www.FlyingMax.com – Paragliding

Steve Nash and myself were holding a xAlps workshop for “Nova Junior Pilots” to give them some insights of the xAlps.
First we planned to head to Chamonix to “hike & fly” from Mont Blanc south towards Monaco, but due the strong winds in this area we stayed in the eastern part of the alps.
The first day was a travel day ending with a one hour flight from the “Hirtzer” (near Meran). The day before it snowed down to 1800 meters and therefore we had to plan to stay lower for the next couple of days.
The 2nd day we “hiked & flew” from the Jaufenpass to Bruneck. This started with a 2 hour hike up to the Jaufenpass where we were able to fly to Sterzing. The interesting part was that we needed to

find a launch site to take off into the west (due the west wind) and then fly to the east. This is typical in the xAlps and puts a different perspective of finding the right launch site then you normally do.

Following the flight, we walked for 6 km along the river and then hiked up to another pass followed with a long glide into the Valles valley. For a XC pilot, the day ends after you landed, but not in the xAlps, so we started to walk for an hour into the night to give them this experience as well.
Overall, it was a great example to display sections of a typical xAlps day, such as hiking to a launch and fly into the lee to get where you need to go, walking in the valley, crossing another pass and keep walking in the dark after a flight.
The next day we headed to the Dolomite’s and wanted to take advantage of the good weather. We started with a hike up to the Belvedere followed with a flight to Canazei and then another hike up to Col Rodella followed with a extended glide into the valley.
For the last day Steve and I set a task to the “Junior Pilots” and we only followed them. The task was  from Feltre (south Italy) to our team meeting landing site at Lago (near Belluno). The team choose a save route, starting with a 5 hour hike and then a save glide to the goal. It feels good when you plan a hike & fly route and make it to goal. And even better when a lot of your Nova Team Members are landing with you at the same landing.
The annual Nova Team meet was a huge success with over 50 people coming from all over the world. We had a great time to socialize, party and get the latest news of what Nova is working on.
Thanks again to Robert starting this idea and for Nova to make it all happen and last but not least to the three Junior Nova Team members Moritz, Rico and Robert to make this

such a fun week.

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.