Paragliding, and competition in particular, is a perfect training ground for business life. Altitude is your capital. The higher you are, the more options you have. Only then can you think about strategy. If you're low, it doesn't matter at all whether you think about flying east or southeast. You just have to get up there first. And I always tell the competition participants—those are the other companies—and the weather is the global economy. Everyone has to deal with this weather. Now, let's say in business life, suddenly there's a war in Iran, this happens, and that happens. Things we can't change, but we have to adapt to them and make the best of it.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today with Michal Vici. And I'm Lucian Haas.
You can see all sorts of vivid parallels in paragliding. Some compare the strategic component to a game of chess. Others see themselves in the air as free improvisers, like in jazz, which still follows certain musical rules. The Swiss Michal Vici sees paragliding as a reflection of business life. That's not for nothing. Michal Vici has already managed a whole range of companies in various industries. And in paragliding, he has also been successful in different types of disciplines. From PWC competitions to the X-Alps, where in 2015, after a spectacular rescue landing in the middle of a lake, he continued the race anyway and even reached the finish line just before the deadline.
Nowadays, Michael's existence as a boss is also reflected in his paragliding career. The 48-year-old doesn't just lead the Hike-and-Fly competition Eikertour. Since the beginning of the year, he has also been the CEO of the paraglider manufacturer Air Design. How that happened and how he wants to further develop the brand is also what this episode 188 of Podz-Glidz is about.
By the way, I can only present conversations like this because there are supporters who financially support my work on the podcast and blog. Join in. You can find out how on the Gleitschirm-Blog Mooglites, specifically on the "Fördern" page.
Michael, you wrote to me saying you're a total landing freak. Are you always happy to be back on the ground?
No, it's actually just about being happy to be back. Those are rare experiences; I've also had those where you almost can't come down anymore. Luckily, rarely. No, I just find coming back to Earth a bit fascinating. From the air back to the ground.
What is the fascinating thing about it? This shift between the mediums? That you say you're free in the air and bound on the earth? Or what is it that moves you so much?
Maybe I can sense something more. It also starts at takeoff. I prefer flights where I head out somewhere, pull up, land, and then head out again. I don't really know the difference between the solidity of the earth and the air. The air actually forgives you a lot more than the ground does. If you come in 10 km/h too fast or a meter too low, you've already broken something. In the air, as long as you're not flying right next to the terrain, you're usually much freer in that regard. But I can't really explain to you why that fascinates me so much.
Is it maybe also a bit the thrill of the risk? I mean, every landing is a risk too. Just like you said, I'm free in the air. Or maybe less can happen to me in the air. It only happens when you get close to the ground and are maybe still too fast. So is it that, as you say, I also like to play with that risk?
That would probably be subconscious. I wouldn't rule out that theory right now. But it's certainly not conscious. I'm sure that I'm just expanding my comfort zone by landing a lot. Often trying out complicated landings too. And carrying them out. But lately, I often also say, yeah, that's too risky for me now. The risk is that I won't make it. With age, that's happening more and more. Or I say, yeah, not anymore. Now I'm going to the big field and not looking for the helicopter landing field anymore.
Has it ever happened to you that you really screwed up a landing like that?
Yeah, quite a few, yeah. Always without breaking anything, but with a few days of foot pain.
What lessons do you take from that? Do you become more cautious, or do you just say, well, next time I have to approach it differently?
Often, it's actually the turbulence that leads to it. Then I have to tell myself, okay, it's actually too turbulent to approach this landing field. Or it could also be that I used the wrong technique for it. If you're doing a ridge soar, for example, and it's very thermal, then you almost have to expect that you'll suddenly be ten meters higher. That's just part of it. And with a ridge soar, you can't just fly away if you come in from the side.
Not everyone will immediately understand "slope soaring landing," especially those who haven't seen it before. Can you briefly explain what a slope soaring landing is and how you do it?
So I have a good story and a theory, which people might even disagree with. I always claim that the slope landing was really developed or refined by Padel von Kennel and Kregel-Maurer. Specifically, when they first came to the Eiger-Tour, they knew my concept because I had discussed it with them beforehand. And suddenly, they realized you have to be fast with the landing. And suddenly these two guys came and flew up the slope one after the other from below. I had never seen that before. Until then, I only knew it from Deltas. I'd sometimes see the brave Delta pilots do that, where they dive in and then land up the slope.
And suddenly, at the Eiger Tour, the first edition, these two guys come in and land several meters below and are incredibly fast. And afterwards I asked, Kregel, how did you come up with that? And then he said, well, you know, actually it's often even the safest if you just fly straight against the slope. You hold the gas, then convert the energy, then climb. And then, of course, I also started training that. And I already noticed there are situations where that is the safest landing. Of course, that's very impressive because you have to give gas against the slope. And if you come in too low, then, as they say in Swiss German, it "claps" or it bangs.
If you come in too high, you'll stall out. And then you have to glide down under the parachute.
Yeah, that's actually the slope takeoff. Or how would you say that, as someone who knows German better than I do?
I don't know. Well, there's another term for it. I think paragliders or something call it a "counter-slope landing." So, landing against the slope. Where you really fly directly toward the slope—not vertically, but yeah, directly at it—and then just bleed off the speed and convert it into altitude so that you follow the angle of the slope and, ideally, flare out completely gently. Griegl once told me that he practiced these slope landings a lot in the snow at first. Because he says, yeah, if it goes wrong, you just thunder into the soft snow at high speed and not much happens. Did you do that too, or did you just say the meadow has to take it?
Yeah, I actually only started in the summer. Also, that Reigertour inspired me. And I just started flying towards a slope at a bit of an angle. At first. So that I—and you know, where there aren't many trees—so that I could have actually turned away. And then at 45 degrees, and then I gradually increased it to 90 degrees. It works just like that in the summer too. Of course, the snow is important, so you need good snow. If it's hard-frozen, it doesn't help. So, yeah, fast is certainly not bad. And in the winter, it's almost too easy sometimes because you have this adiabatic slope sink from the cold air. And that makes it even easier, of course.
Or you land uphill and you have a headwind too. Then you're even slower.
Yeah, but in the summer, as you just said, the difficulty can be that you land uphill, then the slope lift kicks in and lifts you much higher than you actually planned. Higher than where you wanted to touch down. Exactly, yeah. Let's go way back to your flying beginnings. I think you've been flying for 28 years now, is that right? Correct, since 1998, yeah. And what actually drove you into the air back then? Because, as far as I know, you come from a family with a big construction tradition. You have a construction company in the family. So, something that is very much in the earthly, grounded realm. What drives someone like that into the air?
