New Technologies 1 : Beni Kälin (speedflyingschool.com)

Aninder: You know there's something about human psyche that when we hear the term new technologies, it just excites us. I mean there's a range of emotions that one goes through. It sounds very thrilling to begin with. There's a hope that there's more safety in the newer technology that is coming in. And then you start thinking that there has been a lot of R&D that has gone on behind the scenes. There have been prototypes which have been developed. A lot of test flying has been done by the brand or whosoever is coming out with that new technology in their own field. And there's a very famous kind of saying which goes around in paragliding world that to be the best in paragliding, you have to fly the best equipment. That is

the very first thing that you accomplish and then everything else follows it. So this month's topic is all about exploring new technologies in our sport of paragliding. You know, every now and then we see some designer, someone having the will and the zeal and the fire inside them, challenging the status quo and saying that, hey, we're going to do things differently and we're going to add more fun to flying. So I thought, like, who better than bringing in a person who has basically revolutionized flying So far, we are used to seeing paragliders move in a horizontal direction when they're floating through air, and the vertical energy conversion is very limited. But

this brand and the people behind it thought outside the box and have created a toy which allows us to expand our horizons of flying paragliders even more. So merging the kiting and the paragliding concept has added a lot of fun in soaring scenarios for now. However, the beauty of this tech is that it is just starting out. And who knows, maybe we are seeing something similar in thermic scenarios. Maybe we are going to see something coming out like that in racing paragliders, in World Cups, and all of that. But We'll leave all of that to the designers, and I hope some of them, the ones which are coming on board this month, will be able to throw some light on what's coming up. But to begin with,

this is episode number one of the topic new technologies, and here is a very special man. very passionate person about his craft, Benny Collin. He's the owner of Speed Flying School, has an amazing way of teaching and imparting knowledge, and has been instrumental in bringing this technology to life and making it accessible to everyday pilots like me and you. So without further ado, let's dive right into this very holistic conversation with Benny. Super thankful that he finally came on board and took out time from his busy schedule because I've been chasing him for quite a while. But regardless, it was worth the wait. The content is absolutely amazing and I hope you like it.

Benny Galen, so nice to see you finally, man. Welcome to Paralympic Atlas. Thank you for doing this. Thanks for inviting me. Yeah, no, I mean, you know, your content and every single thing that you put out on online is pretty inspiring. And it had been at the back of my mind as a host of a show because this initiative was all about information sharing. I think the way you guys have new technologies coming out in the sport and the amount of fun that is being had with those new technologies, people want to know what goes on behind the scene and how do you guys manage it. So

Aninder: I mean, if I have to begin, you know, on some note, speed flying school, like how did this happen in your life? And why did you start? Like, what's the motivation behind such an amazing institute? I basically got into speed flying when I was 20 years old. And I became a paragliding

Beni Kälin: instructor when I was 22. And then I worked for a big school here for many years. And then we separated and I founded my own school. And, you know, there's just in the state where I live here, Bern, there's like 18 paragliding schools. So there's literally at least one school in every valley. So you kind of, I felt like, hey, I want to do something different. So that's kind of why I named my paragliding school Speed Flying School, because we do also teach paragliding, not just speed flying and speed riding. And we also teach paragliding a bit in a different way. We do three weeks courses. We teach people in three weeks in a row in so-called intense courses instead of where people just come

and join whenever they want. And then usually they spread it out over a year. So, yeah, we try to do things, you know, a little bit different. And that's why I found like, okay, this name Speed Flying School, it suits also for my paragliding school. No, for sure. And I think your idea of

Aninder: doing things differently seem to be working so well, because I'm pretty sure the amount of passion you have behind the project is turning out some really safe and knowledgeable pilots. But do you want to throw some light on doing things differently, like especially teaching three weeks intensive rather than just, you know, going the other way around like how everybody else plays? Yeah, it's quite interesting. I think

Beni Kälin: globally seen, the standard way to learn paragliding is doing, you know, like a week course, a 10-day course, or like a two-week course. But somehow here in Switzerland, that's really not the standard. The standard here in Switzerland is doing like four or five days, like a basic course with the equipment included. And then... People sign up for the license course, which they have usually like a year time. So a year to get their 50 flights that they need at least to go for the exam here in Switzerland. And then it really spreads out. And there's quite a lot of people along the way that stop because they don't fly in a regular base. And if you don't fly in a regular base, then you never really get the

confidence you should, you know. And that subtle feeling we need in that sport, you don't really get that. And yeah, obviously when you do it three weeks in a row and you really fully in there, you commit to it and you get a lot better, a lot more confident and that subtle feeling, that judgment for landings and things. We all know, you know, how it is when you fly in a regular base, when you go on a two weeks paragliding holiday.

Aninder: It just feels better under the canopy. You're just more confident. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You're much more connected to the wing

Beni Kälin: when you do it on a daily base than when you're not flying for a while and you put yourself back on the wing. And that's really, I think, the biggest advantage here for the students. And for me as an instructor, the big advantage is that I have the same people every day. I do get to know them really well. and they all advance as a group. Because normally in the system here we have in Switzerland, it's a very mixed level. The students have between three flights and a hundred flights, you know, and then you as an instructor, you try to teach them all on the same day in

the same location you know and some students they they want a thermal and stay up two hours and the other ones would not like to fly at all while there's thermic air and turbulence out there and it's just difficult to you know than to make everyone happy. And here, at least the people have all more or less the same experience. There's still people that want to fly more thermals and some that want to fly less thermals, but at least they have very similar experiences. And that makes it much more easy for me to teach them and to kind of you know, bring in like a continuation, a

progress in during the course, you know, start with easy flights with, you know, big landings, easy takeoffs, and then you can progress during the course with the whole group, because otherwise there's always some beginners in the group where you can't take to an advanced landing site or takeoff site because it's early for them. They're not ready for it yet. And here this is a lot less of a problem. makes total sense. And I

Aninder: think safe progression is the word that we should be mentioning here because there are many other ways to progress as well. But if you're shedding your pounds when progressing, then it's not a lot of fun. So progressing safely and confidently But you seem to be pushing the limits quite a lot with your flying yourself as a person. Do you get students who kind of are inspired by your lifestyle and kind of want to follow down your leads and And what I'm trying to understand is the psychology of an instructor. In those cases, do you try to hold back or do you try to give as much as you can, even though it's very early stages for them? Because I certainly resonate when I was kind of learning the

Aninder: sport. I wanted to go all guns blazing. And I did not have enough trust in my first instructor, whether he was giving me the right amount of push and pull at the same time. So do you find those situations, if any, like challenging to navigate? Or what's your way out of those moments? It's

Beni Kälin: funny. I don't think I'm pushing the sport really. I'm just interested in new things. With new technology like a flare system now with those parakites, there's new possibilities popping up. I just like exploring what is possible with these new things. I don't think I do very extreme things. I also fly them quite a lot. They might look extreme for you or for somebody watching it, but Understanding the technology and understanding my experience with that new technology behind it. For me, this is mostly totally comfort zone. Like I try not to do things where I'm scared of. But of course, for other people, this looks like this is crazy and they can't imagine this because they don't know the

technology and they don't know what is possible with it and how much experience someone has put into it. That's why it might look crazy. To me, you know, I try to always be in the comfort zone. And that's also where I teach my students like paragliding or also speed flying or speed riding. It should all be done in the comfort zone. You're up in the air and there's always that risk of falling down, you know, like it can be bigger or smaller, but it is gravity and you just can't. cheated whatever goes up can go down and you should never forget about this and lose that

respect i think that that's very important and i think sometimes for for people coming from different sports you know like climbing or bodybuilding whatever there are sports that you have to push the limits you know if you're a sports climber and you want to climb uh a or nine grade One day you have to push the limits, you know, you have to keep on going, even if you're scared, even if your hands can't hold it anymore, you still have to push and just go for it until you just slip off and fall into that rope. And if you can't push there, then I think you have a very slow

progression. And I think it's super important to understand in those air sports that this is not the case. This might be beneficial when you try to learn awkward maneuvers for a while that when you're, you know, a bit of a bold pilot, you progress a little quicker, but essentially you will get a bad experience and it's going to throw you back a lot and you'll be way more scared than ever before and maybe never even overcome that bad experience anymore, that fear, and you've actually slowed yourself down a lot more than you've gained with pushing a little bit too hard, you know. And I really try to get that to students across. It's sometimes hard, you know, because they see all the things I'm doing and

then I tell them not, you know, to push too hard at the same time. But yeah, that's obviously, I'm trying this, yeah. No, I get your dilemma, Vinny.

