105. Kindheitstraeume - Benjamin Hoerburger

For practicing and learning how to launch backwards, that was just the basic stuff. At first, I only took the A and only the B. And I was allowed to do that for years. Had to. Because my arms were too short. Such bullshit. I always only flew on the rear three-strap. So, if someone comes up now like, hey, how cool, he's flying on the rear three-strap and twisting. Yeah, fuck. That was my shitty job, otherwise I wouldn't have been allowed to fly, right? There was no other way. Yeah, exactly. We already did that in six years.

Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.

Today with Benjamin Hörburger. And I am Lucian Haas. It

There are people who tell their stories like an untamed river flowing through nature. In meanders. Those who let themselves drift never quite know what awaits them around the next bend. But somehow, new perspectives and insights into life's fullness constantly unfold. That is what it is like when you get to listen to Benjamin Hörburger. The 36-year-old from Allgäu has been flying since the womb, took to the skies solo for the first time at age five, qualified for the German League at 14, and has been working since he was 18 as a test pilot who is now, quite literally, seasoned in every way, currently for the brand Vieh. Someone who soaked up the passion for flying with his mother's milk and is a true child of the scene has a lot to tell.

This podcast, although almost 2 hours long, is sort of just the tip of the iceberg. But a very entertaining one. We mainly talk about Benny's childhood experiences in a flight school and his work as a test pilot. From this common thread of the narrative flow, Benny meanders into interesting thematic side valleys again and again. These include reflections on the golden era of the first paraglider boom, right up to the current question of how safe ENC two-liners actually are. If you enjoy Podz-Glidz, then support my work as a patron. You can find out how this is possible very easily and without any obligation on the website of my Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz, specifically on the "Fördern" page.

Benni, what's it like growing up as the child of a flight instructor?

In any case, it's better than being the child of a regular school teacher. It means you definitely have better connections to things that drive you more to engage with certain topics.

So great! That means you were already dealing with flying as a child too?

Yeah, I also had classmates whose father was the principal of the grammar school and was also a teacher. And I can't remember us ever being at his house; we were actually mostly at my house. Because, how should I put it, the range of paragliders sitting on the shelf there, where one would secretly... I mean, I have to say, I grew up in a very rural area. It's actually a great farmstead. We have about 600 meters or something to the next neighbor. And then the neighbor after that. It was already over a kilometer away. We had plenty of opportunities to get into mischief there.

And for example, the kids of the regular teachers, I'd say, preferred being at my place rather than at theirs, like how we were with them.

So that was already cool. With your parents' background and the flight school and all that, were you sort of like the star of the class because of that?

Uh, wow, hmm. Oh,

I have no idea. Well, wow, it's already difficult to say whether you yourself have a high level of popularity or not. I think it's stayed pretty limited. I was never really the type to let people get too close. So, even though I'm very communicative, I'm more the type who, to this day, only very selectively chooses the people around me, my circle, and loves that small circle. That means I have a school friend, I've known him since the sixth, fifth, no, fifth, sixth grade or something. And by now, he's my best man and, well, he's pretty much my best friend. And interestingly, he thinks aviation is great and has traveled with me a lot as well.

But he never actually started flying; instead, he'd fly with me secretly, basically black-market style, somewhere abroad. And I don't want to get anyone in trouble. But I'd say from the age of six until I was fourteen, he was also out there illegally. But there were moments—we were always away during the summer holidays, to get back to the question and finally give an answer. It was always the case that I was away during the summer holidays. My parents were on tour, and during the autumn holidays, I wasn't home. During the Christmas holidays, I was only home for one week; the other week I was on La Palma. Then during Easter—what were they? During the carnival holidays, I wasn't home either. I was on Lanzarote. So, I never had that thing where everyone else would meet up in their neighborhood during the holidays and get together in a cabin.

I didn't have that kind of childhood. I also did a massive amount of sports alongside my childhood years. You can't see it anymore, but I was once a Nordic skier and actually wanted to go professional in that direction. Thank God it didn't work out that way. Otherwise, I wouldn't have ended up in the field I'm in now. So, I basically only had sports friends. And if you do competitive sports, maybe everyone who knows that knows that you only really have friends there at certain points. Because usually, once someone is no longer good enough for the squad, even if you're friends, the contact just breaks off because they're not allowed to go along anymore.

So my circle of friends was actually always pretty small, but that was actually for the best. So, I don't think I was the superhero at home or at school. But it was like many people tried to drop by all the time and get a bit of a glimpse into the flying side of things. I just noticed there was a phase, right before puberty until puberty, where a lot of people were jealous. That happened because the others would talk about what they were doing. I never told anyone at school what they were doing.

Going back to your perhaps very young childhood. How was that to imagine? Were you basically already in the carrier on the practice slope, sort of absorbing the flying with your mother's milk, to put it very pictorially?

If I want to put it into a very vivid picture. You have to imagine that at that point, my mother flew down the Hochgrat—our local mountain in Oberstaufen—with one of the Kuipermatten Priser 8s from LDK, Laurent—so an eight-cell—I think on March 20th. That means she was nine months pregnant with me, and less than five years later, I had that exact same glider in my hands. I was born on March 31st, so I was only late. She was already overdue, that's how it was when she flew me there. And she must have already known what she was doing when landing and all that, because the gliders back then weren't exactly fluttering softly. They were more like moving in a false manner.

But then, five years later, I started flying. And I was basically just a little kid, messing around on the practice slope with that same glider. So that was actually quite interesting, because my mother was more of a featherweight, so I got a featherweight too. But you have to say one thing: it was never the case that my parents actually wanted to pressure me into starting to fly. So that's the big trick. Everywhere at home, you might know this, where the father is maybe a pro in some area. And he also wants the child to become a pro there, but the child doesn't actually become a pro; they have to develop and get the interest themselves.

For me, it was just that my sister, for example, my older sister, she started flying. She's nine years older than me. She just always noticed that she was allowed to fly. So, for as long as my brain can remember, she knows she's allowed to fly and I'm not. And then my brother came along and I noticed him too. He's allowed to fly too. And I'm not. And then I was... well, of course, you only know people who fly, right? And you grow up in a flight school and you're not allowed to fly. Which is really stupid. I mean, everything you're not allowed to do is tempting. That's clear. And my parents really tried to keep me away from the sport. My parents weren't the type to do exercises with me or anything like that.

Rather, it was like this: back then, we were at the production line at the LDK company by Lake Geneva. Laurenti Calbermann had the largest paraglider manufacturer there had ever existed. I think they built 12,000 paragliders in one year or something like that. Even in Switzerland. For 3,000 francs, you have to say. Highly interesting. If you wanted to become an importer of those back then, you had to buy 150 gliders blindly. Only then would you become a dealer in your country. So those times are completely over. Nowadays, you have to be happy that anyone represents you at all, and that they have a bit of money on the side to cover the demos and stuff like that. But it was very interesting. And as a child, I wasn't allowed into the production line. I had to wait outside at the reception, more or less.

And there was a secretary looking after me. I was about three and a half, four at the time. And she then, after the production stuff was finished, basically just shoved a paraglider into my hands. And this paraglider was a mat, a steering glider. One-to-one a real paraglider. Plus about one and a half or two square meters in size. Well, and then I grabbed a backpack. I was at home at some point. I grabbed a backpack. And I put on my bicycle helmet. The backpack was basically my high-altitude gear. And the bicycle helmet, obviously, my flight helmet. And then, as a three-year-old, I kept running around behind the house with the glider. It looked funny because that was the era of polka dots, the 80s. Everything was nice in neon colors and dots.

And I had these overalls with a huge dot right between the legs. And they were pink. And the glider was pink too. Everything was very well coordinated. Yeah, so that's how it basically started, right? Yeah, and then later with the ND5. I mean, nowadays people would say I'm hyperactive. Back then, I was unbearable. I hope none of my three kids ever get even remotely as annoying as I probably was. Anyway, I put an insane amount of pressure on them, all the time. And because of that pressure, which was created, it was to the point where my brother sacrificed himself, secretly behind the house. We have a nice slope there, a south-facing one. And then he played around there himself. And then I penetrated it.

And then he thought, you know what, come on. Now I'll just put it into the harness too. And that was back then, I mean, the glider was called a Pfann. So it was a seven-cell. That was this Pfann. And he pushed me down that slope. And then, as a five-year-old, I flew for the first time.

And took off too.

Yeah, yeah, totally flown. He just let me rise like standing in a beer garden. I mean, he just pulled me there on the harness. And then the thing just stood there. The mat, somehow. No brakes in my hand. And just pushed out. And then I somehow glided down the slope. The advantage is, when you load a surface like that so low. And a surface like that has so little power. Then it flies, yeah, it's like now when you take a single-skin in your hand. That's the interesting thing. So a single-skin, you do nothing. The thing flies super slowly. A large single-skin. Super slowly. And nothing happens. So of course it has no energy to flare. And it has no glide angle. But that's it. So that's how it was back then with those mats. And yeah, then I penetrated further. Then I penetrated my sister too.

Then my father came and eventually said, okay. That was about half a year later, I think. So four months later. Because I'd really caught the bug then. And I was really annoying everyone. Then I wanted to go up in a tandem. And yeah, at that time, the tandem gliders weren't that great. I mean, they were really bad. And as a father, you'd already be panicking a bit. Now, with a tandem glider, with your little boy who doesn't weigh 15 kilos. Or 18 kilos. Flying down there. No, that doesn't look good. At that time. It's completely different from how gliders fly now. And so he thought more along the lines of, yeah, maybe it's better like my brother already did. The type of paraglider might not be so bad. I mean, if there's little wind.

Just letting it fly on a small slope with a huge run-out. If that calms him down a bit and makes him happy, maybe that's the method. And he just wasn't being used enough. You have to say that too. You're on tour with them. And my mother, she was the one handling the food, drinks, and supplies for the 20 people. My father was in charge of looking after the little pilots and making sure people got up and down. Well, and then you have someone like me along, who pulls some shit every day. In other words, if I didn't... in Castelluccio, they wouldn't let me fly. Or I'd do all sorts of nonsense. I did a lot of real crap. But my father realized that if he lets me fly now...

Then it might have been that he could handle me better there. I mean, I did cycling there too, and everything. But yeah, that was just... then he thought, let's do it the hard way instead. Then we'll try, maybe we can tame him. And then he shoved the glider into your hands, something like that. Then we went to the Rotondo in Castelluccio back then. Then he said, if you can do ground handling—setting it up and playing with it—then you can fly off the first one in the evening. There were supposedly stages in there, and they were tiny. You're allowed to fly down from the first stage. And then I did ground handling there for hours. From morning until evening, I did ground handling with this Prisa 8. Where my mom back then, like, with me in the late stages of pregnancy, in her ninth month, was basically around the eggs. And yeah, that's how it was. And then I did the ground handling. Claudio's dad thought that was great.

