When I do something like that, I have to accept that as a pilot I am 100% responsible and can't say, "Yeah, but the glider reacted differently than I expected." That doesn't help at all.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today with Lex Robin. And I am Lucian Haas. Who
As an XC pilot, you've probably already come across the XContest rankings. Lex Robin has been one of the most successful participants over the last ten years. Twice, in 2015 and 2017, the now 47-year-old Austrian even won the XContest world rankings in the open class. Six flights per year count towards these rankings. What you can't see immediately in the XContest, however, is that Lex Robin also rarely goes on a targeted points hunt for more than six days a year. He simply doesn't have the time for it, as he explains in this 95th episode of Podz-Glidz. To still be able to fly at the very front, he follows a strategy. He only starts on hammer days, but then he's fully motivated and perfectly prepared.
Lex's knack for spotting the good days is legendary. Often, dozens of pilots follow him immediately when he announces that a great flying day is coming at Stoderzinken or on the border. In the podcast, he reveals which weather conditions he looks out for and which meteo sources he uses to identify the hammer days. Another topic is risk management. Even though he only gets so few flying days, Lex uses a high-performance CCC two-liner. This naturally raises the question: how does he justify the increased risk and how does he mitigate it?
Besides that, it's also about what Lex gets out of recently sponsoring other pilots and the Austrian League, and learning from his passion for meticulously analyzing flights to pass that knowledge on to others. If you enjoy the podcast, please support my work as a patron. You can find out how this is easily possible and without any obligation on the support page of my blog website Lu-Glidz.
Lex, I heard you can't fly wing-overs. To what extent is that true?
What the little bird chirped to you is true. Unfortunately, because I never really took the time to learn it systematically, and I've seen so many accidents in reality resulting from incomplete, messy wing-overs, I have a bit of an issue with it. For example, a good friend of mine died in a fatal accident like that, so I have a lot of respect for it. That means I only do it, if at all, at high altitudes or some "housewife" wing-overs that don't even deserve their names. Yes, the official excuse is always that I'm trying to spare the material. But in truth, I usually don't have the timing for it. I usually glide out the altitude anyway because I try to get relatively low in the final approach when I'm flying a competition flight.
...or of course during takeoff. I try to squeeze out those last few meters of distance even when cross-country flying. So my wing-over training is limited to the few times we still go down with Huna with the club. And yeah, then just do a bit of circling there in the Magic Air. But it definitely doesn't deserve the name wing-over. Unfortunately.
Shouldn't you as a good cross-country flight pilot at least have some Akro skills as well? Especially since you might find yourself in conditions that challenge you more? Absolutely. Definitely.
For me, it's a huge time factor and always a struggle, and there's that great respect for the maneuver itself—that I simply don't practice it enough. As you probably know, I'm self-employed now. My desk is full of work, so it's even rarer that I get into the air. And on the days I do go flying, I usually have cross-country flights planned. And yeah, the fun flying around in the air has unfortunately been reduced even further. So yeah, I'm completely on your side. But the fact is, I don't do it enough. How many flight hours do you get in a year? Well, normally, if I have a bad year, it's around 50, 60 hours.
And in good years, it's somewhere around 100, 120 hours. Although most of those, of course, come from cross-country flights for me. And those are caused by the fact that I only go flying on the best days and, of course, accumulate very, very many hours per flight there. So it's very few flights, but usually very long ones. So, plus or minus, let's say, I get a weak 100 hours a year.
How many real XC-Tage do you actually manage to get, when you say you only fly relatively rarely?
Yeah, basically, if the days are of good quality, that's the advantage of being self-employed; I can always somehow squeeze out the time. So, like it was this year, specifically on the northern side of the Alps, in the Eastern Alps—I lived in the Enztal—the conditions were actually quite poor. In the summer it was dead, in the spring it was windy and sometimes just a bit damp. So the yield just wasn't that great, and as a result, I only actually got into the air on three good days this year. And there was nothing else on offer around us until the beginning of August. And from the beginning of August, there's usually just a big family vacation planned. So, you could say my season is always over by the end of July.
That means it's actually a compressed window of time. That
So, this year was a bad year for cross-country flight for you?
Yeah, given the conditions, it just wasn't good for me. And like I said, if the day doesn't look promising, we just don't take the time. That might also be because I've been flying for 22 years now. And yeah, my standards for the day have actually always increased. Because just flying down here during the XC high season, I don't really do that anymore. Now in the autumn, it's funny, it's always getting a bit more interesting again, just doing some leisure glides here. But even so, that's reduced to three or four times a year where I really say, okay, I'll gladly take the glide. Because it's just nice. But basically, it's just a bit too little for me.
Because the effort and the time itself just don't represent as much for me as they used to, because I'm now more focused on the intense experiences and don't just want to fly for pleasure anymore.
If this year was a bad year, but you still work a lot otherwise and everything else, how many big XC flights or big XC-Tage did you manage to do in good years?
In good years, it's those typical XContest sigs. That means we just have the issue that really good conditions, which we actually call hammer days, are very, very rare. And it's just important to me, it's one of my big maxims, I just want to make the most of the day completely. That means I want to start as early as possible, ideally well before 10 a.m. And really, if it's possible, I'll start. If the conditions allow, I'll land well after 8 a.m. That just allows me to enjoy a day so intensely. It specifically also gives me, because with this early start the thermals usually aren't that aggressive yet, the chance to get used to the gear with my poor practice level.
then make up for it a bit in the first half hour or the first hour, and once again focus on the quasi-light turbulence and potholes that you sometimes get hit with unexpectedly over the glider, so that I can just accept that a bit again, push it into my subconscious, and thus really enjoy the day to the fullest. It's just fun for me when things are moving. If it's tough and you have to fight a bit for every bit of lift and so on, well, that's just not so cool for me, compared to when you just glide along nicely on a day. That's simply what I love.
In 2015 and 2017, you even won the XContest world rankings. Did you really only do that with, I mean, did you only fly those six rated flights in those years—the big ones—and you didn't manage to put together much more than that?