Yeah, we're very down-to-earth. I don't have any pilots in my family. So, for me, it just developed. I can't really tell you. I just know that when I was 16, I went on a hike once, and I was on a summit and I saw this guy coming with a pink backpack, and he lays out his glider, says "bye everyone," and takes off. And that's when I basically knew, I want to learn that too.
That taking off into the air.
And did you start at 16?
Well, I didn't have any money back then. I had to save up. I didn't have enough money until I was 20.
Okay, so you did the private license at 20. What would you say you've been looking for in flying since then? Because you've always kept at it.
So... I think you experience nature differently when you're flying. You can do incredible things. Otherwise, you'd have to be some kind of super alpinist. I mean, the day before yesterday I was in a tandem, and I soared right up the beach, just three meters away. If I were doing that any other way, I'd have to be some kind of super alpinist. So it's definitely the experience of nature. And I also think it's actually like a game of chess with nature, with physics. My engineer's brain definitely comes into play there too. If you know the physical rules, there are still many things you have to learn intuitively or learn empirically.
And that's just a wonderful game with nature, I think. Mhm. It's never the same and it's always fleeting. So there's almost never a place where you know, "In a week I can go there and it'll work." You don't know that. And that's certainly also the fleeting nature of the thermals, of the experience of flying, which is what makes it so exciting to this day. So, I also fly with the motor now. And that's much more reliable, and because of that, a bit less attractive. I mean, it's nice too. Yes. But you just know that in three days I can take off with the motor glider at half past two and land again at four. At least 80 percent of the time. In winter it's a bit more difficult, also with the fog and all that.
But I think that's also the fleeting nature of it, which maybe surfers of the waves know too, right?
Every wave is different and so on. And you're always looking for them again. They might come from a similar direction, but every ride you take there is a different ride. And that way, every flight of yours becomes a different flight too.
Exactly. And that's why I always say the happiest flight isn't necessarily the longest or anything like that. I always think the happiest flight is when reality turns out to be bigger than your expectations. Then you go, wow. If you think it's just going down and you can stay in some small corner for 20 minutes, then you're already... so I'm already very, very happy.
At the beginning of your flying career, or not just at the beginning, let's say in the first third, you were, or are, more than a third, but you were also very competition-oriented. Yes. What drew you to that? Because I mean, one thing is this experience of always doing something different, always something new. You can do that with every flight. You don't have to say, I have to measure myself against other people for that. What fascinated you about competition flying?
Well, it started with a childhood friend of mine named Michael Steinbach. When I started, he was at his peak as a World Cup pilot. He already had a contract with Red Bull back then. And he just told me, you know, if you really want to know how to fly, you have to fly in competitions. Otherwise, you only learn half of it. And I always had his saying in my head. And that's how it turned out. And in Grindelwald, there was also a scene around Alex Hofer, who was great back then, World Cup, won everything. And then there was Gregel Maurer, who was coming in as a young pilot. They were all there.
There's also this groove where you go to the next competition every weekend. And that's really how it was. I learned an extreme amount of things from it, very quickly.
I can say the same about that. Any pilot who has the time and the desire can just do some flight competitions, even if you're not necessarily going to be on the podium. You learn an incredible amount.
One thing was competition. You also flew PWC and stuff like that. But in 2015, you even took part in the X-Alps. What appealed to you about that? Now, saying I don't just want to fly, but suddenly he has to bring in much more terrestrial skills. Now you probably also have to be able to run quite a bit. And a lot of strategies. You can keep that in your back pocket.
Yeah, that's definitely part of it. The main idea was, I want to do a competition where it's always just forward. When I do PWC, you're going zigzag, all Mickey Mouse, or back and forth. That's already funny. But actually, I found the concept much more exciting. I'm in Salzburg and I want to go to Monaco. And now I'm going, always in that direction, of course there were a few trees, but always in that direction. That fascinated me. And also the freedom. Or as a PWC pilot, even Krigl was somehow 92 kilos, I was 95 kilos. We ate like crazy and we wanted to have the biggest gliders.
And suddenly I noticed Krigl losing weight and getting slimmer. And then I said, Krigl, what do you think, could I do that too? He said, yeah, I think so. You have two years until you're roughly at a physical level where you can join in. That's what I did. I lost weight and then ramped up the endurance sports, because I wasn't an endurance athlete at all. And that really paid off. You learn to fly all over again with this landing and starting stuff that you do in Hike & Fly. Because as a PWC pilot, I couldn't start well and I wasn't that good at landing either.
I could just fly well. And then as an ex-Alps pilot, I eventually became able to take off and land well too. But the basic idea was always to keep moving forward, from Salzburg to that raft in Monaco.
In those two years where you said, I want to participate, I'm starting to train now. You said that before that, you were putting on weight to say, I want to fly the big gliders. How much weight did you lose in those two years? If you were at 95 before, what did you get down to?
I went from 97 down to 80.
Oh wow.
That was hard. It was really... I said, I felt like a drug addict on a train.
But at first, I was so weak that I didn't really train everything. But yeah, I pushed through it, and then at some point you get lighter and suddenly everything becomes easier. And that's when I ramped up my training. In the short term, I also went into overtraining, where I suddenly had Achilles tendonitis about four months before the X-Half. That was really bad and I couldn't get rid of it for a month. But it was a very exciting experience. And luckily, I really had Kriegel, who shared all his knowledge with me.
And even without him, I wouldn't have been capable of making a step like that in two years.
So he was sort of your X-Halbs mentor and he got you there. Yes, definitely. Yeah, exactly. At this X-Halbs, back in 2015, you were a finisher too. I think you finished 19th, and thus the last of everyone who arrived there. And if I remember correctly, I think it was only 15 minutes before the end of or the closing of the time window. What's it like to actually make it to the finish line?
That was truly overwhelming. For the first five days, I was doing pretty well at the front, always in the top five. And then I fell into the water in Lago di Poschiavo in the North Fern. That really knocked me mentally. And from that sixth day on, I kept getting washed further back at the X-Halbs. At some point, they even said, "Phew, now it's getting tight, whether we can still make it." From the very beginning, my goal was—I'm not a professional athlete, but I absolutely want to get to Monaco. That was the goal. And one day, when we were already in France, we said, "Now it's going to be difficult to still reach that."
