Risk Vs Reward 2 : Subir Sidhu

Subir Sidhu: The day was tremendous. We had lived to, you know, 12, 13,000 feet. And the mountains were ahead of us. It's a big range of rock and glacier and ice and deep valleys with nothing but a river flowing through. You put your glider in all kinds of shapes and situations and learn to deal with them and to a certain extent anticipate that they're about to happen. And that is the training that you need to fly a really hot glider.

what's up everybody welcome back to another episode of paragliding atlas this time around we are navigating the topic of risk versus reward and in installment two we have a very special guest who also happens to be a very dear friend a very humble person as well to talk to and most importantly a very competent paragliding pilot But the reason why he is a part of the show today is that he has navigated the spectrum of risk versus reward with utmost respect. And by that, I mean that he has pushed where he wanted to and held back where he had to. I'm talking about none other than Subir Sidhu, a new name to a lot of people, but a known person in the flying community to the ones who have had the chance of sharing the

sky with him. Subir has lived the dream that many of us manifest, and that is progressing quickly. And he has not only done it quickly, but he has done it in a very safe manner as well. Accumulating more than 1,500 hours in less than three and a half years, Subir has made a name for himself. From joining his first high-level competition and almost finishing in the top 10, to scaling the tallest mountains in the world and chasing glory all across the globe, This guy has nothing but value to add to our highlighting knowledge. So tune in to a very homogeneous talk with one of the maestros in making in our sport, none other than Subir Sethu himself.

Subir Sethu, what an absolute honor to finally have you on the show, man. How are you? Hey, I'm doing great, Andy. Thanks for having me on the show.

Subir Sidhu: It's really good to be here. That's good to hear. I think you're one of those few pilots who spends more time in the air than on the ground

mostly. That's why it's so hard to catch you. I've been trying to chase you for quite a few months now, but I think it's inspiring to see your track logs and all your activity on X-Contest. What a life, man. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. Great. Just to get this going, what does airtime mean for you? How and why do you chase it so hard? What is this all about then? Yeah, so that's a number of different things. At its most

Subir Sidhu: fundamental, I think it's just joy. I just get a lot of pleasure from being in the air, from exploring the world by paraglider, seeing different sites, different mountains, particularly. And there's just intrinsic joy and therefore more motivation to just be in the air. But also, airtime to me means progression. It means learning. Every time I'm in the air, there is something new that catches me by surprise and that kind of adds it to my body of knowledge, so to speak. And yeah, it's just about learning and about exploration for me. I think this is

one statement which a lot of paraglider pilots can resonate with in our audience as well, that every single flight is so different. It's so dynamic and it's so rewarding in its own way that every time you get in the air, it's a whole new journey that you embark on. Indeed. Yeah. But Subir, just for the perspective of our listeners, I know you personally. Most of the Indian pilots or I think a lot of internationals as well know you very well. But for everybody in our audience, how long have you been in the sport and how many hours have you accumulated already? What are the numbers that we are looking at, man? Sure. So, yeah, I started flying about three and a half years ago in January of

Subir Sidhu: 2021. And I typically fly anywhere between 400 to 500 hours every year since then. And my first year, of course, was limited because I was having a lot of top-to-bottom flights. But yeah, second year onward, it was 400 hours or more. In all, I have about 1,500 hours at this point. And most of the continents all over the place in Europe, in India, in the U.S., in South America... And yeah, it's been a tremendous journey for me. And these hours, I would like to point out, I have accumulated rather quickly, but I have not jumped any step in the paragliding progression. I started with a school wing with an A wing, put 60, 70 hours on it before I got a low B wing. And I put a good 150 hours on a low B before I got a high B and

so on and so forth. A couple hundred hours on a C wing. Did quite a few SIV courses. I did three SIV courses within my first couple years. And from last year, basically, I've been flying high aspect wings. But I have to say, I still have my school wing. I still have my A-wings. And there are times I still take it out. And it just gives me great pleasure to fly that wing. And so to me, it's coming back to the sheer joy and beauty of flight is where it's at. And yeah, I've enjoyed every step in my progression. There hasn't been a desire to skip this step because I want to be

somewhere else. I've really enjoyed every moment and I continue to enjoy every moment of. Wow. I think for our listeners who do not believe,

let me reiterate, that's three and a half years, more than 1500 hours in the air. God damn it, man. What a life and what an amazing dedication. And I think for those of them who are wondering, why do you still have your school wings? That's because Sevier likes to fly the life out of the wing, so they're practically not sellable anymore. All 500 hours are exhausted, and the remaining ones are probably going out in packaging and ground handling. So that's why those are mementos and trophies of glory and hard work, which you probably deserve. But Honestly, I wish this was a video podcast. I could show our listeners the amazing smile that you have while talking about this. And it's so happy to see you

grinning while telling all of these stories, man. Super inspiring. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. Thank you, Andy. And yeah, I might say

that you put it in better words than I can. But yes, I am very enthusiastic about flight. That's so nice to hear. Subhir, help me understand this.