Yeah, plus or minus, yeah. So it might have been eight big flights, but around that, these plus or minus six hammer days a year, there would have been more of those this year too, but it's always a bit of a decision. I think I mostly, I always find myself in the small town, calculation areas, meaning the flight decision is naturally my home XC mountain, Stoderzinken, which always takes priority for me. So if it looks good here, I naturally try to fly far from here. Alternatively, I also sometimes go down to the Kränte or I like going to the Zillertal, those are also beautiful conditions. But basically, it really boils down to these few cross-country flight mountains. And precisely because I go so rarely, it's still always special for me, because in the end, when I fly in the Fliegen, I'm at these spar spots only once or twice a year anyway.
And there could have been some very, very good flying days on the southern side of the Alps, but it didn't look too bad on the northern side near my home either. And yeah, so I actually never flew the big cross-country routes this year, even though I have a new glider now that I'm very happy with, which is really fun to fly, but the goal of at least flying my best performance of the year at home simply outweighed it. And yeah, luckily I managed to do that. But of course, you can't compare it if you're saying, okay, I'm really heading to the absolute, absolute best spot.
When you focus on so few flying days like you do, it requires incredibly good preparation or an incredibly good assessment—or rather, the ability to say, "That is truly the day of days. I'm taking that one off." And then I might have six of those good days, or maybe only four good days a year, but I make the most of them. How do you recognize these good days? What does that involve for you?
As I mentioned, I've been flying for 22 years now. And specifically the first years, they were actually characterized by very, very simple gliders, like from the Haushügel, where I really flew for five years. But then I got into cross-country flying and noticed right away that the day—the quality of the day—is actually the deciding factor. Not just for the kilometers that end up in the final tally, but for the overall beautiful flying experience. And during that period, when I was very, very enthusiastic as a cross-country pilot and also had more time, I basically turned studying weather forecasts into something that would be called a doctoral thesis today. You know better than I do; you're an even more profound expert on the subject.
That opens up a whole universe. You can really dive deep into it. And back then, the first tools came out that simplified things. So, not just the "Ausdruckskontrolle," which is currently good and free for us in Austria, but other planning tools came along that also take weather into account. Because of that, I built my own quick-check weather map back then, where I used my modest programming skills to pull the relevant info from all sorts of weather sites into my own homepage, just to keep the enormous amount of time and effort needed to assess a day a bit shorter. I mean, what used to take hours of weighing up—and where I didn't yet know exactly which weather models or services were best for what, or less suitable for what—that took hours back then.
Nowadays, thanks to better services and my own experience, my "recipe" has actually been reduced to almost fifteen minutes to be able to reliably predict a very, very good day. Now you have
You just mentioned a recipe. What ingredients need to come together for the flight porridge to taste really good for you in the end?
Yeah, that's a good term, "flight porridge," because there are several aspects. Basically, for me, the wind is always a decisive criterion. I'm actually very, very hard on myself in that regard because I have a poor practice level. I'm very, very hard on myself because I have a poor practice level. And I know that too. I'm actually the type who, if I say, yeah, I have more than 10 or 15 knots of wind somewhere in the forecast, that's a no-go for me. Because I know exactly that it's not fun to fly for me. I'd just be stuck trying to stay on the airside somehow, and that just limits my development as a pilot and the fun. Then, of course, there are the classic factors that come into play, which is the sun,
Cloud cover. I don't think we need to go into the details. What might be much more important from my perspective is simply which weather sites give the best overall overview to assess this. And for me, it's reached the point where I actually use the site soaringmeteo.org because, in my opinion,
the most reliable daily quality forecasts, in my opinion. There's a color scheme, there's a point system, where they have this thermal quotient, they call it,
then predicts, very, very simply, also in a color scheme, to recognize which area or in which area good daily quality is available. And I believe, apart from the fact that air turbulence caused by Sahara dust, for example, can occur, this service actually covers quite a lot. Because other services, like Meteo-Parapont, for example, also have their advantages, but they show the wind, for instance, too intensely. So if you believed all of that, you would never go up at all, because they'd forecast 30 km/h plus wind everywhere at once. Similarly, Alptherm has a bit of a problem if there's a warm air attraction somewhere. You'd think it's a great day.
And somehow it misses it. So if you're at the launch site, and for example the Sahara dust, which isn't shown there, becomes an issue, or the warm air. Every one of their tools has its pros and cons. But the Soaring-Meteo service is the one I actually prefer using to get a hint in advance—like, really five or six days ahead—that, oops, a good situation might be coming.
Soaring-Meteo is still based on the relatively coarse GFS model. But is that enough for you to assess good weather conditions?
Absolutely. Because if you're going cross-country, you don't judge that based on microclimates anyway. You have to look at how the air mass is shaped, how much cloud cover we have, and what the solar radiation on the ground is like. That's the most important thing first. Then, of course, comes the next ingredient for your mix—the base height, which allows me to estimate how the day will go. Whether I'll attempt a crossing of the main Alpine ridge or if I'll just stay on one side at all. But that comes in the second step. The first step is really the quick assessment. And I've also realized that, from my point of view, at least weather forecasts that reach further into the future than five or six days are actually completely worthless.
So there are nice services that are easy to consume, Paraglidables and so on, they really do a great job. But for me personally, anything that looks further into the future is almost worthless. That means, whether it's five or six days in advance, I tell myself, yeah, something good could come along. And yeah, I'll track that first with something like Meteo. And then I'll look at what Chiron, that Greek dust forecast site, says. Especially if we have southerly conditions, whether there's any Sahara dust involved. And then I'll take that specific day under the microscope a bit more and track it over the next few days. And it's exactly the same the other way around, if the day doesn't look good there,
then I don't look any further. I don't look anywhere else, yeah, but I could still go flying regardless, given the circumstances—family, job—it's just lower down in my priorities, yeah, it's situated a bit lower. Because I had that phase of wanting to go flying ultra-intensively all the time, and I lived through that perfectly well. That was good. But now I'm in a different phase. I'm lucky that I really enjoy my job and that the business is doing great. And yeah, that's just my focus at the moment.
With Soaring Meteo, there's that aggregated variable for thermal quality that they also provide for certain regions or individual spots. Do you pay attention to that? And at what percentage of thermal quality do you say it's a good day?