Aninder: But honestly, you know, the question pops in my mind that you started when you were 20. 20 by no means is an early start in a lot of conventional sports, you know, because I do come from a conventional sports background. And over there, they said that you have to get into it at seven or nine or like, you know, early 10. Like, for example, a soccer player, if you want to be the best in the world. Like by the time you are 14, 15, you're already building up on your international career and some even debut at those like 16, 17 ages. Aerial sports is very different,

but it is the glory that the competing or the satisfaction that humans are chasing, that they're looking from competing, is kind of same as it is in conventional sports. You're becoming better of other people and then there's a reward for being better. How did you choose? I mean, even if you didn't push the limits outside, but what was your definition of pushing the limits within comfort zone? And how did you navigate that risk versus reward spectrum while you were trying to get better version of yourself every day? Even though the age that you started was a little bit later, a lot of pilots these days are starting. And I mean, you see pilots flying competition wings at the age of 18, 19 and World Cups

Aninder: already. Well, first of all, I don't think I'm that good of a pilot as you might think. I think there's so many better paragliding pilots out

Beni Kälin: there than I am. I've never done a single paragliding competition. I meant speed flying as well, the whole ecosystem. Many speed fly pilots that can do what I can do or have even a better level and speed riding anyway because I'm not that good of a skier. I really don't think I'm an exceptional pilot. I think some of the things I'm doing is actually pretty easy to achieve for somebody. But sometimes people think I might be such a good pilot is just because I'm kind of exploring that new technology and showing things that haven't been done before. with that new technology but i don't think it's actually that difficult you know and and you know i think with that new

technology there's going to be many people that can do things like that you know yeah so so again it's for me it's it's not as extreme i think a lot of it is that new technology that makes things very easy but you know if you don't realize that you think wow this is crazy yeah Now I get it.

Aninder: Instagram versus reality is a different version. And of course, I see you from a six-inch screen every day. So it's a very different perception, I believe. Talking about new technologies, Benny, GoFlare Global basically came in and kind of redefined what having fun means and increased the spectrum. What was the thought process behind? How did this project originate? Because I saw... Jean-Baptiste, you know, putting across a video and like pretty much going crazy. And then like, when I look at the website on like Go Fred Roble, you have, you have the other Benny, Benny Bully and Arwen, like he is one of the legendary, I think he's got an accomplishment about a pilot. So how did, if you didn't

just talk about behind the scenes, like how did, how did you guys plan to, to come up with something like this? I wasn't involved from the very

Beni Kälin: beginning. Skywalk has been working on this mustache wing way before I joined them. And they had a pretty much finished product. They just never really dared to sell it or they weren't like, They were undecisive what to market it for. It was a closed cell wing, like the kites. And yeah, somehow they never threw this on the market. And I started flying a lot with the Ozone race kites on Dundee Pila. And I remember exactly my first flight with one of those kites. And I realized, wow, this is awesome. This is a completely different way of flying. And it completely blew me away, the the energy that was in this kite and the range it has. And then I started sorting around with this a lot there and really started pushing

the limits there, obviously always like super low ground. yeah and then i started flying those kites in the mountains as well and i just saw a huge potential and basically when you fly those kites you know there was i had a 7 meter 11 and a 17 and basically the 11 meter kite did you know it collided like a paraglider almost and it had the speed of like you know six seven meter speed wing it was just an incredible machine like it it puts every other speed flyer i have ever flown it just makes it looks like a a kid's toy basically So it's like a speed wing on steroids, but with a

Aninder: profile kite. Yeah, totally. There was such a huge step from those speed wings to this kite. You can't imagine. It's like going from an A-wing to

Beni Kälin: probably like a competition hang glider kind of thing. Wow. It's just unreal, you know? And then I hear that. I mean, just for the perspective

Aninder: of our listeners, you basically attach the kite risers on carabiners, and those carabiners were attached to a paragliding harness, and that was your setup when you were having fun. Exactly, yeah. Wow. Do they have those kind of riders? Is it possible to fit in a paragliding harness? Can you put a board harness and a kite and kind of make it work? Yeah, it actually works pretty simple. Amazingly simple it works, yeah. Yeah,

Beni Kälin: but it's still a kite, you know, and if this thing does collapse, it might not reopen, you know, so as long as you don't fly, you know, higher than you want to fall, I guess this is a good thing to do. But once you start flying a little bit higher, this is definitely not safe. So basically

Aninder: you got a really fun hoverboard. Like, I mean, you were at the height, which was almost skimming the ground and you were going super fast. yeah exactly yeah yeah but i didn't use any board i was just you know i was giving an example like like i was basically skimming the height hole but it was not the best example but that sounds so much fun like proximity to the ground because then you can just feel the speed and sense the speed and look more than normal normal link or normal flying exactly yeah yeah that's totally how it was Yeah, and then basically I hear that Skywalk

Beni Kälin: had this project, they called it Skycarver, and I was like, hey guys, if there's any way I can help you with that, like, I'm totally in, like, I think this is the future of soaring. And I showed them, you know, what I've done with the kites and videos, and I showed them as well, like, this is, I think soaring and speed flying, this is the future. Yeah, and then, you know, Benny Belli, he came over one day with his old prototypes and we flew them here and started that project again. And Benny basically then, you know, two years later, finished the project more or less on his

holidays and came out with this mustache. Yeah, we're super happy with it, with the product and also with the way it's working, with how people are using it. For me, I see it like a perfect wing that enables people to fly on the coast in stronger winds that have not been flying in that strong winds before, you know. I can also take a speed wing or I can take a mini wing or I can fly a two liner, you know, and saw it in 50 Ks of winds. I have the skills to do so, but for, I say for the regular pilot, he's not going to want to fly a ENSO in 50 Ks of winds, you know, but he can safely and

like relaxed do this on a moustache without having to be a superhero. And this is fairly easy on a moustache. So it really makes this strong wind flying accessible for a big range of pilots. You know, it's obviously, you know, it can go fast and you have to be able to deal with the speed, but it makes coastal soaring so much easier. And I think that's why there's so many Stoke pilots, you know, flying a moustache. And obviously as well, because you have the ability to... to dive and to convert your speed back into lift and that high stability and you don't have to worry about collapses. Yeah, in a way it's more fun because you have that extra dive. You can choose how high you want to fly. It's not the wing or the wind

that decides on which height on the ridge you're actually soaring. It's you by holding the toggles higher or lower and making more or less lift. And that's really cool, you know. because then you when you fly close to the ground you get that sensation of speed and you're not just stuck up there and and thinking like okay how do i get down what what can i do and that that accessibility that it's it's really easy to fly a mustache in on the right spot i think you know it can be difficult obviously top landing it again on small spots and things it you know you need certain

skills but in general people are surprised how easy this is to fly you know and Yeah, now I think we've made the same step with the line, the flare line. It basically makes flying close to the ground, whether this is snow or grass, it just makes it safer because

