Cloudbase Mayhem Podcast

After getting his novice sign-off in Mexico (30 flights) under the instruction of 2019 Red Bull X-Alps pilot and recent podcast guest Marko Hrgetic Hrga, for his very first solo flight (flight 31) Adrian Garza hiked up one of the highest volcanoes in North America and flew off. And it's been all volcanoes since.

Ziad Bassil is someone most pilots who have gear questions already know. His blog the "Dust of the Universe" is probably (definitely?) the most comprehensive independent gear testing site on Earth. He does it solely for pleasure and is PROLIFIC. If it flies, he flies it and then gives his many, many followers his opinions.

On December 13th, 2018 test pilot Mark "Forger" Stucky piloted SpaceShipTwo, Virgin Galactic's tourism spaceship into space for the first time after years and years of testing and many set backs. He and his co-pilot Rick "CJ" Sturckow had a "long burn" and reached 51 miles above the Earth (over 270,000'), and reached mach 2.9.

During their six-week expedition to Pakistan this summer, Damien Lacaze and Antoine Girard traveled more than 1,500 kilometers in just 14 days of flight, making the second highest flight in the history of paragliding, bivouacked at more than 6,000 meters and attempted the ascent of Spantik, which rises to more than 7000 m. It was an adventure at the extreme boundaries of what is humanly possible.

Hang gliding is arguably the first "extreme sport" in human history and it literally changed the world. Drawing inspiration from Leonardo Davinci, Otto Lillienthal built the first foot-launched hang gliders in the late 1800's. His wings inspired Octave Chanute and his assistants to make thousands of flights at the turn of the last century on the shores of lake Michigan which led to the Wright Brot...

In this episode we discuss why we are sometimes in the "flow" and confident and everything is just clicking and why at other times we can't seem to get anything right, and how we can maybe improve the odds to be in the former. Felipe talks about how important it is to visualize how a wing flows through the air and how understanding fluid dynamics, which he learned through surfing and shaping lent...

Cade Palmer is a speed test pilot and designer for Ozone Paragliders; is one of the most accomplished aerobatics pilots in the world; flies tandems professionally in Jackson Hole, Wyoming; regularly sessions some of the most awe-inspiring terrain on Earth with his paramotor; of course flies small planes (and jumps out of them!) in his free time; flies RC planes and lives year-round in a van with h...

I sat down with veteran comp pilots JP Robert Vandenbegine (Canada and Belgium), Chin Chien Huang (aka Jimmy from the US), and Francisco Mantaras (Argentina) to discuss the A to Z of comps. These guys collectively have decades of comp experience and we dove into pre-race strategies, how to get a good start, gaggle flying, finding good lines and gliding, safety and cautionary tales, tactics for win...

Dominic has been flying for 21 years, recently sold his share of a very successful school (Paraworld) in Zurich and has been living the dream- traveling the world in the pursuit of the skycrack. From Tanzania and Kenya to Brazil to Colombia Dominic takes us on a journey that only a paraglider can do. This one is filled with great advice, many laughs, a few solid warnings, fantastic travel stories,...

Theo Warden is only 19 years old and just took home two wins that would be truly amazing in a career of competition flying, let alone from someone who's just getting seriously into the game. Theo took home gold at the Europeans in Portugal in August, then chalked up another win immediately afterwards at the British Nationals in Krushevo, Macedonia.  Two of the toughest comps in the world, two back...

Mitch Riley has been chasing the sky crack as hard as anyone the last few years. He's averaging 500-600 hours a year, instructs full-time for Eagle Paragliding, competes regularly, does commercial tandems, competed in the 2017 X-Alps and guides around the world. Mitch's approach to training and improvement isn't simply airtime- this is a mental game we play more than anything and Mitch has been a...

Greg is a former PWC pilot and is the man responsible for all those awesome FlyBubble videos, participated in the X-Pyr in 2016, is passionate about vol biv and has a lot of great thoughts and advice for pilots at every level. We discuss gear and choices and how to not get sucked into what others are saying vs what's right for you, how to get into vol biv and best practices, the difference and adv...

