Red Bull X-Alps 2013. Imagine: a July day at 11am and you are standing on the take-off above Interlaken. The sun is shining and the clouds are touching the mountain tops. You would like to fly to the Matterhorn or even better, over Mt. Blanc to Grenoble. With your paraglider, either flying or hiking. Hiking means stress, it’s strenuous – and seven times slower.
Author: Judith Mole
Heike Hamann learned to fly in 1992 and recently completed a Masters in Process Oriented Psychology. After a few paragliding incidents she developed a fear of being high and as part of her thesis she started to examine her fears and thought about how she could tackle them. The result is an article called ‘The Seven Steps of Fear Management in Paragliding’. The entire thesis can be read here.
In this podcast she talks about how she came to develop the seven steps, how to use them to control your own fear and what practical things you can do when you feel anxious. This will hopefully lead to you getting more enjoyment out of your flying and improve your performance.
Listen to the podcast below:
There’s still thousands of things to learn and improve!
Chrigel Maurer and Thomas Theurillat have won the X-Alps three times and entered the X-pyr for the first time in 2014. The X-pyr is an adventure race based on the X-Alps, where competitors must traverse the Pyrenees from Atlantic to the Mediterranean by walking or flying. This year the race was 440km. The CTR around the dropzone at the Empuria Brava skydiving centre meant that there was a 30km hike at the end of the race.
Tim O’Neill started flying 44 years ago in sailplanes and has been hooked on aviation ever since. He began flying paragliders in 2002 and has been an avid XC pilot for the last 9 years. He makes his living flying 747s for a US airline, but spends much his home time assessing whether the day is flyable or not…
His interest in the safety aspect of our sport is based on his 26,000 hours of accident-free experience in civilian aviation, coupled with his occasional bouts with injury and over-enthusiasm in paragliding. If you want to see more about him and his flying adventures you can view his blog here.
Tim loves to have fun and in this podcast he talks about his personal attitude to safety, communication, attitudes to risk and how to balance having a great time while trying to stay safe…
Listen to the podcast below:
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Shhhh… don’t mention the S-word
We have just released a new podcast called Shhhh… don’t mention the S-word with Tim Bishop
Tim has a background in military and civil aviation and flies paragliders in Iceland. Our discussion centred on all sorts of aspects of flight safety… human factors, the usefulness of flight simulation, training, psychology, the difficulty of having productive safety discussions and a lot more.
Listen to the podcast here: