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.