And then I pushed through the whole night and actually managed to finish 19th just fifteen minutes before the end. I became 18th because Stefan Gruber behind me flew into the Royal... or how do you say it, the Monegasque elephant enclosure. He got penalized there.
And I told him, you know, for me, I work and these are my holidays, and I've made the most of my holidays. Until fifteen minutes before the end, I enjoyed my holidays. So it wasn't always enjoying, but it was also enjoying. Yeah, I was really very,
very happy. You probably didn't enjoy your crash into the lake. I still remember sitting in front of the screen back then, watching the live tracking, and I can still see that image of your flight path, which pulls so beautifully along the top and then suddenly takes a dip downwards, and you see this red flight path going down and ending in the lake. What is it like when you have a disturbance like that, deploy the rescue glider, and hang over the lake, knowing and seeing from the descent path that you're going to land right in the middle of that water? What goes through your head then?
So the cool thing was, by chance, I had practiced it; I had already flown over the Prienstersee with the exact same equipment before, you know, threw the Nordschirm and I had a seat without loops, so I also knew how to get out in the water, and I didn't drag my Nordschirm across the lake at all, I was already quite far over land, but the Nordschirm was so strong that it pushed me towards the south, and actually I was almost glad because I thought if I slammed into a house at 40, 50 km/h—horizontal speed, I mean—then that wouldn't be funny, and that's something you definitely don't practice.
a horizontal impact with the glider, and at some point I thought, yeah, maybe I'll have to swim, but I'd already done it, I know exactly how to undo my shoulder straps in the air and then back out of it in the water, I knew all of that. Actually, I was pretty calm and almost relieved that I didn't slam into a house or something, but instead hit the lake at that Föhn speed.
Maybe landing in the lake with that strong wind was actually advantageous in a way, because your glider and the north glider would probably still be filled by the wind. I can imagine it staying filled like that, keeping the lines taut, so you could get out of there relatively well and swim away accordingly. Was that the case?
Yes, so the main glider went into the water, it acted like an anchor, and the Nordschirm acted like a sail, and that was under quite a lot of tension.
Or with this one, with my set, both went onto the carabiners; otherwise, it might have pulled me into a horizontal position or if the north glider had been on top of my shoulders.
But yeah, that worked pretty well; at least there was no mess with the lines, they were fully taut from the main glider or it was in the water. At first, I thought I'd let the Nord glider pull me out toward the shore, but the main glider was like an anchor—I realized then that it wouldn't do anything, so I just had to let it all go and swim.
So you swam to the shore. How did you get your gear back, or did it stay in the lake?
It was funny, at the moment I landed in the lake, there wasn't a single boat around, and that's not necessarily normal; there are boats on this lake, but the host of the Romantica, the hotel where I stayed, he recovered my gear with his boat. It was still torn, though; he said, "Watch out," because when I pulled it out, something made a weird sound, but I was just grateful that he got it out for me. But then Aaron Duragati helped me sew something on the harness pack, and we dried it overnight and used it again the next day.
So you dried everything, repacked the reserve glider and the glider, and then kept going, kept flying.
Yeah, I think that was close. I think I needed my reserve glider for a day, and in that case, you have to ask Red Bull if that's okay. I needed my reserve glider for a day to let the other one dry, but yeah, I needed the seat, it was almost dry by then, and my supporters reinstalled the emergency glider, exactly.
I can imagine that an experience like that is pretty extreme and, of course, involves some kind of mental strength. Why did you still decide to keep going in that situation, instead of just saying, hey, that was a sign, I survived, but maybe this isn't for me or whatever else you could think of?
So, I didn't think about stopping for a single second, it didn't even cross my mind, and then when Tarkin Cooper called, from the Red Bull organization,
I told him, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I didn't think about it for long at all. That day was actually a bit better than what came after. The next day, I realized what the effect was. I was really scared of flying over crevasses then, and that's when my flight errors started too. And actually, my strength was flying, not running, and my strength suddenly became my weakness. But I never thought about quitting. I actually knew the reasons; from my perspective, there were three: first, extreme fatigue, meaning my reactions were slow. Number two was the Föhn, the Nordföhn is no joke, and number three was the glider, which just wasn't stable at full speed.
You flew full throttle in the North Föhn?
Yeah exactly, Stefan Gruben was next to me with a Skywalk and he landed well, and then I got swept away. And because I knew what that triple combination was,
I also knew that I could keep going, actually. Although I did have problems with the fatigue, because your body is so wired up; you're actually exhausted, but you're wide awake in your camper somewhere at three in the morning, and that fatigue remained a problem until the very end.
When you said it was harder for you, for example, flying over glacier crevasses and that feelings of fear came up and stuff like that, was that something that was only in competition or did it also haunt you for longer? Or was it just that you're saying, in normal flying I don't take such risks, in normal everyday life I wouldn't fly in such a Foehn wind, so I don't have those worries there? Or did it actually haunt you?
I think after two or three months, I was mentally back to being pretty normal. And fortunately, it has remained my only glider throw to this day, which supports my theory that I don't have that trinity of things in my normal life.
Plus such fatigue—normally, when I'm that tired, I'd never go flying for life.
And I wouldn't take that glider today, either. Anyway, I processed it pretty quickly and today I have zero effects from it.
Why didn't you do another X-Alps? Was it clear to you from the start that you'd say, "I want to try this once, I want to experience this once, and that's it for me"? Or were there other reasons for that?
Well, I just think that as an entrepreneur, I allowed myself the luxury of reducing my workload to 80%, and then you can train three days a week. But I already knew that if I were to go again and want to correct all my weaknesses, it wouldn't be enough to just keep going with an 80% workload. So I thought, if I do it the same way again, it's actually, first of all, a shame because I can't properly correct everything, and secondly, it's too dangerous. That's why it was never an option.
Was that the fact that you couldn't participate yourself, but was that also the motivation behind you founding the X-Alps Academy with Kriegel in 2017? That you said, okay, then I want to at least push this idea forward in some other way for you and for others?
So Kriegel asked me back then, would you help me found this academy? And I just thought, yeah, I could benefit so much from Kriegel, and if I can contribute something, then I want to help others be able to do that too. That was actually the motivation. And the part about not being able to participate myself, I probably lived that out or put that into practice with the Eiger Tour.
