So, the idea of making a short video came about on the way to the first flight site of this 2023 trip. So I started taking shots at the landing and takeoff sites, just roughly panning the camera and saying something briefly about it. Like a short description, not with the ambition of being exhaustive. It was more about the goal of doing the whole thing for myself first. Of course, I also had it in the back of my mind that maybe someone would be interested, maybe it would help someone. Because of that, I also looked for a name for the whole thing. And that's how the name Paraspotting somehow popped up.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with Clemens Lehner.
And I'm Lucian Haas.
Trainspotting. That's the English term for the strange hobby of people waiting on railway tracks for trains and photographing them as they pass by. A real trainspotter will enthusiastically keep a log of the numbers of all the trains they've captured on camera. Clemens Lehner is a comparable collector, but not of trains, but of launch sites. This 155th episode of Podz-Glidz is about that. In it, Clemens tells how he took a break from his job as a flight instructor two years ago and started systematically spotting as many flight sites in the Alps as possible.
On-site, the 39-year-old takes short videos of all launch and landing sites and uploads them to his YouTube channel. What started as a private hobby has turned into a project with a broad impact. On his website Paraspotting.com, there is a map where all his launch site videos are linked. More and more paraglider pilots are using the offer to get a better idea of what awaits them on-site. Paraspotting is now even available in printed form. However, not as a launch site guidebook, but as quartet card game sets. The cards don't just offer basic technical data on flight areas to outdo an opponent in the game.
QR codes lead to further useful online information.
Since you're listening to the podcast, why not become a supporter of Podz-Glidz? It's explained on the Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz, specifically on the "Fördern" page, how easy it is to do.
Clemens, how many flying sites have you flown in by now? Do you lead...
Do you have some kind of list? No, I don't have one. I can only say that in 2023, for example—I can say that pretty accurately—I flew in around 70 different flight areas.
And I mean, that was the summer where I definitely flew the most different flight sites. If you take them all together—I can only give an estimate at the moment, I'd say maybe around 200 flight sites, but that could vary by 100 up or down. So it could be 300? It could definitely be 300, yes. How long have you been flying now? I've been flying since 2016. I started my training in 2016 and finished it in the same summer. Exactly, then I dove into all that flying very quickly. Flying has always kind of been a dream of mine.
But I was so far away from the whole flying scene. I didn't know anyone who flew a paraglider or anything else. And that's why it was just so far away. It took quite a long time for me to finally start flying at 30. But then I dove right in. The enthusiasm was so great that just a year and a half later, I started working in that field as well. At the beginning, you have to say, my output in terms of flying areas, if you want to look at it that way, was very low. Because I lived in Vienna and always drove to the Hohe Wand. Yes, occasionally to the Hohe Wand or to the Muckenkogel. Or to the Spitzerberg. Yes, Spitzerberg is more of a ground handling area.
But that's actually one of my favorite things. What I did most in Vienna, at least once a week, was going to the Donauinsel. There's a large meadow there. And I went there for ground handling. I mean, it's just a very flat meadow. Often there was good wind. So I'd just check the forecasts. And as much wind as possible, so that it's really blowing. And then I'd go there. And I went there regularly for ground handling. So that was actually my number one flying area. At the beginning of my flying, the Donauinsel and the flat meadow there, where I had a huge amount of fun. I mean, always flying without taking off. Yeah, exactly. So when it was blowing well, I'd also take off once in a while in between.
Whether intended or not. Yeah, but that was also, yeah, also the feeling of flying. And also this, how should I put it. First of all, the sporting ambition to hold the glider above yourself. And over time, then just the fun of it. It grows. For me, it just kept growing the more I had the glider under control. That wasn't, yeah, real flying. But in that case, it didn't have to be. But certainly, when the wind is blowing hard, then you're just sitting there in your harness. More or less inside. Still have your toes a bit on the ground.
And it's almost flying already, I'd say.
Nowadays you're a flight instructor. You worked in flight schools for a while. You do a lot of flight trips and stuff like that today. How much time do you still get to do regular ground handling yourself? Or are the movements all so ingrained in your routine now that
do you actually not need it anymore? So, as for dedicated ground handling, where I say I'm going somewhere and doing ground handling there—I actually don't get around to that very often. If there's a nice piece of terrain somewhere, then I like doing that very much. But what happens quite frequently for me is that after landing, if there's some wind, I don't take off the glider right away, but just walk around for a few more minutes. That's often pleasant after long cross-country flights, when you come down a bit hypothermic, to get the body moving again and warm up. And yeah, it's just also a huge amount of fun. Why take off the glider and pack it up right after landing when you can still play around a bit? Yes, I usually have to
pee. When I get hypothermic after long cross-country flights, I usually want to get out of the harness really quickly once I've landed. But maybe it's different for other people. You started a project in 2023 called Paraspotting. How did that come about and what is it all about?
