The day was tremendous. We had lift to, you know, 1213
thousand feet and the mountains were ahead of us.
It's a big range of rock and glacier and ice and deep valleys
with nothing but a river flowing through.
You put your glider in all kinds of shape and situations and
learn to deal with them and to a certain extent anticipate that
they're and that is the training that you need to fly a really
hot glider. What's up everybody?
Welcome back to another episode of Paragliding Atlas.
This time around we are navigating the topic of risk
versus reward. And in installment too, we have
a very special guest who also happens to be a very dear
friend, a very humble person as well to talk to, and most
importantly, a very competent paragliding pilot.
But the reason why he's a part of the show today is that he has
navigated the spectrum of risk versus reward with utmost
respect. And by that I mean that he has
pushed where he wanted to and held back where he had to.
I'm talking about none other than Subir Sidhu, a new name to
a lot of people, but a known person in the flying community
to the ones who have had the chance of sharing the sky with
him. Subir has lived the dream that
many of us manifest and that is progressing quickly.
And he has not only done it quickly, but he has done it in a
very safe manner as well. Accumulating more than 1500
hours in less than 3 1/2 years, Subir has made a name for
himself. From joining his first high
level competition and almost finishing in the top 10, to
scaling the tallest mountains in the world and chasing glory all
across the globe, this guy has nothing but value to add to our
power guiding knowledge. So tune into a very homogeneous
talk with one of the maestros in making in our sport, none other
than Subir Sethu himself. Savir Sidhu, what an absolute
honor to finally have you on the show, man, How are you?
Hey, I'm doing great, Andy. Thanks for having me on on the
show. It's really good to be here.
That's good to hear, Savir. I think you're one of those few
pilots who is who spends more time in the air than on the
ground. Mostly.
That's why it's so hard to catch you.
I've been trying to chase you for quite a few months now, but
I think it's inspiring to see your track logs and and all your
activity on X contests. What a life, man.
Thanks and I appreciate that. Great.
Just to just to get this going, what does airtime mean for you?
Like how and why do you chase it so hard?
Or what is this all about then? Yeah, so that's a number of
different things. At its most fundamental, I think
it's just joy. I just get a lot of pleasure
from being in the air, from exploring the world by
paraglider, seeing different sites, different mountains
particularly, and there's just intrinsic joy and therefore
motivation to just be in the air.
But also airtime to me means means progression, it means
learning. Every time I'm in the air, there
is something new that catches me by surprise and that kind of
adds it to my body of of knowledge, so to speak.
And yeah, it's just about about learning and about exploration
for me. I think this is one statement,
there's a lot of fan guide of pilots can resonate with in our
audience as well, that every single flight is so different.
It's so dynamic and it's so rewarding in its own way that
every time you get in the get in the air, it's it's a whole new
journey that you embark on. Indeed.
Yeah. But to be just for the
perspective of our listeners, I know you personally, most of the
Indian pilots or I think a lot of internationals as well know
you very well. But for everybody in your
audience, how long have you been in the sport and how many hours
have you accumulated already? What are the numbers that we are
looking at man? You sure?
So yeah, I started flying about 3 1/2 years ago in January of
2021 and I typically fly anywhere between 4 to 500 hours
every year since then. And my first year of course was
limited because I was having a lot of top to bottom flights.
But yeah, second year onwards it was 400 hours or more in all.
I have about 1500 hours at this point.
And the most of the continents all over the place in Europe,
in, in India, in the US, in South America.
And yeah, it's been a tremendous journey for me.
And these hours I would like to point out I I have accumulated
rather quickly but I have not jumped any step in the
paragliding progression. I started with a school wing
with an A wing, put 60-70 hours on it before I got a low B and I
put a good 150 hours on a low B before I go to high B and so on
and so forth. Couple 100 hours on AC wing.
Did quite a few Siv courses. I did 3 Siv courses within my
first couple years and from last year, basically I've been flying
higher spec wings. But I have to say I, I still
have my school wing, I still have my A wings.
And there are times I, I still take it out and it just gives me
great pleasure to, to fly that wing.
And so to me, it's coming back to the sheer joy and, and beauty
of flight is where it, it's at. And yeah, I've enjoyed every
step in my progression. There hasn't been a desire to
skip this step because I want to be somewhere else.
I really enjoyed every moment and I continue to enjoy every
moment of. Wow.
I think for our listeners who did not believe, let me
reiterate, that's 3 1/2 years more than 1500 hours in the air.
God damn it, man, what a life and what an amazing dedication.
And I think for those of for those of them who are wondering
why do you still have your school wings?
That's because Severe likes to fly the life out of the wing.
So they're practically not sellable anymore.
Yeah, all 500 hours are exhausted.
And the remaining ones are probably going out and packaging
and ground handling. So that's why those are mementos
and trophies of of glory and hard work, which you probably
deserve. But honestly, I wish this was a
video podcast. I could show our listeners the
the amazing smile that you have while talking about this and
it's so happy to see you grinning well, telling all of
these stories man, Super inspiring.
Thank you. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Andy. And yeah, I might say that you
put it in better words than than I can.
