No. 412 AUGUST 2023 The magazine of the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association2 SKYWINGS AUGUST 2023 attitude The Treasurer’s Report lists expenditure, but it’s worth looking behind the figures at what your Association does with your subscription. The five main services that the BHPA provides for its members are Admin & office services; Technical services; Skywings & the BHPA website; Insurance and Competitions. Let’s start with the office. In 2011 the BHPA formed a company with the BGA to buy our shared office building in Leicester. This meant an end to rent payments, and it was a pretty safe place to invest capital that the Association had built up. Michelle Lanman, our office manager, together with Steph, Lorna, Sarah and Clair (who work part-time), handle enquiries from the public and manage queries and admin for our 7,500 members, 69 schools and 60 clubs. Apart from the schools and membership paperwork, they also manage the accounting and PAYE activity required by a company turning over more than £1 million. Exec and FSC meetings are held on site; the tech staff also use the office and run Senior Instructor courses there. Many of you will have met or spoken with one of our Technical Officers. Ian, Mark and Dave have a very wide range of duties. These include liaison with the CAA and national and international bodies, generating exams, managing training programmes, and overseeing safe procedures for everything from aerotowing to speed flying. The tech staff also run Club Coaching, Instructor, Senior Instructor and EPS courses, all of which are cost- neutral and pay for themselves. Our schools are visited regularly to ensure standards are maintained, and that they are professionally run. This is crucial to protect our insurable status. The tech team also keeps a close eye on accidents and incidents, and where necessary will investigate and report on these. The Association also charges a Coroner when we provide a them with report, minimising the cost to the membership. These activities involve a good deal of travel, and we have several schools based outside the UK. Schools pay a registration fee each year which we expect to cover the cost of these visits. The Tech Staff run practical examinations for members who apply for Dual and EPS licences, and for Senior Tow or Aerotow Coaches, Instructors and Senior Instructors. Candidates pay a fee for these, although Instructor and Coaching licences are subsidised. Members call the tech team to ask advice, from revalidation criteria to what club to join, or how to become rated for a nanolight trike. Less common are requests to certify a new hang glider, which means a day at the airfield using the BHPA test rig. Skywings needs no introduction. It costs members around £1.70 (including 60p postage) for each copy and is consistently professional and very readable. It ensures that safety information and other news is delivered to every member. The BHPA website is packed with useful information, aimed at everyone from a curious browser searching for a school to a member wanting a dual flying factsheet. Or, crucially, anyone wishing to report an incident though the online system. The website is maintained at no charge by Paul Dancey, an unsung hero of the Association. We all know that our biggest cost is insurance. In recent years the premium has risen steeply; there has sometimes been concern that we might not be able to obtain a quote at all. Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of Marc Asquith and Martin Heywood, we have managed to retain our £5m cover. Why do we pay just over £0.5m for our policy? The insurance industry has become much more risk-averse in the current economic climate, and our pulling power is not strong. Our claims history contains several accidents and some significant claims on our insurance over the years. Our sport can be pretty risky and people have been injured. If someone cannot work they may, understandably, make a claim against our policy. There is no specific risk area; there have been member-to-member claims following a mid-air collision, claims against a dual pilot, and a significant claim against a club. However our schools have generally proved very safe and claim-resistant, due in part to our excellent training syllabus and school processes. Our premium is reasonable in view of the liability our insurers could potentially face. Do we need this cover? Consider what would happen if we lost it. If an uninsured pilot had a mid-air collision with another flyer and someone was badly injured, it could attract a claim of £2 or 3 million. Even a broken leg and a few months off work might attract a claim of £100,000 or more. The last thing any of us wants to receive is a solicitors’ letter asking us if we own a house and to list our assets. Our legal team is very good at defending members against claims, but they are paid by the insurance company. Without our insurance this legal back-up would not exist. But surely, if I fly carefully the risk is small? That’s true, but you are not the only person in the air. And it’s not always about piloting skill. A child can run out onto the beach just as you are landing; a helicopter pilot might not see you as you are thermalling. We operate in an uncontrolled environment where risks cannot be entirely eliminated. As a rough estimate, 60% of our