So, it basically happened because I took a summer off once. I had worked at flight schools for about five years before that. So, of course, I was constantly dealing with aviation and had a ton of fun at work. But at some point, I realized I needed some time for myself again, and for my own flying, so to speak. And so I took the year 2023 off. Just with the initial goal of, yeah, I want to go flying myself. And no big plan behind it. Eventually, when the time came—in January and February—I thought, okay, now I want to discover new flying areas for myself.
I already know a lot, but I also want to discover a lot of new things. And how do I do that? Should I just head out blindly? I have a mini camper that makes me super mobile and allows me to travel comfortably for weeks at a time.
Yeah, I kind of got the idea that, yeah, I want to make a bit of a plan so I know roughly what to expect or what the rewarding flight sites are. And it became pretty clear to me quite soon, yeah, I don't want to spend my free summer checking out some exotic flight sites. So I'd rather first, of course, if you know all the hotspots, you can still look at the small or rather unknown spots. But especially in the Northern Alps, I knew almost nothing. Except maybe, yeah, I was in Kössen once or at the Bischling, but otherwise everything else that I often heard from my fellow travelers on the flight tours.
I don't know, Tegelberg, Braunegg, etc. Those were names I'd heard a hundred times, but I just didn't have a visual for them and I wanted to change that. So I basically decided on a selection criterion for myself: I want to visit the flying areas where the most flying happens. How do I find that out? I go on DHV-XC and XContest and just analyze where I find the most flights. I did that for a few days and basically created a long Excel list. And that's how it crystallized what the hotspots are. And yeah, the other story, why it came to perlspotting, I don't even know if that was before or after, but anyway, the idea occurred to me that if I'm visiting so many flying areas, I want to have some kind of souvenir at the end of the summer.
So I'd know where I'd been and could just look back a bit. And then, during a long car ride, for some reason, the idea hit me: I could make a card game, like a Top Trumps card game. I liked playing those as a kid—you know, the car quartets or planes, ships, whatever. Where all different stats are on them, like weight, acceleration, etc.
And when you play, you just compare them. And whoever has the higher number takes the trick. So it's a very simple principle. And I had so much fun with that as a kid. And now it occurred to me again. And I thought, yeah, you could do that with flying sites too.
Yeah, that's how it came about. I thought, yeah, I'll take a quick photo everywhere. And the data, well, I wasn't sure yet what exactly would come out of it. But measuring altitude or something like that isn't much work. So the idea was, I'll sit down for a bit at the end of the summer. One, two weeks maximum. And then I'll design the whole thing, have a nice memento. Maybe I'll even print a few copies as gifts. And yeah, that way I'll have finished a nice project. And also, during the summer, it gives me a bit of a common thread and a small goal to work towards. That's basically how it started.
With all that stuff you're saying, it sounds like it actually turned out a bit differently.
Yeah, it turned out differently. Right at the start, on the way to the first flying site, I thought of an addition. That was on the way to Hirzer in Meran, near Meran. And during the car ride, I thought to myself, yeah, a year and a half ago, I was also traveling by car for a long time in France and Spain. And I visited an insane amount of flying sites there too. Sometimes I just looked at them, knowing the weather wouldn't be right. But I still had the interest in seeing the terrain. And then I'd sometimes get the question from friends, like, "So, what's that flying site over there or that one like?" And I knew I'd been there, but in some cases, I didn't have a clear picture in my mind anymore. I found that kind of a shame and thought, we have to do this.
Well, if I have such a bad memory, then I have to find some other way to keep the whole thing present or at least refresh it. And that's how the idea came up on the way to the first flying site of this 2023 trip—the idea to make a short video. So I started taking footage at the landing sites and take-off sites, basically all the relevant spots where you touch the ground or take off with the paraglider, just panning the camera roughly and saying something brief about it. Like a short description, not with the aim of being exhaustive, but at least so the images won't be completely empty, you could say.