You can climb a lot more, you can increase your glide ratio a lot more than you can do on a classic speed wing. So if you're flying close to the ground and there's something ahead of you, there's sinking air or whatever, and you need lift, you can get a lot more lift from that wing basically. wow and to stay along the ground you have to do less turns you can you know if you have a good slope you can just go straight down the slope without having to do any turns to follow it just by going hands up and down so this is like it can be literally really really easy yeah No, I love it. And I

Aninder: think it sounds like unlimited fun, basically, whenever you have these wings above your head with the amount of possibilities that you said, you know, within their spectrum. But I'm curious, Benny, like when you explain it that well, what is the most boring flying that Mustache or Lion can offer? Like, where do you start? Like, if you're a pilot or not a pilot, and you don't know what speed wings are, and you don't know what mini wings are, but somehow you see the content and the technology and all of these amazing things out there, and you're keen to get your hands on one of the moustaches and lines. First of all, does it make sense to grab even the bigger sizes of one of these? And secondly, what do baby

Aninder: steps under these wings look like for someone who's coming off from just paragliding background and not smaller wings? Yeah, I think it's super

Beni Kälin: important to realize that a line is made for speed flying and a moustache is made for soaring. So if you're a paraglider pilot and you take a moustache on a normal paragliding takeoff with no soaring possibilities, you can totally take it off there even if there's no wind, you can land it if there's a big landing. It's fairly easy, I think, if you know how to inflate it, how to launch it. People get along pretty quickly, but you can't really get the sense of what this actually can do. So if you really want to try a mustache, I think you almost need to saw it to

realize what this thing is capable of doing. I usually tell people, The moment you realize what the mustache is actually capable of is when you stand on a dune and there's like 50 Ks of wind blowing in your face and you stand there with a 15 or 18 meter wing without leaning forward. You just stand there and you think, could be more wind, you know? And you exactly, there's almost sand blowing into your eyes and you know, this is fucking stormy. And you know exactly like, I would not stand here with any other wing, not even with a mini wing, but it's totally easy for Mustache. I

think that that's like the moment where you realize what this wing actually, how much this is a game changer, you know? So yeah, basically it makes sense to take a soaring to really really understand the possibility of these things. But it's super easy just to take a 22-meter moustache or even an 18 to a normal takeoff with a little bit of a headwind and you have a bit of a valley breeze at the landing. I think it's really not a big deal. You know, there's a lot of pilots that can do this, you know, and they'll figure out how to fly these things fairly quickly, you

know, I would say. I think the most important thing is that you try not to land on a small landing. Same thing with a line. They're kind of hard to, let's say, to make a spot landing at the beginning. You know, usually at the beginning, people end up a little bit, come a little bit short or go a little bit far. Yeah. You kind of have to get used to that a little bit. It usually flares further than they think, you know, and then people come back and they're like, this thing flares forever. And I'm like, that's why it's called flare. I think the way you guys are going swooping and

Aninder: skydiving seems soon going to be out of fashion because paragliders seem to be having a lot of fun with these technologies and for a lot less money, basically. I think so too, yeah. That's amazing. But you know, I was wondering from Paraguay's perspective, when we try and learn a few things in paragliding after kind of graduating from the school, like after having the basic knowledge of an instructor. Now, I personally felt that it was very difficult for anyone to say that, okay, I'm going to put in this much of money every year. And save it up and spend it on SIVs because, okay, you can pay for someone, instructors, up to a certain point, where after that you have to learn and figure it out yourself

because it's not financially sustainable to hire an instructor every time you go out there and push the limits. So I naturally tried to start looking at videos and start looking for information that was online and started reading posts and people's experiences. And eventually I was like, okay, if I find a trustworthy instructor sharing his knowledge on YouTube on how to recover asymmetric or how to recover spiral life or any of these SME maneuvers, I can try and gain something out of it. And I can apply it safely in my own training because I have Being under the training of an instructor who has shown me how to do it correctly once, Can something similar be applied in these new technologies where you

Aninder: have YouTube videos where they're teaching you skills? And even though it's a brand new technology, even though you might not have had a chance for an instructor who is specifically trained to impart training on line or flare, because most of the instructors just know how to teach paragliding. There are not a lot of instructors who know how to teach moustache flying or line flying. So can people look at YouTube videos and try and learn something from it while staying safe? Is it a good idea or should everybody just try and reach out to one of the schools who are teaching this and then only put their trust from there? I think it's never wrong going with an instructor. But as you said, there's not that

Beni Kälin: many instructors out there that already have experience with with para kites that can actually teach people, you know, like more that, you know, you can find on our, for example, flair tutorial videos. Anyway, I think, you know, someone that has a decent amount of experience in paragliding, he's going to figure it out really quickly by himself. Someone that is pretty new that has basically just got his paragliding license. He can go on a moustache or even on a line pretty quickly as well, but he needs to be smart about it. So both wings, they have quite a lot of roll. So I think you have to be able to deal with the roll that you don't start rolling around uncontrolled. And you have to be able to deal with

the speed or you have to, you know, be able to learn with it. So you have to fly a big enough size first, you know, and not go on a too small size too quick. I think for both wings, it's great to start with ground handling, obviously. Run around on a field and, you know, get to know the stall point, get to know where the, you know, the maximum lift is and everything. And if you've done that, you're going to be already very confident on launch. And landing is also going to be less of a problem. And Yeah, especially sawing a moustache, I think you can really, if you

have a good spot, like sandy spots on dunes, you can really learn that yourself easily, you know. That's why we have made those tutorial videos, you know, on YouTube with Flair, to give people, pilots, the knowledge they need to have to fly these things. But it's funny because the other brands don't do this for their standard paragliders. You get the impression that these things are super extreme. Like a moose is such an extreme wing and you need a special education and everything to be able to fly one. It's not at all like this. It's just because the mustache was the first parakeet out there. And there's some things, you know, there's some bad habits that, you know, that can fuck you up on launch if

you're doing this. And that's why we made those videos, you know. But it's very few things. And I think for many pilots, it's pretty straightforward. I'm always surprised how quickly people get along with this. I have put a lot of people on a moustache and already on a line, and I'm always surprised how quickly people figure this out. That's good to hear. It looks something really fun. So you obviously figure out

Aninder: that if it's a lot of fun, that means it's a lot of work to get to that fun part. But if you're saying it's quick, me, including a lot of listeners, will be stoked to give it a shot one day. Yeah, exactly. I think the most important thing is, in general, is try it in forgiving terrain. So if you

Beni Kälin: want to go on a line, if you have skis and you have an easy takeoff, easy terrain, go do it on skis. If you want to try a moustache, go somewhere there is not a cliff where you have to top land for soaring, you know. Go somewhere with a beach, easy launch, you can land on the beach, maybe even sand dunes. And in this environment, you can really progress a lot and even make some mistakes and it's quite forgiving. I think that's kind of the most important thing if you want to go and try, teach this yourself without an instructor, that you have a forgiving landscape

around you. Now it makes sense that the safety net should be as vague and as broad as possible before. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Then it takes me to a

Aninder: point, you know, if there is someone out there listening, like, you know, I have had that mindset myself some of the times. where I'm like, this seems to be within my comfort zone, and I would like to push the limits a bit more. We all have that, I think, inherent part of our brain telling us that you are capable of doing this, and even though it looks a bit scarier, but you want to. So, I'm just wondering, if there is someone who does not come from coast, who lives in the foothills, and is living in a thermic site, still decides to take this up on a thermic site, what is

Aninder: the worst that That can happen. Like, how does shitting your pants under a moustache look like? Because under a pantomime, it's just like, there are collapses, and there can be cascades, and there can be twists, and then, you know, it's history. Then you deploy the result. But, like, what can happen in a parrachide if you put it in thermic conditions in the mountain? I don't exactly know. I've never had a collapse.

