New Technologies 5 : Frantisek Pavlousek (UP Paragliders)

the right side collapse goes between the left and right half of the lines and it went through and make a knot in the middle of the canopy. I have no time. Exactly what happens if the... Every glider is a compromise. The more you push for performance, the more you lose safety. It's not my idea. It wasn't not my idea. And to be honest, I'm not very happy with that. But the pilots made that. And if you break the glider, you have to do all the repair by stitching. There is no chance to put a sticker on it. You have a fake safety feeling. You have a feeling that there are no turbulences in the air. But then, when there is a collapse, if it's small, it's easy. But

when you are somewhere in the place you shouldn't be. Because most of the accidents happen when there is a combination of several reasons. Like...

Frantisek Pavlousek: what is up everyone welcome back to public lighting atlas and you are listening to aninder singh in case you're new here i'm your host and this time around we are bringing to you episode number five of the topic new technologies yes you heard it right it's been five amazing guests from our industry who have come across to share all the wisdom that we need to know about the next generation of technology that is coming and influencing the way we have fun in the air But for this one, we are joined with one of the senior most designer that our sport has seen over the years. Three decades in the game and still coming out with absolutely phenomenal wings, which people are trusting all across the globe.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and everyone along with them, we bring to you none other than Frantisek Pavlošek.

I really hope I'm saying his name correctly because if not, let's just call him Franta as the community knows him since long. And in case you're wondering why am I sounding so excited, that is because Franta happens to be another one of those amazing people who had a passion and moreover they believed in that passion and eventually were strong enough to stick with it to make it worthwhile not just for themselves but for all of us out here as well. So without further ado, this is an in- depth conversation with a super interesting Rainera community and most importantly, an unfiltered and honest one on how the new technologies are shaping the paragliding of tomorrow. So tune in and I hope you like

it. And of course, as you all know, a like, subscribe, share or rating goes a super long way in spreading the love. So do not forget to do your needful and I promise I will double up the efforts and do my needful so both of us together can keep this awesomeness growing week after week and make paragliding a safer and more enjoyable sport, not just for ourselves, but for everyone else involved as well.

František Pavlošek, three decades in the industry and now finally I have a chance to bring you on Panoramic Atlas. Welcome to the show, sir. How have you been? Thank you very much, Pavel. Thank you for inviting me. The topic of today's show, new technologies. So starting on that front, I think the first question that comes to my mind is that technologies are relying upon the guidelines set by certifications a lot. So let's talk about certifications and how they have evolved over the past three decades of your experience in the design industry. Can you just give our audiences a little bit of introduction about how the certification structure was and how is it compared to today and how it has evolved all

this while? I think all these things, they follow the reality, they follow the pilots, what they need, what they want. At the beginning,

these ports started to be quite dangerous with no certifications and some gliders already were safe, some gliders were dangerous. And these situations brought the necessity to have some certifications. So they were built two different norms, one by Germans, it was DHV norm, another one by Swiss and French guys. It was AFNONORM. It was AFNONORM and they both worked well. But as the market or as the whole paragliding was moving forward, that AFNONORM started to be not enough for the reality. What was the problem? They were gliders that were quite high performance. And still, if you were a successful designer, you were able to make the quite high performance glider to pass A category

certification, AFN or A. That led to a tricky situation to the pilots because you could choose the A glider, but it could be quite high performance. According to the certification, it was A, but it wasn't a beginner glider at all. So with this situation, this norm started to be replaced with something new. And at that time, there was already the DHV norm existing, what was more strict, and that covered this A category, it was covered at the DHV by categories 1, 1, 2, and 2.

in some gliders, sometimes 112, sometimes the glider was able to pass DHV2, sometimes it was AFNORB. So it was like on the edge of A and B. So that norm was better. It was for the customers better because then when the glider was certified as DHV-1, they knew it's a school glider. It was DHV-1 too. It was that 80% or 60, 70% of the pilots buying the glider after school. If it was DHV-2, it was already for some kind of pilots with better skills, with more experience. So that was the old times. Then the European legislative put that think to build a new norm, the EN norm, to

be for the whole Europe. And the EN norm is then based on the HV norm. So that's the actual reality, actual pilots know. That's the history of certification. So let's say the first question that comes to my mind is what was wrong with the AFNOR? Can you give us an idea what allowed

Frantisek Pavlousek: manufacturers to just run away with the performance and not care about the safety in a beginner wing? Nothing was wrong. It was just the reality

because the norm was built in the time when the gliders were really unsafe. To make a glider was very difficult for some brands in early nineties. And the B certified, Afnor B glider was already in those times, a kind of safe glider with still not that much performance, but as the designers were learning how to build the gliders, they were able to make the gliders more and more safe. And I have to say, there are two points to discuss about safety. It's the safety according to the certification and safety in real flight, because these two things are connected, but not the same. If you make the glider now certified as ENA, for sure, it's not a really unsafe glider. But there could be an ENB

glider, what is exactly the same real safety as that A, but couldn't pass the A category for one maneuver. In reality, it's the same. So it's two different things, the real safety and the certification. So they are close. For sure, it's not ENB glider, what is the same safety as ENA. For sure not. So it can be a low B, almost same or even the same safety in real flight than the ena certified glider it can be what we call now low b and about your question what was wrong with the norm there was nothing wrong exactly the same way as there is nothing wrong with e and b category now

it's exactly the same situation now we have b category and we have three gliders most of the brands like UP has, and most of the other brands, they have three gliders. I'm not talking about the lightweight, heavyweight, but I'm talking about low B, mid B, and high B gliders. We have three gliders. At the beginning of this EN norm, it was very common that there was one A for every brand. One A, something like lower B and higher B, and then there was one C and one D glider. It's very common that the brands have one or two A's, more often one A, but they have three B's

and they have one or two C gliders, one or two gliders in C category. And then they have a two liner D category glider, then they have a comb glider. Let's not talk about comb gliders because they are interesting for sure. but it would be another topic for another talk for a long talk so let's talk about the gliders certified in the standards it was in part the same we had the dhv one to three categories there were five categories one one two two two three and three almost nobody certified gliders in degree number three most of the gliders were one two two three That means four categories, like now you have E, N, A, B, C, D. So it's a similar situation. And the comps glide over separately, like you have

them now in CCC. So let's forget the comp wings and stay with A, B, C, D. If I go about this situation, as I said, nothing wrong with Yatnor. It just started, the market pushed that. If you want to know why that, we can talk about that topic, why we have now three GLADAS in B category. It's not my idea. It wasn't not my idea. And to be honest, I'm not very happy with that. But the pilot made that. You think so? Is it not the manufacturers

