Urs Haari: The Real Truth About Reserve Parachutes : A Paragliding Survival Guide

Aninder: It's a dangerous sport we're in. Holy shit, I mean, we still have schools advertise. It's really a joke, sorry for telling you guys this, but in my opinion, it's a joke. If they do a statement like this, glide not more than one to one, so forward speed, It's not allowed to exceed 5.5 meters per second. I took an instrument and my ground speed was 50 kilometers an hour under the reserve parachute. I'm convinced the certification process needs new rules. They need to try. When we have a market watchdog

like PMA, What influence do they have on such decisions? Is there a lobbying of some sorts causing this to go haywire? I think the

Aninder: manufacturers, they are doing their job. Probably the problem is don't ground handle your reserve parachute. You destroy a parachute within minutes. Even on a grassy slope, you can destroy the fabric within two or three moves. The friction with the ground, basically. No, not the friction, but also on the grass. These damages are not visible to the naked eye. It's only when you put bright lights and those kind of things. And the reason why I'm telling this situation to the listeners is I had two experiences which probably saved my life one month later because I was in at the World Championship first task. I was flying in the leading goggle pretty much in front. Coming down under two reserves, is that

better than one or is it not to be tested or not to be tried because it can be dangerous? Interesting question.

The world of reserve parachutes theoretically isn't a complicated one. There are three main design shapes that the industry offers with a little bit of occasional variation thrown in here and there. But when we take a closer look, the decision to pick one for yourself can be quite overwhelming with the amount of choices that we have. And this is due to the fact that the amount of tech and R&D which goes into sewing one together is much more than what meets the eye. What DaVinci invented as the first flying machine for humans back in the day has turned out to be an essential life-saving device in modern day paragliding. And joining me today is an industry insider and a pioneer of some sorts from back in

the day, who has seen the development of these tiny but essential pieces of our flying equipment pretty much since their inception in modern day flying. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and everyone along with them, doesn't matter who you are, where you're from and what you believe in, so even if you identify yourself as a reserve handle, Do me a favor and go smash that like and subscribe button and drop in a rating wherever possible because this is your weekly dose of awesomeness from paragliding atlas coming to you as planned with one of the longest yet the most enriching episodes that we have made ever since we have started this show. So without further ado, I'm going to say what I always say and

that is tune in and I hope you like it. And most importantly, if you do, do not forget to share it with your friends because this information is nothing but pure gold. So the more people that know about it, the safer our skies become. And that means the fun factor increases, not just for ourselves, but for everyone around us every time we take to the skies.

Of course, Hari, what an absolute honor to bring you on Paragliding Atlas. Thank you so much for coming. Anlinder, it's a pleasure for me.

Aninder: Thank you for being in your show. I'll tell you why I've been so excited to bring you on the show or not just because of your knowledge and all the

awesomeness that you have bought in the paragliding world. But I was just reading a little bit about you on Google. And it said in the cloud based mayhem write up that you're an ex world record holder, multiple PwC task winner, Swiss champion, a nature lover. and most importantly, a cross-country flying guru, and many more. I know the list is endless, but please tell our audiences a little bit about who are you and how did you become so awesome in life? All of those things you were talking about is history. I'm 60 years old now. I just became 60 years old this March.

Aninder: I'm a grandpa. Our daughter has another daughter, which is one year old now. I'm still in paragliding. I still love it. When I was young, I came from sailplane sport into paragliding. Yeah, that's what I'm doing since I'm 16 years old. And I had my own business, High Adventure, which I passed over to younger hands one and a half year ago. I'm still involved there. I'm employed now. So less pressure on decisions. Enjoying more free time. Started kite foiling. four years ago and it was a really excellent experience going back to the things like when you were a small child learning how to ride a bike or all these things it's really nice being able to experience these feelings in my age indeed more than four

decades in the game 16 to 60 that's 44 years and still going strong chasing adventure How did you maintain the urge or stay excited to keep

going? I think for me, the important thing was balance. I was diving deep into paragliding. But I also had my business. We celebrated 30 years

Aninder: last year. I was not flying every day. I was working a lot. When I was off, I was really keen into flying. So that kept it interesting for me. The mixture of all those different things. During wintertime, I was not flying at all. I did maybe some hike and flies, but I did a lot of ski touring, skiing and all these things. I like to be out in the nature and enjoying the place where I live and the people I live around. I think that made it interesting for me. Basically keeping it diversified, not just one sport, having the options open to switch over to another discipline

when the flying part is not possible. That was working for me. When I was working a lot and then had a good flying day, I was really keen on to go

Aninder: there and to fight 10, 11 hours. I've learned that if I do that regularly two, three or four days in a row, I'm not so much into it anymore. did you ever had to navigate the feeling of burnouts because i think that is something that comes with chasing excellence in any discipline yes i have experience with burnout it was 36 or 37 years old when i had my first burnout just working too much When the company was young, you had trouble in the company and the market was difficult. The signs when the nerves are showing, everything gets red and itchy. That's what I had, classic burnouts. That was my first time two, no, three, four years ago. I went into a similar situation. I lost my parent. My dad died in 2019. My

mother died in 23. And between there was this pandemic type of deal. I had a pretty strong body, obviously. And business was difficult. A very good friend who was working for me was 36 years old. All those experiences When I woke up in the morning, I had no idea what to do. I had no energy, no power. I got really angry within seconds. And that was the point when I decided it's probably better to enjoy life more and focus on the things I really like. And that's where I am right now. I love the ending that you brought out to our audience there. Sorry for your loss.

It's a struggle to lose a support system as big as your parents and pandemic in general was quite a tough time for most people in the world. What I'm wondering is that there's no way we can foresee such challenges in our life. However, previous experiences prepare us for the next ones and how to tackle them better. Is there anything, any mantra or some thoughts that you have decoded? that let you live your dream for more than four decades and still counting from all of these things that has happened to you in the past? This question, I think it's whatever makes

Aninder: you happy, you know, whatever you find your joy. It doesn't mean that it has to be in sport at all, family, free time, nature. Most of the things I did is because I love them. And I think that's all about, then you are in the flow and then you do the right things, the right decisions. That helped me keep going through that time. When we're doing excellence, there's a comfort level or equilibrium in life where you put in effort

and get proportional reward and you're happy with the existence. But when you're chasing more than the ordinary, not being just another brick in the wall, you are required to put in a little bit more than what the people around you or the population around you. When it comes to chasing passion, let's take the example of sports. Let's say you want to be a soccer star or get into basketball or cross-country skiing. Passion has to turn into obsession to be one of the top in the world and be the king of your craft. Is there a pin line in understanding passion turning into obsession and should you pull back or keep going? Because that is what you signed up for and what brings peace deep inside going

Aninder: back to my childhood i always wanted to be good i always wanted to be perfect in what i did the passion i discovered was to try to get perfect you know i was not the guy doing different things a lot of other stuff i also had not the chance at the time where i grew up there was skiing biking or playing football as i said whenever i did something i really went deep into it i like even now when kite foiling it's such a difficult sport for me to start something new it's such a good feeling trying those tricks working hard getting better every time. And it's a game. It reminds me to

my childhood when I started to learn how to ride a bike. It was an amazing feeling coming back every day, more experience. That's what makes the difference. So I think making peace with your present and being in the moment and living it to the fullest is the crux of the matter here. Yeah, that's the point. When you're so focused on something, there is nothing else around you. You're completely in the present. I know we are

deviating far from the topic because this was supposed to be a talk about the reserve parachutes, but this is turning out to be one of the most interesting starts to any podcast I've done. If you allow me, I'm curious about the spiritual or intimate side of things when it comes to chasing a lifestyle like this. It says that you had a history with shamanism. Have you explored combining that dynamic with being present in your reality and making the most of it? Is that a topic you can talk about? Yeah, I think so. I always had this connection even when I was

Aninder: young. When I was in nature, I felt very good in nature. I was always happy when I was out there. Flying, paragliding, So being out there, being in all those elements, we are all connected to those things. Some of us just don't know. If you're in the air looking for thermals, wind systems, flying around, we are deeply connected. We are so focused. We are working a lot with our intuition. That's what it's all about. A good pilot. Those real hotshots, they're deeply spiritual because they work with intuition. They don't think that much anymore. They do everything out of their feelings. They are connected. And I think that helps a lot in whatever you do. This brings me to a point I would love to

share with you if you allow me to. I was flying in Birbilling, the Himalayas last month, having a beautiful flight, average speed of 30, 35. I'm at 150 kilometer mark. And then suddenly, wind caused me to blow back behind the ridge and I got stuck. When that started, I was like, I am very far away from my goal. I am most likely to land out in a place where the retrieve will take like half a day or the whole day focusing on finding the weakest lifts was becoming such a challenge where i had to constantly remind myself let go of the other thoughts just focus on

circling as efficiently as possible and i did up to a point eventually i lost it finally i had to bomb out and land it was a beautiful landing everything ended well I was back in Bir the next day. But what I'm trying to say is that once I went back to this incident and tried to revisit my thoughts, I was like, this has simply come down to the concentration because I lost concentration while circling in that weak lift, which caused me to bomb out. So what I'm saying is that if you want to become better at flying or just generally better at navigating life, Is it all

about being able to sit with your thoughts and put them where you want to be, just being present, like how animals live in the moment? The most

Aninder: important thing is what I've learned is that there is always a reason to get there and it is important what you make out of it. You have to accept you find yourself in such a situation, deal with it. What I've learned is breathing is so important. Whenever you are in a stressful situation, this was a real game changer. Whenever I had a problem in my life, when I started to know about how that works with breathing, how that helped me back to a calmer mind, you need options. When you grab them from your past experiences and what you've learned in your life, what's the next thing

Aninder: I can do to get out of this situation? that helps a lot it's always a lesson even if you bomb out you have to accept maybe this prevented you from a serious accident i missed a really good cross-country day the weather forecast was perfect i went to bed i couldn't sleep i was so excited i couldn't sleep the next morning when i get up My friends were waiting and I had to call them or even went up at three o'clock in the morning. I text them and they said, listen, I'm not coming today because I don't feel well. I'm not relaxed at all. I just blow that day. And I was not angry

because I knew that there is a reason for that. And I accepted it. I was really lucky so far. No really serious accident paragliding. And I think that's probably why I don't go with my head through the wall. I feel that the signs out there are not good, even on a good cross-country flight, even if I'm really close to my personal best. If there are signs giving me the feeling something is wrong here, I accept and I go for land.