Beni Kälin: But I tell people, just be smart about it. You can totally fly them through thermals. We just marketed the mustache to not fly in thermals. Because it's so easy to fly this wing in strong wind. And strong wind, you know, with 50 Ks of wind, the wind has four times the energy than 25 Ks of wind when you're normally flying. So the turbulence, if you hit a lee side in 50 Ks, is also four times as bad. And then if you have 50 Ks of wind and you have strong thermals in there on top and people fly hands up, also the moustache is going to collapse at some stage. We knew the Moustache

is pretty collapse stable. It's more collapse stable than any other paraglider out there flying on full bar. But the thing is, on a paraglider, there is this psychological... hurdle like anyone knows that has a bit of experience if i push that speed bar i'm faster but i'm more likely to get a collapse and if i do get a collapse more likely to lose control at least anyone that has done an siv and pulled some you know bar asymmetrics has that respect built in from then on definitely yeah but then it hits you yeah exactly you feel it and you get that respect you know that's the good thing about doing an siv So there's that psychological barrier of pushing that speed bar. And with a parakite, with those

risers, this is completely gone. It's super easy to go hands up. And people go hands up all the time. There's zero psychological barrier of going full speed. And we were aware of this. And that's why we tried to keep people safe and warn people like, hey, this thing is super stable, even full bar, which is only hands up. You don't have to push anything. But it can still collapse. And that's why we've marketed like don't fly in thermals and blah, blah, blah. But in fact, it works perfectly. as well as on a paraglider, or actually even better because it's more stable. But we didn't want for people to fly brainless in 50, 60 k's of wind with strong thermic in there because we knew they were going to go

hands up without thinking about it. And that's the whole reason behind it. So when people want to fly through thermals, I just tell them, go for it, do it, but fly in best glide, which is quite low on your hands. That's the normal trim position on a paraglider. Don't fly hands up. And then your wing is maybe not more stable. Probably it is more stable, but if you do get a collapse, you're not flying fully accelerated. So if you do get a collapse when flying slow, the collapse is going to be a lot more gentle and you can react to it better, I guess. So basically that's what I

recommend people. Just fly through thermal slowly and fly active and then there's no worries about it. What's the behaviour difference

Aninder: between a moustache and a regular paraglider? How would an SIV look under a moustache compared to a regular paraglider? That's a good

Beni Kälin: question. You can't pull collapses on a moustache. You can do pull-ups on the A-lines. Even with the collapse lines? Yeah, if you have a pulling line, it would work, yes. It is actually pretty gentle, the reaction from the moustache to collapses, because the wing is quite soft. It's not tensioned a lot. It's built in a very forgiving way. Surprisingly forgiving. I would say it's not any worse than a sea glider. It's just a rough guess. But when you take a collapse and you go hands up, then the glider is accelerated. And a glider that is fully accelerated, it... It doesn't have a lot of pressure inside, so it takes a long time to inflate, to reinflate. You can very well notice this when you do big ears and you

have the speed bar pushed and then you let go the A-line. Then on a lot of gliders, the A's, the ears just stay in. They don't inflate until you release the speed bar. So it's a little bit the same thing with a moustache. If you get a big collapse and you're just staying hands up, it takes a very, very long, quite a long time to fully inflate the gun all the way into the tips. It works much quicker if you actually countersteer and pump it open. If you give it a pump, the collapse side, then it re-inflates very quickly. I think that's like the main difference, you

know. A fair comparison would be taking a normal paraglider to an SIV and make a full speed bar collapse and stay on speed bar and stay hands up.

Aninder: Wow. Man, that's a recipe for disaster. Yeah, exactly. That's scary. And on a Mustang, this is even surprisingly... gentle like so wow this is

Beni Kälin: just a guess but i think the mustache it it would actually be more gentle than than some other sea wings in in that case you know but we don't have a lot of experiences with collapses because they don't happen much nothing That's such a good way to put it. But I'm just wondering, when

Aninder: you're developing a wing like this, of course, there must have been some history that would have gone into the project before it was restarted again. But what effort does the manufacturer or the production team put when it comes to trying and feeling what life under it looks like when it is not so good? Do you guys take it out and... just keep on collapsing it again and again and keep on... Like, how does testing look like? What did your protos kind of do when you were... Like, what were the possibilities at that time, if you can just talk about that? That's an

Beni Kälin: interesting question. In fact, I think the paragliding brands, they do this a lot because they have to pass that certification. So... For the normal paraglider test pilots, it's very important that their wing has this exact, how do you say, behavior. Recovery behavior, I think. Recovery behavior that it can pass that certification. And they put a lot of effort to reach this. We didn't do that effort. We put a lot of effort into, or especially Benny, he's the genius behind it. I'm just telling him, no, it's got to go faster or whatever. got to do this better, whatever. But he's the genius behind it. I don't understand 10% of what he does and understands, you know. But basically, we just focus on

making these things stable enough that collapses do not happen in those conditions it's made for. I think when you're soaring or when you're speed flying close to the ground, it doesn't matter too much if you get a full speed bar collapse and your wing turns 130 degrees or 150 degrees. You're going to hit the ground anyway. You know what I mean? It's much more important that your wing does not collapse while you're flying close to the ground. So... That, I think, is a much more important case also when it comes to speed flying wings, you know. And I think it's the same with, say, paramotor wings, you know. Paramotor wings are also the full reflex glide. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They just keep on going. Yeah.

Exactly. For those, it's important not to have a gentle collapse behavior. It's important to not collapse at all. That's kind of a very different mentality in a way. In paragliding, everyone is worried about how it does collapse, but I actually rather have a wing that does not collapse at all. first hand and you know the second my second worry is how the reaction is going to be but I'm actually happier flying a wing that does not collapse you know what I mean it's it's a very different mentality in a way I find it very easy to resonate with it because when I

Aninder: talk to non-flyers, you know, when I talk to my friends who don't fly, they're like, dude, that's stupid. Like, why are you doing this? You know, why are you going out in the air? And the answer that you gave me in the beginning when I was stoked that, you know, the amount of effort and the way you fly is like, it seems very exciting. Like the risk versus reward seems to be a lot more higher. So I get that question from my non-flying friends. And I'm like the, the, the obvious, like, you know, school of thought is that I want to be under a wing or I'm flying an

equipment that does not fail. Like I trust in the, the equipment failure should not happen. That is the first rule of the game. That is why I play the game. And I think that is what you're saying that the first rule of this game is that the collapse does not come. And that is why we are playing it because that rule is usually it holds true. So when we're trying to build collapse resistant, you know, when we're like putting most of our eggs in rule number one, in rule number one's basket, you know, because that is like, it has to be collapse resistant, then we can

have more fun. Why can't we get inspiration from those kites that have like, is collapse a safety behavior? Like why can't we make wings that just don't collapse? Like what's stopping the manufacturers? I think you have to ask the designers. I'm not a designer. I'm not the genius. But

