If I had any sense of what I'm doing, I'd be, let's just say, your average Instagram blogger, capturing some leisure activities in photos or videos. I'm more interested in the background. Ad Astra means "to the stars." We always want, we always strive, to fly to the clouds. And that's where I thought, okay, then I'll call my blog Ad Nubis.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with Oliver Thome. And I'm Lucian Haas.
Many paraglider pilots have a need to do more than just go flying. Flying captivates them so much that they invest a significant portion of their free time into their hobby. And sometimes, that also benefits others. YouTube videos or lectures to club members, for example, provide a lot of visual material for further education. Oliver Thome has chosen a special form for his activities in this direction. He runs his own Gleitschirm-Blog, Ad Nubis.info. Anyone browsing it will quickly realize that Oliver isn't trying to portray himself as a hero of the skies. Rather, he also tackles topics that are important for us pilots to understand, but which tend to seem cumbersome and dry.
This includes the dangers of power lines, deploying reserve parachutes, aviation law, or tips and tricks. The 59-year-old tells us what drives him in this episode of Podz-Glidz. By the way, I can only present such special conversations in Podz-Glidz because there are sponsors who financially support my work on the podcast and blog. Join in too. You can find all the necessary information in the Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz, specifically on the "Fördern" page.
Oliver, have you ever flown into a power line? No, luckily not yet. Have you seen anyone ever fly into one? No, I haven't witnessed it live, luckily. But now you've written about the dangers of power lines several times. How much respect do you have when you see power lines? A lot.
I have huge respect for overhead power lines. That's just the danger potential that comes from overhead lines, which is significantly higher than from normal transport cables. And that's why I have a lot of respect for them.
Well, there are different types of overhead power lines. Which ones would you actually consider to be the most dangerous?
Well, that's not that easy to answer, because I'd say everything from medium voltage and above is equally lethal for us humans. It actually makes hardly any difference whether you're hanging from 10 kV or 380 kV.
That means if electricity flows through our bodies once, we're grilled, as they say.
So the probability is relatively high, yeah. So if you get between two overhead lines, between two cables, it actually doesn't matter whether you're hanging on 10 kV or 380 kV.
With medium-voltage overhead lines, the problem is that the distance is relatively small, and we can easily bridge it with our bodies. So the potential danger is actually higher than with high- or extra-high-voltage lines, where the distances are larger. In the Regel, they are so large that we can't bridge them with our bodies. Therefore, the potential danger is actually greater with medium-voltage lines. And they're also where we like to land, they just go crisscross over the fields way too often. So, overhead lines, specifically medium-voltage lines, are definitely more dangerous.
I mean, you probably see these high-voltage overhead lines much more clearly as a rule. Simply because the pylons are already so much larger and you can follow them through the landscape because they're so massive. And these medium-voltage lines are a bit lower and such, you might only see them sometimes later or something. So just because of that, it's more difficult.
The answer isn't that clear-cut either, because with high or extra-high voltage, the distances are much greater. And with medium voltage, they're much smaller. So you can't really give a definitive answer there either.
Well, I know you work for an energy provider. Yes.
Just with that background you have from there. How should one react if—I'm not saying I'd be there myself, maybe you're already fried or something—but if you see someone fly into a power line. And you see they're hanging there, okay, they're hanging over all sorts of things, and the electricity is already flowing through the guy, but they're hanging over a line like that. What can you even do then? Should you run over to them and pull them down, or what should you do? Exactly, that's...
you shouldn't do that. You really should keep a large distance, even if it doesn't seem like it. The natural reflex, of course, is to try to help someone who is in danger. But in this case, you really should keep your distance from the victim. You should try to call the police. It probably doesn't help much to call the energy provider directly either. You usually don't have their number anyway. So call the police and describe the situation, and they will have to get in touch with the energy provider to de-energize the overhead line. But under no circumstances, even if it looks like no electricity is flowing, would I go anywhere near there.