Frantisek Pavlousek: which are trying to increase the sale numbers? I'll tell you why I'm coming up with the statement. Because oftentimes I've seen B category gliders being upgraded every year with tiniest bit of improvements. It's like, this one flies this much better. This one flies, this one kind of has a tiny bit of more control, tiny bit of easier landing. When you look at the test reports, it's almost impossible to tell the difference between the B category glider from the same brand one year before and one year later. To me, it just looks like a marketing gimmick where this is the category that you can sell a lot and you keep making it look really cool on new launches. People just keep on getting excited and keep on

buying it. I think it's a bit of a manufacturer's part as well, not just a pilot theory in here. It's not manufacturer, it's the pilot. To be

honest, my personal opinion is, if you watch what pilots won't read about the new glider, they won't read it's much faster, it's better safety, it has much better glide ratio, and it has better handling. So in all aspects, it's much better. That's what customers want to have every two years. That's the customer, what they push for. I will go back to the three gliders in B category, how the customer made it. There were one typical situation was one glider in A or sometimes two gliders in A category. If the brand made like A glider typical for schools, the schools are pushing for the price because they have to buy and 12, 15 gliders, depending how big the school is, they have to buy it before the

season. Well, it's quite a lot of money for them. Paragliding business, it's not making huge money. We have most of the people doing that business, they are doing that for the passion and not to be rich. That's reality. That's reality. The schools, they have to buy the gliders, harnesses, rescues, radios, and all the stuff like that. So it costs a lot of money. Some brands were used to make or are still used to make a cheap school glider. Then they have a second glider for the beginners, still in A category. Sometimes they make it as a low B. As I said, these two gliders can be very similar. In general, we had, for example, the last model for this category we had. Four years ago, we had Makalu 4 as a low B.

And there was Manaura Ascent as a school glider. Then we brought Remo as a school glider. What is, what was more in the middle? Ascent was a school glider, and Trimo is a school beginner's glider. So it's in the middle of A category. It's not in the real beginner anymore, like it was. We had Dana, second glider in A category. So we had, from the situation five years ago, we had, or five, six years ago, we had A glider and low B glider. Later we made A glider, two A gliders, and We removed that low B glider. And now we are coming back and the customers are asking for that.

Marketing guys, they are getting this input that it's better to have a low B glider. As we have the A glider in the middle of the A category. It's not the real school glider built to be cheap. It's a nice beginner's glider. It's easy to be used for schools. And it's a nice glider for beginners. So you don't need a second day glider. Now we are coming with Macabre 5. A low B glider, it stays the same. There was a second B glider for pilots with more experience flying B category because the first low B, it's the beginner's glider. After school, very often bought just after school, you had the second glider in B category and there was a C category glider. But there are pilots who are flying different

cross-country cups, different countries, but they have a serial class up to B category. For these hobby kind of competitions, you have serial class. That means B category. And the pilots wanted to have as much as performance glider in the B segment. There were not many of them, but there were some. And they started to push in that direction. And some brands started to produce this kind of glider. And it was quite popular for the rest of the pilots, not only for these hobby competitors. It was popular for most of the pilots who are interested in this kind of glider. And they say, oh, B category glider, it's more safe than that one. And the performance is the same. In reality, it's the same glider. You just have

to spend as a team, RD team, we just have to spend a bit more time at the beginning, quite a lot more time, not to ruin any aspect, just to pass the certification. So it was the first of the summit we made in B category seven years ago. And from that time, the summit glider is B category. It's a high B. So now we have three gliders in B category. Low B, mid B, and high B. In my opinion, it wasn't me who made it for myself and for my team, for our team, made it more tricky. not to only make a glider with good performance, glider with good safety, but as well the glider with good

performance, good safety, and to pass the certification. Because sometimes you need to do something different. You can even fight with the real safety to get the safety of certification. I can explain that in very easy words. How? Because You understand that it looks quite strange, what I'm saying now, that safety can go against certification result. What should say something about safety? What should say this is the safe glider if it's B category? What is the most typical problem with a glider to pass the B category, to get in with a high performance? It's full-speed asymmetrical collapse. That's the only letter on every single test report that I see is sending the glider onto a next category.

Frantisek Pavlousek: I was checking the test report of an E and C wing from a renowned manufacturer. It has got A on landing, B on takeoff, and B on a lot of other things. But the asymmetric on bar is the one sending it to C. Please explain why and how does this work? Yeah, and you can imagine. So we have a

nice glider, beautiful glider, one has all the A's and B's in all the maneuvers. And there is one C for full speed, 75% collapse. But you want to certify the glider in B. So you start to fight. If you push the full bar, normally you react. If you have a collapse, you react somehow. You push the brakes a bit. Or at least you push the brakes 20% if it's not a real... A good pilot for this category should know how to react on a full-speed asymmetrical collapse. But the certification is hands up, making the collapse without the brake handle in your hand. You are putting the A

riser down and the brake handle is not in your hand. because if it is still in your hand, you are pulling at the same time a bit the training edge and the collapse is much softer. So you move an asymmetrical collapse really hard and then you observe what happens with no reaction, completely no reaction. And that's already some kind of outer reality. But I'm not saying the norm is bad because It's very tricky to simulate right in the norm the rule for the right reaction of the pilot. So the norm compares the glider behavior, and that's it. The norm makes it fair for all the gliders, same rule for all the gliders. So I'm not saying the norm is bad. I'm just saying the reality and the norm is different. If you do

that collapse, now I want that collapse to be in B category. The easiest way how to make it is to make the trim speed slower. Or to make the external parts of the wing, because when you have a right side collapse, the behavior is determined by the left side speed at that moment. The open side speed, how fast it is, how fast it goes to the rotation. Because if it's slower, it's like you pull the brake a bit. So what you do, you make the left side a bit slower. You can make the end of the wing, the external part of the wing a bit slower. But it could lead to worse behavior for the

handling. Spin and stall and spiral. It's very tricky to find a good balance, not to change these things. So Every glider is a compromise. The more you push for performance, the more you lose safety. And the first summit we did with the B category, in the B category, I don't know, six, eight years ago, it was a lot of work for us not to make it unsafe in the other aspects, to make safer asymmetrical collapse, safer for the certification, to pass the certification with asymmetrical collapse. And not to make it unsafe with any other aspects, with any other flying situations, and not to ruin the nice behavior, nice handling, and not to decrease the performance. Because it would be

really easy what to do. Okay, you can make, decrease the accelerator travel, but then you are two, three kilometers slower on the full speed. You don't want that. So the first time was quite tricky. Later, it was easier because we learned from that what is hard that moves you forward. If you have any difficult situation in your life, it moves you forward. And then the designing of the paragliders is exactly the same. I think

Frantisek Pavlousek: the three decades in the industry, you must have had loads of tough situations and you have moved forward without giving up. That's so inspiring to hear. How difficult is it to be a paraglider designer in this industry now? I don't know how difficult. I don't think about this

kind of question, if it's difficult or not. I like the job and it's a passion for me. I'm doing this for more than 30 years and still it's a passion. I'm flying less than I was used to flying. I had years when I've been flying Every day, even in the rainy days, flying with wet paraglider, stupid things like that. When I started to fly, I was flying every day. So now I can't, of course, I have family, I have two kids. I see

Frantisek Pavlousek: you seem to have a pretty fulfilling life. I see there's a rock climbing wall on the background. That's a first. Sounds like a beautiful life, Franta. But Franta, before we move on to the C category and the two-liner things, let's talk about the brand new category division that has happened in C. From what I see as a consumer or as a pilot who wants to chase more fun in the air, my visualization of getting in the air under a wing and the need to upgrade is that I want the fun factor to get high, but I do not want to compromise on safety. So I think the manufacturers, as you

said, make what the consumers ask. What the manufacturers did is that finally we have the same category, but with a lot more performance. As far as the safety aspect is concerned, we keep it in the same kind of homologation, but we reduce the drag and increase the performance and everything. So... changing homologation up to a certain point to accommodate such technological changes. Is this going to happen in lower class as well? Is two-liner the way to go? Are we looking at reducing drag further and tweaking the norms as time passes? What is your thought on C category being completely split open with three-liners and two-liners because the definition of C changed with

the introduction of collapse lines? Yeah, it's a bit tough question because it's really wide problem. Okay. Where to start?

