One of the first lessons of the video ‘InstabilityÂ’ is to understand the difference between spins and spirals. It is absolutely essential to understand the difference because the method of recovery from a spiral is exactly the opposite to the method of recovery from a spin. Unfortunately most people do not understand the difference between […]

(published in Dec-Jan edition) Saturday, July 26th July, 1997. I had a feeling I shouldn’t fly that day. My friend Matko and I woke up at 6 o’clock, packed the stuff in a rush, took a shower and headed for Buzet, the site for the competition. The weather didn’t look good. We drove through showers, […]

Strong winds and organisational misunderstandings have hampered the first PWC of 1999 in Cordoba, Argentina. On the last day of the competition, a valid PWC round was flown, saving the competition from total-disaster status. A 39 Km race took place, but only one pilot managed to battle his way through a headwind to cross the line: Austria’s Stephan Stieglair.

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DOWN UNDER 1999
By Carol Binder
Us pilots generally prefer warmth to anything else on earth. To have our wings with us is a bonus. Australian flying is diverse with inland mountain sites such at Mt Buffalo gorge, Canungra, and Blackheath, thousands of kilometres of outback which is being used more and more to set world records […]

BautekÂ’s Twister was on of the first kingpostless gliders on the market, but it has yet to grab much international attention. Bautek has spent little effort marketing outside of Europe. They have been content to serve the large European market which has historically formed the nucleus for the global market.
All that is changing. Bautek has […]

I had expected the new sports glider from Edel to be a replacement for the Saber; a solid DHV 2 wing. I was looking for bombproof, twitchless characteristics; I wanted a bog standard VW Golf Diesel, and no more. But when I ripped open the packaging, it looked like they had sent me the GTI […]

My harness creaks like an old saddle under the force of the thermal I’m riding. The ferocity of the thermals as they blast us upward through the rarefied air above 20,000ft is phenomenal. The terrain below, a savage world of scree, rock and glacier moraines adds to the hostility of the situation. I gasp for […]