Larry Tudor – CLOUDBASE MAYHEM

Free flight tends to attract some rather big personalities to its crutches. And among its most interesting and passionate devotees is American pilot and pioneer Chuck Smith. Chuck learned back east on the dunes in the US with his brother in the late 80's under the tutelage of climbing legend John Bouchard. From there the search for airtime and the love of the flying community brought him all over...

John Heiney started hang gliding in 1978 and he's still going strong today. His photographs of free flight have been on more than 50 magazine covers. He broke the Guinness World Record for looping in 1988. And then he broke his own record again ten years later! He was crowned the world aerobatics champion four times. He's a machinist; diesel rabbit aficionado (he's driving his fifth these days); h...

Ovcharov hails from Sofia, Bulgaria who's background is in acro but he's about as all-purpose as you can get in the realm of free flight. He's passionate about wing suit base jumping; he just competed in the UAE Hike and Fly Championships in Dubai; he won the overall XContest this year chasing huge distance in Brazil and around the world; he competed in this year's World Championships in Argentina...

Mitchell McAleer properly crashed a hang glider on literally his first flight in the early 70’s. But he shook it off and was in the right place at the right time and had the right mentors and right attitude and eventually became the winningest aerobatics pilot in history. Southern California was one of the true meccas of hang gliding in the 70’s and 80’s. It was the home of UP during their reign w...

James "Kiwi" Oroc is a journalist, photographer, artist and pilot born in the small South Pacific nation of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Since 1998 he has been pursuing and reporting on the cutting edge of extreme sports in more than 40 countries around the globe and has written three books- the non-fiction cult classic Tryptamine Palace, The New Psychedelic Revolution and the just-published fictional...

Charlie Baughman has been flying hang gliders since 1973. That's 47 years...and he's still going strong. In 2011 at the age of 64 Charlie broke the Oregon state record (which still holds) when he flew 218 miles into Idaho, and then did a very styly self retrieve.  We have it on good authority that Charlie was the first person in North American to figure out how to thermal, and possibly the world....

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...

For all of us who make the yearly winter migration to Valle...

In this wide-ranging and laugh-out-loud episode Dustin Martin takes us through some close calls with tornados (plural!); how to assess a gust front; a brief history of hang gliders; the importance of mentors; how to find good lines; avoiding sink; working light lift; reducing drag; advice for new pilots; chasing world records; sponsorship; being a student and building a foundation; the origins of...

Larry Tudor was known as the "Dark Prince" back in the day. We roll the clock way back to 1973 when Larry learned how to fly his first hanglider in the seated position (yep, pre-prone days) on a wing that got a worse glide ratio than today's smallest speed wings. The stories in this episode are going to make your head spin. Remember when hangies flew the Owens every day in the summer? Guys tumblin...