Demystifying The Science Behind Endless Fun Factor of Parakites With Bryan Van Ostheim

Bryan Van Ostheim: I think the biggest problem in parakiting is that people can get so confident that they think they can always fly in all kinds of conditions and start to push the limits. And then at some point, yeah, there is a limit and then it gets really nasty. For you as an industry insider, how have you seen the artificial neural networks come around and offer

Aninder: their assistance? How does it work? So what will happen is that everything will be more optimized. We will know better and even 3D

Bryan Van Ostheim: printers that could print your whole canopy. It works like you have two layers of fabric. and the machine can cut out all the panels. And then in between those fabrics, they are welding tapes. So instead of having real ribs, you just have tapes. You won't have the normal billowed shape in between the cells anymore. It will look more like one solid wing. That's exciting. But the technology is there already. It's just a matter of time. Theoretically, how fast can our wings go on paper at least? I think the restrictions are mainly how much load can the wing hold before it starts to explode. The faster you go,

Aninder: what is up everyone welcome back to another episode of paragliding atlas podcast i'm your host aninder singh and as you might have noticed we are coming to you a little bit out of schedule and the reason for this tiny bit of delay is that i've been relentlessly traveling across various countries chasing airtimes mostly in the baltics and needless to say life has been an absolute blessing while doing so Earlier this month I had just finished my travels in Macedonia where I was staying for the PWC Macedonian Edition 2025 although I was not racing but just by being there at the time of the World Cup I got to connect with so many amazing pilots and of course I managed to get hold of loads of amazing

names a couple of them you have already heard but stay tuned for the remaining ones that are coming to you week after week in the near future And until then, here is an episode with one of the most interesting brains in our industry. To put it in more simple words, his main job is to design kites for the big ships out there to help them with energy efficiency. But guess what? As a side gig, he started a hobby project that took off and eventually made him create a brand that we all know today, which goes by the name of Dune Rider. So without further ado, this

is Brian van Ostheim, the brain behind taking parakeets to a whole next level and unlocking the performance dynamics of dune riding that we never even knew existed. So let's dive right in and I hope you like it.

Brian van Ostheim, what an absolute honor to have you on Paragliding Atlas. Welcome to the show. thank you to have me here brian i want to start with dune rider because it's a revolutionary product which has promised the audiences all the pilots out there to increase the fun factor in the paragliding industry so what is dune rider all about and what makes it different from the other paragliders that are available out there yeah With Dune Rider, we started basically just as me and a few friends. We are all pilots. And we mainly fly in the Netherlands. So we

Bryan Van Ostheim: have like really small dunes. And we were thinking about how can we have more fun on those small dunes. And we realized that we need more glide. We wanted more dive and more pop. So more energy retention. And we wanted to have more roll. That were the basics for us. And with that, we could basically increase the fun factor. So we basically have a parakite now with quite some high performance and it's checking all the boxes from the things I just said. I'm very curious about the trim speed of parakites because paragliders, of course, when we start pushing the

Aninder: bar, we start seeing an acceleration in the ground speed. And the trim speed is not that big of a variation. But when we look at parakeets, they just seem to go a whole lot faster. So what is the trim speed that parakeets have? And is Dune Rider a lot more faster than the other parakeets that are on the market by other brands? So it's not a lot faster than the other brands. It's mainly that we can achieve a better glide.

Bryan Van Ostheim: and also a worse glide so i think main difference with between a normal paraglider and a parakite is that with a parakite we want to have the best glide when we are at trim so with our hands down And we want to have the worst glide when we have our hands up because then we start to dive. So our trim speed is a little bit higher compared to a normal paraglider. And this is also because we are using different profiles and we are basically having a better glide when we fly a little bit faster. So we can also fly relatively slow, especially on the really big paraglides. But

you almost don't do that. You will feel that once you start to fly a paracord, you will always fly it above trim speed because it's just more fun and it stores more energy. And from that point, you can be way more playful with your glider. But yeah, so we can also fly around like 70 or 80 kilometers an hour on the dunes. And coming from a turn is easy to do over 100 kilometers an hour, just on our small dunes even. What I'm wondering

Aninder: is because in paragliders, if you wanted to handle those kinds of speeds, you literally had to go to competition wings, like something like two liner performance. or like the top of the line gliders were able to give you those performance as pilots out there. But with parakites, there's one product, and it's just downsizing, which is allowing you to handle larger wind speeds. What is the basic difference in layman terms, like for those people who haven't tried parakites out there? What is the one thing that makes parakites different from paragliders?