When you're chasing something with all your heart and passion like this, first of all, take us back to how the journey began. What sparked your fascination? How did suddenly Subhir Sudhu come out of nowhere and said that I'm just going to go at this as hard as I can and probably make it count every possible way? Yes, that's pretty interesting. So my first flight was a tandem flight I did about 20 years ago. And at that time, I was

Subir Sidhu: in a very different point in life. I had young kids. I was in the middle of my career. And I put that away as something I would like to do at some point of time in the future. And I basically never got back to that. Till about four years ago, I was on a family vacation here in the Alps. And I took my whole family out for a tandem flight, the wife, both kids, myself. All four of us were in the air at the same time. And it was just a fantastic experience and a complete reawakening for me that, what have I done? I should have done this a long time ago. But fortunately, the moment I got

back home to Seattle, I found the closest school and basically signed up for a course. And to a certain extent, this energy and this drive and this

Subir Sidhu: motivation comes from, I've In a sense, did not take up an opportunity way back then, but now I want to make the most of it. I'm relatively advanced in my age. I'm about 53 now, and I have this sense of... I would say calm urgency. But there is an urgency that there's only so much time, and I would like to learn and explore as much as I can in that time. And yeah, I'm at it with all my interest and dedication. But I would say that because I did somewhat of a rare animal, perhaps, in that I know a lot of my friends and other pilots who at some point of time in their careers

decided they've had enough and all they want to do is fly and they switch to flying. In my case, I was actually pretty much done with my career and I wanted to move on to the next phase of my life. And I was just trying to find things to do. And I have lots of other hobbies and interests and pursuits. But once I started paragliding, it immediately caught my fancy. And it checks just a lot of different boxes for me, and I'm sure for many other pilots. And I just followed it. And just to give a quick recap of those boxes it takes, it gives a sense of purpose. For me, the sense of

purpose comes from just trying to understand and explore the world. It gives certainly just pure joy. But it also takes an intellectual curiosity, or you may call it a need for an intellectual challenge and for problem solving. And I've spent 25 years in the tech industry, which is all about finding opportunities and finding problems to solve and ways to solve those problems. And paragliding gives us here in one flight, if you're doing a cross-country flight over some challenging terrain, it's basically an endless stream of information and of problems to solve. And that never gets old, in my opinion. Now, wow, what an explanation. I think the first thing that comes to my mind is that even

though you're Indian by origin, but you're definitely not the typical IT guy, regardless of spending 25 years behind a computer.

What a transition, man. What a transition. This is needless to say, this is inspiring and reminds me of a saying called the better late than never. The moment you have a chance in your life to to pursue your meaningful goals. Just go for it. You never know how much fun you've missed out and how much fun there is to be created in time to come. So way to go, man. Great. But another thing that comes to my mind is when you're transitioning from a very fulfilling, stable life onto something as exciting as this, as you said, it's technical, it requires hard work, it's very rewarding. How do you find placing your trust in people while entering a whole new industry? Because obviously, as per the theme of

this episode, risk versus reward, for you, somebody who has a fair bit of knowledge how the world works, you've been at the top end of your game in whatever you were doing, be it working in IT, and then you suddenly switch over to a brand new industry, which is a complete, you're a new beginner. So navigating risk versus reward and identifying the correct people in your life and placing trust, how did those kind of questions, how did those challenges come to you and how did you navigate your way around them? Yes, that's a very interesting question. So

Subir Sidhu: fundamentally, I, when confronted with any new situation or new domain, I like to rely on multiple sources of information. And there's a saying in science that basically in science, there are no authorities. There's people who know and the papers that are written that are reviewed by others and so on and so forth. But everything and everybody is potentially fallible. And so I just approach things with a certain degree of skepticism. But that is positive skepticism. That's a skepticism... to try and understand as deeply as I can and not just take something as gospel or face value. So I just approach it with that mindset. But that said, concretely, When I started paragliding

initially, it was hard. I simply went to the first school that was convenient and close by and learned from them. There were some good things. There were some not so good things. But very quickly, I started, even in that setup, identify who are the pilots who basically have a great reputation, who other pilots think of as good pilots. Certainly, there is some credibility there. and also results. I was very fortunate that a former US national champion was an instructor in this school. And that adds a lot to the credibility. And there is that. And definitely people, good pilots are probably the best source of information if you can identify them. I was super lucky that within the first few months of

my starting, I ran into two or three pilots who were not just extremely knowledgeable, but also very helpful. But then I also rely a lot on just books, really. YouTube videos, for sure. They're nice and handy and convenient. But I go back to the books a lot. I have pretty much the entire library of major books that have been written on paragliding, and I've gone through most of them. So these are the kind of primary sources of information. But there's another thing I would like to add, which is, I think very key to progression is a sense of humility, a sense of not being 100% sure of anything myself. Always being open to the idea that I'm carrying in my head is... there's a certain probability of its