I think what you're pointing is towards listen to your gut feeling or intuition, as we all know. Yes, exactly. What I'm curious is that, let's say, because this is one of the challenges that I faced recently, and I don't know if maybe there are some people in the audience can relate. We can compare this to driving a car. when you've driven a car for quite a while there is a subconscious mind which takes over similarly in flying when you are approaching a trigger and need to put in the work or find the next line or a glide or be on the bar you are very present you are working

actively but a lot of times your brain goes into subconscious mode where other thoughts come into you is there a mantra or a way to maintain that concentration how to stay concentrated to make sure you don't wander off or is this a training other than paragliding and not just limited to flying and it's all aspects of life basically from my experience when i'm on a cross-country flight And my biggest problem I have when I'm in an

Aninder: area or in a situation where there are other pilots around, when you have to take a decision for a valley crossing, a big valley crossing or flying to the next ridge, where should I go? Should I go to the left? Should I go to the right? When I'm focused, I have this tunnel vision because I'm really focused. Totally in this game, I'm focused to only what I'm doing right now, what I'm doing next. That's where intuition also comes into the game. When there are other pilots around, flying more to the left or right, I see one climbing, the other thinking about that. brings the whole my whole concept over it disturbs me and that's where i do wrong decisions i'm not following my intuition i'm not following my

experience and i think if one acts like this then you're in this flow situation and then you are also in a very high learning process you learn all the time new things you fly to the wrong place and when you bump out You start thinking about what did I wrong? What would have been the better decision? Check the other flights and see why the valley wind was stronger here or I didn't flew into the lee side too much wind. That brings us further in whatever we do. We have to do a lot of experience by our own and then learn from that, build on that. Sometimes I wish there

was a book to navigate the mental aspect of this because physically, just like any other sport, there's so much you can do like ground handling and kiting in all sorts of situations and all of those things. The mental aspect of this game is a whole different universe. Eventually, the ones who reach the pinnacle are the ones who master both. It's an amazing sport, one of the best. We are so lucky to incarnate

Aninder: to this time, being able to do such things. But I think paragliding, there are so many things to learn, to understand, and it's so helpful. I think it's also helpful for our daily life, making decisions quicker. You can't sit and wait if you have a huge collapse or if it's time to throw a reserve. This brings us back to our topic. I think it's really great what we learn here, what we can do for our life. I'm glad you mentioned the name

Reserve because I completely forgot about it. I think there's no way 15 minutes of an intro, a single podcast episode can do justice to the amount of experience you have in this sport and all the cool things around it. But let's stick to what we agreed on. We can have you on board. You seem to be a podcaster's dream, if I'm honest. I'd love to throw endless questions at you in time to come. First, reserves are non-negotiable in our sport. Before I dive into reserves, how did reserves become important in your life? Did you have a plan before getting into the sport? How did you become the high adventure owner? That's an interesting question. I never really focused on goals when I

Aninder: was young. I did my apprenticeship, went to the army. It was quite a long time in the army. And I never had goals like I want to become owner of a company, I want to become the best pilot, cross-country pilot or all these things. They were not really, I was not focused on that. Maybe in my deepest insight, yes, because my thing was really whatever I did or whatever I do, i like to become a master because i like when i'm in that flow i like to become better so that was the result of what i did so how did high adventure come into like what did the early days of high adventure

look like early days of high adventure were like 9 90 93 94 we started the company at 94 i was in another company 93

But when I came out of the army, I was flying competitions. I was working for a manufacturer as a test pilot for the short while. I don't like that work at all. isn't it a lot of fun i thought test pilots were having the most fun out there out of all of us like getting paid and go collapse gliders how cool is that i didn't like that i was driving up the mountain flying down driving up again and i got thick in the car and now that it wasn't my thing i'm too hectic i don't like too many hectic things i'm finally found out what am i going to do with my life now i can't stay test

pilot or a competition pilot for my whole life and then i was really keen flying i loved this competition scene but we had so many accidents at that time i lost so many friends and it turned into really a stupid thing this competition was big gliders heavy ballast we went they sent us into conditions which were way too dangerous when i came back from the paragliding world cup in japan we lost the swiss member there and there were a lot of talks and how to make paragliding competitions safer and i hope we learned something there but when i came back it was swiss championship in geneva and i was in leading position We needed three tasks or four tasks to make it valid. It was a bit short of time. The

weather forecasts were not as good anymore. So they sent us up the hill for the last task and it was firm. This strong south wind phenomenon in Switzerland where you better stay on the ground. It's really dangerous to fly. We were on that takeoff. The organizers said, we will send out a dummy and then we will take a decision. And the dummy was a really good pilot at that time, also a test pilot. And he managed to fly pretty well in those conditions. But we were not only flying just in front of the mountain if you do a task. It's the task at that time were as big as they are

today. They started the competition and I was in front and I said, listen guys, if you are serious here, After what happens just a few months ago, that's it. Then I'm definitely in the wrong place. I want to get old in the sport and I'm not going to risk my life here for becoming one more time a Swiss champion. So that's where I finished my career. And then I needed something to live from. Serious work. That's how I found High Adventure. Thanks for answering with honest intent and unfiltered opinion. I'm curious because High Adventure is a lot about Beemer,

which is a Regalo shape, but what is High Adventure Company all about? I started working together with Nova in the early 90s, 1990, I think,

Aninder: 1991. And with High Adventure, we took over the distribution ship for Switzerland, the dealership, and we still are. over 30 years now together. We are also representing Woody Valley. We're representing different brands in paragliding. And we have our own stuff we design. And basically the most known product is Reserve Parachute and Beamer that we started in 95 after an accident I had. I started to put my focus on safety, reserve parachutes. Is Beemer that you offer any different from the Rogalo design that is patented back in the day? I think it was 80s

or something. I don't remember the correct year. But is there any difference or are all Rogalo pretty much the same? Rogalo is a global

Aninder: name for the shape. It's a triangle. It's basically a triangle. It's a hang glider. It's also a Rogalo shape. Shoots afterwards, if you can find them in the internet, you can find some Rogalo shoots from NASA. It's interesting to see them. In the early seventies, they were jumping out of airplanes with the shoots. There was the time between the round skydiving shoots before the Ram Air skydiving shoots came to the markets. They were skydiving with Rogalos. Now you have a few reserve parachutes on the market. They look similar, but they are completely different. That is the reason why I asked this question. How can users identify such differences and what are the things they should look out

for while choosing a Rogalo shape? The best way to find out the difference is to talk to experienced pilots. I think the most

Aninder: experienced pilots in our scene right now are probably the aerobatic pilots. or some competition cross-country pilots, they find out fast what's working and what's not working. If you are in a good area, in a good system with experienced pilots, if you can go over a lake and train yourself, try it out. That's the best. You will find out immediately what works for you, what's not working for you. I want us to be more

specific. What variations are possible in coming down under reserve? You throw it, it opens, opening times matter. Then I think it's the pendulum. And then of course the descent rates. Most of this information is in the technical manuals, probably in good faith from the manufacturer. But how do you as a user go out and look for these cues? And what should you look for? I want to be a bit more specific. If you are

Aninder: just... focusing product side on the reserve parachute side not folding packing into your harness and all these things maybe we can talk about later in this podcast about but for me what is important is you named it already opening time but today's products all open fast their products open a little faster than others because of their shape and the material become very light. And 10 or 15 years ago, the reserve parachutes were weighing two kilos, two and a half kilos. Nowadays, they are under or around a kilo. The light material opens much faster than the reserves we had 10 or 15 years ago. So opening time matters. And in my opinion, of the most important feature of a reserve parachute is

the behavior together with the paraglider how does reserve behaves with a paraglider gone wild going to a mirror position starting to down plane when it reopens again what happens if there is a big force fighting your reserve and that's for me the most important thing on the reserve because if it works if it does its job then you are all set steering is the cream on top the behavior in the connected states together with your paraglider that's the most important thing of that part of your equipment All right, so I just want to sum it up. Opening times, that is

based on whatever information manufacturer is supplying in good faith. And you'll get that from there. Dissent rate, the same test laboratory is doing the work for you. So you don't need to dig it out yourself. Reviews, of course, you can ask people how they feel that is subjected to every pilot and their affinity towards the brand. Downplaning, that sounds scary for a person to go out and try and then choose a result. How do you answer that question? I'm sure we will see it in the future, unfortunately, more and more. It was a topic a few years

Aninder: ago. Then the reserve parachute designs got better. Now I think we are in a position now where we are going a big step backward again in reserve parachute history with this light trend. It's all about weight and volume. No one talks about sink rate and behavior with your paraglider. If you look at the brochures, if you look at the ads in the magazines, it's all about manufacturers telling you, we have the smallest and lightest reserve parachute. I've seen videos now, I've seen footage from last year, safety clinics from schools recording reserve openings above water. The pilots aren't able to neutralize their paragliders. The reserve parachute and paraglider are in a mirror position, fighting

and downplaning so hard that they hit the water that it almost hurts by looking at those footage. and we are talking about brand new equipment of light and i think this is a completely wrong direction for sure about water you can test it but better would be if you record your flight if those guys would record their flights when they test those or when they have those situations They would never use such equipment when they know that they would have to throw this above ground in alpine conditions, strong thermals, strong valley winds, rocky mountains would be just a nightmare. Sacrificing weight or safety just doesn't make sense in my head. We are flying paper thin harnesses and as you said,

almost negligible reserves. Gravity is just going to bring these things much faster, which in turn is not healthy. for her lifestyle and her sport. Yeah, it's a dangerous sport we're in. Holy shit. I mean, we still have schools advertise it's a safe sport. Nothing can happen.

Aninder: It's not true. You have to tell students this is dangerous. It's a whole process. If they don't take it for serious, they're going to risk their life. Isn't that lying? One should keep this always safe. in our heads or it is dangerous if you have a problem up there you can't just stop and rewind there is no stop button there is gravity and things go goes they're going fast this is really problem and you gotta have to know that i know i completely every time every flight you should know Something can happen. Your body should know where the handle is of your reserve parachute. With closed eyes, without thinking, those procedures, they need to be in your blood, in your memory, in your cells, in your

Aninder: unconscious. That is important. This brings me to a point, Urs. What is Paraglider's Manufacturer Association's take on this? What are they

saying about this aspect of reserves, which are the last line of defense we have against the unexpected? Marketing, capitalism, selling more, making profits, will make sense to somebody who's investing in the business. And especially when there are corporations coming in with big money and saying that we want to cater to this niche. There are quite a few brands which are quite big. They will end up focusing numbers over fashion or safety or whatever it is. So when we have a market watchdog like PMA, what influence do they have on such decisions? Is there a lobbying of some sorts causing this to go haywire? I think the manufacturers, they are doing their job probably the problem is

Aninder: there's a lot of money involved into it and i see the problem that those guys are also deciding about the procedure how to test the material how to test the reserve parachutes i think some of them or even work group six and i've been there participating in a meeting probably 10 years ago or even longer it was a meeting in paris and those guys in there I think there was not a single person in there who ever saw one of the reserve designs above ground to see what happens when there is a paraglider connected to the reserve. They were talking about the rules. In my opinion, that's

one point. I mean, they're doing a good job, but it's also a lot of lobbying. you know it's natural you can't change this we're all human beings but i see a really big problem coming up or even present now i can talk about the swiss market and about the french market the associations are not doing their job they are like the swiss organic federation they're really doing a great job in regarding airspace lobbying with with nature all this nature conservationist i think yes they're really good they really ought in basic formation teaching their instructor or giving giving all the mechanics all the material to the into the hands of the instructors how to form their students but the

problem is that when they've finished their license afterwards there is nothing There is no formation needed. It's everything is on volunteer. You can go and throw a reserve row for a maneuvers clinic, but there is no control. There is also no help. So there are schools focusing on that. A lot of pilots, a lot of friends in my area here, when they have the license, they just go flying. They just There's no big interest into getting better, into learning weather and getting better in all those things. In the past few years, weather is changing. It's getting stronger out there. We have a lot more accidents. We have a lot of fatal accidents. We have had a lot of fatal tandem accidents. Now the

insurance companies are getting onto the plan. We just had a change here in Switzerland. The former insurance company was not willing anymore to insure this thing. So there is a new insurance working together with the federation. And we have so many accidents and the sport is becoming really, the image of the sport is becoming really bad out there. If you talk to non-flyers and think, wow, paragliding is a dangerous sport. I think that's a serious problem. The manufacturers should work together with the associations and the associations should really become a lot more serious into further instructions, making things obligatory. I don't see another way. I'm not a big fan of rules. I like

free flying, but it's too big now. We need rules. When I was flying sailplanes, I was 16 years old. And there you are in a club and it is completely different from what I'm doing here since 30 years. Civil aviation is more serious. Skydiving the reserves, that's serious business. If your reserve is not folded by a professional rigger within the last four months, you will not enter a plane. I was in Brazil trying to skydive on the base. We were in front of the plane and the guys were asking me, show me your reserve card. When was it packed last time? And it was like five months. I said, sorry, my friend, but you're not jumping here. So they have a complete different approach to safety as we do have in