Bryan Van Ostheim: Yeah, I wouldn't say it's one thing. I would say it's two things. But the most important thing is that we have kite risers. And this is like a pulley system with toggles as well in your hand, but everything is connected. So basically you have your speed system that is built inside your risers. Once you're steering or you're going hands up, for example, you're basically not deforming your trailing edge to steer. It's basically changing the angle of attack of your whole wing. And if you only do this on one side, it's basically, it makes you turn or it makes you dive, for example. I think this is one of the biggest changes, but another big factor is the profile. Like we designed those wings more

like a kite. It's more like a kite than a paraglider because with a normal paraglider, the focus is really more on performance and stability when you are at trim speed. And for power kites, it's really important to have the best possible stability, even with your lowest angle of attack. So we've focused a lot on that, that you can go full speed, but still have a great stability. I saw this video on one of your Instagram channels

Aninder: which said that if you hit brakes when the paraglider is diving forward, then there's a chance of stalling it or violent behavior. So why does that happen? Because intuitively for me, when I fly paragliders, I've been told that every time the leading edge dives in front of your head, you should... stop it by pulling the brakes and bringing it back to your head so how is this technology different from the usual paragliders where braking is supposedly the safe thing but here going hands up is the safer thing this baffles my mind if you can talk a little bit about this

Bryan Van Ostheim: Yeah, of course. Yeah, so we are making use of a reflex profile and a reflex profile basically acts like a spoiler. I can actually show it to you up here like a small model. So if the wing wants to shoot forward, then on a regular paraglider, it's pitching forward like this and you have to break it so that it will not collapse. With the reflex profile, it's shooting forward, but then the trailing edge is tilting up and it acts like a spoiler and it brings the wing back so it basically it of course it can collapse in really heavy turbulence but most of the times the reflex

will make sure that the wing is yeah moving back coming back to the natural position yeah yeah and then the thing that that you were talking about by hitting the brakes once this happens it's not really about stalling the glider it's mainly that it can completely collapsed. Because if the wing shoots forward and you don't let the reflex do its thing and you break just a little bit or just enough that you take out the reflex, the whole wing can suddenly move forward and the whole center of pressure is moving to the back. So that means that there is no pressure in the leading edge anymore and it can just suddenly collapse. So we basically say that Either you do nothing when this happens, when the

wing is shooting forward, just do nothing and the reflex will solve it. But once you are in heavy turbulence, I would never advise this. And then you have to active fly, but then do it a lot by heavy pulling and pull much, but not a little bit. Because yeah, that's not a good combination on most parakeets where there is some degree of reflex. So basically reflex activates the safety mechanism, but only up to a point. And if you mess

Aninder: with that small little buffer that reflex is supposed to solve for you, then of course you put yourself in danger. But if you cross that buffer and give it an input where it negates the reflex from the profile, then it is a lot more easier to prevent the surge like a normal paraglider. Is this correct? Yeah, but the funny thing is this search will not happen that often, actually. The search will mainly happen when you break...

Bryan Van Ostheim: that much that you take out the reflex and if you don't do this maybe the wing is just moving a bit but yeah even if we come out from a spiral and we don't make a nice exit even then the we've tested this on the on lake garda and we we came out from spiral and then after this the wing is actually it wants to shoot forward but then it stops because yeah the reflex makes it stop so it's It's actually really easy to control those wings. You just have to keep in mind that, okay, if it's really shooting forward, just pull a lot or do nothing. But don't pull to the point where, yeah, you only

take out the reflex a little bit because then you don't have the design shape anymore and the reflex is not there anymore. So then it's suddenly like a normal wing. Is there a way to practice this in ground handling? How do you develop the instinct for this? Yeah, I think ground handling is a great way to practice this, like always for all kinds of maneuvers. Even on the ground, the wing is less stable. So while ground handling, because there's not much wing loading on it. So yeah, exactly. Practice this on the ground, especially in turbulent air. If it's turbulent, just go ground handling. And on the other hand, this also tells you a lot on the conditions. for the dunes especially if you should fly or not if

Bryan Van Ostheim: you have your hands up and the wing keeps on collapsing you can expect from a reflex wing that it will be super turbulent because you need some pressure in the wing and even if you have a lot of reflex at some point your lines are not rigid so your wing can still come down and towards you even while it's not collapsing What I'm wondering is what kind of collapses are the most common one in paraglides? Because for paragliders,

Aninder: asymmetrics are something that happen pretty often. And we are told to do whatever, opposite brake shift or opposite brake. It's a fairly easy mechanism to try and navigate an asymmetric. I wouldn't say easy, but at least straightforward. But Parakites, on the other hand, do not have a lot of collapse videos out there. And I understand that they might be being flown in laminar conditions in a coast where there is very little possibility to go out and collapse or face the collapses of Parakite. But what is the usual thing that goes wrong in the Parakite technology that needs pilot input to correct? Okay. So regarding the collapses, yeah, a power cut can collapse. And I think this really differs from type