When the two liners occurred in their origin, when the first two liners started as a comp wings, I don't know how many years it is already, but a long time ago. The first we tried, I think all the manufacturers tried, they just put the rods in their existing wings. some kind of rot at the beginning. Most of the people use the BHB style, that means the carbon rot. And what we found immediately, or at least we at the brand I worked at that time, it was Axis in Czech Republic, with a team we found immediately that it's not that easy. That we have to look at the point

completely different. We started to work on the gliders and we have found that we have completely changed the philosophy how the airfoil is made, how the wing is built, and so on. It's one of the tough points when you learn a lot from fighting to solve the problems. And there were many problems. And it was a huge experience. It was a time when I was starting to work for UP. It's almost 15 years. Most of the work I'm talking about was already for EOP or already at EOP and we have made some comp wings, they were flying and then the situation has changed and the E&D category

for the two liners was opened and two liners started to be built for E& certified category and for the certification you had to use the folding clients. In that time Nobody, probably nobody, maybe somebody had, but I didn't think about, because I didn't think about making a B category glider as a two liner or C category glider as a two liner in that time. I didn't think about that. And the norm at the beginning said, okay, you can use folding lines, but folding lines are something for cheating. normally you make the collapse front stall or asymmetric collapse you make it just put in the a riser you're making it with putting some of the a lines the a lines are attached around 9 10 11 percent from the leading

edge but if you make a two liner you move them backwards you move them far away so they are 12 13 the second of them because they are split into two points they are around 18 the middle is around 15 16

but when you pull down you are pulling the second line too that means you are pulling around 80 percent of the chord of the airfoil you are pulling down around 18% instead of around 10%. That means the collapse is behaving completely different. It's like when you try to pull almost A's and B's together to make asymmetric. What happens in such situation, the wing flaps with very steep angle for the normal collapse. you pull down in 45 degrees from the chord axis. And this way, you pull down almost 90 degrees. That means the behavior is completely different. For that reason, to achieve the similar collapse on the two-liner as on the standard glider, It's allowed to build in the

additional attachment points and to use the folding clients way, way closer to the leading edge. So they are around 5% compared to the 10 of standard gliders. The more you put them backwards, the worse the collapse behaves. But the more you put them frontwards, the better the collapse behaves. That's the reason why I'm saying it's a kind of cheating. I'm not saying it's 100% cheating, but there were some attempts to put the folding client attachment points in front of the air intake, to put them more to the front. So now the norm says they must not be in front of the start of the lower scheme. So that means... First, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, no problem. We wanted to ask something. Yeah, why do we

Frantisek Pavlousek: need folding lines? What is this fuss about having folding lines on the gliders? And I'm pretty sure there are a lot of audience members who don't know about this, who are fairly beginner. So just give us a little introduction about this folding lines thing. You don't have folding

lines on a two-liner. There are two options. Because the norm says how the collapse, what certification should look like. it should be 50% on the trailing edge, the big asymmetrical collapse, if we talk about. Big asymmetrical collapse is 50% of the trailing edge, plus minus 2.5, and 45 degrees angle going to the open side of the leading edge. So it defines exactly where the collapsed area should be, how the proper collapse should look like. You can see, if you see some videos of testing, you see the stickers on the bottom skins, like this for certification. These stickers are to show how big area of the asymmetric collapse should be. and the front stall and so on. Big asymmetrical collapse, small

asymmetrical collapse. There are markers sticked to the bottom skin. Without this, you can't give the glider to the laboratory for certification. You have to put the stickers there. And they follow the stickers on the canopy to make the proper collapse. If you have a two-liner, there are two options. Either it's physically impossible for your arm to pull down to make the proper collapse, Or you are a really strong man, depends of course on the glider design. Some it's more difficult, but you can make it for sure. You can't achieve this angle. The steeper the angle is, either you make 50% on the trailing edge and instead of 70, 75 on the leading edge, you make only 60 on leading edge.

That means collapse is small with a too sharp angle. So it's not a proper collapse. Or you go to 70-75% on the leading edge, but then not 50, but 60-65% on the trailing edge, what is too sharp, what is not a proper collapse again. So for that reason, the folding clients are used to be put on the gliders, and that helps to achieve the proper collapse for the certification. Real life collapses when the turbulence hits from

Frantisek Pavlousek: above, because when it hits from below, of course, there's no collapse. We just get lifted. When shit goes wrong in the air, it is hitting all the lines pretty much together. So the collapses more than any certification can mimic. As I said, certification is one thing and real

safety is another thing. They are linked together. So if you have a glider what can pass ENB and it's CCC certified because it wouldn't even go into ENB, it's quite probable that it's not easy glider in the real flying. The same situation is if the glider is ENB, it is an easy glider for real flying. That means the letter is giving you a hint, but it's not saying exactly, this is that safe. It's giving you a rough idea about the way you can see the difference. All the gliders for the comps are certified as CCC. And you can see the difference between one and the other. The same situation is E&D. And even an E&D certified two-liner from one brand, I don't want to talk about the name, but most of the pilots

would know, even the E&D glider certified from one brand and its successor coming a few years later from the same brand, the pilots can say, okay, it's different. The real safety is different. And I'm not saying this doesn't happen to UP. We are trying our best. to bring the glider in the same level, but I think we are quite focused on this, not to make any surprises to the pilots. For me, this is a very important thing and I'm trying not to have these, I'm working quite hard not to have these situations that the pilots are buying successor of a wing they were happy with before. And with the successor, they start to be scared. This is what I think I can say that didn't happen. It hasn't happened at all to

me. And I'm very satisfied with it. This is the reality of your question about the real safety compared to the certification. And it's somehow linked together. You can't mix B and D certification, but the gliders in D category, they are different. They are not the same. One is safer, one less, even though they are both D category. So when a pilot wants to upgrade, what is the most important letter that they should look? How