Just wait until the emergency services
just wait until the rescue workers are there and waiting. But isn't it the case that if someone flies into it, the fuse automatically trips somewhere? Yes, one...
you can imagine it like at home, where there are circuit breakers that normally trip at the point of the fault. But it's not quite that simple here either. It's certainly possible, conceivable, that the fault isn't detected and that the fault point isn't disconnected. It also always depends a bit on the situation, whether you've created a ground fault or whether
you're between two... ground fault means I'm already on the ground and my glider is maybe still up there, and then current can flow from the line into the ground. That's a ground fault? Exactly, that's a ground fault. There
that's how it's designed; the whole thing is engineered for supply security, not personal safety. I mean, you want to supply the consumer. Even if a branch or something else is hanging in the overhead line, it won't be tripped; instead, the current is, let's say, minimized. The background for that would be a bit too complicated to explain all at once. The current is minimized, but the supply continues. It doesn't trip. And that would mean for the pilot hanging there that he keeps getting grilled. That's the case with a ground fault. And even if you're hanging between two overhead lines—so the pilot is hanging between two cables—
and it could be that the short-circuit current isn't reached, but rather the normal operating current. So, for the protection device at the next substation, this means it can't tell the difference between a human and the normal operating current, the consumer current. That means it wouldn't trip.
From my perspective, looking from the outside, I have no chance of knowing whether there's still power on it or not. I could only feel it, in a way. So
In a way, yeah, exactly. But there are also measures. I explained that in my report. There are also, I'd say, if you're hanging in the overhead line and have no contact with the mast or the ground, there are already ways to move yourself into a safe position. So, normally, you should have something with you when you do a tree landing so that you can secure yourself. And in that case, I would suggest, if there's the possibility, to connect to a rope—importantly, to connect to a rope, not to somehow try to make additional contact with a second rope, yeah, exactly, or with masts or to make contact, but really to try to, for example, if you've been blown into the overhead line between two masts, to somehow secure yourself there.
And also ask other people not to come near and to really wait for the rescue services until it's actually confirmed, also by the energy provider, that the overhead line is de-energized. They will probably lay grounding cables then. So, a rescue worker probably won't go in, and I wouldn't say just rely on someone's word; a grounding cable will actually be laid, and only then will the rescue operations begin.
That means it's already quite involved. I mean, a rescue like that, if you're stuck up there, it could take hours, maybe. With everything—coordination, laying grounding cables, and all that. Setting up the rescue and getting there, and depending on how high up you are, it's really involved, maybe.
You can assume that, yes. It's already a lot of work if you're being rescued from a cable car or a transport ropeway. That can take several hours, and I'd say it's even more complex in that case.
Are these cables for medium voltage—at least medium voltage—so thick that it almost wouldn't work anyway? I can imagine that with high voltage. I don't know what cable car cables are like, but can these medium voltage cables that are stretched there really support a person? Like, can you hang from them and they won't snap? I haven't tried it yet, but I'd say, yes, they should be sufficient. Okay. But if they do snap, you fall to the ground and then the cables basically sag, and then electricity probably flows through the ground. What do you do then?
It's the same thing as I said before. So you just wait until it's actually confirmed that the overhead line is switched off. I tried to explain that earlier. There's a device that tries to minimize the current flow during a ground fault. For the protection device, it's just like a normal ground fault. If a cable falls down, it doesn't really know that, in principle.
If a cable has direct ground contact, it will try to minimize the current flow through the soil and continue to supply power. And that's where the problem comes in—if it's not switched off, you can have what's called a step voltage in the ground. So, if you're actually moving toward the fault point with large steps, it can naturally lead to body currents. And that would be unpleasant, let's just say. At least unpleasant. I don't know if it could even be fatal.
could. Step voltage means the current flows in through one foot and out through the other. And the larger the step I take, the greater the voltage that can flow through.
That also happens with lightning strikes. Of course, with a lightning strike, it's relatively short. With a ground fault, it can obviously last a long time. So, if there's a ground fault, depending on the energy provider's concept, it gets reported to the control center. A notification comes in, and then usually a repair crew is sent out immediately. But that can also take an hour, one or two hours. If it's somewhere in the Alps, far away from everything, it can take correspondingly long.
That means, if I'm looking at it from the outside for now. If I've observed someone fly into a line, and it's now snapped and they've fallen with it. The two lines are hanging on the ground, he's lying somewhere in between, probably injured, and I'd have to provide some kind of aid. But I really have to wait, or rather, I really should wait until the whole situation is clarified—that it's switched off and secured. Because otherwise, if I run over there, I run the risk of step voltage or whatever, then I would...
I would absolutely do that. So even as an insider, in my case, I would be extremely cautious. But of course, it's hard when you see someone who is already seriously injured, with burns, and you don't go over there and complain. That's quite a feat, of course, but your own safety always comes first. That's also the case in other situations before any rescue measures are taken.