Bryan Van Ostheim: and model. But I can only tell you about the dune riders, we are focusing a lot that once it starts to collapse, we want to have this happening from the tip, so from the side, because we prefer that you have only a tip that's collapsing and not directly the whole wing. Another thing is that we try to make it really talkative. So before it's collapsing, the wing will tell you, hey, something is going wrong and you need to start flying more active. If you ignore this, then at some point you feel like some pressure loss and it feels a bit different compared to normal gliders. You feel it more at your hips and your butt because it's also like everything is pulled. So the feedback that you get is different. So

we've been testing this. We didn't get any frontals in the test. in the production series we only managed to get some side wingtip collapses and this is in really rough air or for example when we are soaring with the 12 in more than 30 knots and we are flying all the way to the ground where you get all the turbulence from the waves and if you do then don't do anything and you're not active flying then it might be that wingtip can collapse but even then we managed to to keep the keep flying the wing straight so it's not really moving away and it opens up quickly but what

is important i think this counts for every parakite on the market is that once you experience a collapse don't keep your hands high. On a regular paraglider, it's good to keep your hands high. It will start to accelerate and it will reinflate. But basically, you can compare it that if you have your hands high on a paraglide, you are pushed full speed. So it's at a very low angle of attack and it's way harder for the glider to open up again. So what works really good is just to do one hard pull down The wing starts to open up again and then bring your hands to

glide position. So not directly hands up again. Yeah, so these are things that can happen. And I think what you need to keep in mind of flying parakeets is that in general, you fly way faster compared to other wings. So you have to take this into account. Crash can be way worse because of your speed. And I think the biggest problem in parakiting is that people can get so confident that they think they can always fly in all kinds of conditions and start to push the limits. And then at some point, yeah, there is a limit. And then it gets really nasty. So

Aninder: basically you're telling me that there's a pseudo sense of safety for people who don't understand the amount of risk that is generated and how quickly it is generated. Whereas in paragliders, the learning curve is a lot longer, so you go a bit more slower and it's more intuitive. yeah

Bryan Van Ostheim: yeah imagine that you're flying in really high wind speeds and you're flying on a 12 for example everything happens just so much faster and i even got during prototyping some collapses that i felt them coming and i started to act on it and still was too late so still had the collapse but then the your responses is too late and it still solves the problem but You will get the collapse. And if you are flying on the bigger parakeet, it is more gently. Also, when you fly with lower wing loading, the chance of a collapse is bigger. But if you get the collapse, it's less intimidating, basically. What's the learning curve like in this sport? Because in paragliders, of course, there are like very clear cut

Aninder: levels which you can follow. Like you fly an E and A wing straight after the school, you fly it for 50, 100 hours, you're ready to go to a B wing. So there is like very defined steps that any pilot can go out and progress on. But paragliding seems to be a whole new fun way of chasing adrenaline. And the definition of performance versus safety is just downsizing. Like there's no other homologation which gives you that kind of reference point. So how does the progress of a pilot look from your eyes in this sport? This is a really interesting question. I think,

Bryan Van Ostheim: so from what I can see, there are two things happening. You have, or yeah, maybe even more, but you have the group of the traditional paraglider pilots and they fly already and then they want to change to a wing, to a parakite. And the other group are mainly paragliders. For example, people that come from other spots like skydivers, kitesurfers. In the Netherlands, it's mainly kitesurfers. Kitesurfers, they switch from kiting to parakiting. And it's quite funny to see because the people that already do kitesurfing, they have control over the parakite almost immediately because they are used to the same system with the depower and things that is also happening on the kite. But they don't

have the the feeling and the sense of flying yet and also not in combination with the conditions and flying with other people around and then the other group are the people that are already flying paragliders and so they basically know how to fly and they yeah they are familiar with many situations in the air but they have to get used to a new system so for this group it's it looks that it's sometimes harder Because all the muscle memory is already there, but it's different. For example, once you experience a collapse, it's not happening often, but if it would happen and you keep the same reflex from flying with a normal paraglider, you're doing it wrong. It's the same with starting. If you

launch from the dune and you keep your hands high, you will not take off because there is no lift and because it only wants to accelerate. And so these kinds of things, but once you get used to it, it's, super simple and then there's maybe only a really small group that has no experience at all and they start on parakites yeah and i think the learning curve is different for different kind of people some people they can fly in one day and order of other people it's a few weeks or a few months i would say for progressing and stepping up just keep on flying where you feel

comfortable with And don't push too far. Don't go over your limits because in this sport, you cannot go over your limits. So do everything as slow as possible and try to understand what you are doing. But from that perspective, it's not really much different than with normal paragliders, I would say. What I'm wondering is that, is it honestly possible to do two sports at the same time, like arakiting and