And I also started uploading that to YouTube. Did you get any reactions to it right away? I don't think it was a crazy amount at the beginning, no. But to be honest, that wasn't really important to me because... That was a
like a diary for you or just
So... Exactly, exactly, yeah.
Video notebook, as you might call it, right?
Exactly, you could put it that way, yeah. So that was more of the initial goal, doing the whole thing for myself first. Of course, I also had it in the back of my mind that maybe there's a demand for it, or maybe someone is interested, or maybe it helps someone.
And because of that, I looked for a name for the whole thing. That's how the name Paraspotting somehow came up and...
Popped up? How does a name like that pop up? Do you have the movie? I only know the movie, it's called Trainspotting. But it's about some drug experiences of Scottish teenagers and has something to do with trains on the fringes, and stuff like that. But for you, is Paraspotting you, the flight junkie, in a way? Or how?
Did you think of that? That's a very nice interpretation, the flight junkie, yeah. I haven't seen that one yet, but the movie or at least the name of the movie did play a role in finding the name for the project. I can't trace it back exactly anymore, but at least I know that the term Trainspotting, which is in English as far as I know, stands for watching trains on one hand, but on the other hand, it's also for a completely pointless activity. So, Trainspotting. Yeah, what am I doing today? I'm just looking at trains. So as a metaphor or an image for doing something basically pointless in the end.
And yeah, with paragliding, if you look at it purely practically, it doesn't really make that much sense, but it's just huge fun. And yeah, that would be a reason in itself, of course.
But because, well, I don't know if this is going too far, I'm drifting off, but if people ask about the point of it even within paragliding, I don't know, who needs speed suits or who needs a lying harness or something. So if it's fun, then that's enough of a point, because our whole thing doesn't really have any more point than the fun, I'd say. Okay, but back to your project Paraspotting. To Paraspotting, exactly. So basically paragliding or observing paragliders, yes, basically a, well, "pointless" might be the wrong word now, but something you don't have to take too seriously. Maybe you could see it that way. Somehow it's like that, they also use "spot" simultaneously as, well, as the English term for a place or a point.
And I thought that was quite fitting and also a memorable name. Then you...
But did you always go to each of these different flight areas, or launch sites, in person? Did you go there, walk around, whatever, and set up your camera first before you flew, saying, "I'm going to do a 180-degree pan here, or even more, and talk about what I know about this launch site"?
Exactly, in the best-case scenario, I had already met people there whom I would always squeeze for any interesting facts about the flying area. But yeah, I approached it in a very, how should I put it, non-perfectionist way. And even if I didn't know much about the spot, I still stood there and said whatever I could—either what was visible, what logically followed, or nothing at all. So, if I don't know something, I don't say anything about it. If I don't know how strong the valley wind gets, I leave it out or just say I don't know the exact valley wind. Sometimes based on a hunch. Sometimes with the videos, if I knew I'd find something out about the flying area later, I'd do it that way. So, that's one option. Yeah. In short.
And then the other one. And then during the editing, I just cut out what wasn't right. My ambition was definitely to visit all the relevant spots at the launch sites. So, not just flying up to the one launch site that was currently suitable and landing, but as much as possible, I tried to visit the other launch sites too, even if they weren't properly wind-aligned or suitable at the moment, to get a sense of them and document that image. That was
but also because you had the time for it. You were free. You could say, wonderful, I can go flying every day, theoretically, if the weather is right, and I can also go flying afterwards. Now I'll just walk the 20 minutes over to that other launch site back there too and check out the east flank or whatever.
Exactly. I had a lot, a lot of time. And that was a good thing. I ended up needing it because I underestimated at the beginning what it would take to visit 64 flight sites in one summer. Even if you have plenty of time, it's quite ambitious, and the weather also has to cooperate. And it was 2023, right at the beginning of the year, and the spring wasn't that great. I think I've been to all of them—at least all the flight sites I have in my card game, I definitely flew everywhere. I mean, I did try to go to some sites during bad weather, but for the ones I really wanted to get to know, I absolutely wanted to fly there, and I did exactly that.
And yes, visiting the different launch sites often isn't that much more effort. Well, it depends, but I often hiked up the mountain on foot. I had plenty of time, but I didn't want to spend a crazy amount of money, so I frequently skipped the mountain railway. Plus, it's fun. And if you're already there in the morning anyway, you can use the time before the thermals kick in, even on foot. And then it often works out that you just go from one launch site to the next in order until you reach the very top. Or sometimes you can combine it differently. If the thermals are right, you can somehow take off from a middle launch site and land at the upper one, and then fly on again. And yes, that way it worked out quite well, that I often—during suitable weather phases—could visit a new flight area every day for a week or two, and basically visit all the relevant spots there every day.