Aninder: paragliding. And this is one of the biggest problems we have right now. I agree. Paragliding is one of the simplest yet dangerous forms of

aviation. When you spoke about the instructor qualification Any commercial flying, which is 100x more safer than the collapsible wings that we fly, there to be an instructor, you have to go through endless exams and keep on renewing your knowledge and be a part of a whole setup repeatedly year after year to retain your certification. But the requirements that we have in free flight... Which is a beautiful word. I completely agree with you, but it's quite a shame. It doesn't even compare to five days worth of the work that the commercial aviation is putting in. Yeah, I agree. I totally agree. Let's give our listeners a little bit of a solution. Everybody wants to stay the safest. It's a

no-brainer. Nobody wants to go out there and chase risk. Leslie but if they want to chase fun in the safest manner what are the ways they should look at when it comes to rescue technologies is it just peer reviews or the information by brands driven in a capitalist way there's a conflict of interest because work group six and the ones who are making regulation is also comprised by these guys small names which come out by not so much capitalist gain and are more into it for passion do not have the investment required to put in the R&D. So as a consumer, when you want to go out there and invest your money in something safest, how do you navigate that question or finding it hard? The thing is, we have to force

Aninder: people or to tell them, go and test your reserve. Try it out. Go through the procedure. And try several reserves. That was my learning when I had my accident. But you need how to behave on the reserve because your paddler can do ugly things to you while you're hanging under your reserve. And go for surface. Don't buy the latest reserves advertised. in the magazines as lightest and smallest volume check out the surface check out the shape and what we also should know is certification it's it's such an old-fashioned way actual reserve parachutes got certified they allow a glide angle from one to one saying that if you have 5.5 meters per second of maximum sink rate for a certification, you have

also 5.5 meters per second in forward speed. That's 15, 17, 18 kilometers an hour. Small and light designs only pass certification because they are not connected to a paraglider. They are not connected to something which creates drag. No freaking way. If they would be connected to something which creates drag, we are talking about surfaces like 20 square meters for a total takeoff weight without paraglider. When you're talking about reserve parachutes, takeoff weight or hooking weight, it's always without paraglider. but we are actual designs are 20 square meters for a cooking weight of 80 kilograms 75 kilograms 80 kilograms and if you compare this like to a t10 like the

old-fashioned round parachutes pilots were jumping out of airplanes they had 70 square meters

Of course, they jumped out five, ten times a day. They knew how to land the proper way. But it's just not possible. The way today's certification can be achieved is by they all glide. They glide like hell. So if you are serious about this reserve parachute thing, you should try a reserve parachute. and see what happens above water, how it behaves in a B stall, if it's rotating, if it's down planing, and you will find out immediately if your choice was right or not. I'm so glad you put it out that clearly, Urs, because a lot of us are believing in testing

harnesses and gliders and all kinds of accessories. We have the fanciest instrument out there and all of that, but not a single one of us speaks about reserve testing. I don't know why this has become a taboo topic, but I'm so glad we are throwing some light on this and doing our little bit. Yeah. So anyway, listening out there. It's really strange because we are organizing since years, we are organizing clinics just

Aninder: for that, because I'm, what I've experienced is that the safety clinics where they do at the end, where they offer at the end reserve opening, that's not working. That's not, it's not something that you will. it's not sustainable they tell you at the end we make a big collapse so you reserve and you will see what happens and that's not sustainable at all that's not lasting you need a briefing of how to do how to react on different situations with your paraglider and then it really helps we are offering clinics but no one is interested into it as long as there is no need to From the associations or the manufacturer telling you, go and try it, it's really important. It won't really bring a lot. Most of the

contact I have is from pilots, also from really good cross- country pilots, when they had to throw their reserve and they got hurt. And they want to know why they got hurt, because they bought a good reserve parachute. They got hurt and didn't want to understand what was wrong. And then we analyzed. We analyze, we see, okay, your reserve parachute is probably a little bit too small. The place and the time where you throw it, it was windy like hell. It was thermic. And how was your paraglider looking? Was it rotating or it was downplaning? And then it's too late. If your back is broken, it's bad. Try to get the best out of it before the real situation. Please tell our listeners a little about your

offering. What are your clinics all about and what can people learn in them? We specialize a bit on the beamer type of deal with this

Aninder: possibility of steering because it's a bit frustrating, as I told you, when a pilot with a beamer goes to a regular clinic and they tell them at the end, just go for it. full speed collapse and throw it out and we will see what happens and then you see a big mess because the paraglider is rotating around the beamer is opening and then they tell to the pilot okay now grab your brake lines and steer and you come steering the paraglider has gone wild there needs to be an order and the order is the same for a unsteerable or a steerable reserve parachute our clinics are

focused on We meet the night before and we have a theory about one and a half, two hours. We talk about different situations, how to react, how to throw. And in the meantime, we check their equipment. They pull out their reserve in the simulator to see if they're able to get it out because 30% of the pilots are not getting out their reserve parachute out of their harnesses. And Then we do exercises like the kamikaze pilots at that time. I want to give the pilots or the customers the experience that these mechanisms are going into their unconsciousness. It needs to be something inside. Because when the time has come for a reserve opening, There is no time to think sensory

overload. Most of us are not able to think anymore the proper way. So this mechanism has to come like, boom. And time matters. And you have to do it in the right order. And that's what we are training the night before. And then the next day, I send them over water without radio. And then we tell them where they can throw their reserves in. And the only instruction for such a descent on the reserve is if they have an unsteerable reserve. gave them an instruction to play around with the paraglider like freestyle like an asymmetrical reaction like only on one side see what happens when it's rotating see what happens when you completely deactivated your paraglider when you neutralize it completely see

what happens when it's open but they have six or seven hundred meters of altitude above the water so they can really focus on their descent on the reserve parachute. It's a great experience. You can even steer. You can even steer a non-steerable square or round parachute if there is wind. Let go or pull in the B-lines, one side, asymmetrical. You can even influence the direction a little bit. That helps if you're drifting towards an obstacle in a valley paint, for instance. And the behavior for a beamer, steerable, a reserve parachute is exactly the same like for an unsteerable. So you throw it, you wait the opening. If it's not opening, you need to do something. This is something that all pilots

don't know. They throw the reserve and they're waiting and they're waiting and nothing happens. So if nothing happens, you have to get active. There are ways to open the reserve parachute, which has a problem of malfunction. There are chances. And then when the opening is in process, start working on your paraglider, try to neutralize it as quick as possible. And then until now, we are at the same stage, steerable and unsteerable. And this is perfect. Because most of the time, a lot of openings, they take place pretty low. And if there is time, if you have a steerable reserve, then you keep your paraglider, your neutralized paraglider, whether it's in a B-stall or C-stall, keep

both risers in one hand and you just grab with your... opposite hand you just grab one brake line and you pull it and because we have on the beam and we have pre-braked opening setup if you pull one line one brake line with this one you can turn to both sides because the other side is still pre-break and this way and this way you can if you're lucky you can avoid an obstacle We're not talking about a spot landing. You just need to avoid flying into a power line or a house or a river. People should learn and join this. If it's the first time and you've never tried it before, it

won't work. I remember my first reserve opening above water. Really saved my life later on, one year later. When I was above water, 1,000 meters, we did some tests. I was really young. When I was above water and I saw this little tiny boat underneath in the lake, I was so scared. And just imagine, I was thinking when I would be above the Alps in strong valley winds and beside of rocks, I would even be more scared. But that's the point. If time has come, if the ship hits the fan, the decision must come, boom, it's time for the reserve. No matter where you are, it's your

Aninder: endurance to chance, train this, even more game changer. Why did you use the word, if you are lucky, you might skip the obstacle? Is there a sure

shot way to skip the obstacle with a regalo? Or are you talking about blowbacks in those scenarios? No, the thing is when people decide for a

Aninder: steerable reserve, they think they can steer like their paraglider. And that's not the case. It is the case if you do hundreds of openings like I did. I do spot landing with my Rogalo. I can. You have to train yourself. But if you never trained before, if it's the first time, then, you know, That's what I explained before. That's what we train our customers. Neutralize your paraglider, go for your brake line, check the landscape, look where you are drifting. And if you have time enough height, try to land somewhere where there are no obstacles. So it makes sense. It's aerobatic pilots. We see the videos. They have much smaller wings, so they bring in their wings. If they screwed up their maneuvers,

they have 10, 14 square meters of gliders, glider sizes. If they're collapsed, there's not a lot of force to bring it in. And then they have a fully controllable Beamer 3 to do all kinds of stuff. But we are, most of our customers, even myself, I'm not flying with Quick Outs. So I let my paraglider connected to the harness. and I just know what to do and I can still steer with one hand wherever there is a place in reach to land, I will land there. If I have a serious problem with the glider, sometimes that can also happen like rotations. If you have a really

bad situation with a glider gone wrong with rotations or down planing a lot, You have twists in your risers and you can't do anything because the lines, brake lines are blocked, risers are blocked. I have a cut knife. I had to do it once while testing. And if you have a real good cut knife, it works like a charm and it just goes boom and it's gone. You cut the lines of risers, which are easier and more economical to cut? When I had to, I cut the lines. because it's more economical, risers are more expensive. But that was more a reflex. I was not thinking in that situation. I was

really in trouble testing a prototype. But to cut risers, the cut knives, most of the pilots out there pairing with them, they are from the toy store. You won't cut any risers with that. Yeah, I was thinking the same because they're too thick. You need a real good cut knife. There are cut knives in the market where you can cut risers. If they're on tension, they need to be on tension. Most times they are on tension. You've got these two fingers like the doctor in the operational hall. It's really easy. Wow. I was wondering, why don't we make quick-out carabiners as

the regular offering from the industry? The weight is one thing, but the amount of safety we are sacrificing for the sake of weight is too much now. Everybody should have quick-out carabiners. Every harness, it should come standard. Yeah, I really would love to see a manufacturer

Aninder: coming out with a real good system. The actual systems are... Not 100% proof. That's the problem. There's still chances of malfunction and you don't want to fall out of the sky because a carabiner opens by its own. Oh my God, I never knew that was a possibility. I thought there was only

one carabiner. What's that? Charlie... I'm forgetting. The Finsterwaller Charlie thing. It's a pretty good system, but not 100%

Aninder: voucher proof. And Finsterwalter came out with a new system a few years ago. Oh, was that the one which had a couple of safety notices coming the

past few months? Yes. Oh, that was scary, man. It is scary. I think it was really, I know a lot of pilots flying tandem, landing in strong valley

Aninder: winds under tandem is just a pain. It's really dangerous. Flying world records in Brazil, South Africa, with 100 kilometers wind ground speed, you don't want to land there. You don't want to land under a reserve parachute in that condition. A really good cutaway system would be perfect. Maybe there are engineers out there listening to this podcast, so kick your asses, mate. This is a tool to go. meat of the hour it

should be light too that's another demand from today's market i'll save this question for later but why can't we have base canopies in cross country is it the harness design acro guys are killing it with them anyways the three ring system just release or the whole system yeah the main canopy goes out and then the base canopy comes out it fixes the quick out issue opening times are at par with any other offering it's a tried

Aninder: and tested system developed by experts i see two problems and this is i have to go back a little bit also to them i think it was in the late 90s beginning of 2000 the system already existed we had it in paragliding a good friend of mine he was just like only only base system for him and he tried it whenever he had to repack it whenever i had a safety clinic he joined me he opened the system he was a hundred percent convinced of the system and i was always a little bit curious and Then when I was getting into skydiving, when I was getting into skydiving before, because I

wanted to learn and understand their way, I tested it on my own. Not just from the trim flight, but it collapsed and I released the system or I activated the system in a moment where the glider was diving forward, rubbing into a spiral dive and I cut away my main paraglider the feeling until the opening of the square parachute was quite scary because you have a short trace of free fall the ram air parachute it was a ram air square yeah my friend one year later called me said i had an accident and i broke my back he had a big collapse with a cravat and entered the spiral

Aninder: dive and didn't activate his base system. I asked him, Daniel, why? I mean, you trained it like I never knew any other pilot trained it before. Why didn't you activate your base system? And he said, that was 150 meters above ground. I was too scared of this short time of free fall. And the shoots, they are also pre-break, that they are not shooting too much forward. They need some action before they accelerate strong, before you can steer them. I said I was scared because I was close to the hillside. That's my point. We had many successful openings with reserve parachutes, 30, 40 meters above ground. They still work. If they're not open totally, even if they get into the branches, if you hit

the tree and it keeps you with lines and fabric in the tree, you don't hit the deck. It's already successful, but you are limited with a base system close to the ground. It's a psychological deal. And most of us won't do it because they are afraid from the actual scene. I was surprised. We did safety talk last year when World Cup was in Switzerland with all the pilots. 90% of those pilots are equipped with beamers. Some of them have, the rest has, it's 5-5% with regular reserve parachutes or with cutaway systems. And talking to them, I was surprised because in up-road, it makes sense. They have a lot of rotations and then it's okay. Most argued that If one part of your

paraglider is connected to your body, it already will not work anymore. If you have a line around your foot or your hand, nothing will happen because you need your paraglider to pull out the reserve. The second argument was that even if you experience, it's a lot more complicated to repack. and more expensive. That's it. Now, I just wanted to thank you for this very in-depth talk on cutaway systems, because I was

theoretically believing that they were the best ones until you came out with all of these extra things to consider. But I think I want to sum up this topic by saying to anybody who's listening out there to this knowledge, it doesn't matter whether you're in Europe, Asia, North America, or wherever you're tuning in from the world, go down to Urs's website. We put the link in the show notes below because we have heard about safety clinics. We have heard about beginner courses, but never really known that somebody was offering reserve clinics. I think you are making a big difference in your own bit, Urs. And I would encourage our audiences to go out and reach out to you for further guidance.