Aninder: paragliding? Or because... they are intuitively so different that there is a chance that your subconscious mind will not register things when they happen too quickly and you might end up mixing up the dangers and messing up because your brain is wired to react differently in different scenarios yeah it's funny like in the in at the start of parakites people were worried about this and from what i have experienced it it's not really a problem It's like you fly a completely different wing and you feel what the wing is doing. So you also respond

Bryan Van Ostheim: differently on it. But maybe as a complete beginner, you should not mix up those things. Maybe either just start on a normal paraglider first and then from there on progress to parakite or just start on a parakite. This opinion is not so favored by many people to start on only a parakite. But I think in the future, it will be like this anyway, at least for dune soaring. I think for dune soaring, you will almost not see normal paragliders at the dunes anymore in the future. Yeah. Now, what I'm wondering is that, is it possible to be a good paraglider pilot and a good

Aninder: parakite pilot at the same time? Or are these two very different things where a human brain is only able to develop safety mechanisms for one sport effectively than for two different sports and then mix and match because as I said 5% brake pressure in paragliders is nice but 5% brake pressure in paragliding is freaking dangerous because you're messing up with the reflex yeah I think you can be a great pilot in both but I think there goes like many more hours in becoming a good pilot under a normal paraglider it's way more It's way more advanced, I would say, compared

Bryan Van Ostheim: to a parakite. On a parakite, everything with flying is just so easy. And that's the thing why I told you people get so confident. And then, yeah, then you start to look for the limits. And that's where the danger starts. What happens if we take a parakite into a thermal? And if we

Aninder: circle it to a cloud base? Yeah, it's totally possible. Yeah. So you're telling me that it is possible to go cross-country on para-kites as well? Yeah, you could. But the question is, why would you want to do this? It's not comfortable. You have to keep your hands all the way down at all

Bryan Van Ostheim: times to have the best glide. So this is not ideal. But flying in turbulence, parakeets are relatively stable. So the wings are super stable. It's mainly about how are you going to respond. There's more options because with every movement you are making, you're also changing the angle of attack. So for the brands that are having a parakeet on the market, it's really hard to tell how safe is this wing in a thermal. or in turbulence, because it mainly depends on the piloting. And you don't know how people are piloting the thing. There's too many variations. But yeah, I've done it. And some team riders have done it as well. And yeah, if you know what you are doing, it's totally possible.

Aninder: What I'm wondering is that why has nobody put a port harness on a paraglide yet? Like, why do we only see chair harnesses? Because pod harnesses are much more streamlined. And if we are chasing speed and glide, which is the whole idea of parakeets, where you want extra speed and extra glide to increase the fun factor, then why don't we see conventional pod harnesses coming? Except from the part that, okay, you want to do some toe touches and stuff like that. But let's say if you just want proximity soaring on dunes, do you see pod harnesses being a part of the kit as well in time to come? So in the Netherlands, there are some people using this combination of parakite and pod harness. I think

Bryan Van Ostheim: it depends on what you want to do. When you're flying with pod harness, you may have one body position and you have to deal with that. If we fly without the port harness, we have more options because we straightened our legs, for example, to get a better glide. But we can also bend our body down or like our legs down and come out of the harness really easily to get like a worse glide. So if we combine this when flying a parakeet, we can easily get the best glide. And when, for example, we want to go up or when we want to have the glide or when we are flying proximity, But if we want to

dive, we are coming out of the harness to even get more dives. And this is something that is way harder to do when you fly a pod harness. And another thing is, of course, that we are flying in a lot of wind. And from my experience, when flying with a pod harness on the dunes in a lot of wind, the chance of starting to rotate or getting twisted in a turn or whatever is also high. way higher so it's totally possible from but for me personally it's not that much more fun but for some people that are seeking for the best glide and most lift sure they are using a potholder

there's there's one guy from the netherlands this guy is avon and He is mainly flying modified paragliders. So he's building his own kite riser system and then putting them on normal gliders and using it as a parakite in combination with the pothoners. And you can see that he is getting like the most performance from anyone else at the dunes and even being able to sometimes doing three or four spirals down at the small dunes, which is like a few years ago. I think this never happened. So it's indeed a great way to increase your performance, but it's not only about the glide performance. It's also about how playful is the wing, how much can you dive and stuff like that. What wing is he experimenting on, if you

Aninder: don't mind talking about it? Okay. I think he started on like regular race kites. It was R1, I think. And from there on, he started to

Bryan Van Ostheim: experiment with D-wings and even competition gliders. So the one he is flying now mainly, I think it's a Nephuk. Yeah, like a triple C glider.

