Hi there everybody. Welcome to another episode of cloud based Mayhem. I want to start by apologizing for being so late with this 1 we're a week behind. I will stack them back up as we always do and get back on track. We'll do this 1 this week and then another 1 next week and get back to our 2 week schedule. The the reasons are many. We had a very good friend of mine, having And and
his wonderful gal. And I just got married on Saturday, and we had a big fly in here in Sun Valley and the weather really cooperated and lot big flights go down Some you have heard galen Kirk, beat the Us Fa record by substantial margin that was actually set here little over 10 years ago by a farmer and here in sao Valley. So somebody valley continues to be the place for really big flights, and it was fun to have a whole bunch of people in town, Jason it. Before I get into this show with Michael
B gall and free flight lab. Wanted to put out little Psa from Jessica Love. So you may remember she was collecting data quite a while back on fear injuries, and she's just got another grant to take an even deeper dive, and I'm gonna just read this from her. And if you're interested in participating, You can reach her directly or just ping me and I'll send you or she will send you the invitation letter that explains how it all works. But
Here it is from her directly. Are you a pair lighting pilot currently experiencing a fear injury and I'm assuming works also for hang glider of course. Jessica Love is a postgraduate researcher at the University of Ports smith, and she's conducting a study to understand how fear fear injuries change and evolve over time. Jessica's research aims doing identify the factors that promote or inhibit recovery to design better interventions and foster resilience.
She is looking for active pilots who are currently experiencing fear injury to volunteer for this study. As a participant, you'll be asked to take part in interviews and maintain a dire diary of your experiences over the course of 6 months. Unique opportunity to contribute to research in our sport that could help countless others in the future. By sharing your story can help uncover valuable insights and make a significant dent difference in how we understand and treat fear injuries.
If you're interested in volunteering or want more information, Please contact jessica glove at University of Ports smith. You can email her directly at jessica dot love at port dot a c dot u k. Again, that's jessica dot love at port dot a c dot u k. Or just ping me, and I'll send you the information. Alright. This week's show Michael Gala. I've been hanging out with Mike comps for a number
of years. He and I have a some sailing background together, he doesn't done, he has done a lot of racing than I have started with sailboat racing and was into science and research and back in school and then discovered para for France in 2012 and shifted his life as many as there as many of us do around to flying with mostly research. And he a organization called the Free flight lab. It's a
non profit. And he as he explains in the show, there's kinda 3 pillars of that, climate science, conservation and safety, and he geek out on all kinds of cool things when it comes to flying and weather and forecasting and measuring energy, and he wants to get a robot flying in mar on Mars and all kinds of cool stuff. His his brain is fascinating how he thinks he's fascinating.
We've been a big fan for many years even though I did fully understand what he was doing, so I wanted to get him on the show so I could better understand what they were doing. And, what the vision is there and what they can potentially accomplish fascinating stuff, and we had a lot of fun, and I think you will too. Oh, and there's a bit at the end mountain motion sickness is very cool. Now you suffered with it badly both sailing and flying. So you suffer from
motion sickness. Make sure you stay stay till the end and he's got some bites to puppy you out. Enjoy. Mike. It's great to have you on the show. I should've have been doing this years ago. You've been deep some very cool projects, and I have washed from afar because everything you do is way beyond my brain power. So I can't wait for you to wow me in the audience and I'll try not to act too stupid in the
questions I ask you. But I know you're you're dealing with energy in a way that's that's very cool that maybe we inherently understand, but I don't think we really do. So... But before we get into the free flight lab and what you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish, and the powers that be? What's your history in this sport? How'd you get into this? How'd did you get into flying? How did it lead to the free lab? Yeah. Gavin, I I really appreciate you having
me on the on the show. I know we've we've talked a few times. And actually, there's no better time than today to kind of discuss the the different projects have been working on. I got into para mainly because I was talking out how racing sailboat changed my life. I was... You know, I I always had a dream to be like an astronaut and fly around and explore strange planets. And a mentor had given me advice that I
needed to become an operator. So be able to effectively be trained in anything and be able to accomplish high stress, convergent situations and and deal with them. I went to University in Florida, and I started repairing boats that were destroyed from a hurricane and started taking them mountain racing them.
I found a group and started doing offshore races off the coast of Florida in the gulf stream, and that had a fundamental impact on my life because You know, you'd be a few days into a race and and in a sq, and in the middle of the night, see the moon moonlight and and rainbows by the moon and and it was these unbelievable experiences on earth that were powered by wind and weather that changed my life. And so I was talking about that at this this university in France, and a guy said, hey.
I think if you like sailing, you might like para planning. And so, you know, really what I didn't realize is he just needed me to drive his car down. But it's okay because I, you know, I I put on the bag and I hike to launch, and I watch them take off, and I and I thought this is this is just... This is the thing I've been looking for. Right? I I had hoped to... I don't know, fly fighter jets or something, but I didn't wanna bomb villages, and and all of a sudden there's this
fabric aircraft that seems quite capable. Now, I went to school for Aerospace engineering But we never learned about para gliders. We never learned about gliders or soaring or thermals. We learned about very other things. And so out of a bit of frustration.