correctness, but it's potentially incorrect. And so that allows them to keep learning from new information that comes your way rather than just discarding it. And in that sense, I think there is something for me to learn From every pilot out there, every pilot I meet, regardless of their skill or experience, in most cases, something positive to learn. In a few exceptional cases, something not to do. But regardless, there's an opportunity to learn something from everyone. And I just have a desire and a curiosity to find out what that is that I can learn from, from this new engagement and from this new opportunity that I have. And again, I'm not sure if this is super clear, but one thing that

has added a lot to my progression that I can recommend highly to people is to try within the limits of your resources to try and fly as many different sites as possible. Because every new site you go to, you meet newer local pilots and some new special situations that a site has that the local pilots will explain to you. And that helps greatly in your overall body of knowledge. And it develops a comfort also so that when you go to the next new site, You know how to assess it based on all your previous learnings. There'll still be something new. But based on your previous learnings, you say, hey, these might be the risks. This might be what happens. And then you correlate it with what the local pilots

tell you. And they'll no doubt add something new. But all of this is helping greatly. The difference, initially, you asked me about the number of flying hours. I think the number of flying hours are important. But just as important is the quality of those hours. Were they always doing the same thing at the same site? Or were they doing different things at different sites? And so I think that has been very helpful for me. Got it. I think just to sum it up, the first thing is look at the testimonials, that is, check out the reviews about how trustworthy

the place is where you're going and putting all your trust in. And secondly is try and gather as much knowledge as you can from all the open source trustworthy sources. Again, that is the key over here. And the third one is be open to suggestions and be open to learning something. But at the same time, I think I can compare with my progression and my early days that there has to be some sort of barrier where you know when to filter out. And which is, it's a bit too hard to build up this barrier in early days, and especially if you're in a younger age group. Let's say

you're a teenage pilot, or you're somebody who does not really know how to navigate the people spectrum, where somebody who's 20 years older to you says that, all right, I've been flying for so many years, I've been teaching. Then, and he comes up with the statement in just because the age gap, you tend to give in to whatever So I think that is a very thin line where you decide whether you want to give your trust 100% to the person at the school stage or in the early instructor stage. After building a bit of experience, of course, it comes easier. So I think that is one thing

that people can answer for themselves, probably. Yeah, that's well said, Andy. I agree with that. And just to add to that, though, Just like I

Subir Sidhu: said, a new student should pretty much choose a good instructor or a good school and trust them entirely because you're essentially placing your life in that person's hands at that point. And they know better than you. But once you are out of kind of the school stage, you're now an intermediate pilot, which, by the way, most pilots will be for their entire career. I very much consider myself squarely in the intermediate pilot category. There are very few pilots who are advanced pilots. And if anybody has any doubts whether you're an advanced pilot or not, you are an intermediate pilot. So for all of us intermediate pilots, I think of paragliding as an art and a science.

There are parts that are pretty much science in terms of rules. Thou shalt or shalt not do. And if you break those rules, you will pay the consequences if not in that flight. in some other flight where it was almost exactly the same situation. It's just that the roll of the dice was in your favor. So those ones are golden. You don't break those. But there's a lot of paragliding that is an art. It's still evolving. It's still not fully understood. And we are very lucky, actually, to be in a sport at that stage of its development, where there's just so much new that pretty much nobody knows. And people are still figuring that out. It's very exciting, actually. And in those areas are the ones I would say

I think all of us benefit from keeping an open mind because these are not necessarily safety-related things. These are here just how can you come out better or how can you pick up better glide lines and such. And the risk in those ones is that you might bomb out. Those are not life-threatening, but they help greatly in your progression if you figure those things out. And those, I would say, keep an open mind, experiment, listen to the session of some other pilot, try it. If it works, keep it. If it doesn't, discard it. Or maybe try it again in some other situation. But I think that is pretty, is very important. That's pure words of wisdom, Subhir. I think that you've put it very, very well,

that there are some rules, non-negotiable, stick to them, or consequences will be grave and hard. The other ones, the more you work with them, the better the experience gets. Nice. Great. But Sabir, as you said, you had a, I forgot the term that you used, but you had a very subtle urgency when you began this sport finally and you were getting into it. So how did you plan out your hard work? What was your visualization like? Did you manifest this for a while or was it just after the tandem that it happened? How did hard work look like in your flying career? Yeah, so there are a number of things I would say. Suddenly the bug bit me after the tandem flight that I mentioned. And as I