That's exactly the quality factor I meant earlier. And yes, at some point during the day—since the day is divided into morning, midday, and afternoon—it should show me that beautiful sky blue or even white at least once. Because that "mush" is already evaluated there. That means I have the option to see if it breaks out somewhere, if clouds spread out here in the evening, or if the wind picks up too much somewhere. And then it's like that, and so on. So all of that is already factored into this thermals quality factor. And to give you a number, yeah, from about 70 or 80, I take a close look at a day.
You also have to differentiate. Sometimes after a front passes, the morning value gets pulled down into the basement because there's still a lot of residual moisture around. That means you shouldn't overvalue it too much. Or you have to see it in a larger context. It can still, it can always be a peak flying day, because especially after those frontal passages, the air mass is very, very active. And it's usually quite nice and smooth to fly. I find that out again and again when you really have a day where it last rained around 3 or 4 p.m. the day before. On that day, a bit of drying can take place. And then, usually, you get a flying day the next day that is well-defined, where maybe the base is just a bit low at the beginning.
But you can usually start very, very early and then basically grow with the day, and then usually fly it off in a very, very pleasant way. So the thermals are quite round and soft and everything is nice. Especially here in the Alps, it's much more fun. And yeah, it also lures you to get up on the gas earlier because everything is so nicely marked by the cumulus clouds. Now
Let's go back to the detailed process for a bit. If you've seen a day on Soaring Meteo with good thermal quality, oh, there's a day, you put it in focus. The day gets closer. What detailed analyses do you do then? Or do you really just look at whether the wind is somewhat okay? The thermals will be okay if the thermal quality is somehow above 80 percent. That'll work. Actually, that's almost enough preparation for me. Or do you then go into it much more intensively for the day you actually fly and look at 37 other sites?
Yeah, not 37. But I have my four or five favorites because, as I mentioned at the beginning, every site has, in my view, its own reason for existing. That means, for example, as we said before, the dust forecast is always important to me because I've stood at the launch site very often and wondered, yeah, where is my shadow? Because there was simply so much shielding from the dust particles in the air that almost no ground radiation was taking place anymore. I've also experienced just as many dull days that were actually predicted to be very, very good. So I was always looking for, yeah, which systems mapped that well? And then I discovered for myself, for example, starting with the topic of humidity, that ZAMG has a weather forecast here.
That's an Austrian weather service. And these weather animations, especially the rain forecast, even if it's very, very, very coarse, is usually the most accurate because services like MeteoParapont, for example, if it's predicted to be a bit damp there, well, it indicates the remaining precipitation. That's quite nice for seeing where the strongest trend is, but the precipitation that the MeteoParapont model usually predicts is also completely exaggerated. So, as I said, you can read the general area there, but if ZAMG says it won't rain that day—meaning there are no points on that coarse grid—then I take that pretty much at face value.
Then the day before is, of course, the starting point, the cross-check for us in Austria. Naturally, that's actually the weather service itself. So there, I see the areas of the best lift, how high the base is. That's usually very, very accurate. The wind has also improved quite a bit by now; it's neither estimated too aggressively nor too conservatively. I actually think that's pretty great. Maybe what I forgot to mention before is that when it goes three or four days into the future, I ironically also quite like using these meteograms from Meteo Blue just to get a bit of a sense of what the cloud development will be like there. But of course, I have the issue that this is only possible at specific points and not over a more complete area.
You don't use Windy at all? For the wind forecasts, which are also kept pretty coarse, I actually think it's quite good. But with these new thermals forecasts, I haven't gotten any added value out of them yet. For me, it's all too optimistic and too good, and everything is basically colored the same. I see too little difference in the daily quality from day A to day B. If I say I don't find any added value in the geographical gradation, then the comparison between the days is also too difficult for me to distinguish, so I can't say, not today but tomorrow, or vice versa, better today than tomorrow.
I find that not meaningful enough for me. But of course, Windy is otherwise a top-notch weather service; in my opinion, it's very simple, easy to understand, and powerful. But for my actual flight decisions, it's not really the system of my choice.
How often, now that you've gotten so into it, does it still happen to you that you head out, stand at the launch site, and say, "Damn, I messed up the forecast somehow or got my hopes up for the wrong reasons"? Like the...
In recent years, it's very, very rare. I'd have to say that out of five times, I'm pretty sure I was right four of them. For example, even on the best flying day we had in our local Eastern Alps this year, I already thought to myself, yeah, this is going to be a 250-kilometer day. If you were to fly on the border, they might even do 300. And it was pretty much exactly like that. I also made it public that even though I see it better on the border, I still prefer my Stotterzinken.
And so, yeah, it was actually a conscious decision not to go to this launch site, even though I saw that it's actually better down there. So, as for the success rate, I'm actually happy with it; it shows that the systems, the way I use them, are actually quite good. Of course, another good aspect is that, if I write it out now, that I believe it's good there, there's also a lot of coordination happening in the community. That means, yeah, I get different assessments again, what other people think about it as well. Or one could maybe go there too, because I'm always focused on these three flight areas I mentioned earlier. And yeah, so I'm actually super happy with the success rate.
There are never really bad days; sometimes it might be a bit disappointing that the thermals don't build up quite as well, but they're always actually great flying days. I was also super happy with my 250er flight from Stoderzinken this year because I landed late, as I felt like I made the best use of the day I was offered for my skills. And that makes me completely satisfied.
Now you've named three typical flight areas where you say these are your favorite flights. Or the ones you fly mainly. Stoderzinken, Grente, and Meduno, I believe. Zillertal, yes. Oh, Zillertal as well. Doesn't the unknown appeal to you anymore, or not so much, to fly other routes as well? Because I mean, you know the Stoderzinken triangle by now.
Yeah, I know that well. For a long time, I really tried to find some great early launch sites in my region. But we have a massive issue with the military here. You just can't launch everywhere that would actually be good early launch sites. Then we have the airspace issue where I live. That's especially the case if you were to launch early or fly home really late, especially near the main camp—in my area, military airspace comes into play again. So it's all a bit cumbersome. For example, I've never been to Fiesch in Switzerland because, until now, the effort just didn't make sense. So my search is actually where I'm now actively saying, okay, I'll sacrifice a good day.