Frantisek Pavlousek: can they base their decision upon that on test reports? I think you can't find an easy solution for that. But I think I gave you already a part of the

answer to this question. That's what I'm trying to do. And I think I'm quite satisfied with my work in that aspect. I'm trying to build the successor of the predecessor to build for the pilots to get what they expect to have. So if you were flying the same category and you are buying the new glider in that category, I think if you stay with the UP, you can expect that you are not surprised. And I think there are more brands working like that. And I would say if you are happy with this philosophy of the brand, you should follow it. The same point is handling, for

example. If you love the handling we are used to make on the gliders, you should stay with them. If you don't like it, you should go to another brand and test it to fly it and to see how you like it. Because this is the thing for sure what is different from other brands. The performance is more or less the same. The safety is the same category. If you are not pushing to your limits, I go a bit to the side. I was competing in past. I spent flying comps quite a few years. And there you were pushing for the best performance. There you need a glider with a good performance. but

if you don't compete it's more you than the glider it's your performance it's not the performance of the glider so if you buy a glider in the category you are not pushing the limit if you are a pilot for a big glider you shouldn't buy a c glider because You won't get the performance of the glider out of it if your performance is not good enough. So you lose the safety and the glider doesn't have the safety and performance. The safety is according to the weakest point and the performance is according to the weakest point of the chain. It's like that if you fly cross-country with a goggle over people and just follow them. But You won't learn anything. You wouldn't improve yourself. If you go to fly

cross country alone, that is what makes you better pilot. Alone, you make your own decisions that pushes you forward a lot. In my opinion, this is the first topic you should focus on. If you say a letter, it's a letter. Don't push, don't buy the glider with a letter. You can trust the brands that the mid B is mid B. You are not a test pilot. You can't say if it's a better mid B or a worse mid B. It's mid B. So if you are a pilot for mid B, buy mid B. Don't buy high B. That's the letter. To watch if it's B, but watch low B, mid B, high B. This is what is written in the website of the

manufacturer or the brand. It's written there. And it's, if you are a low B pilot, don't buy mid B or high B. So if you ask for the letter, this is the letter. I think it's quite often with all the categories. I would say it's more often with the C category. And when we talked about the two-liner, I escaped somehow from this question of the C category and the two-liners. I can come back now if you agree. In my opinion, this is a typical category where people are buying something they don't fit to. In my opinion, I'm an old pilot. And I'm not pushing anymore. I've been

pushing some years ago, but I'm not pushing anymore. And I can enjoy every day when I have time to go flying. I can enjoy that because I'm not pushing to fly comb glider anymore. If we go to two liners and three liners in C category, I wouldn't call them low C and high C. I would call them C category three liners and C category two liners because the designs are different. I wouldn't even say one is safer and one is less safe. What is the difference between these two gliders? The two liner is almost not collapsing. It's very rigid. The typical behavior of a two liner is that you have a few collapses during the whole season of flying. That's reality. But then the question is how the glider behaves when the

collapse is there, and how high you are to recover from the collapse, and how wide is the range of proper reaction to help the glider recover. And this is a difference, in my opinion. So if we talk, for example, about the collapse behavior, the question is this point. If you have a small collapse on a two-liner or on a three-liner, we are talking about C category. We are talking about Maru, what we have in Maru 2, what we have in D category, and Trango X, what we have in C category. There's a two-liner and three-liner in different categories. And there are some pilots saying that the Maru 2 is so safe. They feel that even safer than Trango. But I prefer to fly Trango. on my own. I prefer Trangor because

the Mero, the communication of the two-liner, and Mero is a really easy glider in that category, but still it is a two-liner and the communication, there is less communication of that glider. So it makes you have a fake safety feeling. You have a feeling that there are no turbulences in the air. But then, when there is a collapse, if it's small, it's easy. But when you are somewhere in the place you shouldn't be, because most of the accidents happen when there is a combination of several reasons. Like you fly with the wrong glider in the wrong place, and you are a wrong pilot for that glider. That means you are the pilot for him, is that glider on limit of his skills, and you fly into the lee

somewhere to find a thermal, but the lee thermals or the turbulences are stronger than you expected. So you made a mistake to take that decision to go there. And then if everything is okay, you still survive without no problem. You somehow managed to go away from there to climb the thermal and you say, that was rough. But

If you are there two seconds later or 10 seconds earlier, you got it. And then you can crash. You can have an accident. So it's a combination of several bad things happen together. And the easier glider you have, that's the better. The less you push to the limits and go in for the lead terminals, if you are not sure about that place that You can handle it and so on. So now back to the three liners, two gliders. I think that the three liners will have much more often collapses, but the collapses are more gentle. The collapses, to manage them, you were used to fly till now, you

were used to fly the B category glider. And then you went to triangle and you start to fly that wing. So you went from high B to the high C. from three-liner to three-liner, you are familiar with that kind of behavior. If you go from high B to high C, but that C is a two-liner, the glider behaves different. It's a different work. So it can be too high step forward. And then of course, if you fly safe, if you fly in easy conditions, if you are a good experienced pilot, so you don't make mistakes, you don't go in the wrong places. But when you fly cross

country, you often go to wrong places and know the air is rough there, but you need that thermal. That's obvious. Because we are not flying hang gliders when you can choose where to go. We are flying, or sailplanes, where you fly just above all these problems. You just fly on the cloud base. We go from the cloud base almost to the ground, and again to the cloud base, and again to the ground almost. That's funny on the Perk Line in cross countries that very often, every second glide, you go almost to bomb out. That's reality of our flying. I know, man. This is such a hard

Frantisek Pavlousek: thing to navigate during the flight because one wrong decision and you're this, like, you're super close to bombing out. And second wrong decision, you're already on the ground. It's so much brain work to stay up in the air and do the long distance flights. You fly your plan. And even

before you make your plan, these areas will be tough. I know that I'm going here, I'm going to follow the ridge here. So it's easy part of my task. And then I know this part will be tough. Here will be a tricky place, here will be second and third tricky place, and I have to be really careful. On the ridge, I can push, I can be fast, but here I have to focus not to make a mistake, not to go low to these places. That's paragliding because you can follow the ridge out and return, then it's easy i know places where you can make 150 kilometer and you are still on one reach

where when you want to make something more complicated for yourself to improve to push your limits the tricky places are there and you know that these are the tricky place it's not like you make a mistake there will be tricky places and you push yourself you push your limits let's go The first type or the main line on top. I just want to, before we finish up the ENC, the two-liner on the collapse resistance topic, are we not capable

Frantisek Pavlousek: of producing gliders which don't collapse? Or is collapse a safety mechanism in flight? You can't make wings which don't collapse. It's

impossible. It's the neutrality of the paraglider that it collapses. And the more rigid the wing you make, In general, the more rigid the structure, you have the less collapses. But when there is a collapse, it's worse. That's general rule. So you see that all the school wings and beginner's things, they have some collapses. They are even not collapses. They are just the formation of the canopy. Like, they work like a sponge. They absorb the turbulence. They behave like a sponge. There are wrinkles between A and B lines to deform the airfoil instead of having a collapse. So in small turbulence, you have quite often these little deformations of the canopy with no collapse. Then when the

turbulence is stronger, you have very small collapses with very easy behavior. And when it's even stronger, the tubulence, you have bigger collapses still with very easy behavior. And when you have more rigid canopy of higher category, because you want to go through the tubulences, you want the glider not to lose energy in tubulences. So you want them to cut through the tubulences. They don't react on the small tubulence. They won't have any reaction. They don't have any reactions on... Average turbulence, they pass through it. But on the bigger one, you have a collapse and it's much harder. So in general, this is a general rule. The more rigid the wink is, the worse the behavior then is when it

happens, when the collapse occurs. Sometimes I think, what is that? It's called kiting, probably, which is done on water, where they pump up