Aninder: Damn. so kite risers on a triple c and that's endless performance basically then because this the glide is insane and what what happens when you put a kite riser on a paraglider what's the difference in behavior what changes i would say mainly you don't have the same stability when having your hands up so flying at the lowest angle of attack You always have to fly way more active when you put kite risers on a

Bryan Van Ostheim: normal paraglider. I would say the chance of a collapse is way greater. And it really depends on what kind of glider you put the kite risers on. Because, yeah, if you have, I know there are some competition gliders that are having built-in reflex. So on those wings, I think it's easier to put kite risers and make it work. But there are also some wings that are really bad with kite risers and you don't have much speed range. Speed range will be less for sure. And after this, it will just start to collapse. It might be that your brake pressure is way higher. So this also depends on what kind of kite risers you're putting on the wing. And another thing is that... which is really important, but you don't see it

usually directly on the wing, is the spacing of your attachment points. So you have, for example, your A, B, C spacing. And the spacing in between those is really important to keep the ratio aligned with your kite risers. So if it deviates too much from the ideal positioning, it means that you will deform your wing way earlier. You will just deform it when you put your hands up or when you put them down at yeah once they are moving

Aninder: away from the perfect twin position so like the thing with kite risers is that they're a bit like longer because my curiosity is that how does a kite rider kite riser change from the regular risers because kites seem to be a lot further away from the athlete or the body when i see a kite harness attached to a kite whereas a paraglider is much shorter like the distance between the pilot and the glider or the lower surface isn't that long so is it just the length the pendulum effect or is it the material which is or as you said the attachment points like what is the

major difference between flying kite risers to a surface than a paraglider rises to a surface yeah i think the in in so basically they look really similar but there are many differences so for example the build construction is different a power kite needs to be built way

Bryan Van Ostheim: stronger because we will experience higher g-forces we use different materials often i would say a little bit heavier more heavy duty And of course, yeah, the positioning of the pilot is indeed way different. On the parakite, you are pretty close to the canopy. And with the normal kite, it's often between 17 to 21 meters, 22 meters.

so that means if you would put like your harness directly to a normal kite that it's deformed you get you don't get the shape of how it should be because the line there is no line length so that means that the normal kite will become like super curved it will have a super high r shape so you would have to modify this first but of course there's another thing which is We built a parakeet. We developed a parakeet. And it's, of course, we call it a parakeet, but it's optimized for flying. So we check all the situations with flying. How is the roll? How is the dive? How does

Bryan Van Ostheim: it respond on the brakes? How does it feel? I would say the feeling of how a wing feels is super important. And then you do the same thing when you develop a kite, right? But a kite is not really made for flying. So you check all the stuff that is mainly very important. So in the end, you end up with a totally different product, I would say. The main things that are similar is, I would say, the airfoil looks very similar. And then the system with the depower and the police is something that is super similar. I'm glad you mentioned the manufacturing side of it because I

Aninder: was on your website a little while ago and I saw that you are doing some pretty cool things out there. Just quickly for the reference of our audiences, who are you and how do you make such cool products? Because the SP80 project that is basically powering some world record speed handling. I'm sorry I should have asked this in the beginning of the show, but what has your journey been like in this scenario and what have you been up to so far before Dune Rider came in your life? Yeah, it's funny that you ask this because Dune Rider is basically like a side project

Bryan Van Ostheim: still. I love the humble brag over there that this is just a side gig. The real thing is even cooler. I wouldn't say it's cooler. It's something completely different. So what I'm doing mainly in my daily life is designing big kites. So this starts from 25 square meters up to 400 square meters at the moment. And you would ask, what can you do with this kind of kites? How strong do you need to be to fly a 400 square meter kite,

Aninder: man? Do you need bodybuilders to pull the risers? You need many bodybuilders. So with that, we can pull like cargo, like big cargo

Bryan Van Ostheim: ships. And so my background is a bit in... I started at a company where we were developing kites to generate... electricity yeah with the kite and the ground station and then the kite was flying figures of eight pulling out the tether and then with that we create we were creating electricity and then we depowered the kite at the zenith where it's not pulling much and then it's retrieving the kite again and this pumping cycle yeah makes it that you get electricity but what i learned is that these kind of kites are Having a way different approach because it's not only about the performance, but safety is a really big thing. And the biggest thing is, I would say, is production because it's really hard to

produce those kites. There's many things that you need to do differently and also design-wise differently. yeah you're just approaching it in a different way so we use stronger materials we use construction methods that makes the kite way stronger sometimes we have just one single attachment point that needs to handle like around 400 kilos on just one single attachment point yeah and that's a lot and then even if we have this we still need a whole bridle with a lot of support So the big kites I started on were mainly looking like big kite surfing kites. So they were inflatable. But the bridle was due to this high wing loading thing looking way more like a paraglider. So there are like many

lines connecting to the canopy. And yeah, from this, I started to gain more experience and I worked already a lot with a factory that can do big kites. And then I started to do, I basically quit my job and then started my own business and starting to do these kinds of projects for multiple companies. companies, because I found like, oh, there are now many more companies that want this and want this technology integrated in what they are doing, but they don't have the experience yet and I can help them with it. So yeah, for example, SB80 is one of those customers. They want to break the speed sailing world record. And instead of using a regular sail, they want to use a kite because it's more efficient in the end. So we