Subir Sidhu: went back to school and did a little bit of ground handling and then my first flight, that was instant love. This is just amazing. I just want to do more of it. And I want to do it well. I would say there is something in me which says, If it's worth doing something, then it's worth doing it. There's no doing something half-heartedly for me. And I really wanted to become a competent and good pilot. And one of my early inspirations was a friend and a mentor of mine, Mitch Riley. He's, like I mentioned, a former US Open national champion and has also done the X-Alps, I

believe, in 2016. And a few things he told me, I just took to heart. And one of those was, that there is no such thing as too much ground handling. That he would like me to do at least one hour of ground handling per week, which means 52 hours in the year. And I took that to heart. And I'm like, if I have to do that, then I have to track it. So just like most pilots have a flight log and the ones that don't, I would highly encourage that everybody should have a flight log. But I have a kiting log also. Every single kiting session that I do, I log which wing I used, where was it, how

many hours did I ground handle. And I maintain my ground handling log even now. And I finished that first year and I went back to Mitch and said, hey, Mitch, you'll be disappointed because I couldn't do the 52 hours. I got to 39 hours. And he's like, hey, I was just giving you a bluff because 39 is great. It's awesome. And I was like, okay, cool. But there is a sense of, I think, discipline that is helpful in a lot of aspects of prior learning. As long as you have the motivation, it's just working out. You might envision a great body. But if you don't work out, you won't have it.

And likewise, in paragliding, you aspire to be a good pilot, but it just takes a lot of work and dedication. It's like going to the gym so you can become stronger. And so there are a lot of things that you have to do that just take discipline. But to your point, if there's some vision or some motivation, then the discipline becomes easier. And for me, the motivation is simply... to see the world by foot and by paraglider. And that means I have to be physically strong so I can hike and that I become a good pilot so I can fly long distances. And that is the motivation for me

lately. That's amazing to hear. So this puts a thought in my mind. Let's say all of us have heard a term that too much of something is bad. And of

course, the more passionate you are, the more further you raise the bar for defining too much for you. But let's say when it came to balancing the mental part of the hard work, the physical part of the hard work, resting in between, I understand you fixed a lot of everything else in life so that you could be in a position to push this that hard. But did you ever face the challenge of having an imbalance in between them where you were like, oh my God, I'm pushing too hard and maybe I need to figure out this? How did you navigate those kind of days? So I would say while there might

Subir Sidhu: be some truth that extremes unhealthy, for me personally, I don't think I've reached that point yet because there's another parallel part. I forget the name of the author who basically says for somebody to become an expert at anything takes about 10,000 hours of doing that thing. You might have that. And right now I'm only at 1,500 hours and 8,500 more hours is going to take me a long time. Till then, I'm not a quote unquote expert. And so I feel, and another thing is I have seven years of life experience behind me, like you mentioned, but I'm only at three, three and a half years of flying. And so I'm still in that early stage of this is exciting. This is new. This is wonderful. And there is more for me to

learn than I have learned so far. In fact, orders of magnitude more for me to learn. And that keeps it fresh. That keeps it exciting. And just to give you a concrete example, I have a background in adventure sports in general. I'm a mountaineer. I'm a skier. I just love being in the mountains. I've done that for many years. And so there was a natural attraction for mountains for me. And so as I started paragliding, the natural thing for me was hike and fly. I just did from, it was my happiest hiking a new site, a new mountain and just flying off it. And but but that

got a little old after a while because you spend only so much time in the air. And as I got hungry for more and more airtime, I switched to more cross-country flying. And then as I became slightly better at that, I started doing competition flying. And now, you know, my interest in combination flying is actually waning a little bit. And I'm super passionate about my new interest, which is acro, of which I know absolutely nothing. And I'm going to start an acro progression this October in Olodunis. So it's new, it's exciting, it's different, and it is energizing. Way to go, man. All right. Watch out, acro boy. Subir is coming for you. with all his heart. But I just want to backtrack a tiny bit

here to Malcolm Gladwell, if I'm not mistaken, is the author who mentioned the 10,000-hour theory. And he very clearly says that 10,000 hours are really effective if you are being watched by a coach and your mistakes are being picked out so that you follow those 10,000 hours in a certain way, like you don't go off track. So when you have been chasing all this airtime and you have been pushing your limits and trying to become a better version of yourself in the air, have you had a chance to be mentored or being coached or being watched upon by someone? And if yes, then if you can talk a little bit about that side of your journey. 100%. I think Maxwell Gladwell said it. Yes, I think Malcolm Gladwell is spot