Frantisek Pavlousek: the leading edge and make that leading edge very solid. That seems to basically leave the kites open no matter where the wind is coming from. Are we not employing those kind of technologies in paragliding? Because if we make it super rigid, then it's just super crazy collapses. Is that the mindset as well in here? Yeah, that's impossible. You can watch the guys when they are kitesurfing. Sometimes they get their

kites tangled because they just go through the lines. They just go around. So you can imagine if that would happen. It's much more pleasant to have a collapse with these rigid wings. Sometimes there is a half collapse. which goes between the left and the right half of the canopy. Haven't you seen that? The right side collapse goes between the left and right half of the lines, and it went through and make a knot in the middle of the canopy. I have seen it many times. Exactly what happens if the wing is really rigid. With a soft wing, this would never happen because the soft wing goes... down like this, and then it goes backwards when it's soft. But the rigid wing can go down and can go in front of you. I don't

think it's realistic. Another problem is the weight. You can see that all the two liners, the more rigid structure is built in, the more these gliders are using the lightweight fabrics. Because if the two-lighter, the comb glider would weigh about nine kilos built from standard fabrics or eight kilos, it would be really unsafe because the weight of the canopy gives it, keeps the inertia energy of the canopy. What would make it jump in much more frontwards. And that's the reason why all these wings are built of lightweight fabrics. When it comes to

Frantisek Pavlousek: having inertia or momentum, if we are building a heavier car, you accelerate it, it is going to carry the momentum much further. So it is going to go through the potholes or any kind of disturbance on the road in a much more efficient manner. when we are bringing two-liner technology into the wings to make sure it's more rigid, and that is why it's more efficient when it goes through turbulence, why aren't we making the gliders heavier to make them more collapse resistant and carry more momentum? Why aren't we applying the same philosophy that we are applying in two-liners, but changing it when it comes to weight? The safety of the paraglider is based on the basic system, the canopy

creates the lift and your body is bringing to the system the weight. And the more the weight would go to the canopy, the more you would become to be similar to a hang glider. If you put the weight into the canopy, it would be very easy to tumble in any situation because the heavy glider would go forward according to its inertia energy, you know. If you put the wires instead of lines, if you put all the weight into the canopy and no weight to the position of the pilot, then the glider wouldn't fly, it would fly upside down. So what's keeping you down, it's your weight. And what's

keeping the glider up, it's the less weight it is, the better it keeps the position on top. It's visible if you make same glider of heavy and light fabrics, that lighter fabrics will make the glider more stable, like easier in maneuvers. That's reality. Are you telling me the

Frantisek Pavlousek: lightweight wings are easier to fly in the same category than the regular wings? They could be because most often you make some more

changes, not only change the fabrics. Of course, if you change the fabrics, there is elasticity and so on. What changes the behavior as well? So it's not that easy, but I remember the times when in history we had a manufacturer of fabrics here in Czech and the fabrics produced by them was about 58 grams per square meter. And at that time, fabrics from Porsche was about 45 grams. And the wings built from the same fabric, from the different fabrics, exactly same wing. Czech fabrics had much worse behavior in maneuvers, much more inertia energy. If you made asymmetric collapse, the angle of shooting forward was much bigger, the rotation much bigger. So it was obvious. And now when we make the

gliders of lightweight fabrics, for example, we have Lotse X and Kibo X. They are tape gliders built of lightweight fabrics. And if you see Kibo X, you can feel that the glider stays there more. There is another difference. We are using different lines. to spare weight and drag. So the Lotse X is with unsheathed glance completely. So it gives the glider a bit more dynamic behavior. What is a compensation of that effect, making it lighter. While we are talking about the materials, this is a topic I wanted to touch upon earlier. Materials have changed

Frantisek Pavlousek: drastically. Every now and then, some manufacturer comes around and says, this is a brand new material and offers more performance. How have you, who has seen the supply chain, who has seen the end- use case scenario, and who has incorporated these changes into the actual flying, how have you seen materials develop over time? Can you talk to our audiences a little bit about the raw materials and the fabrics and the lines, if you can? Yeah, I think if we talk about fabrics, let's make it separately fabrics and lines. These are two main materials. The

third material is risers, webbing is for the risers, but it's quite simple. If we talk about fabrics, From the beginning of the industry, it was the fabrics had a couple of problems. There was no special fabrics for the ribs and for the skins. It was something in between the actual fabrics. And for the ribs, it was quite elastic in diagonal direction. what brought or what make disadvantages of keeping the canopy or the airfoil shape and for the fabrics it was still for the top skin bottom skins mainly for the top skins it was losing the low porosity characteristics during the time or the low porosity wasn't that good as it is now it's zero porosity for these fabrics and during the time when

it's aging it lost the zero porosity characteristic. The first step was to make two different fabrics for the skins and for the ribs. That happened quite soon and then these fabrics were developed separately. So at the moment we have good rigid fabrics for the ribs in different weight so you can make it more strong, if you don't care about the weight. There is one point you have to imagine. Every time, whatever we do, we need to take care about the price as well. Beginners don't want to buy all the equipment and don't even know if they are going to fly a few times per year or every day. And if they continue for the next years, they don't want to buy equipment for €10,000. You have to think about that as well.

And that's one point. Because the lighter the fabric is, the more it is expensive. It's very simple. Because for the lightweight fabrics, you need to use thinner lines, thinner yarns. And then, of course, you need more meters for the yarn. And you spend more time by owing the fabric. So that makes the lighter fabrics the more expensive. That's the principle of production of the fabrics. There is no marketing behind that. That's the reality. So that means you have different now for the ribs, you have different fabrics from, for example, the biggest manufacturer of fabrics, CV or Pochere. People are used to know these names. It's Skytex, the name. And it's in 40 grams, hard finish for the

ribs is made in 40 grams, 32 grams and 27 grams. So you can choose out of the three fabrics according what you need. Even if you would like to make a lightweight glider, if it's a tandem glider, you wouldn't use 27 grams for the center part of the main ribs. You can use it for the external parts. But then the question is, what is the durability of the glider? long time how many flights and flying cars he could make out of that so that's the reality how the designer has to think about he has to think about not i only i would like to make the glider light as well the

durability, the price, and so on. So it's like that. So it's the three different fabrics or the rips now. That's the actual situation. Most of the world, there are different fabrics, different manufacturers, but I would say 90% of the rip fabrics is one of three, and 90% of the rip fabrics is 40 grams hard finish Skytex. if we are not talking about lightweight wings. So it's, I would say, 50-70% of the ribs for the whole market are made of Porsche Skytex 40 grams. The most important fabrics for the ribs on the market. One thing that I'm very curious is, I'm pretty

Frantisek Pavlousek: sure you as a manufacturer slash owner of a brand must have heard about galvanor. I think this is a fabric which is being used in a lot of results parachute and has zero porosity. Why can't we use a fabric like galvanor over horseshoe dominico or scythe in main canopies? Because zero porosity means better behavior in retaining the pressure and of course, longer lifespan of the glider. So that means less money to be spent again and again. Why is that only preferred for reserves and skydiving canopies? Why does it suit paragliding? Gylmenor, it's a

special story a bit. But I started to smile because you said, why don't we need to spend every two years money for a new glider? As a pilot, you want to have a new glider every two years. Yeah. Even if your old glider is still in perfect shape, you want to have a new glider. That's the first. This is why I started to laugh. Sorry. I'm guilty of this. I just bought a brand new wing, even though my previous wing has not done more than 200

