I described it quite clearly in my last editorial of the last printed issue. For me personally, it's of course a painful cut. The haptics and all that, a digital magazine obviously can't offer in any way. Maybe the paraglider scene, or the German-speaking paraglider scene, is too small and as you can see, the French one too. But I still haven't completely written off this idea yet.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with Norbert Aprissnig and
I'm Lucian Haas. Before
For around 20 years, there were three competing German-language paraglider magazines available in print. In addition to the usual association magazines from DRV and SHV, there were Der Gleitschirm, Fly & Glide, and the Schlechtflieger-Magazin. Then came the major market consolidation and merger. The three magazines became one and were published from then on as Thermik. Under this title, the Austrian Norbert Apresnik had started his dream of a paraglider magazine as far back as 30 years ago. As the sole remaining publisher, he returned to it. Several golden years followed, in which Thermik was the most significant and visually stunning medium of the paraglider scene in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland.
With the rise of blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, however, users' viewing and reading habits changed. As did the marketing strategies of paraglider manufacturers. Since the beginning of 2026, Thermik has only been published in a digital format. In this episode 181 of Potspitz, Norbert Apresnik talks about the rise and decline of printed paraglider magazines and how he has accompanied the development of the paragliding scene for over 30 years.
I can only present these kinds of special conversations in Potspitz because there are sponsors who financially support my work on the podcast and blog. Join in. You can find all the necessary information about this on the Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz, specifically on the "Fördern" page.
Norbert, how many years have you actually been publishing paraglider magazine now?
Yes, it's been 30 years already. So since 1995, actually in the 31st year.
Do you remember what was on the cover of your first magazine? That
I know that exactly, because that was on the occasion of the World Championships in Japan in 1995. That was sort of the idea for my intro or number 0 or number 1 or whatever. And Stefan Stiegler, who became world champion back then, was on the cover.
And Austria, I believe, finished third as a nation, if I remember correctly.
Yes, that was on the cover back then. And Austria, I believe,
still know. That's how it is
it was. And I had the pleasure and the honor of being there as the team leader and, so to speak, linked this success or this presence with the first magazine.
It was
Because of this World Championship success, you said we have to celebrate it somehow, that we have to put out a magazine? Or was there this magazine idea already, and conveniently you also said, wonderful, we can start number one directly with the world champion?
The latter. So the idea had existed for a long time and it was, of course, a perfect starting point. Although, of course, even back then, the interest of the paragliding public in competitions was, I'd say, modest. So in that sense, it might not have been the perfect starting point. But for me personally, it was, of course, a great start.
Back then, the magazine was also called Thermik. Not all the time, but we can still look into that. Was it already a high-gloss magazine back then, like it is today? Or was it more like number one, in terms of a student newspaper, printed with matrices and stuff like that?
It was very modest compared to the magazine today. I mean, it was already printed. At times, back then there was still the option—nobody does that anymore for cost reasons—to print black and white pages. So, in the printing house, there were some black and white pages in there, but that was already, I'll say, professional printing. But the rest was somewhere between, how do you put it, a school newspaper and a professional magazine. And
how long did it take for you to say that from then on, we were really professional?
I'd say that was it—of course, right from the start, I did that back then with many friends who were there free of charge. And those who, so to speak, helped me out—it wouldn't have been possible otherwise—we worked on this idea and, of course, we stepped it up starting with the very first issue. But the real entry point was actually the moment when we were able to take over the paraglider magazine, I mean the Swiss paraglider magazine. That was certainly a big leap. That was in 1998,
I think so. That's how it is. I'd like to come back to that a bit later. Let's stay with the beginnings or even before the beginnings. How did you, as Gleitschirm-Blog and also team leader and such, come up with the idea to say, hey, I actually want to make a paraglider magazine? That was
it was actually the crazy idea of saying, there's a magazine in Switzerland, there's a magazine in Germany, why isn't there one in Austria?
That was actually my original motivation.
But it was also maybe crazy, because from today's perspective, I know of course that the markets are small and while Austria is a beautiful country for paragliding, it's not that big in terms of the number of pilots. So in that sense, it was actually, in hindsight, a premature idea.
Did you intend to say, "Hey, I want to do this full-time" from the start, or was it just like, "Yeah, let's do this as a hobby, let's make a magazine on the side and then we'll see how it goes"? The idea was already that it should eventually become my profession. Did you have any journalistic experience? Not at all.
So, I studied business administration and writing and reading were always kind of a hobby of mine, but I didn't have any journalistic training.
Did you have other role models? I mean, you probably knew this Swiss magazine and maybe the German one. The Swiss one was paraglider, and the German one was Fly and Glide back then, I think. Were those your role models, like, "exactly that's what I want to emulate," or did you have something else as a role model where you'd say, "Hey, I see there are these kinds of hobby magazines, like for sports hobbies, that exist, there are magazines, I want something like that too"?