Subir Sidhu: on. He's 100% correct because there's a saying in golf, for example, that if you practice a lot of the wrong thing, you become great at the wrong thing. And so it's absolutely true. And I do have a number of mentors who have guided me from time to time and who still do. There is one more thing, though. that nobody is going to be watching you all the time, except you yourself. You are watching your flying all the time. And you have to be your first and best critic. Anytime anything happens that catches you that, hey, that wasn't right, and a slightly bad takeoff, something going sideways in the air, you have to... not just brush it off saying, yeah, that's okay, let me just move on. You have to first

acknowledge that I made a mistake. And secondly, try to figure out what that mistake was. And suddenly your body of knowledge might not be enough To understand that, and at that point, you go to your friends, your advisors, your mentors, or any pilot who is further along in their progression than you are, and you review your situation with them and ask them for perhaps what has happened. If you have video footage, then that is very helpful. But even otherwise, just talking through that incident is extremely important. And I would go back to this flight log comment that I mentioned earlier. One of the reasons your flight log is so important is that when you fill your flight log entry at the end of your

flight or at the end of the day, you try to at least identify some mistake that you made that you could have done better or some other insight that you have from that flight. Because if you... You won't learn something new from every flight than while that flight was fun and joyful and for sure. And those are good enough reasons to do that flight. From a pure progression perspective, that flight was not helpful. And so I think the discipline of maintaining a flight log just allows you to reflect on your flight and put something into words that of what you're learning was. And that I think is extremely helpful. So you have to be your first and best critic, I would say in a nutshell. Just be true to yourself and

stay disciplined. And these are like two of the foolproof ways of progressing safely and on your terms, I think. Yes. And again, I would

Subir Sidhu: say not to brush off something. Let's say you pulled up your wing, the wing didn't come up right, and you still forced a launch and you got away with it. The lesson from that shouldn't be, ah, that's all okay. I got away with it. It's fine. No. The outcome should not determine whether there was a learning opportunity or not. Because you do the exact same thing another time, some other little variable will be bad enough that you might not have the successful launch, for example. And so we have to learn not from the outcome of incidents, but from the fact that an incident happened, even if the outcome was favorable, and try to understand what happened, why did it happen, did I know something was

going wrong, and I still... made a poor choice, in which case I need to whack myself on the wrist and not do it again? Or do I not understand what happened, in which case I need to go and talk to another pilot to understand what might have happened? And so this is key. Got it. I think

that just makes it very simple for our listeners to understand how to make sure that you stay on the good side and the more fun side of the sport as and when you wish or take to the skies every now and then. But while we're talking about staying safe and making it count every time. You said you have done a ton of SIVs. Can you just brush us, can you just tell our listeners the role of safety training and acrobatics in flying in general? Because I've heard, I don't know if this is a perception or not, but majority of good pilots who we see on Instagram and Facebook, they

have an acro background and everybody keeps on saying, do SIVs, do keep on doing all of that. But Money is a big thing in this sport. And as a pilot, you practically cannot afford to keep on going to SIV clinics. You'll burn a hole in your pocket and you'll eventually give up. So how do you navigate that side of the sport where you are not being watched in every collapse? You just have to take your glider up on a lake and do those things yourself. And of course, you want to be the safest pilot, but yet safety training in acrobatics is an essential part to the progression.

So how did you navigate this and what advice would you give to every other pilot who's trying to follow your footsteps? Yeah, my assessment is

Subir Sidhu: that SIV is intrinsic to safe flying. Before an incident happens in the wild, if you have done an SIV or a few and have a better understanding of handling more situations, you will just have better outcomes. And I would advocate pilots who are flying and have aspired to fly cross-country to do an SIV more early in the progression. Now, see, But at the same time, I wouldn't say there's kind of one-size-fits-all. There might be pilots who just do coastal soaring on a soaring site with laminar winds. And that's all they want to do. And that's fantastic. There are other pilots who might just want to occasionally fly their home site in gentle conditions, morning, evenings, just to enjoy some

airtime. They're busy with their lives. They have other priorities. I think it's okay for those pilots to fly safely in known good conditions to manage that risk. But any pilot who's thermal flying and is flying cross-country, you are essentially seeking turbulent air. We're all naturally afraid of turbulence, but guess what a thermal is? A thermal, by definition, is turbulence. And we are actively seeking turbulence and putting our glider into turbulent air. And this thing about adventure, that sometimes you go looking for adventure and you find it. and occasionally you might find this really rough air and your glider goes sideways and when it does you can reliably recover a glider only

from situations that you have seen before if your glider is in a configuration that you've never seen before your chances of recovering from that are pretty low actually and your best bet is to throw your reserve and we can talk about that as a subtopic down the road but The point is, if you're flying in turbulent air, you should have put your wing into different configurations and recovered from them. And that's really what an SIV is. And for a pilot flying thermal or cross-country, I would say within the first probably 50 to 100 hours of flying, I would recommend they do an SIV. And for pilots who've never done an SIV before, For most pilots, there are exceptions, but for most

pilots, the experience is going to be borderline terrifying. For some, it's just fun. But for most, there is some degree of panic involved.

yourself not so much reliable do you have the ability to calm yourself assess and give the proper input at the proper time and so on so forth and you just have to go through your first siv to get a better sense of that and it's in your second siv that you can really learn a lot in my opinion and that was certainly my experience but i've spoken to other pilots too And so I would basically advocate the first SIV in 50 to 100 hours and the second SIV as soon thereafter as possible, not wait for the next year. And that's just the price of admission, in my opinion, for thermal

flying. Gliders are expensive. Gliders and full kits cost, we know what they cost. But proper training... is, I think, incredibly efficient in terms of how well you and how confidently you then fly those tools. And rather than investing in the next, this topic never comes up, in my opinion, for most pilots. They'll buy a wing or two, then they want to, at some point, many pilots progress to the next wing. But that next wing is going to be very expensive. That SIV and other training, let's say a cross-country clinic, is less expensive than a new wing. And it will help you fly whatever wing you're flying today, an A, a B, or a C, much, much better than spending the money to buy your next level wing.

