www.FlyingMax.com – Paragliding

After the

“Flight with the Balloons“flight, we managed to get one more flight from St. Hilare and then headed to the Dolomite’s. By the way, Mik’s video had over 26000 views in the first 7 days, which I was very surprised by. A massive low pressure system moved over Europe and the week for flying in the Dolo’s did not look very promising. The tour started with a hike around the 3 Zinnen. The day after we could fly for hours at Col Rodella. Then we had a day of hiking at Fasso Falzarego and the Piz Boe. Penny, Carrie and Dave spend one day in Venice which was a amazing trip on its own. Even if you can not fly, the Dolomite’s are spectacular and always worth a visit or just a couple hours away from other amazing places like Venice. Before the tour finished, we still got one more day of great flying and some people managed to fly to the Marmolada and to

fly back to the hotel in Arabba. All in all it was a great week.

After the Dolomite’s we headed north and visited the main office from Nova near Innsbruck. Dave was very excited to help to get

his Ion2 tuned with their computerized tuning system. The days after we flew at the Brauneck (bei Lenggries) and had a good time with our tour guide Mik and his family. Thanks again for your

time Mik. The last 3 days we spend in the Allgaeuer Alps to fly and to check out the castle, ruins, food and the last day/night we had a very good time at the Oktoberfest in Munich. Now I am back in Sillian to get ready for one more week in the Dolomite’s.

For this years Dolomite/Germany tour we started at St. Hilare at the “Coupe Icare“. Wow, explains it all!! Mik, Toni and Hannes from Nova organized tents and thermo-mats for us, and showed us around, showed us where to camp and gave us all the “inside” details of what to do and what was going, during our stay.

Thanks again for all your help. The Coupe Icare is a must for every light aircraft pilot. I have never seen so many people attending a flying event. I heard that they had about 100.000 visitors. I am not sure if it is true, but the take off and landing sites were jam packed, traffic was blocked up for kilometers, and pilots of any kind were seen in the air for 3 days. The flying expo was amazing and it was super interesting to see what the manufactures are offering and planning for the future. The parties in the evening were just awesome with some wild bands and performers. The evening light up was fantastic and we really loved the mini hot air balloons. We also managed to get some flights in and the most amazing flight was in the early morning (with fog) flying around hot air balloons. See the video (from Mik) and pictures below.

paraglider meet hot-air ballons @ coupe icare 2012 from Mik Broschart on Vimeo.

Fall is one of my favorite flying seasons. This is the time of the year to give lessons as the conditions are mellow and way more relaxed then during the spring and summer season and great for “hike & fly” as it is not to hot for hiking and still having good conditions for nice x-country flights. So far August and September (until mid September) just was a “blur” with all the activities we did. Besides flying, we did a lot like camping in the west Kootenays, Stand-up paddle boarding, multi-day canoe trip down the Columbia River, fishing, hiking, exploring, partying and so on.

Now we are getting ready for our “Fly the Alps” tour. This will be very exciting and fun. Penny and I will travel with a couple Canadians to St. Hilare to the Coupe Icare and then we will be guiding for www.BlueSky.at in the Dolomite’s. After the Dolomite tour, we will be traveling to Achensee to visit Nova to check out what they are working on and fly at their flying sites. After the Achensee we are traveling to the German

Alps to fly over the fairy tale castle Neuschwanstein (see pictures and more info at https://flyingmax.com/dolomite-tour/). This tour will be finished off with a visit at the October Fest in Munich. After this I will be doing another Dolomite tour (also with some Canadian’s) for www.BlueSky.at and right after this I will participating at SIV course at Gardasee.

A day after the SIV, Steve Nash (UK xAlps pilot) and I will be holding a xAlps workshop for Nova junior pilots from Mt. Blanc following one of the xAlps routes. The following weekend will be the Nova pilots meet in Austria to finish off the European trip. All this will be jam-packed into a 5 week period. I will be posting pictures and posts during the trip.

The dinner and party was at the Lakeside Pub and was a lot of fun. The “Electric Squirrels” did a great job to keep the dance floor busy.

To get more update/results and to keep updated (click “like”), go to

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lakeside-Event/148779641862570

I used to hate paragliding “comps” (competitive events), but started to enjoy participating in them since I was at the”Serial Cup” last year in Slovenia.

The main reason why I did not like them is that you had to fly a hot glider and the guy with the biggest balls had the best chances. This statement can easily backed up with the accident statistics.

At the last years “Serial Cup” it was fun, safe and very educational as the tasks where designed for average pilots flying average wings.

Following are some questions which cover what I like and not like about competitions.

Why are we going to competitions?

I think to have fun, meet new people, measure your self (same category of wings, tasks and conditions), experience and share the same with your peers.