Yes, those were naturally the two magazines, my role models back then. Of course, you look for your own path, but basically, the idea was, in the time, in the time, in the time, in the time. It should go in that direction or roughly in that direction.
How did you get there before that? I mean, you said you were basically the captain of the national team or the team leader there—how did you get to that point?
That was also pretty crazy, looking back from today's perspective, because I started glacier flying in 1989, I think, and was totally hooked from the very beginning, as they say in Germany. Or in Switzerland, I'd actually say. What would you say in Austria? In Austria, they say "voll begeistert" or something like that. Ah, okay. And then suddenly, I'd almost say it became my main focus, glacier flying.
And I started then, I was still studying at the time, and basically every minute I could manage, I was out with a glacier glider. And then I slipped into the competition scene relatively quickly, which sounds reckless again from today's perspective. That was a completely different era, of course, you can't compare it to today at all. My first competition glider was an STV Comet 25, probably only a few people know it anymore. Huge surface area, slow speed. And that's how it started. Back then, it was more of a cross-country flight with many pilots participating.
So, speed wasn't really the main issue. Yeah, and I basically slipped into it quite quickly. I wasn't among the top people then, but I wasn't without success either. And it was actually quite close that I didn't qualify for the... national team for the World Championships in Japan in 1995. And yeah, somehow in Austria, there was less support from the association, of course also due to the size.
And yeah, it just made sense, they were looking for someone at the time. And the team manager goes to the World Cup. Whether that was also... I was also... I think it was a year later at the European Championship. The European Championship in Norway, where unfortunately nothing measurable came of it due to the weather. And that's basically how it happened.
Is it actually sensible from a journalistic perspective—where you say journalism should always be independent—to say, okay, a national team manager is ultimately making a magazine where he celebrates his team's successes?
Of course you can... You can certainly come up with that idea. But at the time, it wasn't actually... It wasn't a thought at all. I mean, if I remember correctly, the original idea was actually to start with a completely normal magazine, so not with this World Cup number, so to speak. That was actually, yeah, somehow logical to me and all.
...is that how it became. With this or after this number 1, did it then continue as a monthly or bimonthly, or was it a very sparse publication at the beginning?
No, it was actually, I think, four times a year at first, then six times a year. So it was always a lot of work.
In the beginning, your magazine was called Thermik, just like it's called again today. You already mentioned earlier that, yeah, in between, it was the paragliders.
In 1998, there was this name change and all that. How did that happen? What was the background?
Yes, it was obviously very quickly clear to me with the attempt or the... Thermik magazine 1, if you want to call it that, that this was going to be difficult, because you can see that quite clearly. The others have other means. Fly & Glide was already, well, a top special publisher back then. So that was just a completely different level. And it was actually pretty clear to me whether this could continue like this in the long run, it's questionable. And the idea of why can't we take over another magazine was actually a topic pretty quickly. Yes, but of course you can't, because it only works if someone sells a magazine. And that was somehow the case with Gleitschirm. Schweizer Gleitschirm had a complex ownership structure.
And that's just how it turned out. And I was in the right place at the right time, if you want to put it that way. And then it actually happened quite quickly. And that was a completely different league back then. And I'd say we also needed a few issues afterwards until we reached the level of the Swiss paraglider magazine. So more in terms of the layout, those kinds of things. But it was pretty clear that Thermik was, I'd say, a startup in student circles. And paraglider was a professional magazine. And it was perfectly clear that we took over the name.
But you only took over the name back then. And probably the addresses. Or did you also basically take over part of the paraglider editorial team from Switzerland?
We also took over some of the staff. The editorial team was already pretty neglected back then. That was sort of the problem. A large Swiss printing company thought they were getting into publishing and produced several sports magazines, from skiing to biking and also paragliding. They did this on the condition that if you printed with them, you'd basically hand it over to independent editors-in-chief, so to speak. And apparently, there weren't any left, or no one wanted or could carry it on anymore. And I was allowed to jump into that gap.
Then you took over paraglider. Paraglider was the Swiss magazine. There was the German Fly & Glide. I haven't been doing this for that long. But I know that when I started flying paraglider, that was around 2004, and before that, I already had acquaintances who flew paraglider. So from time to time I'd look around and see, okay, in the station kiosk, you could still see it; paraglider was standing next to Fly & Glide and you could buy it there. How did that happen? Was it deliberate, like you saying, I want to go into the German market too and really compete with Fly & Glide? Isn't that also exhausting?