Performance doesn't come from the wing. Performance comes from the expertise of the pilot. And the more you invest in your own expertise, the better your performance will become. That makes total sense to me. I think that's the easiest way to put it. I think it reminds me of a saying,

the more you bleed and practice, the less you breathe in water or something like that. So when it comes to navigating the risk versus reward and glider handling and all of this, I can share my experience. I finally upgraded to a two-liner and I love pushing the bar. I wouldn't say that it comes out as intuitive, but it's something that I'm very comfortable with. But then the moment I enter turbulent air and controlling the wing with brakes is much more reassuring than controlling the wing with Bs. Now, the point is, where do I draw a line that at this level of turbulence or this level of movement, these are no longer my comfort zone? Because you can be mentally very strong. You can

be all motivated to go out and push the limits. But then SIVs will answer a lot of these questions, I completely agree. But there are some times like we see best of the best pilots, even triple C wings get collapses in big gaggles and unfortunately some of them have to pay a pretty heavy price for it. Of course there's a level of uncertainty that we will never be able to define because the sport is still developing, there's not enough data and all the other reasons. But how have you managed answering this question for yourself that, all right, now I need to calm down. This is going beyond my skill and comfort. And this is where I reduce my reward because the risk is too high. Yes, there are a number of

Subir Sidhu: things in what you've said, and they were all very important. I'll just address your last question first to give a concrete example. Like I said, I invested in training, did SIVs, and I progressed through all the wing classes. One thing that I realized as I was progressing and also talking to really experienced pilots was, I think, the answer to the question, when is it right for a pilot to step up to the next wing class? This is a very common question. And there are many considerations. Again, we are talking about cross-country flying here, or competition flying perhaps, not acro or anything else. So for cross- country flying, the answer to that question basically boils down to, you can

potentially step up to the next wing class if you are comfortable flying the full speed range of your current glider it's as simple as that and your full speed range is not from trim but from min sync all the way to full bar this is the speed range of your glider if you're not comfortable flying this glide your current glider in this entire speed range you will not benefit from stepping up to the next wing class because it's not the wing that gives you performance, like I said. The thing is, within reason, most gliders from pretty much a low B all the way to, for sure, a D

or even a triple C, at trim, they all vary between 38 to 40 kilometers per hour. They're all about the same speed. The performance of the glider class comes from bar, as we know, and particularly from the polar curve and what happens to the glider when you're pushing full bar. If you're not going to be comfortable flying the glider on full bar and also know the stall point and fly the glider at min sync safely, you should focus on learning to fly your existing glider better. That's the bottom line. So for me, personally, I was comfortable all the way to D. I flew the Zeolite and then the Xeno. And I was totally comfortable. I have about 700 hours on two different Xenos and two different sizes. And then when I stepped

up to a triple C wing, I could see that I'm immediately not confident. And I'm not confident on full bar in the same turbulent air that I was confident on my Xeno. And I was like, this is not comfortable. This is not safe. And I don't want to be doing this. And I asked one of my mentors this question. Hey, how do I overcome this? Should I spend more hours flying my D glider? Or should I just deal with it and become more comfortable flying the Enzo in perhaps calmer conditions first and so on and so forth? And he said, neither. Neither will be helpful. What will be

helpful is acrobatics. And that, my friend, is one of the reasons why I'm starting Acro. Not because it particularly excites or interests me

Aninder: that I want to be doing all these cool tricks, which might well end up being the case. I don't know as yet. But because I want to become better at

Subir Sidhu: wing control. And what Evan told me was, it's not that, and again, I don't know for sure. I have an open mind about this. But he said it's not about the tricks themselves that how to do those tricks that make you better at wing control. It's the process of learning acro. You put your glider in all kinds of shapes and situations and learn to deal with them and to a certain extent anticipate that they're about to happen. And that is the training that you need to fly a really hot glider comfortably. That makes total sense. As you mentioned earlier, that if you have seen your

wing in that configuration, the chances of you recovering it are much more higher than you being caught up by surprise and just being taken aback by what's going on. And I think that is one of the reasons why other people are also good acropilots. Absolutely, Andy. I did want to touch

