Author Archive

I have flown a Hang glider trike many years ago and I got back into it again.
I can’t tell how much fun I have with it!

Here is a video of our recent SIV workshop held last week at Whitetail Lake.
Lots of happy faces!
From SIV flights/lessons, building up everyone’s flying skills and confidence, to big thermal flights, viewing Columbia Lake, Whitetail Lake and Lake Windermere below…Just spectacular!

Thanks to everyone who participated, both pilots and all our helpers, for making this such a fun and safe event. Also a big thank you to the DuBois family and Royal Antler Ranch for letting us use their beautiful properties.

The air in the Rockies can be crazy and bumpy… just like we have currently going on with the current Worlds situation.
This time the air was nice and magnificent…. ahhh I needed this kind of flight!
Looking forward for more.

Merry Christmas and all the best from the Fanderl/Powers gang.
We were able to do our annual Christmas flying again at www.PanoramaResort.com .
Looking forward to another great flying season at Panorama!

Thank you for a great 2019 season!
If you are still looking for the perfect Christmas gift, a Paragliding tandem flight or paddling gift certificate is your answer.
Season Greetings and all the best from the whole team!

This year I created a 3D video of the Columbia River from Invermere to Radium Hot Springs.
The main reason for this video is to give our paddle customers at www.ColumbiaRiverPaddle.com a better idea of the Columbia River wetlands and river system.
Have fun checking out the views!

The summer of 2019 here in the Canadian Rockies was rather interesting with the broken up jetstream and unstable weather patterns.
Besides the unstable and wet summer, we did have a couple very good flying days and pilots who took advantage of it were rewarded with some very impressive flights.

In regards to flying events, the weather made the same impact as described above. The “Willi” in Golden had 4 non flying days in a row, but also a couple of very good days, which produced some spectacular flights.
The LakesideEvent.com also had a struggle. First with the not so positive weather forecast, followed by a rainy morning, but lead into a “Sunny & Hot” couple hours with ideal flying conditions, enabling the pilots to get one flight in.

There are a couple more flying events coming up. One is “the Inaugural Fernie fly in” September 6-7, which sounds like a lot of fun and we plan to be there! See details at their facebook page.

The other event is a “PPG Valley Cruise” (others call it the “Silly PPG in the Valley”, October 12-13.
We plan to fly from the Invermere Airport to Fairmont Hot Springs and land on the 6000 feet long runway (hope it is long enough ;)), then taking a complimentary shuttle to the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort for brunch. Once back on the airstrip we plan to explore the area south of Fairmont and fly over Columbia Lake.
The day after we plan to fly from Invermere to Radium Hot Springs to explore the wetlands.

Here is a 360 video flying over the Radium Hot Springs wetlands and over the new Radium River Access points, note the Radium Airport in the video.
Does this look like a nice area to fly your PPG or what?

This unique opportunity to learn the dynamics and limits of your wing will be held at the beautiful private flying site of Whitetail Lake in BC. This site offers a generous amount of height to practice maneuvers over the safety of water. There will be two landing sites (one near the water and the big field), two instructors and a safety boat onsite.

3 day Supervised flights and P2 maneuvers

Date: July 5th -7th, 2019
Location: Whitetail Lake, BC
Instructors: Max Fanderl & Adrian Pery

This course is for P1 pilots wanting to do some of their 25 supersized flights, and includes theory in risk management  and preparation for the P2 exam. There will be an opportunity to challenge your P2 exam upon completion of the required flights.
It is also for all other pilots (P2/P3) who would like to get warmed up for the season and maybe try, and work on more maneuvers, than they are currently comfortable with.

The maneuvers you will learn and practice are:

  • Big ears
  • “Small” Asymmetric collapse
  • Pitch control (dolphin)
  • Rolls and intro to wing overs
  • Fast eight

Costs:
P1 Pilots
$420
for Friday to Sunday or $200/day
P2 Pilots
$320
for Friday to Sunday or $150/day
If you book and pay before June 17 save 10%  

Active flying SIV & Freestyle course

Date: July 4th -7th, 2019
Location: Whitetail Lake, BC
Instructors: Max Fanderl & Kirs Chasse

This course targeted for:

  • Occasional pilots, beginners and ambitious amateur pilots.
  • Freestyle pilots.

