The longer you're at it, the more you go from a paragliding gourmand to a paragliding gourmet. In the beginning, quantity still counts—so as much as possible, which isn't bad in a way, because you're gaining experience, you have to fly, fly, fly, that's how you learn to fly. But then eventually comes the point where you say, I don't have to prove anything to anyone, and then you just pick out the right, beautiful moments because you already know it. And that's what you can enjoy in the cosmos.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today with Manfred Neugebauer and Lucian Haas at the microphone.
Today we have a small anniversary. This is the 100th episode of Podz-Glidz. Sometimes I wonder myself how I've been keeping this project alive for four years now. At any rate, I can say that the fun of it hasn't faded for me. And as I can tell from many messages from Podz-Glidz listeners, many of you also see real added value in it. So I can also happily announce that Podz-Glidz will continue with now three-digit counting. Because there are still many stories from the cosmos of paragliding that simply need to be told. From some messages, I also know that some were expecting a special guest for this 100th episode. Some might rub their eyes in surprise—or, since we're in a podcast, their ears—at the name Manfred Neugebauer, which is probably still unknown to many of you.
But I can assure you, Manfred is a special guest. And if you listen to this episode until the end, you'll surely agree with me. Because Manfred has gathered a lot of experience in his 36 years of paragliding. The man, who is nearly 60, is a defining pillar of the eastern Austrian paragliding community and the grand senior of the Hohe Wand flight area. He was a flight instructor for many years, runs his own paraglider video blog, and is a perceptive observer of past and current trends in the flying scene. There's a lot of material for conversation there, where one or two very valuable pieces of flying wisdom also flash by.
If you like Podz-Glidz, then please support my work as a patron. You can find out how to do that easily and without any obligation on the website of my paraglider blog Flugleits, on the Förder page.
Manfred, do you actually have a nickname?
Yes, I do have a nickname. My name is Manfred Neugebauer. And it happens every now and then that I get addressed as Fredo. And then, of course, there's the thing with my favorite drink, coffee. And that's when the name Flieger-Fredo came up again. So, it's quite funny and amusing. It happens from time to time. But mostly, it's just being called Fredo quickly.
Then I can call you Fredo, the flying fossil of the high wall. I mean, you've been paragliding for 36 years now. Have you ever actually hurt yourself while flying? Like, have you ever been injured?
No, hardly anyone believes me. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, I should be knocking on wood right now. Well, I have to say, I was there from the very beginning when it came to flying. I knew it back with the great-great-great-great-grandpa paragliders that you can't even imagine today. The development went very, very fast back then. You could say a newer, better model came out every six months. And the development team didn't even exist yet. So it was like these gliders, the good ones, the ones that were better, were pretty hot, you could say, in the air. So at times, it was quite intense. And it did happen that in some situations, I was lucky that it didn't end badly.
And when something did happen, luckily, honestly, it was just a few bruises and an "ouch." You'd just get up, dust yourself off, and think, "Ouch, that was a close one." Yeah, and otherwise, luckily nothing. But you have to be honest, luck was always a factor. And you learn from it. So, nothing serious. Honestly,
Honestly, honestly. In your opinion, how much luck is generally involved in paragliding?
Well, I see it a bit differently, I'd say you have to differentiate a bit. Specifically, where you're most at risk. So, where you might need a bit of luck—and you have to put "luck" in quotation marks, of course—is right at the beginning. When you're brand new, you have your pilot's license, you're full of enthusiasm, you know a lot of theory, but as the saying goes, theory is gray. And in practice, some things can look completely different. And it can happen very quickly that you need a bit of luck so that it doesn't end badly or unpleasant, or at least with a bruise or something similar.
What I find important, though, is that you have to learn from that luck. That is, you have to recognize that you were just lucky and then be able to develop further.
From which lucky situation did you learn the most?
From which lucky situation? Oh, there were several. There were quite a few. And even as a so-called experienced pilot, you're not immune to making a misjudgment. It just happens. I'd say it can happen once or twice a year where you take off in the air and then think, oh crap, that's nice, dot dot dot. I wouldn't have thought of that. You just have the advantage that, through experience, you can maybe handle such a situation better. For example, let's take one case where people really laughed at me, you could say. Ah, we wouldn't have expected that to happen to you.
I started there at Soaring—the high wall, the flight area where I fly the most is mainly Soaring territory, mixed with thermals. It was a cloudy day. And it was good for flying, it was carrying. I had a new glider to try out. Yeah, and I saw all around, it's getting better and better and it's quite good. People go down to land and think, okay, I'll fly down slowly now and look ahead. And suddenly it starts to rise and so on, getting better and better. And they think, oh, it's coming from one direction, it looks like it's turning black, a thunderstorm is approaching, still pretty far away. And after a while I think to myself, well, let's better just land. It's coming faster than I thought.
And then I change my flight direction towards the landing field. And suddenly I see, oops, there's a thunderstorm, another one, much, much closer. By then, I was already having a bit of trouble getting down. With the new glider, I didn't really dare to do any extreme maneuvers yet. You just don't know how the glider will react. Yes, then I managed to land anyway. And down there, just as I'm landing, in the final approach, I see people hurriedly packing up again, running away. One turns back, gestures to me, telling me to turn around. And at the moment I make ground contact, the glider falls down, we unhook the harness, I turn around again, right into that direction.
And there was a real wall of rain, I mean, white. A thunderstorm front moved in. And I managed to somehow stuff the glider away just then because it was already wet, it was pouring. And then ten minutes later, the first lightning strikes happened to the left and right—not directly, immediately, but in the area. I thought, oh boy. Well, then I was soaked to the skin, of course, really unpleasant. Then, luckily, a plane picked me up. And on the plane, they were already like, "Ah, Manfred, Manfred, how is this possible? I never would have thought this from you. You're always so careful and then something like this happens to you." And I thought, well, you're not immune, even as a pilot. I was a bit of a pilot, getting into something like that once.
I'd say I was lucky, because ten minutes later, it might have ended with a crash. And
what did you learn from that for yourself?
Well, looking around more, taking the weather report into account a bit more closely, and not being so eager with the new glider. So, also looking around a bit more carefully and playing it safe.
Quite simple. You've already mentioned the Hohe Wand. You basically live right at the foot of the Hohe Wand. It's in eastern Austria. But many listeners might not be able to relate to that at first. Just describe for us, what is the Hohe Wand? What's special about it?
Well, what's special about it, you have to differentiate. There's a meteorological aspect, a very interesting one here. And also a topographical aspect. Well, there are already some comparable terrains where you'd say, yeah, it looks just like that. It's a long ridge, you could say. A rock face, hence the name Hohe Wand. This rock face is about, well, with a few interruptions in it—there are some small valley cuts. It's about 300 meters high on average. There are higher areas that are a bit taller. And yeah, you can soar beautifully there. It's oriented towards the south-east.
