a picture and a short explanation with it. And that's exactly how I did it.
Where does this, let's say, pedagogical sense of mission come from? I mean, you could also say I've developed or gained my knowledge for myself. That's a lot of experiential knowledge too. Where does this drive come from to say, "You know, I want to pass this on"? I want many more people to benefit from it.
I can't tell you exactly. It's just sort of inside me. I'm just naturally a bit of a teacher type. I was already like that as a kid. And then I thought, oh, I guess I am a teacher after all.
And yes, ever since I started flying, I've enjoyed passing on what I knew to other people. I've also written an incredible number of articles. And in the end, that's what this book came from. So it was a story; I didn't put much thought into writing a global bestseller. It just kind of happened. How hard
did you actually enjoy putting into words at the beginning, this knowledge, which is also so much experiential knowledge?
I like to learn or read things that are simply described. And that's how I've always done it. And sometimes it's not that easy to present complicated issues in simple words. And I started doing that 25 years ago. At first, I just handed out notes in the club with things I'd noticed, things people should pay attention to. So that's basically how it started.
What do you mean by handing out notes? You wrote something down at home, printed out 20 copies, and said at the club, "Here, pay attention, these are my findings, read through this, maybe it'll help you."
Yes, actually, that's how it was. First a few, maybe Club Schwaben, when we had club meetings, I then printed out some notes and handed them out to them.
Do you remember what the first topics were that you wrote on those notes?
Most of them were experiences. Things I noticed while flying that I hadn't necessarily read in other books. Or some things I researched and looked into—like, how does this work?—and then summarized them, briefly and concisely.
That means, in your thermals book, a lot of it consists of these little tip boxes. It's basically like your collection of notes, something like that. Yeah, exactly. You can write a tip on these little Post-its that you could even stick somewhere, and you can pass it on and say, read through it and try to apply it on your next flight.
Yeah, for example. Or "pay attention to that." Or if you've read something once, you can pay better attention to it. Ah yes, I've heard that before or something. There's also the realization,
that you actually only really understand a lot of things once you manage to put them into words at all. Did it happen that way for you too? Or did you also find that, in the process of writing this book, you only really understood some of the things you're describing and all that thermals stuff at the very end?
No, actually the other way around. An insight I gained while flying, I then tried to put into words. For example, when I was in the thermals, I once slid down the edge of a thermal. That was very impressive because I was flying against the thermal and sank five to seven meters. And suddenly I hit the thermal and it catapulted me. I went up at seven meters per second. And that was the insight. Oh, that was the edge of the thermal. I had heard the word before that something like that could happen. But once you've experienced it, you can of course describe much better what it's actually like. And I drew a diagram for that, because you can't see a thermal. And with this diagram, everyone can better imagine how it happens.
Or what it could be like when something like that happens.
Are there also things that you then, while describing,
Yeah, how should I put it, are there insights that maybe only really opened up for you regarding thermal flying while writing the book, where you also say that, ultimately, writing the book helped you with your own flying as well? Something like that.
no.
Most of it is actually based on experience or research. And the experience I've had, sometimes researched and then put into words. It wasn't a case of me writing it down and then trying it out. I experienced it first and then formulated it.
Yeah, there are so many experiences where you might say, you experience something, then you question it, why was that? Then you say, okay, now I'll write it down as a little rule you can establish. Just like your tips are basically a summary of many small rules you can have for thermals flying. And where you also say, once you've written them down, then maybe on the next flight you could think more systematically. So it comes to mind much faster because you say, I wrote it myself that if you fall out of the thermals, you have to turn immediately and not fly for another ten seconds, only to realize again, damn it, you didn't stick to your own rule.
Yes, you're right there. That's happened to me too. There's this vortex ring theory of thermals. You fly against the vortex ring, so into the thermals in a headwind. But you're not in the thermals for very long then. And if you turn too early, you're immediately out again. You have to fly into it for a very, very long time until you reach the center, and only then can you turn. It keeps happening to me; I fly into the thermal ring, have 20 km/h of headwind, and fly for five, six, seven seconds. And then I think, that should be enough now. And then I'm immediately out the back again when I turn. And then I think, you idiot, that was the thermal ring, you have to fly into it longer.
It's called a thermal ring or a vortex ring; you can imagine it like a smoke ring you can blow out, where a large, round torus rotates into itself. But you really only feel the headwind if you hit this thermal ring from above, right? Because from underneath, it actually tends to pull you in.
Yeah, it's not like a cigarette smoke ring; it's stretched out. It spans several hundred meters. It goes from the inside out everywhere. Okay. And you're flying somewhere across these few hundred meters, against this ring, and then suddenly—well, it's good to have a GPS with you—if I was flying at 35 and then suddenly 20, where is that headwind coming from? And very often, it's this vortex ring. And then you have to fly into it for a long time until you finally reach the center and only then start turning. In
once you're in the middle, you don't have any headwind anymore. Could you then fly by GPS and say, as long as I only have 20 now where I had 30 before, I'll keep flying forward, and as soon as it goes back up to 30, I'll turn at that point, if I still have some climb left?