S.I.V. – Simulating Situations in Flight gives the pilot a dynamic reaction to recover his/her paraglider to normal flight from unexpected situation, with an instructor’s guidance. The aim for that, preparing the pilot to react properly to an unexpected or dangerous situation while flying.

The main purpose of this course is working on all the basic simulated situations you can have in flight and decent techniques. Once these are mastered you can progress to fly and practice the full stall which will allow you to evolve into freestyle/acro flying.

We are supplying a manual and syllabus about the SIV and freestyle maneuvers.

Ground school

Every pilot, weather it is your first time or you have done the SIV and progressed to a Freestyle pilot, you will need to go through our Intro and safety briefing on Thursday morning (8:00 am).

After the first briefings, we will check the equipment and harness and will do another indoor lesson about SIV flying tasks and creating a program for each participant.

Onsite lessons

After all the Ground school sessions we will head out to Whitetail Lake and will get started with some regular flights at Whitetail Lake. We plan to film all the launches and do some video analysis later in the afternoon/evening.

In the evening of the first day we will create for each pilot their own program to get to what they want to achieve in this course.

The next 3 days (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) we will start with a morning briefing at 7:00 am and do about 3-4 flights until noon’ish and do the video analysis in the afternoon.

  • Front stall
  • Asymmetric collapse (30%,50% 75%)
    • Asymmetric collapse spiral dive
  • Spiral dive
    • Asymmetric Spiral
  • Full stall
  • Rolling and wing overs
  • Practicing your own maneuvers

Cost:
$1380 for Friday to Sunday
$1080 for Freestyle pilots (must be able fly a perfect full stall and backfly)
If you book and pay before June 17 save 10%

Requirements:
Current HPAC insurance/membership, Reserve, life jacket (if you do not have one, let us know), hook knife (we sell them for $25), FRS/GMRS Family Radios.

This includes:
Camping site at Whitetail Lake, shuttles to the takeoff site, radios and basic PFD’s.

Optional:
Dinners – Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Breakfasts and lunches – Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Cost … will be updated as soon we get the price from Patrick Stettler, who will be the caterer.

Requirements:
Current HPAC insurance/membership, Reserve, life jacket (if you do not have one, let us know), hook knife (we sell them for $25), FRS/GMRS Family Radios.

**There is a limited number of spots for this event. To secure your spot, you must make a down payment of $250 prior to arrival and the full payment upon arrival. All payments can be made via e-transfer to: (max@flyingMax.com). There is a $250 non-refundable charge, if cancelled after June 17 2019. We reserve the right to send any participant home, who does not follow instructions, putting themselves or others in danger.
For more information, email: max@flyingMax.com

Well, I never was thinking about it myself.
Last December Pascal was asking me if I would do a P1 & P2 course in the winter…. my reply was that it is to cold and there is to much snow at the practice hill.
By the end of January, Kaymin contacted me with the same question … Looking outside, there was not much snow here in the valley at all and before I knew it, I had 2 students starting a 2 week course.

Conditions were absolutely perfect and within 4 days each of them did more than 10 flights from our 40 meter high practice hill.
The week after we started to do our “high mountain” flights at Panorama Mountain Resort with skis. A week later each of them had over 20 flights.

Flying with skis at the resort works very well. The access to the launch site is super convenient by using the chair lifts. Panorama Resort supports our sport a lot and only charges $35 for a day to fly. On some days we ended up flying up to 5 flights a day.

In the mean time we have 4 other P1 pilots working on their 25 supervised flights at the Panorama Ski Resort. This works very well and besides running courses in the spring/summer I already started to schedule a P1 course for late fall this year so we can do the high mountain flights in the winter at the ski hill.

Check out our Calendar as we keep on adding courses and events…. PPG, SIV, XC and P3 workshops coming soon.

Filmed and cut by Calin Pava

Happy, healthy and prosperous 2019 from flyingMax.com.
We are looking forward to a great new year with lots of adventures and flights!
Here is a video of Penny and Max flying into the new year!