What have you learned from this paragliding spotting approach? For example, how do you proceed when you arrive in an area you don't know yet? What general tips can you give? What basic questions should a pilot ask themselves there? And are there things you didn't know before, new insights you've actually gained for yourself from your own approach?
That's a very good question. How do I understand or learn a flight area well enough so that I can find my way around when I get there and know what to look out for? There are, of course, various platforms. There are also—especially in the Northern Alps—often very good club websites where you can find a lot of great information.
Still, for me, it's often not, not enough. So, one of my main sources, you could say, for the information—which I often do, for example, when I go from one flight area to the next and prepare for the next one in the evening—is that I look at the flights that were made there. I'm less interested in what the longest flights are or something like that; instead, I look at a certain range of flights where I then check the track on XContest. That's very easy if you set that radius and use the World Wide Flight Search function to set the radius on the map and see what flights pop up there. Then I look at, say, ten flights and see where they started and where they landed.
Because the existing databases are often not as good as they are; they're just not always accurate. And I've often found myself wandering through the wilderness for hours looking for a new aircraft or a new flight area. I wanted to avoid that, and you can avoid it very well by looking at those kinds of flights. Of course, they shouldn't be from 20 years ago or something, but if you look at the flights from the last few years and see that someone started at this location, or maybe three or four people started, then you can say with relative certainty that it will work for me too, provided the wind situation is appropriate. But you can even see from the flight direction of the tracks, for example, much better what starting direction is suitable than if you look at the information in one of the usual databases.
Do you also look for where they usually find the first thermals or something else to say that something like that exists? I mean, can you tell from these IGC data in the XContest flights that you can basically recognize house thermals and stuff directly from that, which you then used for yourself? That
you can probably see that if you look at it. To be honest, I didn't use that because, well, it's more or less logical where the thermals are, or rather, when I meet people—and those were mainly the busier flying areas I visited—I ask them too. So there might be some hidden potential there,
but as for these thermals, where do I find the thermals? I rely either on people's information if I have no clue at all, or on my gut feeling for the terrain, where I think something might work. Usually, you have several chances then
to look for. And what you're telling or have told in your videos, the ones that are already available to watch now, how much of that is the knowledge you're saying you basically pulled from XContest? I mean, I find it through XContest.
Point. The actual starting point. Exactly, unless it's already specified somewhere beforehand or I validate it again. Otherwise, yes, where—especially in the Southern Alps, you have to say, not all the flying sites are places I've never been to. Especially in the Southern Alps, there are very, very many flying sites that I've known for years. And there, the information is naturally based on my own experience. And what you also learn in conversation with others—if I don't know a flying site at all, then those are things I've asked about as far as possible and that I can also, well, logically derive from the terrain and so on.
And it's, well, for me, the text I say over the video isn't really the essence of it all. I mean, of course I don't want to say anything wrong, no question. That's why I'd rather say nothing if I'm not sure about something. But I think the most important thing is to see the whole thing. For myself, to refresh my memory, and probably for others too, to see if it's somehow suitable for them. Is the launch site wide enough for me?
And is the landing field big enough for me? I think you can best judge that for yourself based on a video like this. I do like to say, yeah, the landing field is this long and this wide and whatnot. But you can easily measure that on Google Maps, for example. Exactly, yeah, the things I say are based on experience and things that other locals will tell me, in the best-case scenario. Although I've already experienced that you have to take that with a grain of salt sometimes. I mean, usually the locals know their terrain best. But either, let's say, maybe I didn't quite understand the statement correctly or passed it on wrongly. In any case, it's also happened to me that I got a message from a club, for example, saying, yeah, what you're saying is completely wrong.
You're not allowed to fly there. You're brutally in the lee and so on. I took that out immediately, of course. If I were to do it again now, I mean, the information certainly wasn't wrong, but it depends on the time of day you fly there. If the valley wind kicks in directly, then it becomes dangerous. In this specific situation. That's why it's so difficult to make general statements when flying. I can't just say, "it always flies there," because it always fits perfectly. It also depends extremely on the weather situation.