Yes, that's exactly how it is. Suddenly the speed picks up again, and if I fly out past the center, I'll suddenly see 45 on the GPS, and by then I've already flown past the center. A GPS is great for seeing these effects properly.
But that would also mean you really have to fly right through the center of the thermal. You could also, if there's a bit of a crosswind, fly along the edge of the thermal the whole time, and it basically just keeps pushing you away, something like that.
Theoretically you can do that too, but it's not as much fun as being right in the center where you're climbing best.
Would you say that you've become a better pilot yourself through your own book? Yes, I think
Well, because the effects I wrote down, I also constantly notice or confirm for myself that I wrote them down correctly. Now you are
you, with the book writing too, you really made money with it and those earnings certainly gave you more, how shall I put it, temporal freedom. You were probably even able to go flying more. In that way, you might have also benefited from your book. In the
In the end, I made really good money with the book. But of course, I didn't know that at the beginning. When I was writing the book—it took me a year and a half—I figured I wasn't making any money at all. I lived off the money I got from the sale of the flight school. And I didn't even know if it would be a complete success. I had 7,000 books printed for the first edition, and then a truck—a full-sized truck—comes and brings me 7 tons of books. So, you see that and think big, and there's a huge financial investment involved. But then the books sold great; in two years, the 7,000 books were gone. And I thought, wow, that went really well.
And well, then it just kept evolving. And I continued to work as a freelancer in parallel, doing cross-country flight seminars or flight mentoring. And I was able to gradually reduce that a bit more with the success of the books.
That means the books gave you the time to fly more privately as well, which you probably couldn't do as often before as a flight instructor and such, because you always had to be standing there instructing and teaching the others.
Yeah, the worst month was August 2003. Anyone who can remember, that was that heatwave summer. It was 30 degrees every single day. I did 30 days of instruction in a row and then I got really frustrated because the others were always flying long distances. And then I said, Steli, I have to sell my share of the flight school, I can't take it anymore. I have to fly when the weather is good, and when the weather is bad, I can, for example, write and do research. But when the weather is great, I have to get into the air more often.
But that means you took a huge risk back then, because you're saying, I'm selling my flight school, I'm basically giving up my profession in a way, and now I'm starting something that I don't even know how good I am at or if it will actually pay off in the end. What is actually being sold and what will come out of it?
Yes, in that sense, the risk was manageable. I could always work as a flight instructor. It's not like flight instructors are somehow always in demand, or flight attendants for travel tours and such. I could have kept doing that regardless. And I was only able to reduce that after six, seven, eight years, because only then was it clear that with the money I was earning—I bought condominiums for retirement and as capital investments. And since I'm not paying into a pension for ages, I have to provide for myself privately. Because of that, I gained more and more financial freedom and could basically just go flying, work a bit on the side, and of course, always do new editions, take new pictures—basically, always stay on top of things.
There are now four editions of the thermals book.
Will there be a fifth and a sixth edition too? Are you going to stick with it? Or is mountain biking so much in the foreground now that you're saying, actually, not that much is developing in aviation anymore? So...
The books are timeless. If I look at what I changed from the third to the fourth edition, it's primarily the pictures with newer gliders. When you open the book, you don't see ancient gliders pictured. That makes it look like it's something newer. As for the texts, not much has changed. I think I rewrote about six pages because I found new insights. Other things were just error corrections, changing a few things, drawing a new diagram. But the book is actually timeless. It's just the pictures that become outdated because of the gliders.
Have you actually received any feedback from other pilots on these books, like, "Hey Burki, what you wrote there can't be right. I experience it completely differently"? Or have you only ever received the positive, encouraging feedback?
Well, I've received a lot of feedback and most of it was very, very positive. And every now and then I'd get a correction, like "actually, the valley isn't called Lesachtal, it's Geiltal in that area or something," or "that mountain is called Haslital," and things like that. But those were mostly minor things. Or someone once said, "on my photo, I did it like this. It's drawn in that the cloud is rotating to the left. But he thinks the cloud looks like it's rotating to the right." But those are all minor things. Most of it gets a lot of approval. And the funny thing is, my thermals book is actually part of the basis for flight instructor training in Switzerland.
Is that the standard textbook for them, then?
I don't know exactly how they train them either. But my distributor in Switzerland said it would be pretty bad if the books ran out, because they sell well and are part of the flight instructor's curriculum. I was like, oh, I didn't know that at all.
Oh, and regarding the question about a fifth or sixth edition—I'm not entirely sure yet. I still have so much left that it should last for another two or three years. From a sales perspective, if things continue as they are, and sales have already slowed down, it's not certain yet if there will be a fifth edition. Probably not for the next few years. Well...