developed this together. And yeah, these are the kind of things that I'm doing. And I would say, so what I said about the production, it's way different. It's more advanced. And even looking at the size, there's no space at the normal kite department to make those big kites. So you have to make a combination in the end. And this also makes it possible for me to really go outside of the box because we need to solve different solutions different problems compared to what we have in the kite surfing or paragliding industry and this is what i mainly like to go outside of the box to see what can we try and then then just go for it then solve this issue yeah i mean what i'm wondering is 400 kilometer

kilogram for an attachment point what kind of materials do you guys use on this is it similar to what we have in paragliding or is it completely a whole new industry that we are not aware of No, it's still very similar, but it's way thicker, for example. I would say we are trying to smart optimize all the kites. So we are also using just Dyneema materials, for example, but also Dyneema fabrics. And Dyneema fabrics is not really common yet in paragliders or in the kite surfing industry. It's way strong. It's way stronger. And Coming back to the attachment points, yeah, we are testing often all kinds of different construction. And this goes from even the smallest details, like how long should be a

Bryan Van Ostheim: splice? How should it be spliced? And how long should be the taper in how to cut the splice? Because those kinds of things have so much influence on construction. the maximum strength of something. And this goes even together with, okay, then we stitch the attachment point in the strut, for example, for the kite. And how do we do this? What kind of thread? How big is the stitch? And how far is the stitch offset from the seam? All those things together you can use to really optimize the product. But other than that, we are also testing a lot new kind of materials. Yeah. Go on. So this is something that we will see soon in the future. I think new kind of materials that are way lighter, way stronger and different

production techniques. So not stitching anymore, but also a lot of welding. Yeah, that's what I was actually getting to that as a designer,

Aninder: because most of the paraglider designer have usually worked with paragliders, right? Like they, they have been in paragliding industry for long enough, and they have invested their time, soul and energy in this single sport itself. But you seem to be having quite a diverse portfolio. Like how did the switch happen? Like how did Dune Rider come into your life? What were the origins of this brand from? Making 400 square meter kites to just normal power. This seems to be like a side gig, a project that is like baffles my mind because there are other people who would invest their lifetimes in perfecting something and you just went out and made something just when you had like free time. It seems like

that at least. Yeah. Yeah. So in my spare time, I am flying as much as possible. And because I am living pretty close to the shore, to the

Bryan Van Ostheim: dunes, I can do dunes soaring a lot. And at first I was a team rider at Flair, but I was looking for something more. I had this idea already a long time in my head to increase performance, get more dive, more roll, et cetera. Within my company, i was looking like i need to do i want to do some more r d but what can i do because if i put this effort in big kite technology i cannot do it alone i have to do it together with the company and the r d goes really slowly we can do maybe one or two prototypes each month but then testing those big kites is is way more challenging you

cannot test like multiple kites in one day for example So for me, it was like, okay, it needs to be a project that I can do by myself. And it needs to go fast because I like to iterate fast. And that were the main requirements for myself. And then I thought, why I'm not just putting my effort in learning, designing parakeets, because that's what I like doing the most. And it's even an extra option for me to get airborne even more. And then on my own parakeets. So that's how it started. I had the first sketch was already in my computer for more than one year, but I

didn't produce it yet because I knew once I started on it, I will keep on doing it. So at some point I ordered just the first sample and unfortunately it came a bit too late. And in the meantime, I got like accident and I broke my back. So for a few months, I was not being able to fly those prototypes myself, but luckily I have Quite some friends that are also flying. So they were flying my prototypes. And I learned a lot from that because I was there every session. I was recording them on video and I got the feedback from them. And then after a few months, I was

finally able to fly myself again. And then I figured out, hey, this I want to still change and this and that. And for me, of course, starting this project was way easier because I already have the connection with the factory. So the same factory is also producing a lot of paragliders. So for this, I went to the paraglider department and they were willing to help me. And I told them like, hey, this is just a project, just an R&D project. I don't know if we will go into serial production ever, but... Please help me with those samples. And they were really friendly and they wanted to help. And at some point we realized like, hey, this wing is really becoming a thing and it's checking all the boxes, all the things

that we want. And my friends were like, you should bring this to the markets that other people also can fly it. So then I was just trying to figure out, okay, how do I need to start a brand? I never owned a brand before. So this is something completely new to me. And I got like lots of consultancy from different people that are already owning a brand and things like that. Yeah, we got in touch with Air2Cross for the certification for the shock test and load test. Other people wanted to do a video. And that's basically how it started. I was looking for team riders because we also needed to have people in the video and and before before we know yeah we had to launch so we launched in january this year