Beni Kälin: I think it has a little bit to do with it, with that certification for the paragliders. As I said, the certification is about making a gentle collapse behavior, which in a way stops manufacturers maybe sometimes of building a wing that is very collapse resistant. You can make a wing more, more collapse resistant, for example, by having the A-lines for the back. But if you have the A-lines for the back, you cannot, it gets very hard to certify the wings because collapses tend to be bigger and deeper. And then also it doesn't work as good for, for SIVs. Yeah. So, but I think, you know, that technology with those reflex airfoils That is rather new. I mean, there's many paragliders out there that actually

have reflex built in and people just don't know. So the mustache is not like this crazy new wing that has a technology that no other wing had. There's quite many gliders out there that have a reflex airfoil in there. The Mustache is just the first wing that has combined this with those kite risers, you know, with those flare system. But my opinion or, you know, my experience is that there's quite a lot of wings that don't have reflex. And I think that reflex technology is still kind of a little bit in the early stages, you know, I think. Brands have been very focused on making paragliders that have a lot of performance. Climb well and that glide really well. Like that you race, basically. Yeah, but for any

class, you know, like even B-Wings, you know, have to have a very good performance. But I think in the future that performance can no longer be improved that much. Because you reach a plateau, you know, think there's only so much glide you can get with a wing that has aspect ratio five and 40 cells. So I hope that in the future, the brands will start making wings that are more collapse stable, that are safer and focus less on the performance. I think that's what our market needs and I think there's quite big potential, but This is just a rough guess, you know, like I could be totally wrong. Maybe there won't get much more collapse stable, but I think there is quite some room for improvement for making

any of those gliders quite a bit more collapse stable than they are now. But I think it might take time. I have to ask you something very honestly,

Aninder: Benny here, because this question has been ringing in my mind ever since I graduated from the school. Because the first question that a student gets after graduating is, should I buy an A wing or should I buy a low B wing? And when you come out as a layman, when you're just learning to see your body in the air, learning to sense how life in the air feels like, it's a brand new way of transportation that you have discovered as a human. Pushing the limits into the unknown is a big question. I was researching all kinds of articles. I was trying to reach out to all sorts

Aninder: of information sources that Should I buy an A-ring or should I buy a low B-ring? And of course, that feeling of intimacy that everyone has, there is an intuition which gives you a part of that answer. until somebody came across and told me that dude certifications only matter up to a point and they're very good for the marketing perspective but if you really want to be a good pilot then just go by the feel of it and then just go by what you see in the manufacturer rather than what the certification is saying about the manufacturer because certification does tell you how it reopens or how it kind of recovers, but it does not tell you how often it gets into that configuration or how

often it gets to shit. And then I started reading the documents, the certification documents, like what kind of, you know, like the details about it. But is certification a bit more irrelevant than what it is? And is it holding back the R&D in the sport of paralleling at least up to some point? Because people are emphasizing on something that does not really have that kind of weight so much. I think it's great we have that

Beni Kälin: certification. If we wouldn't have the certification, then, you know, brands, they would cheat a lot more, you know, and uh i think the wings will be a lot sketchier out there there would for sure be brand um you know probably big brands that that totally have the trust from from the customers and and you know try not to cheat but i think there will be quite quite some gliders out there that are doing quite well but for certain you know configurations for certain maneuvers or something, they, they will totally fail because no one, no one will test it, you know? So I think, I think it's good. We have, we have that certification system, but in a way it's also a little bit overrated. I think there's still

quite, quite differences, I think, from one glider to another. And, and also, as you said, it, it only says how a wing reacts when it does collapse. It doesn't say. how much it takes until a wing does collapse that would be actually a very interesting you know number if if you could compare this but that's obviously impossible to do but i think that that's quite a diff quite an important thing as well especially with smaller wings when you fly close to the ground because having a collapse close to the ground is always a bad thing like it doesn't matter how gentle or bad the collapse is is going to be you know so i think anytime you fly close to the ground, it's really important to not get a collapse at

first hand. Makes sense. You know, I mean, I could keep on going on and on about this question. It is so deep and so interesting with

Aninder: certification and the amount of fun that it allows you to have. But the profile of a kite, which basically inflates the leading edge, you know, there are so many kites that inflate the leading edge and after that, they just don't collapse. Like, they're not like the foil kites. Or maybe, are they the foil? Like, you know, the kite that builds a tube on its leading edge, which you inflate. Yeah. Why can't we have that technology to resist collapses in paragliding? Like, what's stopping us to make paragliders completely collapse resistant with something like that, which is flexible yet kind of tough when you need it? I think that it is back in the days. But I think that you can still fall into your

Beni Kälin: own wing. You know, I think at some stage it might be good that the wing actually gives in and collapses. But honestly, I haven't done too much research of that, but I know this has all been tested and they've all came away from this. Also, like closed cells like the foil kites have, like, you know, air valves or airlock system that the air goes in, but it can't come out anymore of the paraglider. This has all been tested and this has all been not used anymore because it was too dangerous, you know. so i i guess at some stage it's good if things can collapse so so the collapse

sorry who knows maybe maybe we'll have again wings in the future that that have an aero system i don't know i think you get a bit more stability if you have a closed cell wing than than when you have the leading edge open but Yeah, we'll see. Time will tell. Probably not for thermaling, but who knows? Maybe mustache tan is going to have closed cells again. I don't know. I don't think so, but yeah. No, we can stay excited because at

Aninder: least the most us one has promised to deliver so much fun. So the time coming up front looks really amazing. Benny, I quickly want to talk about the topic of analyzing a few things, but analyzing challenges in the art of flight that we want to practice. But before I get that, I want to get some perspective from the manufacturer's side, because you have been involved in some way with these new technologies that are coming in and redefining the way you have fun in the air. Often we have seen, you know, designers break away or merge or like come out with their own version of revolutionary technologies and having fun. Like, you know, there are designers who are working with big brands saying that I'm

going out and starting my own brand. And brand glidering still reputable names. And when you see, like, we see gliders going in from three-liner Cs to two-liner Cs and then 2.5B and, you know, every other time there is a new product launch, the manufacturer claims that it is the safest way to have fun at this use-versus-reward spectrum. When a customer has to place their trust in a new product, What kind of research can you put behind? How do you determine that what amount of R&D and what amount of effort has gone into bringing this product out? Of course, the legacy factor and the marketing and various things will tell you a lot about the brand. I'm not denying that. But still, when a brand comes up

with a brand new technology, how do you as a customer, or if you were in a customer's shoes, how would you determine if this is worth my effort? And along with that, if you can just tell us a little bit, how did life look like when this project, even though I understand that you were not the project lead for this, but how did life look like in a manufacturer's term during those days at that time? I think for most customers, for most

Beni Kälin: pilots, it's impossible to figure out and how much effort has been put into a wing from a brand. And I also think it doesn't matter. Sometimes those designers, they draw something and the first prototype, it's amazing.

At Swing, doing Speedwings, we've tried 10 prototypes and at the end, we went for the first one. But obviously, I think there are wings that brands make, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 prototypes because they needed to reach what they want. So I don't think it matters how much effort has been put into it. What matters at the end is the final product and how it's working, you know, how stable it is, how good it climbs, how good the performance it is, and how safe it is. But I think for a normal pilot, even for me as an instructor, this is pretty hard to find out these days. Yeah,

so I think there's something missing in our community. I was thinking the other day about making a website that would basically record all the collapses or all the incidents with every wing. So every wing on the market out there would be registered on that website. And then every pilot who had an accident or almost accident or some kind of incident with this wing basically puts it up there. So in an ideal world, every pilot would do this, and then you get, let's say, 100,000 people there, and there's going to be a ton of data. And then you might see, oh, this wing, oh, there's a lot of people that have accidentally spinned this wing while thermaling. And with another wing, you see... well, this is

almost never the case. No one's ever spinned this wing by accident while thermaling. But there's some issue with collapses with this wing or whatever. So I think that would be very interesting to see and would give us that missing data. We don't know. You're right. If you read the marketing text from a brand that brings out the new wing, you basically feel like Can't fly the old model anymore. It's not. I need to have a new one. It's like, I'm risking my life. Just because of money. You know, kind of. I'm an idiot. Like the new one has so much more performance and it's so safer. Like gotta get the new one, you know? Yeah. Happily pilots don't fly next to the old model because there will be very few

difference. They will be very disappointed in the difference of extra glide ratio they get, I think. So this is, I think to me, this is very overrated nowadays. There's so little, you know, steps to be made in performance from one model to another. Not always, but a lot of times it's very minor differences. Before I jump onto the next one, I quickly forgot to bring this up. Your tech has basically increased the speed. Do