The world's largest flight school. At that time, they processed 2,000 students in one year. Just so we know. So you learned at the Wasserkuppe, right? Exactly. I don't want to mock the Wasserkuppe, but it was like this: the Wasserkuppe always claimed to be the largest flight school in the world ever. Well, damn. The largest flight school was in Castelluccio. At times, they had only flight instructors. They employed 100 flight instructors. 100? You can't even imagine. So, 100. Yeah, because it worked differently. They didn't train over the course of the year; they did it compactly. So that means he had people—at that time, probably everyone could have been a flight instructor. Or Claudio probably determined that.

But he said he needed about 100 instructors. Probably all of them were adjutants, including those for water landings. But he needed 100 instructors to be able to process those 2,000 students who received their license. I mean, you don't want to know. We know that only about 60% of the trainees actually complete the course to get their certificate. So you can imagine the sheer mass of people he moved. And only during the summer. Because Castelluccio only ran in the summer. And only this area could handle that many people. And it's highly interesting—he was the biggest dealer ever. He sold so many gliders that large flight schools can still claim it today. And now he's very small and solid, like the flight school.

Always just in Castelluccio. And he's very down-to-earth. And yeah, he does it the right way.

And it was fun to fly. How old were you back then, when you did that first flight—or probably the first flights—in Castelluccio?

So the first real flight. I was about 6 years old then. That's when I really pulled up the glider myself, walked out, and flew. But I did it without the brake in my hand. I mean, you have to know that what's being marketed as a new hit by Air Design right now—the AB riser. And so, basically with a C-certified glider. Such a simple glider with only an AB riser. That's the Loco from Air Design. Yeah, exactly. But all this crap already existed. Man. So let's look back. What was a Priser? It had four attachment points. A Priser had, so to speak, a double A and a double B, and it led these down. The only thing it didn't have was V-ribs.

I mean, he had to hang every cell so that it wouldn't belly out. And single skin—all of that already existed. Only Laurent de Calvaran once said, "If I had known that the nose led further down back then with his 87 prototypes, I wouldn't want to know how the development would have continued." Because he would have certainly moved away from the double sail. Because back then, the double sail caused real problems with the collapse and such. That was obviously due to this venting. And of course, Laurent de Calvaran was being a bit reckless there. But anyway, I was 6 years old then and took off. I basically pulled it up at the A-level. And then when it started to lift off, I reached for the B-level at the back, down below. And I steered with the B-level because you catch quite a lot of surface area there.

With a lot of resistance. And the brake was on the three-point harness. Much higher up. You couldn't even reach it. The arms were too short. Exactly. And the pictures are funny too. I have quite a few funny pictures where you can see that. Where I'm lifting down there. During ground handling, I only ever worked with the A and the B. Because it couldn't be done any other way. And that's actually when I realized how nonsensical most ground handling courses are. And how intelligent it is from Mike. For example, Mike Küng. The ground handling training is, I'll put it this way, the basic foundation. You're not learning how to start in strong wind now. You're actually just learning to control the glider. The A-plane in strong wind. He wants to formulate it that way. But it's the first step. The right one, actually, for practicing. And it was like that back then too.

When a lot of wind comes, I pulled on the B. I needed strength, but then it tore the whole glider apart. Or? At the brake, it makes this "woof" sound. It makes a little arc. And then it goes over there. Over the plains. And basically, these things. Practicing and learning to launch backwards. That was just the basic. First, just taking the A in your hand. And just the B. And that for years. Yeah. Then I was allowed to do it. Had to. Because the arms were too short. Because the arms were too short. Such bullshit. I always only flew on the rear three-strap. So, if someone comes along now, like, "Hey, how cool, he's flying into the rear three-strap and twisting." Yeah. Fuck. I was already doing that at 6 years old. You say? That was... that was my shitty job. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been allowed to fly. Or? It couldn't be done any other way. Yeah. Exactly. I was already doing that at 6 years old.

So it's called. Letting kids fly. The world a better decision. How actually for adults. Yes. Teaching flight. So. They do so many things. Right away. From the start already properly. That's actually. That's like skiing too. Um. Um. Teaching adults to ski. I find that. A very high risk. So. You have to. Shift back 5 levels. But with the kids. You actually. Shift back 5 levels. With flying at least. Mhm. And actually. You have to let it run normally with the kids. With the adults. Is that actually. With the hand brake. The whole thing. Significantly more operated. Because the accident rate. Is catastrophic. What. That is. A very high need. I

Nowadays, you can start at 14. With the license at 16, you can have it by then. But from your experience, would you say it's way too late? Way too late. Start at 8.

Or... yeah. The products... they exist. You can... decide. I think it's a mistake. I mean, look. Our system... it makes a huge mistake. So...

At the savory slope. You can. And the black slope. So. And. That's by difficulty level. If you were to distribute these types of slopes with licenses, that would be much smarter. Why does someone who can handle it well in Krautendel and lives in Denmark and only wants to learn something about flying thermals, and let's say, from Föhn conditions and aviation law for cross-country flying, why can't he just get the license for what he actually handles? In other words, just for this area. You have it with boating too. You can get a Lake Constance certificate or you can get this sea certificate. And in paragliding, there's actually only this A-license or the SOBI in Austria. And then there's the cross-country license, which is actually a pseudo-B.

As soon as I move into this airspace, I would actually automatically need the cross-country license or authorization. Because you can be blown off course by the wind alone. Then it's legal again with the A-license if you land outside. So it makes more sense to build it up based on areas and based on product types according to the description. Little Cloud actually only exists because the manufacturer simply makes products for thin, laminar wind. It's interesting. It has no certification, nothing, just a load test, it works. People don't buy anything because it has an A-license, then a glider there, but beginners have a Little Cloud there and fly with the Little Cloud because it's safer in high wind, like a 26-square-meter bag in 30 km/h wind, right?

And it's still roll-stable. So, I think that would also be right for the kids. Over there, they're basically categorized by age - licenses. So MOVA, no problem, then you're allowed to fly with a single-skin, in my opinion, on the practice slope, with zero wind, under 30 meters, obstacle-free. You can define the areas for that, it's simple. You have enough experts, flight instructors, all that stuff. So, under supervision in any case, with ski jumping, you have to imagine, with ski jumping, you're standing there as a 14-year-old with rails there that are 2.30 meters long, at the jump, that's for your first jump from the large hill, that means from the large hill, medium or normal large hill, so that means one where the K-point is, and it lies at 90 meters, that means from the takeoff table until the radius flattens out again at the bottom of the steep slope, exactly at that moment, that's the K-point, so basically,

The jump is 90 meters long there, and you're traveling at over 100 km/h, you're going over this takeoff table—namely, at the beginning, speed in ski jumping is safety. That means your coach won't let you take off for the first time from the lowest shelf, from the lowest kicker, but from the highest one. And that's the reason because you then have much more airflow; that means even if you had the tendency to press the skis down, to over-rotate, it's safer—you press them up here and stand up, and you do like, I'd say, Eddie the Eagle, that kind of "little man" pose, he always only did that kind, and you naturally have more resistance and safety because of that, and you still get into the transition area where the slope gets steeper, and you land softly, as if you have little pressure and have a large jump where you then have to take the skis with you, actively,

that you even get far at all, and the ski kicks out and rotates forward. And with a 14-year-old, you can only decide by a feeling whether he's actually seriously injured in the end or survives. So there's hardly any—there's no orange zone in there. That means if you go onto the large hill as a child, it's immediate: either you have a real injury if you mess up, and there's no room for error. So you have to have your routine down when you go onto this large hill; that routine has to be perfect. And that won't work for adults. That only works for children. So, speaking of ski jumping, that means when you get to the large hill, that rhythm is already in there, you're already so focused on your area, you take in the perception—you don't see the size of the entire hill, you only think about your routine.

That means, if you look at it, you've noticed how ski jumpers hardly show any joy in the finish line when they're down at the bottom. It's rare to see them let out their emotions; instead, they're always in this evaluative state where they're constantly judging themselves. And because they're locked into such a focus, you can hardly get out of it. That means once you've jumped, you're in a sort of hypnosis, you're focusing on this one point, then you convert that energy, and you do your thing, because you have to maintain that focus, otherwise you'd have deathly fears. And because you know, in a normal state—like we're talking about now—that jumping off a jump table that's four meters high with skis that have a loose binding, where you're not standing stably inside,

when you go over it at 110 km/h, if there's anything there, it always flips you around, and it always hits the cervical vertebrae. So that's the problem. The ski creates more resistance, it does this, and the head goes forward. And then in the snow, that move really hurts. But it doesn't happen. I mean, you almost never have cases where a child crashes into something. And that was actually the interesting part, which is why I'm pretty convinced that children do everything extreme significantly better and with more reason. And children can focus incredibly well where adults struggle. That means when it comes to fear and risk, children are just significantly better tuned to the point. The only thing is, of course, a six-year-old—you have to say something about that—a six-year-old might just jump down from a three-meter tree without thinking and crash into something down there.

But you also have to know that if you compare it to an adult, if they jump down from three meters and things go really wrong, they'll land with their legs straight and everything will be wrecked. But a six-year-old will get, at most, a bruise. Actually, they won't even get a bruise. So even if they jump down from three meters without thinking, they know very well that they can jump down from that height without breaking anything. And I only have this feeling, I only know this from how it was back then. And that's why I trust the story that children can actually fly purposefully in different areas without any problems.

Let's jump ahead a little bit in your flying career. Now you're 14, let's say. And I read that at 14, you had already flown along in your first competition. Oh boy. I have two questions about that. Yes, go ahead. First question, how is it even possible, legally speaking, how are you allowed to fly along in a competition at 14 when you can only get your license at 16? And second, what was it like participating in a competition like that at 14? Yes,

That was the Junior Challenge back then. Stefan Mascht was in charge of the paraglider section, Rudel Burger for the kiting section. The Junior Challenge was at a pretty high level back then. That means the German national team co-led and organized the competition for the youth and used it as a training camp themselves. Back then, Olli Rössel, Achim Joos. Then came Norman Lausch, who flew with me, apropos Junior Challenge, at the time. So he was a rising star in the competition scene back then. Later a test pilot. And now it's simple. My brother was a fresh flight instructor. The youngest flight instructor in Germany, obviously. Because he started earlier too.

Back then, I flew the Nova Carbon from the company Nova, and then I went to the Junior Challenge and signed up. Everything had to be signed up by hand. And at that time, my brother flew with the kiting, and I tried to get myself moved up to 16 during the registration. Like, whether I have a certificate, and I used my brother's license number. I mean, he flew kiting, so he only needed his kiting license. And I have the paraglider license. And it said Hörburger at the back. I thought they wouldn't read Dominik Hörburger there. Like, his name. And then, my brother, he was totally ready to shit on me. My parents knew that I was in a flying status.