Because typically, you know the feeling, when you fly from a new launch site for the first time where you've never flown before, you're just more conservative, you have the risk of a crash and and and. And actually, it's important to me that I have a good chance to fly long from the start, and I'm not really as open to existence, to experiments, as I used to be, because I'm of the opinion that with the three options, with my three main options, that's actually a guarantee for a super nice flight day and I can enjoy that over and over again. Of course, if someone had a new idea where I see potential, I'm immediately on board. But somehow, at least for me, no one tells me at a new launch site, it's just not the time anymore,
by not having the will to look for something great and new here, because I'm super happy with the way I actually fly.
But you could still say, look,
I pick a good day when I know I can stay in the air for ten hours. I go to a launch site that might be unfamiliar to me. I know I can't push as much here because I don't know the terrain that well. I have to fly more defensively. I won't manage a 250 at the end, but maybe only a 180 or 200. But I just love the appeal of getting to know something new, and I'm in the air just as long, so the experience, the feeling, is probably the same. Or does that mileage and point total still count so much for you in the end that you'd rather go to Stoderzinken, because at least there I know what I'll have on the clock at the end?
It's mixed. Like I said, I'm missing that hunger to absolutely have to or want to experience something new right now, because, as I mentioned, I'm happy. Basically, if I see a cool idea, there are usually several people who can be inspired by it. That means getting up there, flying together, and thereby increasing the chances of hitting a good glide right away in an unfamiliar area—yeah, that's all there is to it. But for me, that's more or less almost like league flying. Through league flying, I get to go to spots where I would otherwise never go. I just get that racing experience, that high-speed flying experience, and the group experience, as I said before.
And I don't really have the same demands now when I go cross-country. Like I said, if someone has a great idea, I'm the first to say, hey, we could really look into that. But yeah, at the moment, they don't exist. They come more spontaneously. Like you interviewed a very good friend of mine, Werner Luidold, this year. A spontaneous story like in Meduno, where I'm sitting behind the Valon and then get confronted with the idea while heading up—the day isn't actually bad. We could try to fly back home, too. That's spontaneous. No idea what the route choice is. Take a quick look, into the harness, out into the air, and then we fly it. Yeah, it works. But basically now...
I don't have that, yeah, my flight area, my curiosity to explore something new, that's not really that big of a factor for cross-country flying right now.
You just mentioned league flying. Those are, well, classic tasks that might last, sometimes they're quick and are over after two hours. If they're a bit longer, then usually after four hours you're already heading back for landing. Now, you prefer to fly very long and far. If you're standing there facing the decision, oh, it's a good day, there's a league task or I could go fly somewhere for myself. What do you decide on?
you? There are examples of both. For instance, last year—no, that was two years ago—on a good flying day, I bailed out of a competition and headed for the crags, taking Sommi and Josi along, and Luki too. We were down at the crags, I don't know, flying the 260 or I think even the 300, Sommi. So that was a really, really productive trip. That means when the flying days are really good, cross-country flight is clearly the priority. But specifically like it was today, or this year, there were some nice days, they were okay in terms of wind, they were okay in terms of moisture, and, and, and, but they just weren't great cross-country flight days.
And that's why I love being part of the competition with my CCC glider, on one hand to maintain old friendships, and above all, to really mix at the front again with the new gear. For me personally, from a flying perspective, it's not just about the fun factor itself, but, yeah, it helps me to constantly recalibrate how fast you can fly. Because if I'm out there alone as a cross-country pilot, I tend to be satisfied with the thermals right away, just circling a few more times. And it's great when you can fly through the air with the guys and really only take the absolute minimum amount of lift needed.
That's really funny. And especially with how it was this year, I won my first league ranking competition. Although we swept up most of the leading points on the tasks, and of course, that's also a huge amount of fun when you see that you can combine your cross-country flight skills—where you're used to flying at the front alone—with the tactics that you naturally also need in a competition flight like that. There are
Yeah, many people say they learned speed flying during competition flying and then transferred that back into cross-country. But you basically do it the other way around. You say you got your skills from cross-country flying and now you're transferring them into competition flying. It is
It's a mix, Lucian. It's a mix of reading the terrain and sensing where the best board is without anyone pointing it out to you; that is clearly attributable to cross-country flying. But basically, the ability to recognize all of that whenever it's possible in speed flying clearly comes from competition flying. So they fertilize each other. Because of the speed, I'm only now realizing how fast I can fly during cross-country, how deep I can actually let myself drop depending on the day's quality, and how to still find a sufficiently good thermal entry even in deeper flight levels. I'd never scout that out if I were only a cross-country pilot, because then I'd just always stay in the upper stories and, yeah, fly it nicely and it would all fit.
Just to really experience it yourself, and not just always be told or read about it—like, you should glide for a long time and then climb back up deep—you have to feel it, you have to experience it, to really have it ready for when you go back out on a cross-country flight yourself.
And did you just say you fly a CCC glider, a two-liner? I believe it's a Niviuk Icepeak X1 at the moment.
At the same time, you mentioned earlier that you don't get to fly very often, that it's actually only a few flight days that add up. From a classic pilot's perspective, you'd say, hey, with actually so little, yeah,
you don't have that much flight experience, but with so little practice—which you also have in between, where you say at the beginning of a flight I have to get back into the swing of things again, and it's nice that the conditions are still weak, then I can really get into it. But is flying a CCC two-liner actually not too high a risk?
Absolutely. I'm fully aware of the risks. I'm moving into this risk profile in a classic way. I'm at an advanced age, I'm almost 50 now. I have a lot of flight experience. I fly a hot glider, but I have a poor practice level. And that's, of course, a whole cocktail of re-risks being served here. And I try to reduce those risk factors, the ones that actually make it dangerous, that could really lead to an accident, one by one. And then the most important thing, the very, very most important thing, is the weather and the wind. So that's, for me, the main criterion as to whether I decide to go flying at all. Then, of course, there's the line choice.
How close do I let myself get to the terrain?
And yes, that also depends partly on your form for the day. Or specifically now, when I'm flying competition, whether someone is flying ahead of me who basically makes the air more readable for me, or if turbulent areas are to be expected somewhere. So it's a constant, um, yes, attempt to minimize the risk on all levels there are, be it wind, weather, uh, my own abilities, my current mental state, and of course the decisions I make in the air.