Aninder: you wildly, sometime down the lane, see the speed of triple C wings increasing with a little sprinkle of this technology that you guys have on mustache? Not at all. I think CCC gliders are faster than a mustache. The moustache is actually not a very fast wing. I think there's many

Beni Kälin: two-liners out there that in the same size, they would have the same speed as a moustache or are even faster than a moustache. Because the moustache has actually a quite thick airfoil. We've actually limited the speed or Benny has limited the speed from the moustache on purpose for stability. So a lot of people think the Musash is that crazy fast wing, but it's actually not true. It's actually much more designed for stability than for speed. But the CCC wings, they are more for speed and glide than for stability. Yeah, yeah, makes sense. Yeah, and I think, you know, there are CCC wings that have a bit of reflex in there and there's CCC wings that don't have it. There's both. Yeah, so this, as I

said, this is not a crazy new technology in the moustache. I think it's just a smart choice of parameters for that type of wing that Benny did.

Aninder: Makes sense. But I'm curious when you say that you guys had to limit the speed on this because it was probably getting way too fast and way too much fun for everyone. But do you guys fly one of those, you know, factory branded, no limited, like no holes bar editions that you guys accept for yourself? Or do you guys fly the commercial ones as well? No, no, you got me wrong. The moustache has always been limited. We haven't actually

Beni Kälin: made much faster moustaches. Well, you could if you wanted to. But if Benny would want to make faster moustaches, he would clearly know how to make them faster. But he has already, from the very beginning... decided to not make it very do not make it crazy fast but to make it more to build it more for stability instead of speed you know yeah so if we we fly the standard mustards yeah No, very exciting. Anyways, you know,

Aninder: coming back to the gray area that you said when new technologies are, you know, it's almost impossible for a customer to kind of put their effort and kind of know where to research to know how much effort has gone in from manufacturer side. Of course, we've seen people getting surprised, of course, unknowingly when trying out new technologies and two-liner Cs and 2.5-liner Bs, which probably will go to two-liner Bs as well, the way we are progressing. we see people kind of getting into unpleasant situations and i've seen you you've had extensive write-ups of how to deal with those kind of things and how to figure figure out so if someone has to do that kind of like research that that you put in by writing those

right off like is it just from experience or is there a certain way of things that you look at how being behaves or like How do you gather the information that gives you that outlook on an incident or a new wing, basically, is what I'm curious about. I think it's super difficult as a

Beni Kälin: normal pilot. There's not something I could say like, okay, this is how you can figure this out, how a safe wing should look like. Even for me, I'm not 100% sure, you know, which wing is safer than another. This is so hard to tell. And at the end, the only way you can tell is, you know, by, you know, making thousands, thousand wing and sell them. And after three years, you see how it worked, you know. Basically, that's, you know, also for the brands, you know, they know a wing very well, but at the end of the day, These are test pilots and, you know, if a test pilot doesn't want

to get a collapse, he doesn't get a collapse. But how the customer that flies that B wing that is not a test pilot, how he gets along with it, it's always a bit of, you know, mystery also to the brands. And that's what the market shows in those two, three year cycle where the wing is used, you know? So I think it's pretty difficult to find these things out. And it's mostly experience and... personal experience, but also experience from other pilots, videos I've seen, stories that pilots have told me, things like that. Makes sense. And thank you for your honesty, because a

Aninder: lot of people in this situation, if they represented or were face of a brand, would just say that, no, we have done the research, so just believe us for it. But I think, as you said, wait for the technology to be there for a while before putting your trust into it. Am I getting it correctly? yeah yeah exactly i mean sure we you know we've flown those wings before the mustache was sold there were i think we had 10 moose

Beni Kälin: stars for one and a half years or almost two years that have been flying in in you know from from good pilots all over the world in and in you know extreme situations in very different situations i was using it for speed flying some other guys were soaring with it and And together we've collected many, many, many hours on those mustaches, on those pre-series wings before it actually got sold. And same thing now with the line. We've done hundreds, probably thousands of flights with different line wings and sizes before it's been sold. We know that it's working, but again, we also know the limits of it and when not to use it and what to do if it's turbulent. How the customer essentially uses it then

is another thing, which is always a bit of a question. Yeah, I feel like there should be an industry standard. I don't know if it is there in

Aninder: commercial aviation or when you have these fighter jets, which have been produced on the military lines. There should be a wing that should go under a mandatory amount of hours of flying before it is out there in the market. Because I think as a manufacturer with some bit of financial backing, it's so easy to approach a factory who manufactures these kind of things. say that hey here's the money here's the minimum model quantity let me get my toys and let me go out there and market them as best as i can and try to make a living out of it so i think if if we have that

standard where the amount of test flying hours are are kind of dictated that you need these many hours that will that will be a really good uh standout for the industry in time to come i guess It sure would help, but I think the, at the end is, you know, it's still the certification that,

Beni Kälin: or, or some kind of certification that, that needs to be there before a wing, you know, can be sold. And you know, at Flair, we would like having a certification for the mustache, but it's just not possible with the current certification. You just can't put a mustache through that. It's just not made for this, you know, but who knows, maybe one day we'll have something in the future. What scares me is that we, as a consumer,

Aninder: are basically making Instagram videos a certification. The algorithms that show us the social media is what is playing with our minds as consumers. That, hey, that wing looks so much fun. That wing does not see... We don't see a lot of gnarly stuff about that wing out there. And it basically subconsciously is telling your brain that it's okay to put trust in that wing, but that's through a six-inch phone screen. or a 5-inch phone screen, which does not tell you the reality. And certification being very limited, you can only put so much trust into that. So it's kind of like lost path that I'm searching, like the answer that I'm searching for. But the only way is that, okay, man, if

you're so keen, then go out and try it for yourself. But then in today's digital age, like I wish we had a bit more data points with the help of AI and everything, you know, just streamline this a bit more because there's a substantial amount of people doing this. to make it commercially viable, to invite that kind of R&D into our sport and to make it more accessible and get even more people to enjoy the out-of-flight that we all have. Yeah, I totally agree. It would be nice to have more data, as I said, you know, like that website or whatever for