I've been continually trying to connect the dots between my my science and research background and this sort of beautiful art that we participate in, which is para lighting, and both the the design and construction of para riders, but also how we use them, how we fly and the, you know, the variety of species of birds we are. Right? And I... And I like to make the joke, it's like the odd ducks at the odd duck pond. You're gonna find weird pilots, and you know
what? You're gonna land in a field with them, and the person you're yelling at at the in the thermal, they're gonna land in the same field as you. So you you kind of can't burn too many bridges But at the same time, everyone is their own unique type of pilot. Right? They either into acr or they're into hike and fly or they're into racing where they're carrying
50 pounds of wet or something. And and we're all unique, but we also all are taking advantage of an opportunity that has only existed basically in the last 30 years out of all history. Right? Out of tens of thousands of years of humans being curious about things that are moving around in the air, we get to do it. And and that blows my mind. And I'm trying, you know, free lab and this essence is is how to do more with para
ladders. Beyond just a sport where some crazy people go and fly around and race or or go explore, and then where it really roots back to my origins is it's exploring a very strange planet with very strange creatures on it, and and you get smells and you get you get all of the wonderful things that is on earth, and that's fascinating to me. So III first saw it in France I took, like, afternoon and ran down a Calf field filled with Thorn and was bleeding
off from my legs. This the best day of my life, and it was fantastic. And and so I was, you know, a student. I didn't have any money. I had lots of time, and and I you know, until I was out in California, I didn't start. So I saw it in 20 10, and I started in 20 12. And if my instructor hadn't let me pay him over to the course of a year and a half for my first wing, I
wouldn't be flying. Right? And That day in France took a very big deviation of what my course in life was and where my course in life has now ended up. And I wouldn't I wouldn't change it for anything. They're like, their experience is flying that I can't dream. Right? Like, This start of a race where everyone is rid soaring up the side of a cloud before they cross the Columbia river. You can't explain that to anybody else. Like, it just doesn't make sense. Yesterday, we were
we were flying from here. It's it's quite smoky right now. We were flying from here just basically as far as we could, I was with my buddy Rev, who's supporting me you know, in a couple x alps. And we got out over the le highs over over saddle peak. And hooked an 8 meter climb on the average. You know, that's really hard to describe that to somebody. Where going from and 6000 feet to 15 grand and seconds. You know, just and your ears popping and everything so epic.
It's just epic. It's it's mind blowing. You know, what you're seeing, what you're feeling what you're experiencing from hot to cold to the power of the sky is is mind crunching. And then a plastic garbage bag or hey, a stars shaped balloon flies past you or or or you... And some other crazy thing, and I I think the perspective we get is alarming. You know, the modern world as humans, we're basically too dimensional. We're like magnets on a
refrigerator. Right? We move along, we can climb up a mountain, but even on a plane, you're going 500 miles an hour in 1 direction, and the up and down is not so much. So para and and gl or but but really para gl and hang gl probably are the most 3 dimensional experience you can have on earth and And then I asked the question well, what can you do with that? Right? And that... That's really where the lab projects come in.
And the The. Idea of, like, well, what are the 3 areas that could help our community, help our pilots and and kind of enrich and enhance the sport in 1 way or another. And I and I landed on 3 areas. And so it's climate science, so that's you know, measuring things in the atmosphere, looking at improving weather forecasts, etcetera. Conservation, So as pilots we end up flying in really beautiful amazing natural spaces, and we're actually, we care a lot about them. We have
good stewards of our natural spaces. Right? We we hike 1 way and fly down. We're not... We're... We use the trail half as much as other people in some cases. But that revolves around, you know, eagle preservation, hawk. Right? All of our experiences that we have around nature in its animals and how do we prevent forest fires, for example? Like, I've been at a number of sites where we're flying and we call in the fire.
Because we're the ones with the perspective. We're, you know, out in King's Canyon at 7000 feet and we say, hey, look, There's a hotspot over there. Somebody calling in, and and we can call it in. So we we have a way to effectively work with our communities and and people that and and protect the natural spaces we love. And then the final area is safety. Right?
And whether that relates to motion sickness, which I I've done a lot of work on motion sickness or line trimming, keeping the gear in calibration and tuned. Those are sort of the 3 pillars of areas where projects exist, within free flight lab. And you know, it's all it's all a big experiment at the the current sort of main showcase project currently is a high altitude para robot. And so we've talked a bit about that. And I just was curious how high para gloves
could fly? Alright? Like, what is the physical limitation of how high we can fly? And it was kind of a wacky dream, but I got the opportunity to test it 1 day, and I built a robot, like a small little Rc robot with little arms, and it had a very dumb control system and had Gps, had some weight points in it. And I built a small d bag out of a recycled spin, and put it up on a high altitude balloon like a weather balloon, and a d bag
from 18 kilometers. And I I packed the wing just like an acr pilot would pack the wing, and I I followed, you know, I followed the pal to katz video and just said, okay, well, let me mean, do it the way Kyle does it because I'm not gonna reinvent the wheel here. And then the robot worked. Right? I mean, it had some rise twist. The Rise twist came out. And then it worked. And so I said, well, shit. Now now what? Right? Like, this thing works. What do we do with it?
And and a lot of the ideas are around Well, how do we return radio songs? How do we return weather balloons and make sure that we're not creating trash all over the planet? Right? 2800 stations globally that launched twice a day is almost a million dollars a day spent on weather balloons, and it's all garbage. For the most part. Now, there's an opportunity to use para gliders and to use other systems to fly these things back or to launch balloons in more places. Right? I was talking to
somebody recently in sun Valley. They said, yeah. Our closest sounding is in boise. Like, we would love to be able to launch radio songs here. So the project ideas are around sending things really high up and then flying them back. A 3 kilogram per glider can carry a hundred kilogram pilot all day. 11 hours, 12 hours, 500 kilometers.
In engineering school, you would learn that that para glider would just go down at some glide angle and not be as capable as having that flight platform carrying that amount of mass that doesn't exist in any other flight platform in the world ever that is that efficient. And so other than people flying around for sport, it hasn't really
been applied. And so that's That's fundamentally the projects now that I'm trying to get funding from Nasa and from national Science Foundation is to unlock the the use of para gliders for these type of research, atmospheric research, climate science research, helping out forest firefighters, providing radio relays, for example. And and 1 of the things is that the rules just don't even exist. If you say, III flew the highest para ladder in the world.