I don't know how I would react either, of course, but it is
advisable to wait. That's not a pleasant thought. Let's flip it around. I've flown into something, so I flew into it myself. I'm not hanging up there, I secured myself, but I've fallen down with it and I'm now somewhere, and these two lines are hanging around on the ground to the left and right. I'm lying between them, maybe sitting in my harness, I might even—I notice I'm not injured. Should I, I mean, if I notice no electricity is flowing through me or something, should I just stay seated anyway, if I see the overhead lines there, and I'm calling for help, or what do I do then?
Yes, I'd call for help, exactly, so call and ask other pilots to keep their distance. That's what I'd recommend. Yeah, just wait. If I'm not in immediate danger, I'd just wait until the rescue services confirm, "Roger, the voltage is gone, it's switched off," so that I can move away from the source of the fault.
Wouldn't it also make sense, maybe, if I can get up and notice that nothing is happening, but there's still the possibility of step voltage, that I move away from there in tiny little steps, or by hopping, or trying to get out of there with huge leaps, so that I only ever have one foot on the ground at a time?
Yeah, you can try that. Then, even if I don't have cell service, for example, and there are no other people nearby, I'd probably want to do that too. But otherwise, my recommendation is to wait and see, so to speak—wait until it's actually confirmed that the free flight is cleared.
The reason I even brought up this topic of free flight with you is because I read it on your blog, Abnubis, and you write about various topics surrounding paragliding, as well as things like the dangers of free flight and so on. How did you even come up with the name Abnubis in the first place? What does it mean? I
I don't know Latin, but there was a movie a few years ago called Ad Astra with Brad Pitt, and I actually liked it quite well. It took a long time; I thought of different names and eventually I came up with the idea. Ad Astra means "to the stars." We're always striving to fly to the clouds. And I thought, okay, let's do that. And then I named my blog Abnubis. So I tried out some translators, I think Google Translate, and it suggested Abnubis to me. And yeah, that's how I named my blog.
To the clouds. In Latin. I mean, the old Romans didn't know anything about paragliding or anything like that for a long time. But maybe if they had seen people spinning around up there, they would have thought, oh, he's flying Abnubis. Nice thought. What motivated you or appealed to you about starting your own blog?
So, I've been in the business for a bit longer now. For 30 years, if you include my time as a glider pilot. And the training back then was very intensive.
And I've also been interested in the background of various topics regarding paragliders. And at some point, I thought, yeah, maybe someone might be interested in what I have to say. It all started primarily with flight reports. And then I slowly got the idea to start a blog. I also called it Abnubis.info and not .blog. It was—I can't really remember anymore—but it was "Gedankengänge" in this blog. It wasn't the focus at the beginning; I just wanted to write reports. And then the blog stuff was added on top of that, so to speak.
But do you really mean that you're saying, okay, I'm providing information on the page I have there? You have quite a bit of, let's say, theoretical knowledge that you then process there. And some of that theoretical knowledge is the kind where you'd say, hey, these are topics that are actually relatively dry. Yeah. And in terms of communication, it takes real work to prepare them properly. For example, you had a blog topic like, how do you retrieve NOTAMs? What options are there for that? Or how can you plan routes with Term XC from, what's his name, Bernd Gassner? Yeah. But described in great detail. Or how can you get a lot out of the flight app XC Track?
How can you set up the various gliders? And other things you can do with them. Do you have, like, what should I say, a certain sense of purpose?
Or is this writing actually a way for you to make these topics understandable to yourself? That you say... That
I'd say yes. Making it understandable for myself, that hits the nail on the head. If I had a sense of being on camera, I'd be, let's say, your normal Instagram blogger, capturing some leisure activities in photos or videos. I'm more interested in the background and...
So, yeah. Are there things where you say you only really understood how it works once you started writing it? There are, yeah.
For example? Actually, regarding aviation law, I had to deal with that very intensively. It was something from Hans Lang, whom you've also had on the podcast. It was like a wake-up call. I already mentioned earlier that we had very good training during our glider training.
And that was... I neglected the topic of aviation law for years, I have to be honest. And it was another wake-up call for me to deal with aviation law more closely. And when you write it yourself—I think you know that too—you have to engage with the topic much more intensively. And you learn a lot from it. And that's why it makes absolute sense. So for me, and if other people benefit from it, then it's even more...