But yes, I I am very enthusiastic about flight.
That that's so nice to hear, Sumeer, but help me understand
this when you're chasing something with all your heart
and passion like that. First of all, take us back to
how the journey began. Like what sparked your
fascination? Like how did suddenly Subir
Sidhu come out of nowhere and said that I'm just going to go
at this as hard as I can and probably make it count every
possible way. Yes.
So that's pretty interesting. And so my first flight was a
tandem flight I did about 20 years ago.
And at that time, I was in a very different point in life.
I had young kids, I was in the middle of my career and I put
that away as something I would like to do at some point of time
in the future. And I basically never got back
to that till about four years ago.
I was on a family vacation here in the Alps and I took my whole
family out for a tandem flight. The wife, both kids, myself, all
four of us were in the air at the same time.
And it was just a fantastic experience and a complete
reawakening for me that what have I done?
I should have done this a long time ago and but fortunately,
the moment I got back home to Seattle, I found the closest
school and basically signed up for a course.
And to a certain extent that this energy and this drive and
this motivation comes from I, I in a sense, did not take up an
opportunity way back then, but now I want to make the most of
it. I'm relatively advanced in my
age. I'm about 53 now and I, I have
this sense of, I would say calm urgency, but there is an urgency
that there's only so much time and I would like to learn and,
and explore as much as I can in that time.
And, and yeah, I'm at it will with all my interest and
dedication. And, but I, I would say that
because I did somewhat of a rare animal perhaps in that I know a
lot of my friends and other pilots who, you know, at some
point of time in their careers decided they've had enough and
all they want to do is fly and they switch to flying.
In my case, I was actually pretty much done with my career
and I wanted to move on to the next phase of my life.
And I was just trying to find things to do.
And it's, I have lots of other hobbies and interests and, and
pursuits. But once I started paragliding,
it immediately caught my fancy and it checks just a lot of
different boxes for me and I'm sure for many other pilots.
And and I just followed it. And just to give a quick recap
of those boxes, it takes it, it gives a sense of, of purpose for
me, the sense of purpose comes from just trying to understand
and, and explore the world. It gives suddenly just pure joy.
But it also takes and intellectual curiosity, or you
may call it a need for, for an intellectual challenge and for
problem solving. And I've spent, you know, 25
years in, in the tech industry, which is all about finding
opportunities and finding problems to solve and, and ways
to solve those problems. And paragliding gives us you in
one flight. If you're doing a cross country
flight or some challenging terrain, it's basically an
endless stream of information and of problems to, to solve.
And that never gets old in my opinion.
No. Wow, what an explanation.
I think the first thing that comes to my mind is that even
though you're Indian by origin, but you're definitely not the
typical IT guy regardless of spending 25 years behind a
computer. What a transition man.
What a transition this is. Needless to say, this is
inspiring and reminds me of a saying called The Better Late
than never. The moment you have a chance in
your life to to pursue your meaningful goals, just go for
it. You never know how much fun is,
how much fun you've missed out, and how much fun there is to be
treated in time to come. So way to go, man.
Great. But so another thing that comes
to our mind is when you, when you're transitioning from a very
fulfilling, stable life onto something as exciting as this.
As you said, it's technical and it requires hard work.
It's very rewarding. How do you find placing your
trust in people while entering the whole new industry?
Because obviously, as per the theme of this episode, risk
versus reward for you, somebody who has, who has a fair bit of
knowledge how the world works. You've been with, you've been at
the top end of your game in whatever you were doing, be it
working in IT. And then you suddenly switch
over to a brand new industry, which is a complete, you're a
new beginner. So navigating risk versus reward
and identifying the correct people in your life and placing
trust. How did those kind of questions,
how did those challenges come to you and how did you navigate
your way around them? Yes, that's a very interesting
question. So fundamentally, I haven't
confronted with any new situation or new domain.
I like to rely on multiple sources of information.
And there's a saying in science that basically in science there
are no authorities. There's people who know and the
papers that are written that are reviewed by others and so on and
so forth. But everything and everybody is
potentially fallible. And so I just approached things
with with a certain degree of scepticism.
But that is positive scepticism. That's a scepticism to try and
understand as deeply as I can and not just take something at
at as gospel or face value. So I just approach it for that
mindset. But that said concretely, when I
started paragliding initially it was hard.
I simply went to the first school that was convenient and
close by and learnt from them. There were some good things,
there were some not so good things.
But very quickly I started, even in that set up, identify who are
the pilots who basically have a great reputation, who other
pilots think of as good pilots. Certainly there's some
credibility there and also results.
I was very fortunate that a former U.S.
National champion was an instructor in this school and
that adds a lot to the credibility.
And there is that and definitely people good pilots are probably
the best source of information if you can identify them.
I was super lucky that within the first few months of my
starting, I ran into two or three pilots who who were not
just extremely knowledgeable, but also very helpful.
But then I also rely a lot on just books really.
YouTube videos for sure. They're nice and handy and
convenient, but I go back to the books a lot.