One part then towards the south. There's a break in the terrain there, you could say. The length of this flyable wall isn't always constant. Because of course it depends on the main wind direction. And how it works thermally, it's about 10 kilometers long. So almost 12 kilometers long where you can fly off. Yes, and meteorologically, as I mentioned, behind the Hohe Wand, the high mountains begin, the real Alps. And in front of the Hohe Wand is the lowlands. If you notice sometimes, the Vienna Basin—that's a large basin, a lowland—goes towards Pannonia, towards Hungary.
And that's basically the lowland weather. And we are right on the dividing line where this Pannonian lowland weather... weather takes effect. And in one part of the area, the high-alpine weather already begins. And depending on how that develops, in terms of the wind currents, we are more under the influence of alpine weather or, at times, more under the influence of the Pannonian lowland weather. That makes it a bit difficult sometimes with the...
Weather forecasts. Can you actually take off from the high wall and fly out into the lowlands? Or do you actually find... I'm not quite following.
Yes, yes. That works quite well. You can fly out into the lowlands beautifully. Only, unfortunately, there's a very, very big catch. Because we are, not directly in sight, but in an air traffic control area that's weaker. That's actually the airport of Vienna, so Vienna Airport. And we're still inside that area.
That means you probably can't climb that high, right? No,
you're not allowed to. No, relatively. So there are two areas of the high wall. Normally up to about 2,000 meters MSL. And then in another area, you can climb up to 2,500 meters MSL. You don't get up to that height very often anyway. But if you want to fly out into the lowlands, as you said, the gradients get lower and lower. So, flying cross-country out into the lowlands, legally, that has to be like that, it's not
not recommended. Okay. You also ran a flight school at the Hohe Wand for a long time. Yes, I did. How suitable is the Hohe Wand actually for training? Isn't it a bit exposed because there are so many, I'd say, vertical cliffs, so is it perhaps a bit more difficult for training?
That is a very, very interesting question. Because that brings into play another very positive characteristic of the hohe Wand. And I can say upfront, yes, the training area is quite interesting. So, for the fact that we actually only have one, in principle, launch direction for our big flights, for the high-altitude flights, which is south, towards east-southeast, where we launch out. And this launch site for the students is really nice. So that has developed; it wasn't like that in the early days. I mean, we really started, you could say, almost from a nursery launch site. But that is significantly better now.
We have a really, really great launch site where you can easily abort. So it's definitely suitable for training. Otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten the certification for the school, of course.
But at the beginning, if you look back about 30 years or so, did you also train there? Like, did you go out from this cliff launch site with those absolute parachutes they still had back then?
Yeah, yeah, but
That was a long time ago. But one advantage, with the students—on the first day we went there and said, look, this is where we'll do our high-altitude flights. So, the flight school back then was very, very motivated to learn how to take off there. And it wasn't such a problem as it sometimes is today in some aircraft, where the chicks—let's call them that—the flight beginners say at the practice site, "Yeah, I want to go up already, I want to fly from up there." The motivation was naturally there to already be good at it and take off from there. And I have to say, there were never any problems. Of course, you had to be careful if you took off from a cliff start, that the wind conditions were optimal, and as a flight instructor, you had to intervene if necessary.
So nothing ever happened there and it was flawless. Of course, we then looked for other terrain, but the authorities also said, well, we should actually look into getting a better launch site. And then this launch site was created, where the high flights are now—we call it Oststartplatz—it has also constantly evolved, it's getting wider, bigger, and more well-maintained and more beautiful. And out of that, this launch site was created. For a while, there was also a flight school before that, it was called Flugschule Puchberg, because the next big mountain is also the largest mountain in Lower Austria, the Schneeberg, which is over 2,000 meters, and in that area, back when it was still Flugschule Puchberg, we used to have the practice slopes.
So, a practice slope, a slightly higher slope where you have about 80 meters of altitude difference. And then there was another launch site, which doesn't exist anymore, on the Hohe Wand, where we did our high-altitude flights. There were problems there with the hunting community and with people running into it, etc. Unfortunately, it wasn't possible to launch there for very long. And out of this whole situation, it was 1990, as I remember, this new launch site was created, which is mainly used by the ridge soarers. And as I already said, it has constantly evolved, getting better and better, becoming more beautiful, and you could say that since around 1990 and 1991, we've had a perfect, beautiful launch site, which is only oriented towards the east, but because the Hohe Wand, to get back to a question of yours,
since the high wall isn't that high in the direction we launch from, we're essentially in a thermal influence zone of the lowlands in front of the high wall, where the thermals often prevail. Of course, less so in winter, but when it starts getting thermal, we consistently get a thermally induced east-south-east wind, and thus you can still fly. If there's a west wind over the high wall, for example, it obviously shouldn't be so strong that it cuts through, but otherwise, you can still fly on the high wall relatively often, and for instruction as well, of course.
If you look back on your flying life now, what percentage—if you can estimate it somehow—what percentage of your flights or flight hours have you accumulated on the high wall alone?
Oh, that's a tough one. I'd have to think about it for a bit, but definitely the vast majority. I'd say at least 70 percent, maybe even 70 to 80 percent of my flights are on the Hohe Wand, but first of all, that was because of the training. Of course, you end up flying in your own "territory," so to speak, the most.
And before that, my nest—you could call it my flying nest—was where I started flying. But back then, it was with a glider; the hang glider didn't exist yet. I started there in the autumn of 1984. I flew there a lot at the Ätscher. That's also in Lower Austria, already a bit towards the border with Styria. And that's where I learned; it was the only flight school that existed at the time, and I flew there a lot. And then, of course, you look around. All around, what else you could fly, what was possible to fly. Even here in the immediate vicinity of the Hohe Wand, I also look around now, because since I'm no longer at the Hohe Wand school, I also fly in other flight areas.
But still, because I live here, in the flight area, it logically follows that you mainly fly here in the
...flight area at the High Wall. Don't you get bored there? I mean, you know the High Wall now. It's probably like your own backyard or something. When you go flying there now, don't you get bored? No, not at all. No.
That's actually the great thing about flying: first of all, meteorologically, every flight is different. It's always different. The weather situation is always different. You can set yourself a few goals here.
Boring? No, I can't say that. So, no.
Have you ever actually gotten bored while flying? Especially since you've been doing it for so long now.
No.
No. For the exact same reason. It's always a different experience. Every flight is different. So, you always have to prepare for certain situations. Yes, we already talked about that earlier, including a small lucky situation where you get lucky, which of course shouldn't happen often. Yes, in that case, you have to think, "Am I doing something wrong?" But no, because there's always a different situation, the world is always different, the situation is slightly different, the landscape looks different, you experience it differently, you feel it differently. So, one—and I'm sure every listener will understand this now—if you really fly for a long time, it's almost like a way of life, you could almost say, you experience nature completely differently.