Well, it's just that the Gleitschirm magazine was already represented in the German market, I believe. From that perspective, it was actually quite logical to continue trying to increase their presence there. And from that point of view, it was actually just logical for me. And it's rather more difficult, or not more difficult, but Austria is somehow closer to Germany than to Switzerland. I'm just saying that very casually. There are still a few little things you have to consider there. From that perspective, it was actually logical for me. And Germany was, of course, the largest market. No doubt about that.
If you look further into the history, there was the paraglider magazine starting in 1998. But in 2008, there was—at least from my perspective, looking at how I followed it—the big merger. Back then, there was still a paraglider magazine. That was a second or third German paraglider magazine that hadn't been founded much earlier. That's the Schlechtflieger magazine by Andy Cohn. And there was this Fly & Glide and there was the Gleitschirme. And all of a sudden, it was like, yeah, now all three are joining together. And basically, you've taken over your competitors. Can you put it like that? Yes,
you can certainly say that
...so say, yeah. Why did it happen that way? I mean, why didn't Fly & Glide swallow you up, when they were actually on the much larger market to begin with?
Yes, it was actually quite obvious to me at the time that Fly & Glide also had issues, albeit of a different nature. They actually—I think it was several editorial teams in total—were replaced. And ultimately, they ended up with an editorial office where, I believe, the paraglider background was relatively low. Even though they still produced a great magazine, of course. But for me, it was already clear: how much longer can this go on? Yes, I mean, the Ja! Top Special publisher in Hamburg was, of course, not comparable to me in any way. Nevertheless, I spoke with the woman from Ja! several times.
back then, I spoke with her on the phone several times. And of course, she always brushed it off. We don't sell titles. And they didn't either, because you're asking why they didn't take us over or take me over. That attempt never really happened. They were somehow busy with their own editorial team. And then, all of a sudden, the tables turned. And there was the possibility of taking over Fly & Glide as well. That was very unexpected, of course, for
me. Then you have the merger with the one remaining
quasi a magazine monopoly then. Was that, would you say, the golden era? You then called it Thermik again, so you merged paraglider, Fly & Glide, and what was it, Fliegermagazin, and you said, okay, we're making a name out of it again, we're relaunching the old Thermik. Was that merger the golden era for you?
Most definitely, yes.
So that
you could say that, yeah.
Well, that was obviously—I don't have the numbers in my head anymore, but there were naturally more readers, more interest back then. It was somehow... I think there were many pilots from the early paragliding scene who eventually dropped out. But there were still relatively many of them. And that was certainly for me, or maybe even overall, the golden era. That's no question.
Looking back over the last 30 years, how do you see the world of paraglider magazines having evolved over time? Were there any typical trends or developments? Not just in terms of mergers, but also regarding what people say, what topics are covered? Or how certain developments in the scene are approached? Or would you say it's actually stayed pretty much the same for 30 years?
I wouldn't say that, I can't really generalize it like that. But for me personally, it was a continuous process of development. Yes. Where you take in new ideas that might not be so visible on the outside. And ultimately, of course, there was also other competition. So it's not like we've remained here as a monopolist. That's true in the sense of... at least as a print monopolist, let's say. Yes, exactly. But of course, you mustn't forget that we've always had, and continue to have, increasing competition from two association magazines.
And that is, to be completely honest, some unpleasant competition, because it's constantly suggested or people ask themselves: we get a magazine, we're association members, why should we buy another one? So that story has always been a topic. And of course, the increasing presence of the internet has also brought many—I'll call them bloggers or other internet-based media, for lack of a better term—to the forefront.
Now, you've also followed the paraglider scene very, very closely over many years. That's just what you do when you're a journalist and want to write about it; you're actually involved in everything all the time. From your perspective, looking back over these 30 years, what are the biggest constants you see in how the paraglider scene functions? And what might be the biggest changes you've experienced as major shifts?
Well, of course, you always have to see that in the context of paraglider development. And of course, there have been many trends that came and went at times. Yes, from that perspective, there have always been some. But I've always experienced it more as a continuous process, although there are, of course, things where you say in hindsight that it was less successful and somehow didn't move development forward. And if you compare it to the starts or the beginning in the 90s, the safety issues were naturally higher, but over the years, an insane amount has happened in that area.
Although I always feel like there are still trends that aren't just positive. For example? Regarding the safety issue. So, this two-liner story or this influx of two-liners into the normal paraglider areas, the sport class, and who knows where it's going from here—I don't see that as purely positive, of course.
Because you see that more accidents are happening with them? Do you perceive it that way too?