Alright, but since I have the thermals expert sitting here, maybe you can give my listeners a few more tips and things like that. For example, what would you say is the best way for a beginner to learn or train to fly thermals?
You fly in large-scale, calm thermals. Low wind, not too strong thermals. That's safer for beginners. And easier. You then look at, for example, the centering technique of thermals in my book. How do you actually center it? And once you've seen the image and read the centering technique, you then proceed purposefully according to that pattern to find the center well. Then bank tightly. That's actually the biggest mistake beginners make when they don't climb well—that they turn way too wide. And then turn tightly in the center of the thermals.
That's actually thermals tip number one: turn tightly. Most people turn way too wide to climb effectively.
That's already my third question that I have prepared here. It says, what do you see as the biggest mistakes pilots make when flying thermals? You've already said most turn too wide. Yes, turning too wide. What does "too wide" mean, or what does "tight" mean? How do you measure that, in radii, or do you say, okay, every circle shouldn't take longer than 20 seconds? That's tight turning, right?
So 20 seconds is already relatively tight, yes. And most people turn much wider. If you have a massive thermal, of course you can turn wide and climb well because the thermal is just that big. But that's the rarer case.
From my experience, there are often these torn thermals or ones that feel like they have about five lift cores. Then there are the ones where you can hang on really tight and say, I'm going to circle up narrowly. But sometimes they're so narrow that you might not even be able to center them properly, to really be inside them. And then there are others that fly large circles around you, and then fly through five strong lift cores during those large circles, but then end up back in the flat air. In the end, though, they climb just as fast as I do with my narrow circle. Unless I'm really lucky and catch the narrow one so well, then of course you can fly through it and you're gone. That's happened to me too.
That's usually in the lower range. You fight, you try to center one of those small cores and the others, like you said, fly around you and climb just as well. But that usually only happens for a few hundred meters. And then a tight core also becomes large enough that I can stay inside it. And then I climb away quickly. How
How do you do that? Do you say at the beginning, "Alright, they're turning wide," and then you turn wide too and get tighter in 200 meters? Or do you say, "No, if I've already found something down there, then I'm really going to hang in there tightly"?
Yeah, I always try to center those tight cores and climb quickly with them.
Okay, that would be the big, best thermals tip you can give someone. Definitely try to learn how to turn tightly at some point, too. Yes. To be able to fly clean circles like that. What was the best thermals tip you might have received during your training? Or in your piloting career? It could also be that you got a tip only after gaining a lot of experience where you said, wow. So, then
is the topic of flatland flying. And I found that extremely difficult at the beginning. It was so undefined. I couldn't see the edges of the terrain properly. I didn't know where the thermals were rising. And if you flew in the flatlands with a tailwind and hit a large sink, some people told me that you have to fly out at a 90-degree angle. In the flatlands, you have nice lift, followed by heavy sink. And this heavy sink is also offset from the wind. That means if you keep flying straight ahead with the tailwind, you stay in that sink for a long time. And that was a great tip I once got from others. Flying out at a 90-degree angle.
And I have so much lowland flying experience by now that I can say, yes, that is really important. Turn 90 degrees away immediately and into better air.
So not even
45, but really 90 degrees. No, 45 takes too long to descend. 90 degrees across the wind and as it gets better, or 70 degrees, so in any case, clearly out of this descent. And specifically at a quasi right angle. And then again with a tailwind. If you
If you think about it, with a lot of wind, 90 degrees also means you're not actually flying at 90 degrees, but with the wind drift, you'll probably end up on your own flight path, landing at 60 degrees or something else because it pushes you over so much. Yes, if that...
with strong tailwinds, it ends up being a 60 or 45-degree angle over ground anyway.
Is there any part or any concept in the formation of thermals where you would say, I haven't understood that until today?
No, not really. I mean, it's pretty clear to me how it happens. You've mastered it all, both mentally and through experience. Yeah, so nothing surprises me anymore. I mean, thermals can also come out of the shade. For example, at Braunig, that's completely normal. And once the valley wind has kicked in, the valley wind pushes the warm air against the mountain, and the warm air that then forms in the lowlands is pushed against the north face of the mountain and then very much rises as a thermal. But the thermal didn't originate on the north face.
...but already in the lowlands before. In the lowlands beforehand. And then it's just pushed along. Now, there are also some days where there's 100% cloud cover and it's lifting everywhere. Are there any tricks for that, like, are they the same spots where the thermals release? Or are there other mental techniques for those kinds of days to help you locate that stuff? Like a day like you...
you describe, that's extremely unstable air masses where even the slightest hint of sun or a very small, very slight thermal advantage is enough to trigger the thermals at all. Sometimes even over large areas. But the spots themselves are still the same.