...even better. Would you say there are things where, by engaging with these topics—not just from a theoretical standpoint, but from a practical one—you've become a better pilot in some way?
Yeah, the practice
is a thing for me. Yeah. But at least I managed this Mülltal triangle this year. I'm actually a bit proud of myself for that. But of course, theory is the basis for practice, I'd say. So especially the topic of flight planning helps me a lot to, let's say, achieve the goal I've set for myself.
I think Marcel Dürr also said once that if you have a flight plan and a goal, you have a better chance of actually reaching those goals.
Let's stick with this flight planning and route planning. Do you plan a lot yourself, or are all your flights actually pre-planned when you go on a cross-country flight? Do you have dozens of waypoints? Well, not dozens,
but I do have about 10 to 15 flight plans ready. For example, the Mölltal triangle or the Karwendel triangle. I've already planned a lot for those. I've put together my Excel lists, which are based on waypoints. And I've tried to write down all the tips and tricks you pick up from your surroundings, from YouTube videos, and so on.
And I try to proceed that way. But you know yourself, you always have to stay flexible. You have to be flexible when flying. You never know how the wind or the thermals will develop. So, I'd say, strictly following a flight plan or actually reaching the goal I set for myself is more like 10 to 20 percent. But still, in my opinion, it makes sense to plan well. But there are also flyers, pilots... I was just talking to someone yesterday who flew the Gletscher-Dreieck here in the area. He didn't plan much at all. He looked at the weather forecasts, but he didn't really set any waypoints or anything like that; he just took off and went for it.
There's a tracking mode in the XC-Track. He switched that on, basically followed other pilots, but didn't do much flight planning. So there are both extremes. There are people like me, I think many, who do flight planning. But there are also pilots who fly very successfully who just
just fly off. From the flight plans I can at least see in your blog, I don't assume you've described all your planned flights there or that they can be seen as a graphic. But you mentioned the Mölltal triangle earlier, so Greifenburg and then around the Kreuzegg group. I looked at that image and thought, wow, what are all those waypoints. Yes, you really have all the intermediate points. Not just the corners of a triangle. And like, maybe a key spot where you know, I have to turn up at least 1000 meters over Grad or whatever. Instead, you've also basically included all the mountains in between or whatever.
Do you actually fly according to all those waypoints, like, do you fly all those waypoints off? Or is it just a guide for you during planning, maybe to help remember the names better or whatever? Yeah, exactly. I'd say it's more...
a bit of a guide for me. In flight planning, I mean, I don't actually fly every single waypoint exactly. But it's a guide for the planning. I also think, let's say, for the somewhat advanced cross-country pilot, it's a bit overkill. But for a beginner, I'd say it makes absolute sense to set the waypoints really relatively short. Maybe five kilometers, five to
ten kilometers. So, basically, you turn and glide once. You say, I'm really coming from this one waypoint, which you'll probably also use as a thermal point, where you say I want to turn, and then I want to glide to the next one so I can get back into it there, so I can turn there too. And that's basically from waypoint to waypoint. Yes, exactly. But that
The problem is that you don't have all that flight planning... I mean, you can see it as a route on the XC track, but you don't have all the notes you've made in your head while flying. And that's just one question I'm currently thinking about—how to best do it so that you can somehow view the notes within the XC track. But I haven't come up with a proper solution yet. It would be great if you could display all those tips you get from your circle of friends, from YouTube, and so on, right there on the display. I'm still looking. Let's see if I can think of a solution.
Yeah, you could also display various websites there. You could just, for example, display your own website or host an Excel list somewhere where you say it'll be called up online and then automatically switches to the next one or whatever.
Yeah, something like that. Unfortunately, I've experimented with these waypoint files before, with KML and whatever they're called. But you can only display one line, and that's a bit too little. You'd have to find some kind of solution to display multiple lines over the map. Yeah, you really have to... I mean, an Excel file is just hard to handle in the air. I can hardly imagine that. At most maybe a printout, but that's also a bit difficult to handle. But I'll come up with something.
Let yourself be surprised. Yeah, or maybe it's actually much better to keep it in your head and answer the important questions accordingly. Yeah. Tell me, when you do this flight planning and set all these waypoints, are they always just the mountain peaks you specify, or do you actually plan it out by saying, I'll look at where the classic ones are—I always upload other flights too, to see where they've turned up, just to know where the classic thermals are, and then I enter those as waypoints. So, how much prep work is it to make sure your planning is actually decent? Roughly how much?