I do perceive it that way, yes. It's a double-edged sword, of course, because on one hand, it's a positive development, but I think there are still many pilots who enter this area that I still find problematic. Or, to put it positively another way, there are so many great ENA and ENB gliders that already offer so much performance that, for me, there isn't necessarily a need to fly a two-liner. Was there one, or do you remember,
any stories you've shared where you'd say it was a real "wow" effect at the time—some new technology or something—but that didn't actually take off and was ultimately a great development, but sort of a flop? You mean that in paraglider development too? Yes.
Interestingly, nothing like that actually comes to mind.
I remember, for example, there was once a glider that had the middle pulled down like a bird's wing, so like two wings of the Bionic. I think you guys did a pretty big feature on it and explained it, and it was built in such a way that you could pull the middle down with a special line, thereby reducing the surface area and essentially creating "ears" to sink down. At the time, that was considered, well, bird-like bionic flight and all that, because it looked so beautiful. Yeah. But after a few years, that concept just disappeared, even though many people who flew it were really enthusiastic about it.
That was a pet project of our employee at the time, Sascha Burckhardt. And he came, if I remember correctly, from France. Sascha lived in France and was really enthusiastic about it, and I can still remember that for a while during our tests, we did glide comparisons, and Sascha insisted that we should also include the Bionic in our glide comparisons, and to be honest, that thing was pretty weak in terms of performance. And yeah, it was an interesting eye-catcher, but in the air, it obviously didn't...
proven. That means, in the end, performance might have been the deciding factor or something like that. Does the paragliding scene look too performance-oriented from your perspective? Well, I'm definitely of the...
opinion. Why is that?
Performance is one of the few factors, even though it's very difficult to measure, as I know from my own experience. It's one of the few points that's actually tangible. And that's why, I believe, many pilots naturally focus on it, and apparently, it's still the main motivation.
more performance. You said performance is so hard to measure. But you still did those glide comparisons for a while and I think you also provided glide ratios and stuff like that. Why did you stop? It was surely a point why many people might buy a booklet, for example, to know that my glider has, say, an 8.2 or an 8.7 glide ratio listed there.
Yeah, yeah. First of all, that was the case, but that wasn't the reason we stopped doing it; it was a massive amount of work. We spent a long time thinking about how we could do it beforehand. And I can remember countless sleepless nights because we were already standing at the Flugberg at six in the morning, or even earlier in the summer. Then you needed two pilots with identical or as identical as possible weight, with identical harnesses, to do these glide comparisons. That was also, well, I'm convinced in hindsight, a very measurable thing actually.
So there were certainly parameters that were harder to measure than this glide ratio. The problem we eventually ran into is that you actually treat gliders unfairly. That's the strange thing about it. In the sense that while the glide ratio is easily measurable and actually comparable in completely still air, we realized there were gliders that performed very well in still air, for example, but not at all in turbulent air, or in moderately turbulent air.
And the other way around, like, today we often say during testing, they're well-buoyed in, yeah, not completely calm air. And that's where we actually realized that you're just doing some unfair to certain ones or doing others a favor. We also noticed there—and now we're getting back to the topic—performance is everything. People, of course, obsessed over these glide ratios, and that was somehow the most important criterion. It was really only about glide ratios anymore. And in the end, that was too one-dimensional for me.
Do you think you lost subscribers when you gave that up? For sure.
Well, I'm convinced of that. It was well-established and people loved it. And suddenly it's gone, and I can remember some letters, emails, reactions. It really means...
annoying letters to the editor saying, "why aren't you doing this anymore, write it down again," and stuff like that. Mhm.
Since the beginning of this year, Thermik magazine has only been available digitally. So, no longer in printed form.
Why? Well, I think one story is—and you don't have to look very far—the print scene or the magazine scene has actually been in a veritable crisis for years. Printing costs are rising, shipping costs are rising. What was also really bad for us is that while we barely had any problems with non-delivered magazines at the beginning, it suddenly slipped into an unacceptable number for us. And not just in... well, there were third countries we supplied where we had to cancel subscriptions simply because you can't send a magazine to Spain or Italy anymore.
It's just not getting delivered. And that was also the case in countries like Switzerland, for example, where we had an insane amount of returns. And that was, of course, also an argument. At the same time, we've actually been working on a digital magazine app for months, because with our external attempts—or they weren't attempts, they existed for a long time,
Thermik at Zinio, and most recently at Presspad, which is a Polish provider for magazines. But that has simply always caused major problems. So, as long as you don't, so to speak, have everything in your own hands, it was problematic. And that was one of the reasons why we'd been thinking for a while now, okay, it's only going to work if we actually do it ourselves. And we'd actually been working on that for over a year. And so that was sort of a good time to say, okay, now we're just going to try it, now we're doing it.
And you can see it too, you've reported on it as well—the last French magazine, Parapente Marc, has closed its doors for good. And of course, we didn't want that and said, better now, it's too late. Now we're only trying it digitally.