Beni Kälin: me would be, for sure would be nice also for the brands to have more accurate data about how the wings work, you know, and yeah, in real life with the pilots that it's made for, I think, yeah. Maybe... You talked about the progression at the beginning of the show. And whether it's paragliding or speed flying or speed riding, I think, as I said, it's important not to push the limits and not to get bad experiences. Because you know it throws you back you you're gonna get fear which you might deal with you can deal with it or maybe not you know like i've once used my

reserve while flying thermals and i couldn't fly cross country for the last five six years i had you know more fear than than um you know joy so Didn't bother flying cross country for like five years, I think. And now somehow last year I felt like, hey, I want to go back into it and I still have fear, but now I had more joy again. And so I think it's very important to... to not rush things and to do things step by step. There's instructors that tell you, hey, you need three years of experience before you can do this. I'm like, no. Three years doesn't help shit. I

have sometimes people that want to come to a speed flying course and say, You know, I fly for 20 years now, have quite a lot of flights, and I want to get into speed flying now. And then I'm like, okay, how much flights do you have? And they're like, oh, I didn't count, you know? Okay, sounds very experienced. And then I'm like asking, yeah, is it 20? Is it 200? Is it 2000? And they're like, I'm sure it's 150. And then, you know, okay, he did 150 flights in 20 years. Like, okay, you should better not speed fly, you know. I'm really not the instructor that tries to hold people back

from progressing. I think it's amazing if someone wants to progress quickly, but you have to do it step by step. So especially speed flying speed flying is it's, it's quite an easy to learn sport. It looks really extreme and it's obviously very dangerous if you fuck it up, but you can get into it very quickly. You can, you can get on a smaller size pretty quick if, you know, if you're not working, if you can go fly every day and you can get your flights numbers up really quick, you can take a very quick progression. Same thing in paragliding. The other day, I had a guy

here in the course. He worked for Microsoft. He's paragliding for two years now and he's flying at Zeno and he's flying PWC. I was like, wow, that's a fast progression. But he quit his job and all he did in two years is paragliding. I'm sure he's a safe pilot. And I think that's You know, I always try to, or when people tell me, hey, what needs to I be able to do to fly a moustache? And I'll tell them, okay, you gotta, you know, you gotta have to deal with the speed and the roll and not tell them, oh, you gotta have two years experience. Two years doesn't say anything, you know?

There's a lot of instructors out there that try to, you know, keep people off from doing something. because they know they're not ready for them. But it doesn't help them just tell them, oh, this is dangerous, don't do it. I think it's much better if you tell them, hey, you can do this, but this is what you have to have in your skill set. You got to have this first, this first, and this. And once you got those skills, then you can do that next step and learn this safely. And I think that's very important, you know? And it's funny, sometimes in the speed flying courses, people are

surprised of what sort of wing I already give them. They wouldn't expect to fly a lion on the first day, you know? But because I know the pilots and I know what they can do or not, then this works. Yeah, so I think it's super important to progress step by step and not to jump any steps. To be safe, basically. And also to be current, you know. Also, a common thing I see a lot is that people think like if they can fly acro really well, it's going to help them a ton for flying cross country. It might help them a little bit when they're about to fall out of the sky, but it's not going to help

them to prevent a collapse. You know, if you want to fly cross country, what you have to be able to do is fly active, right? You want to not let collapses happen. And to stop collapses, you have to learn to fly active. And to learn to fly active, you can't do this in an SUV over a lake. You can learn to deal with collapses. But preventing collapses, you only learn by exposing yourself to turbulence and learn to fly active.

Aninder: Wow, so much sense. So much sense in there. Yeah, and I think at the end of the day, it's true for each individual thing. If you want to speed fly,

Beni Kälin: cross-country doesn't help you. I've had in the course, in the same course, I've had super experienced cross-country pilot and I've had a, you know, ex-student with a half-year license, you know, but a bloody good skier and You couldn't, by looking at how they were flying, you couldn't tell who was like super experienced crossbound country pilot and who was a pretty fresh pilot. I think that's also super important to respect is that every discipline requires its own skills. Of course, you learn speed flying a little quicker if you're a super experienced cross-country pilot. But at the end of the day, it's a different sport and it's got its own rules. Same thing for speed riding and same thing for

aqua flying and same thing for paragliding. And I realized that as well. I sometimes do tandem flights here in town with the tourists. And for example, last year, I haven't done one flight. So when I took my tandem out recently, I realized I was super rusty. Like all my speed flying, all my moustache flying, all the cross-country flying I did. It helped me zero for flying tandem. I really felt not comfortable doing big wing overs and then the landing and it felt so weird to me. So yeah, it's, I think each discipline is very different. Um, and, and it needs, if you want to be good at a discipline, you need to be current at that discipline. And just because you're current at another discipline

doesn't mean you're automatically current at this other one. I, I also realized that when I'm sometimes in spring, I don't speed fly much, do other things, fly cross country or mountain biking. Then when I go back speed flying in like August. Then I feel like on an 11-meter wing, like, holy shit, this is fast. And I'm like, how was I comfortable on an 8-meter wing last fall? I was like, this is insane. I felt like this 8-meter wing wasn't too hard to fly. And now I feel like this 11 is a crazy weapon. And it's just because you're on current. Yeah, I think that's a very

important thing I want to get across, that whatever you do, if you want to, do it on a high level, you need to be current at this exact discipline and doing much of another thing actually doesn't help you as much as people think for that other discipline. At least that's for me, you know, but I think it's similar for other people. There's pure wisdom out there, like, and there was many, because this makes airtime as

Aninder: eventual, you know, one of the metrics where you can measure. And if you haven't had airtime in that year, does not matter what amount of airtime you have had in previous years, you are forgetting to feel how your body feels. Exactly. Totally. In paragliding, cross-country flying, it's

Beni Kälin: about airtime. In, you know, acro and speed flying, it's about numbers of flights, I think. Yeah, yeah. Because the flights are short, so you have to make it up with the numbers. So interesting. And I think basically what comes to my thought is that when you as a pilot, like, you

Aninder: know, nobody goes in and says that, okay, I'm going to start racing paragliders for the rest of... I mean, okay, there are some people who have their inclination towards some sport, but every one of us, when we start our new beginner's course, we are pretty much clueless how our minds and how our bodies are going to feel under the wings, or like which discipline will we be choosing, will we be choosing accuracy, acro, or cross-country, or one of these speed things. But as we develop more in the sport, we try to lean towards one discipline more than the others, because I think it's financially and physically impossible to practice everything as a person and get better at it. I was wondering if

there's someone who says that I really want to push the limit and be really competitive and going cross-country because this is more or less a paraglider sport car, so more of my audience is flying paragliders. If you're pushing cross-country and acro in paragliding and it's rocking your world hard enough, and then you see these new toys out there, which... promise to deliver a brand new experience and make your life in the air much more fun and in a very different manner and you're like okay I kind of want to start putting my resources there as well and I kind of want to start chasing those those feelings like that excitement as well is it possible to get better at at cross-country as

well as you know these freestyle kind of flying that line and many or mustache offers because like really our brain somehow forget uh how it was to kind of you know be the best in cross-country when it when it tries to push the limits in in freestyle like this or or or the vice versa like do you think it is it is possible to be in conflict of interest in in in two types of flying so you should just focus on one if you're trying to just go absolute hammer at it like you know head down and try to be the best in the world kind of thing I don't know. I never tried to be the best in the world.

Beni Kälin: Hard to say. I think in many other sports, this is not possible, you know, like in football or in skiing or in, you know, let's say in some more normal sports that are done by much more people. I think the limit is just way higher than in our sports. You know, I think overall paragliding is still a very new and very small sport. that you know if you want to fly a you know world cup you can progress pretty quickly and get there but if you want to ski downhill world cup you know it's a much longer way to get there i think you know and you know speed flying there's obviously not much

competition anymore and there is acro i guess acro is pretty difficult nowadays as well to get there but probably also not like skiing so i think probably in our sport there is still room to do two, you know, two disciplines. I mean, look at Paul Takras, you know, like he's, he's super good at acro. I'm not sure if he's still one of the top pilots, but you know, now he's doing X-Alps and he's flying PWC. Yeah. So if, if it is possible, then I think much more still in, in the flying communities or the flying sports then, then in more involved with longer history sports. No, definitely. And Paul definitely does show the way forward because he incidentally happens to be the very first guest on

Aninder: Paralyzing Atlas. He was very kind to come up and talk about flying in Colombia. That was the very first episode we did. So a super fun guy to hang out and what an inspiration and what a base of knowledge. Benny, we are almost at the end of the show now. I kind of wanted your closing comments because of course I've seen the way you look at things and the amount of wisdom you put into your thoughts. Is there something that you wish we as pilots kind of did better in our own flying? Like, is there something that kind of makes you agitated or angry and you're just like,

yes, I wish I could change that for the community? Or like, I wish the community did things better in that way? I think what I would wish from