It is. So that's a bit more relaxed. I'd say it's mixed. But it's sensible, I'd say, to fly the thermals. The well-known ones that you can also get from the KK7 system, for example.
But there are also, let's say, prominent mountains and things like that, which you can enter as a waypoint to fly toward. I find it quite difficult, though other pilots probably manage to incorporate that better.
I always find it a bit difficult to, let's say, recognize the mountains again that you might have seen beforehand on Google Maps or somewhere else, or up in the Streetmap.
So you're the type who likes lists, bullet points, and all that.
Exactly, yeah. I like to plan things out as well as possible. I also worked as a project manager for years, and you have to do a lot of planning and foresight there. Maybe it comes...
...that from there. Yes. What I also noticed in your blog, some of the texts—and you also say this quite openly—are created with AI. Or you use an AI to rework them or polish them or something else. One example that I found particularly outstanding was when you picked up on the current discussion about competition flying, where it's about whether competitions should actually only be flown with C-gliders in the future. There was once... Mhm. A big post by Paul Tackerts who actually propagated that on Facebook and wrote about it, saying it would be much safer and people would have more fun and all that. And then you made a post and used an AI and basically had all the comments that were on that post by Paul Tackerts on Facebook—I believe you had all of them summarized by the AI and had the most important points extracted.
And that's just an organized long list of these comments. Is that the way you like to approach things?
So, I view AI quite critically and this post didn't turn out that well for me. I mean, you can do this summary, but in my opinion, it's not really that good. I would have preferred to, let's say, create it by hand, or maybe have the AI do an initial summary, but then I would have had to heavily revise it by hand. I didn't do that in this case. So I see AI... I'm not really a big fan of it. Of course, there are use cases where it really supports you well, for example, translating from German into English. But with things like this, well, you can get help, but you just can't rely on AI. That's still far from my...
My opinion. It also gave the impression that you're a person who likes to create order. So if someone says, "I'm going to use AI to organize all this mess of comments and categorize them into subtopics and stuff like that." That's true, yeah. That's correct. How does this sense of order manifest in your aviation? Maybe by the fact that I try to plan ahead.
That's a point, I'd say. That I always have my gear organized. That everything is well-sorted and I really only take what I actually or probably need. Exactly.
I saw that on your blog too. You have an Excel list where all your gear, all sorts of things you have, is entered with all the exact weights and so on. And then I think you just have to click something and can see at the end, okay, my backpack will weigh 15.7 kilos or something like that.
Yeah, that's more for hike and fly. There, you try to save every gram. But maybe I went a bit overboard with that. That was at the beginning of my blogging. Whether that's actually useful is up for debate. But it is a piece of information that's important for us paragliders—knowing which pilot or takeoff weight you're traveling with. So that was a thought I was pursuing back then. But I haven't done it for a long time now. It was just a thought I had. I try to plan as much as possible in advance. It's also a matter of safety in the end. The more you plan ahead, the safer you are in the air ultimately.
I'm just not the type who's not adventurous, but rather the one who tries to plan as much as possible in advance, as far as it's possible for us. But there's always a bit of uncertainty involved. That's also the beauty of it, in our sport. It makes it interesting that you can't plan 100% in advance, but there's still a bit of uncertainty. But as much as possible
planning ahead.
When you have this sense of order and at the same time you say we're facing chaotic air—at least on a small scale it's chaotic, on a large scale there are certainly patterns that you can recognize again and again and stuff like that. Is that something you have problems with? Because you say you understand the patterns, you're constantly trying to find the order and you can't, but that's exactly what appeals to you? Or what is it that appeals to you about this flying in the end?
So for me, it's that typical thing that many other pilots are looking for too—that freedom and independence in the air, that's what appeals to me. And the uncertainty of the remainder, I just have to come to terms with the fact that you can't plan 100% of it in advance, that's also part of the appeal. But I try to minimize that. But for me, the appeal of paragliding is very clearly that you usually have your own aircraft, that the freedom you enjoy—many people complain about the whole aviation law issue, but we really still enjoy great freedom. We paragliders, and that's the appeal for me.
And all these different styles of paragliding, like Hike and Fly or cross-country flying—there's such a huge range of options for us that you probably never get bored.