The Eiger Tour came in 2018, I believe you did the first edition of it. Exactly. Briefly explain, as maybe not everyone listening here knows, what is the Eiger Tour? It's a Hike & Fly competition, but a very special one. What's so special about the Eiger Tour?
Yes, that brings us back to the beginning, to what you asked me: why do you love the Eiger Tour so much? The Eiger Tour is actually a race that, based on my criteria and my experiences from the X-Alps Plus—the famous Vercofly in the south of Switzerland back then—is like a synthesis. There were elements of the X-Alps that I liked very much, and others where I'd say, if you need a support team, if you have to run 40 km on asphalt roads, I don't find that very cool. And from those experiences, the Eiger Tour was born with the goal of, first, it being a multi-day race,
secondly, you don't need as much money to hire a support team and expensive buses to follow you. Thirdly, the goal is that you never drop below 1,600 meters for four days, so it's a real alpine experience. Because that was the part about X-Alps, where you're running 20 km on a road in Italy and cars are zooming past you at 120 km/h. That's not cool; you just do it because you're in a race. And I wanted to eliminate that. And then there's the landing, taking off, landing—that's extremely practiced and very demanding. That's why Kriegel says it, he has this newspaper article where he says that the Eiger Tour is harder than X-Alps.
By that, he means technically more difficult.
So, the landing, you don't really have that yet. The checkpoints you set are always mountain huts? Exactly, almost always, yeah. And people always have to land at the checkpoints and take a selfie, and that's basically the point where you say, the checkpoints you set are always mountain huts. You've reached it. And that's why the landing is such a big deal on the Eiger Tour, or why it takes such a spotlight.
Exactly, I mean you can't take the checkpoints by air, otherwise it would be like a normal air race, so they'd have to be taken on the ground. Theoretically, you can do everything on foot, so flying isn't mandatory. But of course, if you fly, you're usually much faster. And why the huts? The huts are just cool. You have a certain level of safety there, so if something happens to you, there are people right there. You have a toilet, you have food, you can also stay overnight. And you have fans, so the people at the huts, of course, they think this race is cool. That's why I actually came up with these hut checkpoints.
So, let's say, there are 20 to 35 huts that arrive in four days. And will be flown out.
What is it for you—I mean, you organize the whole thing, so you're certainly putting a lot of money into it, but also of course a lot of your time and energy. What's your motivation for organizing something like this? And ultimately, if I understand correctly, you don't fly with them, but as the organizer, you're on the ground, following the whole thing, and then have to organize other things there in the end.
What fascinates you about it? To say, I invest my energy into that.
Yeah, I think the main argument is my clients—the pilots—who come back after those four days with these glowing eyes and say, wow, thanks so much, that was another amazing experience.
I think that's the main motivation. As an entrepreneur, it's a really bad deal. Extremely high risk without any... I mean, I don't earn anything, my hours are free, right? But as an entrepreneur, I shouldn't be doing this; as a Gleitschirm-Blog and a Hikenflyer myself, I actually want to make it possible for my people. And of course, I join in sometimes. I've already had my three or four cool landings and hut approaches and stuff, so that's enough for me.
And it's also an opportunity for me to keep coming back to Grindelwald, because that's where I started my flying career. And it gives me a feel for the Hikenfly market. And now, as a paraglider dealer and manufacturer, I find that very valuable.
Paraglider dealer, manufacturer—we'll get to that topic in a moment. Let's stay with this Eiger tour for now. The many top landings people have to do there. Every landing, which we already had at the beginning, always carries an increased risk. You come in with momentum onto hard ground, near hard ground, and you always risk breaking something, tearing a line, or whatever. That means with the route you lay out there and the sometimes very exposed landings at those mountain huts that are necessary, you're asking a lot of the participants. Do you actually have to prove something when you apply to participate, like saying, I have the skills to land in such exposed terrain? And how can you prove something like that?
Do you have to send in a video or what do you do?
With me, you have to apply. You can't just sign up. You can sign up, but then you have to be accepted. I definitely look at the results from previous races. So, the experience someone has already had. So, the experience someone has already had. Then, if I have doubts, I say, send me a top-landing video. Actually, the top landing is the main criterion of what I want to see. And if I still have doubts then, I say, look, I've founded an academy specifically to enable people to get started safely. The academy is a guided tour with a flight instructor. And after these four days of the academy, if the flight instructor says, yes, this person is suitable, then you can come as a participant the following year.
The hardest part is actually the mental side, because your flying skills don't really play such a big role. If you're not that good, but you head for a huge field three kilometers away, then you're safe. And for me as an organizer, that's actually okay. On the other hand, if you fly great, but you make an even more extreme landing than your flying skills allow and you break something, then you don't really belong in the Eigentour. I try to explain that to people, but I can't test it. I'd almost have to do some kind of psychological test. Because there are people who are technically very good, but they enter competition mode and then cross every boundary.
And then they fall again. And then there are others who are very sensible; they don't fly that well, but they always stay in the safe zone. They are very welcome. And that's the difficult part. It involves a bit of human intuition and judgment as well.
Do you experience that in these competitions? Are there many people who are "sensible"? Like, where you can really see that they don't always aim for the landing in the rocky terrain right next to the mountain hut, but instead they actually land somehow two kilometers away on the somewhat green meadow on the slope and know they might have to climb another 100 meters or something. But they always do it in a low-risk way. Or doesn't a competition actually tempt 90 percent of people to say, "If the others are already landing up there, I have to be able to do that too"? But then they're actually tempted very quickly to go beyond their own limits.
So, over the last few years, I have to say, I think the scene has become a bit more sensible. At the same time, I've abolished the Pro category. That's where the really extreme huts were. There were cases where even good pilots suffered leg fractures and such. I've scrapped those. So, that means I've actually lowered the level. And it's like, the competition group, the others are there too, I do that as well. It exists.
Last year, for example, the Lötschenpass was such a key point. There was actually a north wind there, and some people ended up landing backwards in a wind that was blowing them down the slope. So, I've decided that to avoid this in the future, I might just need to set some safety zones. I'm starting that this year—places where people have to land, where it's no longer worth trying to start out until the next waypoint.
So, to sum up, safety has improved. The majority of people have become more sensible. But the competition pressure—that's a psychological effect that will always be there.