If you go in the Faa rules and the Na rules, there aren't rules to even get the record. So in the last week, I submitted a proposal to the Na that will end up going to Fa to add new rules and new type classes to even allow robotic para ladders to to achieve anything. Because it's been going on now for 5 years, and we have flights from 25 kilometers have flown over a hundred and 80 kilometers, the company that I worked with most recently flew in a 90 kilogram robot from 20 kilometers.
Full scale wing. Single surface dental on wing. And and I learned about the wing from Logan. I said, look, I really need a single surface. It needs to be strong. It can't just be hiking, you know, it can't be super ultra lightweight. And he's like, dude, you gotta go and check out this dent on. It's a freestyle wing. People do acr with it. And so that's already happened. I mean, it this... And you put a robot on on it
and flu... Yeah. It was a 90 kilogram robot And the whole goal of that is to return things from space, but, like, para gliders, hang gliders that all started with space stuff. Right? They were trying to return the Gemini capsule because those astronauts didn't wanna just be thrown into the ocean. They wanted to have some ability to land where they wanted. And then Like, no. You guys, we're gonna put you in the ocean. We don't care. We're gonna give you round parachutes.
But it all started with big inflatable hang glider things. And so we're kind of returning to that original idea, just Nasa gave up on para glad stuff in the late eighties early nineties because they were garbage. I mean, not not to insult the people racing them at the time, but, like, they were not that good. Yeah. Wow. How much trash is happening from weather balloons? Well, each how how bigger they? What are they made of? Where do they go? Where do they end out?
About a loaf of bread about, you know, it's a foam box that's got electronics and batteries in it. And they're launch from all the radio on locations. In Germany and some countries, there's a a big communities of people that chase them and collect them and send them back.
But for the most part, there's a lot of areas of the ocean of the South America african continent that they don't really have this incredibly important truth information that anchors all the satellite data and all the forecast together, you know, 1 of the most valuable measurements is are these radio. Songs. And so globally, we have a problem. And especially, we... That the pace of weather changing or dynamic earth system is out pacing our ability to keep up
with it. And so we need to have more measurements but dude it in a way that's responsible and dude it in a way that doesn't create more problem. Right? And so we... You know people working with me and and myself are are trying to figure out how to unlock reusable radio songs, but also once it's reusable, then you can put more expensive sensors on it. Right? Whether it's looking for fires or whatever that might be. But it's really just the beginning, and and a lot of it is just...
First, when I went to Coup care and showed people I wanted to fly a para glider at high altitude. Told me it was impossible. And then the next year, I went back with pictures from doing it. And they're like, well, this is crazy. I was like, okay. Well, then now what do we do. Let's like... Figure out how to work together here. Yeah. Now the craziest part is there are dust devils on Mars. Yeah. Now there's dust devils on Mars,
there's gotta be lift on Mars. And so 1 of the goals is to fly high enough. To get Nasa excited and say, hey, let's go send 1 of these things to Mars and go thermal around on Mars and go land on Olympus mon. Like, the biggest mountain in the solar system is on Mars, and Nasa's not gonna go land there because it's hard and scary. And so it just throw 1 of these things in the side of the mountain on Mars. Yeah. Anyway. Okay. Show them.
Take me through. Maybe I'm diving... To into the specifics, but again, because I'm ignorant on this stuff. So as I understand, what do you call... How what do you call the balloons the weather balloons balloons. Weather balloons? Yeah. But you call high altitude balloons. Yeah. You called it songs or something. Well, I said radios. Son is the sensor payload. Okay. So yeah as I understand those usually get... They go off in the morning. Right? Yeah Like 6AM. At 0 and 12 Zulu.
So oh, globally, they're synchronized. How do you get yours to go up? Same thing. Out a balloon, launch it, same exact thing. Oh, okay. It it looks the same. Now, an interesting piece is that early on when they started, they didn't have Gps. Right? They had just a radio that would send temperature and pressure and humidity. Mostly temperature in the beginning. But anyway, but now they have Gps. So the models have all been adjusted to basically treat the balloons as if they
only go vertical. But that's not true. They get into the jet stream and they blow in the wind and stuff. So there's a couple pieces of of making, you know, right now, we only measure the temperature profile on the way up. Right? And we measure the winds on the way up. But this now allows you to run a mission, not 1 way, but both ways. Right? So Even that same system. Same exact radio sound payload can fly up and fly back. Doing collecting data on both directions.
So there's just a couple things, and and that's where, you know, Free fight lab is a non nonprofit and it it bootstrap its work by selling nose cones and trim rigs and, like, giving talks and things like that. But in order to be a nonprofit that grows and is sustainable. There's this other element of, like, need to actually do have customers and figure out how to you know, get contracts to do radio on launches and help different organizations and groups.
And that's that's just a snowball that gets slowly built you know, day after day, based on rejections. Fascinating. So the... The this current songs the the current weather balloons? They've got Gps. Why don't people go get them? I mean, you said they do in Germany? Yeah. Some places do. I mean, it's just it requires someone in a car drive. It's just it's people and time. And that's it. It's people in time and it's costly, and is there incentive to reuse it?
You know, I think we're slowly getting there. But but this idea that the system can fly after its end of, you know, it's reached its top ascent and then it flies. I mean, we're... The amazing thing about these high altitude flights is sometimes you can't come back. So if at 15 kilometers, you let go or 20 kilometers, the jet stream might be too too strong. So the system has to determine, I can't make at home it's too windy. Have to
go and land other places. And we have a little Sd card that has backup landings locations, and and it'll go and just pick a new location and go land. But the most amazing thing is that if you go to hire, if you go to 25 kilometers or 30 kilometers, The thing is going so fast because the air is so thin that you make it back upstream and you can make it home. Right? Instead, you know, the very first wing, it opened at 88 meters per second. Wow That's how thin the air is.