Bryan Van Ostheim: without knowing what to expect even for the factory they didn't know i basically told them like okay we we are opening the pre-orders and this is the amount that you have to produce so i cannot promise you like minimum water or anything and they were like no we can let's do it this way and we see from there yeah and that's and now we are here we We did a few batches already and production is now a continuous thing, even. That's

Aninder: cool, man. Let's let you add your side gig, take off and spread more awesomeness in the world. But tell me a little bit about the design aids that you use, Brian. If I ask you the question that what goes on from drawing broad to the actual production, it's a pretty wide one. But what I'm wondering is that AI is coming up pretty heavily. You have probably been in design design departments for much before this whole, like revolutionary of chat GPTs and everything coming around to us. For you as an industry insider, how have you seen the artificial neural networks come around and offer their assistance to designers like you? How does it work behind the scenes? You think this will play a big role in

Bryan Van Ostheim: the future of kite design? Actually, I know this because I'm connected to some people that are working on this, mainly working at the technical university in the Netherlands. And so what will happen is that everything will be more optimized. So we will know better what kind of air balls to use or how should be even the 3D shape of a kite. Everything will be more accurate. So it will be mainly in the future. You just need to have your requirements and you need to know what you want. And this tool will just help you reaching that goal. And in the end, it will save you some prototypes, I think. So this is something that's going on at the moment. And I think this will be combined with our kite design tools. For

example, how it works now, we have a separate software for doing our designs. Then we take the output or for example, like every piece of output, we take it to different simulations and we get the result and we have to basically have to guess on how to continue and how to improve it so you do you iterate between those programs all the time and at some point you're like okay this should be something that works and then you build a prototype but you never know for sure because it's really hard to simulate yeah the the whole canopy because it's also moving it's stretching and that's especially in paragliders is in internal airflow and there are some people that that are already into this and

they are simulating this but it's still super time consuming and i think in the future this will be just like almost automated easy thing it will be like a tool it will be like a super easy optimal you have any idea how far that day is like until when does the end user like me and the listeners out

Aninder: there are able to reap the benefits of this new revolution this is hard to tell i'm also not that deep into this part of the tools but i guess this will be like five to ten years something like that It will be in combination with everything together. Something that is going on at

Bryan Van Ostheim: the moment is not only simulation that is improving or design tools, but production is becoming different. There's new options in production and materials. There will be different type of materials. So all this combined, I think, will make the whole industry look different, way different in a few years. Ten years ago, if we roll back the clock, nobody would have ever imagined that we could or have a fusion between heights

Aninder: and paragliders and come out with parachutes. You as an industry insider who has seen the evolution of sports over a period of time, do you have any visualization of what could be coming in time to come? Yeah, this is really cool to think about, actually. So maybe I can keep the

Bryan Van Ostheim: focus a little bit on parachutes because otherwise it would be so wide. But for parachutes, I think we will see different type of parakites. You have the all-rounders that are suitable for everyone. And basically all parakites are like that now. And then we have only the high performance wing. So that's only one other category. I think there will be many more categories just like with normal paragliding, but then optimized for parakiting. And I think the performance and everything will be pushed even more because people are starting to fly those things more. They are learning to fly them. In some years, they are ready for the next thing. For example, now the scraper is for the expert pilot, but

this might be different in a few years if there is like many people that are flying already on this level and they might be looking even for something more extreme. Looking at myself and the direction I would like to go, I think I would be the person that keeps pushing the limits and trying to go outside of the box. Something that I'm doing right now is looking into way smaller wings even smaller than the 12th but we want to keep the performance so the challenge now is to get super high performance small wings but still have the stability stuff like that once you can reach this people can to start fly smaller you can Even in lower wind speeds, you can fly smaller wings. It allows you to go faster

and have a more dynamic wing because it's also more playful and it moves more. But at the moment, this is not happening so much yet because already a 12 is for many people, they think it's too small. Once we increase performance, it also means that you can start flying a smaller wing in lower wind speeds. So I think this is one of the things that will happen in the future. Materials and production will change. we will have different materials exciting times are coming to say the least basically yeah so if you look on what what's going on behind the scenes there's a lot of r d into developing new type of fabrics and as i said before the welding techniques and even 3d printers that could print

your whole canopy This means it works like you have two layers of fabric and the machine can cut out all the panels. And then in between those fabrics, they are welding tapes. So instead of having real ribs, you just have tapes. You won't have the normal billowed shape in between the cells anymore. It will look more like one solid wing. Damn, that's exciting. That's a lot of performance gain. But also weight, because you only need the tapes. So you take away the human labor cost out of it, a small suing of small parts. I think in the end, it could be cheaper. Indeed, it first needs to get to the stage where it can be used in production. In the beginning, it would be to test small segments and to

do prototyping. Imagine prototyping. You have a great idea and you want to test it. In one or two days, in the night, you just send this model to this printer and it prints your whole wing. It sounds like something from the future, and it is, but the technology is there already. It's just a matter of time and investment. To get there, it takes some time and development and trial and error. Wow, man. Blows my mind to consider how

