Hi there, my name is Mads Syndergaard. I’ve been doing paragliding comps for almost as long as Patrick Berod, and I have volunteered to blog for XC Mag with my perspective on the upcoming Worlds event in Valle de Bravo, Mexico. My view on things differs from, say, Mark Hayman’s in that, aside from representing the well-known paragliding nation, Denmark, I’m also the comp activities coordinator for UP International, and an event like the Worlds is taken rather seriously by UP, to say the least. My goal with this blog is to give you lot out there an insider’s view of the ups and downs of one of the manufacturing teams present in Valle – I hope you’ll enjoy it!
At UP we don’t really believe that whichever manufacturer goes home with the trophy will sell many more gliders – but we know that this event is a fantastic opportunity to do a number of very different things:
- We get to test our latest comp protos against the newest and the best that our co-manufacturers have to offer at the moment. Quite a few of the big ones have brought out new wings for this event, and we’re obviously keen to see how our latest ideas compare to those of the other designers
- We, or I to be more precise, get to network on a level that just isn’t possible anywhere else at any time between these events. Some of this networking is among existing friends that I just don’t get to see very often; can’t wait to say Hi to all my mates from all over! But a large part of the networking is also about meeting new people, possibly even from markets where we’re not currently well represented.
- This comp will also serve to cement the relationships between the UP Race Team pilots. With Torsten Siegel’s imminent departure from UP (right after the event) I have been busy restructuring the comp activities – not because Torsten hasn’t been doing a great job, he has, but because any forced change is also an opportunity for voluntary change, and we’re grasping that opportunity to expand our team activities and get our pilots involved on a whole new level. This event should give me an indication of how well the changes are going to work, and what direction I need to follow in the upcoming months.
To say that the last few weeks have been hectic at my desk would be understating things. One of the more challenging things has been to work out which prototypes we had available, and who would be flying them. As it turns out we have got 5 different protos in this event. Three of these are so new they have hardly flown before – they are flown by Torsten Siegel, Primoz Podobnik from Slovenia and Ronny Helgesen from Norway. About ½ hour ago I got a Skype message from Primoz that he had arrived in Valle and turned over one of the protos to Ronny – who is reported to be dancing down the street huggin’ his new baby J So he and Primoz will be flying their new babies tomorrow, and I may be getting the first feedback tomorrow night (exciting…).
I’m actually not sure when Torsten arrives in Valle, so I can’t even get too excited about when I’ll be getting his first feedback… I myself will be flying a slightly older, but re-trimmed proto, and Olli Rössel will also be on a wing that is already proven in comps during the latter part of last season.
As the comp coordinator I would have loved nothing better than to be able to supply the whole team, including the 6 pilots flying standard Edges, with new weapons for the event – but these things can’t be rushed and the fact of the matter is, as you can see from the number of different protos present, we simply weren’t ready with a wing that could be passed on to non-factory pilots. Tough luck.
Where a few of the other brands are going down a path of ever-increasing internal bracing the UP wings are going the other way. Our designer Stephan Stieglair is getting progressively better at maintaining the wing shape he wants by using intelligent soft design features, and he’s even radically reducing the Mylar used in the leading edge to maintain LE shape both during inflation and flight. My personal guess is that this Worlds will be inconclusive as to which direction is the most efficient, but on a personal level it does make sense to me to keep a paraglider soft, both so that I can pack it away and so that it can pack itself away if the airmass is doing ugly things to it – hopefully to unpack again in a hurry before I get too scared…
The most radically new design feature by UP in this event are the ears on Primoz’ proto. I won’t reveal all just yet but I can let you have Stephans idea, which was to put proper winglets on a wing for once. And no they don’t look ANYTHING like the winglets on Advance wings. Primoz has brought his old wing too, just in case it turns out to be a dead end design-wise, but he did already fly it back home in Slovenia a few days ago, and he was raving afterwards. The open question is, will 10m/s thermals make the new wing look as good as the 2-3m/s winter stuff he experienced back home the other day? Time will tell.
Enough for now – I’ll be back as soon as I think of something more to say, or as soon as I have feedback from some of the guys,
Mads