With wind and weather, you do this very good preparation at least for your own cross-country flights and say, it's just a good day, it's a relatively low-wind day, I can go fly relatively safely. When you fly competitions, well, basically you have to take what comes much more. And of course, the competition people also say, we say then, we also do tasks even if the weather isn't so great, but sometimes it develops over the course of a day in such a way that you say, yeah, now it's slowly getting more critical and stuff. How do you approach risk there? Would you also go down for tasks there, or are you still so ambitious that you say, I'll push through here and I'll just accept this increased risk? Yes, it
it's often not an easy decision because, basically, I'm the type of person who, if I'm told a task is doable, will really push through it. But of course, I'm also the type who knows that if I see many signs in the air, let's say, indicating that I'm heading toward being seriously overwhelmed, then I think I'd be at the point of saying I'm going to land intentionally. But that's never happened until now. For one thing, I'd never go to a competition where I already know the weather forecasts aren't good. That means I'll never be able to win in the league at all, because I don't go to all the competitions where the weather is actually flyable and taskable.
For example, if it's just too weak to climb above 8 octaves, even if moisture instability is predicted, I won't go there because it just doesn't give me enough. But it's just that with my X1, I actually have a glider that gives me the feeling that I master it well, despite its CCC properties. So, the way it always managed the NIVIUG, it stays in construction position even in the highest conditions during Wüderschaft; with my skills and my understanding of how I've piloted it so far, I haven't felt like it's challenging me. On the contrary, it actually surprised me quite positively. Because whenever I think, "Okay, for example at the Kitzbühlerhorn, there's a massive Leopold, let's see how I do there," it was of course associated with great tension, yeah,
but I was still able to manage it. And that's really attributable to the glider as well, that it translates my control inputs well and lets me read it in a way that shows I can obviously provide the right motor inputs there. So until now, the tension, yeah, that was definitely high and the concentration was absolutely 100%, which I love, I have to say. And yeah, until now, they've actually just been great experiences. Not even close calls since I've been flying this glider here, I just feel completely at ease. Have you ever
Have you ever experienced a really risky, high-stakes situation while flying?
Yeah, that was two years ago in Brazil. In Brazil, we were down in the lowlands, on a cross-country hunt, and there, it was actually like this—it was my second year flying my used end-of-life wing, and yeah, because you go flying every day and your glider really sticks with you, you get to know it very, very well, and you get a bit overconfident. And that overconfidence was also due to the fact that—I remember it exactly—we were over some hilly terrain, with a good 30 or 40 valley wind down below, so we entered a thermal at medium altitude that was relatively rough, but yeah, by now you're used to it, and when they're just small collapses, which you can definitely have in the lowlands too, I just didn't pay them much attention anymore.
And so, while circling on the outside in the thermals, I took a very, very unspectacular-feeling collapse. But it then pulled down slowly like a banana and really wove itself deep into my surface. And then, well, I thought, okay, and of course I tried to stop the rotation. I figured the whole thing is very important because enough people have already been knocked out who then didn't make it to throwing the rescue. I then tried to somehow get the wing flying again. With my skills, we're back to the point where I just do very, very few SRVs and have very rarely had to correct extreme flight states until now, so that didn't work.
And then I threw the rescue and landed backwards with my steerable rescue. Luckily, I was able to aim for a landing field there between the thorn bushes. During the backward flight, because as I said, you have fat valley winds down there, or ground winds, you have to say. And yeah, that was actually my wildest incident I've ever had in the air. Luckily, nothing came of it at all, except that I needed a bit of a sticky sail for my rescue parachute. But otherwise, luckily, everything turned out fine. But as always, I wasn't held back from staying in the CCC class anyway, because it's a bit of a quirk of mine that I just love the performance.
And I'm, as I said, well aware of the risk, so I try to reduce the other factors a bit. That means I definitely do ground handling at my meadow because the effort involved is very, very low. But otherwise, yeah, it's more about just going flying when the conditions are good.
Wouldn't a SIV training still make sense there? Even with a glider like that?
Yes, I also prescribed that for myself last year. I'm organized by the league and the flight school too, if they fly
not that good, I've...
carried out with Helle Schrempf and a few colleagues from the league for training. And I have to say, that was an eye-opener for me. Because at the beginning of last season, I was really thinking in the classic way, "Do I really belong there?" Especially because of the factors we discussed earlier, the high-risk profile. And I borrowed a 1-2, so a B-glider, and had it with me during the SIV training. And also an END-glider. Just to see, yeah, what does it feel like? And yeah, with all the new findings—it's curious what's still going on there—I actually took Helle's statement a bit skeptically at first, for example.
Yeah, if you have a collapse, and the altitude allows for it, you should really fly with the glider, turning away in the direction of the collapse. Because that helps the overall system get out of the situation again with the least amount of altitude loss. Because it helps against snapping collapses and, and, and. And if you don't try that, that's one of the things,
You've basically ingrained that into your head over the decades. If it works, then weight on the open side, plus or minus the Nesler grip, something in that ballpark. And you could fly well with that for a long time. Until you once try both variants with such a glider in an SIV training. The classic way, how it's always been done, and simply allowing, at sufficient altitude, to see what happens if you just go with the collapse. Those were actually eye-openers for me, seeing how many different ways there are to react well to glider malfunctions. Specifically also recognizing with the other pilots, who have also flown more or less CCC or ENT gliders, what the behavior is like.
And there I just realized, yeah, I can do this. I handled it, especially how my own awareness was in that moment. So the focus, the inputs, and all that—it was great. And then I tried the same thing once with the ENB glider. And yeah, when I landed, my colleagues said you could clearly see I was completely under-challenged. I thought to myself, yeah, this is really fun to fly. But it was just that after this SIV training, I only went out once on a good cross-country flight day in the Zillertal, because it managed to work out. And it was a really great cross-country flight day. By half-past eight, it had already started to bumble around. I even waited extra because I knew, well, I have an ENB glider now.
It doesn't climb as well as my other gliders, of course. Really waited. And it turned out that, unfortunately, I was the only one who got washed out that day. And then I thought to myself, I'm not enjoying this. So, regarding my skills, I tried to somehow prevent the glider from getting into the ditch. For me, I didn't manage to do that well. And thus, this decision during that SIV training plus one day of cross-country flight attempt made it clear to me that I just said, okay, I accept, I accept lower passive safety. What? I have to work more on the other factors and do what's necessary so that I can still...