I am absolutely not ready to take high risks. And I approach the whole thing very deliberately. You have to know, I've witnessed many accidents during tours everywhere I've been abroad. And at that time, paragliding had such a boom where the gliders got a lot of power. And then suddenly, there were heavy accidents again. That's when the airbag story first came out. That's also when the rescue obligation first came out in Germany. Abroad, none of that existed. In Slovenia, we were in Slovenia, and the people just bomb it. You're standing at the launch site as a kid. The others are gone. And basically, you're supposed to wait up there until the tour bus comes back up. And then someone bombs in next to you.

And yeah, for the next five hours you're an eyewitness, watching them die. So that's why I had a different perspective on the risks. Because you have to be aware that if you're as stupid as an adult—that's how I always described it back then—you can die pretty quickly from what happens out there. So that was for my...

Parents, no problem. I have to jump in there for a second. Did you actually experience people dying in front of you, who died here at the launch site, who were bombed there? Yes,

sure. Or

was that just... No, no,

No, no. It was real. The story is real, yeah. No story. No story. I've experienced it several times. So, in my test career, yes. In other words, if you're a test pilot, you can assess the risk and the weather situation differently because you fly professionally. Combined with the product and your skill level. That means, in dangerous conditions, I choose the product I can still work on, check the stability, and so on. So, I wouldn't start off with just any prototype of a competition glider. And I wouldn't do first flights either. But then you go up the Tegelberg, for example, with Manuel Krotsch at Swing back then, you go up the lift and at the bottom the lift operator says, "Watch out, at the pylon—I don't remember what it was, pylon 3 or 4 at the top, the one below the launch site, we have wind gusts from the east, north, northeast of peak 35."

It was spring, May, I think. So it was still a pretty unstable time. A high-pressure system had moved in. And then we said, yeah, no problem, we're test pilots, we're going up there now and we'll take a look. And then someone had already headed in, and then we said, hey, watch out, for the average flyer the conditions are actually bad right now. I wouldn't fly if I were you. And then he was like, yeah, I can handle it. So they're always around 50, 55, have flown for 20 years without an accident, and you learn a lot about human character then, and later you read what the newspapers reported. I'll tell you how it was. You get to the lift, you get warned by the lift operator about the conditions, you warn every pilot who wants to head up now.

You say to him, look, we're 20-year veterans, we're professional test pilots, we're going up there now just to check certain things with selected products. Please don't fly. But he already knows what he's doing, he goes up anyway, and then you're up there and you say to him, look, the conditions are really intense, you'd better stay down. That's for an average person, and if I didn't have to feel it professionally, I'd say the risk isn't really justified anymore. I mean, it's not fun. So, me falling down isn't really the problem, but it's just not fun.

The conclusion of the story was that it was a bit of a stare-down; my Grotsching and I then flew down. Back then, I don't know what it was, a Mistral or I don't know what kind of glider we were flying with Swing. Down, hand on it is practically stability, checked the gas, these are ideal conditions. So you fly out there and head into the east wind and you feel the thermal lift anyway, 2 p.m. And then you can just watch in the gas and see if the glider compresses between A and B, B and C, how it behaves and what kind of stability it has already. That's already great for something like that. And there you are at 110, concentration 110 even with the B-glider or back then 1 to 2, nothing can happen. So you know, they can also shred you. You have the experience by now. Yeah, the conclusion of the story was that the guy with his Gradient, it was a Gradient glider back then, but it wasn't his fault that the Gradient also starts up and flies out.

Then there was a lot of east wind and he didn't want to get blown away over there, he absolutely wanted to land on the landing field because he was being pushed around a lot, he didn't hold back up there. And then he flew into the landing field, kept the glider in the gas afterwards, near the ground, flew at full throttle, instead of just saying, "I'm just having some fun." And you know how it is in the spring, when the dandelions are blooming, I can only tell you, when the dandelions are blooming and there's an east wind, you get lift off the ground that is insane and really strong. And especially in this foothills region, these lift currents were extremely strong. And as it happened, he took one on the roof and the sun is hot, the air is cold, so pure energy, he took one on the roof, took a front fall, then put the glider on the brake, typical reaction, like so many people who fall, instead of just leaving their hands up and letting the glider do its thing, especially B-gliders, please don't touch anything, wait.

And brake doesn't mean going onto the brake, as a tip, or if people think they have their hands up, they think at head height, but at head height the glider might already be braked. So it's very important, you have to orient yourself to the roll, the hands have to be on the riser at the buckles. If you get a collapse, first leave your hands on the buckles, because most people fall down out of a chain reaction. That is, what did he do? He went onto the brake, had a front stall, goes onto the brake because he wants to actively make things worse. Yes, then you have a stall. What did he have? A stall? The glider tilts back, then he checks that something is going wrong and doesn't know what and puts his hands up. What does the glider do? Pendulum motion, he shoots, he jumps past the wing and before the lines were extended, his upper body slammed into the ground.

Well, and then you go there as a first responder and just think to yourself, I just tried to explain to that guy three times that the conditions aren't for him. And then you read the accident report and it just knocks you off your pedestal. It says in there, experienced pilot, 30 years of flight experience, frequent flyer, suddenly fell from the sky. Later you find out that it then says he got a collapse near the ground and through this movement, he died in an accident. What nonsense. The thing was, the guy was self-absorbed, overestimated himself, typical, because he hadn't had an accident for 30 years. Not routine, product in hand that is absolutely above his level because he hasn't had an accident until now, big, so by luck.

And then, basically, he fell out of the sky because he had already stalled. And not because of the collapse, but the reason was actually that he was flying with a high angle of attack and didn't hear the warning shot. That's why he actually fell out of the sky, not because of the product. So it was so many chains of events, and this is still true today, whenever you read "30 years of flight experience"—you know that Lufthansa pilots, the ones with the most experience, are not the ones who do the, what's the word, the prototypes for the LBA. So, if you're doing a VVZ, meaning you're building a plane for yourself, a prototype, the first flight cannot be done by a Lufthansa pilot.

The insurance won't pay for that. Yeah, because those who don't actually have experience in this area—they have a lot of flight hours and they have the highest license, but they are raised with very high self-confidence. But they aren't raised on skill, as in aviation skill; they actually always go by the automatism of how things are supposed to happen. So they have that underlying structure, but not in terms of flying. And the ones who do the first flights, the Lufthansa pilots, they rarely like to be told what to do by some, let's say, run-of-the-mill smart aleck who flies ultra-light or something, who only flies by feel. So what happens? Yeah, you'll probably rather fall down like the one who, in practical terms,

the product moves. So, to speak of an instinctive feeling. That's why test pilots are often not Lufthansa line pilots for the three-axis stories. And that's in the insurance policy. With the LBA, if you want to take out insurance, a Lufthansa professional pilot is not allowed to do the first flight. Interesting, right? And that's how it happened to me too. So, to speak of an experienced flight instructor, 30 years of experience as a multi-pilot, and then he completely dismantles himself.

Now we've drifted off a bit. Still, a nice story. But I want to jump back. Recent competition. You were at this competition when you were 14. You were there, trying to sneak in. Did you get caught? Immediately.

Immediately. But they caught you

let them fly anyway. Yeah, that was very simple. I mean, they didn't do anything wrong.

So Greifenburg is a training area. At 14, you're allowed to do altitude training. So at 14, you can do altitude flights. And in Greifenburg, I did my altitude flight with a flight order. Two flight instructors, and a flight instructor in the air with accompaniment. So that means the Liga pilots back then, Achim Joos had just recently gotten his flight instructor license. And Olli Rüssel was a flight instructor assistant. Then Rudel Burger was a paraglider instructor. Stefan Masch wasn't one. He was just the national head, a supervisor. He did the flight order, and at the landing field, my brother took my reception with a flight order. And so I basically flew with the Liga legally later with a flight order. Well, not Liga, Unichallenge. And now comes the joke. Then I'm at the Unichallenge. Quite silly, they were actually allowed to take me in officially.

I had the authorization back then to participate in this national competition—it's not an international one, so that means you don't need an FAI license in that sense—and I was also insured through the flight school.

And interestingly, it was like this back then—I think I can say my name, right? I can say anyone's name, can't I? I'm fine with it. I like saying names. So, was it like this that as a 14-year-old, I qualified for the Liga because the first five spots were already fixed, and then seven people—back then you had to qualify because the application pool was still large—then seven people were allowed to qualify for the Liga. And I was... well, the first ones were the competition pilots I was already with, the boys, and they were definitely in, and I, in any case, qualified. And behind me was... I think his name was Tobias Schreiner. Tobias Schreiner was behind me, one spot behind me, and I took his Liga spot.

Now I had even qualified and he didn't. Yeah, then he immediately got me in big trouble with the DHV in the media. Right? That was obviously bad for my parents, right? Because she got hit with a massive fine and she didn't know that I was flying in the league. There were no cell phones or anything yet. I was there watching my brother fly in the competition and I was allowed to fly secretly somewhere from time to time, right? They didn't really catch onto that exactly. We kept a lot of things secret. Yeah, that's how it was. And then I flew in the league. It was cool. It was fun.

That means even though Tobias Schreiner snitched on you or something, the DHV said, okay, he's still allowed to fly with the league.

Yeah, there was a special procedure back then, a small one. I then received a D-license, unofficially, officially. They exist officially now. That means you're allowed to go flying independently. Without flight instruction in approved flight areas. And with that license, you would have had the possibility to fly with the league. But actually, no, that's not right. I didn't fly with the league immediately because Tobias Schreiner had already made quite a scene and my parents were afraid for their livelihood. That was a hot time, of course. They had a huge house to finance and, and, and. And kids who are sometimes, I'll say, in our case that's a term of endearment, real little shits.

And so, a lot of shit. I didn't just do stupid things while flying. We did stupid things with everything. And yeah, then afterwards it was like, you guys actually waited until I was 16. And at 16, I went out again. I think I came in second or something at the Junior Challenge back then, I don't even know. And then I was officially allowed to fly along. So, I didn't have to qualify for the league anymore, not like at 14 when I was flying along. So, it was like, Stefan Mascht—I have to give him some credit there—really even back then under Rudel Burger, when the competitions were together, they always voted for the kids. And they didn't know me at the Junior Challenge back then at 14. They didn't know me and they did something,

...what nobody would do. Just think about it, there's a kid from somewhere else, no parents with them. You have no contact with the parents. And you say, okay, you're allowed to fly there now. In "alpine," higher, alpine terrain. And at 14, the tasks were already tough. 75 kilometers and then with those bags back then. It was quite something. But it worked. It was anyway the best 1-2er glider at the time that he flew. So, I qualified for the league and in this 1-2er class, if I were to call it a B-class now, since the others were flying high-light and open class, I was definitely in there. And this Tobias Schreiner, he was also flying a high-light. And then a 14-year-old comes along and flies all around him. And at the same time, they were just very solid, safe finishers.

