Thermalling well is all about mental mapping, staying alert to new information and exploration within the thermal. And lots of flying is the only way to collect the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle, writes Bob Drury

‘XC131: the mountain issue’ with a FREE A2 colour poster that explains how valley winds work. Inside its 84 glossy colour pages is: How to fly the mountains, Infinite Tumbling a tandem paraglider, the hang gliding Euro Champs, the Ozone Delta, ITV Awak, wind gradients, pod harnesses and so much more. Subscribe at www.xcmag.com

Pål Hammar Rognøy D-bags from his own paraglider above the Swedish ski resort of Åre.

Britain’s Kirsty Cameron has won both Open and Serial classes of the first female-only paragliding open that was held in Ager in the Spanish Pyrenees, winning herself a new Sup’Air harness and Flymaster B1 nav GPS-vario.

France’s Lucas Bernardin and Seiko Fukuoka-Naville won the seventh round of the 2010 Paragliding World Cup series in Portugal. Seiko and Thomas Brandlehner (AT) are the PWC European champions.

Mountains and how to fly them. Your complete guide to flying the mountains, with advice from some of the best in the sport

Free download to the best paragliding and hang gliding sites in the world.   Cross Country magazine’s Global Travel Guide for hang gliding and paragliding is now available online as a free pdf download – perfect for the iPad, your laptop or printing off. Published in April 2010 the print edition of the guide was [...]

Nordic acro champion, Norwegian Ove Tillung, won the 2010 Downteam Challenge acro competition held in the Swedish ski resort of Ã…re from 6 – 8 August.

Readers of Cross Country’s digital version of the magazine may like to know that Zinio Reader 4 is availble now

Flight international festival for paragliders, hang gliders and microlights takes place at the Tegelberg, Germany, over the weekend of 25 – 26 September.

In July 2010 India’s paragliding community came together to form a National Association for the sport, the Paragliding Association of India.

The film by French team Oseven, created by winning the Julbo-sponsored contest, was voted the best in the online contest for the Nissan Outdoor Games 2010.

In celebration of their tenth anniversary and new logo, Icaro Paragliders are running a competition to find the best photo of Edelweiss growing in the wild.

Applications for the 2011 Red Bull X-Alps paragliding adventure race, have opened and athletes have until 30 September 2010 to apply.

Alongside the ever-expanding number of flying podcasts (21 now), British paraglider pilot Judith Mole has have just started developing flying related webcasts (visuals as well as audio).

Skyline have created a greatly improved riser set for their EN B Falcon which allows more efficient acceleration on bar.

Frenchman Stéphane Drouin’s World and European speed over a 200km triangle record of 26 km/hr, has been ratified.

Version 1.22a of LK8000′s touch screen flight computer, which runs on PDAs and car navigators (PNAs), is now officially stable and available to users.

Following four tasks, Manfred Ruhmer (AT) has won the hang gliding pre-Worlds in Monte Cucco, Italy.

Austrian Tom Weissenberger has put in a prelimanary record claim for a 345.4km triangle flight on his Moyes Litespeed RS3.5.