...can move through the air with an acceptable level of risk.
If average pilots, young pilots in your club or something, come to you and say, "Lex, I'm thinking about maybe moving up from a B to a C or from a three-liner to a two-liner and stuff. When would you, would you tell them, really do it? I mean, when would you say it makes sense? And what should they do accordingly to prepare for that?"
Yeah, for that, I just have to know them well or at least be able to assess them enough to know what kind of person they are. Because of course, there are all different ways to approach practicing such a beautiful sport, or wanting to practice it. And they're all okay. But basically, if someone says they're heading towards...
performance-oriented flying, you just want to feel that two-liner fulfillment, then for me the most, most decisive thing is: what kind of person is this? Is this a person who likes to pass responsibility to others? Is this someone who says, "Yeah, you all have to watch out for me. You told me I should go flying today." If it goes in the direction of someone arguing like that and not taking 100% responsibility for themselves, then I would, in principle, rather advise against it. Especially, it could be that they still have good skills, then that's something else. But just in terms of mindset and character. That I say, "Hey, if I do something like this, I have to accept that as a pilot..."
am one hundred percent responsible and can't say, "Yeah, but the glider reacted somehow differently than I would have imagined." That doesn't help at all. If you're the type of person who, for example, has only been flying for a year or two and says, "Yeah, I always go out on the practice slope for that, or I train this and that," and is a profound, let's say, expert on their gear, then there's absolutely nothing against it. For example, with a relatively simple glider, like the Volt seems to be—I don't know it, but just to really feel that glider feeling, I think that's absolutely justified. So, if I can, as I said, assess the people a bit, I wouldn't dare to give a judgment at all.
Otherwise, yeah, I'd say, well, let your flight school or your flight instructor judge that, they know you better. But if I remember and if I know the person a bit, then in my opinion, there's absolutely nothing against exploring the two-liner direction, because from my point of view, it's simply more fun and also safer—we can go into that in more detail regarding certain aspects—but I have to, and I think I'm repeating this for the third time now, I have to give the weather absolute focus. If I can't read that in the air, where the air and lift will form, and I'm probably still struggling somewhere, then I'd say, yeah, okay, then that's naturally a no-go. But if I have the opportunity, for example, in the morning or in the evening for the first few hours, or to start in the autumn, to just fly a two-liner once in relatively relaxed areas, like Meduna, to gather flight hours there and simply this
...more about dynamics, in positive and of course also in more critical conditions, to understand and read them, then in my opinion, there's nothing against it, because it simply gives the possibilities and especially that feeling of flight, that beauty, yeah, just another real boost. If you...
To condense what you just said, I'd read it as good weather understanding and 100% personal responsibility. Then you can
flying two-liners. Good weather understanding is, in my opinion, the be-all and end-all for risk management. And yes, motorically, I mean, many aspects come into play. This is a very, very reduced summary and, of course, you have to be motorically suitable as well. Everything is a bit more specialized. The takeoff is a bit more specialized. The sensitivity in flight is a bit more specialized. So it must have been a bit of a maturation process as well. But it will, per se, if the guy or the lady is suitable, after two or three years of intensive flying with all its aspects, I would say you can certainly give it a try, because over the last ten years or more, since two-liners have been on the market, the technology and the understanding of the manufacturers and producers have improved massively.
And I'm just going to... I'm going to refrain a bit from condemning these twin-liners per se. Because for me, they are more collapse-resistant. They offer a larger speed window with better glide. And thus, even if I get pinned into a valley by a valley wind somewhere, I might be able to maneuver out of a stupid situation even better. Because, as I said, they're more collapse-resistant and also faster with better glide. And those are simply things—you have those advantages every single second of flight. And how often do you need passive safety? That's just such a central theme. How often do I need passive safety? When am I, as a pilot, actually passive?
For me, well, it's almost a bit incomprehensible if you practice a sport like paragliding. At least, that's my approach. And that's why I say, yeah, I accept that I'm being challenged. I can't do anything stupid. I just have to make sure that I do it as well as I possibly can, for my own sake. So, I'm going to participate in the SIV training again next year to really work on my own skills again, based on the risk profile I mentioned earlier. And those few days, we've really mandated them now because I've truly felt and recognized the added value; Eli and Hele do a really outstanding job.
Let's jump to another topic for a bit. You're also someone who really enjoys sharing your knowledge. And you have a really great website, lex.xalps.com, where you always feature photo reports of many of the flights you've done—those big cross-country flights. For every photo, you also state where it was or what was special about it and things like that. Why do you put in all this work?
Yes, because I love it. It's just, despite all the time I don't have anymore, that's what I still make time for. I take a lot of photos, even during competition days, tasks, just to capture the conditions here, to capture beautiful moments, because so much happens in my life that I end up forgetting all these things. But when I see a photo now and wrote those flight reports relatively soon after, all those feelings and assessments of how it was back then are immediately fully present again. When I had more time, I also put a lot of energy and love into videos. Since going self-employed, unfortunately, I can't do that anymore. But for me, that was simply a complete reliving of all those fantastic experiences.
And I can still watch those now, even the videos from 15 years ago. And it's still that feeling, reproducible, of how it was back then. What I also still do now, even though I've been doing it for 22 years, is to analyze what was good, what was bad, what the weather decision was, did it fit, would it have been better elsewhere? And specifically the flight tactical decisions. Should I have maybe pulled deeper into the Alps here? Or no, did it look better earlier because everything was shaded behind? And that, Lucian, is really still, after all these years, when you look at it now, I think I found 12 or 15 points,
...which were all either positive or in need of improvement. And actually, this might just be a nice thing to mention, but all my findings are available completely free on the website. I've built a lessons-learned database for every flight that was, in my view, more special. And whether it was down in Meduno, where I only flew 70 kilometers a month ago, there was still a lot to learn there too. And I just think this kind of debriefing is great; when you go flying again, you can approach it fresh by simply filtering that lessons-learned database by launch site, maybe even by wind direction and weather—you can do all that quite easily—just to look at those bullet points from back then again, simply to avoid making the same mistakes twice.