What was, for you, how should I put it, the most extreme or the most wonderful thermals experience you can still remember?
Well, the most intense thing that comes to mind right now is Bassano. Bassano normally never goes insanely high. But on that day, it went up to 3,500 meters. Thermals were rising up to 10 meters. And with a diameter of 500 meters or larger. It was just so insane. The vario was just howling. And it was so calm. And with that strength of lift. I think I've only experienced that twice in my life. And then at 3,500 in Bassano, basically in the upstream Po plain over the mountains. Suddenly, the whole Monte Grappa is just a tiny hill. It's unimaginable.
Was that a typical north wind day with a cold air mass moving over from the north, where it's often said that the thermals in Bassano are very good, but it's not always necessarily pleasant near the slope?
It was theoretically a light north wind, but it was so weak that it was just wonderful for flying even down low. I had a cross-country flight seminar that day. And it wasn't easy at all to keep the pilots together, because some said 2,500 meters is enough, I don't want to go higher. But if it's possible, we have to fly as high, high, high as possible. And then they just gave up 1,000 meters of potential for continuing, which of course was still extremely sufficient. But I lost sight of the pilots.
Because they were so scattered? Exactly.
What do you do at these cross-country flight seminars? Nowadays there are techniques, like vario techniques such as Farnet or something like that. Do you use something like that now to track people or also to fly together with other people in a group?
No, that only came up after I had stopped doing cross-country flight seminars. And even though I observed the development myself, I never used the device. When I go out on a cross-country flight alone, it was never that interesting to know where the others are. Because when I go cross-country flying for myself, for example to participate in a cross-country championship, there might have been a few others around me that we started with. But usually, you quickly lose sight of them. And it's not that interesting where they are right now. It's about me continuing to track my thermals or my flight route.
Since we're talking about technology, like variometers and stuff, do you always fly with a vario, or do you sometimes deliberately turn it off? Or do you intentionally go on flights without one to see how well I can still manage with my own "butt-feeling" or whatever?
That actually only happens when my battery is running out. I don't fly long distances for motivation. When I'm flying long distances for motivation, I always have two variometers with me.
Do they both beep at the same time?
No, one is turned down. But in an emergency, I just have to turn it on. I can fly thermals without a vario too, but I somehow always feel a bit exposed. The beeping is just missing. I'm not that good at it. I think Achim Joost is excellent at that. He says he doesn't care whether he has a vario or not. But I can't do it that way.
When you're centering and stuff like that, do you still pay very close attention to the vario tone? Or is it at this point where you say, okay, the vario helps me recognize where the thermals start or something, and also feel a bit where they are now, how strong they are. But you say that for centering, I don't need it at all. My body feel is actually enough.
No, I fly almost entirely by the sound of the vario. It's modulated, too—it gets tighter and higher the stronger the lift is. And that's a really important reference point for me when I'm centering.
Do you also use something like a thermal sniffer on the vario that triggers before it actually starts going up with your glider? The air masses might already be rising. You have a reduced sink of 0.5 and it's already ticking a little bit. Or do you not need that? No, I mean...
I've tried that, even with the visual display. But that just kind of confused me more. I've learned to listen to the sound and just focus on the piping.
And I make sure, maybe as a tip, that if the thermals are slanted, I always center myself in the lift of the thermal. That's usually where the better lift is. And if I fall out of the lift, I'm back in immediately. If I fall out of the lee of the thermal, it usually takes longer to get back in and it's harder for me to find it again. How do you know where the lift and the lee are within a thermal?
The lift is usually stronger on the windward side. And I always try to stay in the strongest area. If I get displaced into a weaker area, I fly straight for a bit first. And when I notice the lift getting weaker, I turn around immediately. That way, I make sure I'm in the front
...area. I've sometimes had the experience with lift and thermals flying that you get tricked a bit, because you're flying ahead, you say, maybe I'll hold on a bit longer, fly a bit forward again. And sometimes these thermals basically have, before that, like the dynamic lift from the oncoming wind, where it first drops off very briefly and then increases significantly again. And then you think, ah, here comes something else. And then you fly further straight ahead, thinking, now I have to go further in that direction, center it even better. The best lift is up there. But by then, you've already fallen out. If you turn around immediately, you fly right back in, as you say, that's the advantage on the lift side. But still, it keeps happening to me that thermals also trick me a bit at this point, or I let myself be tricked a bit.
Yeah, yeah, that can happen. And once it's happened twice in a row, you pay better attention so you don't fall for it again.