I've pretty much the entire library of major books that have
been written on on, on paragliding, and I've gone
through most of them. But so these are the kind of
primary sources of information. But there's another thing I
would like to add, which is I think very key to progression is
a sense of humility, a sense of not being 100% sure of anything
myself. Always being open to the idea
that I'm carrying in my head is potentially, there's a certain
probability of it's correctness, but it's potentially incorrect.
And so that is allows them to keep learning from new
information that comes your way rather than just discarding it.
And in that sense, I think there is something for me to learn
from every pilot out there, every pilot I meet, regardless
of the skill or experience, In most cases, something positive
to learn. In a few exceptional cases,
something not to do. But regardless, there's an
opportunity to learn something from everyone.
And I just have a desire and a curiosity to find out what that
is that I can learn from, from this new engagement and from
this new opportunity that I have.
And again, I'm not sure if this is super clear, but one, one
thing that has added a lot to my progression that I can recommend
highly to people is to try within the limits of your
resources to try and fly as many different sites as possible.
Because every new site you go to, you meet newer local pilots
and some new Special Situations that a site has that the local
pilots will explain to you. And that helps greatly in your
overall body of knowledge. And it develops a comfort also
so that when you go to the next new site, you know how to assess
it based on all your previous learnings.
There'll still be something new. But you, based on your previous
learnings, you say, hey, these might be the risks, this might
be what happens. And then you correlated with
what the local pilots tell you and they'll no doubt add
something new. But all of this is helping
greatly the difference. Initially you asked me about the
number of flying hours. I think the number of flying
hours are important, but just as important is the quality of
those hours. Were they were they always doing
the same thing at the same site or were they doing different
things at different sites? And so I think that has been
very helpful for me. Got it.
I think just to sum it up, the first thing is look at the
testimonials that is check out the reviews about how
trustworthy the places where you're going and putting your
putting all your trust in. And secondly is try and gather
as much knowledge as you can from all the open source
trustworthy sources. Again, that is the key over
here. And the third one is be open to
suggestions and be open to learning something.
But at the same time, I, I think I, I can compare with my
progression and, and my early days that there has to be some
sort of barrier where you know when to filter out and which is
it. It's a bit too hard to build up
this barrier in early days. And especially if you're in a
younger age group, Let's say you're a teenage pilot or you're
somebody who does not really know how to navigate the the
people spectrum, where somebody who's 20 years folder to you
says that, all right, I've been flying for so many years, I've
been teaching then. And he comes out of the
statement in just because the age gap, you tend to give in to
whatever they're saying. So I think that is a very thin
line where you decide whether you want to give your trust 100%
to the person at at the school stage or in in the early
instructor stage. After building a bit of
experience, of course, it it comes easier.
So I think that is one thing that people can answer for
themselves probably. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's
Vince, said Andy. I agree with with that.
And just to add to that though, just like you said, a new
student should pretty much choose a good instructor or a
good school and trust them entirely because you're
essentially placed in your life in that person's hands at that
point and they know better than you.
But once you are out of kind of the school stage, you're now an
intermediate pilot, which by the way, most pilots will be for the
entire career. I, I very much consider myself
squarely in the intermediate pilot category.
There are very few pilots, advanced pilots.
And if anybody has any doubts whether you're on fast pilot or
not, you are an intermediate pilot.
So for all of us intermediate pilots, I think of paragliding
as an art and a science. There are parts that are pretty
much science in terms of rules thou shalt or shall not do.
And if you break those rules, you will pay the consequences,
if not in that flight, in some other flight where it was almost
exactly the same situation. It's just that the roll of the
dice was in your favor. So those ones are golden.
You don't break those. But there there's a lot of
paragliding that is an art. It's still evolving, it's still
not fully understood. And we are very lucky actually
to be in a sport at that stage of its development where there's
just so much new that pretty much nobody knows and people are
still feeling that out. It's very exciting actually.
And in those areas are the ones I would say I think all of us
benefit from keeping an open mind because these are not
necessarily safety related things.
These are here. Just how can you better or how
can you pick up better glide lines and such.
And the risk in those ones is that you might bomb out.
It's not Those are not life threatening, but they have
greatly in your progression if you figure those things out.
And those I would say keep an open mind, experiment, listen to
the session of some of the pilot, try it.
If it works, keep it. If it doesn't, discard it or
maybe try it again in some other situation.
But I think that is pretty. That is very important.
That's that's pure words of wisdom to be.
I think that you've put it very, very well that there are some
rules non negotiable. Stick to them or consequences
will be grave and hard. The other ones, they, the more
you work with them, the better the experience gets.
Nice, great, but severe. As you said, you had AI forgot
the term that you used, but you had a very subtle urgency.
What when you began the sport finally and you were getting
into it. So how how did you plan out your
hard work? What did what was your what was
your visualization like? What did you manifest this for a
while? Or was it just after the tandem
that had happened? Like how did hard work look like
in in your flying career? Yeah, so there are a number of
things. I would say suddenly the bug bit
me after the dandem flight that I mentioned and as I went back
to school and did a little bit of ground handling and then my
first flight that was instant love.