Because this can be a lifesaver. It's the need of the hour when we practice such an amazing sport. Thanks, Sanindra, for the little

Aninder: commercial insertion. It's in good faith. You can also travel. If you guys want to organize something somewhere else, I have the call.

Believe me, a person like Urs, if he says he's willing to offer his guidance, then anybody out there should be taking it because of all the four decades and counting of all the experience that he has had for four decades and counting but moving on or so it's hard to move on with you man because your knowledge is so full of depth and endless amazing conversations that we have it's like i i've lost track of time and i don't even care split it in two

yeah the reduction in attention spans might cause people to tune in but that's why we have the pause button and save option moving on three offerings from the industry round square and rogado one word answer which is the safest of them all all of them jeez that's the most diplomatic reply i've heard in my six years of flying look the thing is that There were good and bad round canopies on the market. There are good

Aninder: and less good square canopies on the market. There are good and less good round square canopies on the market. It's the same for the Rogalos. They are Rogalos tested a hundred of times on the market. They are working very well and they are other systems out there which offers in in in the commercial of the manufacturers the same features but they haven't been tested at all and they are not working at all as saying this i tested almost everything, all of those different type of reserves. And that was like 10 or 15 years offering safety clinics. I had beginners who saw the reserve for the first time doing everything right or wrong. I have a lot of experience with this. After one or two years, you see what's

working and what's not working. And this is on the practical side of this of the story we are talking about there is a technical side like packing packing around reserve is a no-brainer that's also safety packing a short more complex there are square parachutes for packing which are not symmetrical which is all it's almost the same to pack like a roller shoot you have to know what you do but the wrong ones were really easy And the round ones probably disappeared because of the certification process and because of the trend we are fully in now of lighter and lighter. The square parachutes are a little more stable and came into the game because you can design them with higher projected surface

area. So that means you can make them smaller than a round one, and you can get better results, sink rate wise. Because they cover more surface

area, that's why they're of lower sink rate. Yeah, you can build them flatter. There is a trade-off between round and semi-round. There were

Aninder: products of round parachutes on the market where the center was already pulled down quite a lot. to increase the the projected surface area but they were not stable they were not so stable as other ones because you have a profile it's like a it's like a profile all around which is similar so if they're pendling they will not they will not reduce the pendling as fast as like a square parachute where you have openings where air is blowing out and it's a different shape in the air. Square parachute is more stable after pendling, stops pendling faster than a round parachute. Design is important. We have excellent designs of round parachutes. I saw above ground and never got hurt just for testing. It

was working perfect. The thing is with the square parachutes, they glide like hell they go really fast they can go like 15 16 meters per second when we designed the pentagon with nova together we spent a lot of time comparing with other products and we spent a lot of time comparing the ground speed in calm conditions early in the morning nil wind conditions not a lot of air mass moving around and we found when you release

And when you go into the test procedure, EN and LTEF is asking for measuring the sink rate. The modern reserve parachutes, square, square, round, triangle, I'm talking about unsteerable, they glide like 14, 12, 14, 15 kilometers an hour. You mean forward? Forward. Forward.

Aninder: In Colmay, in airflow simulations, there are just a few manufacturers being able to do airflow simulations. And if they do, they know this exactly. They know that even if the designs are totally symmetric, they will glide. And they have to glide because it's not possible with 20 or 25 square meters to reach 5.5 meters per second without gliding. That's a simple calculation. So they glide like crazy. And then the discussion that always, people always say, I don't want to revolve because they have forward speed. And comparing to a pre-break position, we are at 17 kilometers an hour. So we are a little bit faster, but our sink rate is 35% better. The impact is much less than the other ones.

The forward speed, one can often read in a commercial of a manufacturer, we have a new reserve parachute, blah, blah, blah, and it's totally symmetric and it has no forward speed. Then I know immediately, probably they copied something, but if they really designed this reserve parachute from scratch and if they would have been tested it they would have know that such words are totally because it's just not possible it's not possible modern designs have forward speed like crazy and it's not a problem as long as you're not connected to a paraglider but as soon as you are connected to a paraglider The forward speed turns into a pretty high chance of a real good downplane. And they

will downplane. That's what we see from footage in safety clinics during the last two years. They are going more and more into downplane positions than we ever had before. Interesting. And that's why I'm convinced the certification process needs new rules. They need to try new things out. Because if you read the EN or LTF rules, how they test, they say glide, not more than a glide for one-to-one. How they measure it, because normally there is wind. They test their gliders or our shoots above water. You know, there is water temperature. The water temperature is different in winter or summertime. They draw up a line of 30 or 40 meters, and then they measure the time when the bullies at the

bottom of the line hits the water until the pilot hits the water. So there is wind, there is ground speed, different temperature of the water, different temperature of the air mass, moving air mass. It's a joke. It's really a joke. Sorry for telling you guys this, but in my opinion, it's a joke. if they do a statement like this glide not more than one to one so forward speed does not it's not allowed to exceed 5.5 meters per second if the maximum sync rate is 5.5 how they measure they are not able to measure true airspeed because for such a test you need to measure true

airspeed but they can't i was testing for a shoot for us at their location. And my ground speed, I took an instrument, and my ground speed was 50 kilometers an hour under the reserve parachute. What the hell, man? So there was wind speed and the speed of the reserve, and it got certified because the test of the line was good, was okay. But I was gliding with 50 kilometers an hour with a small kid in front of me because of the weight. It was... certified up to 145 kilos. So I had to bring a passenger and I was really scary. The actual EN LTF norm is not what we

Aninder: need for paragliding anymore. It's outdated. They need to change. That's why I'm really telling everybody who is asking my opinion is go for size, go for big. If you go for small, if you go for really small, then go for two that's even something i am personally thinking about for the future if i should go for two reserves now because we we have more and more the situation that the reserve flows the reserve ends up in the lines when the paraglider is rotating and you know then it's game over if you're unlucky then it was really game over if you're not if you're not high enough if you don't have time for plan b then you're done yeah that's the thing either big if you have a honest with one compartment go for a big

reserve because opening time is no topic anymore they all open fast pendling is no topic at all if the most important thing is that you're Parachute is dominating your paraglider. Whatever the paraglider does, your reserve parachute must dominate. And it won't if it's only 20 square meters large. Gopher size, if you're flying hot gliders, if there is a chance of a reserve opening, go for two. Thanks for pulling it

out so clearly there, Ursa. I had Alan Zoller from Air Turquoise on the show a few weeks ago. He said Group 6 is meeting repeatedly, hoping to improve shortcomings with new technologies catching up. So maybe there is hope and silver lining at the end of these. But while we are talking about this, two questions that I want to address before we move on. Let's start with the first one. And that is gradle attachment points. I recently saw a technology from Flyneo where they came out with a harness which had some sort of stand-up reserve system or something where they had radial attachment points. I'm not really sure exact location, but it said somewhere close to the carabiners. Is there

a possibility to move the attachment points or do the current attachment points serve the purpose well enough? uh saw the system as

Aninder: well it's a pretty interesting what they do is they i think they attach it on the regular shoulder attachment points but when there is a load on those it brings the pilot over a connection to the main carabiners in a upright position that's how i understood the system i have about close or even more than 400 openings

with reserves. Most of them were above ground. When I have the choice today where to connect my reserve parachute, it would be always into my main carabiners. Unless they were quick out in any other place. But what I've seen during my CIV clinics or what I have learned, what I have experienced during my openings is that Whenever you are connected to your reserve parachute on your shoulder straps and your main paraglider is connected to cooking points, as soon as the two forces are fighting each other, you're lying on your back like you turn around the turtle on the ground. And, you know, we argue so much also with Ola. Hope he's listening to it. Sorry, Ola, but I really have to tell you, you're

wrong. Because he says it's really bad to connect everything into the main carabiners. But I also had Hannes Popisch, as I told you lately, on the phone. He's testing a lot as well. And he did exactly the same experience. If you have connected everything to your main carabiners, from pilot's view, pilot's position, Nothing will change from before to after. Before, under your paraglider, with two forces fighting each other. You're sitting there like you would sit under your paraglider. Even if the paraglider is in front and the reserve parachute on one side or the back, you are sitting in the harness. If you want to put yourself into an upright position, all you do is you grab something in front of you

and you pull you up finish and that is really helpful if you have an opening close to the ground if you can't work on your paraglider anymore if you can't steer your steerable reserve if you're close to the ground if you hit the deck just after an opening if connected to the back you will hit on the back if you are connected in front everything to the front do this still action put you in an upright position you're landing on your feet i did it so often it's so obvious it's easier in the safety clinics i thought when they wait for the opening shock of the reserve parachute

it's time to work on their paragliders when connected to the back and the paraglider is already diving forward Most pilots are not able anymore to reach the risers or brake lines, brake handles to keep work going on their paragliders. If you wait too long, the chance is gone. You cannot influence your paraglider anymore because you're too far away back. and your hands are too short, especially for smaller pilots. We always had the same problem. When it stays locked in front, like school gliders, they don't collapse that fast. If you do it over water, you have sinking air masses, not a lot of wind, no turbulences. Stable gliders tend to go forward and stay locked in front of you. and the reserve is on

the back, if it's not dominating, then you are in a proper down plane position and can't do anything because you're like, you're on your back, your hands are too short, or you don't have the power to bring in the B lines because of the forces. Just out of curiosity, when the glider is

in front of you and completely open, what happens if you pull the brake lines? Does the canopy not come back over your head because of that force? It can. There is no single same reaction. Every situation is different. With the glider, wing load, meteorology around, there are

Aninder: so many unknown factors. You just have to try. When we do B-lines, brake lines, or pull the rear risers down, sometimes the glider hits the reserve parachute and you have a short phase of a little bit unorganized sync flight, but then it recovers. Some canopies have longer lines, some have shorter lines. So you cannot say in such a situation, this and this will happen. You have to try. That's all you can do in such a situation. When I come into the device is try always to do a symmetrical movement, a symmetrical action. Never go for an asymmetrical action. don't pull in one sea line one sea riser or one brake line this will always end up in a rotation and rotations are the last you are looking for under a

reserve parachute yeah that's scary man just imagining that because i'll tell you from personal experience i deployed on an ikuma 2 and i was flying a round reserve at that point of time with the gto light one I deployed and it was proper down planing. I tried pulling in the wing with

all my strength, but completely failed. It was just open and it was like so much strength that no matter how much energy I put in, it just wasn't fully fully open in front of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, that's the classic one. So eventually what happened, this was after a double twisted auto rotation. I had been in the mess for about probably 60 seconds. I don't know how long because your perception of time is messed up. But yeah, double twisted auto rotation. I've deployed the reserves, opens flawlessly. The canopy comes out of its twist, wants to fly, but is pulling in the down planing direction. But somehow, I don't know if it worked or if this is my perception now because it's been like

three, four years. or longer, but I just pulled the brake lines and then eventually I could bring back the glider at the same level as the reserve. It was like for a regalo system, if I'm not mistaken, where it had a lot of forward speed, but it was coming down with the comfort of the reserve, round reserve as well. I impacted in trees, so I never had to hit the ground. You're a lucky guy. See, the thing is that in that situation,