I still tell my students, that's a completely different world, it's another world. I always said, for example, as a pilot, you can't really be any closer to nature, because basically, we are moving in an element that—let's be blunt for a moment—cannot be more hostile to humans. Because in the water, I can only swim, that works, but in the air, flapping your wings is going to be a bit difficult. So, we need this crutch; we are exposed to this nature, and that's probably what makes this experience so incredibly intense, moving into an element that we normally can't move in, and because of that, it seemingly never gets old.
Because it's always a challenge, or why do you think so?
Well, a challenge—I'd say it depends on the pilot's character. I mean, you can see it as a challenge if you want to fly performance-oriented. When it's about performance, like a long-haul pilot who's a mileage-eater, who absolutely sets a goal for themselves, like "I want to fly this far on day XY" or "I want to get to here and there," then of course it's a big challenge. The other side, of course, is that you have to take the opposite. I also know some pilots who are perfectly happy; they go up the mountain very early in the morning, do just one—in quotation marks—a glide, and enjoy nature. For that five to ten-minute flight down, with all their senses, those people are so happy.
And that's always different too. And that's why I wouldn't see it as a challenge
...as such. Has your own attitude towards flying, or the way you fly or what you set as a flight objective, changed over the years? Absolutely, absolutely.
Every pilot will certainly experience that in their... in their personal flying life, the longer you're at it. I always put it like this: you go from being a flying gourmand to a flying gourmet. So, at the beginning, quantity still counts—as much as possible, which isn't bad in part, since you're gaining experience. I mean, you have to fly, fly, fly, that's how you learn to fly. But then at some point, you reach the stage where you say, just as an example, the thermals are way too strong for me, I'm not going to bother with that anymore. I don't have to prove anything to anyone, along those lines. And then you just pick out the right, beautiful moments, because you already know that you can enjoy it.
So that's also possible, of course. And in that way, flying has completely changed, in the sense that you become more of an enthusiast. You don't have to prove yourself anymore; I don't need to fly these routes with a "must" and a plan. You just enjoy it a lot more.
more about flying. Are pleasure flights generally shorter flights, or does pleasure for you also mean you can really soar back and forth along the high wall for four hours and experience those four hours as a pleasure? A bit of both. I can...
enjoying a glide that might last five or ten minutes. If the mood and the weather situation are just right, it can really make your heart soar. Wow, what a beautiful moment to enjoy. And then, as you say, often even much longer. You can fly back and forth for six or seven hours if the weather is right. But then it might eventually get boring. I'd put it that way.
But that can also be great, of course, if you manage—I managed—to enjoy the view of the wide countryside from the 1,000-meter altitude limit we talked about, the limit of what's legally allowed for us in aviation, if the visibility permits. Yes. With moments over and over again. I wouldn't necessarily link enjoying that to the flight duration. It could be a five-minute flight, but it could also be another flight on thermals where you have to, I don't want to say, fight a bit, if you're really feeling it. Ah, now it's great, it's really—let's put it this way—really awesome flying weather, awesome thermals. And you can of course enjoy that too. So it also depends on that factor.
How you're mentally in it, how you enjoy it, that's an interplay—so, how you're feeling at the moment.
how you're mentally in it, how you enjoy it, that's an interplay, so how you're currently... Do you experience it now with your flight experience and also with your increasing age, where you say there are certain conditions you just don't like anymore—where you say they're too thermal, too turbulent, it's no longer enjoyable for me, so I just skip them, even if you could still fly, which is what many others might still do on days like that.
Absolutely, absolutely. And I actually said that before, you get more experience and you just become more about enjoying it and simply don't put yourself through certain things anymore. So there are weather situations, which do happen here with us on the Hohe Wand, where it gets really extremely thermal. So where, I always say, you're flying ballistically, you feel like a cork on boiling water, something like that. Well, you can take that in a fighting spirit. I can handle that. I can do that now. And yeah, if I really want to eat up the kilometers, then you fly in conditions that could almost be described as borderline.
But sure, yeah, enjoyment is diverse. One person enjoys this, another enjoys that. And then there's a situation where I say, no, I'm not doing that anymore. When it's really hammering, just really brutally hammering, then I say, no, I don't want to at all. I don't want to fight. First of all, it's like, your concentration drops because it is exhausting. So, when you're flying actively and concentrated, you're actually distracted from the enjoyment, to put it bluntly, and then you just don't do it anymore. And as an example, you know this happens again and again, it doesn't matter where, at any launch site, you always have the old stars or I don't know what you want to call them.
They sit there, watching, taking it all in, saying no, just chatting quietly, and all around them, there's the big hustle—mostly the younger, inexperienced pilots who are like, I have to get out there now, get out, get out, take off. And then you always have, depending on the situation, you have to watch, two or three people sitting around saying, well, I'll wait a bit longer, I'll watch this. I'm not going to do that now. And I actually count myself as one of those people.
Are you one of those people who sit at the starting points? Always commenting on what the others are doing in front of you? Or are you a quiet observer?
A silent observer?
So, commenting, yes, in that context, because so many people know me on the home front and then approach me. And you, how do you assess that now? And then you get back into commenting again, but not commenting in the sense of leveling malicious criticism. Like, you remember the Muppet Show, the two older gentlemen on the balcony. That comparison always comes up, of course. It does, of course. But it should be constructive, of course, that you might, under certain circumstances, ask a pilot who isn't very experienced yet or is just at the beginning.
Then you take examples, like, "Look, that's why it happened that way during the takeoff," and that explains the why. And then you get back into the middle of it. It's also the case that you see it immediately. And then, of course, there's some communication. But otherwise, when I'm sitting there or talking normally with the flyers, no. I mean, it's not disparaging, to put it so harshly.
You've worked as a flight instructor for many years. How much of that instructor instinct still kicks in for you? Like, when you're at the launch site and you see people who might still be having difficulties or are beginners or something, do you jump up and that instructor instinct just takes over and you say, "Let me help you, I'll explain it to you again," or can you hold yourself back?
To be honest, the instructor instinct is there. There are situations where I have to hold back a bit, where I really have to brake myself. It's just something that's inside you. But maybe it was more pronounced in the past than it is now, in the last few years, where it doesn't happen as much. Now I do it more like, if someone approaches me or asks, then yes. The only time I might jump in, you could almost say literally, is if I see immediate danger, then of course. For example, it happens, I've seen it a few times, that someone didn't check their harness beforehand and they're hanging halfway out because the handle was pulled and the pins are open.
So, if no one else sees it, then I can't take off in that moment, because that can end badly. So, in that case, I definitely won't. And but,
Yeah. I think in a case like that, everyone—whether they're flight instructors or not—will hopefully jump in and point out things like that to the other person. Like, the seatbelts are open or the rescuer is hanging halfway out or something. Because you'd want to be pointed out yourself if that were to happen to you, that you shouldn't take off with those kinds of errors, because they can really turn nasty very quickly.