So that means that the forward velocity is also screaming along. So if you wanna get in front of 50 mile an hour winds, you just go and fly a hundred mile an hour, for, like, 10 minutes above it, and then you've gotten upstream and you can make it home. So it's it's it's like these alarming things that we would never discover until we just started throwing things into that environment and flying them and seeing what happens. You know, in a good flight is actually
boring. The video is really boring. It just It's a black sky. You've got a wing. Yeah, The earth is absolutely stunning, but a boring flight. When the system was dumb, and it would do spirals and wing overs and stuff. Awesome. You have, like, these amazing views of the Earth and, yeah. It was wild. If you... If someone just came do you today and said here's a million bucks go for it, where would... Where would the majority of those funds go? What would you deal... What would you be working on?
I think there's a few elements of, sensing systems? Right? And and 1 of them is, if you take the jeep... The raw Gps data, that instead of calculating a navigation solution of, like, where am mi. If you take the data from the Gps receiver and the transmitter from the satellite, When that receiver and transmitter is rising and setting over the horizon, the signal goes through the atmosphere, and you can capture temperature and humidity profiles just with the raw Gps data.
And so in 20 20, I did a bunch of experiments on airbus commercial aircraft because I I was sponsored by Airbus for a short period of time, basically until Covid. And I demonstrated it for the first time that all commercial aircraft without a purpose science built payload can take their Gps data and capture really highly valuable weather data. Now, As of yesterday, there's a paper coming out on it. Right? And so all the stuff is happening still right now, and I think, you know,
You can't just create science for science. It has to have impact and it has to be able to, you know, have some fundamental thing that changes what people do. And I think there's a huge opportunity when it comes to weather forecasting. And You know, it relates to our agriculture. It relates to clean water. Relates to sports. It relates to scheduling and planning, aviation, transportation. And I think that para ladders have a very
unique perspective on all of this. You know, some of the least under stood areas of our atmosphere, are the planetary boundary layer, specifically around how do clouds form? What's the transition of con systems Like, basically everything para is the thing that people don't understand is how is energy moving from the ground to the top of lift? How our clouds forming, and and we are so in it. We in that environment. We are in the environment that people don't under stand. Right? There...
There's nobody modeling dust devils in this in, like, the Water plateau. Right? Like, that's not a thing. But then you have tornadoes destroying communities. You say, well, maybe there's a bit of the... We can take the flavors of food that we get to eat as para and help the rest of everyone, understand how that all works. And, like, early ideas was I say, oh, let's let's give sensors to all the para ladder pilots have them fly around. That's not really the right thing to do.
So 1 day, Free flight lab might look a bit like Stanford Research Institute is the goal. Where there's a nonprofit that works on high impact projects, but then there's sort of, like, a venture fund. That takes those when they're product, takes them when they actually can be a real business and spins them out into businesses. With licensing fees that generate these projects that don't make a lot of sense to anybody. And so that's that's the end goal of all of this.
Is to get there somehow. And and, you know, again, 1 step at a time up this mountain, just put it like, head down foot in front of the next and see what happens. It... Since you started the lab, have you been able to capture a ton of data, you know, are you are you sending stuff up into the atmosphere on on a regular enough basis that you're seeing certain trends, certain differences, you know, how much difference is it between 2012 when you start flying And now in our
atmospheres, there are more water vapor. They're less? Is there more heat? Is there, you know, obviously, a climate change is is is a part of this question, but what are you seeing? And how specifically, how is that going to impact us as a community in what you're seeing? Yeah. I think that the right answer to you is that we're not We're not collecting enough information right now for me to be able to accurately answer that without it being a much larger conversation I think.
What I am seeing is that since about 20 15, I've been tracking the investment into weather companies. Right? Just across the board. And how weather companies are growing and and what kind of conversations around whether it's Ai and weather, etcetera, etcetera Quantum and weather. This is a space that's gonna get more and more interesting over the next 5 or 10 years. Because in some cases where people see whether risk, there's also weather opportunity. Right? I think back to sailing,
I used a high web... High high resolution forecast that was AA2 hundred meter model, made by a guy, Mike Dev. He made it for America's cup. He started selling it to sailors in San Francisco Bay. We were able to pick left or right on a 1 kilometer course and won, the 20 17 national championships. Right? For the express 37 fleet. We had a better forecast. We were able to make better strategic you know, business decisions based on that forecast. We all know that forecasting para is quite difficult.
Right? But we do also expect that, you know, with drone deliveries coming online, flying taxis coming online. These vertical air motions are gonna become very critical to everyone else. Pretty soon. Now, we also know that the difference between taking off and this cycle in the next cycle is getting yard into the trees or having a clean launch and just flying away. Right? And and we are sensitive to that.
And and I think that there's a lot of the things I'd like to work on our are trying to create that bridge and create value in in taking what we know and our perspective and and converting it in a way that keeps people safe. Right? Like, if you're if
you're flying... If you have your grandmother flying in some flying car taxi thing, You don't wanna her flying at the inversion, where she's bouncing around and and crashing into the ceiling of the inversion and getting sick and upset, like, are all of these flying taxes is gonna smell like vomit. Right? Because people are just, like, flying in turbulence and and it's you know, it's a robot who doesn't care
and it hasn't looked at anything. So I think that's kind of like the future of things that will will be, you know, addressing. I don't know. That didn't answer your question on on the... How much data we're collecting. Right now, I have... From the work I did with Airbus, I have more data than I have money to pay professors to process. Wow. Right? So it's not from app. Yeah. It's a great problem mix except for. You
need the money to pay the professors. And and once once Covid happened in Airbus shutdown down a lot of their innovation projects, that dried up. So I I had... I had money, I had a team, and that's what really kind of through the spark into all of this is that I I had enough, you know, critical mass of resources to do my first high altitude test to to build the sensors to kind of tease out where the value of our perspective and experience connects with the rest of the world.