Would you say people have become more sensible? Or is it perhaps what you're also seeing, that you'd say people's skills have generally improved as well? You mentioned that during the first Eiger tour, it was the paddles from Kennel and Kriegel Maurer who were the only ones who basically showed those downhill landings. And you said, wow, what are you doing there? And now, this knowledge that it's possible, and that it's also possible with a paraglider, where people might have said before that you can only land like that with kites from such a crossing or something like that. And now it's also possible with a paraglider. And more and more people can do that. Or at least more and more people are practicing it. And they can do it reasonably well, I'd say. Is that something you've also seen, over the years, that the skills of the average pilots participating with you have simply become much better?
Yes, I think the skills have certainly improved. Although, for example, the hike-fly scenes in Switzerland that are really at the forefront are still a fairly small group of people. Or the hike-fly races in Switzerland aren't being overrun by 300 people right now. And Switzerland has 18,000 active pilots, after all. So, tendentially yes, the level has risen, but the people who really train hike-fly at a high level are still few.
And isn't your Eiger tour, as it stands, a bit too much for most of the people who might be participating today?
As I said, if someone is mentally strong but not as technically proficient, then they're in the right place. And I have customers who also ask, "Do you think I can come?" Yes, you don't have to be super fast, and as long as you don't fly until you're exhausted, but you have a wonderful experience over four days in an extreme alpine environment and you stay safe, then you're welcome. It's also the case that I'm actually the only race that has a very large, I mean a large international field.
Usually, 12 to 16 nations come. It's actually the only Hikefly race in Switzerland. And that way, let's just say, you get top athletes from other countries joining in, so that I can reasonably fill those 60 spots I have.
Let's jump around the subject a bit and back to you and your flying. I saw that you started as a paraglider, but in recent years you've also tried to basically expand. You learned hang gliding, or star glider flying, and flew the Archäopteryx. Then in 2023, you also got a sailplane license.
Why are you seeking this expansion? And what do both give you, if you can compare them, paragliding and soaring, for example? For
There were two reasons for me. First, soaring is my retirement plan. It was still crazy because, actually, it's more demanding than paragliding, but I still think, especially physically, it's significantly less demanding.
That was reason number one. Reason number two, I told myself, at 45 it's good to just learn something new. It's also the last moment, I'd say, where you can still fly well with a reasonable amount of effort. As a sailplane—or motor flight—pilot. That was actually my motivation for why I started with it. You know, because those seven hours there with the B-license holders always pulling and watching that the glider doesn't collapse. Somehow I think that's already tedious, actually. Especially the cross-country flights, right? That means for me, sailplane flight primarily replaces those long cross-country flights with the paraglider.
And I'm just much more comfortable traveling that way. I'm in my cockpit, my hands aren't cold, and I can fly my plane with two fingers. I can navigate through the airspaces with the transponder. That's one more advantage.
And of course, I can use it to enter the king's class—which for me is flying Föhn waves—I can enter the king's class of flying. Which is also something I did right away.
Because for me, the paraglider is still all about the taking off and landing—that's the incredible part. Taking off anywhere, landing anywhere. Extremely uncomplicated. Being very close to the terrain. You don't get that combination with hiking with the glider. When I have a glider flight day, I always go for a one-hour walk in the morning, first in the forest, so that I've covered that part. And then you just sit there in your cockpit. Even for me, the paraglider has an extreme justification. But then on really good days, where
With the paraglider, you sometimes can't reach the next thermal. And with the sailplane, you can fly into completely different areas. I've learned so much from that. You get into thermals that you can't reach with the paraglider. Conversely, you know paragliding spots where the sailplane doesn't go. This combination is extremely enriching. And then there's the Föhn wave flying, which is massive, just massive. Theoretically, you could go out and fly on a December day from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.
But how do you deal with the two hearts beating in your chest right now? For example, over Pentecost, we had amazing weather, especially in the Alps, where record flights were probably made with both the paraglider and the glider. So, what do you decide for yourself to say, today is a glider day? No, today is a paraglider day? What draws you in one direction one time and the other the next?
Wow, so I wasn't even paragliding at Pentecost. It's just that our club has the club planes, and they're eventually...
blocked, although I actually had the two-seater reserved for Whit Monday, but then I had a colleague with a broken hand and she said, yeah, I want to get into the air with the paraglider again. And I said, okay, we'll fly from Valais over to the Canton of Bern. I think it depends. So, obviously, the micro-flight days, you do those with the paraglider. Doing an hour of circling a cliff somewhere with the glider is first of all dangerous, not that fun, extremely demanding. So micro-flight days are reserved for the paraglider, hike-and-fly days are reserved anyway. You know, in the autumn there are often days, for example in Valais, where you can still get up to 4,000 in November, but with very small, few thermals.
You have to know how to get into those. Those are only possible with a paraglider. Then there are the Foehn days, which are reserved for the glider anyway. And then there are those days when the thermals over long distances are very good. That's when I'm already drawn into the glider. You know, if you have great weather from Switzerland to Monaco, you can cover massive distances with the glider. And that's how I think about it. And then there's also a bit of a social aspect. When I go paragliding with my son or my brother, it's a social occasion. And I say to myself, I'm sharing my passion with the family.
And then I don't go gliding.
I saw a picture the other day, I think on Instagram or something, where you were out in a glider with your son. I've now understood that you probably go tandem flying with him and take him along for the ride. What does your son like better, gliding or tandem flying, I mean with the paraglider?
I think soaring. He wants to become a line pilot now, and that's what's closest to it. Although with paragliding, he has the advantage of being allowed to fly alone already since he's 15. So he could do soaring too, but he's still in the training phase. I think he enjoys doing both very much. He's actually growing up with both at the same time. From the very beginning, he's been paragliding and soaring.
Do you actually fly differently, I mean, you have the comparison with your other soaring colleagues. Before you started soaring, you had already been paragliding for over 20 years. Do you fly in any way differently because you have that paragliding experience? Do you read the air differently? Do you read the terrain differently than a classic soarer?
Yes, definitely. I think at my club, there was a bit of a... how should I put it, a bit of friction at the beginning, because I—or rather, we have these rules, you always fly only in the cone where you come back, and then maybe once in the Jura, but certainly not in the Alps. And I said, you know, I've been flying in the Alps for 20 years. Why are you telling me now where there's a lee from the valley wind? I've known that for a long time. So I'm sure I progressed much faster in soaring than an average glider pilot. And that caused some... well, a bit of frowning, of course, among certain fellow glider pilots. But I think they eventually understood, because I—yes, I know every corner from Engadin to somewhere in France and
I know it all. And that makes a huge difference because when you know something, you fly there and you already know how it works.