Yes, you're absolutely right. That's how it should be. But if you've been a flight instructor for a long time, you naturally develop a certain eye, a certain way of seeing things or recognizing things in advance, which can be good under certain circumstances. An open rescue might not be the best comparison here, because that's obvious when you see it. But you just see certain things faster and maybe recognize them a bit earlier. I don't want to put anyone down, I know many pilots who would be very, very good flight instructors, but they just aren't, don't want to be, for private or whatever reasons.
And I also know flight instructors where I think to myself, well, okay, why is a flight instructor—just to call them that. So, it's not about whether you're a flight instructor now or not, but someone who is truly a flight instructor at heart, they'll see it more if you've been doing it for a long time, because you're basically trained for it, you've trained yourself to watch your students to make sure nothing happens, because of course, you have a duty of supervision toward your students, a very, very great responsibility that you always have to be aware of. And you train for that, of course, and that you recognize it much sooner.
Do you actually need more luck as a flight instructor than as a regular pilot?
No, I wouldn't say that. I'd actually say the opposite. As a flight instructor, if you're in the air more and flying more, you develop a routine. But that routine can also become a danger. You can't forget that. So routine isn't always an advantage if you start overlooking things out of habit, but because of it, you actually become more cautious because you experience and see so much, and you deal with the whole subject much more intensively—and of course, you should, that's clear. As a professional flight instructor, I think it's different.
For example, I know a statement that's very interesting, where some good students are advised to just do the flight instructor training, even if you don't end up becoming one. You get a completely different insight or perspective on flying. You don't have to actually complete the exam and do it, because getting into the whole subject is still such a kick. So, it's interesting.
Interesting approach. I can only confirm the latter. I didn't complete the flight instructor training, but I did take the flight instructor assistant course, and that was also quite eye-opening for me in certain other aspects. So, I can definitely recommend that. I want to go back to the high wall, but on a slightly different topic. One reason why I wanted to do a podcast with you was a video I saw. Yes. A video of you. You also like making videos about paragliding and other things. And in this video, you presented a long-term statistic of the flyable days at the high wall—a statistic that you keep yourself.
Do you really write down every single day when people fly at the high wall? Yes, that...
a certain condition. That came about back then with the school stuff. So, the flight school here, where I was a co-founder of the flight school, as the head of training, was in 2001. But that was in the summer, so in June 2001, that was the school. Then we got the notice from the authorities that we were allowed to provide training.
And then in 2002, the question always came up: how often is it actually flyable? And how often can you fly on the Hohe Wand? You had already asked that question too. And yeah, now I'm curious myself. I just write it down. And for a while, I started writing it down starting from 2002. So from January, from January 1st, on which day it was flyable. I didn't just mean training conditions, but generally, under regular conditions. So not flying in fog or in the turbulent part. I've expressed flying in the rain quite drastically. That's how I wrote it down. And then, seven years ago, I started doing it even more, because I thought, well, you could make it even more interesting.
We have a very, very large number of weather stations in this area. That's really great, it's really good. And that way, even if I'm not personally in the flight area right now, you can tell based on the weather stations and the records how many hours a day it was actually flyable. And I'm adding that to it now as well. And now it's been 20 years that I've been doing this statistic. And people are always very curious again and again. Especially now, a very hot topic, climate change of course. How it affects things and so on. I get asked about that at least once. And basically, I actually started doing this because of the questions about how often it's actually flyable.
That I say, yeah, take a look at this. This is how often it's flyable in
the reality here of flying on the circular wall. Just to understand that properly again. So you don't just look out the window and say, yeah, it would be flyable today or not, but you actually look at the data, which you mainly pull from the weather stations, and say, okay, based on the conditions, the wind was from the southeast and had this and that strength, it would have been flyable today. And then you enter in your calendar that it would have been flyable today. And for seven years, you also add that, based on the wind values, between 12 and 5 p.m. So those five hours would have been flyable on that day, or something like that.
Absolutely. But exactly like that. That's described perfectly. That's exactly how I do it. You don't just look out the window and say, "Yeah, it's flyable weather." That's obviously not very reliable, so to speak. You really have to look at all the weather data. Like I just said, there are a lot of weather stations there. I always tell the students or the pilots when they approach me: please don't just look at the wind conditions at the launch site, but also look at all the wind values all around the flight area. We have several, even multiple stations from the Central Meteorological Institute. That's the main meteorological institute in Austria. We have weather stations here that are all standardized and set up accordingly. So you can really see a lot from that.
We at the club—there's a flying club here, one of the oldest in all of Austria and one of the largest. We had our 40th anniversary a few years ago, but that's just a side note. And they've been operating weather stations and webcams for many years now. So, of course, you can check out what's happening with the wind and weather there. And you absolutely should. I can recommend that to everyone, in every flying area. No matter where it is, look at the weather data. Not just the local ones, if possible, of course, but also the surrounding ones, because that also has an influence on the specific flying area where you...
Do you also write down not just which days were flyable, but on which days people actually flew?
Well, those two things actually go hand in hand. There are days, for example, where I might say it was flyable for two hours regularly; it can certainly happen that a pilot doesn't notice that. You also have to factor in the travel time. Even I, who live right at the foot of the high wall, so to speak. And if I notice it, yeah, wow, it's flyable. By the time I'm standing up there ready to go, at least—I have to be very fast, but at least—half an hour to forty-five minutes until I'm at the launch site. And in forty-five minutes, so much can change. What can I do, meteorologically? Well, it can't happen—I'm just taking this as an example—it can happen that it's not flyable for two hours, but no pilot noticed, no pilot was there or no pilot was on site, because the weather can change so quickly that a launch window might open up anyway.
And then I write down that it was a flying day. So, "flying day" doesn't mean when the flight actually took place, as you might have meant it, but rather when it was meteorologically feasible.
...was was flyable. How big does a flight window have to be, I mean, how long does it basically have to be open for you to say, okay, I'll count that as a flight day? Is it half an hour, an hour, or does it have to be at least two hours for you to say, okay, that would be a sensible thing, because you might need an hour alone just to hike up, and if you realize down below that it's flyable now, I'm hiking up and then launching from the top, so it would have to be at least those two hours. How do you break that down?
Yes, exactly. You said it right, two hours should be considered a flight day, if you take it that way. One hour, for the reasons mentioned before, of course, makes little sense. You'd really have to be standing at the launch site up there, recognize that it fits, but then you're also relying on luck again, because you don't know, for example, if the wind at the launch site is good right now. With a phone and internet and so on, you can of course check what's going on all around, which you should do if it's not bad, in case a situation suddenly changes and maybe wasn't announced in the forecasts. So you'd really have to be standing on-site at the launch site and then just, bam, bam, and launch out now—that works.
That happens sometimes, yeah, but I wouldn't necessarily look at that as a flying day. So, as you correctly said, it should be at least two hours for it to be reliably flyable as planned.