And now I just, like, have a knife in my teeth to try to, like, make it even more real, you know? Tell me about conservation. That was an... Same thing to hear you say. 1 of the 3 pillars. This is something that I'm constantly feeling guilty about is our same profession, our recreation, what we participate participated. You know, we're flying plastic. We travel, it's a pretty self. It's a approach to learn. Yes. Trucks to launch. You know, if if you're not doing the hike and fly thing,
but the the travel really adds up. You know, if you're if you're doing the World cup circuit or even just a couple comps a year. This is something I'm always I I always feel guilty about it. On the flip side. I also see your point. We are very aware of our environment as it can is a community. I think we're we're pretty good about paying attention. We're pretty good about wanting to protect the protect the places we go you know, some obviously better than others and some, you know, more
adept at understanding how to do it. I think often we, like recycling, You know, should you, should you not? It's it's a... There's always nothing's very simple especially when it comes to protecting. And it's hard to take the step. It's hard to just take the step to make something happen. Anyway, talk about it. Yeah. Well, again, it comes to our perspectives. Right? At at at our local park, for example, the the rangers, there's there's a helicopter. The county has a helicopter.
Now, once in while, the county flies a helicopter around. But, you know, helicopters are 700 plus dollars an hour, burn a lot of fuel are not the most elegant flying machine. They just beat the air into suppression. Now, we fly at our home site. But we have all the same perspectives as the helicopter. So how how can we... And and it started with the question of how... How can we fly park rangers tandem, for example, and allow them to do what they need to do in the park without a help helicopter?
Right? I mean, I got my tandem to be able to share this perspective. And and 1 of the kind of, the biggest things that free flight lab has done related to conservation is Bd reached out to us because I have a picture of a Golden Eagle from Mission peak, and they reached out in 20 19... In 20, yeah, 20 18. Anyway, we planned. In 20 19, The Bbc team came out with this evil expert Lloyd Buck and the and the Bbc film team from Natural world.
And over the course of 4 days, we flew Lloyd with wild eagles. Now, this guy had dedicated entire life. To birds to training them. He's like bonded with this eagle tilly, neither 1 of them can leave the house at the same time, like, they have someone's gotta be the house with all these birds, you know, all the birds with David at or Burrow, this guy is that guy. His entire life he'd wanted to fly with eagles.
And he'd done the, you know, where they chase the gee with the pair, of the the powered hang glider and stuff. But I was able to take him flying with wild Eagles, wild Golden Eagles. And I mean, we're both crying. We're like, in the tandem, he said, I have waited my entire life for this moment, and I never imagined it would be like this. And we're we're busy taking climbs and thermal together. And that's
what I wanted to create. I wanted to say, well, look, we... I get to listen to the sound of bird feathers adjusting because we had no motor. It it's like, it's There are bird experts that have these bird books that most of the pictures are from underneath the birds. Not not up with the birds, not when they're flying not at 8000 feet over something where it's just you and this bird turning a thermal because you're both so desperate to get into the air.
And so you know, I think maybe you and I were talking about it. Somebody was saying how the that the birds don't play. Right? Yeah. Yeah like saying, oh, the birds don't play. And we definitely know they play, whether they're the the crow or whatever. So we have a lot of opportunities and I don't know. I don't know if as a community. We're taking advantage of them. Right? Like, we all want access to launches.
And it's very hard to get community... Parks or police or anybody to say, okay, Our insurance says it's okay for you to take this park ranger. Right? And I I think it does come down to insurance. But on on a... We've taken a few park rangers on their off day. Right And said, like, we love the park. We know you love the park. Come fly with us, and we'll show you the park from an angle. You've never seen it. Right. And then the guys, like, I've always wondered what it looked like over here.
And at he he'd worked at the park 10 years. Right? And he finally gets to see parts of the park. And whether it's counting cows or animals. I mean, there's so many opportunities, and I think the goal is to inspire more people to say, okay, Well, there's this park. We have tandem pilots. We have the ability to to share this perspective and and and see what we can do. Right? Explore the solution space of, can we help? And and, you know, I had built a payload back to the science payloads.
I built a multi spectral camera. That just basically looked at plant health. So it took out the infrared filter, looked at plant health. And I flew it over an area in Kings Canyon that had had a had the rough fire. And there's a really, really large fire. And you could see where the dead trees met the lot living trees, just in the data, Right? And it's it's kind of a beautiful image, but like, you can see where
the dead trees meet the living trees. But something else happened is that in that image, You could also see dead trees within the living trees, and that was pine beetle rock. And so we have the same perspective as a Ua, some flying drone thing, you know, a helicopter, and we enjoy it, but also we can share it and maybe help fund local clubs. Right? Like, what what is what is the way to tie tie these things together? You say, okay. Well, water. I don't know.
Once a month, we're gonna go and take a picture of the river in this 1 position or or if it's the... Along the coast in California, we're gonna take a picture of the cliffs and update, you know, geology people who are interested in how the clips are collapsing. Like, they don't need to run a 200000 dollar program of flying planes low with Lidar or half a million dollar thing, how do they engage as a community to say, Well, there's a bunch of Algae bloom now. Right? Like, take pictures of the
Algae bloom every month? Like, how do we how do we connect the dots between pilots, the communities and the natural spaces that they fly. And And I'm doing it in my own way, but I I think the real goal is to just inspire others to say, we have this unique craft, we can do more with it and who and how can we connect these dots to make things more sustainable. Right? For everyone. My 1 of my favorite memories from of
my film projects. I was just out tell eyed for, their club was doing a fundraiser for know, the insurance issue that we have here in the States wanna get into that now, But that this is a Us thing, But it's that we were showing the Rockies traverse, and the very first day of that trip with Will ga, we we kind dove off course and went into ropes and the the highest Mountain Canadian Rockies.
