Do you always fold up your glider in exactly the same way? Something to do with how we fold our wings was brought to my attention recently after testing a relatively new zulu for  prosity. Ninety nine percent of the wing was in excellent condition, yet sadly one small part of the leading edge failed the test quite badly! So how can it be that most of the wing was in great shape whilst the most important part of the wing was not safe? The answer is quite simply to do with how it’s owner put his little flying machine away each day. Too many people always fold the wing in exactly the same way. I always tell people to fold up differently. If you fold your wing from the wing tips to the center and then fold it up all along the center the tissue will always get creased in the same places resulting in the centre of the wing loosing it’s enduction much faster than the rest of the material. Another thing that I see people to do is that they fold to the center and whilst sitting on the ground they pull the wing towards them which each fold, dragging the center of the canopy across the grass with each pull. Again, with time, this constant dragging of the nylon across the ground will wear out the enduction and cause the porosity of your cherished glider to drop dramitically.

Whilst on this note, it’s also a good idea to concertina the leading edge if you can in an attempt to prolong the life of your stiff mylar cell walls. Maintaining the rigidity of the cell walls is especially important for the take-off characteristics of your wing.

February 2010:  Last week’s picture.

I have just returned from the Andaman Islands where I was asked to skipper ‘Discovery’, the yacht that we sailed around Tonga on last year. The Andaman Islands belong to India and are located on the Eastern part of the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean. These islands are without a doubt the least touristy place that I have ever visited. Many of the islands are totally off limits to foreigners as our everyday germs could wipe out an entire tribe. In fact while we were there yet another tribe became extinct and with it one of the oldest languages in the world. In 2004 India sent helicopters over these islands to examine the extent of the damage caused by the Tsunami but they were chased away by tribes armed with spears and bows and arrows!

This fantastic adventure started in the capital town of Port Blair, where we spent 4 long days trying to provision the boat. There are no supermarkets in Port Blair. We were driven around the busy dusty port town in an old Ambassador car by our cheerful taxi driver, Ravi. He took us to buy chickens that were slaughtered right in front of us. He rounded up his friends to help us buy beer as by law we could not buy more than 6 bottles at a time. And he took us to the wonderful markets where we were able to buy endless fruits and vegetables.

We were desperate for a swim during these first few days in Port Blair but apart from not wanting to swim in the dirty harbour where we were anchored we had also heard of recent attacks on local fishermen by salt water crocodiles, so we were an excited crew as we sailed out into the turquoise blue waters of the Andaman sea with our newly arrived guests. I pointed Discovery towards a small island where we hoped to swim with one of the local inhabitants by the name of Rajan. Rajan is an elephant. There are a few elephants that still remain on Havelock Island where they were brought to by the English for logging. Unfortunately Rajan was not up for swimming while we were there but it was very cool to see elephants roaming around a tropical island.

The main aim of this journey through the Andamans was to kite surf and to paraglide, but the highlight for me was definitely the wildlife both above and below the water. On some of the islands elephants would freely roam, on others wild deer and brightly coloured parrots. Below the surface we swam with manta rays, were escorted into a bay by a school of dolphins and Clinton, one of our guests hand fed a giant morey eel. While spear fishing we would swim alongside humphead  wrasse the size of me and white tip reef sharks.

Paragliding over the Andaman Sea was awesome. Unfortunately we didn’t fly as much as we would have liked to. The wind was rarely right….either the wrong direction or too strong and often there was just too much reef to get the boat through. But we did get to do some wonderful flights over North Cinque island. The flying was not as good as it had been on my previous trip onboard Discovery in Tonga but it always feels such a privilege to fly above these wonderful islands and their startling blue sea that envelops them.

Next trip on Discovery will be in Madagascar in October where we expect to do a lot of flying…so stay tuned!

Thanks to my crew….Jody, Mikey and Bobby and thank you Gav for trusting me to skipper your wonderful boat.

You can follow Discovery as she travels around the world on www.offshoreodysseys.com

Two years ago we acquired a beautiful lodge which has been great, but we have also started to feel that we have grown too quickly and that a certain amount of our personal touch has been lost due to the size of the groups that we can now cater for. Because of this we have decided to go back to a chalet and we have found the perfect one. Our new chalet for 2010 is a spectacular home located on the Sport Centre Landing field in the heart of Verbier. Step off the deck onto the training hill, or land after your last flight, step off the landing field and into the hot tub! The chalet boasts 7 en-suite rooms as well as two large living areas. We expect that the Pierre Avoi will set new standards to our current proven benchmark.