And I basically, I'd say, the typical world champion types aren't the ones who just race for first place, but they fly consistently to the finish. And that consistency actually helped me more. And you have to say, Olli Rössel was always watching me in the air. He flew towards me back then with his Targa, always spiraling down, checking where I was. In the

competition as well.

Always in competition. So, he always accompanied me and then came back to me, checked what was going on. And he landed somewhere optimal and was always watching me. And he actually did a few things back then. And then, speaking of GPS, I got my experience with GPS there. You had batteries in there and then it was just photo and GPS. So, you started tracking and also had a photo for safety. And then I got a GPS from Olli Rössel and there was the safety rope attached to that screw at the back where the batteries are. And instead of keeping it in the middle, I basically had the rope on the left and right in the carabiner. And now there was tension on it. Now the GPS was upside down. And then I wanted to look at the GPS, of course, so I turn it and then it goes plop and suddenly the batteries fell out, bing, bing, bing, bing.

Then I had to, oh boy, I had to switch back to photo mode and take pictures, shove the batteries back in, turn it on again. And that was really funny. I mean, there were all sorts of hilarious things happening. And it was a lot of fun. And no, the support was very, very good back then. I just have to keep saying thanks for what they did there. I don't know if I'd do it exactly like that right now, immediately, but I think I would. I'd take on the responsibility of the risk.

But now you haven't had a real competition career, but rather went down the test pilot route. Why? I have

...signed a contract where competitive flying couldn't be the priority. I mean, I wanted to make money from it professionally. Olli Rössel was basically my trainer; he came from my area, the Oberstdorf region. And Olli really struggled to make money from it back then. Achim Joos was the last one hired by the Bundeswehr, and he did it on a professional military track as a professional athlete, a career athlete. And yeah, you don't make anything financially from that. So, what do you do then? Well, then you have to think about tandem flying, right? Should I become a tandem pilot now? Yeah, fine. You can still do tandem piloting at 60.

So, that's possible everywhere if you have a good area. So, it was clear that if I wanted to do it professionally, flight instructor? No, that was out of the question too. And then I was with the German Ultralight Association back then and they were looking for hand pilots. I was 18 years old. Speaking of which, I did an apprenticeship as a pastry chef. And do you know why pastry chef? Confectioner. Because that was the only job, after my shitty, bad school leaving certificate, that was the only job where you have night shifts, where you're allowed to work night shifts as a kid, so that you can go flying during the day. So, the priority was completely... That's why you have

Trained as a pastry chef? Yes,

No joke, yeah. I wasn't interested in the job at all. Only the working hours. Great. Seven hours of work, but for night shifts, right? Yeah, at some point you realize that night shifts might not be so easy after all. I mean, if you've only stayed up all night once while going out or with friends and think it's easy. No, when you have to do it, the whole thing is different. And then I was at the company Swing... Well, back then it was like that, then the DULV came along. And the DULV, the German Ultralight Association, was already looking for test pilots for motors. I had an accident in between and basically dropped out of the competition scene for a bit. So, and then I got interested in acrobatics. Paragliding acrobatics at the time. And I tried it, even at 14, 15, I tried flying helis and doing wingovers back then.

You have to imagine the look on my father's face. You're standing there in Asprey as a dad, there's a 30 mph headwind, and you have to help some paraglider out—someone who hasn't flown in a year and a half. And you're standing there with him at the edge, and the wing is bucking. And then you see out of the corner of your eye a blue Arcus 1 up there, doing these insane, shitty full-styles, right? And you know exactly that it's your son, that man, at 14, that idiot.

Somehow, while in the air, I decided, I felt like it should actually work now. What I did was, I watched the videos from the DHV, maybe half a year or three months before, where Karl Slezak did the SIV training at Achensee. He mostly only made recordings of people crashing. And I just kept watching those accidents and saw what the problems were, what they were doing. And then I was there at 14 with an Arcus, because I wasn't flying with the Carbon anymore, because the Carbon went into a deep stall. That winter, because of a wrinkled wing, I slammed into a Didamskopf below the rock face because that piece of crap had already gone into a deep stall, because there was a Kerrington wing on it and the Kerrington was causing problems.

And then I flew the Arcus -Notfrühstück. And with this Arcus, yeah, I flew my full stoys and practiced there. I practiced heli-flying and stuff like that. Yeah, it didn't all go well at first. But I didn't need a rescuer, nothing, everything was fine. And afterwards, it was like I wanted to fly high-end. And then I got a Stratus IV AC from the company Swing back then, because I was flying the Arcus. So, I got it. Didn't buy it. I just requested it and got a glider. And I was basically allowed to fly it for free. And I still didn't have a B-license. You can't forget that.

No B-license, but flying an open-class competition glider. And I practiced with that one too, and I was in Southern France. I knew, well, the good thing is, I knew all of Europe with all the weather conditions. So, I can tell many people, oh, it's such a rotation. Wow, strong, thermal, and dangerous and turbulent. No, they don't know how the cycle of this area works. So, they just have no experience. Typical Germans, he drives to the launch site at 11:30, 12 o'clock, stands at the highest point, and then unpacks his glider first of all. Well, that doesn't work in the south. In the south, you drive to the launch site at 9 o'clock and then first put on your short harness and basically finish your glider in the lee at the back and take a Rosetti before you. The Germans somehow don't really know that.

So, not the Austrians either. And not the Swiss either. I don't want to just bash the Germans, that's not entirely true. But it was typical when a German showed up. Germans are, you have to say, the ones who have been trained the most. And because of that, you naturally had many among them who, of course, put on a show. And at half past eleven, of course, it's blasting full throttle because it's blowing up thermally with a 30 km/h wind. And towards the afternoon, let's say until 1 or 1:30, the wind goes up to 40 km/h. But that's lift. So, in other words, if you're out there in the air, you don't have this wind. And you have to know that if you start at 11 o'clock, you only have the chance to land until half past twelve, and then it gets critical. Because then you have the valley wind systems starting to pick up.

And during this time when they start to lift, there are a lot of thermal lift-offs. And then around 2 p.m., the valley winds are on. You don't have such strong lift-offs anymore because you have the strong valley winds in the valley, where you come down vertically, but at least you don't have the thermals on the ground anymore. And by 3 p.m., the valley wind starts to drop off again. And then you can land there quite smoothly and laminarly. So that means from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., just don't go landing there where it's officially marked as the official landing field, because those aren't the landing fields we would recommend. And then I flew there with the competition glider, so I flew with gliders everywhere in all kinds of conditions. And then I said, I didn't have to wait at home until the conditions became sporty. And thus, I suddenly had good experience with high performance as well.

And then it was like this, I ended up having an accident because I was maneuvering a high-performance wing near the ground, like an overt, on the slope. And if the wind hits at about 45 degrees from the left during slope lift, there's a shift. Then you get closer to the slope and realize, oh, the slope is so close now that it's no longer doable. You recognize it immediately. It was already clear in that moment when you initiate, you look and see it won't work. And then I just slammed into it. That really set me back in my career as a ski jumper and cross-country skier, as well as in flying, because the foot injury—it was just the ankle—was pretty shitty. So it involved a long waiting period with, I'd say, an eternity of time until it was somewhat okay again with surgery and all that stuff and crap; it took quite a long time.

I think that completely knocked me out for half a year. And the fact that it was prone to breaking, that it liked to break on me, that was already a thing. But this with the wingover was just so fundamentally stupid. I already knew that morning that, intuitively, it wasn't quite sitting right today. And my brother said, why are you actually flying around with the high-performance glider right now, because it's already thermal. So in the evening I stopped wingovering in the laminar wind up there and wanted to start exactly the same way again in the morning with the first thermal conditions. And that was the lesson. Acted stupidly, immediately broke. Poof, done. So there was no learning curve there, it was immediate compensation for pain. Yeah, and then the job came along afterwards and I wanted to train again during the day, start flying.

Then, of course, I wanted to go full throttle training combinations. I knew I had to get back on my feet somehow. Well, that took quite a long time. I was only able to start again after half a year. So, a good year had already passed. And then I was turning 18 soon anyway. At 18, I looked to see if Dulf had posted anything; I was flying motor gliders then, and I did a lot of licenses in parallel because I couldn't really do much sport. So I preferred to invest money in licenses. I blew my entire tuition on licenses. In other words, I got my three-axis certificate. I had a flight instructor for the three-axis—no, I did that later. But I got a motor glider certificate. I got a three-axis certificate. I did all sorts of things. I started sailplane flying. I wanted to do a PPL-A, actually, even because I really wanted to fly aerobatics officially.

And and and and and. And then the rest of the money, from tandem flying and secretly stealing gliders from the warehouse when we were kids and secretly selling them on eBay Kleinanzeigen. I blew that money on renting planes, on ULs, so that I could do so many hours. At our airfield, you could rent ULs. And then I said right away, I'll take a 30-hour package. So 30 hours felt like very little to me. Then I wanted a 30-hour package, but you could only book 10-hour packages. And then back then, Franz Schnell at the airfield told me, yeah, no problem, you'll get it, I'll give you a discount, and he gave it to me back then for a sports price

...sold that 30-hour rental package. And the cool thing was, I didn't have any money for it yet. Then I started flying hours, I had to push myself, and in the background, I had to swipe gliders from the shelf for my parents when I was already old, and sold them on eBay Kleinanzeigen, got the money, and then always something would go wrong with the bank, or the transfer wouldn't go through. So, if a young guy starts that, he lies like a book, you wouldn't believe it.

It means he just had no cash. But Franz already checked that, or it didn't matter to him, and he said, look, just pay the money, make sure you get the money together, you can still keep flying, but just bring it here. And then that worked too. Anyway, yeah, and then because of the licenses, I was allowed to start in the motor section of the German Ultralight Association, just for testing. At the time, the student Stefan was there, and Walter Holzmüller had posted a K-exam thing with the student Stefan where you can test the compatibility between motor and glider. And then I went there with the Angaros and came back from the Liga competition right then, drove there with the high-loader, and then with the high-loader there...