So you have your YouTube channel Paraspotting, where all these videos are posted. You have a website, Paraspotting, which also has a map view where, basically, all the videos are linked from the map, so you can zoom in and say, oh, there are launch sites, and then I can click on it and you immediately get the short video for that launch site. Those are usually one, two, or three minutes. Is that being used? I mean, do you notice people going there, and what kind of feedback do you get? Especially for these—they're actually relatively basic pieces of information, because you're mainly just showing the image and saying, I'm here now and this is what it's like. And there are three other launch sites or whatever. But it's not like a major flight area description that you're providing directly there.
Regarding the topic of feedback: at the beginning, my goal was always to have more subscribers than videos on YouTube. And that has now stabilized. Currently, there are over 1,500 subscribers on the Paraspotting channel. And the numbers for how often the videos are viewed are also slowly but steadily going up. So yes, I constantly get feedback in the form of comments on YouTube. I also see on my website, for example, how high the view count is for this map—the Paraspotting Map, as I call it—where you can see the individual points on the map and the video appears when you click on them.
And that's also steadily going up. Sometimes the funniest feedback is when I'm at a flight site and talking to people I don't know. Then someone will go, "Oh, I know you, I recognize your voice." And then people basically come up to me because they recognize my voice from the videos.
That's already happened to me a few times. It's being watched, it's being used, and I think and hope that it can also provide a lot of people with a way to make it easier to fly new flight sites.
Can you see anything in the view counts you have that sort of reflects one-to-one how popular the flying sites are? Like, can you see that, okay, Greifenburg is watched the most and Bassano. And then some obscure, whatever, hike-and-fly sites, I only had two views there or something.
Yes, I think so. You can clearly see that the more popular areas are watched more often. I think people also enjoy watching what they already know.
The most-watched video when it comes to spots is, I think, Meduno, the launch site. I mean, Meduno isn't the most popular flying area by far, but it's definitely in the top 10 in the Eastern Alps. Bassano is also quite well-watched. Yes, it's the spots—so the popular spots—where the videos are watched more often than others. Definitely, yes.
So you took your sabbatical in 2023 and traveled around a lot. Is the project continuing? I mean, are you still expanding Parallelspotting?
Yes, I'm on it, definitely, yeah. It's just, I'm going back to the many things in my description of how the project came about. So this actually,
It was actually supposed to only take a short time in the autumn when I put the card game together. In reality, it was more like I sat down at my desk in November and didn't get up again until July, roughly. So I needed an extreme amount of time to process all the information. I could have definitely done it faster, but unlike the short YouTube videos I make very simply, my perfectionism crept back in a bit with the card game itself. I worked on the design for a very long time. What do I want on the cards? How do I represent it? What should the individual symbols look like? And so on. Then, of course, gathering all the data was also quite an undertaking.
It doesn't just say on every card how many flights are completed there on average per year, but also what percentage of those last over an hour, what percentage are over 15 kilometers, or how many are over 100 kilometers. It's a way to assess the cross-country flight suitability—or rather, I prefer to say the cross-country flight usage—of the terrain. Then it shows roughly how much is flown in the individual months, and so on and so forth. There is an insane amount of data, all of which ultimately comes from the real flight uploads from DHV-XC and XContest.
Did you program something for that? Like some kind of bot that automatically pulls down the data and then simultaneously extracts the data you need to be able to say, okay, 3% flew further than 100 kilometers from here?
No, I can't program. I have, well, in Google Sheets—not Excel, in Google Sheets—there's an option to basically pull data from a website using a function. I've used that in a semi-automated way for some parts. Exactly, and that already makes the whole thing significantly simpler, of course. I don't always have to enter, "show me all 15-kilometer flights at Braunegg," and then copy out 3,000 of them again. That's already, yeah, I've automated that a bit. It could probably be done better, but getting the data wasn't the most extreme effort; it was more about processing it, so to speak. And for example, there isn't even an option to filter out the 1-hour flights on XContest.
So I had to use a workaround involving the average speed and the total flight distance. You can calculate that. But you need a few more database queries to get an approximation. So yeah, but that was only part of it. The data, maybe for another two weeks, then setting up the website again, also for a few weeks and so on. So that's how it all comes together. The question is, what's coming, what kind of data do I want to put on the website for the flight area descriptions at all? Well, every map has a QR code on it that takes you to a dedicated page on my website, where the flight area is described in more detail than in the individual videos. So of course, the videos are also linked or embedded,
but there's also much more data in there, which goes a bit further and has been researched even more deeply.