Do you really think that printed magazines actually have no future? I mean, haptically, it's just so much nicer to have a magazine in your hand than on a small phone or even if you have an iPad or something. It's still something different to flip through or whatever. The magazine can just lie next to you on the toilet as soon as you sit down. Then you grab it, read the next article in there again, and put it back down. You might not do that with a pad or phone, or it's just a different approach.
You're touching on a very sore point for me, of course. And I wrote about it quite clearly in my last editorial of the final printed issue. For me personally, it's a painful cut. No question. Your heart bleeds. That's how it is. And you described it perfectly. The haptics and all that—a digital magazine obviously can't offer that in any way. That's unfortunately the case. Whether there will still be magazines on paper—there will surely still be magazines on paper, there's no doubt about that for me. But maybe the paragliding scene, or the German-speaking paragliding scene, is too small.
And as you can see, the French one too. But I haven't completely written off this project or this idea yet. So we're still thinking about whether we might perhaps release a yearbook of all the magazines once a year, with so to speak a compendium of the ten issues, or whether we'll do a very small number,
...to try to market them differently from printed magazines. But yeah, that's still a bit up in the air, but it's not completely history yet.
What I read about the French paraglider market was that they also said, especially last year, that advertising revenue has dropped very, very sharply because the paragliding scene or paraglider manufacturers in general are also struggling a bit in some areas. And after Corona, where there was an initial peak, but then it went down again and some of them fell relatively low, and they're saying, okay, we have to cut costs in that area first. Is that also something you're noticing clearly?
Absolutely, yes. We've noticed it exactly the same way. It's just like you said. There was a bit of a hype with the manufacturers during Corona, and from then on, things went pretty downhill. Why? Probably partly due to the general economic situation. People are saving money and don't want to buy a paraglider every year or every other year, or they simply can't afford to. And we've noticed that too, of course. And logically, from the manufacturers' perspective, where else can you cut costs? Because unfortunately, we're the first ones to be hit in that sense. Or one of the first.
Well, it's like this when you look at it. I mean, nowadays there's social media, there's Instagram, Facebook, but in that field, probably more and more Instagram, where the manufacturers themselves then use these channels to basically do direct advertising. And there are these nice little films, and you've subscribed to some channel and you get shown these films and stuff. And as a manufacturer, you don't have to say, I need another magazine that only comes out every few weeks, otherwise I have to place an ad there; instead, you can react relatively quickly and keep making these little stories and other things. But would you still say that the paraglider scene actually loses something because of social media? Even if it's just the independence, maybe?
Of course. I mean, that's not a question at all. It's like in the general press, or the problem with the general press. Of course, journalism gets mixed with non-journalistic content, and the same thing happens—or is happening—in the paraglider scene as well. But I am still convinced that a medium is needed that reports independently. Or several media outlets. You're active in this field too. So I would even say, as one of the few who has somehow consistently shown or shown it over the years...
had. Yes, there were always a few other blogs that tried to start up, but I think after a while they realized how much work goes into it in the end because you always want to keep at it. That you have to put a lot of time into it and that you have to ask yourself, if you want to do this, is it worth it or not. And then many of them, I think, eventually gave up again. What I noticed about you, or what I'm noticing now if you look back a bit at previous issues, what it used to be like back then. From my point of view, you had once a real unique selling point, also compared to other print magazines like Cross Country or something, that you did large festivals where you had six gliders, ten gliders, a dozen gliders
...described in a comparative way in one issue. And I remember, I think you always traveled as a whole test team to Spain or somewhere else, and I met you once somewhere, I think near Almeria or something, where there were I think five or six of you and you had half a dozen gliders with you, always swapping them out with each other. You always took off, landed back at the top, and then did the comparison slowly. And for me, that was always such a real unique selling point of yours, where you could really say, hey, I'm getting a direct comparison described here. Even if one might say that, from my perspective, you could have sometimes worked out the critical points or the positive things a bit more pointedly. But it was still something where you'd say, that's why I bought you, or surely other people bought you too.
Why did you give that up?
Yes, you're absolutely right. So that was definitely a mistake, or it didn't just come out of nowhere. It was simply very difficult for us to maintain this team structure. And the effort involved is, of course, huge. Besides, even there, manufacturers were already... yeah, it was always getting harder; we did it decentrally for a while. That means we had gliders stored in a flight area, for example, all those models we were testing, and we did that over a relatively long period. And by then, you could already feel the dissatisfaction from the manufacturers.