Subir Sidhu: on one more topic that you brought up in this question, which was being comfortable on brakes versus comfortable on the rear risers. Now, two-liners are special beasts because they are very direct. When you press more bar, your angle of attack becomes lower, the glider speeds up. And if you hold that bar and you pull the risers without distorting the shape of the wing, your angle of attack becomes greater. and your speed reduces. And so to a certain extent, if you're at trim, and after that you push half bar and you pull the risers an equivalent amount, your glider is exactly at trim in configuration and in speed. And so this direct handling is extremely useful, and developing a comfort for it is

extremely handy. Because when you pull the brakes, it's actually distorting the shape of the wing. It's steering performance. The whole reason you're flying a hot glider, a two-liner C, and so on and so forth is because you want that performance. And it's the risers, using the risers that give you control without sacrificing performance. And it's just phenomenal. And you do get comfort with it as you keep using them more. Like I said, I have 700 hours on the Xeno, another 150 hours on a Zeolite. In all of that, At this point, I am actually, it might sound

strange, more comfortable on the risers simply because I've spent so much time on them than I am even with the brakes. That makes sense. But for

people who have never flown a two-liner, pulling risers on a three-liner is a whole different world. It takes shitloads of energy. The profile does not distort that much. But do you ever get tired? I've seen your flight logs. You fly for hours and hours. So two-liner flying and rear riser control, does it tire you out more muscularly, not mentally? It does. It does. There is more pressure on at least the two

Subir Sidhu: liners that I fly. Keep in mind that wings are different. There are some two liners in particular where there is less pressure on the rear risers. But still, it's more than brakes typically. Yeah, so it does get tiring. But this brings us to another topic of flying endurance. Endurance flying, I think, is something that needs to be developed. both mentally as well as physically. And for a cross-country pilot who wants to fly far, it's a good area to invest in. And for the simple reason, and again, I'm not saying that everybody should aspire to fly great long distances. But if you do aspire, if you do want to do 100 kilometer flights or 200 kilometer flights, for example, Entirely your choice.

But if you want to do that, then you have to do certain things to achieve those goals. And one of them is to be able to fly long. The simple math is that a typical intermediate pilot flying a B or a C wing will have an average cross-country speed of, on a decently good day, 20 to 25 kilometers per hour. including tumbling and all of that. And so if you've got to fly 100K, you'll be flying for four or five hours. It is, in my opinion, much better for pilots at their local sites, even if they are not conducive to flying long distances, but they work for a long enough

duration to launch and just fly for two hours if they fly for an hour or fly for three hours, four hours, five hours, doing essentially nothing but tumbling up, bring overs down, or if you're lucky enough to have at least a couple of features and a valley crossing to just do the valley crossings back and forth, thermal up, understand thermals, just spend a great deal of time in the air because there's no substitute for airtime just for learning, but also to build endurance. And so if you're super comfortable flying for four or five hours when you launch, it can be mentally exhausting, like you said. Then when the day is there and you are at a site where 100K is possible, You don't have to worry about the

flying for five hours a bit. You just have to worry about terrain and the thermals. And so that just comes with practice. It's as simple as that. There's no better way to build arm strength, I think, than just by doing the activity that you like. You could certainly go to the gym and so on and

so forth, but I mostly just fly. Indeed, and you're pretty good at it as well. So these are golden pieces of advice that you have given out to our

community here and to all the audiences. But before I move on to the last part of the show, there was one topic that I feel we really need to address. And this is a challenge that a lot of us feel, but not a lot of us talk about. We just shy away from it. And maybe it is peer pressure. Maybe it is personal or whatever, like preference. But burnouts are real in every aspect of life. And I think paragliding is no different. When you chase something with all your heart and soul, and when you put in so much effort into it, if things go your way, nothing like it. But if they don't,

and if they take a bit longer, there is a whole different mental challenge that you have to deal with in staying motivated, convincing yourself that yes, it's all worth it and keeping on going. You have been at the helm of things for long enough to face all of these challenges, I believe, especially once you have flown that long. How have you navigated this topic? And if you have had a chance to face anything, or were you just simply too excited in life to even let this come close to you? I think the reality is, as you said, what has worked for me, because I

Subir Sidhu: get bored very easily. I can't keep doing the same thing again and again. So as long as things are different, I stay happy and I stay motivated. And for me, there's just so much variation in paragliding that has not come to pass. And again, granted, resources to live the dream, like you said, but for example, every new site, is fresh and interesting for me. I like nothing better than going to a new site and have my first flight at that site, even if it's a top to bottom. In fact, quite often it is a top to bottom because I'll go early in the morning and launch just because I'm

so excited and I just want to fly. And almost always my first flight at a new site is a top to bottom and then I go and have another stomach flight. later in the day but but that's what keeps it interesting for me and also like i mentioned just trying different things like i couldn't be more excited about trying acro now it's a whole new area it's a whole new things it's all related to paragliding but it's almost a little ecosystem and a community of its own and which i want to engage with And as long as all these varieties and variations are there. And the other