What do I not like about competitions?

Can easily push you flying in conditions you normally would not fly in. It also can make you use equipment you should  not be flying and can make you a nervous pilot.

I just came back from the Canadian Paragliding Nationals in Pemberton.

I only could join the event for a couple of days as I needed to head back to do my part for the upcoming www.LakesideEvent.com. Pemberton is a great site and has super nice people. Thanks again to everyone for your hospitality and kindness. I loved it and and I will be back again.

Now thinking about the Nationals a couple days after, the only part I did not like too much (and this has nothing to do with the site and organizers) is that the Nationals are advertised for everyone, but the tasks are designed that only by about 10-20% of the participants make goal. Less then a quarter of the pilots were using the high end “D” wings which do have a definite advantage to finish the tasks and a big part of the remaining pilots get discouraged. It was interesting to observe how many people measured themselves in what they fly and how a lot of others where not so proud to state they would “only” fly a “B” rated wing.

I think the overall concept of Paragliding competitions need to be evaluated.

Right now we do have a hand full of pilots training for competitions and using the best available equipment, then we have the “wana be” comp pilots flying wings they should not fly and then we have the average to good pilots flying “B” rated wings.

If I would compare this to the car racing world, this would mean our competitions are done by Formula 1 pilots, “wana be” Formula 1 pilots/wings, “standard sports car” wings and pilots.

Seeing it from this perspective, this does not make a lot of sense.

I am all for the “Formula 1” races (wings/pilots) and they should compete at the “Paragliding World Cup” series only and the rest should focus on the main group of people the organizers are advertising to.

With this statement, I like to stress that I am in full support of the organizers of the current Canadian Nationals in Pemberton, but I think we need to re-think to who we want to cater our only official Canadian Paragliding competition to, in the future. I think we have a lot of recreational Canadian pilots who like to go to a competitions to learn, have fun and maybe to evolve into the professional paragliding circuit.

from Mt. Swansea.

Click here for more pictures from BlueSky.at

Yeahhh,  Penny’s new Ion2 finally arrived and she flew it last Sunday with a big grin in her face. Even this eagle (behind her) had to fly with her to believe what he saw.

We are very excited about the whole development Nova is focusing on.

Last October the kids, Penny and I had the pleasure to be at the last Nova-Pilots meet at Fiss in Austria. It was a fantastic place and we all enjoyed the area, people and the great service we had. Katia and I lucked out to win the first prize (weekend in Fiss) by kicking the soccer ball into goal at our landing, see the pictures below.

Anyhow, a lot of people were surprised when Hannes announced during the meet that they are working on a new Low 1-2 wing (Ion2) instead of a new high end wing (Triton2). Hannes stated that the 2-3 wings are going through a lot of changes and he is more excited to show what you can do today with a low end 1-2 wing.

A couple month later, the result of the Ion2 (low end 1-2 wing) was enormous, the performance and handling in this class is outstanding. All the words and hype got now backed up with a 223 km FAI triangle flight last week. No one ever flew on a wings you can use to teach people on this far. Now to top it off, Nova released the new Prion2, which is a beginner wing which is used mostly in schools. Well, this wing is not only for schools, it has just about the same performance like the Ion2, which means you should be able to do a 200 km flight as well.

The very interesting result of this, is how students are now looking at buying wings. I was running a beginner to novice paragliding course the last 10 days and normally people are looking for cheap used wings to get started and once they have a couple hours under their belt to upgrade to a 1-2 wing and then start with cross country flights. This approach is now changing as you can skip the first step and get stated right away with a wing which is save to learn on with a great handling and the performance to fly far and long from the get go.

Well done and thanks to Hannes and his team.

boat racing. Penny Powers took home the trophy this year and she is the first female on the trophy. Well done Penny. The kids were not so happy with me as I did not land in the target with them tandem on our first flights. Thanks also to everyone who dressed up, and came with their costumes. Karen had the best costume and I forgot the name of the character who she was….again, see in the pictures below who she was. If anyone has some pictures they would like to share, please send them to me or contact me to give you access to this album.Thanks to Panorama Mountain Resort, Calin Comaneseu, Rick Cowley, Jason Chychal, Raul Sanchez, Brett Yeates, Dennie Shipley, Dannie Wolf, Sandor & Nikoletta, Stew Cabbledick, Andy Gamp, Dominic Hughes, Dave & Carrie Corbin, Janet Morris, Bob & Natalie Gardner, Karen Girouard, Chad Chudyk & Mary, Nathan Livingston, Mike Waddington and Sherie Kark, Chris and Kari Wilson, Frank & Tracye, Jeff Grieve, Jimmy, Max & Penny, all who helped raise $800 for our buddy Stewart Midwinter. Happy landings.