Now you told me earlier that you started as a sailplane pilot 30 years ago. And as far as I can see—I'm no sailplane pilot, I've only gone along for a ride once or twice—as far as I can see, sailplane pilots are even more "classic" pilots, who are more involved in preparation and stuff like that. We paragliders are often, as you say, the ones where one takes it as an adventure, flies the glacier triangle, but says, "I'll just fly along behind it a bit," but I didn't really prepare much or anything. That's also how quite a lot of paragliders approach flying; they say, "it looks flyable," they go to the launch site, they take off, and they haven't really put much thought into it. They just cruise around in the air or something like that. If you're such an orderly person, why did you stop sailplane flying again?
Yeah, in
In soaring, you don't have your own equipment; very few people can afford to own their own glider. You need a whole crew just to get into the air, depending on whether you're being towed by a motor or pulled up by a winch. And I like having that kind of freedom. When the weather is good, I can fly, I can take my work with me, and then I can just drive into the mountains and take off whenever the weather is right. With soaring, you just don't have that to the same extent.
Would you say that you learned something from soaring that benefits you today in paragliding? Definitely. I mean, this...
Thermal management, for example, is a pretty similar issue when it comes to centering thermals. Then there's the big topic of aviation law, which I neglected at times. We had a top flight instructor back then who really drilled aviation law into us. And that helped me a lot. I carried a lot of that over. I took a break. I last sat in a sailplane in 2004, started paragliding in 2008, so I had a gap in between. But I did a lot of it. The topic of aviation law isn't about reinventing everything from scratch; it just keeps evolving.
That's why a lot of what I learned in 1995 is still valid today. And that's why it's helped me so much. Nevertheless, I still get pretty jealous of the sailplane pilots every now and then, when we're struggling and don't know for sure if we'll make it across the valley, and they just fly over a wide valley like that in 10 or 20 seconds. Then I'm already
jealous of those guys. Yeah, but they can also fly 1,000 kilometers in the Alps, which we can't do. You always have to put things into perspective. At the same time, we have the wind at our backs and can fly so close to the terrain and land somewhere up high, go pee for a second, and then take off again, which a glider absolutely can't do. They always have to worry in between whether they'll even find a decent landing field in the Alps.
Yeah, what really gets on my nerves as a paraglider pilot is this shaking, these turbulence you're often exposed to. It gets pretty annoying. I'm actually jealous of the sailplane pilots. Of course, just because of the mass you have in a sailplane, it's nowhere near as turbulent as what we paraglider pilots experience.
Speaking of shaking and turbulence and all that. I saw that for a while, you were flying C gliders. I think a Gin one and then an Ozone Alpina. But then you downgraded to a B glider. I think now you're flying an Advanced Jota DLS or something. Why? I mean, was it really that shaking?
No, well, yeah. I lived in the flatlands back in Bonanza. Everything was still okay there. I managed just fine. But unless I was flying wide, high-performance wings, I moved back to the Alps in late 2019. And I was totally overwhelmed with the Bonanza. I was basically just rowing, hanging on the brakes. Completely overwhelmed. I sold it relatively quickly. I'd classify it more as a High C. Then I thought, yeah, buy an Alpina. I should be able to handle that one. I'd classify that more as a Low C. But nothing bad ever happened.
I just felt uncomfortable under the glider. I always had this uneasy feeling whenever it got a bit more turbulent again.
And at some point, I decided to go back to High B. So I stepped down. I do think it's a relatively big step from B to C. And that's why I went back and went under the Jota. Even though it's also naturally more communicative there, I feel much more comfortable under it.
B-glider. We always say I've downgraded. Did you experience that as a downgrade at all? Like, did it feel like a bit of a blow to your pride, saying "I can't fly a C-glider anymore, I'm going back to B"? So, was that some kind of a demotion for you too? Would
I wouldn't put it like that. I just don't think I'm even in a position where I'm utilizing the full potential of a High B yet. I'm nowhere near that. If I ever manage to fly 100 kilometers, then you could say I've utilized the potential of a High B. But that's far from the case for me. So, it's not really a downgrade, it's just a difference in classes. Or "difference in classes" isn't quite the right word either. It's just switching from C to B.
Why did you choose a C glider back then at all? I mean, if you say you hadn't flown 200 kilometers yet or anything like that. Was it just the desire for performance? Or what was it?