That's the good thing. The bad thing is, I think sometimes I turn the glider way too much. Sometimes I think I still have the paraglider in my head.
You still want to go up to the cloud, when in reality, with the glider you'd say, "Nonsense, just fly straight 30 kilometers further, the next thermal is over there." With that, you can do three circles just the same and then you're off again.
I think sometimes that's a bit of a hindrance. The last time I was in Wals, three weeks ago, I saw these sailplanes diving down to 2,000 meters. I'm always hanging onto the cloud. And then I think, yeah, maybe it is a bit of a hindrance, not for the fun of it, but for the performance. You're just a bit slower with a sailplane. And I also have respect for off-field landings with a sailplane. Have you ever had one? No. No, I'm really very conservative.
So with soaring you fear the landing, but what is it that you're looking for with paragliding?
Yeah, I'm not afraid of landing, but I'm afraid of landing without a runway. Because if you come in at 90 and you don't see something, like a ditch or something, it takes very little and then there's at least some major material damage. And even if everything goes well—and it's good if everything goes well—you somehow lose twelve hours. You then have to somehow get home, find the trailer, drive back to where you are, disassemble the plane, pack it up, drive home again, and set it up again. Yeah, I don't want to spend my time on that.
Paragliding is of course much easier. You fold it up, put it in your backpack, get on the train, and head back home. Exactly. And
that's just something brilliant. You can just land anywhere with a paraglider. That's a huge advantage.
Sailplanes sometimes talk a bit disparagingly about paragliders. At least in Germany, there are certain terms, and maybe it's the same in Switzerland. They call them "tea bag flyers" or, oh, there go the "air buoys" again, because they just stand there in the sky like they're nailed down and you can only ever curve and circle around them. Do you experience that in Switzerland? I mean, when you're paragliding, or if your sailplane colleagues know you're out there with a paraglider, do they look at you a bit sideways?
Yeah, they say your colleagues were way too many up there in the air. They call them your handkerchiefs or the handkerchiefs and such. Yeah, that's for sure. It's always when you're sharing the airspace, right. Personally, it doesn't bother me. Of course, sometimes it's really difficult when there are extremely many gliders in the air. With the paraglider, you just have to dodge sometimes. I just find it a shame when the paragliders don't have a flight frame and then somehow fly into the cloud. They aren't aware that, at least in Switzerland, it would be legally possible for a glider to fly into the cloud, in the cloud flight zones. But nobody does that anymore because we all know there are deaths because certain paragliders simply go into them.
That's the only thing that bothers me a bit as a glider pilot. Otherwise, I can understand both sides. Both are fine, more or less. Everyone should just have FLARMs and at least not fly into the clouds.
You can act as a bit of an ambassador. How could we foster more understanding or more exchange between these two scenes? I think you can learn from both sides.
I think it would really do every glider pilot good to do a tandem flight with a paraglider once. And it does every paraglider pilot good to come along with the glider sometimes. I do that; I actually only take paraglider pilots with me in the glider. I don't look for pedestrians because, first of all, most paraglider pilots can handle it, the others would have to puke. Plus, the paraglider pilots get an impression of what it's like, having a white glider in front of the cloud, and another one without a flare. Simply so they get a bit more sensitized to gliding. Plus, of course, the gliding community is tendentially more
dying out. And I think the best pool to save soaring from dying out is the paraglider pilots. People who do both, or maybe even switch over sometime, are actually the best young talents for soaring.
So people like you, who say, paragliders, you'll also get older at some point, and maybe then you'll want to fly long distances more calmly than you have to do all the time there in Wallis with B-handle gymnastics. Come join us, come fly with us.
Exactly, exactly. And they already bring a backpack, or they learn much faster; they're usually also much more active because they've already practiced a hobby quite intensely before.
Let's change the subject. This year, you started a new "adventure," so to speak. You took a stake in AirDesign and are now the CEO. Exactly. How did that happen?
Yeah, exactly, I've been an importer for AirDesign in Switzerland for seven years now, and a while back, Martin Gosner approached me. He said, you, Stefan, and I—we're slowly getting into succession planning and all that.
Actually, the proof that you can work with your passion was my job as an importer for me. Before that, I told him I wasn't going to work in aviation because I didn't want to mix work and passion or mix my hobby like that. And then I realized, exactly seven years as an importer for AirDesign and I've always enjoyed it. And I thought, well, actually, yeah, why not? I had also founded a solar company, but then the market collapsed quite a bit last year. And then at some point I thought, yeah, okay, that might be a hint, maybe it's a sign. And then I told Martin last summer, okay, I'm ready.
If you didn't actually want to combine work with your hobby, why did you become an importer for AirDesign in the first place seven years ago?
That's a funny story. Martin had been pushing me even before that, and I said, look, I don't have the time, no time. At the time, I was in politics, I was on the Langenthal municipal council, and then I stepped down. That was a 20% position, and I told myself, look, I've been doing these 20% things alongside my main job. I don't want to fill them with my main job again, but with something completely different. And then I called Martin and said, look, I'll do it, just at a 20% capacity. That's the story behind it.
But now, the problem—or "problem" in quotation marks—was still there: you said you didn't actually want to combine your hobby with work, but now you have. What was the motivation for saying, okay, I'm mixing them anyway, I'm going for it?
I think, well, for sure the product is something I like, it's my passion project, the paraglider, and I already knew AirDesign from various products I've flown myself, and I thought, yeah, something completely, well, completely new. It was new in the sense of selling the paraglider too, not just using it. And I think I liked the challenge.
With the investment, you also moved the company headquarters to Switzerland. Originally, AirDesign comes from Austria and also has developers based in France. Why Switzerland?
First of all, for sure, because that's my legal system, which I've known for many years as a citizen and as an entrepreneur.
So for sure, I know it. I don't know the EU very well.
Secondly, Switzerland is just, what should I say? I always say, you Swiss, you shouldn't complain about your country. If you complain, go into politics and try to change something. We have such a small country and we have a very direct democracy.
That also means for me that we are more adaptable than the EU. We are also simply, how shall I put it, better positioned in terms of taxes and administration. Public debt is a huge issue for me. I just find, how can it be that a state can get so brutally into debt, while every company that does that goes bankrupt immediately? And in the EU, there are now several states where you can get massively into debt. And I don't really want to have a company in a state where, well, debt is actually future taxes. Because if the state then has to service the debt more and more, pay it off, or even just pay the interest, it either has to cut services or increase revenue.