You just mentioned climate change. I don't want to get into a discussion about whether it's actually climate change or how, but regarding those 20 years you have as a statistical basis—I really don't want to go through every single year or anything—but is there something where you can say that a trend can be recognized from these 20 years in one way or another? For example, is it a trend for the better, that there are more flyable days, or do you see more of a trend toward the worse, that there are fewer flyable days?
Yes, there is definitely a change. Pilots who have been flying for a long time, or I've heard it from other flight areas and other flight schools as well, have noticed that the wind speeds are generally increasing. The thermals, once they are there, can be significantly stronger; they are getting more powerful, and that has to do with the dryness. But you also have to say that it depends a bit regionally. So there are certainly areas that are less affected than areas where you see it much more. Here with us on the Hohe Wand, since you just asked about it, you notice that the wind is getting stronger and also the wind direction.
Last year, it really stood out to me—not an unusual, unusual, in quotation marks—very often we had a northern wind flow here that until now had only occurred once in a while. I mean, yes, when a front passes through or from a certain direction, you get that wind flow. But last year, in 2022, it was relatively often the case that we had a northern wind component. I had never noticed that until now. And that makes flying here with us... as I said, the Hohe Wand is oriented south-south-east, so it's more like a bit of alley flying.
And that makes it very, very difficult. Sometimes it's just not flyable at all because of this northern wind. And I've noticed that. Yes, and it's also become drier here. So we have the groundwater levels dropping. That's a huge problem for us in this area now. So excavation lakes, lakes, places that were swimming lakes, where there were brick ponds and so on, they're drying out here now, slowly, but less and less. And this dryness has an effect. We have clayey, stony soil. A part of the Vienna Basin is also called Steinfeld. It has a reason, because it's always so stony. A limestone area. And the thermals develop correspondingly more strongly there.
So when the air is dry and all that, the thermals can already get quite intense around midday. It almost reminds me of Spain. Like when you fly in Spain, where the climate is similar. And we're slowly getting that here too. So, bottom line, flying is becoming more demanding. You have to keep a closer eye on the weather, deal with it more. The whole thing is becoming more dynamic; everything is changing faster. And I'm noticing that
...over the last few years. Does that also mean that less experienced pilots should actually retreat more strongly into the marginal zones of the day for their own safety? Like, before the thermals really kick in in the morning? Or really only in the late afternoon, when the heavy thermal activity has calmed down a bit? Well, I would recommend it...
at times. But yeah, everyone knows that feeling. Now I'm at the Flugberg, I have time, I want to fly. One should maybe think about it a bit. But yeah, it gets harder. So for pilots who fly less—that's my perspective on the whole thing now—pilots who don't get to fly as often, for whatever reason, be it work or social commitments, I think it's going to be harder for them to be "leisure pilots." You know, the ones who want calmer situations. As you correctly said earlier, it's more advisable to fly in the morning, early morning, or then in the evening, depending on the season, of course.
Because then, during the midday period—from late morning into the afternoon, well into the afternoon—the flight conditions become very demanding. And if you don't have the experience, you can potentially end up in unpleasant flight situations. Situations where it's no longer fun, where you're actually far away from enjoying it. I definitely see this trend. And you mustn't forget, a good example—I can remember, this actually happens very, very rarely—last year, in 2022, the DHV actually warned, even in the Alpine region: watch out, difficult flight conditions, it's demanding.
So that actually shows the direction in which things are developing. It's becoming more demanding.
Do you also see a recognizable trend, alongside the trend toward more demanding weather, that accidents are actually happening more frequently because of it? Maybe just in relation to the Hohe Wand for now, as it's hard to generalize that to the entire Alps. You have a good view of the Hohe Wand; if you live there and fly so much, you probably pick up on everything that happens seriously there immediately. Would you say that has increased in recent years?
No, luckily, we have to knock on wood there. No, I mean, it's actually more...
well, you have to differentiate things a bit in that regard. Because, fortunately—and that's great—paraglider development in the direction of passive safety has really taken off in recent years; I'd say around 2010 it really got going, and a huge amount has been done regarding passive safety. So, of course, even if they have unpleasant situations where they get into them and maybe don't even notice it themselves, it's a drama if they don't learn from it that a lot of accidents are avoided thanks to this passive safety in paragliders. So then, as we've already discussed, luck comes into play, and maybe that's what's increasing, but fortunately, in cases where serious things happen—where helicopters really have to come, I mean rescue helicopters—I wouldn't say, maybe with quotation marks, with a slight hint, not yet.
And I hope, of course, for all of us, that it doesn't keep going in the direction where the weather becomes even more extreme—meaning, in terms of wind and very strong thermals—then that could eventually happen at some point, of course. But the pilots have to go along with that too. Recognizing that is better left out for now, maybe from that
flight to foresee. Bottom line, if you can observe that, would you say this increase in passive safety in gliders is ultimately a blessing, or is it perhaps a boomerang that will eventually come back because pilots are much more likely to dare to fly, even in marginal conditions, and thus basically expose themselves to higher risks and ultimately maybe even push their luck further? Ah, that is a very, very excellent point. A very
hot topic.
I think you must have had that experience too, which is why it was very, very interesting in a previous podcast of yours, where a pilot talked about his accident experience with the rock face. I really thought that was great.
Yeah,
That is, yeah, for me personally, my personal opinion, yeah, it's partly a curse when people say, well, I'm buying an A paraglider, nothing can happen to me, the passive safety is so incredibly high and I basically just need to, as one email says, hang under it and just steer left and right and the glider does the rest for me. If you think like a pilot, then it's a curse, yeah. Unfortunately, God forbid, I've already had accidents with A paragliders, experienced pilots who thought exactly like that. And then, even though they'd already been warned, watch out, watch out, the glider above you is already bending a bit and isn't responding anymore.
Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right, he's good, he irons it out, the glider is so safe, yeah. And then, after two years of piloting, it ended fatally anyway. Despite the warnings. So, of course, you don't notice that. But of course, with the safety, you really have to watch out that you don't get overconfident. So in that sense, it can become a curse. But because of that, it naturally balances out a bit now, you could say. Because if the meteorological conditions, if flying is becoming more demanding, we're actually back at the level where, despite the passive safety, you can still notice it.
Despite this passive safety of paragliders. Because it's getting more demanding, so we're back at the level of, say, the 1990s, where the gear might have been more "hot." So, from a safety standpoint, it balances out again with the passive safety, as we're dealing with increasingly demanding flight conditions, you can actually notice that again. But of course, it's still a huge positive, in every case, with this passive safety—how the paragliders react during a collapse. You have to say, that's a very positive development that they've moved away from that.
In the past, paragliders were developed in such a way that the paraglider wasn't supposed to collapse—not supposed to collapse at all.