Yeah, the whole process took, as I said, until well into the summer of 2024, until I was finally able to get the cards into print. At the same time, at the end of 2023, I saw, okay, my savings are going to last a bit longer. So, and because I was still so deep into the work on the cards, I told myself, okay, I'll stick with it for another year, focusing on what I'm enjoying right now. Exactly, so that's how it went—the cards themselves finally came out of print in September.
I had them printed at a print shop in Germany and then picked them up. And yeah, so I first had about 1,000 card sets sitting around with me. And I had no idea how it was going to go from there. But so far, I've already gotten rid of well over half of them. So I have to say, it's off to a very good start. And that also encourages me to keep going in that direction.
That means there might eventually even be a second edition of this card set, the one that already exists. And at the same time, you're maybe planning other areas too. Because I think the card sets now, those are the South Eastern Alps and the Northern Eastern Alps. Do you want to eventually go into more of the western areas in Switzerland and say, I'll map those out a lot too?
That is actually the plan, that I'll be traveling the Western Alps this summer. So I'm really looking forward to that, because I think that's a completely different area where I don't have any clue at all so far. I was in Sant 'Elea once, and I think that was it for what I know of the Western Alps. I can still afford it, I'd say, thanks to all the purchases. It's not like all of this is being financed. I'm still dipping into my savings, but they're lasting longer and longer. And I'm really looking forward to being able to treat myself to traveling the Western Alps and discovering them for myself this summer.
And I'd like to put together a deck for that as well. In that case, probably just one deck, because 64 flight areas in one summer—I don't think I'm doing that again. Besides, I also have some flight trips that I didn't have in 2023, which I'll be leading as a guide. So I'll be a bit busier with the upcoming...
Summer. Before 2023, before your sabbatical, when it started, you were working as a flight instructor. Why did you need a sabbatical?
So, maybe regarding the term sabbatical, it's often used in a way that implies it's a paid vacation. For me, in the end, I finished my work...
and I then reached out independently relatively soon. Why did I need a sabbatical? Well, it's wonderful to work as a flight instructor, but it's extremely intense. Where does the intensity lie? There are certainly other models out there, but where I worked, it just runs from March until the end of October. So there are times when, well, the weekend is theoretically free, but especially when you do trips, they start on Sunday and end on Saturday. And I did a lot of trips; on average, I was traveling for almost a third of the weeks.
Because of that, my days off were extremely limited. So that's basically the intensity of it all—that you're really busy with work almost every day. And as beautiful as it is, at some point you still think to yourself, I'd really like to have one or two weeks where I'm out there myself, going where I want to go at that moment and actually going flying myself. Because as a flight instructor, you're constantly dealing with flying, but mostly you're watching others and knowing better. But the actual flying myself, that just didn't get enough time with me. And yeah, that's basically the simple reason why I needed a sabbatical.
So it wasn't like I was burnt out or anything as a flight instructor, but rather a growing desire to get back up in the air myself more often.
Exactly, exactly. No, definitely not burnout. But yeah, it was a bit like the feeling that if this continues so intensely, I might eventually lose the joy of flying. And then, then I'd have to quit completely. And that would be very, very sad. Yeah, it was more about regaining some of that joy in the whole thing myself.
Well, then you basically tied another project to your belt. First, you traveled around, made your videos, and flew. But then, as you said, you worked on these maps alone for half a year, and also with... Did it ever become too much and too difficult for you? Or were you just so in your element with it that you said, "Ah, this is going to be something"? No,
So you've basically taken on a different project now. First, you traveled around, made your videos, and flew. But then, as you said, you worked on these maps alone for half a year, including with... Did it ever become too much or too difficult for you? Or was it just that you were so in your element with it that you thought, "Ah, this is going to be something"? No,
that hasn't become difficult for me. No, because I also took the freedom to just go flying again and again in between. So this image of me sitting down in October and writing them up again in July—that's not quite right. I've actually gone flying more often and managed my time there relatively freely; I worked intensively, but then also treated myself accordingly to do something different, to go flying, and so on. Yes, in that way, it actually fit perfectly and, yeah, you can imagine continuing in that direction. Also because, well, it's just a huge amount of fun to prepare the whole thing. It's a bit different again from the flight instructor job, where you just,
...it's also super exciting with people. It's something different and I really enjoy it. I don't want to miss out on that, but then sitting at the desk again, being so focused and preparing things like that—that has its own quality that I enjoy. It's evolved over...
has time changed anything for you, in how you approach an airfield? So, are your videos, the newer ones, somehow different from the first ones you made?