One thing that also keeps striking me, especially when I'm flying with pilots who aren't that experienced yet, is that many of them are actually trying to center, and they all do it relatively cleanly at times, but many of them don't really look around much when flying thermals. And sometimes it's the case that 30 meters away or 50 meters away, the lift is much better. And you see it, or you're climbing better yourself, you see someone circling over there and think, they just have to fly over to me now. They actually just need to open their circle a bit to get over here. Then they'd have two meters more of lift right away. But they don't do that; instead, they stubbornly stay on their thing. Yeah,
I've noticed that too, and it happens all the time. I think it's usually the less experienced pilots who are so happy to have any lift at all that they're so focused they don't look around at where it might be better. It happened to me once in the Canaries—they were climbing at one meter, and I zipped past them at five meters. I thought, there's no way, they have to come over to me. But they didn't. No, no, they didn't come over.
Maybe it was too intense for them, too. They think, "He's swooping past like that, I don't want any part of that."
I don't think they see it. Bruce Goldsmith once wrote that it's like horse racing. Whenever a horse is faster, it jumps onto the horse in front of it, which is a bit further ahead. That's how it is with fast centering. Or, of course, if you're ambitious and want to fly distance, then it's obviously important to center quickly. If I just want to fly around a bit, then it doesn't really matter whether I climb fast or slow. It's
is the centering technique for fast centering different?
No. It's primarily about the tight centering in the strongest core in that area.
That means, if you really say it's tight here, it also means centering quickly—then really quickly at this strong point, saying, "here I'm really turning," making that fast decision, "here I'm turning in tight now," just to catch that strong climb.
Yeah, exactly. And if I see a pilot 100 meters next to me who's climbing faster, then I'm on them immediately.
If you see birds flying somewhere now, do you always head towards them because you figure they know how it works? Or has it ever happened to you that they've completely messed with you?
Yes, they have too. But they start circling, I fly over there and then they fly away. Yeah, then the thermals were already gone. But that's rather rare. It's also better to fly towards birds or others that are, above all, as low as possible. If one is 500 meters above me, I'd rather stay in my own thermals because it's too difficult. Whether there's even any thermals left is the question anyway by the time I get there. If he's that far above me, finding the thermals is difficult and it's not certain whether it's not a bubble that's already broken through, that there's nothing left to find anyway.
Is there any way to tell from forecasts or anything else on certain days whether it's more likely to be bubble thermals or rather passing bath thermals?
The temperature gradient plays a huge role. And in the past, way back then, I always thought the higher the gradient, the better. But now I've realized that when the gradient heads towards 1, the thermals are so ripped and so strong that it's counterproductive for thermal flying. It's much better if the thermals rise a bit later, but are a bit larger and also rise a bit slower, rather than this explosive thing where you fly into something, it rips you along at 5 meters, and it's so big that I can't center it. So that's no fun. So, preferably a slightly smaller gradient. What are
So, if you could just give a few key figures, what would be your favorite thermal or weather forecast, where you say I'd like an air pressure of X and a thermal gradient of Y, and the wind shouldn't be stronger or weaker than Z. What would you name those?
So, 1024 hectopascals sounds good. A 0.7-degree temperature gradient. And as little wind as possible in the mountains. If I'm out in the lowlands with a tailwind, I like it when there's little wind at the bottom and it increases constantly as it goes up. Because if the wind isn't strong at the bottom, then nice large thermals can detach, but if the wind is already strong at the ground level, then it's those small "rippers" that detach, and that's unpleasant to fly.
How strong can the wind get up there?
In Brazil, if the wind picks up to 40, 50 km/h at high altitude, that's good. Then I can get away quickly. But not on the ground. On the ground, I want 20 at most.
If you're flying in the mountains right now, what would be your favorite upper limit for wind that you'd want to have there?
I have a very simple rule of thumb for that. 20 knots of wind from a northern direction. North, northeast, northwest. That means it creates such strong lee areas on the south side, and since I usually fly on the south flanks of the thermals, I won't fly there anymore. I won't do any cross-country flights if there's such strong wind at gradient level.
From those northern directions. If it's from the south, then it's supportive. Then I don't have the lee on the south flank either.
Okay. What do you actually use as weather sources for your preparation? Do you also look at special thermal forecasts, where, of course, Ausdruckkontrolle is always the thing, so Alptherm, or are there other specialized services you use where you say, I get along best with these or they provide me with the most important info I actually need?
So for now, Alptherm is actually enough for me. And I don't travel around as much as I used to, like flying from here to the southern side of the Alps. I've never done it for one day anyway. But if I'm heading over for two or three days, then I use other meteo models too. But when it comes to flying, Ausdruckkontrolle is enough for me. They give me the most important values. And exactly how the day will turn out, you never really know until you're in the air anyway. And if you want to be ambitious and participate in the cross-country flight championships, you almost have to try out every good cross-country flight day anyway. If it's nothing, you just go land. But I always say, the day could have been better.
That means if you're ambitious and say you really want to score points, you have to give even a mediocre day a chance to get better and really go for it.
Yeah, exactly. And if you notice after a while that it's nothing, and after two hours you've only covered 15 or 20 kilometers, then it's not going to be a big flight anyway.