And now, just to take a small detour, I'd like to say one more word about that. It's that the gliders are allowed to collapse, but that it's a controlled collapse, that it remains controllable. So, in that sense, it has gone in the really great, right direction. I mean, a paraglider is allowed to collapse; it's not a stable wing. But that you can control it, that you have time to react. And there, in my personal opinion, I see the development of these two-liners. For example, they are now extremely long-term collapse-stable. Only when it does collapse once, it collapses properly. And there, the development is exactly the opposite again.
And that's going to keep decreasing. This year, 2023, more and more manufacturers are coming out with two-liner concepts in the C-class. And I'm already very, very curious to see how that develops. I mean, what happens with the passive safety when things go wrong, how that behaves, and how the pilots can handle it. I'm curious about that. In the D-class, no problem. Yes, people say that. D is already demanding. You should already know what you're doing there. But C-class, well, several pilots fly those. And that's something completely different. And that's where the question is,
we'll see how it
developed.
Well, with your 36 years of flying—I mean paragliding years—you've probably flown dozens of different gliders. Would you say that, basically, every new model you've flown or even owned has always gotten better? Or do you still have any, maybe an earlier model in mind, that you'd say was actually my all-time model? My all-time favorite.
No, it has definitely gotten better. Of course, it's, I don't know, whatever people generally understand by performance. The handling—the flight feel—that was already there relatively early on. When you say, "ah, this glider is fun," and so on. But when it comes to passive safety, as we were just discussing, and flight fun and flight performance, a lot has changed. Although in recent years, of course, the leaps—you can't cheat physics. At some point, it reaches its limits. And that's where these subtleties come in.
And that's where paraglider manufacturers start to differentiate themselves a bit. Manufacturer XY makes gliders that are more understated—meaning they can do pretty much everything, to put it simply—but don't have a standout personality. And then there are manufacturers who build their gliders so that they have this dream, amazing handling, where you just make a turn by thought alone, so to speak, as a character trait. So that's how the manufacturers differentiate, but in principle, I can say that all the gliders I've flown so far have certain characters.
You have to be careful about safety. That's always a big topic with the classifications. Do they even still fit into the classification? This particularly concerns the B-class. In my opinion, we should probably think about that a bit because, in my view, quite a few B-class gliders are actually C-class gliders in terms of pilot requirements when it really comes down to it. And yes, maybe these things, but bottom line, you can just simply say, yes, the gliders have become better, safer, and I'm always curious to see what's new, something different to fly, how the development continues.
It's exciting, as I mentioned earlier, how this two-liner technology is evolving. There
I'm very curious. What makes a good glider or a good glider character for you personally?
Well, I'd say that's very, very individual. Everyone perceives something different as being better. For one person, it's more important...
I asked what it does for you personally. That would be what it is for you individually right now. Okay. Not for others, but... for me. What is a good glider for you? For me, it's quite,
very important, in one sentence: unobtrusively striking. That means that in wide areas, so that it can also climb well, it has acceptable handling, that glider,
that a speed bar glides well, meaning that you still have a manageable glide at least up to half gas, so that you can fly cross-country with the glider if you want to try it once, that you can get into that. There are already paragliders out there that can do that.
Yes, so this lack of fuss and being able to fly stress-free. There are gliders that are incredibly good, but you always have to have them a bit on the toggles, so you have to fly with concentration. If you're up in the air for two or three hours, you'll notice that your concentration starts to drop. But if the glider has a certain ease to it, yet still shows you what's going on around you—I don't want a tank, because that can show a fatal sense of security. It should still show what's happening in the air, at least through the brakes, but with enough damping so that you can fly in somewhat more demanding conditions for a long, long time without getting tired.
This is an ideal glider for me.
You have a video blog yourself. You make quite detailed videos about individual gliders that you've tested, which you then get provided by manufacturers for these tests. What matters to you in these tests? What do you want to find out and what do you want to convey? I'd like to ask you about that once...
First of all, don't call it a test, because in my experience, you can't really judge a paraglider properly until after at least one flying season, so that you can say, "Yes, the paraglider behaves like this or that." Of course, my flying experience helps because I've flown very many paragliders. I can't even give you a number anymore. And my goal in making these videos is that, during my time in school, we obviously flew all these paragliders that we distributed. And then, of course, the questions come from the buyers, from the people interested. How is the glider? Is it suitable for me? What can it do? And I have to be able to say something about that specific paraglider. That's why we flew them.
And that's what I'm continuing to do now using these videos. You can see that in some of the comments below the videos. They say, "Yes, that's right, and thanks for the help in visualizing the paraglider—how it feels, how it behaves." So, in my opinion, for whom it would be suitable or who it wouldn't be suitable for. What level of pilot skill I think it could correspond to. That's actually the intention. It's actually more of a visualization of the paraglider, how the glider behaves, rather than a real test. Because if I were to do a test, a detailed one, I would at least go over the lake at least once and then fly extreme maneuvers. And also in different, in many different flight areas,
...flying in different meteorological conditions, how the glider reacts in harsh conditions. Also where it really kicks off, so you can say what the glider does. In my opinion, that's a real test, where you can actually make a statement. But what I'm doing is providing an idea, so that people can see, yeah, in what direction the glider might interest them, before they go for a test flight. Because you just can't get around the fact that you have to do your own test flight.
What can people take away from your videos for themselves? Even if they say, okay, I still have to go test-fly. What might they still be able to learn from your videos regardless?
Well, how the glider feels in terms of handling—for instance, if the glider turns around a corner, is it very communicative? It shows every air movement there. In that case, there would be pilots who are looking for a stable glider, who just want to fly very relaxed and don't want to pick up on so much. That brings us back to the topic of passive safety: a blessing or a curse. That, yes, without naming a specific brand, there are gliders designed that way—and I noticed this exactly with certain gliders—where it really shows precisely what's going on in the air, but that doesn't mean it's unstable.
That I can convey to people that he knows, okay, the glider might be nothing for me, it maybe shows too much, I don't want that right now. I want a very cozy, calm glider. Just as an example. So that people have some orientation as to how the glider feels. Of course, it's still individual. Every person's perception is individual. Unfortunately, you can't take that away. But it's once a direction, a decision-making aid, so you can say, yeah, the glider is maybe too twitchy for me, I'd rather take that one. Or I'm cross-country flight oriented but want to stay in the C-class, yeah, that one would be very, very good.
Or, what has also become more of a topic in recent years, with the A paraglider, can I go cross-country with those? Is that possible? Does it have that much performance? So that I can convey that to people and say, yes, you could do that with those. So that
works. You probably also like reading other glider tests to be able to assess things like that. Do you sometimes experience that you read something and think, "But I experienced that completely differently"? Or do you actually find that even the written glider tests, for example, appearing in the Thermik magazine or elsewhere, show that, ah, no, somehow the basic character or the important basic character of the glider still comes across well in most cases?