Aninder: there are two possibilities. You can wait and pray, if you're lucky a thermal or turbulence or the valley wind will collapse your wing okay if you have chances if you just if okay i can maybe i can do something if you can work on the glider if it's not totally twisted use the brake lines if nothing is twisted try to go full speed if you're still sitting in your pod harness go on full speed the glider should collapse it will take the whole energy out of this constellation. So you have to try whatever is possible. If there is a twist, if you can't work on the lines, if you can't

work on the risers, if you can't work on the speed system, then you're done, or your angel will do it for you. If you hit the ground with a really stable glider, with a school glider, which doesn't collapse so easy, and with a small parachute, a modern parachute, a light one, you will

really hurt yourself very bad yes just i don't know if this is hypothetical or not but if you're coming in a down plane with fairly fast speed should you try and impact on your side or just try and turn last minute face down to prevent your back and hips from hitting the ground first oh not sure the thing is Coming to that idea is already a task. But what I learn quite often testing my reserves is that the whole setup, you

Aninder: are so trapped in all those fixations. You don't move like you're a prima ballerina. You can't just turn around. There are forces pulling on your body, on your harness. In the early days, we taught or we read in the books or we taught pilots try to do a proper landing roll. This is almost not possible because you're not in the situation To be totally upright, to put your knees together, to roll over one side of your body in order not to hurt yourself too much. It's like you smash a potato on the ground. That's how it feels. If your glider is connected to you, if there's still

force from your glider, the parachute connected to you, you won't move that easy anymore. But let's say... My question was stemming from the

fact that in cases where it is possible for the pilots to actually move. So in those kinds of situations where you have freedom of movement, how does brace for impact situation looks like? Because of course we are talking about a topic which is very less discussed, but I think PLF and brace for impact timings are even less discussed in the industry. With 400 openings under your experience, how do you manage things when they come? The last two seconds. When I have the choice, I want to break my legs or arms before anything else. So those are the parts I'm stretching out

Aninder: before impact. Arms out, legs out. When you have a hard landing or when you know the landing is going to be difficult, there is a lot of thermals, there's a lot of wind flying cross country, landing on a nasty place, my hot harness is open 250 meters above ground for landing procedure and i'm trying for a proper landing procedure in order to land where i would like to land my legs are out and i'm upright it helped me already several times to save my back when I hit the ground hard. It's the best protector. Interesting. Quickly, without spending a lot of time, tandem rescues

are less used, so less about as well. I saw a tandem rescue from Icaro paragliders having a descent rate of six meters per second. What is the maximum desirable descent rate offered by the industry under certain guidelines and specifications? First, we have to understand this six

Aninder: meters per second. I think that's to the listeners pretty important that they know about those six meters. The thing is, Jan says 5.5 meters per second. And this is always calculated to sea level. On a certified product, sea level, you would have 5.5 meters per second if you have connected 100 kilograms to that reserve parachute saying that is if you are flying here in the alps the chances for a reserve deployment is i would say between 500 up to 3 000 most happened here in switzerland around 2000 meters and the sink rate the same product

tested at sea level or 2000 meters to get the same sink rate of 5.5 meters per second the hooking weight would be around 75 80 kilograms we are talking under labor conditions yeah ideal conditions ideal conditions but why this guy had to throw the reserve because of strong thermal winds so these factors are you have to add it will be worse or be higher What we have to understand is that the impact energy is not increasing linear, it's increasing in double. It's increasing times by times. So impact energy will increase squared to the sink rate, the higher sink rate. So five meters per second means you're impacting at 25 square. Looks like, yeah, it really, the impact energy is a lot harder

than only the difference on 5.5 meters per second when you jump from an object with that height. If you increase the height, it will hurt yourself more if you're flying in the Alps. Choose a reserve with a sink rate or with a surface which allows you still a good sink rate higher up on 2000 meters, let's say. two and a half thousand meters my recommendation is always go bigger calculate in 10 or 20 percent in the regular reserve parachutes where you have five or five point five meters per second choose a reserve which is not don't go to the top like 100 kilos if you're 80 kilos choose a hundred don't choose the reserve certified up to 80 kilos always go for a marching Between your takeoff

weight without paraglider to the maximum certified weight of the parachute. Then you're on the safer side. Interesting. Would you want

to click on the link I sent you? This reserve says less than 6.5. And it seems like it's not certified because there's no certification mentioned there. It's in the chat link. Is it even possible to sell reserves which are uncertified on the market? Or it does have a... It

Aninder: looks like it is certified. It says reference number EAPR. That was the certification we had a few years ago. For a short time, Guido Reich did his own thing. i think all i told in this podcast about this guy so it it looks like it's certified but listeners also have to understand this eon eon certification allows maximum sync rate of 5.5 meters per second where ltf the german certification allows 6.8

Aninder: meters per second sink rate as a maximum. So maybe this was tested according to LTF standard. Is EN safer than LTF? You have to understand the ideology behind. EN is limiting it on 5.5 meters per second with their test procedure above water. And those gliders are flying. The shoots tested EN, at least here in Switzerland, I think there is no other certification, even in France, those shoots are gliding. They are gliding like crazy.

LTF says our shoots or our testing procedure is we pull it behind a truck. and measure the resistance. And they have a reference shoot. They calibrate their instruments with a reference. You can only go there at a certain pressure, hectopascal pressure, atmospheric pressure. You can't test every day. They shoot behind the car and measure resistance. They calculate the sink rate. and their total sink rate they accept is 6.8 meters per second but they also tell you don't load up the maximum weight to this glider in order to reach this sink rate go for much lighter than this shoot they explain to the pilots take off at least 20 25 that's an official recommendation reduce 25 of the maximum wing loads tested i

think their approach to measure the sink rate is better than the ian certification because the test procedure dragging the shoot behind the car there is no glide possible If you would have an asymmetrical design, it would hit the ground or it would go wild. If it's symmetric, you will drag it behind, create effective drag, and the result will be clearer than from Eon, where the shoot is gliding almost like a revolve.

This is a lot of information for me. I'm wondering that we opened the box of Pandora. Maybe not everybody likes to hear this, but that's the

Aninder: truth. It's really the truth. Look, DHV is still offering certifications, but there is not one single manufacturer I know in the present who is still going there. They are all going for EN-Test. Don't ask why. When we designed round parachutes, we did LTF tests because we wanted to sell also in Germany and those markets. And I know from experience that their tests, they are really a pain. It's really a pain.

First of all, thank you for being brave enough to bring it out. And then secondly, thank you for doing it. It's very kind of you to give this information to our audiences. All free of cost, if I must say. that's the most generous part about it talking about sync rates and all of these if you put a tandem reserve on a solo paraglider and throw that the question that i'm trying to ask is bigger the better the case in reserves are up to only a certain point as you said if you're 80 use a one up to 100 but why can't we use 160 reserve when you're 80 i was instructed for the Swiss

Aninder: Angling Federation for quite a long time in this reserve parachute department. And we did a lot of openings with instructors to teach them. Unfortunately, they stopped. It was a good laboratory for testing. And we had kind of experienced pilots like instructors, cross-country pilots, you know, professional hackers for reserve parachutes. We also tried tandem reserve parachutes. connected to one pilot to see what happened. And the interesting part on this was that we can go on single reserve parachutes designed for single pilots. You can go pretty high. They still work fine. We have experience from pilots, like 60 kilo pilots under a Beamer Hurt 130, so almost half of the weight of the

tested top weight. And it still works fine. But under the tandem, these guys had, when there was wind, they had too much movement at the end. They had more movement in the shoot. They had sometimes also small collapses under their wings. I also made the same experience when I tested Beamer 3 for 170 kilos. The first 20 jumps I did without passenger because it was too dangerous. and that it's above ground in thermic conditions and sometimes you have collapses the shoot is next to you and the same altitude it collapses the tree opens you have more this kind of things but that's no big deal i would say it still work it's maybe small disadvantage but it's not an advantage the larger big disadvantage in

my point of view is that If you're on the ground with such a huge monster, and if there is still valley wind, or if you are in South Africa or in Brazil breaking world records, you don't want to be connected to such a monster. It will be a nightmare. More problems on the ground, I think,

than in the air. And the collapses are on the canopy, not on the round reserve surface, isn't it? I also, as I said, I also had collapses on the

Aninder: reserve. okay you are too light on it but as i said it's no big deal we'll reopen again it's not a high aspect 6.8 wing above here it's small and compact and the weight is further down into a small collapse it's boom and it's it reopens again for sure if it happens close to the ground you will hit the deck a little bit harder it's not an argument that would go for For big, there's no way. It can also be too big. It needs longer opening time. Therefore, EN certifications give five meters per second for tandem reserves. It has to open within five meters per second

out of trim speed. On a solo parachute, it's four meters per second out of trim speed. So they have a few in between. It needs to break. to prove that it opens within this time. So there is more volume needed for opening such a big reserve parachute. Makes me curious about military reserves

that we often see. The reason why this came to my mind is because you mentioned that you don't want to be dragged on the ground. I saw a video where there was a military paratrooper coming down on the round canopy and just getting dragged through the fields endlessly, which looked like a very sad scene for the guy. So what I'm wondering is that these canopies are much bigger than ours. they are still not achieving higher descent rates and we with smaller canopies are achieving almost same descent rates is there any science behind them using bigger canopies or us using smaller canopies what we have to understand is military parachutes they were designed for keeping the pilot in good shape they

or the parachutes that Those days, they were jumping four or five times a day. They don't want to have a broken arm or a broken leg. And the military

Aninder: designs, they were not just the pilots. They were like food, water, guns, everything. And they were weighing 120, 130 kilos. And one of the demands I've read in a book for those famous T-10, I think that was the shooter, their demand was landing at an altitude of 1500 meters above sea level with load of 130 kilos sink rate not higher than 5.5 meters per second and no forward speed So that makes a hell of a difference to what our industry is doing right now. First of all, we see the reserve parachute as it's to survive an accident. I think the claim is not to stand up after a reserve opening and walk away. It would be nice, and I think that should be the goal. But the idea is that you survive an impact

from such a crash.

The problem is most of the time it works. We have a lot of pilots reporting the reserve opening and I walked away or I broke my leg or I hurt my back. The serious problems are the problems that comes after a few years, compressed vertebrae. Those things you will feel when you're 60, 70 years old.