He had climbed it, but he... You know, this is all in the film, but he's going, you know, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Nobody's ever flown over this thing. And meanwhile, the filming hell helicopter wasn't with us that morning for the launch. They were coming in from wherever they were coming in from. And so they had just taken on fuel, but it's, you know, it's a million dollar A star helicopter very very high end capable, high mountain high altitude helicopter.
And to get that shot of us flying over the top of Mount Rob, we had to dial down about 5 times spiral hard down because we were out climbing an a star helicopter. I mean. Not not even a little bit. I'm, or, you know, we were just we were just d. You're just... You know, they just annihilate the air what you said. It cracks me up because we were just so much more nimble than an A star helicopter. We could go exactly where we wanted to go like that and just dial up and then wait for... And I
can't get up to you guys? Can you come back down? Sure. Come back. I, I can't get up to you guys? Can you come back sure. We did it 5 time. I mean, the movie, it looks like we just get up to the top and he film it looks amazing, but I I think these are the things that people don't understand is that and and people but with with no motor? Well, how did you do it? Right. All of all of para riding is a blind spot. Like, Right. Unfortunately, the world doesn't
care we exist. Right? And and that... And that... That's wonderful, but also, III see opportunity in that. Right? I mean, then and I don't you know, I don't want the sky filled with para glider robots that make us not able to fly. Right? I definitely do not want that at all. However, somewhere in between insanity and, like, just a couple people getting to experience these unbelievable things
is something really interesting. Right? And and, you know, when you do a spiral in an Si course or a full nose down spiral, you're descending faster than planes... Many planes can descend. Right? Like you're saying, you... The performance of our vehicle outperform, the climb rates, the altitude limits of a lot of expensive aerospace Swiss watches. Right? And I think back to I think the Sierra safari 1 where you're talking about. It's just a elegant beds sheet and dental floss. Right.
Right? I mean, effectively, that's what it is. And and, yeah, you mentioned the idea of its plastic. No. There's a lot of initiatives where people have tried different ways of recycling gliders, whether it's the bags or it's different apparel and things like that. I think 1 way to recycle our gliders is potentially use them for robotic projects. Right? Like, once they're no longer safe for a human to fly, who cares if it rips apart when the robots flying it, I
don't know it doesn't matter. Right. Right? And so there there might be the second life Right? And so what, you know, I haven't some of my old gliders. Yeah. I have some sold... I don't want... I don't want everyone's old glider, but, like, I have I have a bunch of my old glider thinking like, okay. Any day now, any day now, this is this idea I have. This vision is gonna be a real thing. And these old gliders
will get to do something. Right? Like, I'll go and do something ridiculous with them, and it'll be fun. You were clearly destined for, you know, research and science. This is what you went to school for. This is... The... This was your your program. You learn about flying in France. It completely divert your life, probably put you into something that's never gonna make as much money as if you just stayed on track, But you seem really psyche about this. Is it...
Are there days where you wish you would've have stuck with the the plan chosen maybe more fight straightforward path or is this providing your brain and your in with plenty and more. I would say all of the above, I think in It is where I'm at, and there's only... It's it's 1 of these situations where it does feel like the only thing to do is go deeper. Like, really thermals back in that stupid Canyon, and I gotta go deeper. And Like, like Bell courts as you gotta double down.
Yeah. And and I think that there's been times... There's been times are my toes tingle and I'm scared to do it. Right? And I and I, like, play along the foot hills, you know, and then I end up bombing out somewhere along the foot hills. But enough has happened now. That diving deeper feels like the right thing. Right? And I... You know, even if I bail, even if I bail and go get a job again for year, couple years, All these other things are gonna keep pushing
forward. Alright? Be before I got sponsored or funded by Airbus, I had 4 jobs at once. And I was quite happy because I could do what I wanted. And I gave all those up to do the airbus thing, but had I had just gotten Pass certified as a free flight lab school. Right? Because I'm an instructor, and and I had gotten an R g insurance, and I had set up a school. Because I wanted to teach people, and I wanted to share the experience through teaching.
And then I got an opportunity I couldn't say no to, which has kind of kicked off some of these other ideas that were for down the road. And and I'm sure that that could happen again. Right? There there's many bends in turns in this journey. But I recently just won a contract from Nasa and the National Science Foundation to continue working on high altitude para robots. That took 5 years of things that didn't make sense to finally make sense finally get that small contract. So, you know,
I... I'm going deeper until until otherwise noted. Until you got through reserve. Yeah. You know what and I can... I... But reserves work, you'll be fine. Yeah. You know, Look, I can paint fences and dig holes. No matter what we're gonna make sure that things happen. Yeah there's always I think... Well, that's kind of the funny thing too is that Yeah. Selling those combs doesn't pay rent. But do you know what
it offsets. It offsets the fact that my little lab shop with my 3 d printer is in the back of where I live. Right? It's like the Silicon Valley built within a garage kind of thing. And it's being done by selling leather nose cones. You know? And like, that's fine. That's fine. I'm not... I think some people would like me to make millions of dollars I think, like, right now, it's just make it all work and make it make sense, and the weather is still gonna be hard.
In 50 years. There's... We're not gonna un, we're never gonna perfectly crack that. So it's a it's a an exercise of continuous exploration, and, know, every day you fly as a new day. Every single day, whether it's the same site, whether it's the same time of year, There's something new about it. Some new flavor. And and all of these experiments are very much like that. Like, you just don't know until you go. And then you figure out what you do next and you try to make the next best choice.