I'd like to be able to say that, but I don't think it's changed that much. Well, I'd have to think about that longer. I mean, I'm always trying to improve things, and there's certainly a lot to improve in the videos. But at the moment, well, it's still that basic idea of quick and dirty, so to speak. And yeah, because I know if I made it more elaborate, I probably wouldn't do it at all anymore. If I started approaching a flight site with a long list of data and facts that I wanted to fit into the video, I'd probably lose the joy pretty quickly and wouldn't be able to handle the workload at all.
That's why I think it still works quite well as it is. Of course, I have a general impression of the flight site. Often I already know it or have informed myself quite extensively, but I don't really prepare in detail for my own videos regarding exactly what I want to say; it just comes out as it fits in the moment. Sometimes I get annoyed afterwards, like, "shit, I should have said it differently, that would have been interesting," but then it's just not in there. Yeah, it's not complete. It's just a picture, a snapshot of course, and a piece of the puzzle for people who want to inform themselves about a flight area.
So, I put the more detailed information into the flight area descriptions, which you can access via the Paraspotting Cards.
Clemens, now towards the end, I'd like to do a little topic switch. A pretty weird topic switch, I'll say, because I also asked you beforehand if there were any other topics you'd find interesting to talk about. And you mentioned a topic, and I thought, why is he bringing that up now? And that is, you said, would it be possible to measure thermals with a LiDAR - or LiDAR - device and what could one do with that? Tell me first, what is that? How did you come up with this idea and why is it important to you? Interesting.
So thermals are one of the most fascinating things about our sport, I think. It's been on my mind for a long time. I've also been looking into how to best convey that as a flight instructor. Well, and there are thousands of thermal theories. What does a thermal look like? But I don't think anyone has ever really seen a thermal properly. It's like a dream, and I think, well, it definitely came up in our group back when I was a student, when I got my license in 2016. Yeah, it would be cool to see the thermals, like with some kind of thermal goggles and stuff. And that's probably the case for so, so many people—the dream of thermal goggles. Yeah, I have a bit of a technical background from my training, and I then started thinking, well, can't we do that somehow?
But according to all the principles I knew, it's just not possible to see the air. Or thermal radiation or whatever, but I was mistaken there. I only happened to come across that a few weeks ago because I bought a sailing magazine. So, a magazine for sailing sports, sailing ships. And yeah, because I visited my brother in Argentina, I thought I'd bring him something. He's an enthusiastic sailor. Plus, I'm interested in how other magazines are structured. I've already done a second article, which I wrote for the THV magazine. And in the process, I became interested in, well, how does it look in other sectors? What do people write there or about what?
Yes, long story short. I flipped through this magazine and came across a report about a new measurement technology used to display the wind during a regatta. So, it's a regatta, I think it's called the America's Cup, some of you have probably seen it on TV, where they have these relatively large wing catamarans that fly across the water incredibly fast, and every time they make a turn, the whole crew jumps from one side to the other and cranks like crazy. It's a sport, and apparently, there's a lot of money behind it. And there was a report about how they used a technology for the first time to visualize or first of all capture the wind, and then to visualize it over the entire area.
So, it's a few square kilometers, I think, I don't know, like a course, or where they're sailing back and forth in a zigzag. It's maybe ten kilometers by five kilometers or some kind of water area. And it was reported that with the help of three sensors or three measuring devices, the wind field can be captured and then displayed over the entire, over the entire area. And this LIDAR, I don't know now if you call it LIDAR or LIDAR, is the technology behind it.
So depending on whether you understand it in English or German, it's Light Detection and Ranging, or light detection and whatever.
Thanks for knowing the acronym, because I wouldn't have been able to come up with that. What I can say about it is that, basically, they use lasers...
Aerosol particles in the air. That means air can be measured. Specifically over an entire field. So, with three sensors, they can measure this field—the Seelregatta—with high resolution and high precision. At almost every point, I don't know how small the intervals are, but I think they're very fine, the wind can be determined. It's then displayed accordingly, and so on. Now, I can't say for a hundred percent sure if it's just a surface that can be captured, but I'm relatively certain that it's also a three-dimensional space. Well, and there's nothing more obvious than thinking that you'd have to turn this eye toward a thermal just to actually see the thermal for once. So, I don't think the goal here is to have the whole thing live in front of you while flying.