The problems I think we have is that we're going too far into this light and small direction and that's where we have to pay attention now. We could offer better designs to the community, but I think one of the much bigger problems is the formation and the way people are handling or treating their equipment and that they are not prepared for a reserve opening or for such a situation when the shit hits the van. We have problems with compatibility and people doing things with their equipment you won't believe. I think that's where the federations need to come into the game and tell us we need certain rules to make the sport safer. Like they did with the triple C thing, no? Because they

eventually... Yeah. And that's the army. The army, they create standards and everybody has to follow. Even packing, rigging, all

Aninder: these things. And that's what is missing. That part is definitely missing in our sport. It blows my mind that there are better

alternatives available. Let's say the military is able to design... parachutes which allow their soldiers to be deployed with all the gear and everything and still get up, run, and fight. And we, on the other hand, are paying a premium price just to survive and not strive. Why can't we just make it better when we have all the money in the world to fuel the R&D? I think one of the reasons, I'm not sure if I'm right, one reason

Aninder: is this X-Alps game which is really now in, which arrived at the student, at the beginner. It is beautiful. Don't get me wrong on this. I really like that the sport moved or developed within the last 15, 20 years, but now it's so extreme. Everybody wants lighter and smaller. We are now at the point where everybody just wants this small and light equipment and that's not good. you see the disadvantages as well of this direction we are going into and the other thing is also i'm not sure what will happen in four or five years with all this equipment aging maintenance we have a hard time explaining to pilots the valley where our business is located is a there's a lot of flying in there and Nowadays in spring, almost every

second or third week, we have a reserve deployment or we have pilot in the tree or there is something. And they show up and say, oh, I just had a reserve opening. Nothing happened. I landed in the bushes or trees. Here's my equipment. Please check and refold and let me know when it's ready. You have to check the chute. You have to check the paraglide. You have to check the harness for damages. that's written in the handbooks if you read the handbooks of today's paragliding reserve parachute manufacturers or harness manufacturers they all write if reserves if you have an opening you need to recheck if you test above water manufacturers say you need to re-measure the lines that light

equipment if we check after deployment if you were not landing on a grassy hill, if there were branches around, if you are not looking very well by pulling in the material, stocking it into your rucksack, stuffing it into your rucksack, The material is gone. The chutes are destroyed and you can't repair an ultralight reserve parachute. It's dangerous. It's really dangerous. It's the same for the very light harnesses. We are so close to the edge with the material and it's so expensive. And then you call the pilots and we are sorry, but you need a new reserve parachute because it's damaged. It's not worth to repair it. They are not always amused about such phone calls. And one has to

understand this as well. When 15 years ago, or even short, 13, 15 years ago, when you landed in trees with your reserve, it was no problem. Maybe there was some resin or something from the trees which stitched together, you had to clean this. Maybe a line was broken, you repaired the line. But today's equipment, It's a total failure. You throw it away and it costs a fortune. And just because of 300 grams, I don't get it. Customers, they want the lightest. And then they always ask, are you running up every day 1,000 meters of altitude to make a flight? Or are you more the pilot cable car style? And 90% are cable car flyers. And then they ask, why? Why would you like to spend? It's good. I take your money.

No problem. Thank you very much. But I don't see a need for such fragile and expensive equipment. Totally agree with this. It's so relatable

because the deployment I was speaking about, yeah, 2019, I think it was, I was flying a GTO Light 1. and the force of that auto-rotation created rips in the material. Nothing safety-oriented. The straps were intact. I'm not going to deny that. GTO Light 1 was very robust in the straps that they had, but the cosmetic fairing got ripped apart by the G-forces in that spiral. I landed and sent it to Woody Valley via post, and I was like, guys, this is what happened. Can you please fix it? And they were like, buy a new one. Fixing it is going to cost more. Yeah, also,

Aninder: people... I didn't want to understand. They went to safety clinics, did maneuvers with ultralight harnesses. They did dynamic reserve parachute openings from a spiral dive with a lot of opening shock force. And they were surprised that their harnesses were... Now, if everyone would read their manuals, they would not buy such equipment. But more than reserve, this scares me about this. there was this guy there was

this incident about cloud suck in beer yeah i think a year ago which was pretty famous and that guy said that he had some sort of retina damage from all the g-forces that he was going under what i'm wondering is that forces of nature are relentless when they want to show their vengeance and force it is truly and phenomenally scary and God forbid, if shit hits the fan like that, you want the safest and the most robust equipment out there. Why would you even take a chance of going with paper-thin equipment and still blowing a fortune? Like, nothing costs less than a thousand euros these days. Yeah, I really, as I said, I really like, I really like the spirit of this Ixops. But now we got to the point where we

Aninder: are, they are flying with material, with one-way material. Yeah. Yeah. And one can buy these products now at the market. You can buy a X-Alps Harness Pro type. And I ask myself, what the fuck? Who needs such a thing? If I'm looking for the last kilogram or gram to save, I eat different or I do something else to lose a little bit of weight. Leave the GoPro behind for Instagram. That's going to cost 500 grams. Yeah. What's the race? What race is going on here? It's free time. Come on, guys. Enjoy. Have fun. Just to put it to rest, this is what consumerism looks like in a

capitalist economy. We buy things we don't need to. What was that quote? That you buy things that you don't need to impress people that you don't like to. Something like that. That's funny. Glad I can speak all of this with you, man. So nice to be in that comfort zone with you. Another question. Often I've seen these space agencies having two or three parachutes bringing down an object, usually a capsule in which there are humans and kind of people coming back from the orbit. So coming down under two reserves, is that better than one or is it not to be tested or not to be tried because it can be dangerous? Interesting question. Another question. Why do you think it's nasal? you're talking about why do you

Aninder: think they're such a design and why do you think they're still round canopies because they are the simplest and most efficient ones which are proven time and tested over the period of years simple as that i think they know airflow simulation and they know how to calculate those things And they don't want to have their capsule hitting the deck with 20 or 30 kilometers an hour and rolling on the ground. I think, I'm not sure, but I personally think that it works because they're having three identical systems. So they are not fighting each other. So if one looks at their landings, it looks really very stable. And it's probably early in the morning or whatever, they probably choose their best time to land

somewhere in the desert, maybe not when it's stormy. But there is none of these three parachutes fighting each other. And that's because they are most probably opening within milliseconds at the same time, the same way. They have the same shape, they have the same form, the same CW efficiency. And I think paragliding, I remember when tandem flying started, it was in the early 90s. The Germans had not tested parachute for tandem flying and they had no certification rules for testing such a big parachute. So what they did is they did tests outside above water. by throwing out two identical round large parachutes and they finally came to an end that it will save their lives so for that period until they

had the certification and the products for tandem reserve parachutes that was the way to go for a flying tandem in germany from my experience we tested it as well with rogalo shoots two roller shoots open at the same time it's no problem at all because you have 80 square meters out there and it's a really small decent rate we know or we even have video evidences from pilots throwing throwing the first shoot which got caught in the lines didn't open throwing the second shoot then the second should open it brought some dynamic into the whole system, then the first chute opened as well. They came down under a Rogal chute, connected to a round parachute, and it worked also very well. So I think

if I would be in a really frightening situation out there, and if I would have two reserve systems, if the first reserve system is open But probably not working as I was hoping. Not working very well or seeing me drifting towards an obstacle. I don't want to make a connection with it. Then I would toss my second reserve as well. Why not? Can you toss it just for the sake of it? Is there any disadvantage in tossing a second reserve

as well? I don't know. It's just an introduction. When I see the first option is semi-successful or not as successful as I was hoping, I would

Aninder: bring in my second poker to the game. The reason why I asked is that I heard about this from a friend of mine saying that there was a person coming in

under two reserves in an SIV landing in water. But because of the increased descent speed, he had a sprained ankle. Wondering, did it happen because of two reserves or some other dynamic of physics playing into this incident? He was in a clinic? Yeah. So everything without

Aninder: video evidence is just... Not really worth talking about. That's my opinion. Because also here, every case is different according to material, pilot's input, wind, meteorology. But if he was in a safety clinic, they should have video evidence. That would be interesting to see, but I have at least three or four footages of such cases and they look perfect. So there are no known factors of reserves downplaning causing

any sort of negative impact, influence on the... Okay. I want to touch quickly upon the topic of packing the reserves. I don't know if this is a rumor, but I heard AcroPilots were trying this out. I'm not going to take any names, but they said they were stuffing the reserve together and pushing it in the container, making sure the lines were untangled. because all a canopy needs is the opening to make sure the air goes in. So what I'm wondering is, does a pack job really matter if the lines are untangled while installing the reserves? Your pack job matters a lot to

Aninder: modern reserves. The problem is not really the packing anymore, as long as you follow the manual, the instructions in the manual. Your question regarding the aerobatic pilots, I would answer like this they are trash packing it's well known from from the skydivers they also trash pack their canopies and it works but if you trash pack you gotta have to know exactly what you do because if you do just a small detail the wrong way then you have a problem and this is why if you're not experienced if you're not having a second chance or a backup, like the aerobatic pilots, I can risk that the first chute is going out there and it's not working, so they have a second one. But I highly recommend to repack the

chute in a manner that it is close to what the manufacturer is telling you. Because he normally is the one who is experienced. If you trash pack, also I can only speak for a Rugal system, Let's say it this way. The more precise you pack the shoot, the more cleaner are your openings. If those guys out there, they repack a Beamer 3 in 10 minutes and it works. Almost every week now we see Beamer 3 openings from aerobatic pilots. That's their daily business. But they have often a lot of twists. And I think that if you spend another 20 minutes, we're talking about a time difference from 20 minutes, from 10 minutes to 30 minutes. If you're doing a really proper repack job, it will probably also open a little bit

more controllable. If the fabric, the cloth, is opening on one side faster than on the other side, that results in a twist. I mean, that favorites the spinning of a chute. If you have a few base openings on a square round reserve part of chute not lined up the proper way, if they're further down inside of the fabric, that results in an asymmetrical opening. So you have movement in your shoot, which you probably won't or wouldn't have if you spend more time and do it not the trash way. Fair enough. So to conclude, trash packing works, but only if

you are an expert of the subject for ages and it comes with its own strings attached. So just be aware if that side of packing excites you. Yes. Plus

Aninder: you will have a second reserve Vizio. Then I will sign this statement. I love the little disclaimer at the end, the second safety net. When in

your career should you seriously start considering to pack your own reserves? This is subjective. A lot of this depends on how much money do you want to blow in repacking. But to become a good pilot, a self-sufficient, independent pilot... Like how many hours or how many years into the flying, you're like, all right, now I've let enough people take this responsibility for me. But it's high time that I become a packer that I can trust my life with. Difficult question because I think it depends also the location, the country, where you are. Like

Aninder: over here in Switzerland, we have a very high level of well-formed riggers with a lot of experience, with a lot of knowledge. And in my opinion over here, I don't see a reason, unless you're an acropilot, acropilot You spend a fortune being an acro-pilot and giving your reserve parachute to a rigger every time. It costs quite a bit of money. But as a weekend pilot or even competition pilot, I would say, let this job do a professional. It's not only the packing of your chute. I don't see a real big problem in packing the chutes anymore, as I said. already in this discussion folding the reserve parachute is not a miracle anymore you can do a lot of mistakes and it still opens the problem is the

compatibility and the different parts in skydiving you have maybe five or ten harness manufacturers and you have probably the same amount of of shoot manufacturers and they are all certified by the fai it's really it costs a lot of money and they follow certain rules and standards which we are in our community far away from what where they are so to combine those products it's a lot easier than in our sport in our sport we have many different manufacturers we have so many different outer containers like front container side bottom top whatever everybody invents a new closure system we don't have any standards at all and then on the other side we have the manufacturers of the reserve parachutes they come with

their systems they everybody has their own ideas of how to design that in the container back and now we need to combine a reserve parachute to the in the container back of your harness manufacturer there are so many possibilities to fail that's the problem we have so many accidents where none of the pilots throw their reserves and we don't know sometimes we don't know if they ever tried or if it was not possible to get it out and that's where i see the bigger potential for problems regarding this matter and if you are in an area where you do not have just professionals around the corner i would really look for a good formation by someone who really understands how to do it and that you

learn to put together your equipment and if you buy other or new equipment get trained again when following the manual most important is the compatibility test Put your harness into a simulator, sit in there with everything, gloves, goggles, helmet, put everything on you're flying with, shake that thing a little bit and try to open the reserve you packed before. I think with tests like this, we could avoid a lot of problems. Indeed. The part where you mentioned that paragliding has more variables not addressed than skydiving is the key because of

the regulation and the endless combination that anybody who wants to be a manufacturer comes out with in good faith. I'm not denying the fact that everyone wants to put out their product with the best safety, but still an unregulated market. This is the Achilles heel that exists. But for ones who are wanting to learn this, in modern day world, a lot of learning is has gone digital. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, social media scrolling, doom scrolling, let me face it clearly, is becoming the norm of learning or finding the new trends. For those pilots out there who are referring to YouTube, and I know there are, me included sometimes, a lot of times manufacturers go out there and put

out instructional videos. What should be kept in mind when you're learning to repack a reserve aircraft? from a YouTube video or a reel? I

Aninder: think all of us are in a community. I think if in such things, it's really important if there is an exchange. If you can talk to other pilots, join a club. There are people out there which are probably a little bit more experienced or it's good to have that four-eyed principal. Someone else looking at your equipment after you repacked your reserve parachute because you might get disturbed, you might get a phone call in between and you forgot something. It happens so quickly that we are not focused anymore, especially nowadays with all these influences from outside. So I think it's really helpful if you have someone who can join, supervise you or give you feedback. Find somebody like Urs Harry and ask

them to be a mentor. No, also, there are a lot of pilots out there with a lot of experience, too. That's no problem. Of course. But I think, Urs, with the amount of knowledge you have, you should have digital learning courses. The industry needs you, man. Yeah. I'm just retired. No, you can't afford to. Yeah. You bring too much awesome. Maybe I'll do something. When I get bored, that's my problem. I never get bored.