Verbier Summits is now an official BHPA school and Stu Belbas is now a BHPA Senior Instructor. Up until now we have been able to complete the BHPA syllabus, but now students can not only learn the BHPA way with us, but actually go home fully qualified. Furthermore, due to our fantastic training site, we are able to offer a guarantee that students can complete a full Ep or CP course in just a week. The guarantee means that if in the unlikely event a student cannot complete the course in a week, they can come back and finish it whenever they like at no extra charge.

As well as EP and CP courses, we also run BHPA Pilot and advanced pilot courses, paramotor conversion courses and tandem courses. We also run advanced courses such as post CP thermal classes, XC clinics and SIV.

I started looking into the maths too. The Gin Rebel has impressive glide ratio of 8.9! The Gin Sprint, however is at 8.7. I worked it out that if I cross my valley in Verbier for a typical cross country flight (assuming still air), I would arrive at the other side less than 50 meters higher on my Rebel than Bruce on his Sprint. If I’m looking to win a competition or break a World record, this incredibly slight advantage, just might make all the difference, but as a recreational pilot out to enjoy a good XC flight I really don’t think it’s going to change a lot.

1-2 category wings are no longer what they used to be. Designers have done an incredible job bringing the performance of these wings up to compete with their bigger brothers. I really feel that I see too many people who fly a few weeks of the year flying on a category 2 wing. Do you need to step up? Or actually do you need to step down?

Gavin McClurgh is the skipper of Discovery, a 57ft catamaran that is on a five year circumnavigation around the world as part of a kite surf and paragliding expedition in search of the remotest parts of the planet to kite and fly. I had the privilege, along with my twin brother Mike, to be invited to join the boat to spend some time with our friends and in order to help Gavin with the first test flights on the new winch.

We had barely been in Tonga for a few hours before we went flying. We were slightly jet-lagged and quite tired but excitement overcame reason. Discovery was lying in the hot, sticky and dirty little port of Nukualofa and everyone was keen to head out to a small group of desert islands as quickly as possible. We dropped the anchor into the crystal clear waters off the coast of a most alluring and stunning little island. The beach of white sand formed a spur pointing perfectly into a light sea breeze with just the right distance of open deep water before reaching the jagged reef that surrounded the tiny island. ‘What if we don’t find another spot as perfect as this to use the winch?’ a few of us murmured, ignoring the fact that there are hundreds of similar islands throughout this part of the South Pacific. Before we knew it we were lifting the heavy winch into the tender and pulling out brand new gliders and harnesses courtesy of GIN. We were like a group of excited, naughty children running around getting ready to fly. Bruce, a good friend of ours and one of the owners of Discovery, was in all probability the first person to ever fly over Tongan waters. The view that our eyes feasted on from the air was just incredible! A perfect desert island surrounded by turquoise water with our catamaran sitting below all encased within a circular reef. Our excitement continued to get the better of us and Jody, a professional photographer, wanted to get some pictures. I could see her mind reeling faster than the winch as she thought of ways to get the shot she wanted. So we hoisted her up to the top of the mast with the idea that we would winch Mike low and close to the boat so that Jody could get a shot from above with the glider flying close to the catamaran and the tow boat in front. Maybe a little bit ambitious for day 1 but like I said were like a group of animated children. We didn’t actually get the shot. We came too close to the boat, snagged the tow line and Mike ended up in the water. It was not going to be the last time that we got wet…and not the last time that it would be from trying to get ‘the shot’! It was an incredible first day and as we relaxed on the deck that evening drinking cold beer with good friends, I knew that two weeks was going to be far too short.

In the way that a battle ship is loaded with guns, Discovery is loaded with toys! Sometimes we would finish breakfast and go flying, other times we’d pick up a surf board and go and play on the waves that were constantly breaking on the reefs surrounding us. When the wind would pick up we’d go kite-surfing and when we really wanted to relax we’d go diving in the wonderful underwater caves. But for me the most magical pass time when we weren’t flying was following the hump back whales with their calves as they came right up to our boat and would even fully breach just off our bow.