Frantisek Pavlousek: hours. You want to spend money, but you want to have a glider. That's the reality. Back to your question. Galvanor is really good fabric in terms

of longevity, of durability. It's extremely good fabrics. There is one problem with that. The weight of the fabrics is between, I don't remember exactly because my experience with Galvanor was roughly, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago. And as I haven't seen that fabric used By many brands, I didn't focus on it again. And it was 55, 58 grams. There was another problem with galvanite. It's silicone coated and you can't use any stickers to repair it or to support it to be stronger. Some gliders are, some places on the glider are supported with stickers to be more durable where the attachment boards are and so on. And if you break the glider, you have to do all the repair by stitching. There is no chance to

put a sticker on it. Most of the repairs on the other gliders you do with stickers, especially the small damages and stuff like that. There is one another problem that you started to talk about. And back to the fabrics. I talked a lot about the hard finish fabrics for the ribs. but the situation the same situation with designing or improving the fabrics for the other parts there was a lot of improvements done during the years and the actual fabrics they are light and they are very high durability means in time of keeping low porosity galvanor can lasts longer that's reality but you pay for that a high price of having very heavy fabrics with no stickers. So reality is that most of the brands now

are using either Domenico or they are using Skytex. These two brands and Domenico factory, they have most of the market share. I don't know if it's 50-50 or 60-40, 40-60. But if you watch the gliders of all the manufacturers around the world, they are using these fabrics. If you watch the website of the different manufacturers, they, someone called the fabrics dominico d30 someone calls that 30d someone called someone dog dog so it's a bit confusing it could be exactly the same fabrics it could be d30 dfm it could be 30d 30 dfm wr and it's all the time the same fabrics There are different kind of fabrics from Dominico. There are different kind of fabrics from Pocher. Pocher had five

different fabrics for the top skins in 40 grams 10 years ago. He had 40 grams plus minus two grams like from 38 to 32 or from 40 to 42. They had

Coating they called water the purlin. They had a coating called classic. They had a coating. It was confusing even for the manufacturer. It was tricky. And it was more expensive for Pochere to keep the stock of these fabrics. So they went to two different fabrics for the skins in this range of 40 grams. In general, it is same fabrics with two different coatings on it. and it's universal and everlasting. So maybe Dominico will make the same because now they have a lot of fabrics in their range. Quite probably they will come to the same style to have two or three different fabrics around 40 grams and then to have two or three different fabrics around 30-35 grams. and things like

that. Actual situation is that the lightweight gliders are built of 27 or 29 grams. What is 27 double-coated? It's the same fabric, just single-coated or double-coated called Classic II. Those are names used by Porsche. You can see these names. This is for the lightweight fabrics, lightweight wings. And you can combine this with 32 grams for the leading edge, for the lightweight wings, instead of 29 grams. And you can then use 38 grams for heavy gliders and Everlast. 38 grams universal and Everlast. for the top skin's leading edge. That's the typical combination. All these fabrics have zero porosity when they are new. What we discussed about Calvinor. The durability of the

fabrics is different. It's how light you want to have it. If we talk about a universal 38 grams and Everlast 42 grams, you see plus four grams makes the canopy more durable. So you use that on those parts what are the most important to stay zero porosity what is the leading edge top skin that's the part when losing porosity means losing performance or safety if you lose porosity on the bottom skin it doesn't change the gladiator behavior or If you lose it completely, then yes, but then even the top skin is. Pochere made for this special Skytex for lower skins. They call it Easy Fly. It's Skytex with a lower price, a lower porosity. I think it's a bit lighter than the 38 grams universal, but we are not using the

fabrics at UP. We are using either lightweight fabrics or the lightweight wigs, or we are using the Everlast. for the tandem, especially because it's one of the most expensive fabrics. We use that for the leading edge of tandem to make it as durable as possible. We are using Dominico fabrics, the 30 range. For the top skin, it's very good quality, very high durability. I would say similar to Everlast. It's very good fabric. One advantage of that fabric is nice color. Universal and everlast they have quite a standard range of the colors they are not so nice the same 32 grams and we are doing gliders for the customers for the pilots and they want to have them nice not the tandem professionals

they take care about something different compilers they take care about something different but the normal pilots they take care about the nice colors So Dominico has advantage in that field. And it's, the D30 is not any kind of compromise in durability. It's two grams heavier than Evo. It's about one, two grams heavier. It's about four, five grams heavier compared to Universal. So that's a big disadvantage. To compensate, you can use nice colors, again, fabrics. It's Dominico D20, what is same as Universal or even a bit lighter. and with the nice colors. You can use it for the lower skins without any compromise on the durability. So all the manufacturers are somehow balancing these

problems the same to our team. Our team does the same. So yeah, that's how it works with the fabrics. You have explained this very well. Thanks a

Frantisek Pavlousek: ton. It seems like you just gave our listeners a masterclass into fabrics of paragliding because you gave all the information. So in case somebody lost the school of thought, just hitch rewind and listen to this all over again, because that was nothing but pure gold of information coming from you. Before I move on from the fabrics part, I have to ask you this as a consumer or as a customer of paragliders, because Jim recently, and there's no shame in taking names on this show because we are all about sharing knowledge as honestly as possible. Jin came out with brand new fabric saying that they have developed a PU-based composite Quattro-coated fabric. This is too big of a

scientific term for me to understand, but in layman terms it says that it improves performance, it's better handling, and balances strength and lightness. can you from an industry professional's point of view say that what is this brand new fabric about just out of curiosity like there's no you don't have to worry about Jim getting pissed off or anything in case there's some criticality about this but just be honest it's our audience will love it I have no idea probably they do in Jim know they probably know how the fabrics behaves how good it is and I expect them to have the reason to start to use that fabrics hmm On another hand, it's very simple. I'm an old guy in this business and I'm not alone to fly a

long time. And my friends of my age flying with me 25 years, 30 years, they are not pushing to have a new glider when it comes to the market. They buy the glider when it's already one year on the market. It's not brand new. But they know how the glider behaves, how it flies. It's very simple because it's already one year on the market. If there is a mistake, the market would have noticed that already after one year. So let's see how the fabric shows its behavior. Maybe Gin produces the fabrics because they have capacity for that and they can earn some money on that. The

quality of the fabrics is similar to the Menico or maybe it's even better. Maybe it's even better than Porsche, I don't know. I don't know. Let's see in one year. But if P is not produced in the fabrics, so if the fabrics is better, either we buy the fabrics from Jeanne and they earn a lot of money on that, or they don't sell it to the whole world and keep it just for themselves. So they have some advantage on the market. If it's like that, then Domenico has to find out what is good on that fabric, why it is better. And Pochere would have to do the same. So it's how it works.