I think this podcast talk is the first step in this direction. Thank you for being a part of it. I'm pretty sure the ones who have tuned in and who have listened so far are appreciating and have the same gratitude as I do. But let's talk a little bit about materials and innovation, Urs, because you probably have seen this industry evolve since the beginning of its time. and to modern day paragliding. How have you seen the zero porosity materials? Was it galvanor or something? Forgot I spoke about this very briefly to Franta when he was on the show. But a lot of materials in reserve differ from regular paragliding canopies. What does innovation and material change look like over the years from

your perspective? Time being now in this sport or in this business with reserve parachutes, I think the biggest game changer within the last

Aninder: 15, 17 years were the light fabrics, light grip stopper. That really brought us products from 2.5, 2.9 kilos to...

one kilogram or let's say 1.5 kilograms it doesn't matter but on half of the half of the weight as before that's really great that was a really game changer at that time and that was also motivation for us to start new products like beamer 2 beamer 3. at that time the old concept was gone because it was too heavy 2.9 kilos for 34 square meters i think this is great it's not bad but maybe it would be better if we would use this technology to design products which are a little bit bigger or would have other forms but the market is not ready there is no other market

where you have to save every centimeter of material you throw away because it's a price war it's a product that disappears within 15 minutes into the harness no one sees it no one sees the quality no one sees the fabric the pilots out there do not know the difference between cheap or expensive fabric and that's where i see a little bit the problem So instead of exhausting designs weight-wise, industry could bring out much better products by trying different designs. Nowadays, you have to design your parachute for the fabric roll width. Sorry, one more

time. What does that mean? When one design a new reserve parachute, You have to choose the parts that way that the nesting fits to the width of

Aninder: your roll you buy from the supplier of the fabric. You don't want to waste too much fabric because the fabric is the most expensive part of a reserve parachute. But if you talk about the reserve parachute, production cost is ridiculous. It's really ridiculous. But if the industry or if the community would go for, okay, let's spend one and a half times more for such a product, I'm sure we would have much better results. We would have better designs pretty fast. Okay. A question that comes to our mind is, why can't reserve parachutes have multiple

sewings? Is it because of the safety region the fabric might rip apart? An example is, let's say, BGD gliders. They have a lot of different colors, so they are sewn in blocks and pieces of small fabrics. Why can't we use the same for reserves, which will save up on all the wastage that we have? I think one of the reasons, as I said at the entrance of this podcast, is Nowadays, if you want to be successful in the reserve

Aninder: parachute market, there are two topics and small packing volume. Every seam, every tape, every reinforcement combination, mixture of fabric, that's another thing. To come back to your 0P thing, 0P, the problem is it opens pretty hard opening shock. It's heavy because it's most of the time zero P fabric is coated or it's proceeded the way that it's getting very expensive and there is no room for innovation. What a

shame. But where does the 10-year rule come from then? Because let's say the fabric is fine after 10 years because it never really sees the light. The lines don't seem to be degrading that much. Why are we replacing after 10 years? There are different approaches to that topic. There are

Aninder: manufacturers out there, they say 10 plus 2 years. It will really... You do a really deep inspection after 10 years, and then we will decide for another two years. The beamer is like 12 to 14 years for some models. There is the fabric and the lines, they're losing strength during that period. There is a less old plasticizer softener. The softener, you have to process with the air, with humidity. So you are losing elasticity in those products. That's one point. Another point is using air. That's another topic. Looking at the equipment we daily get in our workshop, in our atelier for repacking, for servicing, we have customers I told after two years, listen, your glider or your reserve

parachute you have to swallow away pretty soon because the way you treat your material you have to take care more about your products and especially now with all these light products it's even more a topic and so we have reserve parachutes and people are not treating them very carefully after tests or by repacking they are damaged after a very short time already. And that didn't happen 10 years ago when the fabric was double as strong as it is right now. That's one part of the story. Another part is that in the past 20, 30 years, there was always development. And after 10 years, after five years, after 10 years, one could say, okay, the new designs are better. Now it's time for a

replacement. And the third thing is that I know that DHV did once, but that's a long time ago. They did once, did a load test of older reserve parachutes, 10, 15 years old from hang gliders. Most of them exploded in the first drop test. One could see the strength of the fabric really lost during that time. It's like climbing ropes with climbing equipment, carabiners who have the same rules. I think it's also to ensure the designers, the manufacturers from liability stuff. Makes sense. But how do you guys decide that this reserve is not fly worthy anymore or is it

reaching that stage? Are there visible signs or is there a porosity test and the usual ones? First we do the visible tests on the paraglider. We

Aninder: check risers, lines, swing. canopy we hang it up in our room and we have very strong lights from the other side so we can walk around and see if there are damages the history is important we want to know how many openings this reserve had how many went into water we have a database from our customer on the porosity side It is really difficult. Most of the porosimeters out there, most of the technical gear is not able to measure the porosity because it's too porous. You cannot measure. There is a textile clock, an old one from Kretschmer. That's the only one who can measure. They're very expensive. New instruments are like 10,000 euros. Universities do have such equipment. but not in our

industry. And we also cannot compare because we have no experience from this kind of things. But I would say so far, the tests, strength-wise, they are really good. And the experience tells us we are in a good way. I'm not sure for the ultralight equipment, no. Unfortunately, Sometimes the industry needs accidents before they change to anything. I don't hope we have to see that, but it could be the case in the next few years.

Sorry to hear that. Keeping our fingers crossed, that is not the case. But from a consumer's perspective, what are the best ways to maintain a reserve parachute and take care of it? Keep it and care it like your baby. Don't sit on it. Humidity is a problem. Don't put the harness into wet

Aninder: grass. When you land in water, don't try it on the sun. Don't, you know, ground handling. Don't ground handle your reserve parachute. I get always shocked when I see All our aerobatic pilots drying their Beamers III after they landed in the water on Lake Guadalcee, they ground handle it. You destroy a glider within minutes. Even on a grassy slope, you can destroy the fabric within two or three moves. The friction with the ground basically takes away... No, not the friction, but also on the grass, you have sharp grass when it's cutted fresh. I see. when you step on it when it slides on it can be a really a fabric killer right away so really take care about your reserve parachute it's your life insurance

it's your last chance it's really an important part of your equipment i'm guilty of that because i've gone out and aired my reserve before repacking you just inflate it and then it does drag a little bit on the grass here and there yeah Don't do that with light fabric. When you hang it up in the room with strong lights, you will see immediately what you destroyed. I can share some pictures later on in our workspace. It's really, sometimes it's difficult to decide when it's a two or three year old modern reserve parachute. Should we still fold this one or tell the guy we have a problem? I know what happens on the load tests at the certification. Over 90% of the shoots are failing on the first drop. We

are limited with the light fabric. These damages are not visible to the naked eye. It's only when you put bright lights and those kind of things. Yeah, when you have an understanding of all those things. so how does airing out a reserve look like let's give a solution to the listeners what when you have to air your reserve out before sending it for repack how do you do that yeah first thing most important thing put yourself in with the harness into a simulator throw your harness to see if it opens avoid every single contact with sharp edges so try to do it indoor in the gym area or with a man with a school where they have a large free space and then take your glider take your shoot on the lines together hang it up for

48 hours in the humidity must be good it shouldn't be too dry because of electrostatic charging you will feel it immediately in winter time this is a problem when you have strong heating going on in a room when the air is very dry the fabric charges itself is electrostatic so it's the panels are sticking together ah so they're not airing out properly yeah okay so you really then you need a little bit you need then you can spray a little bit water into the air and keep it 48 or even longer if you have time it was compressed the material so keep it open hanged up in a room Don't

stand on it. And then we pack it flat place. Also here again, no sharp items around. Be careful. No ground handling with your reserve. No ground handling at all. This is absolute no-go. Take your old reserve. Instead of slowing away, go ground handle with your old reserve, but not with your current reserve. This is a bad idea. If you want to see how strong you are. No, but the reason why I'm asking this is there's so many

videos on YouTube where SIE can show the reserves being cleared out on the side of the lake. I attempt to write comments in there, but I stopped.

Aninder: Because people think then, oh, the high adventure has a problem because they're using bad material and so on. I stopped. And when I see people ground handling with light material, I always think, oh, that's good for the market. pretty soon a new reserve parachute yeah stupidity has

no bounds but okay so light parachute is definitely a no-no but what about a regular parachute what happens can you stretch the lines as well what are the big problems of airing out your reserve out in the wind it's just mechanical mechanical issue from how the fabric or lines get in contact lines which are very processed very hard lines which are processed very soft if they get if they caught something like a velcro

Aninder: tape or something you're wrong or not so treat it as your baby fair enough duly noted and i'm super surprised nobody talks about this these things like why doesn't this come in the manual Why is the industry not making people aware of this? Because I've been airing my results and they get

dragged a little bit here and there on the ground all the time. It's really strange. I just made an experience on YouTube as a customer and he

Aninder: wrote me, why does the Beeman needs to be re-inspected after four years every second year? And we have reasons for that because everybody treats his product different. You have people who have an opening. We have people who never touch the reserve parachutes. And he said, it has got to do something with the quality because we wrote that after each throwing or after each opening, you have to inspect. We have someone inspecting your glider. And he said, I just found a manufacturer with latest, lightest reserve parachute. And in his manual, he said, first inspection after six openings and i wrote him back listen that's fine to me just to let you know this i checked the specs they are using the same

material as we do same lines same fabric but all i can tell you is that we have had different products in our workshop of the first opening ultralight fabric When you land in the trees, when you land in the bushes, or when you pull it behind you on the ground, when you're coming out from a sieve or from the boat to the floor, when you drag it behind you, you can destroy your whole shoot. In my opinion, it's better if one controls it after a reserve and opening. And he was really... It was a pain. He said, you're using cheap material. I'm buying the other product because this manufacturer says after six openings. That's how the scene is thinking out there. And that makes it very hard. If you are

honest, you're not selling a lot. That's a fact. Ignorance is a bliss in human existence. The ones who are being ignorant for their own reasons.