...allowed to do that and fly the maneuvers, accelerate the collapse and stuff like that, and she already said, who's coming with the high-end light wing, are they crazy or what? So, to fly into a collapse, you actually take an A-glider, but I was under it, I felt comfortable, I knew exactly what the glider could do and what I could do, and then it's just like, you have to do it with the one you feel comfortable with, the one you've flown in, everything. That's why, for example, you also understand why Kriegel Maurer prefers flying with the older X-Alp glider over the new one, because he's simply one with that glider, and maybe the new one is a breath, a tenth better, but that doesn't mean anything if you don't feel 100% comfortable, so. And yeah, that's how it was actually, then DULF noticed, hey, there's this very young guy who can handle motors incredibly well too.

and where Motor was flown during that time. I mean, the Motor market exploded—Arcus II, Powerplay, Sting—mostly the gliders were sold in LDK times, so 10,000 or 12,000 of one product were sold, I'd have to ask Günther Wölk about that, but he made his money with that one, in any case, not with the products that came after and

He's going to scold me now, but in any case, it was like this: back when I got a job with Dulf—I was hired as a freelance test pilot—they also wanted to get certifications, so the company Swing immediately started looking for a test pilot. Then I went to Swing and basically applied, and both Hartmann Michel and Günther Wölk had already said, "Oh yeah, that's right, hey, if little Hörbacher comes along, bring him in immediately," and then they brought me in. So, more or less, we were looking for each other and found each other, and then they said they had already developed the motor as well, and that was highly interesting because I hadn't flown a motor at all, to be honest.

So none of the average consumers out there know about that; they don't even know what it actually looks like. Nobody follows exactly how your development team works; you see them flying somewhere once and then not again, but it was like this: back then, Manuel Grotschi built a motor glider—what was it called? Well, exactly, well, we always said, well, he built a glider that was supposed to be 18 square meters, projected 18 square meters, I think it was back then, or 20, I don't remember, something like that, and you're supposed to hang 240 kilos or 250 kilos under it with a trimmer and speed bar, and back then the trend was, you have to see how the gliders react to a collapse, they just have to manage it.

Certification 3 back then, classification 3, and then I flew out of there with the tandem and tried to get into that collapse area with the glider, and I watched to see if it reacted or was influenced, and then it really started going off, you were flying in a collapse and you were constantly flying into a roll, so the climbers always threw it over once, it was just the energy coming out, right? It's like when you use a brake with a speedwing, you go over it once and that was the case with the collapse, actually harmless, because it always did it immediately, so there was no "aha," it just went "poof" and then around once and that was it, and you were always there, from the outside it looked spectacular as it pushed out and I thought, that's normal, and then I thought, well, that's the job of a test pilot, and then steering and tumbling with 240 kilos, that somehow worked, but it was completely out of control, but because Manuel Grotschi—I thought he was the total pro at this—because of that,

that Sina stayed so calm, I thought that was just how it was, like he had it under control. And because Benni Hörberger is new and looks so relaxed and stays so calm, he's not allowed to show his weakness as a captain and, despite his fears, basically just tested this small glider with 240 kilos with me in the tandem and

then we were also out there together with the glider in poor preparation, I also thought that's how it's supposed to be, you're over the swell and just wearing a life jacket, not one that inflates, but like a surf life jacket, and then we flew out there and survived the whole test, and as it always goes, then you, well, a massive load basically falls off you and then you just have to go for the landing, and then Manuel Croci back on January 28th, January 27th,

at Ticin back then, to set off towards the outside at the Lange Montjori with a small glider and the weight and a power glider that has zero power, we ended up standing there in the water 150 meters from the shore in outside temperatures of minus 4 or 5 degrees, water temperature two and a half, three degrees plus, without a rescue boat, with a shitty life jacket in a tandem. Can you imagine? You don't die during the landing because of the test flight? Such shit.

The test flight flipped over the canopy several times and whatnot, but in the end, you landed normally in the lake, but it was minus—no, not minus, but it was two degrees and whatnot. Two degrees, yeah. How did you guys get to the shore then? That

My big piece of luck was that I freed myself faster. I knew then that it was going to go south. Manuel was the pilot, basically, right? And he said, "Hey, shit, this isn't working." And then I immediately opened my harness and was already gone when it hit the water. I then said,

Manuel, I mean, I've always had respect for him, the utmost respect. And that was the first time I said, Manuel, you asshole. Because I knew it was going to be shit. And then I swam out of there, and the crazy thing was those 150 meters—I mean, I was able to swim freely. And I'm a talkative person, as you can hear, but when I reached the shore, I couldn't move anymore. Everything was already stiff. So, those 150 meters couldn't have been five meters more, because even if he could have stood there, I wouldn't have made it out. It was crazy because the clothes were so heavy, the swimwear was so shitty and gave so little buoyancy, and no drysuit, just all the equipment that didn't work.

And Manuel,

He also washed out, where you could only stand up late and he freed himself, and it's a spot where you could walk before. So, where the gravel bed goes further in, in the river, and he got out there because he lives there, he also went swimming there, then walked out there, but luckily he was still able to free himself. That's when we knew, so if you go into the water alone, you have no chance of survival, so that was, phew, that was all a lot of luck this time. Yeah, from that point on, we preferred testing over ground, like over cold water without a bottom. I can recommend that to everyone, if you're trying the Akku or something, just go over the forest, and preferably a forest that doesn't have high density, because, I mean, deciduous, deciduous forests are good because you can see it if someone is hanging in there, but with spruces and stuff, the paraglider doesn't catch well.

So, if you go into the forest, you usually slip through the branches and the rescuers won't see you. That's why deciduous forests are actually great for testing and for Akku flying. You have to leave it at that. In those, you can always see the glider hanging inside; it usually gets caught in the crown, and as far as injuries are concerned, nobody really knows of anyone who got seriously hurt when they went into the trees. So, with water, the rescuers know about the injuries, but in the forest, actually less so.

Was this experience with the, not the fall,

but with the inflammation, let's say, in the water and swimming out in two degrees Celsius and all that, was that basically your most dangerous situation so far? No, no, no, that's way...

more dangerous later. But you only ever realize how dangerous something was afterwards. That's the thing. You only know, oh, that was shitty, after the fact. So, I've had several dangerous situations. I got sorted out up on Monte Baldo, saw the clouds closing in below, and I was sure,

oh, then I also come out of the cloud. But it was like there was a lot of wind up there and I was actually hovering in place, and my GPS was only showing the direction. Back then, it wasn't like it stored your previous track, but it just gave, let's say, the heading. It just always showed where, where west was, right? And the Garmin, whatever it was called back then. But it doesn't matter, anyway, it was like that, then suddenly the clouds break and you see on the radio that you're high, like, you're significantly above summit height, and then the clouds break, but you only see rocks where the clouds are clearing. And then you tell yourself, where are there rocks at Monte Baldo when you're above summit height? Yeah, that means I was standing in the wind, and I was always pointing towards the west in terms of direction,

but I had no forward speed at all and was basically flying along the terrain, heading south, effectively, with my GPS pointing west and drifting until I hit the rocks up and to the left where the clouds were. So, I flew four kilometers in the wrong direction and was sure I was flying correctly. But it took forever, and I thought, there's no way, when are the clouds going to break? And by then, your pulse is already up, and then you think to yourself, well, nothing can really happen, purely by variometer you're above the summit, so you'll just come out into the side valley, but the mountain goes south,

At 400 meters altitude, like Monte Baldo itself, the ridge and, yeah, and then I came out there at the rocky ridge below the summit height and saw, oh, rocks and the clouds closing in again. And then I knew, okay, I realized immediately, ah, shit, I'm not moving forward, I'm just drifting, and then I went full throttle. But from that point on, I pressed roll after roll, meaning I pushed through like a speed demon, and then I had forward motion.

and then I came out over Lake Garda at the monkey height and thought, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. That was, by the way, around the same time I was out with a high-performer, during that DULF K-exam test phase, where they really put me through my paces back then. That was one of the flights where the cool competition pilot, that kid, says to me, "You know what, sure, I can still fly that, or, yeah, that's how fast cloud flying goes. Zip, zap, you're gone."

That's when you're in trouble. Yeah, there were several dangerous things, but one of them, at Swing, was, uh, with the white sand, that was quite funny and, um, then later over ground, the testing over the meadow—I mean, the gliders that are always dangerous are the ones you don't expect during testing. And often things are dangerous where you only find out later, um, how close it can be. So, I mean, um, you're testing a tandem, it's spiraling way over 30 meters per second, you can't even imagine that as a normal person, but there are tandems that can really give it some gas. And they give it so much gas, and you don't know it at all, which means you can't steer them out anymore. You need both hands on the outside to pull to steer them out.

Then a lot of test pilots say, "Oh, wait, no, they've never properly tested tandems." So, we had that, right? And then we spiral, and the thing stabilizes, goes full-on into the centrifuge, goes straight, great torque, the force goes up, your lights start to go out halfway, and you want to steer it out because you say, "stable," and then you pull on the brake, and you can't pull it because the force is so high. And then you say, "Oh, yeah, yeah, what do you do then?" Yeah, quite simple. Then, um, you try to pull with both hands. And if that doesn't work, then you have to hope that you can get to the reserve. And then you're playing with your hand that's hanging there, and you're screaming across, and you're trying with the second hand to pull this brake, even though you can barely lift that second hand anymore.

And then you know how high the force is. And someone is sitting inside up front, hoping and thinking, you know what you're doing. That was once, I think it was Thorsten Siegel—Thorsten flew along then. For him, only one thing was dangerous: the glider tilted towards asymmetrical collapses, and you have to do the collapse together as a pair. But, wow, the glider then steered out, otherwise we wouldn't still be sitting here. And, uh, and then the glider tilted towards asymmetrical collapses, and he had to pre-tension the B as a passenger. So, he got himself up front, took the B, and then pulled so that we could get the size of the collapse right. They were always too small. And I then took the A, and then we went one, two, three, and pulled, and then the glider came out nice and big, and I then let go of the A, and normally you have some time then. It falls in first, and then starts sliding out from the middle, and you can basically let go of three rungs, right?

Take your phone away. Now, it was like this. The collapse came in really nicely, and just like it came in, it opened back up at double speed. And now, well, Thorsten only had his hands on the B, and you know, from tandem you know the line locks, they're so huge. Yeah, and the line locks basically smashed his fingers together, and then his—I think it was his ring finger back then—was broken, or something like that. Or he had a capsule rupture, some kind of shit like that. So, in any case, he complained like crazy afterwards. And what was highly dangerous? Yeah, when testing you always have things that are highly dangerous, but by now, you have experience, man, when you've flown tens of thousands of collapses, and I've never done anything else professionally besides pastry chef and now test pilot.