I used to do that, yes. I did look into that. But I haven't done that for a long time now for a very specific reason. Because when you approach a paraglider without any preconceived notions, your own feeling—if, for example, some editor or tester writes that it's this or that or the other—you already have that in your head and you pay close attention to it. Is it really like that or not? You might be, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration or put a bit too sharply, biased if you pay close attention to that. I try very, very much to approach the equipment without any bias in order to form my own completely independent opinion about it.
But I always have to say, there are of course flights I do where, I have this dilemma with the glider I flew last, where I'm wondering, should I wrap up the review now? Should I do it now? I did a single thermal flight with the glider, because it was already quite late in the autumn last year. I can say a bit about that, but to really be able to say something about it, it would have to be properly thermal for once. And then I'll wait and see if I can get the glider out again, to fly it once under crisp spring conditions and then give my opinion on it.
But of course, I still look at it again whenever I stumble over it, but I don't really look for test reports anymore, like what this person or that person writes about it. Or as an extreme example, after the tests, the classifications—so which class it is now, yeah, during launch it's an A, A, A, A, and even the D-glider, it has so many A-paragliders, really, that is an A-paraglider. And from my experience, we're back to the topic of classifications,
I don't know how one could do it, or how to do it better now, but the reality out there, as I've already said here, unfortunately, you can also have a really nasty crash with an A paraglider. The reality out there, what it's really like in the thermals and what the actual flight conditions are like, a glider can do things that you just can't replicate during a test—even in a quality seal test. You simply can't do that; you can't put it all together, it's not possible. And that's what distinguishes it in reality, how a glider actually is and feels, from how it might be presented in a test with all those classifications.
And I used to do that too, I'd look because I was curious, but I've actually moved on from that by now.
...done with. Are there trends in glider development, especially when you look at the lower classes? You mentioned earlier that in the C-class, two-liners or things like that are coming out—those are trends, and we'll have to see where that's really heading. But for the vast majority of pilots who fly B-gliders and also many A-gliders, are there trends in glider development that you would say you don't like?
Well, one trend that's actually been worth watching for a while now is all these High-A, High-B paragliders—pardon, the High-B paragliders, I'll get to High-A in a moment—the High-B paragliders. From the manufacturers' perspective, of course, I understand it; a B paraglider is naturally like a bread-and-butter model, and from a marketing and clearly a prestige standpoint, you always want it to be the best and the coolest paraglider. But that naturally can't always be reconciled with the pilot's actual requirements. They start to drift apart a bit, and these gliders are then designed in such a way that they feel very well-behaved and good.
But when it really gets, as we were just saying,
when it gets demanding, really demanding, that's when you really see what these High-B paragliders are like, and they can then become more of a—now, I'm saying this in an exaggerated way—a beast, rather than what this classification would actually suggest. This trend is, of course, a bit questionable, and of course understandable from the manufacturers' perspective. Sure, always further, higher, faster. That's logical, that's just how it is. And the whole thing has also happened in the A-class over the last few years. I see it a bit less dramatically there, because there are still completely different requirements, for instance, regarding the Quittesiegel stories, with the A-gliders, and by now it was such that the A-gliders were always reviled,
the flying tanks, and there's nothing you can do about that, and that's only for the practice slope and such. Fortunately, that's no longer the case. That was a very, very positive development, and you can also paraglide for a very, very long time and have a lot of fun with a good, modern A paraglider, and even do some cross-country flight attempts. Maybe not everywhere, in every flight area. For example, here with us on the Hohe Wand, it has to be good with a good A paraglider—it has to be good thermically and you have to be good at putting it all together a bit. But it works, it functions, and they still have, precisely because of their A glider classification, a reasonable safety margin. But as I said, just like before, don't let yourself be too lulled into a false sense of security.
But with the B-class, with these High-B paragliders, as great as they are—the flight schools and the dealers who sell these paragliders are, in my opinion, well-advised to look at which pilots are actually buying them. I would under no circumstances hand a student this EMP paraglider.
Do you think that when these two-liners come out in the C-class—which is basically the so-called sport class—probably just in terms of performance if you want to fly long distances and collect points, people will eventually say that you probably have to fly a two-liner in the C-class to somehow keep up. What that would mean is that, from a perspective, the so-called three-liners in the C-class, i.e., the typical C-gliders as they were until now, might eventually become somewhat obsolete in that class, and that the drive toward even more powerful High-Bs might ultimately become even stronger, perhaps for the manufacturers too. And that, ultimately, this expansion of the B-class could basically become even stronger than it already is.
Well, that's a very exciting development for the C-class. Of course, it's the exact same reason: higher, further, faster, and so on with the two-liners. Your point now, as you said, if you still want to be part of the competition or cross-country flight, you have to fly with them. I've basically heard that word for word from a pilot in our club whom I value very much, who also flies in competitions, quite successfully at times; he's now switched to a two-liner because he said he can't keep up. You have to, you're actually, if you want to fly along with them, you have to switch to a two-liner.
Yes, in competition, in the sport, I still see it as, okay, yeah, okay, that's a great development.
When it comes to cross-country flight, normal cross-country flight—not when you want to fly online, way up there, as a normal cross-country pilot, if you want to put it that way, I don't know. It gets interesting with the two-liners because, I think I've said it a few times already, flying a two-liner is a completely, completely different experience than flying a three-liner. And then in the B-class, they say that these hybrid things are still okay. Yeah, they are already somewhat different. And as for these two-liners...
pretty close. So hybrid means the so-called two-and-a-half-liners, where in the core, in the center wing, you still have a classic three-liner suspension, but the outer wing is already suspended like a two-liner. There, you only have the A and B levels.
Exactly, exactly, right. That still has a buffer, which is good and provides performance and the feeling that you can manage with a two-liner, so the transition. I think the development is already quite good, it fits. There will certainly be more done in that direction. But as I said, then the pure two-liners—I've flown two-liners, I was there from the very beginning, even with the competition rigs, I flew those and was blown away at the start too. It's incredible, I mean, what a difference there is, it would be just like, as I said, if you switch from an A paraglider to a D paraglider, now, in terms of performance of course, it's unbelievable what they can do, but the flight feeling and the flying itself is completely different.
It's a bit hard to describe if you haven't flown a two-liner yet. It's really great, it's awesome, but my personal opinion is, it's just a question of—those things are incredibly stable—the question is, in extreme weather situations, when it really starts rattling, how the pilots then, say in the C-class, can handle them. In the CCC range, in the D-range, I say great, awesome, especially in the D-range, if you want to get into it, maybe if you want to fly along in serious competition sports, it's a good transition, no question, you need it and it's also good. But in the C-class now, you really have to wait and see.
I don't dare to judge what the passive safety looks like there now and how the gliders actually react during massive collapses, during massive disturbances, or how the gliders then react in the C-class, whether they are still really paragliders.