Exactly. Yes, I think it happens to many pilots that if you only deliver mediocre performances and fall victim to these misconceptions, many pilots think, "Then I'll just buy a higher-classified glider and become a pilot who can fly longer, bigger distances." And that was a misconception. Crystal clear. So, that doesn't apply to me. That only applies to me, of course. Primarily. That was a misconception. And exactly, as long as I haven't exhausted the potential of the High B yet, I won't be switching to the CE class either.
You mentioned earlier,
With this Bonanza, you were first in the flatlands and stayed in the flatlands. Flying. You lived in Wiesbaden, as far as I know. Yes. But then you moved to Munich a few years ago. Mhm. During that move, if I calculated it correctly, I think you were already 54. Today you're 59. Yes. Did you actually move to Munich because of the aviation?
No. There were several reasons. I just wanted to reorient myself professionally, as they say. My in-laws live near Munich. And, coincidentally, the Alps are nearby. That was a nice-to-have, so to speak. That's why the...
the decision came to me more easily then.
Well, you're 54, or three, I don't know exactly how old you were, but mathematically you would have been 54. That's not necessarily an age where you quickly make connections in a new place. How did that go for you in Munich? Or did flying maybe even help you with that?
Yes, it helped me. I joined the local paragliding club, Bodenlos, on January 1st, 2020, to make some contacts. By now, I know a lot of people in the club. So I feel comfortable there. The move wasn't really a big problem for me. I still drive back home every now and then to visit my mother and friends and so on. So that's not an issue for me. Do you still fly in your hometown sometimes? No, not at all anymore. I don't really keep up with that when I drive to the Taunus. And it's fine like that. If I do fly, I fly here in the Alps. I prefer that.
Well, lowland flying didn't really work out that well anyway, even though it's still fascinating. I still try to fly from Braunegg into the lowlands every now and then. Life doesn't make it easy for you, having to fly against the Bavarian wind. But flying in the lowlands is still fascinating.
What's next for the future? Are you going to keep expanding and running Adnubis? And what about flying—what plans do you have for that?
So Adnubis will definitely continue. I still enjoy working on it a lot. I'd like to do more. I have a huge collection of topics that I'm always gathering information on. I'd like to keep doing the interviews. That's been on hold for several months now. But I definitely want to keep going with that. And articles like, for example, on aviation law or all sorts of things. I'm not setting any limits for myself there. It's definitely going to continue. And aviation-wise, yeah, I'd like to complete the Karwendel triangle again. That would be quite nice. I haven't done the 100 kilometers yet. It would be really great if I could manage that. There are still many items on my bucket list.
Flying from Braunegg to Neuschwanstein. That's still on my bucket list. So, the bucket list is pretty long. Flying from Braunegg to Munich is still on my bucket list. There are still many topics I'd like to do, many flights I want to make.
Okay, 2025 was the year you closed the Mölltal triangle. 2026 is maybe when you can close the Karwendel triangle. And then in 2027 comes the flight to Munich or whatever. Yeah. Oliver, thanks for telling us. And yeah, I can only recommend to everyone that you check out at nubis.info. The background information you can find there—especially if you're dealing with X-Day Track, for example. You've done a lot there. And you also held a long seminar, I think a webinar. That can also be found on YouTube. I'll link that in the show notes so people can check it out. I think there's still a lot one can learn from you as a Krickeli, who also delved deep into the techniques of how to get a lot out of X-Day Track.
I didn't want to go into such detail here in the podcast because it's always a bit difficult to explain all of that without visuals and such. So, that's just the recommendation. Guys, go check that out as well. Oliver, thanks a lot. You're welcome.
I had a lot of fun. It was very interesting to see behind the scenes and how you do it. I found that really interesting. Great.
Here is the web address for Oliver Thome's blog again: adnubes.info. If you enjoyed this episode of Podz-Glidz, then leave a comment on Looglides or a 5-star review on the podcast platform you use. And if you want to hear even more inspiring stories from the cosmos of paragliding, then subscribe to Podz-Glidz in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode. Also, please become a supporter of my work. On the Gleitschirm-Blog looglides.blogspot.com, you can find all the necessary information and links under the "Support" section on how you can continue to provide a basis for this project with a voluntary financial contribution, large or small.
I want to thank all my supporters. Start early, land late, fly far, but stay safe. See you soon, your Lucia.