When we talk about being a test pilot, what would you say are your strengths as a test pilot? What do you do particularly well? Phew,

Um, thanks Mom and Dad, quite simply, I've had to fly old gliders of all generations with my weight—little weight—in a short amount of time, up to the current standard, right? So, from the year 1987 to, um, the year 2000, I flew all the gliders there within, let's say, six or seven years, right? Where, um, and, uh, and so as a kid, you store certain feelings, which, which, which, so to speak, also...

you have to compare, I have to keep doing it, I have to compare, so that means if you set a brake, I have to immediately fly the other brake in the same conditions, otherwise I can't tell you if it's better or worse. And in the past, it was like that, we had these career paths, and because of the flight school, and because I was so obligated to be on the practice slope, I always noticed back then what the actual problems are with the people out there and with the products; you could see which products are good, which aren't, and what's different about them. So, I always dealt with the subject matter, and I think that's the big point. Hannes always says, um, with me it's probably, um, he always says, the ambition, I am absolutely, um,

ambitious, and, uh, very perfectionism-oriented. Even though I seem totally chaotic, um, in my, in my professional sense, um, I strive for the classic high-performance athlete, so, totally goal-oriented in everything. I mean, I can, I can, uh, I have no problem pushing myself to the limit, which my pastry chef apprenticeship also shows. I know that this training is going to be shit, and the working hours, but, uh, I'm happy to take that on for a bit more free time during the day, even though I actually get way less money for it. It was actually one of the worst-paid jobs, actually, and, um, I think that's the big strength, that I focus brutally on the masses. I mean, I know and can accurately assess which product makes which mass happy and which doesn't.

And I know the issues, like for example with the lines you had with the Maestro, with these high-B products where there are unmantled lines inside, where combinations are used, where the main thing is to be as thin as possible and with little resistance, but still with the highest strength—you had that issue back then, sorting them is harder for you, and it's just fiddly work, or you just throw the glider into a set and walk away.

but these compromises are exactly my job—that I specify them beforehand and say, this is what's coming our way and we have to weigh whether it's worth it for us or not. Right? And back then, you gave your feedback, and I was already aware that this problem would arise. And that's where—I mean, you always have to be critical as a test pilot, so you have to explain the criteria immediately and you can't be biased toward a specific product or company in that sense. That means you are the built-in critic, so. Exactly, you're always critical, exactly. That's your job. Don't be the one who, let's say, wipes the designer's ass. Then you'll be out of a job soon and the company will sell very few gliders.

Now you're working at Fiffi. Yes. And you guys have everything from, um, Solar all the way down to an A scale, um, up to a C, all kinds of gliders in there. Yes. How is that? Can a single test pilot really get a feel for such different glider classes, to the point where you can say, "This works for this one"? Because, I mean, a C-pilot is obviously going to want or need something completely different than an A-pilot. How can you differentiate that so finely? Because, mostly, I know many people who say, "I always fly C-gliders," and when they switch to a low B for once, they say, "What is this sluggish piece of junk?" and just say, "This doesn't suit me, I don't like it," and all that. Yes, that's also

it's already a psychological thing, of course, right? But how, how

you have to be able to prepare yourself to say, okay, now I have the mindset of a Low B pilot and I'm testing that now.

You have to orient yourself towards the masses. So, that is very, very important. Now, which masses? First, you do your main taste, you have to... well, I don't have, how should I put it, it would be smart if I said I have no taste, my wife is very pretty, haha, but, but, but I myself am actually taste-neutral and that's probably the point. And I signed a contract with Swing back then saying that I am, um, ready to end my beginning competitive career immediately. That is to say, um, to sacrifice myself exclusively for development and, uh, and all the test pilots, no matter what name they have, always did something else on the side.

and I never did that, so I was always a professional; from the age of 18, I was a professional test pilot and, uh, because of that, it was often... so my career path and my position at the company Swing, Michael Hartmann was my boss, uh, there, so my absolute superior in practice, and Michael Hartmann was, uh, or is, uh, I haven't communicated with him for a long time, which is a shame actually, uh, he was in any case an incredibly good mentor, not in the sense of, uh, the working environment, uh, with the social climate, but, rather, he toughened you up, so, the one who, during those applications—which I didn't know, there were four other people there at the time as test pilots too—and they all failed because they, uh,

they couldn't, um, handle the struggle, so basically, for me, there was only flying. I mean, I don't know, family celebrations, going out, circle of friends—I was raised that way, exactly, through the summer holidays, that I didn't have any attachment to, uh, home. So, it wasn't a problem for me to travel after the weather, and that's how you get to know different flight schools all over the world. So, that means if you're a great pilot, a super pilot in your home region and everyone at the Wasserkuppe, for example, I'll say, from that corner, do you originally come from there or do you still live there?

No, I didn't learn at Wasserkuppe; at Wasserkuppe, they only offered courses at the beginning, that was the reason, and they wrote on their homepage that they can offer training grounds in all wind directions, I say, that fits, I really want to learn to fly this week or at least get started, and that was the reason, I live in Bonn myself, so I drove 200 kilometers or 250, whatever that is, to Wasserkuppe.

Yeah, exactly, and now you have to imagine, for me, I mean, there aren't any real home mountains in Bonn, Cologne, Bonn,

Practice hills, but you can fly there too.

No, no, I mean, small hills are the most fun right now; maneuvering and carving around is fun anyway. So, that means the biggest rock face isn't always the most expensive flying—that's not true at all. That's the most demanding flying because there's the least safety factor from the terrain. I prefer to relax in areas where it's like that and there's plenty of space where you can just perch anywhere. So, as a test pilot, you're not recklessly brave and you enjoy the flying just as much, but if you live on a practice slope—like your home mountain—and you're the best there, you won't become a good test pilot by any means. Because you have no insight into how all the flight schools work and what different tastes in areas people have, what appeals to them. So, for example, let's go down to Italy, everyone knows Bassano, and you wonder, a high-performer flies in, the guy barely, he really barely managed to get off the ground, it looked very exciting, but then at the landing field, after 5 hours he lands and he lands next to you and then he takes off his helmet and you realize, the guy is already in his mid-60s and he's flying a high-performer. So, they're more into high-performers, but not for the performance itself, but for the psychological performance based on the look; it has to be a low-slung one, a low-slung car, so to speak, with wide tires and it has to look sporty, even if you're not flying out that performance at all, except for comrades like there used to be, Luca Donini and consortium and Maurizio Bordigal and so on, who already,

but otherwise, they're into high-performance gliders and back then, I can only say this, we do very precise comparison flights and test flights and collect data and create references in which conditions, so,

the glider works better and, for example, it was quite interesting that back then, in the spring, the Astral 6 came out; you had the Mistral 6, so, a 1 to 2er, and then the 2er Astral 6 came out, and the Astral 6 has

had massive glide, I don't know anymore, I have no idea, something over 6 or something, but anyway, it was like the glider looked insanely good visually, the new design had just come out with the new Domenico fabrics, the new colors, a massive photoshoot, then in the Dolomites and all that stuff and mods, blah blah blah, and the Italians said, what an amazing piece of gear, it has real performance, and the Astral 5 was rather blunt and very solid and simple, because it gave the feeling that it was blunt, people thought it had less performance, and if the glider feels more demanding, people think it has more performance. To do performance flights, data flights, you need test pilots, I'd say, out there almost every flight instructor is a test pilot, because at least they evaluate your product immediately with one or two flights, even though you've basically spent half a year on it as a professional pilot, but that's exactly the moment, so the first moment has to be convincing, and how does the first moment convince?

If I want an Italian to buy a glider like that, I'll make a glider with high glide ratio—they stand on glide ratio, the French do too—and I'd best make a C-glider, because the C-class, or the 2-class back then, they love them. And then the Italians would say how well it flies and how great this Astral is, this Astral 6. And for the performance comparison flights, we need at least about 25 to 30 flights minimum to roughly know,

roughly know how good the glider is. If we knew that immediately every time, we could build a high-performer right away that dominates the World Cup and everyone flies it. It's not for no reason that Kriegel Maurer was at the very front of the World Cup alone for five years; he never reached for the World Championship title, but at least he was at the front all by himself. Why? He had a glider that was possessed; in still air, during the comparisons, the glider wasn't good. He had this High Arc back then, but what the glider was capable of, Kriegel kept to himself. He said the glider was incredibly difficult to fly. That was already his marketing point number one, which is very tactically clever. He wasn't the best pilot at that time, not at all, even if he won and dominated.

So, based on the results, yes; based on the skill level, no, because before that, he was still flying the UP directly, and he couldn't really shine with the UP Taga at all. But with this glider, he suddenly shone incredibly. The story was somehow that Kari Eisenhut thought the glider was crap, threw it into a corner, and said, "Ah, you're going back to AdWords, yeah, then you fly that trash bag, this prototype glider." Then he flew this prototype glider and then took this glider into his hands and suddenly realized—he'd made it split-brakey—that it handles better normally, basically banking on the outer wing. It was all nonsense, just playing around, we don't need that, but he did it briefly there and everyone thought, "Wonderful, look how the glider flies and how the pilot—only this pilot can fly this glider." No, the High Arc made the glider more stable, easier; the collapses were fewer,

it made it easier for him to fly in certain conditions, which is why he was able to fly significantly faster than the others in more difficult conditions, because the High Arc stabilized it, and now here's the joke: there was a profile in there that maybe wasn't that performance-oriented and was so pitchy, I'll say for now, but the glider handled moving air incredibly well, and now he flew to the turn and everyone flew to the turn, now he was first at the turn and much higher, and then the glider—and what did he do in the World Cup? At some point, he was significantly higher when he arrived at the turn, and then he played the "Ränzchen" game, he waited for the pool, that was tactics, so in other words, he was able to tour around, then he felt that it was thermically good, then he hovered around the first turn and waited until the first ones came back. Yes, why? Because he knew the other pilots aren't tactically worse,

but rather even better, because they had more experience at the time, like Luca Donini; he actually just has to fly with them, meaning he's not allowed to fly away now, he can always fly ahead to the turn, but has to wait again until they arrive. He just always copied the tactics, so to speak, of the good ones, meaning he always waited until they arrived, watched them, and then just flew with the tactics of the others, but with a glider that was worlds more high-performance and stronger, and it was only better in turbulent air; in still air, the glider wasn't a meter better, and it takes forever until this "Raushaschen" shows that this glider is also better in turbulent air and feels more stable. That's why, and then came the Thermik magazine—no, not Thermik, what was it called back then?

It's a mix and it's called Thermik, but back then there were a few sub-sections. Was it called Gleitschirm-Magazin back then?

I think it was Gleitschirm-Magazin and Fly and Glide, but you probably mean Gleitschirm-Magazin.