Because you were sitting on the glider for so long, basically. Not blocking test gliders for so long anymore. And yeah, we tried to make it more compressed at times. That was often difficult because of the weather and stuff. But it is our big goal to resume that. So it's not like we don't have the know-how, we know how it's done and we're going to do it again. So that's no question at all.
What does a good test mean to you, or what does it involve for you? You still write test reports yourself today. So you actually go out, you have a glider lying there, you fly with it for two or three weeks, and then you write something at the end. What is it that you want to convey with that? What is important to you?
So I think, on the one hand, that our tests or test reports in general—you do some too—are very important because the others, um,
Test reports, for example homologation test reports, are important, but of course, they only offer a very limited picture of a paraglider. And flying this type of glider in the thermals, and also flying it over a certain period, during several flights over a longer time, I think that is simply very important. And that just offers the possibility to describe and compare the glider in reality. That is important, so very important for me.
Are there points where you also, or have you experienced, manufacturers calling you and telling you that you can't write it that way?
Well, not directly, but of course over the long time I've been doing this—I've actually been doing testing for 30 years now—there have been some very peculiar, or rather, there were some very peculiar cases. For example, I can still remember well when I flew one of the first, I think it was the Mentor 1 or Mentor 2 from Nova; I got pretty hammered for that, and funnily enough, for the same test, in both directions. So the manufacturer was furious about something and made that very clear to me, and the readers, I don't even know for what reason, maybe it was in a forum back then...
done. I once, but before the time I started with the magazine, flew a glider in a competition in Oberschirme and that somehow got held against me, as if I had a non-independent close relationship with Nova, and that was really intense because, so to speak, for the same test I got it from both sides and yeah, that was actually the most extreme case.
Then maybe the test wasn't that bad after all; if you get hammered by both sides, you've probably hit the truth pretty well in the middle. Probably, yeah. There was a phase where I also had the impression that you were washing your tests relatively soft, let's say. And then there was another phase where I thought, okay, now the tests are becoming honest again. By "washed soft," I mean the criticism you'd get from your tests, you had to search for it so much between the lines. There were formulations in there where you'd think, "that's not really going well," but it was phrased very nicely, and you had to already know what was meant to be able to hear it that way.
And then at some point, or at least I had the impression, they started becoming clearer again in how they express themselves. Why was that? Or can you relate to that?
I can understand that, but I just can't somehow, I mean, there wasn't some kind of...
how should I put it, an internal directive saying, like, now we have to test more strictly or whatever. That might have emerged somehow from the gliders or, I mean, I can't really link that to a general line, to a general line or to a... I mean, we never had that. So with us, the test pilots get the gliders and yeah, there's actually no influence. They're allowed to write whatever
they mean. So back then, there was no editor who would come along afterwards and say, "Hey, this is written too harshly, I'll put in that it goes into the curve a bit late" or something like that.
That didn't happen, but there were of course cases where I, for example, flew gliders as well after I'd read the test results, because I just wanted to know, is that really so? But it's, it's incredibly difficult. The test duels you mentioned actually exposed that pretty ruthlessly for us internally. There were test duels where, I remember well, where actually, you said, six, seven pilots or five, six, or whatever, were completely in agreement. On all the gliders, there were actually only uniform opinions.
with very few issues, no deviations. And there were test duels where the opinions went up and down, where they were actually completely contrary. And that's what makes all the testing so difficult. To be honest, every test is a subjective test that simply reflects the opinion of the test pilot. And another one of us could fly the glider five minutes later after the top landing in Meduno and come to significantly different results.
Does this testing and this journalistic approach—where you say you're trying to describe it somewhat neutrally and independently—does that change your approach to flying? I mean, of course it's always subjective, but you still try to get close to the glider somehow and say, I'm describing something I actually felt in that way, so that someone else can relate to it. Has this approach also changed your approach to flying?
Of course, to a certain extent. I'm sure of that.
It's also the case that internally, we don't find that many good test pilots. It's not easy at all. Somehow, in recent years, for example, it has turned out—which was completely okay for me—that there were many test pilots who were interested in high-performance or competition-class gliders.
Everyone wanted to fly two-liner, something like that. Everyone wanted
...fly a two-liner. Many then perhaps still wanted to fly High-B, but I was then somewhat forced to deal with what was left over, the boss, so to speak, with those. And those were often High-A gliders or Basis-Intermediates, and what was perhaps a bit difficult for me at the beginning, because the joy might have been somewhat limited, actually developed more and more into, I would almost say, a passion, because it became more and more fun for me and I simply saw how much is actually already possible in that class. And now I actually love flying these gliders incredibly much. I still have a project, unfortunately I don't get much time for it,
also to show that, you give enough examples, that you can fly great streaks with such gliders without any restrictions. That's certainly something that has changed over time. And on the other hand, you can see that very clearly at festivals, or you've seen it clearly at festivals—you always have to keep your colleagues on their toes, so if we did a Basis-Intermediate festival, they shouldn't see it from the perspective, from the perspective of their private gliders, so you always had to...
when taking the Kantare and saying, like, friends, we're flying basis-intermediates now, these are great gliders. Don't compare them with your
high-performers and says, that's all just a crutch. Like that.
that's exactly how it is.
that's how it is.