thing about this, Andy, to be honest, is the community aspect of paragliding. Just meeting new people, hearing their stories, getting some ideas about where to go fly next or something interesting from them. That gives me a lot of energy and keeps me motivated. Now, that's so

nice to hear. And just to reiterate, that is why Paralyzing Atlas exists, to share the stories and share the joy with everybody across the globe, regardless of whether you're traveling to a place or not. Just tune in to this show on Spotify, click play, and you will get all that you wish for on a landing site or at a takeoff or even in the air. But that's so few to put it in that manner. So before we wrap up for the day, I usually ask, this is a tradition, or it's just becoming more of a kind of a tradition now. I ask my guests to share one flight or one story from their

lives that has stuck with them for a while. Could be a glorious one, could be a one filled with struggle. So if you have anything that comes to your mind that you think is worth sharing with the audience, we'd be very thankful to put it out. Boy, that's a tough one, Andy. There have been so

Subir Sidhu: many good flights with so many good pilots. But one flight that does stand out for me, it's certainly not the longest flight, but it was a flight with a good friend of mine, Jesse Williams. And we flew 120 kilometers from

Essentially, in Washington State, USA, from one side of the Cascade Mountain Range to the other, for over three hours on that fight, we were on such committing terrain that there was basically no decent landing option. We launched. We flew for about half an hour, 45 minutes over a nice ridge with a lot of bailouts. There were like four or five pilots that launched. And then about 45 minutes into that flight, there was Jesse and me. And others turned back. And we were on radio. And we read the day. And we both agreed on what we are seeing. The day was tremendous. We had lived to 12,000, 13,000 feet. And the mountains were ahead of us. It's a big range of rock and glacier and ice and deep valleys with nothing

but a river flowing through. The only potential bailout would be some small riverbank somewhere. but the rest was just trees, no meadows, nothing. And so we exchanged glances, so to speak, got onto the radio and said, yes, we are doing it. And we pushed. And for three hours, we were

Aninder: over this dramatic landscape. And we were working together as a team. Sometimes Jesse would push ahead, find a thermal, I'd join him.

Subir Sidhu: Sometimes I would push ahead. We were just leapfrogging each other, just working together, finding those climbs. And it was just, we were in the zone, so to speak. But at the same time, the relief when we were out of the range on the other side and there were wide open valleys with meadows

Aninder: ahead of us, was just tremendous. Yeah, that will live with me for a long time. Wow. Well, I think that is the epitome of navigating risk versus

reward with sheer confidence, skill, and responsibility. And a teamwork, I believe. I'm pretty sure it would have been different had you been going there solo or probably with someone else or something like that. Hugely different. I would, yeah, that, and even today, would

Subir Sidhu: not attempt that flight, that particular flight by myself. And to your point, I have a lot of respect for Jesse. Jesse is also a former Excels pilot. And his knowledge of that area, like you said, his preparedness. And we had tree kits and emergency bivvy gear and all that. But still, the risk was there. And at the same time, the shot was there and we took it. Wow, man, quite inspiring. And needless to say, something which all of

us wish we can do, like those flights which give you the excitement, but always end up with a happy face and a landing that you can safely walk away from. I think on that note, we have come to the end of this show. So we know you're into acro. We know you're doing that to get on triple Cs. But if you have to tell us what's next on your horizon before we get off of this trip. Yes, I do have a dream, actually. So all this business about acro and

Subir Sidhu: flying triple C gliders and flying competitions is for me like going to the gym so that I become better and I become stronger and I become more competent. The real dream that I have is adventure flying and exploration and exploring mountain ranges across the world. And the most concrete sort of vision of that dream I have is that I'm too old to do the X-Alps, for example. I just don't have the speed on the ground. But I would like to fly the classic X-Alps route from Salzburg to Monaco as one uninterrupted journey. To just have my backpack with my glider and clothes and whatever else I need for the trip started from one end. And over a few weeks, flying just the good days, not taking unnecessary

risks. Just do that whole end-to-end journey as one effort. So that is something concrete that I want to work towards over the next two, three years. And we'll go from there. Amen to that, man. I think I'm going to put your X contest link in the show notes for people to stalk you there. Get

inspired to me, needless to say. And man, the way you share things, the way your knowledge is there. It's such massive thanks from all of us at Creative Writing Atlas. And I'm pretty sure the community, all the audience members also appreciate that. Needless to say, the moment you have more stories, we are more than happy to bring you back on the show for round two. Thank you for that vote of confidence. And thank you for this

Subir Sidhu: time, Andy. It's been a pleasure talking to you. And if all our members of our flying fraternity, even if they just take away one thing that they relate to or otherwise think they would like to work on, I think our time would be very well spent. Indeed, Savir. May you continue to touch the

sky with glory as you have. Thank you. Bye.