You you you and I have a sailing background, you more racing me more, I guess, expedition, and I guess in sense. But the the... It's it is interesting to me that we many of us in her little tribe have a kayak background, a sailing background. You know, obviously, we're pretty similar you know, that there's flow there. There's flow and air. There's flow and water, there's in in a sense similar risk profile, especially with the kayak, maybe not so much in in sailing, but
The question I wanna ask is... And I've been asking this lately because I I just think it's fascinating. We live in places where people do rad things. I have a lot of friends who do rad things, no interest in flying. 0. My wife has no interest in flying. I take her tandem and she starts asking me about where we're gonna have dinner 2 minutes into the flight. Looking over her shoulder. She has no interest in it. What is it about us? What is it
a... Why are there people who the Vinci versus the knot? I have no idea, but also, the experience that I have flying, and I I don't think that's what everyone experiences. That the the thoughts that go through my mind, the very strange weird thoughts that happen while I'm flying around everything from mortality, just like, hyper focused on mortality for maybe some unknown reason, to to f with snacks in your pocket or like, there's just...
It's such an experience that I don't think there's ever an end to it. I mean, there is an end. Well, there there is that end, but but there's more. And I think maybe I was considered that I had, you know, some attention deficit disorder challenges or something. But that's that's in in flying it, I think it becomes your superpower. Right? When they... The British team looked at the Max Planck Institute and they were saying, like, what, you know, they did eye tracking to see what
people were looking at. The absolute best pilots were looking at the most information. Absolute most information. Now, there's too much information. And to me, my brain is always just zip in a lot of different directions. And flying all those directions are focused on 1 task. 1 task, flying. You're flying, and like, maybe bring trips drifts and you think of other things, but but you're in it. You're absolutely in it, and you don't have a... You're not... You can't just say stop. And you
can't say stop. And sometimes, sometimes I don't even think I'm enjoying flights until 3 hours in. Like, somehow after 3 hours, I'm like, wow. This is fantastic. This is so cool. But before that, I am a wreck in my brain thinking about stuff trying to do... I don't know. That isn't watching... I noticed that, yeah, we've we've had a really, really good week here in Sun Valley. And I I've been noticing that. Some valley never really that team. You know, it it... It's pretty on. And
it's and it's always that way. And yet there's this certain point in the flight where, yeah, gloves come off. I'm eating no hands on the brakes. To. I just... I'm just loving it. It's just yeah. Epic. It hasn't gotten any better than it was 2 minutes ago, but sudden suddenly, I'm just so in the zone, and so in the flow, and I'm not any better than I was 2 minutes ago either, but I'm better. I'm way better. I'm way more relaxed. I'm way more.
You know, it's just that, you know, there's the early season that we go through where we're just jittery and everything feels high pressure and sharp, and and that's all just gone I go through that early almost every flight. There's that whole kinda... I'm just not really in sync, not really feeling good, and then there's this moment where it's just... I got. Yes. Yeah. And I and I think unlocking that
is really powerful. I mean, from sailing, the moments in my... I was... I did 4 deck a lot before I did the roll I'm in now. I did 4 deck, which is a, you know, trying to prevent the next problem. You know, and and and managing lines and managing where 4 spin are in sales. And there are these moments where you feel like you're in the matrix for better analogy or not, You slow down time. You just stop the world and all you see is the thing that you have to reach to and connect to.
And everything stops. And all of that happens in a fraction of a second and to everyone else it might look fast, but to you everything has stopped. And even in the middle of it, you're be blasted with waves and all sorts of things, and it all goes quiet, and you just go and do the thing you need to do. And I don't know how to unlock that. Like
no drugs, no meditation. I haven't experienced it any other way than these things like racing sailboat, and then taking 2 d racing sailboat to 3 d with para. And and it's not every flight. But in those critical moments, and I mean, in in January this year, I had my B rise snap in Colombia in the middle of a task, and
It became 1 of those moments. Right? Full pupils as big as dinner plates, all of your training, everything focuses into that moment to make sure that you exist in this world in the next moment. And it was terrible but it was also so powerful and, like, such an enriching experience that made me grateful for everything. So I... I like, I'm okay with that duality. I I'm I hear you that some people just are not interested in flying and they probably shouldn't fly.
Yeah. No. No. I think they shouldn't neither. I just... It's fascinated to me that who's attracted to it and who isn't? Screen? Yeah. I mean, we're crazy. Look, none of this modern world would exist without really crazy people, getting on really shitty boats and most of them dying. None of them knew about hurricanes. They would just get on boats and they'd mostly die and they'd eat their shoes and they'd eat their belts. And that's why we have this world. And that's really
crazy. They were much crazier than we are. Oh my god. I just read the Wage don't know if you've read that, but you... We are so soft compared to what those people used to do. You oh my god. This just it's awful what they went through, But they just kept going through it. This... Yeah. It's amazing. And they didn't have clean water or things with toilet, like, you know, you said a bunch of people and their and they're they're going. And then they're had great success. They're yay.
We did it. Good job. Yeah. I mean, the people were insane. And so I think in order to make progress as humans, There has to be a batch of people that are a bit crazy. Now, do they just do sport forever or do they start to somehow let that sport trickle into other things because it's just so powerful and amazing. And and I think most people have been
looking the other direction. And and the the whole concept behind what I was doing and trying to do with free flight Loud to say, there's something really magical about this para glider system that we fly. But just as a a system to explore and learn about the earth and and just make things better. Let's like unpack this and understand, like, what
what can we do with this? And and try to push it in it as far directions as we possibly can take it just to see what happens and and and see if we can, you know, create some good in the world. And blow up less villages. You know, if if sometime you wanna just talk about motion sickness, I think that could help a lot of people too. I mean, I... For the first first 4 years flying in the mountains, I threw up every single flight. Let's talk about it.
Yeah. Let's give it let's dedicate a couple minutes to that. Yeah. While I used to throw up every flight, and I think it was just that it was a... It was similar to your computer crashing when you open up too many windows. Just like too much going on, and I'd pop. And it's okay because I had done the ocean racing and stuff, and I would just throw up and get back to changing the sale
and it was not a big deal. But when you're flying a para glider at some point, you're exhausted throwing up, You know, your dry heating, your ribs hurt you gotta fly this thing, and and that becomes just not workable. So I started doing research as as I do. And I found a woman who Nasa at Nasa Ames, which is in Mo Mo field over in in it's near San Francisco, who had developed a strategy to help fighter pilots and astronauts that would get d rated.