Beni Kälin: the community to do better is First of all, being like less brand orientated. I feel like many people are married to a brand, you know? And I think every brand has good wings, but sometimes also not the best wing, you know? It's just the way it goes. So I think... In general, people are a little bit too brand-minded, less, not enough open-minded to other brands. That's one thing. And I think there is, there should be more, more knowledge resources, you know. There are books, you know, buy a book of, you know, how to do paragliding and things. But there is, you know, for example, especially in the mini wing beat flying world, there isn't that much reliable or good resources for people that want to teach

themselves. And the fact is that A lot of people that get into speed flying, they don't have access to a school. They don't live somewhere where there's actually a school or a mentor that, you know, can watch their progression a little bit and maybe slow them down every now and then or something. And I guess the same thing in paragliding even, you know. So I wish there would be like a website with very dedicated, very good advice for those kind of people in our community that do not live in those flying hotspots that have, you know, a ton of schools, you know, like here, as I said, there's 18 schools around here and And there's so many good pilots around Interlochen. We have so many world champions

here. Karidl Mauer lives here. If someone wants to progress and become very good, then there's plenty of pilots he can go and seek knowledge from. But in a lot of countries, that's not the case. And I wish there would be better resources for those pilots that live somewhere and don't have that. No, I completely resonate with that answer. And in fact, the reason why I do that is that is the bottom line of our show,

Aninder: Clouded Lightning Atlas, to make knowledge accessible to wider audiences. And because I was one of those guys before I moved to Europe, where I came from a place where the network of pilots was not that big. I mean, of course we, we have a very tiny and a very close knit, but a very welcoming community where, you know, the, the, the knowledgeable and experienced ones are very open and sharing, but just the whole ecosystem in Europe or in one of these like, you know, countries, Western countries like Switzerland and the Alps, and like you go to Bassano and all of that, you're just amongst people who are like basically eating, sleeping and living, paragliding or one of these

sports all the time. So just access becomes so much easier. But I am doing my own tiny bit through the world of hot and lighting Atlas. So I don't know. Did you guys have something similar in speed flying or should I start speed flying and start speed flying Atlas as well? No, this is

Beni Kälin: actually missing. Yeah. I was just thinking that the other day. I don't think there's a speed fly podcast. I mean, I haven't heard of one. No fucking way. I mean, to be honest, it's a lot of work and you've probably got an idea of the amount of time I had to get you on the show, but it's a

Aninder: resource that just is so magical for people who are not in those locations. I'll keep that in the back of my mind. I believe you, but I

Beni Kälin: think the speed flying scene is still a very small seen and, and what I've seen is the people, you know, people speed fly for let's say five years and then they kind of saturated a little bit. There's, I think there's very few pilots that, that keep doing this for 10, 15, 20 years, you know, in paragliding, it's much more common, you know, pilots, they, they, they fly for the, you know, their whole life. But to me, it looks like speed flying is much more of a, something people consume for a while and they love it and they're totally addicted to it. And then it kind of fades

off a little bit, you know, it loses a little bit. It's, how to say, it's rush when you do it, when you've done it too much. And then people go on, you know, and, you know, maybe fly more cross-country or do acro or other things. I've seen a lot of pilots that I've teached once and And we're really into it and then kind of progress to something else, which I think it's amazing, you know. If I wasn't an instructor and a test pilot and, you know, we're doing all of these new things, then it might be the same for me. Yeah. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. so maybe we're still a bit of

a small scene for having our own podcast but i definitely think it's it's growing the speed flying and and i think especially with the latest technology we have on the park heights is it for coastal soaring or is it for speed flying now with a line this makes it much more attractive flying small wings and i see more and more people flying small wings like here in switzerland like mini wings, high can fly wings, you know, like a Bantam or a Cody P, like those 16, let's say 14 to 18 meter wings they have the last few years, they have become like way more popular. There's so

many pilots that have their cross country wings, they have their Okra wings, but they also have one of those small high can fly wings, which is, which is awesome. Yeah. I think it's, it's, it's a good direction. Yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. And, and people love it. Yeah. No, it's

Aninder: so nice to hear that, you know, it's growing progressively. You know, and what basically, like, what holds me back from speed flying is that I think, like, it doesn't allow you to tell you a story, basically. Like, the experience is so quickly finished. You know, you put your stuff in the car in the morning, you go, you take a ski lift up, and boom, a few seconds later, you're down on the ground. And then you keep on doing that over and over again, and then you come back to your home. It's not like a parallel expedition where, like, okay, you put your car, you put your

stuff in the car, you go out there, you fly for a while. So you have experiences to talk about in the end of the day when you sit after a long cross-country flight. Or, you know, in... I mean, Acro is kind of similar, where you finish the day and come back to your own home. But I think the romance of a cross-country flight is that it gives you so much to talk about that that is basically what kind of keeps it going and That is why storytelling is a bit more easier in the world of paragliding than it would be in speed flying, in my opinion. Because I don't want to lose

altitude so quickly. I want to be in the air. This line just got so much easier now. I don't feel my brain telling me that, oh my God, what am I getting myself into? Do you think it's one of these reasons why it's kind of like getting out of people's lives after a while? I think so, yeah.

Beni Kälin: But, you know, at the same time, it's not for everyone. It doesn't have to be for everyone, speed flying. And I'm glad it's not for everyone. If every paragliding pilot could speed fly, it would be banned everywhere, I think. 100%. You could just provide me one of Cohen's

Aninder: rescue service, we'd get every single paragliding pilot at 11 meters on the air. Yeah, totally. I mean, that's the nice thing about the flying,

Beni Kälin: right? There's so many different disciplines and you start with something and you eventually move to something else because your interests shift or maybe your possibilities, your time, whatever. That's totally fine. You know, I see a lot of pilots here that that I have been keen pilots in different disciplines and sooner or later, what they end up doing is hike and fly and they, you know, they run up, they fly down because they become dads and they have family and more busy at their job and but yeah so they you know they try to still stay fit and do sport and at the same time they combine paragliding so they end up doing hike and fly yeah that's the nice thing about our sport it's it's got something to

offer for everyone For sure, for sure. And I think, you know, before I let you go for the day, Mini, one of the, like, if you can share the

Aninder: experiences, like how does, yeah, I mean, if our audience can get a glimpse of how does life look like in life of TestFighted, who's getting access to all these brand new toys every time. It's exciting. It's cool always, you know, like, especially with the parakeets now being able to

Beni Kälin: be part of that revolution. Yeah, especially because I'm, you know, I'm always interested in those new things and the possibility you get with those new things. Yeah, I'm super stoked. I'm part of the Flare team. And yeah, we are looking forward where this is all leading us and bringing us, you know, where this Flare system has potential or not. Yeah, we've only just started the journey. Yeah, I think there's many more great wings to come, hopefully, from Flare. Yeah. Wow. Wisdom and excitement all summed up in one's intents is what I can see, you know, in time to come

Aninder: from the brand of it. But Benny Collins, thank you for such an honest and, you know, absolute pure of an interview from the bottom of your heart. I think we have successfully managed to put across to our audiences why they should stay excited and like what's coming and basically more fun. in in our sports of paragliding and speed flying so fingers crossed keep up the good work you seem to be willing at life by making money out of this full time so definitely there's something right i'm kind of wait to see what's what what comes from go flare global thank you very much thanks for inviting me and i hope to meet you someday somewhere and i hope to see your smile one day when you flew a line likewise for sure