You were very ambitious with cross-country flights for a while. How did you handle days like that? Would you say, okay, now I've flown for two hours, my average is only 13 instead of the 20 I hoped for, or only 15 instead of 25. This isn't going to amount to anything anymore. I'm going to land now. Or could you switch into a pleasure mode on days like that and say, so what, there won't be a big cross-country flight in terms of the score anymore. But now there's the big one. Yeah. A pleasure flight for myself.
It
...are different things. If I have something in my pocket, an idea of what I'd like to check out, or I just want to fly to an area I've never been to, I'll just use a day like that, fly there slowly to take a look. Or I'll turn around after 30 kilometers and say, okay, now I'll at least make sure I get back to the car and don't have to hitchhike. That way I'll have energy for the next day, which might be the really good day. Because if you've flown for 10 hours, you're so exhausted that it's difficult for me to fly for another 10 hours the day after next. You
You were also, as I just said, quite successful and ambitious in cross-country flight and also competitions for years. You were even a German champion. You really flew some records in cross-country flight. I still remember 2013, things were going back and forth a bit. You were in Brazil and set a new German cross-country flight record twice in a row. In between, another German beat you again. Then you topped it again. In the end, you had about 390 kilometers on the clock, I think it was a Chili back then, so with a B-glider. Chili, yeah,
yeah. That was considered...
...not like that. As far as I know, no one had ever flown with a B-glider. At least no German. I don't know if that was the world record, though.
Yes, it was the German record. So I worked towards that German record for a few years on the final flight. Then I got it, and the next day the anti-Ecker took it away from me again. I mean, that's what records are for, to be broken. But when you work at it for years and have the record for one day, that's a bit frustrating. And then I was able to put in another gear and basically take it back. But even these records are there to be beaten. Yes, it is
it's already been broken again. By now, it's...
it's already been broken again, yeah, exactly.
There's a record that is definitely still standing. And you're also listed by the FAI for it, namely a European record for altitude gain. That was also, I believe, during a flight in 2014. You achieved an altitude gain of 3,469 meters. At least that's how it's listed with the FAI. Can you still remember that flight?
Yes, I remember that quite well because I'd had that altitude record in my head for 15 years, wanting to beat it. And it's very difficult in the Alps. You have to comply with the airspace restrictions. And since in most of the Alps the airspace only goes up to 3,850 meters, the record was impossible to beat. But I knew that in the Ötztal, the restricted flight area goes up over 5,000 meters. I think back then it was even 5,900. Now it's just under 5,000. And it was one of those days where I wanted to fly a large triangle. But I was way too slow. I thought, okay, the large triangle is out of the question.
So I look to fly into the Ötztal. And way to the back, where the airspace is much, much higher. And there, I was able to turn up to about 4,700 meters. And the record counts from the lowest point to the highest point. So during that flight, you have to be as low as possible at least once. That was during the cross-country flight in the Jachenau. There, I was only 200 meters above ground. And then turn up to these 4,600 meters, so that there was a gain in altitude of 3,469
...meters was.
That's what comes out of it. That means
but it's not the gain in altitude within a thermal, but the largest altitude difference within a flight. It is
the value from the lowest point of the flight to the subsequent highest point. So, from that perspective, it's very simple. It has nothing to do with cumulative altitude. Lowest point, highest point, that's the altitude gain.
But that means you're not doing extra spirals in the Ötztal for this record just to say, I have to start over from the very bottom to catch the best thermals again in order to... No,
No. The lowest point was actually a few hours earlier during a large cross-country flight. But the problem was also that it was going up so incredibly strongly in the Ötztal. And I had to get into the airspace where I'm allowed to fly that high. I spiraled down a few times beforehand so I wouldn't be too high already. Because before that, I was only allowed to fly up to 3,800 meters. And then I basically flew below 3,800 meters until the airspace was finally clear. And you can see that on the airspace structure map stored in the vario.
Would it have actually gone any higher that day? Or was 4,700, as you said, the limit, and they said it couldn't go any higher?
Yes, that was the end. It unfortunately didn't go any higher, even though I could have gone higher. But it was just the end. Did you
did you notice the altitude already? Like, also, that you say...
No. I wasn't that euphoric because I'd done it. But I don't think it was due to the lack of oxygen. What do records like that mean to you?
I enjoy setting a record, planning what to do, and then actually carrying out that plan. I just enjoy it. Then the record hangs on the wall. I look at it and say, yeah, well done, that was a great day.
Well, to fly records or long distances and stuff like that, you have to be ambitious in a certain way. You have to have the plan first, this goal—this record goal and so on—to achieve it. But some people get eaten up by that ambition because they might experience a lot of failures for themselves, because they say, "I've come a long way, but not as far as I planned," or "I didn't manage the record," and things like that. How is that with you?