When the two-liner secures, the BBH PP gliders, all the manufacturers, all the designers watch that and say, wow, it flies so much better. It has so much better performance. And all the manufacturers started to work on their two lighters. So if the fabric is better, those who are producing the fabrics should look on that and start to think how we have to improve our fabrics. Or for sure, Mr. Jin can bring the new fabrics to the market and say, it's not so good, but we are making our guidance out of it. So let's see what the time shows. Let's see. I don't have any experience with the fabric. I know that it is there, but I don't have any experience with it. I love your honesty. I don't think that the fabrics

is a problem at the moment. The fabrics... Okay, what could be interesting if you make really reasonable durability with a lower weight? Because the market would love it. If you can have the fabrics 20 grams... With good durability and reasonable price, you can produce anything in the world. Of course, not 5 grams fabrics, not 10 grams fabrics, but maybe 20 grams. But the question is the price. The durability, yeah, the question is durability and the price. Probably that would be already possible too. I think it is possible. But the question is... I know that the trade-off always comes down to how much money it's worth investing. But if it's fabrics from 27 to 40 grams, the

durability of these fabrics, double-coated, for example, 27, it's 29 grams. Classic II double-coated from Pochere with 29 grams, it has a good durability. We are using that fabrics on the leading edge of lightweight gliders of some models. And we have no problems with durability of that fabric. So it's there already. I wanted to go to yarns, but before we go that, let's talk a little bit about coating. Why

Frantisek Pavlousek: do we need coating and what is single coating, double coating? I know I should be transferring this to a fabric manufacturer, but you have just so much wealth of knowledge, I can't help but open up my curiosity about this. Let's just quickly touch upon the topic of coatings. The coatings

we discussed, I think it's quite simple. If you make the pure fabric, just the woven yarns, You have little holes in between the yarns, not closed in the structure, so there is some porosity. If you put any coating on that, you close these little holes. The second you bring with that coating, you give to the fabrics some diagonal rigidity. It's important for the ribs fabrics. If you watch inside the glider, you pull in diagonal direction on the rib and you do the same on the top skin, bottom skin, lower skin fabrics, you see a huge difference. Because for the top and lower skins, you are not interested in that point. There is one more point. The more rigid you make the coating, the more sensitive

it is to lose the zero porosity because it's not elastic anymore. It has to be rigid and not elastic. The big problem is when the coating is less elastic than the yarn. When you pull on the fabrics, the yarn with its elasticity stretches, but the coating cannot stretch that much and it tears away from the single yarns. So if you use the microscope and watch the fabric after this kind of stretch, in the corners or on some edges of the yarns, you have holes. The coating is torn away from the yarn. And that's the way how the fabrics is losing porosity. So for that, you need

the fabrics to be for the top and lower skins to be quite elastic. Because the thinner the fabrics is, the less weight of the yarns you have in some direction. The more it is elastic and then the more elastic coating you need to have on it. That's how it works. so that's the reason why 32 grams hard finish have 27 yarns in one direction it has 32 that means 40 style yarn to be less elastic in one direction and more elastic in another direction or less elastic in one direction and less heavy in another direction what makes a compromise between 27 and 40 grams that's how the

32 grams hard finish is made It's such an interesting point. You're bringing up so many technicalities. I feel like the time is such of

Frantisek Pavlousek: essence right now. I could keep on talking about this for so long. Maybe we'll have to save the Jan thing for some other day or some other manufacturer. But like lines, as we're approaching the end of the show, I want to save that for Meru too, because I'm very interested to know what your brand new creation has. Let's talk a little bit about lines. You go out, there are, I think, armored Kevlar or nylon. There's so many things. Can you just tell us how do lines impact a glider behavior and performance and what kind of options are there for manufacturers and customers? How can we look at it? Okay. I will not waste our time with all the times. what was used, and so on. I will just say what now is used. Now

there are two kinds of lines used, I mean, in material used for the lines. It's either aramid or kenlar. This is one of the type of the line of the yarn, and another one is dyneema. I don't exactly remember the name. It's Dyneema. We know that line as Dyneema and that one either Aramid or Kevlar. And they behave different. These two lines, they behave different. The Kevlar and Aramid can sustain, let's call that Kevlar. Let's stay with this one. Let's take Kevlar and Dyneema. Easy way to

Frantisek Pavlousek: segregate. Kevlar is a brown color. You can see that to be brown, if you watch inside the line, what is inside. If you put away the sleeve, you can

see, or the sheeting of the line, you can see what is the core. Either it's brown, what is Kevlar, or it's white, what is Dyneema. The Kevlar can sustain higher temperature, and in its original natural behavior, it has very low elasticity, so it's very stable. The Dyneema is a bit more elastic, but it has one big advantage compared to Kevlar. It doesn't have any problem with bending. It doesn't break. The Kevlar line, if you bend it several times on the same place, it loses a lot of its strength. You see now disadvantages. Kevlar, the disadvantage is its losing of strength when it's bent. Dyneema disadvantage is higher elasticity. For the Dyneema, the problem has been solved by manufacturers. Then

they have some kind they call pre-stretch, stabilization. I don't know exactly what they do, I can just guess what they do. But what they do, they somehow fix the line in a pre-stretch position. That makes the line less elastic and it makes the line to be same low elastic Kevlar. So these two lines now seems to be quite same. Still disadvantage of Kevlar. is this bending problem, this breaking of the lines when you bend it at the same place. The reality is that the Kevlar lines are losing their strength during the time you use them. So for that purpose, there were some accidents in past times when the lines broke, they got break or... Now, there was built a system of bending test for these lines, that you bend

them 90 degrees left and right, 5,000 times, and decrease of the strength is about 40%, roughly 40% or 45% you lose during that test.

so with the kevlar lines you have to expect that you would need to change the lines probably once the line set or at least a part of the lines of the line set during the entire life of the wing lifespan. That means if you buy a wing and it's using the Kevlar lines, you need to expect that either you throw away the glider after some flying years, still the canopy is in the shape, it can fly, but the lines are gone. Or it is a comb glider where you don't care because it's mentally old, still it can fly, But you will not fly the glider anymore because it's old. So you don't care about the

lines that they lost. A part of it is strength. There is another option what I can do as a designer. I use the line of higher diameter for the glider. So there is extra margin of strength. Even if it's only 40% of the strength, it's still over-dimensed. So it's still okay for the use. With the Dyneema, on some lines of the Dyneema, there was a problem that they got shrink. If they got shrink, you get out of the setup of the proper angle of attack, of the proper line length on the canopy, on the glider. So that problem was, you can solve it by using the proper line, because it

doesn't happen if the line is under enough tension. what is AB lines in the center of the glider. It's front lines. If it's three-liner, four-liner, it's AB. If it's a two-liner, it's A lines. It's not the real lines on the glider, and it's not the lines on the tips or close to the tip. So if you use these two different materials where they have their advantages and do not show their disadvantages, then the mix of these lines allow you to be to make it the best so it's quite tricky and every category of the glider has it different there are sheeted lines unsheated lines so of course lower categories with sheeted lines higher categories with lightweight gliders with unsheated lines

because you spare about 30 50 grams not having sheeted lines on the glider because the sheet is extra weight it doesn't break and it just protects the core so if you don't need to protect the core or if you accept that you have to be more careful with the lines then you can use the shielded ones yeah What I'm wondering is as a consumer, as a flyer, when you are flying your canopy for 100 hours, 200 hours, and I'm not talking