I think that will only become clear over time. I believe we've reached a point where it's now really urgently necessary to completely rework all these classifications and categories, and it's been discussed for a long time already—I know it keeps coming up in the THV—but some manufacturers, testing centers, etc., would have to commit to it. I think it would be good to reflect on that and get a new perspective on how to reclassify them for pilot suitability or pilot requirements.
What would perhaps be the most urgent? Splitting the B-class, because there's also a psychological component for the pilots who then say, oh, I'm flying a B-glider, and they don't really differentiate for themselves, is this a low-B or a high-B, it's a B, it'll work anyway or something like that, and that you actually have to say that based on the basic character and orientation of the gliders, a low-B really has a completely different character than a high-B, and that you might find a boundary somewhere in terms of the designation, where one would say, okay, I'm flying a B-glider and that's the typical low-B, and then there's the high-B, which is already significantly more stretched and can react accordingly much more dynamically in many maneuvers.
that you'd say you actually need a separate class so that it's not all lumped together in such a super-wide B-class.
That's a very interesting point you're making, yeah, I might have said exactly that two years ago, but now we have this dilemma—we're actually talking about it all the time—that the two-liner thing is now entering the C-class. Now the question, of course, is how the C-class will develop? Because until now, it was the case that many high-B paragliders actually... there was no difference to some paragliders, there really was no difference left, so I don't want to name any brands or models, but there are some where you'd say, yeah, let's take the C from brand Y, you can fly that just like a B-glider, there's no difference at all, none at all.
So, in terms of the flight feel, the flying, and the performance, you don't need it. It's actually obsolete. And the question now is, how do you develop that further? Can the pilots handle it? Is it being accepted? Is there enough passive safety?
Then the whole thing shifts further down, and you have to ask, okay, what's the situation with the A-class now, compared to the B-class? The whole thing is being graded like that because this whole two-liner thing is, in my opinion, just so different. It's no longer comparable with these two-liners, even with these hybrid two-liners—these two-and-a-half-liners, or whatever you want to call them—it's not really comparable, even though they are close in terms of flight feel, it's still something else entirely.
We'll have to see how that develops in the C-class and then breaks down—how you can categorize it with the B-class, for example. But yes, I completely agree with you that one should think about the B-class, because pretty much everything is in there now. There are certainly some gliders suitable for beginners and novices that are very good and can be used there. Then, there are even gliders in the A-class nowadays that are sometimes better than a low-B glider. So, one should take a look at that. And yes, and all these—if we take, for example, just one example, if we take the hybrid 2-liners...
including 2.5-liners would put it in the C-class, well, no one would buy it anymore because if they were to push through with these 2-liners and it stays there, and all paragliders, you wouldn't need to make a paraglider in hybrid construction or in 3-liner construction anymore, yeah, no one would buy it there anymore.
So I see a bit of a dilemma in how to categorize that right now. I'd say we have to wait and see how the 2-liners develop in the C-class, whether it works, and if the broad group of pilots can handle it. Then, we'll have to see how to proceed from there. But it's definitely necessary to think about it, because in my opinion, it's no longer quite compliant with these classifications.
Yes, that will certainly be exciting. Sure, this year is the year when most—well, not most, but very many—manufacturers are releasing their first C 2-liner. Ozone is releasing something, MacPara is releasing something, and Nova wants to bring something to the market, and so on. So, at the end of the season, we will certainly have to talk about everything that happened this season all over again, and how that—what might have changed in the minds of the pilots because of it—namely, that suddenly very many C gliders or classic C-class pilots might suddenly say, I have to fly a 2-liner now too, or not, and how that then affects the rest of the paraglider market. Manfred, I'd like to make one point here, we've been talking for quite a long time now, so just one last question towards the end.
With your extensive 36 years of experience, what tip can you give to pilots with little flying experience? What should they pay the most attention to, perhaps, to experience a similarly long flying career with so much fun and with so few or no accidents, like you have?
That's actually important to explain with two things. Right at the very beginning, in the first few years, it's important—you should already be clear about this during your training—am I getting enough flying time? Because it's all about flying, flying, flying, flying. Because you only get the feeling and learn by flying yourself. There's no other way. It only works through practice. And it's very important to fly very, very much—I'd say for about three years—very, very, very much to build a foundation. Because then, if you take a longer break once you have that flying experience, it's not quite as tragic as if you've just recently gotten your pilot's license.
And you do a lot of flights at the beginning, and then there's a long break. Then it gets difficult again; you tend to regress rather than stay at the same level. So, it's important to fly very, very, very much in those first years. And the second thing, which is unfortunately often criminally neglected, is to deal with the meteorological flight weather. That you learn to assess: is it good for flying for me, personally as a pilot? Can I handle it? Will it get too stressful for me so that I can build a risk management based on that? That I know what's happening to me in the air?
What to expect in the air? It's very, very important that you deal with that topic—I know, it's not easy, and meteorologically, it also requires a lot of experience. You have to dive really deep into it. It goes beyond what you actually learn in training. It's just like, I always compare it to going mushroom picking. You have a mushroom book in front of you and you see, yes, the mushroom looks like this or that or that. And then out in nature, it looks completely, completely different. It's the same with cloud patterns and so on. Out in the wild, it's a bit different. You need experience for that. But you only get that if you engage with it, look at it, and communicate. Please, talk to each other.
That is very, very important. Talking. Exchanging experiences. It is also very, very important to do that. And to work on yourself. Constantly work. Fly. Watch. Keep learning. So, just because you have your pilot's license once, it doesn't mean you can fly. Those are really just the basics you have. You absolutely have to be aware of that. And basically, that's what you build your skills, your experience, and your abilities on. And you have to be careful. And in any case, take part in further training. Don't be too proud of yourself. That is very, very, very important.
You said a lot of talking with each other. Manfred, we've been doing that for an hour and a half now. Thank you for the insights into the 36 years of flying experience you have with, yes, very beautiful, sophisticated aircraft. Your reflections show that you've perhaps become a very wise pilot over time as well. I wish you many more beautiful years of flying at the Hohen Wand, and that you can certainly continue to help the people there a lot with your flying experience. You also always write a flight weather report for the Hohen Wand on Facebook for people who want to go flying there; they can always get the info on whether it's okay to fly in the next few days or not. So that's already a great service you're providing there. I thank you here as well for participating in the podcast and all the best.
I'm grateful, and I'd be happy if we could meet at the Flugberg sometime. Yes, Hohen Wand is on my list. If I ever get to that area, I also enjoy hike and fly, so we could just hike up there together sometime. Yes, there
I'll have to beef up my fitness a bit, though.
But I'd love to. No, I do it at a relaxed pace. Hike and Fly is also about enjoyment. I'm at your level with that now. It's more about the enjoyment of flying or the enjoyment of hiking than being purely athletic. It doesn't have to be fast up, fast into the air, fast far, or whatever else. Manfred, see you then.
Great. I'm looking forward to it. See you then.
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