Yeah, probably Gleitschirm-Magazin, they always did test reports and then these pseudo-test pilots provided data back then and listed the Astral with a much higher glide ratio and performance than the Mistral 6 at the time, and the joke was, the Astral had more span, more high-arc, we had to throttle it a lot more, it went like crap, it only had nice handling, it was way too slow in terms of top speed because we couldn't manage it from a safety perspective, much less acceleration, and the magazine writes—I'm sorry to all the editors now if I'm putting them down—but the magazine writes, even though the glider has significantly less acceleration, that the glider goes faster, it also had the broader and slower profile, that it goes faster, handles better.

and has much more performance than even its lower class, the Mistral 6.

Well, that means you actually would have been better off with the Mistral 6, but the Italian guy isn't going to buy a Mistral 6; he needs that glide and, purely psychologically, he flies better with it, and you have to recognize that. It means it's not always about the performance itself, and now it's like this—now we do it differently—we stand our ground and don't build gliders based on optics anymore, but we know that you can actually get performance out of a lower class if you turn the right knobs and optimize it. For example, something like the Symphonia 1 has a profile in it where dead air is unspectacular, but if the air is moving and you're flying at half throttle, then it can take off so enormously easily and handles so effortlessly that it differentiates itself incredibly from the other A gliders. And that wasn't planned as a direct A glider back then, the Symphonia, but it was just that based on our experience with how gliders are steered by the line geometry and the type of profile and so on, we determined that an A is possible based purely on the data, and then we tested it back then, Maiko and I.

And then at some point I threw it in, you Hannes, from a safety standpoint it's an A, so I'm always the optimist in our team. For example, with the Scala, everyone thought with the Scala 2 we were working towards a D, except for Hannes, and I just looked at the certification, watched the videos, and said, no, you, this can also be a C, so it's in the C range. Just because it has stretch and maybe looks more spectacular visually doesn't mean the glider is dangerous purely based on the data sheet, and the glider is very stable. So I just stated, watch out, we're doing C there and I'm deciding that, and boom, now we have the Scala 2 light 18 and 19 with C, and the glider has a huge speed bar travel compared to, for example, that one, but it's safe. And exactly this you have to be able to estimate through experience, so you have to be able to assess the gliders and keep getting a feel for the masses. For that, you have to go to a flight school, like Wasserkuppe or Hotspot, and watch what happens there in the practice slope over and over again. That means for you as a test pilot, it's mandatory to regularly go to many practice slopes and yourself, like an idiot in low wind—even if it's no fun—take off and land, take off and land, take off and land in all types of starts, so that you just get a feel for how the glider ticks there, so that you also occasionally, and you'll need much longer than the beginner, occasionally make the beginner mistake where you deliberately try to see where the glider actually shows its limits.

Where the doable lies or what is no longer doable, and that's actually the art of it. Sometimes you have to act pretty stupid and do it over and over again, and then you understand what, for example, Wasserkuppe needs for a glider, because they need something that provides a high level of experience very quickly with maximum passive safety. That means the glider immediately signals to the customer, "Hey, I'm carrying you out," but for example, even if the guy flies higher now and has that euphoria—because paragliding is pure euphoria, nobody has to fly, you know—and through that euphoria, the customer, of course, continues with the course.

If he has a glider that requires more skill and falls on his face twice on the first day, he's not going to get his license, and you have to understand that. At the Wasserkuppe, they fly in less wind at the beginning and on low hills at the bottom, and there you need a product that simply takes off, has full roll damping, and doesn't start rolling. It's not about handling, and even if he comes into the final approach at the practice slope with 50% brake and then pushes again, it would be good if the glider still takes the energy out. And the concepts—you can always turn such small screws and the glider changes immediately—and one thing you mustn't forget, now I'm not the designer, I'm just the test pilot.

But if the language between the designer and the test pilot is more or less the same and both bring a maximum amount of experience, then you have the chance to build insanely good things—so the chance is huge. And that's the difficult part: a great designer can certainly bring one or two products roughly to market on their own without test pilots using their experience, but they won't get any better because they lack that practical experience; they'll have to take it by ear, and it'll take a long time, and they won't be able to pull off a "Zügeles" like we're doing right now, for example. But it's like this: the designer can't do it without the test pilot, and the test pilot can't do it without the designer. A test pilot can buy a Kleiderblink and could, I tried and did this for a while too, whip up a paraglider using a program with their experience values, but eventually, you immediately hit the limits where you just feel it—you're not a professional, you're just this hobby cook when it comes to "I have to design."

And it's the same for Hannes, of course, when it comes to testing—he's just the hobby cook. He doesn't know how to serve up good food quickly for the masses; he can only serve a single dish once, but he won't be able to handle the volume because he hasn't learned those processes. And yeah, you have to be able to do that. If you can do that, then you're set.

You've gathered so much testing experience over the years. And over the years, the way paragliders are constructed has also changed. Nowadays, it's much more about pre-simulations, and the gliders actually come out of the computer much cleaner, so to speak. Has the job of a test pilot become easier for you because of that?

No, exactly the opposite. The job has actually gotten shittier. So you find it harder now. In the past, it wasn't so much about the performance or the perfection of the glider. If you just looked at gliders back then, they actually hit the market with a lot of flaws.

And the test pilot was relieved in collapse flying because he flies multiple lines, multiple suspensions. This allows it to be collapsed more definedly and brought into the maneuver fields better. And back then, it was only about the fact that something like an Astral didn't have much performance comparison done for the masses. Now you can't do that anymore. Now the thing has to perform better. So that's the internal motivation. Back then, you just did it visually, and he would slap his visual gliders at you, and then you basically checked if it also worked technically in terms of safety and also handled finely. The test pilot—you can recognize the test pilot's signature in the handling. So, how the glider acts in the thermals is what the test pilot cares about most: how it feels.

So the feeling of how the glider feels is always the test pilot. That means the designer can build a great glider, but the test pilot determines and gives the feedback on how the glider must feel. And then the designer tries to implement that. And in the past, it was like the glider just felt like shit, and then the test pilot would shorten the B a bit so more tension would come on, so the AB folds would disappear and stuff like that, and he sewed it off. So being a test pilot is a craft. In other words, you're not just flying, but you have to dare to go to the sewing machine to rebuild, sew more tension into the trailing edge, into the rear edge—so the rear edge was simply flipped over, he did some ripping off, and it looked like mini-rips. Now you have mini-rips in there. And then you looked at making it more stable and did stuff like that.

You turned a lot of knobs and saw an improvement pretty quickly. So your work always had small effects. Now, it's like the wealth of experience you have, combined with the perfection of the paragliders being built today—which are very highly simulated—means you can only build even better products with that good experience. That means if you want to train new test pilots, you find it incredibly difficult to teach them this wealth of experience because it has become so much larger. That means, how do I create a fold now, or that the folds... I can't just add extra lines there at the front and then pull down and see what comes out. So you have to be much more targeted with the knobs now, and that's actually the difficult part.

So you can't, if you have a two-liner, you can't just shorten the B to get more tension and more pressure on the canopy, because there is no B. Or in that sense, no B. Of course there is a B, it's basically on the canopy. We actually have to differentiate there. There are two-liners. That means an A-line and a B-line come down from the bottom, and then there is, or there is a two-liner. The only two-liner I've personally ever flown, because people used to always think that's because there's only an A on top and then a B at the bottom and in the back, and that would be the two-liner, that's complete nonsense. No, the gliders still have just as many lines. That means the line meters are just saved and then...

So, you have A, B, C, D at the top of the canopy, which are then bundled together and led down. You just try to make sure that these D lines, for example, which are at the very top and were more of a support line for the canopy—it was like that in the past too—and in the direction of extension and the longitudinal axis of the canopy, you see that you can bundle even fewer lines together. You bundle them more and try to have less suspension and lead them down, but for a very long time, everyone talked about the two-level wing. That was right during the, let's say, BPHPP era, so when the Ozon competition wing came out, and actually the only two-level wing I ever flew, where it really was a two-level wing, was the Korb-Roto by Swing from Thorsten.

He really only had two planes. He had an A and a B, and we tested them without fold lines back then at the DRV, and I think he only got certification with fold lines because you couldn't really fly the collapse well and they were just dangerous. The reflex gliders, motor gliders, were similar to fly. So, when you build more into a two-line, you like to put in reflexes. So the job got hot; the gliders became somewhat unpredictable, so they weren't as predictable anymore during a collapse. They became sportier during a collapse. So with the prototypes, there are small adjustment screws where you change something and it sometimes has a huge effect, and with the prototypes, it often happens—we changed the profile by a hair on the Sinfonia. Two prototypes back then, so Hannes said it was minimal.

So, according to his statement, there was hardly any difference. From a purely simulation standpoint, it's a tick better, otherwise everything is the same as with the Einser. That's how his prototype was. And then I went out to fly it at Ossiacher See. The other test pilots flew the other gliders. The first thing I did, very simply, I accelerated a glider fully right away, started the collapse, made the first collapse, the glider snaps open, you're flying behind the stabilizer, it closes, you twist, it turns away, goes to the other side, snaps open, you're flying in a counter-rotation again, you stop over the glider, you fall just past the glider, 400, 500 meters later you have the situation under control again and are finally active again, and you think to yourself, oh yeah, that's what it's like when you think you have to test a glider. With a high-light, you know it can be a beast and you approach it consciously, feeling your way in, and you always fall off the things where you just don't think it's going to happen like that, right?

And it was only a tiny change to the profile. That means this small adjustment already had such an effect that, for the safety factor, you have to keep thinking, hey man, a good test pilot doesn't fall from the sky and need many rescuers, but the good one uses tricks, feels his way into it. So, for example, I can only recommend that when people go to SIV training, right? And then later they come back and think, because they've flown three collapses in their lives and these were actually just "plunge" collapses—I'll call them that for now, because most of them basically, yeah, didn't do a real, realistic collapse.

They think they can just go out and do a collapse somewhere in the winter, or they come to the test field, watch the YouTube videos, go to the test field, grab some random glider, and then fly the collapse over frozen ground in the Stubai Cup in the winter. And you'd say, you guys are completely insane.

So you probably don't know what you're doing, because if you initiate a collapse on many gliders incorrectly and pull it too steeply, then the surface falls steeply and deep, gets caught in those wide forks they often have between A1 and A2, gets caught, can loop through, and then you end up in the spiral. Then they usually all have a harness on, they get into the spiral, and what happens? You have to know that the rescue-fray has a rate of 50%. That means if you throw your rescuer in the spiral or in the SAT movement—it goes into that SAT movement automatically—then the chance that the rescuer actually opens is at most 50% because it gets eaten by the glider.