Yes, yes, that's exactly how it is
That's how it was, yeah.
If you were just going out to fly for yourself today, without any tests, would you say you could choose an A-glider or a Low-B-glider, or would you already be saying, no, I'm in the mood for something sporty?
Not at all. I mean, I like flying them, so I'd definitely like to fly them privately, without any... I mean, there are so many great models, so I have no problem with that at all.
So you mainly fly test gliders, or do you still have a private glider yourself, or do you basically say, "Hey, there's always something lying around here as a test unit, so I'll take that one out"? It is
Well, we're actually almost a bit understaffed, and I've always had some private gliders too, but in reality, I never get around to flying them and I actually only fly what's currently on the schedule, so to speak.
And these testers, do you request them from the manufacturers or are those always things the manufacturers offer you themselves? Like, they say Swing is releasing a new Miura or whatever, and they say, you guys at Thermik want to have it now, test it. Or are those also things where you say, no, we also choose which models we want to test?
Usually, it's gliders that we request. Of course, there are also manufacturers who sometimes come to us, but generally, we go to the manufacturer and say we'd like to test this or that model.
And then there are also
manufacturers who say
no, you get
you didn't?
There were, yes. Rarely, but there were, yes. Why? Because you once
...have expressed too much criticism or something? Or what are the reasons why a manufacturer would say, "We don't want you as a magazine, even though you're actually doing advertising for us with these tests"?
That's exactly how it is. It's not, I mean, it's really a minority, but there have been such cases. And of course, there's this issue where, although it seems ridiculous to me, some manufacturers are really quite stingy with test gliders. And of course, I find our tests to be very elaborate. And you just can't quickly wrap up what the manufacturers want in two flights. It's simply not possible. With all the measurement flights, with the photos we take, with the detail shots. And there are more and more manufacturers who,
not all of them, but there are some who naturally say, that's three or four weeks a glider is gone, that's difficult. Which, yeah, I would say, seems rather strange to me. I understand it a bit more with importers, who maybe don't have as many models or test models. But with manufacturers, it's still odd. But yeah, in total, we always manage to make it work somehow. But it's not quite as easy as it once was. And of course, you also have to say, the manufacturers often don't see it that way. Generally, our test pilots—and I'm not excluding myself here—are not full-time test pilots, but they are teachers or whatever.
And I'm also often very busy and can't go flying every day, where that might be possible. And that makes it, admittedly, quite difficult.
Was it much easier back then?
That used to be...
simpler, yeah. Looking back over the years, what part of making the magazine did you enjoy the most?
I just love the whole process, from the conceptual beginning to the creation of these reports and the entire magazine, all the way to the layout. And with us, all of that is in...
how should I put it, in close coordination or actually a joint process that I just enjoy immensely all the way to, I almost wanted to say, to the printed result. It's not printed anymore, but I still just enjoy it so much, developing this whole thing from the concept to the result. At
Thermik Digital, what you have now, keep it, at least for the first issue. I don't know how you'll handle it in the future, I'll be watching, but at least for the first issue, it looks like the old printed magazine, just in digital form now. You could also say that if you're doing it digitally, you'd adapt the layout or something much more to the point where you don't say, "I have something that I could also print as a magazine as a PDF," but rather you adapt it much better to screen formats or whatever, and play differently with the visual possibilities I have there. I could include videos or other things. Do ideas like that exist for you too, or do you say it's a conscious decision to say, "No, we're actually sticking to this format with a magazine every month or ten times a year, and the magazine looks digitally the same as it did before when it was printed"?
Yes, I mean, we'll certainly have to make some compromises to improve readability on, for example,
...improve mobile phones, but fundamentally, I want to consciously stick to the magazine format as we actually know it. Why?
I mean, if you're really only digital now, why? It's basically a reminiscence of something, like that golden era is over. Maybe that's exactly it.
That's certainly possible, yes.
You're 64 now, turning 65 this year. How much longer do you want to do magazines, even if it's only in digital form now?
I don't have one, so it's actually open-ended. I don't have one, or you could say, as long as I enjoy it. So I don't have an end date. Of course, I'm always looking for a successor a bit, but it's not that easy at all. And so it just continues for now, I'll say for now.