This is just amazing. I just want to do more of it and
I want to do it well. I would say there is something
in me which says if it's worth doing something, then it's worth
doing it. There's no doing something half
heartedly for me. And I really wanted to become a
competent. And one of my early inspirations
was a friend and a mentor of mine, Mitch Riley.
He's, like I mentioned, a former U.S.
Open national champion and has also done the Exiles, I believe,
in 2016. And a few things he told me I
just took to heart. And one of those was that there
is no such thing as too much ground handling that he would
like to me to see. He would like me to do at least
one out of ground handling per week, which means 50 hours, 52
hours in the year. And I took that to heart.
And I'm like, if I have to do that, then I have to track it.
So just like most pilots have a, a flight log and the ones that
don't, I would highly encourage that.
Everybody should have a flight log, but I have a kiting log
also. Every single kiting session that
I do, I log which wing I used, where was it?
How many hours did I ground handle?
And I, I maintain my ground handling log even now.
And I finished that first year and I went back to Mitch and
said, hey, Mitch, you'll be disappointed because I couldn't
do the 52 hours. I got to 39 And he's, hey, I was
just giving you a tough figure. 39 is great.
It's awesome. And I was like, OK, cool.
But but there is a sense of I think discipline that is helpful
in a lot of aspects of as long as you have the motivation, it's
just working out. You might envision a great body,
but if you don't work out, you won't have it.
And likewise in paragliding, you aspire to be a good pilot, but
it just takes a lot of work and dedication.
It's like going to the gym so you can become stronger.
And so there are a lot of things that you have to do that just
take discipline. And but to your point, if
there's some vision or some motivation, then the discipline
becomes easier. And for me, the motivation is
simply to see the world by foot and by paraglider.
And that means I have to be physically strong so I can hike
and that I become a good pilot so I can fly long distances.
And that is the motivation for me really.
That's amazing to. Hear So we this puts a thought
in my mind. Let's say all of us have heard a
term that's too much of something is bad.
And of course there's not. The more passionate you are, the
more further you raise the bar for defining too much for you.
But let's say when it came to balancing the the mental part of
the hard work, the physical part of the hard work, resting in
between. I understand you fixed a lot of
everything else in life so that you could be in a position to
push this that hard. But did you ever face the
challenge of having an imbalance in between them where you were
like, Oh my God, this is I'm pushing too hard and maybe I
need to figure out this. Like how did how did you
navigate those kind of days? So I would say while there might
be some truth that extremes unhealthy for me personally, I
don't think I've reached that point yet because there's
another parallel thought. I forget the name of the author
who basically says for somebody to become an expert at anything
takes about 10,000 hours of doing that thing.
You might have that. And right now I'm only at 1500
hours and 8 1/2 thousand more hours is going to take me a long
time. Till then, I'm not a quote UN
quote expert. And so I feel and another thing
is I have certain years of life experience behind me like you
mentioned, but I'm only at three, 3 1/2 years of flying.
And so I'm still in that early stage of this is exciting, this
is new, this is wonderful. And there is more for me to
learn than I have learned so far.
In fact, orders of magnitude more for me to learn.
And that keeps it fresh, that keeps it exciting.
And just to give you a concrete example, I have a background in
in adventure sports in general. I'm a Mountaineer, I'm a skier.
I just love being in the mountains.
I've done that for many years. And so there was a natural
attraction for mountains for me. And so as I started paragliding,
the natural thing for me was hike and fly.
I just did. I was at my happiest hiking a
new site, a new mountain and just flying off it.
And but I but that got a little old after a while because you
spend only so much time in the air.
And as I got hungry for more and more airtime, I switched to more
cross country flying. And then as I became slightly
better at that, I started doing competition flying.
And now, you know, my interest in competition flying is
actually waning a little bit. And I super passionate about my
new interest, which is acro, of which I know absolutely nothing.
And I'm going to start an acro progression this October in
Allotonies. So it's new, it's exciting, it's
different and it is energizing. Way to go.
Man, all right, watch out Acro boys, Subir is coming for you
with all his heart. And but I just want to backtrack
a tiny bit here to Malcolm Gladwell, if I'm not mistaken,
is the author who's who, who mentioned the 10,000 hour
theory. And he very clearly says that
10,000 hours are really effective if you are being
washed by a coach and your mistakes are being picked out so
that you follow those 10,000 hours in a certain way, like you
don't go off track. So when you have been chasing
all this air time and you have been pushing your limits and
trying to become a better version of your, of yourself in
in the air, have you had a chance to be mentored or being
coached or being watched upon by someone?
And if yes, then if you can talk a little bit about that, that
that side of your journey 100%. I think Maxwell Gladwell.
You said yes, I think Malcolm Gladwell is, is right, Malcolm.
Gladwell is, is is spot on. He's 100% correct because
there's a saying in in golf, for example, that if you practice a
lot of the wrong thing, you become great at at the wrong
thing. And so it's absolutely true, and
I do have a number of mentors who have guided me from time to
time and who still do. There is one more thing though,
that nobody is going to be watching you all the time except
you yourself. You are watching your flying all
the time and you have to be your first and best critic.