So, are you guys aware out there, we sometimes think about what you're doing to yourselves, because then you're crashing into frozen ground in the spiral in front of 100,000 people, where everyone is fighting just to be able to do such a test flight, because you're basically one foot in prison if you do something like the Stubai Cup or how it's always been in Kössen, and then they try to fly into the collapse, where you can't make any statement about it afterwards, because they are unrealistic collapses, I mean, the lines actually have to be pulled steeply, pulled correctly, so that they really collapse as if the pressure is coming from above, that the mass of the wing goes with it and not you pulling it, that's a collapse. They somehow press the leading edge and if they then steer incorrectly, they think, wow, no acceleration, how harmless, then they dapple into the gas and then they don't pull, they try to pull the collapse exactly the same way or more outwards, but they just pull

and then they do it now and then they throw a reserve and then it gets eaten by the glider and then it pumps in. I mean, there are plenty of YouTube videos going around now where you can see what that can look like for A-pilots sometimes and how close it can be. So, test pilots always have two reserves, and they always do it with an arse, even when they're doing simple things, and A-pilots always have two reserves too. So please, everyone out there, lovely people, just take two reserves with you, it makes sense, even if you're only practicing ears with a speed bar and roll-endings, which you rarely do when it's hot.

Benni, we've been chatting for ages now. We could probably keep chatting for another two hours or so. Let's get to the point. What else should we ask? One question still interests me: now that we've talked about testing and two-liners and all that, I'd like to get your assessment. Now there are these C-two-liners, and there's a discussion in the scene about what effect that will have. Could it be more dangerous for the scene, for the mass of pilots as a whole? Yes, how do you assess this development? Are two-liners per se really something to be considered more dangerous, and will some C-pilots perhaps overestimate themselves with them? Or is it something where you'd say, no, actually these gliders, if they're built properly, are just as safe as the others and the C-pilots will manage just fine?

Yeah, that's where the pigeonholing comes in. So, a Symphonie A2, for example—take that as a topic—you can use it for training, but I don't think the Symphonie A2

a proper training glider. So, I mean proper in the sense that it's not poorly built. No, the passive safety during a collapse and things like that, when it comes from the outside, and the control inputs, it's a very safe glider. But it also has energy and dynamic performance, which automatically means dynamics. And thus, that's where the pigeonholing has already started. That means this glider is nothing for absolute beginners who are flying for the first time, later on, sure, but there it's only about the passive safety. Why should someone who wants more safety, let's say, have a tractor as a paraglider? That's what's now possible constructively. And the same thing is actually happening now in this two-liner C-class. You have to distinguish, if you go to the AV side now, you see the scale and then it says

Certification D. And we're all advertising with C. We need to define that right away, because in Germany there's still LTF, and only the EN standard is on C. So the EN standard, the European standard,

has this C in it. It already allows for two-liners, and with LTF, it's not yet предусмотрено that if you use Faltlein on the collapse, you can have a C under EN, while under LTF you automatically get a D because it hasn't been implemented accordingly yet. There are apparently plans to do that, but for now, that's not the case. But before we slide into that discussion, tell me more about the safety of the C gliders and the drawer thinking again.

Exactly. And now comes the actual decisive point. So that means,

just because I once flew a DHV -2 glider, where what feel like B-gliders now—meaning C-gliders from back then—are now High-B gliders. That's not entirely true; they've become very good in terms of collapse safety, but the dynamics remain. That means they feel more demanding, but the gliders are getting better in terms of safety. The 2-liners currently, something like, I'll take competitor products into account, like Zeolite for the X-Alps, are decent gliders in themselves. But they fly differently than how C-gliders used to fly. So, the 3-liners are more honest in certain aspects. That means they collapse earlier, they show you earlier when they collapse.

and they basically get you into an H-8 position faster. And because of that, the pilot doesn't dare to fly that fast because they're already playing, "Oh, the ear is wobbling, oh, get out of the gas and please don't do anything to me." But in terms of collapse safety, the 3-liner isn't better or worse, otherwise it wouldn't get any tasks. Only these fold-ins make it possible for this stable glider to collapse at all. And now here's just one problem. We're entering a class where people also like to do SIV training. And now they want to do an SIV training with such a glider, then they actually have to mount fold-ins. Now we, as manufacturers, ask ourselves, "Well, who is actually going to mount the fold-ins for them then?" Because rigging a glider is already an absolute overload for, I'd say, 80% of check operations.

They can actually change the main line, but rigging a glider—they can't really do that properly. And now comes the decisive factor: how you actually rig it correctly.

And now we actually have to train people more. So currently, we have to teach them again, just like with the Symphonie, that this glider has a feel to it—I mean, it's still basically the same glider as it was last year. Only the certification on the list has changed. That means the Scale 1 was already a C-glider in terms of maneuvers, control paths, spinning, stalling, and so on, front-end stall. And he didn't dare fly this one now because it says so on there. It's going to happen more and more that you have to pay more attention to the glider description, how the manufacturers specify who the glider is for. But the two-liners aren't more dangerous. In terms of stretch and tendency to hang, they are hotter.

In terms of control inputs, they are also more sporty to a certain extent. So, for example, if the glider collapses and you hit the brake, the control inputs can sometimes be worse because the glider deforms, collapses inward, and then there's less airflow on the open side. But that's also the big advantage of the whole thing. That means if the glider collapses and falls toward your face, it absorbs the energy because that rigid board suddenly starts to deform and collapses inward, taking the energy out. With a two-liner profile, you're using a profile of the type that isn't for maximum performance, but rather a profile that provides higher stability. That means you need more span for the glider to provide more power at all through the induced drag.

That's why there's a danger with two-liners that are performance-oriented; you actually have to keep them stretched out more, which leads to a tendency to hang up, and the control path is more of an issue. That means in the thermals and when accelerating, the things you encounter are unproblematic, they're even safer. So, if you're flying in the gas, they're significantly more stable, and that reminds me a lot of the motor glider stories too. It takes much longer for them to collapse. That could be a disadvantage because pilots might think, "With a C on paper, I can mess around in the gas with this one just as much," and they'll think it'll roll the ear beforehand. No, it won't. Right now, only the glider below conveys that the air would be calmer if you switched under it. That's the next thing.

So, they give you a calmer feeling and because of that, you can fly much, much faster with the glider. And now you're flying nicely in the gas and you dare to gas more in heavy conditions. And that might be the problem, where before with the three-liner, which also has a C, you flew slower and if you then got one on the roof, basically because you flew slower, your reaction would also be weaker, it could be that it takes much longer until you get on the roof with the two-liner, but then you need much more energy from the outside and once you have reached this energy from the outside, then this massive collapse that could happen, or could theoretically happen, they are then much, much more sporty, simply because you are moving with more energy.

That means if you fly just as fast as with the three-liner, you'll get a collapse much less often with the two-liner, and it might even be safer, but as soon as you push that feeling further and fly faster in heavy or sporty conditions, you have to expect that, of course, more will happen. I think it's great from a development standpoint because I'm always open to news; I'm the type who even says the open class belongs back, so this whole competition class as it is now, CCC, with all that stuff, that's just completely restricting the open class. I see it as competitive sports, which means accidents can happen in competitive sports too and people have to assess themselves, which is why I think, especially in the lower range, that's why there's the classification of A gliders and such, where the manufacturer focuses on one specific value,

if we say, if you want to take on little risk, you just have to trust your flight school to give you a product where the risk is low—meaning, to minimize the remaining risk even further—so that you land safely given your skill level. The overestimation of one's own abilities by pilots is the issue; in the past, you could hardly get off the ground with a high-end wing, they were harder to launch, and now it's like a two-liner, the current ones, launch so easily that even anyone who is bad with the technique can get into the air with them, and that could become a problem factor, but in terms of safety, let a few accidents happen now, I'll say, unfortunately, and then we'll see if the C classification maybe

only for two-liners of the X-Alps type, as they have been until now, then C and D might become the future competition classes, because we know that in the CCC class you can only use a very limited speed bar range, which means the competition gliders aren't the fastest gliders, but the D gliders are significantly faster. Purely theoretically, if you can now build a faster and performance-oriented glider, then you can very certainly build a competition glider in the D class that outflies all the CCC gliders, that is possible. But it doesn't mean that this glider would actually be safer, purely like the CCC. So it means you have to pay more attention to the pilots

or manuals, to put it simply, pay more attention to the manufacturer's glider description and figure out for yourself where you fit in there.

belongs. Alright, Benni. I'll just leave that there as a closing word. People, pay more attention to what the manufacturers write, how they describe their glider, and whether you fit that description overall, and look less at the categories from A to D and what exactly those are. Benni, thank you so much for your story. I could have asked a lot more, or rather, we'll probably have to do a second episode at some point. I don't want to ask in advance what has already been covered, otherwise you'll start again right away and I won't be able to stop you. Thanks for... You

you're so decent. Lucian, you're really decent. You hardly interrupted me at all. So, I have a motto.

You didn't give me any chance to do that either. Plus, regarding the interrupting—sometimes, if you don't interrupt people, that's when the really interesting stories come out; otherwise, you always cut them off just before they were about to land the actual scoop, so something like that. So, thanks for your story, how you did it, even with the little side notes where you got lost. I once had another guest on the podcast, Peter Renner, who described himself as a windbag. However, I think I was finished with him after about 35 minutes, because he spoke so fast that he just rattled off everything he had to say very quickly. You might have done a bit of windbagging too, but you created much bigger clouds of steam. It was fun listening to you, and thanks a lot for that.

Yeah, please, please, Lucian Haas, I had fun too. It was a blast, as always. Okay. Oh yeah, exactly, that's what I wanted to say. I always have that saying, Hannes always tells me, please don't talk about hard-boiled eggs. You know, after six minutes, the egg is basically hard. That's always been our time limit. We actually always look at your clock, six minutes, then it has to be over and the content has to stick. Or more or less, you can never ask us about the time, because in our family, we like to explain how the clockwork works.

Okay. If I do another episode with you, I'll put an egg timer next to us and still stick to six minutes, go "brrrrt," and then everyone will know, okay, next topic, no matter where we are at. If you'd just given me the tip beforehand, we could have pulled that off.

No, everyone's allowed to jump in like that once; that's how you see each other a second time in that case.

Benni, thanks again and see you next time. In

In that sense, Lucian, thanks,

Hi.

That was Podz-Glidz episode 105, Childhood Dreams with Benjamin Hörburger. As always, there are some additional links in the show notes on the Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz. My name is Lucian Haas. I am the producer of Podz-Glidz and the publisher of Lu-Glidz. Are you among those who already support my work on the podcast and blog? Thank you. Otherwise, I can recommend it to you once more. There won't be another offer like Lu-Glidz and Podz-Glidz in the paragliding scene. Help me contribute so that I can continue to run and develop both projects for your enjoyment. All the necessary information on how you can easily and without any obligation become a supporter can be found at www.Lu-Glidz.blogspot.com on the Fördern page.

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