It might be interesting, but you have to wonder if it's actually useful for our sport in any way. But from a purely scientific point of view, to take a look at a thermal like that, to measure it once, and at least see one or two examples of what it actually looks like in reality. What does this vortex ring look like? Or what do the dripping Leh-drops look like? Or is it a tube? Is it a bubble? What does the sequence of bubbles look like with pulsating thermals? And so on and so forth. Everything I know about it just isn't satisfying. And to see that really for real once, that would be incredibly fascinating.
...or? Definitely. I mean, most people will say, yeah, I'd prefer to see it live anyway and not just... But to be able to imagine better what shapes the whole thing takes, it's certainly great for that. Is this a project where you'd say, I can only dream of that? Or would it be something where you'd say, I'd like to basically tackle that? I'll see if I can get three LiDAR devices somewhere and set them up in the field? I know there's that house thermal that pulses every 20 minutes or whatever. I can definitely measure that at least once.
So, I'd definitely be interested in doing it myself, but I don't think I have the capacity for it. First of all, time, and then, well, I don't know if I can get that deeply into the weeds. My hope would be that some student who works in that field finds it and tackles it as a master's thesis or maybe a doctoral thesis somehow. I think that would be the most realistic thing if someone could be found. I don't know. Let's say the word gets out now,
the people listening. Big
Call to action, please, please someone do it. I would be burning for that.
interest. If there are any meteorology students out there who might also be into paragliding, you'd have a super great master's thesis you could do by simply trying to capture thermals with three LiDAR devices and then representing them as a three-dimensional model so that everyone can visualize it.
Yes, that would be really great and I think it would bring a lot to practical flying as well. Of course, every thermal looks different, but the mental models you can develop for your own thermals during a real flight would certainly become much, much better if you actually knew them from a few real-life examples. That's for sure. Do you have any other dreams, to wrap things up? Yes, I have one very big dream, and you could probably talk about that for hours; I'd be totally thrilled if, someday—maybe it won't be until I'm old and can't fly as much anymore—I would incredibly love to
watch paragliding races on TV or on whatever other medium is current. On TV.
Paragliding races. Exactly. For two hours. Some CCC gliders zooming along one after another.
Yes, exactly. There are people who watch cars go around in circles for two hours and can barely overtake each other, or then there's that regatta, the America's Cup, or whatever I called it, which is also an example where, at first glance, a rather exotic sport might do things that are hard to grasp, but it still interests a lot of people. And I think that in paragliding, well, of course I'm very, very biased there now. No question. But I still think that you can make paragliding understandable and interesting to people who don't fly at all themselves.
If you prepare it accordingly, maybe adjust the racing mode a bit. But I think it could definitely take on a mass-sport character, at least for spectators, if you can make it really exciting and interesting.
Yeah, maybe in the near future, a bit more of that will start to happen. For example, I know about a Swiss project where they're planning to equip competition pilots, including those in hike-and-fly competitions, with cameras that actually broadcast in live mode, so you'd have a livestream where you can switch between the individual cameras or have a view of all sorts of things. They're even considering going as far as hiring commentators who would then basically act as sports moderators, narrating the whole thing in the moment. I believe the first attempts for that are supposed to be running this year already. Who knows, maybe by the time you're old, it'll actually be at the point where it works perfectly.
And the whole commentary will be spoken by some AI. But who knows, maybe by then we'll just be living in a parallel universe and seeing the Matrix tricking us into thinking we're flying. Who knows what it'll be like in 20 years. Okay,
maybe you can then fly virtually yourself, so that you don't even need the races. Well, but back to this vision
I think live-transmitted races would be really great. Where is that? Did you say where it's starting? In Switzerland?
It's being started by Swiss people. I don't have the names on the tip of my tongue right now, but I'll probably report more on it on Lu-Glidz at some point during the spring, once the whole project gets started and all that. So you'll definitely hear about it. Great, I'm really looking forward to it.
Alright, Clemens. Thanks for your story about Paraspotting and where your sabbatical basically took you—how it gave you a lot of free time, but also a lot of work, while at the same time opening up new perspectives where you can even move towards them, at least partially, professionally. I always find it interesting how these kinds of initiatives grow and eventually turn into something more. Thanks for sharing your story.
Lucian, thank you so much for the invitation and, in general, thank you so much for your great work. I believe it is very, very valuable for the entire paragliding sport. Thank you very much. Yes, thanks. Has
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