Frantisek Pavlousek: about comp lengths because there you trim them pretty often. Do you need to tell yourself that now I have trimmed it enough and now the line set change is a necessity? Or can you just trim it until the lifetime, 400 hours or 500 hours and not think about compromising safety or a lot of performance by not changing the line set instead? What is reality? The lines, they stretch at the beginning of use. They stretch immediately

after you buy a new glider. They stretch. They get relaxed. That's tricky because even if we pre-stretch the lines in the production, before you buy the glider, they are already relaxed. If you fly the first day, you make few spirals left and right, you measure the glider, the lines are stretched. But if you keep the glider for one, two days, and then you open the glider and measure again, they are relaxed. So it's complicated. And then the second day of flying, they stretch again, and they stretch a bit more if you do the same flight, same maneuvers, spirals left and right, the same amount of spiraling and g- forces and so on. They stretch again, and they stretch a bit more than after the first

flight. They get relaxed again, but less than after the first flight. so if we talk a bit more general what is reasonable how to think about when you buy a brand new glider it is a bit faster set up because the glider stretch to get slow of course the a the front line will get more tension than the real lights and they stretch a bit more than the real lights So for that, the glider comes to your hands a bit faster than the optimum setup. Then when you fly it, it gets closer to the real optimum of the glider. During the time, it gets a bit slower, but still very close to

optimum. If you fly it a lot, it gets slower and it starts to be far from the optimum. And it is good to be trimmed again back to the optimum. Then the lines are making these changes. So after you make the first trim to the optimum, then the lines are more or less set and not changing. It's reasonable to talk about. Some lines, we are using the DC lines. It's a Leopold's Dyneema line, which had a shoring problem. But the problem wasn't the line. in its behavior. The problem was that all the manufacturers, including me, when I was working, was that we used the line for the whole canopy, including the ears, including the external part CD lines, including brake lines. And the lines shrink a lot in that

segment because they were not in the tension. We didn't know that. Many manufacturers around the world were using these lines, including UP, including GIN, if I remember well, many. It was a very good line for some reasons. It doesn't have any problem with the aging, with losing the strength. So you don't need to over-dimense the lines and you can use thin lines. So all the competition gliders in those times, or most of the competition gliders, were used with, were using those lines. So that's it. That's the situation, what was there. And we found that the lines have a shrink problem. And most of the world, I would say almost the whole manufacturers around the world, the whole world went away using these

lines. But I stay with the lines because they are not bad. The UP now is using these lines and we are using them with a combination of Kevlar lines. And then we just use the advantage of the lines and we remove the disadvantage. So what happens now in the combinations we use now in this time, because we had to learn that as well in past, we didn't make it exactly the way we are doing it now. Now we are doing the combination, for example, that the A lines over two liners, they are made of Dyneema lines because there is so much tension there, they don't shrink. If it's a

three-liner, we use that for the top gallery lines. The main lines are made of kevlar. So if you want to fly Triangle X, for example, if you want to fly the glider five, six years, and to fly it till the end of the canopy, a lot of, to fly it a lot of, in the middle of this lifespan of the glider, you have to replace not the full line set, What would you have to do if it's built on the Kevlar lines? But you just change the main lines, what are built of Kevlar, with the top gallery lines at the front, where it is the most dangerous if they are not strong enough. they are built of DC, water

is not losing the strength. So this combination gives you the advantage that you have very stable line trip because the line stretches, the main lines, but the top gallery lines they don't stretch. or they stretch a bit only at the beginning, and then they shrink a bit to compensate the stretch. So the length of the lines is very stable. Like with the fabrics, you have to make a good combination, a good choice. There are many fabrics on the market. And the same with the lines. There are some lines on the market, some good lines. And if you take the best out of each of them, you can use the combination. I think this is quite unique with UP because it was a nightmare for the brands using the DC line 15 years ago.

That was the nightmare for most of the work. And most of the words say bad line and went away from that. But it's a different way of thinking. We said, it's not bad. It's bad for something, but it's perfect for something else. I think now we are using the line in combination with the two liners. We are very happy with that. For many years, I would say 10 years on the two liners, Kuru, Meru, Meru 2. And we are very happy with the stability of line. You are using that on trunks or summits and I'm very happy with the concrete with these gliders. Love it. Your wealth of

Frantisek Pavlousek: knowledge and expertise in the industry is the perfect way to customize these combinations and including efficiency. So for people who are interested in having science and technology used in the best possible way, give UP Gliders a test flight and see what all this experience from all these years brings into it. I think we are finally at the end of the show. Before we wrap up, anybody who believes in your philosophy and who has loved this episode will be keen to know when is UP coming out with the latest two-liner tech of ENC? What's your take on ENC two-liner and how can UP fans have that in time to come? And then we talk a little bit about Miro and then we wrap up. Yeah, about the ENC two-liner, we work on that

project. We started to work on it immediately when there were first drummers with change because originally EN norm didn't allow the folding lines to be moved for certification of ENC category. So we started to work on it. We have some gliders. We say they are close to the end, but I cannot say we have finished it. There was a discussion when the first gliders were working on the Trango X. There were discussions with R&D if we should continue with that glider certified for the certification. And I said, it's a different wing for a different market. We have to explain to the market this. And we are still selling Trangos. We are still selling Trango X. You can watch the DHV

cross-country cup. The first two guys are with Trangos flying there. First two guys. offline triangle, so it's not that big advantage to have a two liner in C category if they are beaten by three liners. The three liners. Oh my God. This is the news. We are working on the, on the ENC took a bit longer than would be from the R, from the marketing and sales guys appreciate it. I know that, but I don't want to go out with a product that is not finished or the whole team, we have the same philosophy. through the whole team with the test pilots and so on. And even though the sales

guys, they say better come with something to keep the UP philosophy that we are not coming out with the products what are not 100% what we are not 100% sure about it. Yeah.

Frantisek Pavlousek: That's the reality. Love it. You know that you and your whole team is so focused on not prioritizing profits or jumping on the market, trying to bring out a finished product that actually makes a difference. And I think this reflects so much in your mentality in every other thing where you said you customize and bring in the best possible combination of fabrics and lines. So I think I'm going to have a close look at that project whenever that comes out. I have a two-liner C right now. My next upgrade should be a two-liner D as well. Meru 2 has recently been launched. What does all the fanfare about Meru 2, Franta, give it away? What is this new machine that you have created in EMD and how does it add

fun to people's life who are flying in this category? Yeah, I think we were quite successful with that, what we discussed at the beginning,

that it's quite tricky to bring every time something better in all the aspects. And if we compare the two, we were lucky with that, or I would say we were successful with that. Lucky, let's say lucky. Yeah, we bring the glider, we brought the glider what has better performance, for sure. And what is even easier than one. So we were lucky there. Sometimes it's like that. I think a combination of luck and careful expertise and all

Frantisek Pavlousek: the experience makes the magic product. So I'll be sure to give it a test flight on anybody who's listening to this and has followed us so far. Go ahead. Give UP a test. Love your vibe. And I'm pretty sure it reflects in your wings as well. On that note, frantic shit. Finally, I'm getting it right. Yeah. On that note, it's been an absolute honor talking to you about all of these topics and heartfelt thanks for answering them so honestly and so openly. Considering your wealth of knowledge and experience in this industry, no one episode can do justice to bringing it out to the audiences, but this is a start. So we'll be sure to have you back on the show whenever possible. Until then, it's been an absolute

honor, man. Thank you so much. Thanks you for inviting and bye to you and bye to the All pilots listening.