And the revenue comes from taxes. And so, for me, Switzerland also represents a certain legal certainty for the future. Since, fortunately, we still have a debt brake. You guys have one too, I believe, also in Germany. Do you still have it? Or was it overturned?
Officially, they still exist, but there's constant discussion about whether they're being bypassed at least temporarily, whatever that means.
That's a point for me, although there are also people who say that a direct democracy is a
legal uncertainty, because the population can decide on something insane and then it has to be implemented. So, you can see it from both sides, direct democracy.
But a location in Switzerland, isn't that also disadvantageous if you're selling a lot into the EU and stuff like that? I always experience that when I get any packages from Switzerland, I still have to pay 20% customs duty or something like that. Or it has to go some weird way around, someone takes it with them to Italy because they happen to be there and sends me the package from there, and so on. So from that perspective, wouldn't a location in Austria be even better for you?
So you're absolutely right, and I've fallen into that trap, as Bernd Rüsch would say. I took the risk of wanting to serve the EU from Switzerland at the beginning. It's possible, but it's very disadvantageous. There are really way too many downsides. And that's why I founded the company in France right away, and now the entire EU is handled from France.
That means your company's registered office, the headquarters or whatever you call it—so Air Design AG, it's based in Switzerland, but you then have your sales subsidiaries or whatever, which are based in France.
Exactly, Air Design—unfortunately, I have to say—is the parent company, which is based in Wolfenschiessen in the Engelberg Valley, and Air Design Europe is down near Saint-Hilaire, so if you mean La Terrasse, the village, and from there, the entire EU is handled.
In terms of perception, I mean, originally from the history of Air Design's founding, it was always an Austrian company. Then, for a few years now, they've also been working together with the French colleagues there, and now you're in Switzerland. How do you think this company will be perceived in the future? Besides Advance, will Air Design eventually also be a "Swiss" brand, or how do you position yourselves there?
Yes, of course, in terms of culture, as you say, Air Design has had a strong foothold in France for several years now.
If you look at the last five or six years, it's actually an Austrian-French company. Of course, the headquarters have always been in Austria, but a lot of the communication—this funny way of positioning ourselves—actually came from the founders, but also from the people in France. The Gurzeuge have been developed in France since we started making them, and I always say, I sit right in the middle. I'm really right in the middle between the two locations, and I think culturally too, you know, between the French and the Austrians. From that perspective, it actually fits very well for me. And then, yeah,
how do you position yourself? It's not Made in Switzerland anyway, or it's not, right? Well, there is one small paraglider brand that is really handmade in Switzerland, but nobody knows it, it's so small. Is it Fly Fat, or what is it? Yeah, exactly, you know them, bravo.
Inevitably, I deal with the paragliding scene a bit, so I've already noticed that.
But many people don't know this, but they really are made in Switzerland. For us, it's, well, we are a Swiss brand, like Advance a bit less, because our development also takes place in France and still in the Zildertal with Stefan, right? So I would actually define myself as trinational. We can't just say we're only Swiss if a majority of the employees work in France.
And did you take over the company at a time when, from what you hear, the paragliding scene in general isn't doing so well economically right now?
What's the situation with Airdesign, and how do you see it for yourself? Will the market recover a bit, or what general future prospects do you see for the paraglider market? Speaking as an entrepreneur.
So Airdesign is a very, very solid company. I actually took it over during a period of strength. Not, not during a weak phase or anything. From this strength, this strength I have to...
continue. Our advantage is that we are very—let me put it this way—efficient. Relatively small, but not that small. So, you know, after our size, there are almost only one-man shows, right? And we are, we're still, let's say, structured, well-organized. Now, the transition, the big challenge right now is just this, or I have to set everything up again. There are some turbulences and such. This phase, but we're actually already finishing it now. We're coming back into a period of calm. And as I said, we can really leverage many strengths from the old founders to the extremely young team now in France, and my connections in Switzerland.
The market, I think, is pretty tough, yeah, and it's struggling. But our company is actually well-positioned. I think, well, if, how do you say, if the whole market goes down, we're certainly not going to double just like that, right? You have to live with the market. But I just think that in a world with so many digital experiences, the real thing is something incredibly cool, isn't it? And then I just think that paragliding won't be replaced anytime soon. Even in the crisis, I see, for example, in the USA, our sales are doing great.
Where people are saying, "Hey, they're in a crisis, their gas is twice as expensive and, and, and." But it's going great. Then I think, actually, as an industry, we're already crisis-resistant.
And the growing markets, they have the biggest potential. If you look at India, just imagine, if only one percent of people flew, that would be massive. Yes,
if they have a billion people, then you already have your 100 million who would want to buy gliders.
Wait, I think ten, right? Ten million, is that correct? One billion, one percent.
Yes, that's right. That was 100, 100 million is ten percent, one percent would be ten million. But ten million gliders would be three orders of magnitude more.
And then, of course, the question is, how can you participate in this market, exactly? I mean, the cars are like a prime example, right? There are surely many countries that buy a Tata, but there are still countries that buy a Mercedes or a BMW regardless, right? And that's why I think, India, China, Indonesia, also the African countries—eventually, they'll come, it's a long-term project. And then the market will take off very strongly again.
What kind of influence do you have on the company, or what kind of impulses can you set there? You have your development department, you have a Stefan as a designer and so on, so they have their ideas. Are you then mainly the market person who looks at how I can get the products to the people, where they can be sold, how I can reach 100 million Indians, or whatever? Well, ten million, no, just kidding. So, how can you develop that, or are you also really involved in the products in some way, are you involved there, do you also provide impulses regarding the product development accordingly?
For me, the CEO's main task is having the right team—having the right people working in the right environment, so the rules of the game, the
the vibe and just generally the whole structure of a company, that's my main task. But we are a small company, so I'm almost forced to be involved as well; I'm not a developer and I don't want to interfere too much, but of course, when we're prioritizing between five products, or what has to go to market first, I'm definitely involved. You always have too few resources in a company, that's normal, maybe it's even good that way because otherwise it would be boring for us, but where do you deploy the resources? And that comes directly back to the products, and I always say, I'm a power user and you can give me anything, I'll try it and I'm just one opinion, but still an opinion on the product.