That means the market environment is also—so it's not that easy to find a successor because of the market environment, or because there are still few people who are as passionate as you, saying, I want to make a magazine like this? I mean, you're the Thermik Man, as it were. That's how it is, yeah.
I think that's why. I mean, there are,
well, I don't think so, at least not these people. And in my direct circle, there were once employees where that was a consideration, but they somehow lost their way. They're still at Thermik Magazin, but they do other things on the side. From that perspective, it's of course a difficult point.
Was there more passion, more commitment in the scene back then, or in that area in general?
I
I find it somewhat difficult to judge. I don't want to just say yes, because it's always that "everything was better in the old days" thing. I don't really like hearing that.
And to be honest, that maybe comes with my—you mentioned this—already advanced age. You might distance yourself a bit from that scene. So, initially, I'm of course,
you're at the flight school, you're starting out, you're in that circle, you're meeting new pilots. And I'm naturally a bit far removed from that. I'm still fully involved in the scene, but not in that area anymore. Maybe it's something where one should, yeah, reflect more or move towards that. So, lots of good plans for the year 2026.
So you'd actually need young scene pilots, let's say, who are out there as roving reporters and provide you with reports. Definitely, yeah. So you can basically give a verbal job posting now—or not a posting, but just say what you could use. Who can get in touch with you?
Before that, I'd just like to say beforehand: there are always people who come to us with an interesting story to tell. Usually, it's more exotic destinations where someone has been and wants to share their experience. For me, that's always been a bit of a problem, because I'd prefer to report much more on things from here, so to speak—more regional, more local. There are still so many flight areas that have never been mentioned in a magazine or that are everywhere in the neighboring countries; I mean, you don't necessarily have to...
travel to other continents, and very few readers do that. That's why we of course like to report on exotic destinations too, but I believe this down-to-earth approach is also important and would be, and we're always looking for that kind of thing again and again.
Down-to-earth pilots who want to write about what's nearby, not just wander off into the distance. That's how it is. But let's still drift back in time a bit, to perhaps the near or far distance: what aviation dream would you like to fulfill now, or later in life? If you ever retire or something, is there something left where you'd say, if I didn't have the burden of the magazine on my shoulders anymore, what would I still like to do?
So on one hand, it's like I know a lot and have seen a lot, and I'd love to have more time to fly there again. So these are often very, very banal flight areas that aren't that far away. For example, Meduno near us was once almost an autumn-winter test area because it's often more difficult to fly there. I've been there very little in recent years, and I'd like to go back there more often and fly there. And so there are several nearby, or relatively nearby, destinations that I know and would love to travel to again and again.
But there are certainly also places,
where I'd like to go sometime, places I haven't been to yet. For example, we just had a report from Michael Nesler who was in South Africa. And then you think to yourself, that would be something I'd like to do. So there are surely some spots that are interesting.
And do you also have any aviation goals, like performance goals or something like that? Or where you say, I still want to learn something there, or I want to fly a 150km with an A-glider again, or I want to get into agro-flying somehow, or whatever else one could set as a goal?
Yes, that's definitely for me, you mentioned it, I also brought it up at the beginning, I'd have a lot of fun flying longer distances again with an A-glider or a basic intermediate. I'd love to do that. But somehow, yeah, it's just a lot of work on-site. And honestly, on the old north side, the days in recent years were almost predictable, where you could have flown such routes. And I had a time when I was also an XC traveler to South Tyrol or wherever,
I had less time for that then. And I'd really like to do that again with,
Yeah, I find that exciting. Flying one more long distance with ENA.
Then I wish you the best, Norbert, that it definitely works out. I think you'll find the time. Maybe with Thermik Digital, a bit of the workload you have with a printed magazine will be eliminated, because you don't have to send it anymore and don't have to worry about printing and all that. Maybe that gives you a small window where you can fly at least two more days a month and pick out the good cross-country flight days. I definitely wish you that. And yes, good luck with it. And also with this Thermik Digital, that it still finds its market despite this transition. And I'd be happy if you would resume those big test levels, the comparison test levels, again. I'd think that would be great.
Thanks a lot for the conversation, I really enjoyed it.
You can find further links to this episode of Podz-Glidz in the corresponding show notes on the Gleitschirm-Blog Looglights. This also includes a special code to get a free two-month trial access to the new Thermik Digital platform. Did you enjoy the episode? Then tell your flying friends about it. Give it five stars on the podcast platform you use or write a corresponding comment on the Gleitschirm-Blog Looglights. Also, please become a supporter of my work. On looglights.blogspot.com, you can find all the necessary information and links under the "Fördern" section on how you can continue to provide a basis for this project with a freely chosen, large or small financial contribution.
I want to thank all my supporters. Start early, land late, fly far. See you soon, your Lucian.