Because that's something you naturally can't do. If I've already done something stupid once and realized later, "Ah, that wasn't optimal," then doing the same mistakes again—well, in Austrian, that's a bit of a "tell." And that's why it's important that I say, okay, I make mistakes, there will always be mistakes, everyone makes mistakes by the way, you just try not to make the same ones again. And with this analytical approach, I've actually become completely unspectacular—from a normal local mountain flyer to a cross-country pilot and, let's just say, a circuit pilot. It was completely unspectacular; I don't have any special talent or anything like that.
but it's just the path of small steps that has led me to thermals, and fortunately, I've never actually hurt myself in my sport, and to great experiences right down to a simple XContest victory. And I have to say, for me, that's just confirmation that, as in many other life situations, it's the right approach: just always look at what happened, try to analyze it, and those records on the blog are just very important because you might know it, Lucian, when you remember something, your memories are always distorted. Either they get overdramatized or they get downplayed. And when I specifically take a lot of flight footage now,
I can look back at those later and say, "Yeah, maybe I could have made it to the main Alpine ridge after all? Could I have flown there too?" Or, "How long was it shaded there? How did the thermal development actually progress?" And for example, during that last flight...
from the Stuttgart-Sinken triangle, a total of 100 photos were taken. Simply because every time there's a glide passage or whenever I think, "Okay, the flight decision is made, I'm at three-quarters or full throttle, everything's set," I pull out the camera and take photos of what I see as either beautiful views or flight times, or things relevant to the flight decision. Then, on the next bad day, at some point after the flight is over, I sit down, edit the photos, and write the story to go with them.
From what I'm hearing, it sounds like—at least nowadays, since you might not need as much time for the preparation, including the weather prep—it sounds like you're investing way, way more time into the post-processing than into the preparation?
Absolutely. It has to be that way, because if the post-flight processing is good, the preparation becomes all the more efficient. And I love that feeling—I mean, you'll know this from your cross-country flights, which is why we do the sport in the first place—how long that feeling of happiness lasts after landing. I used to ride motorcycles and do other sports, but that was for a few hours; that was the adrenaline, the endorphins, and then it was back to normal levels. But if you've just had a great cross-country flight that really had so many intense sections, so many moments, then it's just something uplifting, even the next day. And when I look at my photos, and maybe look at the flight tracks of my friends who might have been with me, I'll fly it back and forth twice and then write down my thoughts and feelings.
Then there's the post-processing, which takes, for example, six to eight hours. I sit there, doing the photos and everything that goes with it for the blog, until it goes from zero to a hundred—from the idea of "I'm going there" to me saying, "Guys, look, our flight from last weekend is online." That's almost a full net working day dedicated to that. But I still love it. These are completely self-serving, my memoirs for starters. But I also make it public so that anyone who can say, "It looks good for the Stoderzinken morning, I'm coming from, I don't know, Vienna or somewhere else," can read up a bit beforehand or see how it works. So that I don't just do it like XContest, because you know, XContest has great features for comparing line choices right away, but you already have the issue of...
you have no idea what the weather was like at that time. And that's exactly why I think the photos are such a great supplement, because then it's just, okay, what did it look like in the Gasteinertal or on the main Alpine ridge or out towards Germany. You can see the cloud pattern.
and the cloud base. And was there only 100 meters left to the ridge, where you had to squeeze under and under, or could you fly up to 4,000 meters? I mean, 4,000 meters, you'll be able to see that in the track itself, but you won't see if it was all blue up there or if there were still some cumulus clouds visible, and so on.
Exactly like at the Kränte below, how many times has that happened before? Two air masses meet, the base in the south is 300 meters lower, and you wonder, if you only see the track, "Yeah, why didn't anyone fly any lower?" But with the photo, it's completely clear.
In your last big flight at the Stoderzinken, there's a very interesting sentence under Lessons Learned, namely not to fall into the trap of looking for worse forecasts subconsciously just because I was tired in the evening, in order not to go flying the next day. What kind of lessons learned is that?
That's the high art of trying to be completely objective. Like we said before, everyone has a distorted memory of what was experienced or what actually happened. And for me, it was like this that day: we actually chose a stable day, and that was somewhat intentional. The next day was forecast to be more unstable, but with a certain chance of rain. And then suddenly, I'm looking at a MeteoReport that I already know says too much rain ahead, and it says, well, it'll probably rain, the end of the day will surely have thunderstorms, and, and, and. Just because I'd already had a bit of work and because I was also tired from the previous day.
When you think, well, and then I really took some perspective on that day, you see, you're actually a victim of your own desires and I just let that good day slip away. Because on that day, if we had been out there, it would have held perfectly in the Endstall. It didn't rain at all. And because of that, it would have really been a day where, if you want to put it in kilometers, you would have probably gotten a minimum of 2.8, 2.90, and it would have certainly been more fun flying because on a blue thermals day, you know, that's not all fun. It's a total struggle until around, yeah, 1:00, 1:30, then we really get the good thermals going.
And from the morning on, it would have been a total bust, where at the beginning you think, well, it's going to overdevelop anyway. Yeah, nonsense, it held up perfectly, left a super cross-country flight day behind. And that's exactly that one day out of five I mentioned before, that you just leave behind. So that exists too, that's what's happening, so it's a bit of a misinterpretation, not just that I went and it was worse than expected, but the other way around, which day did I also leave behind that could have been perfect at least according to the webcam images.
How much do we pilots look for weather that fits our expectations? Yeah, way too much.
Definitely too much. And yeah, as a human being, you always tend to justify your decisions. And that's exactly what happens there too. Even though I know it and even though I'm quite meticulous about it and often try to scrutinize myself, it still happens again and again. But you just have to be aware of the fact that's just how it is. And the next time the situation comes up where there are two good days, or one better and one worse, then I know—you see—and the next day I go anyway, and if it's thundering then, I'll just land, but at least I'll try. And if I don't write that down somewhere, then it's possible that after two years I'll be in the exact same situation and basically make the same wrong decision again. I don't like that.
Lately, at least since you've had your own company and been self-employed, you've also been active as a sponsor. You sponsor other pilots, including Michael Sommerauer, and I believe you also sponsor the Austrian League. Why?