Anytime anything happens that catches you that hey that wasn't
right and a slightly bad take off something your wing goes
side with in the air. You have to not just brush it
off saying yeah that's OK, let me just move on.
You have to 1st acknowledge that I made a mistake and secondly
try to figure out what that mistake was.
And suddenly your body of knowledge might not be enough to
understand that. And at that point, you go to
your friends, your advisors, your mentors or any pilot who is
further along in the progression than you are, and you review
your situation with them and ask them for perhaps what have
happened. If if you have video footage,
then that is very helpful. But even otherwise, just talking
through that incident is extremely important.
And I would go back to this flight log comment that I
mentioned earlier. One of the reasons your flight
log is so important is that when you fill your flight log entry
at the end of your flight or at the end of the day, you try to
at least identify some mistake that you made that you could
have done better or some other insight that you have from that
flight. Because if you don't learn
something new from every flight, then while that flight was fun
and joyful and for sure, and those are good enough reasons to
do that flight, from a pure progression perspective, that
flight was not helpful. And so I think the discipline of
maintaining a flight logs just allows you to reflect on your
flight and put something into words of what you're learning
was. And that I think is extremely
helpful. So you have to be your first and
best critic. I would say in a nutshell, just
be true to. Yourself and stay disciplined
and these are like two of the foolproof ways of progressing
safely and on your terms I think yes and.
Again, I would say not to brush off something.
Let's say you pulled up your wing, the wing didn't come up
right and you're still forced a launch and and you got away with
it. The lesson from that shouldn't
be, that's all. OK, I got away with it, it's
fine. No, the outcome should not
determine whether there was a learning opportunity or not,
because you do the exact same thing another time.
Some other little variable will be bad enough that you might not
have the successful launch, for example.
And so we have to learn not from the outcome of incidents, but
from the fact that an incident happened, even if the outcome
was favourable, and try to understand what happened.
Why did it happen? Did I know something was going
wrong and I still made a poor choice?
In which case I need to whack myself on the wrist and not do
it again? Or do I not understand what
happened? In which case I need to go and
talk to another pilot to to understand what might have
happened. And so this is is key.
Got it, I think. That just makes it very simple
for our listeners to understand how to how to make sure that you
stay on the good side and the more fun side of the sport as
and when you wish, or take to the skies every more every now
and then. But while we're talking about
staying, staying safe and making it count every time, you said
you've done a ton of SIVS. Can you just brush us?
Can you just tell our listeners the role of safety training in
acrobatics and flying in general?
Because I've heard, I don't know if this is a perception or not,
but majority of good pilots who are, who we see on Instagram and
Facebook, they have an acro background.
And everybody keeps on saying, do SIVS do keep keep on doing
all of that. But money is a big thing in this
sport. And as a pilot, you practically
cannot afford to keep on going to SIV clinics.
It's you'll burn a hole in your pocket and you'll eventually
give up. So how do you navigate that side
of the sport where you are not being washed by everyone every,
in every collapse? You just have to take your
glider up on a lake and do those things yourself.
And of course, you're, you're, you want to stay.
You're going to be the safest pilot.
But yet safety training in acrobatics is an essential part
to the progression. So how, how did you navigate
this? And what, what advice would you
give to every other pilot who's trying to follow your footsteps?
Yeah, I. My assessment is that SIV is
intrinsic to save flying before an incident happens in the wild.
If you have done an SIV or few and have a better understanding
of handling more situations, you will just have better outcomes.
And I would advocate pilots were flying and have aspired aspired
to fly cross country to do an SAV more early in the
progression. I see.
But at the same time, I won't say this kind of
one-size-fits-all. There might be pilots who just
do with, you know, coastal soaring on a on a soaring site
with laminar winds and that's all they want to do and that's
fantastic. The other pilots who might just
want to occasionally fly their home site in gentle conditions,
morning evenings, just to enjoy some of your time.
They're busy with their lives. They have other priorities.
I think it's OK for those pilots to fly safely in known good
conditions to to manage that risk.
But any pilot who's common flying and is flying cross
country, you are essentially seeking turbulent air.
We are all naturally afraid of turbulence, but guess what a
thermal is A thermal by definition is turbulence.
And if we are actively seeking turbulence and putting our
glider into turbulent air, and this thing about adventure that
sometimes you go looking for adventure and you find it.
And occasionally you might find this really rough air and your
glider goes sideways. And when it does, you can
reliably recover a glider only from situations that you have
seen before. If your glider is in a
configuration that you've never seen before, your chances of
recovering from that are pretty low actually.
And your best bet is to throw your reserves.
And we can talk about that as a sub topic down the road.
But the point is, if you're flying in turbulent air, you
should have put your wing into different configurations and
recovered from them. And that's really what an SIV
is. And for a pilot flying thermal
or cross country I would say within the first probably 50 to
100 hours of flying I would recommend they they do in SIV.
And for pilots who've never done in SIV before.
For most pilots there are exceptions, but for most pilots
the experience is going to be borderline terrifying.
For some it's just fun, but for most there is some degree of
panic involved and yourself not so much as reliable.
And you have the ability to calm yourself, assess and give the
proper input at the proper time and so on so forth.
