Twenty Five Ways to Fly Better (Vol 2) is the ebook version of the best-selling print book 50 Ways to Fly Better. The ebook includes three exclusive free bonus chapters that examine exactly how Red Bull X-Alps champion Chrigel Maurer flies – and explains how you can adapt his ‘Flying Modes’ technique to help your own flying get better. Here’s an extract…
Chrigel Maurer on launch during the 2015 Red Bull X-Alps. Photo: Vitek Ludvik/Red Bull Content Pool
It was 7.30am, and the sun was barely up over the Bavarian mountains. Chrigel Maurer had just caught a 4m/s thermal and was now a small white speck on the horizon, gliding towards us. Ground mist covered the fields around the river running through the valley floor. He surfed on, tucked tight into the wooded slopes, and we drove fast trying to keep up with him.
On and on, round each bend… I couldn’t believe he could keep going. “CHREEEGLE!” shouted his supporter Thomas Theurillat, parked up, his cries breaking the still of the morning. This was quite something to watch. After 25km of tight, technical flying, Maurer touched down.
I was fascinated as to how he’d managed to glide so far – and he explained that early in the morning, warm air heated by the sun on the easterly faces gets trapped in the trees’ foliage. It’s not enough to climb from, but makes a huge difference to your glide angle. His climb had an explanation too – he’d seen a scruffy cumulus forming up high, marking the convergence of the katabatic flow with the northerly wind, and he headed there.
It wasn’t simply ‘magic’, or the genius of a gifted pilot that had got him so far that morning. The more I talked to Chrigel, the more I realised how much preparation, hard work and thinking goes into his flying. To say he’s an eagle, he’s untouchable, is a great compliment to Chrigel – but it also conveniently lets the rest of us off the hook from even trying to fly as well as him. That may be a dream, but the truth of it is there’s much we can learn from Christian Maurer.
Soon after the X-Alps ended, he kindly offered a few insights into how he flies, and to what he attributes his success.
Chrigel, congratulations on your victory. You explained your race in detail in the interview we did for the X-Alps channel, but here I’d like to focus more on how you fly, and look at some of the building blocks for your success. First, let’s talk about your flying style. Your tracklog is just so much straighter, with fewer circles and deviations. Can you explain how you fly in such a direct, arrow-like way?
I don’t know what the difference is exactly, but when I fly, I really focus on just being in one of several modes. That means, when I take-off or I am really low, I stay in the ‘thermalling’ mode and I try to forget everything around, I just focus really intently on my vario, watching around me for birds, and feeling my wing. If I’m in this mode, my goal is cloudbase – or to get as high as possible.
When I’m then climbing well, I can then switch to ‘planning’ mode, and start thinking about where I’m heading next. I think about where my next climb will be, what conditions are doing, think about the route and airspace – all that stuff.
After I get to the top, I go into ‘glide’ mode, and try to fly as efficiently as possible, finding the best line, flying at the best speed with my speedbar, and trimming my wing. Then when I come across lift, I try to analyse whether it’s strong enough to turn or not. If it is, I switch directly into ‘thermalling’ mode – if it’s not, I continue straight.
I really try and select only the best thermals so I don’t lose time. The higher I am, the more picky I can be. This flying style makes me quite fast. On that second day, there were five of us at the same take-off at the same time, with the same gliders, and I really flew in this style – selecting modes, focussing hard on what I’m doing, and pushing on relentlessly – and it really made a difference.
You must have a lot of confidence in your ability to read the terrain and sky ahead and to be able to predict what’s coming up down track, so you can decide to keep gliding?
I think my experience coming from XC flying, competition flying and acro flying helps a lot, and finally, it’s my stomach that leads me. I don’t know how to explain it but sometimes I feel, OK let’s go forward or no, let’s take this 1m/s climb.
Thomas Theurillat and Chrigel Maurer celebrate their fourth successive Red Bull X-Alps victory. Photo: Harald Tauderer/Red Bull Content Pool
Now we’re into an interesting area. This is Star Wars, ‘Use the Force, Luke’ type stuff isn’t it. Can you tell me more about the gut feelings?
It’s very difficult to explain. There are some pop stars who make a song, one is good, one is not so good, they can’t explain why. They have their own favourite songs, but they’re not the hits, and they don’t like to sing the hits.
For me it’s the same, I fly in the mountains, in the sky, using the birds, I try to have fun as much as possible. For sure there are times when it’s difficult, when the wind is strong or the leeside is turbulent, and in these times the acro experience is invaluable, and after that, for sure it gets better.
So you fly a lot by feel, rather than by rationally thinking, ‘right, that’s a sunny face, I’ll go there…’ you’re just doing what feels right?
Maybe I can explain, when I go into the glide mode, I have a plan A – the sunny rock will work. Maybe I get some lift before, so I take the lift. If not, I go to the rock, and if it works, I stay with Plan A.
If it doesn’t work, I have a plan B, C and D and I switch quickly between them. I don’t waste time searching around the cliff face. I know if it’s not working, I have to wait, and turning makes me slow, so I keep going on to the next possible point.
Have there been any times during the race when you’ve landed early because the options haven’t worked?
No, my Plan As have tended to work!
The full chapter, plus two others, are exclusively available in 25 Ways to Fly Better (Vol 2), available as an ebook from Kobo and Amazon.
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