So what you're saying, that's the more common case.
In 1998, I flew my first world record, which was 100 kilometers out and back. Where was that? And against the clock—it was in the Inntal, in the Gnadenwald. That's near Jenbach heading west, 50 kilometers out and 50 kilometers back. And the whole thing was timed. But I definitely attempted that record five or six times, and normally it doesn't work. And flying a record, it's becoming increasingly difficult anyway because the bar for all records is incredibly high; you often start and then succeed once. And you only manage to do it if you have that ambition. Whether that's good or bad, you either have it or you don't.
But most of the time
it doesn't work out. How did you deal with situations like that? I mean, is it easy for you to just say, "well, it wasn't meant to be"? Or did it eat away at you somehow?
No, no, I just think, "too bad, it didn't work." Like in Australia, where I said, this German record with the goal flight. Yeah, I worked on it for years and then I got it, and then it's gone, and then I got it again. That's a certain level of satisfaction, but of course, you have to have incredible ambition for that. And if it had been gone, well, they're all gone anyway now. So the world records, I still have quite a few German records.
You just said that if you fly records, fly very ambitiously, and now want to set these new records, then you actually have to—well, the bar is set very high and much of it can really only be achieved by probably accepting relatively demanding conditions as well. So, for example, for one-way records, a lot of wind so that it can push you along accordingly and stuff like that. Which then often also means a lot of wind at the launch site or other things. So also size, or if you were to crash halfway through, you might have to land in Brazil with a lot of wind, maybe coming down there flying backwards somewhere in the Cerrado, and that probably wouldn't be much fun anymore, let's say.
Or it also carries certain risks. Have you ever hurt yourself at some point, perhaps out of over-ambition or something like that?
Yeah, that was in the Ötztal in 2002.
I was completely overmotivated. I was always motivated, but there I was so overmotivated because the day before I'd washed out at exactly the same spot after 160 kilometers. I wanted to fly a 200-kilometer FAI triangle. And the next day was just like that again. I couldn't get past the same spot because the east wind was working against me too strongly. And then I tried to bypass one more lee, but I misjudged it and ended up in the lee anyway. And then I just had to say, nature is stronger. It gave me such a hit on the glider that I fell down to 20 meters. There was no time for rescue either, because I wasn't that high up.
And I fractured three vertebrae and then I couldn't fly for six months. Since then, I've still been motivated, but I've been much more cautious and I don't take those kinds of risks anymore. I'd rather abort a flight than take such high risks. Since then, I feel like I'm much safer. I have little problem with strong winds now if they're coming from the front, but just not in the lee.
Since you're also doing a lot of mountain biking now, what kind of risks are you taking? Or is it really just a leisurely ride up the mountains? Or are you the type who also blasts down the trails and says, "Okay, you can take me down too"? So...
Mountain biking seems safer to me because the ground, for example, isn't that far away. And I do ride trails, even difficult ones. But as soon as it gets too difficult for me, I get off and push. And as long as I'm doing that, I'm very cautious. You could also try to ride down trails where I'm pushing. But no, I don't want to fall. That's why I'd rather push. But
that's also the advantage of the bike, that you can say I can get off at any time and push for a bit or something like that, which is never the case with a paraglider.
Once you're in a strong lee, you're in it and you have to get through somehow, and you can't get off.
Are there situations where you've said, "Okay, I'd really like to land my paraglider now," but somehow made it through okay?
Yes, that happened a few times during my learning phase in ridge soaring. I didn't have enough experience and ended up in the lee. With the knowledge I have today, I would never have flown there. But back then, I just took off, and then I hit the lee. It was an 800-meter-high flank in the lee where it was dropping down. I basically fell down 500 meters with the destroyed glider. Then the lee stopped and I was able to fly away down there. So, I wished... I would have loved to have gotten out. In between.
But was it not such an extreme experience that you didn't want to get back up again? Or did it take a while for you to get over it?
I flew on immediately. I didn't abort the cross-country flight. I flew straight into the next mishap, into a corner where there was no landing field.
And in the end, I landed in a very small clearing and landed the glider over a telegraph line. It was lucky. I was glad it wasn't a high-voltage line. But that was actually just luck too. And then I thought, oh, maybe I should take the whole thing a bit more carefully.
So, in your early years, you were also still very tough, something like that?
Yeah, I was somehow pain-free back then, yeah.
In the preparation for this conversation, we exchanged emails and stuff, and you also wrote that because of this switch—or not a switch, but because of the more mountain biking you do today—you wrote, and I'll quote you here, that you've come down from that extremely intensive flying. What do you mean by extremely intensive? Is that meant in a positive or a negative sense? It probably concerns
the motivation. Until then, I still wanted to win the cross-country flight competition every year. And if you want to win that, you have to be brutally motivated, and that is extremely intense. And since we researched the mountain bike guide in the summer of 2017, I've gotten less into flying. And then suddenly, just like now, I have the peace; I don't have to do such intense cross-country flight anymore. Flying, pleasure flying, nice flying, flying around for two or three hours, doing a small cross-country flight, but no more of this cross-country flight trophy, I'm never going to win that again.