And you just have to go through your first SIV to get a better
sense of that. And it's in your second SIV that
you really learn a lot, in my opinion.
And that was suddenly my experience.
But I've spoken to other pilots too.
And so I would basically advocate the first SIV in 50 or
100 hours and the second SIV as soon thereafter as possible, not
wait for the next year. And that's just the price of
admission in my opinion for thermal flying, gliders are
expensive gliders and full kids cost.
We know what they cost, but proper training is, I think
incredibly efficient in terms of our value and how confidently
you then fly those tools. And rather than investing in the
next. This topic never comes up in my
opinion here. For most pilots, they'll buy a
wing or two, then they want to at some point many pilots
progress to the next wing, but that next wing is going to be
very expensive. That SIV and other training or
let's say a cross country clinic is is less expensive than a new
wing and it will help you fly whatever wing you're flying
today in A or B or C Much, much better than spending the money
to buy your next level wing. Performance doesn't come from
the wing. Performance comes from the
expertise of the pilot, and the more you invest in your own
expertise, the better your performance will become that
makes total. Sense to me I, I think that
that's the easiest way to put it.
I think it reminds me of saying the more you bleed and and
practice the less you breed in war or something like that yeah.
So when it comes to navigating the risk versus reward and
glider handling and all of this I, I can I can share my
experience. I finally upgraded to A2 liner
and I love pushing the bar. I wouldn't say that it comes out
as intuitive, but it's it's something that I'm very
comfortable with. But then the moment I enter
turbulent air and controlling the wing with brakes is much
more reassuring than controlling the wing with bees.
Now the point is where do I draw a line that this at this level
of turbulence, so this level of movement, bees are no longer my
comfort zone. Because you can be mentally very
strong. You can be all motivated to go
out and push the limits. But then SIVS will answer a lot
of these questions. I completely agree, but there
are sometimes like we see best of the best pilots, even triple
C wings get collapses in in big goggles and unfortunately some
of them have to pay a pretty heavy price for it.
Of course, there's a level of uncertainty that we will never
be able to define because the sport is still developing,
there's not enough data and all the other reasons.
But how have you managed answering this question for
yourself That all right now I need to calm down.
This is going beyond my skill and comfort.
And this is where I, I reduce my reward because the risk is too
high. Yes.
There are a number of things in what you've said and they were
all very important. I'll just address your last
question first to give a concrete example.
Like I said, I invested in training SI VS and and I
progressed through all the wing classes.
One thing that I realized as I was progressing and also talking
to daily experienced pilots was I think the answer to the
question when is it right for a pilot to step up to the next
wing class? This is a very common question
and there are many considerations.
Again, we're talking about cross country flying here or or
competition flying, perhaps not echo or anything else.
So for cross country flying, the answer to that question
basically boils down to you can potentially step up to the next
wing clause if you are comfortable flying the full
speed range of your current glider.
It's as simple as that. And your full speed range is not
from trim, but from min sync all the way to full bar.
This is the speed range of your glider.
If you're not comfortable flying this your current glider in this
entire speed range, you will not benefit from stepping up to the
next wing class because it's not the wing that gives you
performance. Like I said, The thing is within
reason. Most gliders from pretty much a
lobby all the way to for sure AD or even a triple C at trim, they
all vary between 38 to 40 kilometers per hour.
They're all about the same speed.
The performance of the glider class comes from bar as we know,
and particularly from the polar curve and what happens to the
glider when you're pushing full bar.
If you're not going to be comfortable flying the glider on
full bar and also know the stall point and fly the glider at min
sync safely, you should focus on learning to fly your existing
glider better. That's the bottom line.
So for me personally, I was comfortable all the way to D.
I flew the Zeolite and then the Zeno and I was like totally
comfortable. I have about 700 hours on two
different Zenos and two different sizes.
And then when I stepped up to a triple C wing, I could see that
I'm immediately not confident. And I'm not confident in on full
bar in the same turbulent air that I was confident on my Zeno.
And I was like, this is not comfortable.
This is not safe and I don't want to be doing this.
And I asked one of my mentors this question, Hey, how do I
overcome this? How do?
Should I spend more hours flying my D glider or should I just
deal with it and become more comfortable flying the Enzo in
perhaps calmer conditions 1st and so on and so forth.
And he said neither. Neither will be helpful.
What will be helpful is accurate.
And that my friend, is one of the reasons why I'm starting
acro, not because it particularly excites or
interests me that I want to be doing all these cool tricks,
which might well have end up being the case, I don't know as
yet, but because I want to become better at wing control.
And what Evan told me was it's not that.
And again, I don't know for sure, I have an open mind about
this, but he said it's not about the tricks themselves that how
to do those tricks that make you better at wing control.
It's the process of learning acro.
You put your glider in all kinds of shape and situations and
learn to deal with them and to a certain extent anticipate that
they're about to open. And that is the training that
you need to fly a really hot glider comfortably that.
That makes total sense. As you mentioned earlier that if
you have seen your wing in that configuration, the chances of
you recovering it are much more higher than you being caught up
by surprise and just being taken aback by by what's going on.