But Curiosity brings me to the skydiving industry again. Skydiving canopies don't seem to run out for 10 years, 15 years, and they go through a lot more than what our reserves will ever do. And they're also zero porosity and stuff like that. I'm not considering the lightweight reserves just to put it on record. But our skydiving canopy is much more robust when it is almost not possible to replicate in paragliding. Why can't we learn from skydiving for longevity and usage? Their equipment is much heavier than our equipment. They're still compact. They're

Aninder: still compact. When you see them packing, they sweat a lot. When it's hot outside, to put it back in that pod, it's really a technique. That's the first thing. The second thing is that They work with sliders. They don't have so hard openings. They have much more controlled openings. They do not have other things around when they open. They don't have friction of putter gliding lines. Their openings are much more controlled than our ones. And I think one very important reason is that if you talk to skydivers or i was in that scene for four or five years when you look at them how they treat their equipment when they look at us they think are you nuts are you treating your reserve parachute or your equipment just

like i saw it right now they are shocked they treat their equipment like a very important part of their things. They look at their storage. They don't sit on it. All the parts are highly sophisticated, very expensive, no sharp edges. It's a completely different philosophy.

compared to ours the material is for sure much much stronger than we are using much thicker much stronger but does any reserve in paragliding market offer safety in free fall speeds or does it just not make sense for manufacturers to go in that regard I think there is one manufacturer

Aninder: advertising or did advertise last year that he had a higher opening speed, tested his shoots with a higher opening speed. I don't see a reason for that. That we reach freefall speed, I think so far there was one case so far which had a line rupture and had a freefall opening. With our harness, we can't go so fast. We can't fall so fast that this would be necessary. And you can find footage on YouTube of people free falling Beamish 3. And when I saw that, I thought, are you nuts? Because we do not have sliders. This is really dangerous because if we set up our equipment for free fall, we would need to slow down the opening process. because it's a problem for the body if you if the open opening of our

shoots it's so fast and so hard if you don't have a slider if you're in a free fall situation it is really a problem so you're telling me there were people skydiving with beamers no but we saw base champions from tandems they jumped out of in front and they were waiting 10 seconds and they tossed the beamer and it worked. I was surprised that it was in one piece after the opening. The actual EN test, you have to go two times through the shock test, the opening test from the helicopter, and they fly at a speed of 40 meters per second with the maximum payload and they

release so it looks like it's the actual designs are strong enough to handle such an opening but i wouldn't do it and for sure i wouldn't do it twice with the same shoot the fabric can't handle it or lines can't handle it or can anything whatever happens anything okay connections variables again yeah Interesting, man. Scary. This was coming from more or less like in a cloud suck perspective, I think, where you have

detached your canopy and you're just going up and down like yo-yoing in a cloud suck up and down. It happens because this guy said, or even Eva, the Polish woman who got sucked up in the Australian competition said they were being thrown up without feeling gravity at some point. The spiral was going up. So that's why I'm wondering when it spits you out, or something like that in those hypothetical scenarios. I hope none of that is a reality to anyone, but quite interesting. But I think the Rogalo is from skydiving. That's where it was invented. And they used sliders. They had a slightly other construction, but it's based on those designs. Because the harness doesn't rest my curiosity because

since I started flying an XR7, which is super heavy, like what, 7 to 10 kilograms, depending on the configuration, I somehow feel the momentum it adds to you while coming into land is insane. So even if you are in a position where you are falling through the air, where the glider is wrapped around your lines and it isn't giving you a lot of resistance, the added weight of the harness and the momentum is going to be pretty heavy. on the reserve opening. So I was just thinking in that regard. Yeah. Yeah. If this would be a problem, we would have had cases until now.

Aninder: And a lot of those reserves, finally, they, after 10 years, you will find them two years later, somewhere in India or in South America, and they're still working. So I think we are not, right now, we're still okay. I'm looking forward for the next four or five years what will happen with this ultralight stuff. This is more a concern of myself. This makes me think about the airline industry where new planes fly in

the Western countries and old ones, which are more expensive to maintain, get shipped off to Asian or African nations. Still holding people, still making the world go round for them. Yeah, yeah. Shameful, but I think... I don't know. I think we've hit a lot of topics in here, man. And I think I can safely say that I have run out of questions for real. It's done. That's all I had. So the remaining part of the show is yours. Please tell us about your flying experiences, what you have learned and your final advice that you would like to give to people out there. If at all, they have to throw a rescue in their lives. Yeah. Maybe looking back at the time being in this sport, in the air, I think the most valued

Aninder: experience or great experience started flying sailplanes that I got in contact. When I was very young, I grew up on the airfield. My father was a sailplane pilot. I learned how they deal with safety talk, how it works when you change your you were when you changed to another glider you were part of that community in that small little gliding club and the old guys were looking after the young guys they also not saw everything we did we also it we sometimes escaped a little bit from the area where we were supposed to be and did some stuff which was not allowed i think that helped me later when i went into paragliding always to reflect on myself and and ask myself is that still good what i'm doing here or am i getting

close to the limit is it worse to go close to the limit and i think the most valuable experience in my flat career was that time being in that sailing club for years and then when i started paragliding competition flying and test flying. My older brother was instructor in the Swiss Hang Gliding Federation at that time for forming rigors. He was really good and he was quite experienced. And when the QuickOut carabiners came out, he was asking me about my experience. I was already a test pilot and he said, Maybe we should try to see what happens when you're on the reserve parachute and you release your paraglider to see how that works. He sent me out on the lake and I flew out. It was a thousand meters

above Lake Brienz and I saw this little tiny boat underneath me. shit, what am I doing here? I was so scared. And then I threw that reserve. It was a double reserve, a round, a second round on top of it, which worked pretty well at that time. And then I was working for 500 meters on my paraglider. We stalled it, everything, and found out there are some constellations which are working, others are not. And After 500 meters, I released paraglider with this quick odds. And it was so frightening. I was sinking like 50 meters straight. And then reserve parachute was next to me. It went back. It collapsed. It was always the same movement. And the sink rate was so much higher. I was working for

flight at the time. I had a logger with me so we could see the sink rate. And I was right of the behavior of the parachute. And that was in fall 92, I think. And then in the summer, I think 93 was the world championship in Verbier. One month ago, I received the paraglider from Edel. I was flying for Edel at that time. And it was a prototype. And I was visiting a friend of mine who had a flight school just around the corner next to a lake. We were flying for one hour together and then he landed and he went up with his students again. I flew over the water and I did a few maneuvers

and I got a cravat. And I never had that before. It was new. And actually I was spiraling down, not so fast, but it was spiraling down. And I couldn't hold it. I couldn't fly straight. Missed the opposite break and weight shift. I was trying different things, stall it. I couldn't bring it out. And finally I decided not to throw my reserve because I had three and a half or four and a half meters per second sink rate. I thought, this is not too bad. But it was circling and I couldn't make it back to the landing area. So I landed into the water. And... i almost drowned

because at 10 2 or 3 minutes later i was completely out they couldn't move anymore i was tangled in my lines and my friend with his students was in the cable car going up to the mountain he didn't see me the fisherman saved me from that situation and the reason why i'm telling this situation to the listeners is i had two experiences which Probably saved my life one month later because I was at the World Championship first task. I was flying in the leading goggle pretty much in front. We were just close to them on the last leg, close to the finish line. I was a

little bit lower and I had to go for one more furlough. And it was in the lee side, a strong valley wind already. It was in the afternoon. And... i hit this thermal close to the to the mountainside was a steep cliff with some classic places and i get this cravat like one months before and i knew i can't deal with that i checked the height above ground and that was really long i saw the reserve it was everything was like in the movie it was not clear thinking anymore i was like boom The reserve opened and three seconds later, I hit the deck on a steep grassy hillside around me,

steep wall, 500 meters, like mountain, really ugly place to be. I was so lucky. And thanks to that experience I've made before, that saved my life. And I think that's the point. You've got to have to know when... it's time for the reserve parachute when you can still work on your paraglider on a problem when when you need to check the height and when you have to go for the reserve partition if i would not have the experience i've made before i would have probably doubted weighted with the reserve pressure because i was afraid before i did this reserve parachute above the water i was really afraid of slowing my reserve. And after that experience, I knew it's not the nicest experience, but it

helps. So go for it. And you gotta have to get this into your unconscious. You need to have this in your muscle memories. You need to know how to react without thinking in such a situation. And I think that's the point where All of us should go and should be able in a real difficult situation to deal with, not to wait for too long. We have so many accidents where people do not sell their reserves and we don't know why. Yeah, I think

that's just like conflicting decisions coming to the mind of recovering the glider and figuring out if it's the right time to throw. But as you said, running these scenarios when you can in a peace of mind, the more you practice in peace, the less you bleed in war. yeah that's it so life is all about living making it simple and without complicating it too much yeah but yeah if you want to become old in this sport you have to practice you have to practice a lot do you still deploy for fun or for r d yes Pretty soon when it's getting a little bit warmer outside, we have

things to test when you try out. Can I put a public service announcement to the audiences that we have finally met an old and bold pilot in the sport? Yeah, go for it. Aren't you? Come on, 60 and still deploying for fun. That's like bragging rights for generations. Your granddaughter is going to be like, yeah, my grandpa was so fun. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah, that's another generation. They're already wearing

Aninder: helmets for everything. That was not the case when I was young.

Indeed. I think regardless of however we navigate our lives, there are some challenges which humble us and are a great learning experience. You happen to have faced a roadblock in your life once, which probably has been a learning experience. Are you comfortable talking about that and your mindset coming out from that accident, getting back in the sport, making it count? Yeah. One of the most important things I did, we

Aninder: were coming back to that situation at the world i was sitting there on that place where i landed and we had the radios i could have called emergency to get picked up by a helicopter but i knew that if i'm gonna do that i'll never fly again because i was so scared of that situation i was sitting there for one hour And finally I decided to take off again. Wow, man. So I stopped my reserve parachute. I only had one. I stopped again to the backpack of my harness. And I waited for a good moment to take off because it was really not enough to launch properly. But when the

thermals dropped, there was a good, good wind. So I flew back to Verbier and I was so scared. I was really, I was shaking. Everything was shaking. I landed in Verbier. And that helped me. I flew the whole world until the end. But at the evening, I had to find somebody who was repacking my reserve parachute because I was not able at the time. And I felt really bad because I was not sure if he did a good job. He was a competition pilot. And I thought that I've got to have to learn. If I want to really... stay for a long time in this sport i want to know a lot about and i want to learn

all these things the proper way this is probably part of that journey if i do something it's good to to have the whole picture and it helps you making decisions and probably help me also prevent them from serious accidents it's the same with meteorology with material with gliders with i was flying for for years i was flying end gliders even if i had the potential to fly enc or emd gliders but i knew that that time for me being able to go out and fly as an entrepreneur i was stressed all the time so keep the risk as low as possible and try to do the best out of this,

whatever you can learn around. I think that's a little bit my philosophy. Yeah. And I think if you have had a flying accident, the most difficult part is to get back into flying again. So either you look for professional help or I did in my way, but I can, I am in contact with Quite often with people that have had an accident, you have to, this is a traumatic experience and you have to work on it. If you don't work on it, then you will always have a problem. And that's not worse. How did the mental part look and how were you able to get back on the horse briefly for

audiences wanting to know how to navigate that after such a thing? Cool. I think it is really, it all comes about to how you look at things. It's a

Aninder: mind game. Everything is in our mind. It depends how you look at things. It's not a shame if you have an accident to talk about. Learn and try not to do the same mistake again. Grow with such a mistake. It's just like in real life. We do mistakes almost every day. And we should learn that those are not a problem. It's we're here for making mistakes and we can grow with those. In flying, it's similar. The good thing was I knew exactly what I did wrong. I knew what I did right. And I just tried to avoid the same mistake again. I'm so glad life rewarded you because the sport

needs more people like you. There's not one single podcast episode that can do justice to the amount of pure gold that you have given us and our listeners so far across the globe yeah thank you from the bottom of my heart for coming and sharing your views it means a lot man thanks a lot to you Before I let you go Urs, what's cooking on your plate next and what can the paragliding audience expect from you? What are you working on? What are the upcoming projects? I'm really enjoying the situation now. I still like to test things. I still like to be in contact with designers

Aninder: and I hope that I can give or pass my experience to the community. But I don't really have goals. As I said at the beginning of this podcast, I just take every day as it is. And I'm open-minded. I have a lot of ideas. And maybe there will be some realized in the future. If not, it's also good.

Love that free will that you have, Urs. What an inspiration. All right, Urs, this has been one of the longest talks I've ever had on this show, but it's been an absolute pleasure, man. Thanks, Anindya. Same to you. Thank you very much. Have a good time. Have a good year. Fly safe and have

Guest: fun. That's the most important. Love it.