Yes, because I'm in the fortunate position of being able to give something back. I don't actually have many demands for myself, for my life. I only have one child. We have everything sorted out financially at home. The company is generating good profits. It's a very profitable business. And so I think to myself, why shouldn't I just give something back? And on the other hand, I've decided to promote the youth in the league because I see, of course, that we as Austrians hardly play any role internationally anymore. I see other funding programs, especially following the French model, that actually work and that at least the barrier to entry...
for the young up-and-coming pilots, that the entry barrier should be set as low as possible, because basically, you have to travel around, you often have bad conditions, and just to minimize these external, negatively influencing circumstances, I think to myself, I'll sponsor the youth work. How I want to stand out specifically is simply because of Michael Sommerauer, who, in contrast to his peers, has shown so much initiative, working so consistently on himself and his skills, really aligning his life with paragliding, which completely inspires me. That someone makes it so clear for themselves and follows through so consistently—you normally see that less often with the youngsters nowadays—and that's why he is absolutely worth supporting significantly so that he can simply live out his dream.
So, I sponsor because I'm able to. The return on investment from such advertising expenses is, of course, very modest—maybe it'll eventually materialize—but that's not what I'm about at all. What really matters to me is the passion I have for the sport myself, and wanting to enable other people to do it on a large scale. And as you've seen, this path, this consistent path, for example from Sami, who led you to several task wins in really renowned competitions this year, also led to him winning the Austrian League. So, for him, the path is preordained in my opinion, and to me, he is the most complete and best pilot in Austria.
Sami flies with your company's name on the glider. It always says Business Insights. You just said that in advertising, you don't know if anything comes back. Is there even—well, there are some paragliders who fly around with some advertising on the glider. Do you think paragliding offers any advantage at all for someone who puts something on there, or is it actually always just modern patronage?
Second. There's always a goodwill action behind it. Somewhere, you want to support someone. Of course, if an aviation company or a paragliding company advertises for themselves, it might bring in a little something. But otherwise, I think the name just becomes a bit more present, or it's actually nothing. Wait, I have to quickly let the cat out of the bag. Yes, the ball. One moment.
Lex, as far as I know, you also give talks at clubs and similar places about cross-country flying and the experiences you've had. So you're very happy to share your knowledge in those settings. This is my last question: what would you like, could, or should aspiring pilots take away and remember most from you?
The clear focus is risk awareness. Everything else comes on top of that and is basically the icing on the cake. If you're really clear about the fact that, hey, what I'm doing here is moving through an invisible medium, that I'm at the mercy of external environmental influences, and I just have to try to manage the risk that I specifically have as a beginner due to this lack of knowledge or, I believe, the unconscious misjudgment where I say, hey, I accept the risk. So that's always a focus in my lectures, which, due to the interaction and everything else, sometimes last four or five hours. And I simply set out for myself to try and make the people aware of the risk, but then also...
to give them recipes for how to handle risk. Because not every time you're afraid, it's automatically a risk. You have to differentiate between what you perceive and what actually is. And there are just a few methods, perspectives, and ways of proceeding to really ground yourself again, to refocus, to get back on track, even if it gets a bit demanding in the air at times. And that's a focus of my lectures. Besides efficient cross-country flying, of course—how do you do it? A major point, for example, is also the decisions in the air. I've found that this actually brings a lot to people.
that you simply visualize scenarios in the air, for example based on the photos we discussed earlier, just to show: we have a crosswind now, the cloud pattern looks like this, how would you fly? Where would you turn up? What line choice would you make? And people actually take that in very, very well as a complete package, and I just love it when people have a bit more self-confidence again—we've justified that if they accept these risks more consciously and then work on themselves. Not in a stubborn way, but just staying at it constantly. That is, in my opinion, what allows us all to continue enjoying this beautiful sport for a very, very long time.
One point I just picked up from what you were saying is what I'd call a certain level of discomfort tolerance. But not discomfort in the sense of, "I feel sick," physically, but simply, you're afraid. That's absolutely central. And the question is, how do you deal with this fear when you have situations where you could say, if you get through this, the flight can continue for a long time and you don't have to be afraid anymore? So, what's the final tip, a possible technique—how can I deal with fear so that I can say, "Hey, I can pull myself out of that headspace, or out of the valley of fear, while in flight," and then actually experience a nice rest of the flight?
Well, if you only want one tip, then it's clearly this perspective from the outside. If you think, "Yeah, it's getting very turbulent in the air, but I've still got the glider more or less under control, I just have a lot to do," then use that old trick: imagine you're standing on the ground looking up at yourself in the air—what do you see? You don't see anything. You just see a point that's more or less flying out there right now and everything looks fine. That means really reducing or differentiating it—I've still got it under control—and also putting the whole thing into perspective a bit, because we've already said before that your own sensations often play tricks on you. It also depends on your mood for the day or many other factors, like whether I've had enough to drink yet, and, and, and.
I don't want to overcomplicate it, but it's also just about being aware of that, because what you feel can deceive you. Maybe it's not actually dangerous at all.
Lex, I'll leave it at that. It can deceive you about what you're feeling; maybe it's not even really dangerous.
Yes, that's what we work out over an hour in the risk management blog during my lectures, summarized in one or two sentences.
I hope the listeners here in the blog—ah, not in the blog, in the podcast—can take that with them and maybe next time step back a bit mentally or look at it from below and say, "Hmm, actually, it doesn't look that bad. I could just keep flying; it might even be fun." Lex, I thank you for your—on one hand, even, well, especially for your great work in the blog, because you can really...
...can basically browse for hours and look at dozens of your really great flights in those awesome pictures, and then always check out the lessons learned. You can really get an enormous, enormous amount out of that, just as you've passed it on now in the lectures or here in the podcast. Thank you so much for that. Many thanks, Lucian.
You can find the links to Lex Robé's website and the most important weather sites he mentioned in the podcast in the show notes on Lu-Glidz. Lu-Glidz is the paragliding blog to which Podz-Glidz belongs as a podcast. I am the producer of both offerings. My name is Lucian Haas. If you are already a supporter of Podz-Glidz and Lu-Glidz, thank you. If not, please support me in continuing to serve the paragliding scene. As a freelance journalist, I invest a lot of time into this, and it needs to be financed somehow. Especially since this isn't a hobby project, but part of the work I do for a living.
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