Aninder: the wings will start looking eventually. Are we finally looking at triple Cs? being upgraded because i think our sport paragliders have been hitting a stagnation point with triple c's for quite a while since the enzo 3 with nothing but only small improvements here and there but the one you're telling seems to be quite a substantial one and it seems like it has the potential to have a blanket effect on every single category out there yeah I think you are referring mainly to performance when you talk about the CCC Wix because there has been a lot of

Bryan Van Ostheim: development going on lately. What for me... Pencil has stayed around for years now without any other brand challenging the status quo. Like

Aninder: realistically, Neviuc has gone close. Yeah. 777 came with the Gambit, but it fizzled out pretty quickly. It feels like it has stayed stagnant for a while. I'm not saying that it's... that they will win over the Anso 3. I think partly it's also that the biggest amount of pilots will just

Bryan Van Ostheim: choose for the Anso 3 because they know it's a reliable wing and you can win competition with it. But if you look at, I don't know, BGD and Nifjok, they focus a lot on the stability part. So it's not only the performance, but also when you push full speed, that it's stable. And this is something that is very familiar to a parakeet. Only difference is that with the parakeet, we want to dive and then, yeah, with a competition wing, you want to go fast, but keep your glide as well. I don't know too much about it, but for me, it doesn't feel like it's stuck. A lot of things

are going on. You will not see the big steps because once you are getting products more refined, at some point it's, The only improvements you take are really small steps. It could be that you almost don't see them. The differences are really small. But I agree with new technologies and new production techniques. These would be things where we can gain more performance as well. And another thing is I think we could get thinner lines, thinner lines that are as strong and having even thinner lines what do you want like a dental floss line or something because I think we are cutting down on that Chagat really quite hard yeah so at the moment we cannot really cut away something there I would say but smart things have

been done gliders normal but you see it on the two liners and the two and a half liners that are getting into c and b category this is a great way to increase your performance because you will have way less drag from the lines maybe you will get a different type of line in the future which is really trim stable and thin yeah it's just also a bit guessing to me but this is where i can see we can still save Your guess is one of the best ones

Aninder: out there. I feel like you've been a part of the market for quite a while in various diverse landscapes. Before I let you go, Brian, I've been very curious about a question. Theoretically, how fast can our wings go on paper, at least? Or in the simulations, in your case? I've never really

Bryan Van Ostheim: looked into this. I think The restrictions are mainly how much force, how much load can the wing hold before it starts to explode. The faster you go, the higher the internal pressure will be inside the wing. So that means it gets more stiff and at some point it will be more like a fixed wing. The other limit is, of course, your weight. The more weight you put on the glider, the faster you can go. But even if you would fly under a five square meter, there's just a maximum speed you will have with your boarding weight. And I don't know the exact speed, but that's the limit.

We will not fly at hypersonic speeds on the paraglider. Collapsible wings are like one of the most accessible forms of aviation. pack your

Aninder: aircraft in a backpack, open it up in a place which is good to fly and then go chase the auto flight. What I was wondering is that how much fun factor can we add in the most convenient form of aviation as well? Because that is a pretty huge selling point. I think convenience is the thing which actually makes people get attracted. Yeah, it's true what you are saying. It's just so easy to start with this sport and it's also the

Bryan Van Ostheim: cheapest way of flying, I would say. Yeah. Now, We will stay tuned to your oncoming inventions and yeah, keep us updated on bringing out this more

Aninder: awesomeness in the world as you do. But yeah, man, until then, I think Dune Rider is doing its own bit for the community. Looking forward to seeing more of Instagram reels on how you go out and chase the fun factor in time to come. Thanks a lot. And thanks for having me here and to have

Bryan Van Ostheim: this great chat with you. It's a pleasure. Likewise. Hey everyone, for those of you who have listened this far, I just wanted to drop in a note of

Aninder: thanks because you guys are the ones who are actually making the difference. It means the world to me whenever I see audience retention rates remain high all the way to the end. And I'd like to add on by saying that if you have liked the content that you just consumed, do consider liking, subscribing, and dropping a rating wherever possible, because that is one way we can let the algorithms of all of these streaming platforms know that this episode is worthy of being pushed out to more pilots in the community. So collectively, you and I can make this sport a safer and a more fun place to be. Well, on that note, thank you once again for joining me today. And I'm really looking forward to

connecting with you in the next episode as well. Until then, I'm going to say what I always say, and that is stay tuned, stay excited, because this magic is just getting started.