So they... The government spent a ton of money training them, and then they started to get sick and so they couldn't fly their high performance aircraft anymore. And so this woman took them and did a number of, different research programs with them to discover how to train them to basically build up tolerance and get the tools to reverse motion sickness. And And I'll quickly summarize it. So what we found is that there's 5 stages that
lead to motion sickness. And most people don't catch motion sickness until stage 4 or 5. But if you can catch it in stage 1, 2 or 3, you can do breathing exercises to basically reverse the symptoms. So a lot like your your recent episode with Jeremy. I mean, you are holding onto your breath, like a life raft, like an absolute life raft, and and you're doing this active meditation, and you basically reverse the symptoms.
And and so the more that you do it, the more it works and the more it reinforces that it works. I don't get motion sick anymore. At all. You because breathing because we're just conscious breathing? Through breathing and also it's identifying the symptoms early and breathing early. So for example, the very first stage of motion sickness, saliva salvation, sweating, dr ness and increased warmth. At that point, most people wouldn't start breath
breathing exercises. Right? Let's say, like, oh, I need to unzip my jacket or I'll take some water, but then probably don't do breathing exercises. The next step is sort of dizziness, a headache, maybe stomach rumbling, and then epi awareness, which is it's not nausea, and it's not like discomfort, but you're aware of your stomach. Right? You start to, like, think about your inner. Right? And again, that's only the second step. Again, most people don't feel like their motion
sick at the second step. Now, if you're aware of this and you've been training in the first or second step, you're already doing breathing exercises. And you've wound that back and you don't ever get into the third or fourth step. But now in third, in the third step is up gastric discomfort, which isn't nausea, but it's like increasing uncomfortable where you have a knot in your stomach or in your throat. Right? Like that. Really that sensation like, okay. You know, you're swallowing and stuff.
But now now we're into kind stage 3, and this is a bit of the tipping point. Like, if if you catch it here, you can wind it back, but it's tricky. And if you don't catch it here, you're most likely gonna lead into the fourth step, which is nausea. Where you're you're like, not aware or discomfort, but you're, like, very feel very nauseous. And then the final step is just frank vomiting. And that actually counts not actually throwing up. You can be frank vomiting without throwing up.
And you know, and and tandem pilots experience this all the time. But since I learned this, I trick people. So I I get them to do breathing exercises without ever mentioning motion sickness. I mean, the the the 1 in the Patricia Cow, her... 1 of the first lines in the article says, motion sickness is in your mind. It doesn't feel like it. It it doesn't manifest in your mind, but it's starts in your mind. Unless you have some ver things going on with your ears, most people
motion sickness is in your mind. So that actually gives you the power to manage it and control it. And so these... If these 5 steps, if you start doing these breathing exercises, you wear a heart rate monitor on your watch, all of your symptoms, all your physiological states are gonna increase before these symptoms start progressing. And if you can catch it and rewind it, you'll never get sick again. And what
is it takes a while. Just briefly, what is it what does a breathing exercise for this look like? It would be a a long breath in through your nose. So like, And then per your lips in such a way like you're blowing up a balloon. Right? And a real pressured, a real back pressured breathing out. So, like, and just just focusing on that really hard, like, strong in and breathing out. Almost imagining, like, you're be delaying. Right? Like, it, you know, you're bringing in the line and
you're you're tension it. And and you're just you you focus on that as if it's the only thing in the universe. And and and and you can just wind it back. And, you know, a few times I got sick in the 4 years of practicing it or so, But yeah, I can fly 2 weeks of S and never get sick. And I and I did pop up a couple times this last trip. But you know, III noticed it super early, and I just breathe and it's you know, it's like being a batman. It's on my utility belt. And I'm was just like,
okay. Great. I'll just start breathing now. And it also helps when you're shitting your pants. Right? You're in some place stressful. You just do the same breathing exercise. When your heart rate drops, your flying gets a lot better. Like, calm, you're aware, you're you're attentive to things. And I and you've had a number of episodes where people have talked about this, and this is just 1 other element of
it. But people are afraid to talk about it, Like, after many trips, I'll mention it, and someone will come to me, like, in the shadows as we're all headed back to the tent and go, well, I also get sick. So what? Why don't we just talk about this? It doesn't matter. Like, you don't have to be embarrassed. You get sick, like, that there's things to do about it and you don't No you don't have to take drugs or ginger or pressure points. You just use this thing and you can
retrain your brain, and and that's ridiculous. But God. That was wish we've known this for Jody. She spent 8 years sail around the world, and she was sick every day poor thing. Oh, Well, if you remember when Logan, Logan's partner, Sophie did the the World to Hawaii, I worked with them early on because they had some of their teammates who are really getting sick. So they were going to, like, children's playgrounds and spinning in in on the on the games there, and practicing to not
get sick. And on the boat, they ended up using it, and and I think they were good. I. I mean, that was an incredible incredible journey they did. Yeah. That was very cool. Mike, Thanks for thanks for your time. I'm glad we finally got around to doing this. It's it's it's needed to happen. It's, but it sounds like the timing was right. It was for 2 this. And, good luck, man. I've I we all really
appreciate you and what you're doing. And I love that there are people with brains like yours and not everybody has brains like mine. Good luck be Yeah. Well, as long as people have brains, we're gonna be doing okay. Yeah. Thanks so much, Gavin. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. You're a treasurer and and good work. Keep up the good work and and keep going, man. Keep pressing double down. If you find the cloud base may valuable, you can support it in a lot of different ways.
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