The two chefs on board were a lovely couple, Hannah and Lars, who before joining Discovery were both working for Heston Blumenthal at the Fat Duck, so needless to say that mealtimes were some of the highlights of each day. Lars was not a pilot but his desire to see what all the fuss was about every time that the rest of us would chatter excitedly after another flight was evident and I for one was desperate to get him in the air. Our excitement had been contagious and it was only fair that we shared our addiction with him. And so it was that Lars experienced quite possibly the best and most spectacular first flight ever! Our only scandalous wrong-doing in this act was that a first flight such as this would be near impossible to beat and he would most likely be very disappointed the next time he went flying after this trip.

Things didn’t always run smoothly or according to plan. We finished in the water on countless occasions. Numerous times we would get wet from trying to capture a particular moment on camera. Jody took some great ‘over/under’ shots with a glider being towed just above the surface of the water with the coral just below in the foreground. This was a challenging photo to take, firstly for Jody as a photographer who needed to focus one lens in two worlds, which I can only imagine is a very difficult thing to do. Secondly it was not easy for the winch man who needed to keep the pilot just off the water all the way out to the point where Jody was hovering over the coral. The paraglider needed to be so close to the water otherwise Jody’s camera would not get everything into the frame with her wide angle lens. Keeping the pilots feet just above the sea for such a distance proved to be a very difficult task for the winch man whose brake hand was not too steady as the little rubber boat bounced up and down over the swell. On one occasion I was being winched and just as I was in position for the photo Gavin had to swerve to avoid a shallow patch of coral and in the seconds that followed I was in the water! Ah the things we do for fame!

We finished up in the water for other reasons too. We were still getting used to the winch and for most of the crew it was the first time ever using a winch, which was partly why I was there. Sometimes in light winds we would struggle to get the pilot high enough and so the long trek back to the beach would sometimes mean not reaching it. In order to try and overcome this problem on light wind days, we decided to try step towing. Unfortunately we never actually managed to and got wet a few more time as a result! The tender that the winch was operated from only had a 40 horsepower outboard which was ample to winch in wind and just powerful enough to winch with no wind, but when attempting to step tow we found that, even with the slightest breeze, the glider could not stay behind the boat, constantly overtaking it. Landing in the water was never an issue with our rescue boat below us at all times and with the water being so calm.

Our final flight was, as they say in tongan, ‘Hange ha ika kuo vae’, or ‘like the fine fillets of a deep sea fish’. We found a ridge that was square onto a smooth 10 knot sea breeze, just strong enough to soar with a perfect little beach below to take off and land. It meant that we could get 3 paragliders into the air all that same time. Instead of flying alone, we were now able to fly with our friends and instead of landing because we had to, we were landing because we felt like it. We flew for hours and it was quite simply perfect.

I’d like to say a huge thank you to Bruce, Gavin and Jody for this incredible opportunity. Mike and I will be joining Discovery again next year in Madagascar…so stay tuned!

You can follow the adventures of Discovery on www.offshoreodysseys.com

Also a very big thanks to GIN for sponsoring this trip. www.gin-gliders.com

We are offering you the chance to win a Free week with Verbier Summits in 2011!

Upload a photo on this blog that sums up your perfect Alpine flying experience before September 30th 2010. The winning picture will win a free holiday with us here in Verbier in 2011.

Terms and conditions:

• Only two photos per applicant.
• Photos must be uploaded to this blog and to the Verbier-summits facebook page:
• All photos must be uploaded before September 30th 2010.
• We reserve the rights to use any pictures that you enter into this comp.
• The winner will be announced by the end of October 2010.
• The prize is a free week with Verbier-Summits in 2011.

Verbier is quite literally the most ideal flying site that I have ever seen to learn to fly. We have two perfect training hills, a ridge that reliably works for ridge soaring and two top landing locations. Beginners can start with small hops and rapidly progress to longer flights. Our top to bottom elevation is 4,500ft, so airtime quickly adds up to hours in no time at all and due to our superb micro climate we are able to guarantee that a student can complete an EP COURSE or CP COURSE in just a week.

And now as a BHPA school, why would you learn anywhere else?

PARAGLIDING COURSES

Verbier-Summits run all BHPA courses including:

• EP Elementary pilot course
• CP Club Pilot course
• Advanced Pilot training
• TI training
• Instructor training
• Tandem training

Pilots who are looking to start experiencing XC flights can experience breath-taking Xc flights without ever leaving the safety and comfort of our valley. A typical flight like this will take a fairly low airtime pilot from green pastures to snow fields and over Alpine lakes and quite often up onto the stunning glacier….and always in sight of our familiar landing flight.

Verbier-summits run XC clinics as well as offer first class fly-guiding for pilots of all levels.