Bernhard (Benni) Kalin is a Swiss all-things-flight instructor at ChillOutParagliding. Based in Interlaken, speedflying was his initial addiction but over the years it has spread to all canopies- paragliding, base jumping, kitesurfing, kiteskiing- you name it. Last year flying with his father in the Wallis Benni had to deploy his reserve for the first time and ended up in a terrifying position tha...

Nick Greece returns to the Mayhem to share a wealth of insights into competition and flying insights and some very honest talk about the manic ride that often defines our sport. This is an honest and at times hysterical talk about the risks of our sport, dealing with PTSD, creating positive headspace, the psychology of finding flow, rationalizing the risks, finding mentors, how to be a disciplined...

Armin Harich is the co-founder of Skywalk Paragliders, started flying in 1989 and has never had an accident, and is the first person to fly over 300km in Germany, and he did it on a EN B wing (the Skywalk Tequila). I was told by many people before speaking to Armin that he's a flatlands "SkyGod" so we focused much of this show on flatlands flying techniques and how people started flying the flatla...

Nik Hawks returns to the Mayhem to share two pretty scary incidents that ended well, but came with a LOT of lessons that every pilot can learn from including: coming back from "fear injuries"  by using the big 4, time, building exposure, and pattern recognition; how to get better at self-assessment (wingovers, exit from 360, exiting and entering spirals cleanly, avoiding and handling collapses, et...

Fabien Blanco is the founder and head instructor at Flyeo in Annecy, a premiere paragliding school focused on teaching SIV, Cross Country and adventure flying. Fabien was a professional acro pilot and is a passionate ski-mountaineer and brings a wealth of knowledge from various "extreme" disciplines to our sport. He discovered when they first started teaching SIV that rather than focusing on ticki...

If it flies, Andy Hediger flies it (or jumps out of it!). Sailplanes, trikes, hang gliders, light-weight airplanes, wingsuits, Swift, Archaeopteryx, Virus, but he rates the paraglider as the king of them all. The developer of the D-Bag, Andy was there at the absolute beginning of Acro and cross country, sewing some of the very first wings and his passion and love of the sport is as strong now as i...

Two days before the Monarca kicked off in Valle de Bravo, Mexico this January our podcast editor Myles Connolly had a cascade episode low and threw his reserve for the first time. Myles got hung over 80' off the ground in a dead tree without injury. Some locals came to help out quickly but when things started getting a little tense a calm head prevailed and Myles got down to the ground safely. In...

Several years ago Nova Paragliders changed the way we think about performance when they put some of their top pilots on the Mentor, an EN B wing and the world watched as they ticked off some of the biggest flights that had ever been done in the Alps, including the vaunted 300 FAI triangle. By flying wings that were less mentally and physically demanding pilots could stay in the air for 10+ hours a...

What makes a successful pilot? Is it just talent and hours or something anyone can learn with training and application? Sports psychology gives us the answer if we break it down into three dimensions: technical, physical and mental. In this episode Adél Honti explains how her analytical approach and study of human psychology has helped her understand how to operate more adeptly in our invisible wo...

After many many requests we bring you our first show dedicated to speed flying and mini wings. Patrick Hennessey is a pilot based in the Northwest of the US who's been getting after it but came into the sport via skydiving and has a pretty interesting take on how people should learn and access the sport. In this episode we talk about the inherent risks of flying small wings, the high number of unn...

Marko Hrgetic Hrga has been flying World Cups for the past 11 years, has a paragliding school in Valle De Bravo, Mexico which operates under the Swiss APPI system. In this episode we get technical on how to fly fast. Hand position, use of speed bar, how to climb faster, speed to fly, using macready, using polar curves, using pilots in front to fly fast, correct weight shift, the importance of rela...

Lisa Hope Tilstra gives us a perspective all of us can relate to as pilots as she's a total newbie- as a brand new pilot she's going through what we all have at some point in our flying lives. No flight can ever match that first time we stepped into the air and remembering how special that was is reason enough to listen to this show, but we dig down into the huge differences of coming into this sp...

Christoph Weber has been the race director of the Red Bull X-Alps since 2007. This episode dives into the behind-the-scenes for our fans of the show who wanted more than what's available on live tracking. How do athletes get chosen? How is the route decided every year? What's the story with how the rules have changed over the years? Is it possible to beat Chrigel? How has the race changed over the...