You know, I fly every single one of our products.
If you look at your CV, your professional CV, you can see that you've changed positions very frequently, you've founded different companies, you mentioned the solar company earlier, you said you were in the construction industry, you even had a company in Panama and stuff like that, but you can always see that there's constant change. Every few years, you've looked for something new, more or less. Can that still happen with Air Design, or do you think, I'm getting older, I've been doing this for so long, I'm looking for gliding and now I'm looking for a company where I can say, this is what I'm into now, not concrete, but something that simply fascinates me because of the medium the company deals with, I'm going to stick with that.
Yes, well, I have to... I mean, you're probably right in a way, but you need to refine your statement a bit. I think, above all, I had many things going on in parallel, right? Most of the companies I founded, several of them are already ten, twelve, thirteen years old, or my company in Panama—I ran that for ten years, it still exists, the employees took over the shares. The drilling company, we operated that for 13 years, so you can't really say it was a one-hit wonder. Of course, I also founded some things and realized pretty quickly, okay, this isn't working. You haven't even seen everything on my CV yet, but I do think the fact that I'm now... I've become monothematic for the first time in my life.
You only have Air Design as a company now, and your Michu Vici GmbH, which you use to organize the Eiger Tour.
Exactly, regarding the Eiger Tour, you could still hold that against me, but it's actually in the same industry; it's a sense of touch with the customers or with our
Superusers, and given that I've become more focused, older, and calmer, I'm sure about the things I'm doing long-term with Air Design. I can really feel it now—if the world isn't ending tomorrow, I'm truly in the right place. I enjoy pretty much all the activities I do so much that I know I'll be satisfied in the long run. You know, when you have good young people coming up, I always say I can maybe transition into being a business angel at some point.
We have an extremely young team with us now, really, it's crazy, but it's cool. And it's also good to have a few old hands among them who have already experienced so many things, you know. Most of the things that can come up in business, I say, yeah, I've experienced that before. But you also have to be careful, because it's not always the same. Back then it was like this, now maybe you have to decide differently, but at least it doesn't scare me.
They are also different industries, which probably react a bit differently and so on. But if you look at it that way, a lot of things come through, including your initiatives. If you just look at the paraglider scene alone, X-Alps Academy, the Eiger Tour—that actually always shows other people what they offer in terms of what they want to promote. Now you're saying you're in a company with an incredibly young team and you enjoy seeing them blossom, have ideas, and that you can lead them and stuff like that. What is it that fascinates you about that, or where does it come from that you are such a, how should I put it, a people leader, a people enabler, the kind of person who pushes people forward?
Yeah, I think you just have that, I guess, how do you say, naturally, in your bones. I was always just like, there are people who are good at starting things, and their weakness is the detailed work—getting everything through to the very end. But I have this gift, and also the burden, which is a strength and a weakness at the same time: when you're so good at getting things off the ground, you just have to make sure you have the right people on board who can provide the consistency, who can think through the details and all that, and I have that, and that's why I feel so comfortable now.
I think my past plays a role in that too; you just get better at knowing which constellations are actually good, and I think I'm there now. And that's just what I'm good at, or I always say, if I were in the military, I'd be the soldier you send behind the border, and when you say go see what's out there or level the terrain, and then they come after. Yeah, it's just in my genes.
That means you see yourself as a sort of vanguard, a pioneer, a scout for the others who come after.
Yes, simply because, well, for me, changes aren't a problem or a shock, but a challenge. And when the world changes and as an entrepreneur you always have to react to the changing environment, then I enjoy that, I look forward to it.
Is that also something where you'd say you learned something for life from paragliding at this point, or did you already have these genes and this attitude before you ultimately started paragliding, where so much is required—you have to constantly adapt to new things and, as I said, every flight is different, where you always have to look at how I'm going to handle these conditions today?
I certainly had that in my blood or in my genes beforehand, but paragliding is definitely a great school for that, really. And I've always drawn parallels between competition and business life in the past. It's like, altitude is your capital, right? The higher you are, the more options you have. Then you can think about the strategy. If you're low, it doesn't matter at all if you think about where to go, whether you fly east or southeast; you just have to get up there first. And I always say, the competition participants are the other companies, and the weather is the global economy.
And everyone has to deal with this weather. You have individual competitors, where you might look at one and think, he was first yesterday, I have to make sure I stay with him so he doesn't fly into the finish line ahead of me. And then you have the weather, which is, let's say again in business life, suddenly a war in Iran breaks out, this and that happens—things we can't change, but we have to adapt to them and make the best of it. And thus, for me, paragliding and especially competition is a perfect training ground for business life.
That means the next project that might come your way is eventually a management school where you say, "Folks, you're all learning paragliding with me, and then let's see where we can get with this mindset."
So, that's actually a business idea I have sitting in my drawer, it's called the Academy of Willpower. And there, it would be a school where it's primarily about how I can better value myself in my school by doing what I actually want to do and not letting myself get distracted too much. How can I allocate my willpower so that I get as far as possible in exactly the direction I want to go. It's a small paper in my drawer. Academy of Willpower.
Alright, Michael, then I'm curious to see when you pull that paper out of your drawer and eventually... maybe never. Yeah, who knows, but maybe I'll just pull it out sometime. If it ever pops up somewhere, I'm curious to see how you'll incorporate paragliding as your vital life content into it, even if you become more of a glider pilot in a few years, since you say that in everyday life, gliding—at least cross-country gliding—is moving further and further away. Thanks a lot for your story. I think we've spanned a pretty colorful arc today in this podcast, but there was an enormous amount of interesting stuff in there. I wish you lots of luck and above all, lots of success with AirDesign. May you weather the difficulties that might currently exist in the market and then
...and achieve some good growth with AirDesign.
Thanks. Yeah, thanks to you too for your time. That was super interesting.
Podz-Glidz is the podcast of the paraglider blog Loglites. Both are projects that I have been running for years as a freelance journalist and passionate paraglider, completely independently and ad-free. This is only possible because there are people who appreciate my work and therefore provide me with support as patrons. Join in. With your freely chosen amount, you help me keep you updated on all the possible facets and personalities of this fascinating sport. You can choose the amount of your contribution completely freely. All further information and links on how to reach me via PayPal or bank transfer can be found on the page www.Lu-Glidz.blogspot.com under the "Support" section.
By the way, the next episode of Podz-Glidz is already in the works. Until then, your Lucian.