It has been a record season so far in Brazil, with several world records broken. Here’s a round-up of what’s been happening.
9 October 2015
Marcelo Prieto, Donizete Lemos and Frank Brown (BRA) flew into the record books with a spectacular flight of 514km to give them the new paragliding world record for straight-line open distance. Taking off from Tacima they flew north west for 11 hours and landed together in the same field.
Read more
Tracklog
9 October 2015
On the same day, Glauco Pinto (BRA) took off from the same site at the same time and flew 578.3km to claim a new Brazilian hang gliding record.
Tracklog
26 October 2015
Julien Irilli (FRA) and his sister Emilie set a tandem world record for ‘free distance via three turnpoints’ at 363km. He was flying a Niviuk Peak Bi Tandem.
Read more
Tracklog
1 November 2015
Honorin Hamard (FRA) and his girlfriend Karine Gras set a new tandem world record for ‘straight distance to a declared goal’ flying 335.4km from Quixadá. They were flying a tandem Swift 4 from Ozone.
Read more
Tracklog
2 November 2015
Keiko Hiraki (JPN) set a women’s world record for straight distance to a declared goal at 301km. She was flying an Ozone Enzo 2 and launched from Quixadá. On the same day Rafael Saladini, Marcelo Prieto and Donizete Lemos (Tracklogs) again flew further than 500km from Tacima (500km, 513km and 512.8km) but missed out on breaking the world record again by a whisker. The flights confirmed that flying 500km from Tacima is repeatable.
2 November 2015
Julien Irilli and sister Emilie bagged their second tandem world record of the week with a 319km straight distance to a declared goal. They flew their Niviuk Peak Bi from Quixadá.
Tracklog
3 November 2015
Nicole Fedele (ITA) set a new women’s open distance world record with a 395km flight from Quixadá. She was flying a 777 King. She beat her own previous record of 376km that she set from Quixadá in November 2013.
Tracklog
4 November 2015
Honorin Hamard and girlfriend Karine Gras flew their Swift tandem 403.4km from Quixadá to set a new open distance tandem world record. The pair flew another big flight on 10 November, flying 384km (online league distance).
Tracklog
Official distances for all these flights may differ from their online league distance – this is because the FAI measures flights for the purposes of world records in a specific and uniform way, which is always a bit shorter than the online contest distance.
Pilots are still flying for records in Quixadá and Tacima and will be there for the next couple of weeks. Typically October and November are the best months for flying far – winds start to slacken towards the end of the November.
Cross Country is a reader-supported international publication and is available through subscription only. We publish 10 issues a year in print and digital. Subscribe to Cross Country.