And I think that is one of the reasons why other people are
also good acro pilots, yeah. Absolutely.
Andy, I did want to touch on one more topic that you had brought
up in this question, which was being comfortable on brakes
versus comfortable on the rear risers.
Now 22 liners are are special beasts because they are very
direct. When you press more bar, your
angle of attack becomes lower, the glider speeds up and if you
hold that bar and you pull the risers without distorting the
shape of the wing, your angle of attack becomes greater and your
speed reduces. And so to a certain extent for a
trim. And after that you push half bar
and you pull the risers an equivalent amount, your glider
is exactly a trim in configuration and in in speed.
And so this direct handling is extremely useful and developing
a comfort for it is extremely handy because when you pull the
brakes, it's actually distorting the shape of the wing.
It's stealing performance. The whole reason you're flying a
hot glider, A2 liner C and so on so forth is because you want
that performance. And it's the risers using the
risers that give you control without sacrificing performance.
And it's just phenomenal. And you do get comfort with it
as as you keep using them more. Like I said, I have 700 hours on
the Zeno, another 150 hours on a Zeolite.
In all of that at this point I am actually it quite sound stage
more comfortable on the riser simply because I've spent so
much time on them than I'm even with the brakes.
It doesn't that. Makes sense, but for people who
have never flown A2 liner, pulling risers on a three liner
is a whole different world. Takes shit loads of energy.
The profile does not distort that much but do you ever get
tired for I've seen your flight logs you fly for hours and
hours. So 2 liner flying in rear riser
control. Does it tire you out more
muscularly? Not mentally it does.
It does. There is more pressure on at
least the two liners that I fly. Keep in mind that wings are
different. There are some 22 liners in
particular where there is less pressure on the rear risers, but
still it's more than brakes typically.
Yeah, so it does get tiring, but.
But this brings us to another topic of of flying endurance.
Endurance flying I think is something that needs to be
developed both mentally as well as physically.
And for a cross country pilot who wants to fly far, it's a
good area to invest in. And for the simple reason, and
again, I'm not saying that everybody should inspire, it
should aspire to to fly great long distances.
But if you do aspire, if you do want to do 100 kilometre flights
or 200 kilometre flights, for example, entirely your choice.
But if you want to do that, then you have to do certain things to
achieve those goals. And one of them is to be able to
fly long. The simple math is that typical
intermediate pilot flying AB or C ring will have an average
cross country speed of, on a decently good day, 20 to 25
kilometers per hour including tumbling and all of that.
And so if you go to fly 100K, you'll be flying for four or
five hours. It is, in my opinion, much
better for pilots at their local sites, even if they are not
conducive to flying long distances, but they work for
long enough duration to launch and just fly for two hours.
If they fly for an hour or fly for three hours, four hours,
five hours doing essentially nothing but tumbling up, being
goes down. Or if you're lucky enough to
have at least a couple of features and a valley crossing
to just do the valley crossings back and forth, tumble up,
understand thermals. Just spend a great deal of time
in the air because there's no substitute for airtime, just for
learning, but also to build endurance.
And so if you're super comfortable flying for four or
five hours when you launch, it can be mentally exhausting like
you said, then when the day is there and you are at a site
where 100K is possible, you don't have to worry about the
flying for five hours, but you just have to worry about the
rain and the thermals. And so that just comes with,
with practice is as simple as that.
There's no better way to build arm strength, I think than just
by doing the activity that you like.
You could certainly go to the gym and and so on and so forth.
But but I mostly just fly indeed and you're.
Pretty good at it as well. So we these are golden pieces of
advice that you have given out to our community here and to all
the audiences. But before I move on to the last
part of the show. So we, there was one topic that
I feel we really need to address.
And this is a challenge that a lot of us feel but not a lot of
us talk about. We just shy away from it.
And maybe it is peer pressure, maybe it is personal or
whatever, like preference, but burnouts are real in every
aspect of life. And I think paragliding is no
different when you chase something with all your heart
and soul and when you put in so much effort into it, if things
go your way, nothing like it. But if they don't, and if they
take a bit longer, there are there is a whole different
mental challenge that you have to deal with in in staying
motivated, convincing yourself that yes, it's all worth it and
and keeping on going. You have been at the helm of
things for long enough to to face all of these challenges, I
believe, especially when you once you've flown that long, how
have you navigated this topic and if you have had a chance to
face anything or, or were you just simply too excited in life
to even let this come close to you?
I think. The reality is, as as you said,
what has worked for me, because I get bored very easily, I can't
keep doing the same thing again and again.
So as long as things are different, I stay happy and I
stay motivated. And for me, there's just so much
variation is in paragliding that that that has not come to pass.
And again, granted the resources to to live the dream like you
said. But for example, every new site
is fresh and interesting for me. I like nothing better then going
to a new site and have my first flight at that site, even if
it's a top to bottom. In fact, quite often it is a top
to bottom because I'll go early in the morning and launch just
because I'm so excited and I just wanted to fly.