Would you say that you experience flying today? Or after such an enjoyable flight of two or three hours through the landscape, would you say you're happier today than you perhaps were in the past after many flights?
No, not happier. I'm just relieved that I don't have to worry about it as much. After a ten-hour cross-country flight, looking back today, I think I was loaded with adrenaline, just blown away. You land and you're completely exhausted physically, but also from the adrenaline rush. The adrenaline rush you get after ten hours. I don't experience that anymore now, but I don't need it either. Do you need more adrenaline when you're young? Well, I wasn't that young four years ago either.
I only started flying late. I mean, flying didn't even exist before that. But when I started flying at 27, I was just as motivated as the 16-year-olds today who are totally motivated and aggressive with their agro-flying. And I was still like that at 27. But now, I'm 58, and I take it a bit easier now. Have you ever done agro-training?
Right, there wasn't any agro where I was that wild about it. I basically did extreme maneuvers for the manufacturers, not for the DAV, but things like full stall negative. For me, that was already agro flying back then. And only after I left the manufacturers did I stop doing that testing of the gliders. And that's when the real agro flying came out. But in my heart, I was a cross-country pilot and not an agro pilot. If
When you go flying today, what kind of experiences are you looking for? You used to say you flew to collect XC points. Is there anything today where you'd say, "That's my core goal, what I have today"? I fly
I like flying with my wife; then we go to Braunig together. In the past, I'd get all worked up and basically fly off on my own. But today we fly together, we wait for each other, circle around each other, take photos, and do small cross-country flights together.
Yes,
That's lovely. And is there any other experience that's still on your bucket list, where you'd like to achieve it by flying again or make it possible for yourself, realize it?
I'd love to fly to Nepal again, to see the really big mountains. And to fly to Mexico to see the butterflies.
Yeah, there are still a few things like that, but you can still do all of it. Alright Burki, then
I hope these destinations still come true for you. Probably, the big C—the Corona C—still needs to be scaled back a bit so that you can plan things a bit more freely overall. It's not that it's impossible today, but there's always that big reservation hanging over it. I hope that gets resolved and that you can still experience it. Burki, thanks for the chat and yeah, I'm curious to see if there might be a fifth edition after all. The Swiss will probably be happy regardless, so the flight instructors can still get their textbook.
I just opened the cross-country flight book and I see you wrote an eight-page weather special for me in the cross-country flight book back then. Yeah, maybe you'll be a bit more involved in a new edition. We'll see about that.
Just get in touch and then we'll see what comes of it. Sometimes I also wonder if I should write another meteorology book where, similar to yours, you talk about how to break things down as easily as possible. Yeah. Because
I'll first
...the whole basic meteorology has to be explained in such a complicated way that by the time anyone gets through it, they've already said, I'm done. And actually, for flying, the important stuff is just left behind because people don't really invest that time. Yeah. But who knows, I haven't started yet and at some point, the muse has to kiss me so that I find the time or get the motivation.
Yeah, ask me, maybe we'll do something together. Yeah, or
So. Good. Or something like that. Burki, thanks to you and yeah. You're welcome. Have some nice flights and nice tours with the mountain bike. Thanks, thanks and yeah, have a good time. Thank you very much.
That was episode number 66 of Podz-Glidz, featuring Burkhard Martens in conversation with Lucian Haas. You can find out more about Burki's books and records via the show notes for this episode on the Lu-Glidz blog. I've put together a series of further links there. You can find Lu-Glidz online at www.Lu-Glidz.blogspot.com. Lu-Glidz is spelled L-u-G-l-i-d-z. There are already many other episodes of Podz-Glidz with interesting stories from the cosmos of paragliding. You can find them on Lu-Glidz and Soundcloud, as well as everywhere there are good podcasts—so Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, etc. By the way, Podz-Glidz and Lu-Glidz are completely ad-free and accessible without any paywall.
Still, I have to somehow finance my work so that I can continue to provide you with new content in the future. If you feel well-informed or well-entertained as my listener and reader, I would be happy if you would give something back as a supporter when the opportunity arises. Your one-time or recurring contribution is entirely up to you. In other words, you can give as much as you want. For those who can't decide, I have a completely non-binding suggestion. How about one euro per podcast episode and two euros per reading month on Lu-Glidz? Of course, you can listen to a few episodes first and read Lu-Glidz over several months and then make a lump-sum contribution. Payments are very easy via PayPal or bank transfer.
You can find all the necessary details on my blog Lu-Glidz, specifically on the Support page. Until next time. Ciao.