And almost always my first flight at a new site is a top to
bottom and then I go and have another time of flight later in
the day. But but that's what keeps it
interesting for me. And also like I mentioned, just
trying different things, like I couldn't be more excited about
trying acro now. It's a whole new area, it's a
whole new things. It's all related to paragliding,
but it's almost a little ecosystem and the community of
it's own and which I want to engage with and as long as all
these varieties and variations are there.
And the other thing about this, Andy, to be honest, is the
community aspect of paragliding, just meeting new people, hearing
their stories, getting some ideas about where to go fly next
or something interesting from them that that gives me a lot of
energy and it keeps me motivated now that that's so.
Nice to hear and just to reiterate, that is why Para
Landing Atlas exists to to share the stories and share the joy
with everybody across the globe, regardless of whether you're
travelling to a place or not. Just TuneIn to the show on
Spotify, click play and you will get all that you wish for on the
landing side or to take off or even in the air.
But that's so you to put it in that manner.
So we before we wrap up for the day, I usually ask this is a
tradition or it's just becoming more of a kind of a tradition.
Now I ask my guests to to share 11 flight or one story from
their lives that that has stuck with them for a while.
Could be a glorious one, could be a one filled with struggle.
So if you have anything that comes to your mind that you
think is worth sharing with the audience, we'll be very thankful
to put it out. Boy, that's a tough one, Andy.
There have been so many Good flights with so many good
pilots, but one flight that does stand out for me.
It's certainly not the longest flight, but it was a flight with
a good friend of mine, Jesse Williams, and we flew 120
kilometers from essentially in, in Washington state, USA, from
one side of the Cascade Mountain range to the other over for over
three hours. On that flight.
We were on such committing terrain that there was basically
no decent landing option. We read the, we launched, we
flew for about half an hour, 45 minutes over a nice Ridge, a lot
of bailouts. There were just, there were like
4 or 5 pilots that launched and then about 45 minutes into that
flight there was Jesse and and me and others turned back and we
were on radio and we read the day and we both agreed on what
we are seeing. The day was tremendous.
We had lived to, you know, 1213 thousand feet and the mountains
were ahead of us. It's a big range of rock and
glacier and ice and deep valleys with nothing but a river flowing
through. The only potential bailout would
be some small river bank somewhere, but the rest was just
trees, no meadows, nothing. And so we exchanged glances, so
to speak, got onto the radio and said yes, we are doing it.
And we pushed. And for three hours we were over
this dramatic landscape and we were working together as a team.
Sometimes Jesse would push ahead, find a thermalite, join
him. Sometimes I would push ahead.
We were just leapfrogging each other, just working together,
finding those claims. And it was just a we were in the
zone, so to speak. And but at the same time, the
relief when we were out of the range on the other side and they
were wide open valleys with meadows ahead of us was just
tremendous. Yeah, that will live with me for
a long time. Wow.
Well, I think that is the epitome of navigating risk
versus reward with with sheer confidence, skill and
responsibility and a teamwork. I believe.
I'm pretty sure it would have been different had you been
going there solo or probably with someone else or something
like that. Usually different.
I would, yeah, that anyone today would not attempt that flight,
that particular flight by myself.
And to your point, I have a lot of respect for Jesse.
Jesse is also a former Excel pilot and his knowledge of that
area, like you said, his preparedness and we had three
kits and emergency BV gear and all that, but still the risk was
there and at the same time the shot was there and and we took
it. Wow man.
Quite inspiring and Needless to say, something which all of us
wish we can do like those flights which give you the
excitement, but always end up with a with a happy face and a
learning that you can safely walk away from.
I think severe. On that note, we have come to
the end of this show so that we know you're into acro.
We know you're doing that to get on triple C's.
But if you have to tell us what's next on your horizon
before before we get off of this trip.
Yes, I do have a dream actually. So all this business about acro
and fine triple C gliders and flying competitions is for me
like going to the gym so that I become better and I become
stronger and I become more competent.
The real dream that I have is adventure flying and exploration
and exploring mountain ranges across the world.
And the most concrete sort of vision of that dream I have is
that I'm too old to do the ex Alps for example.
I just don't have the speed on the ground.
But I would like to fly the classic ex Alps route from
Salzburg to Morocco as one. An uninterrupted journey to just
have my backpack with my glider and clothes and whatever else I
need for that trip started from one end and over a few weeks
flying just the good days, not taking an unnecessary risk.
Just do that whole end to end journey as as one effort.
So that is something concrete that I want to work towards over
the next 2-3 years and we'll go from there.
Amen to that man. I think I'm going to put your ex
contest link in the show notes for people to stalk you there
get inspired to me, Needless to say and man you're the way you
share things there way your knowledge is there.
It's such massive thanks from all of us.
I've found a lighting Atlas and I'm pretty sure the community,
all the audience members also appreciate that.
Needless to say, the moment you have more stories, we are more
than happy to bring you back on the show for Round 2.
Thank you for that. Vote of confidence and thank you
for for this time, Eddie. It's been a pleasure talking to
you. And if all our members of our
our flying fraternity, even if they just take away one thing
that that they relate to or otherwise thing they would like
to work on, I think our time would be very well spent indeed.
Subir. May you continue to touch the
sky with glory as you have. Thank you.
Bye.