sites are owned by local councils, organisations like the National Trust, Forestry Commission, etc, or large landowners. All these require that we have suitable third-party and public liability insurance to fly from their land – our policy specifically extends cover to the landowner as well. Even smaller landowners like farmers know that they can be held liable for incidents on their property. Anyone who has negotiated with a landowner knows that our insurance is a powerful tool to persuade someone we are a safe bet. The bottom line is that without suitable cover we will lose permission to fly the majority of our sites. Our insurance cover is essential and we should not lose sight of its value. Finally, about £40,000 of BHPA expenditure goes to support our competition teams and events. British teams compete at world level in all disciplines. Many national associations have deeper pockets than ours, yet we continue to compete successfully at the highest level in everything from acro to accuracy. So that is where the money goes. It is likely that membership costs will continue to climb over the next few years, maybe steeply as the Association faces ever- increasing overheads, and particularly insurance premiums. No-one likes paying out, especially for benefits that are largely invisible. I hope this article helps clarify that BHPA volunteers, from Exec members to Club Coaches, deserve our appreciation, and that the staff are working hard for you. Your membership subscription is well worth the current cost. It works out at £13.70 per month; even if increased costs pushed this to £20 per month (a distinct possibility), it would still be well worth it to be a member of this remarkable Association. The cost of BHPA membership has risen significantly over the last few years, with an individual flying membership now costing £164. If costs keep increasing this is likely to rise further. BHPA membership is well worth it! IAN CURRER, BHPA SENIOR TECH OFFICER4 SKYWINGS AUGUST 2023 regulars reviews features THE BHPA LTD 8 Merus Court, Meridian Business Park, Leicester LE19 1RJ. Tel: 0116 289 4316. SKYWINGS MAGAZINE is published monthly by the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association Ltd to inform, educate and entertain those in the sports of Paragliding and Hang Gliding. The views expressed in this magazine are not necessarily those of the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, their Council, Officers or Editor. The Editor and publisher accept no responsibility for any supposed defects in the goods, services and practices represented or advertised in this magazine. The Editor reserves the right to edit contributions. ISSN 0951-5712 SUBSCRIPTIONS AND DELIVERY ENQUIRIES Tel: 0116 289 4316, THE EDITOR Joe Schofield, 39 London Road, Harleston, Norfolk IP20 9BH. Tel: 01379 855021. COVER PHOTO Danny Taylor of Shropshire Paragliding performs at this year's Buttermere Bash Photo: Danny Taylor THIS PAGE Ian Pepper and Ozone Delta 4 over Slovenia's Soca Valley near Kobarid Photo: Pete Gallagher DESIGN & PRODUCTION Fargher Design Ltd. Killane House, Ballaugh, Isle of Man, IM7 5BD. PRINT & DISTRIBUTION Newman Thomson Ltd, One Jubilee Rd, Victoria Ind. Est, Burgess Hill, RH15 9TL. ADVERTISING Tel: 07624 413737 SKYWINGS ONLINE All issues of Skywings magazine are now freely available DEADLINES News items and event/competition reports for the October issue must be submitted to the Skywings office by Monday August 28th. Letters for the September Airmail pages should arrive no later than Friday August 18th. Advertisement bookings for the September edition must arrive by Monday August 14th. Copy and classified bookings no later than the following Friday August 18th. AUGUST 2023 SKYWINGS 56 SKYWINGS AUGUST 2023 news Dan Jones wins BOPC – again! The biggest-ever British paramotor nationals ended in a repeat win for Dan Jones (pictured) in tricky conditions in late June. Manston Airport proved to be the best venue for years and the organisers hope to be able to return in 2024. 19 of the 70 pilots entered were from overseas, including ten from Germany entering their own parallel national championships, won by Benedict Bös. Top overseas pilot was Spain’s Carlos Oscar Lemos Carrel. The Discovery class attracted a remarkable 31 foot-launch and three trike entrants, of whom the winners were Sam-Taylor Jones and Tim Dougall. All seven navigation tasks were attempted despite windy conditions, the event concluding with precision landing tasks on the final evening. Full report next month. [Photo: Tracy Anderson] Judy Leden to retire from tandem flying After 23 years of tandem hang gliding, Judy Leden MBE has decided to hang up her dual harness at the end of March next year. ‘I am not retiring from flying,’ she explains. ‘On the contrary, I want to rediscover the passion for solo flight that drew me to the sport to begin with. Yet it has been a privilege and a pleasure to introduce so many people to the sport that I love.’ Judy has made thousands of tandem flights over the years. She has also worked closely with Flyability and enabled hundreds of people with a range of disabilities to take to the air. If any tandem fliers out there would like to pick up the reins and take over an established, smooth-running operation in Derbyshire as an independent concern, they should contact Andy Snell at Airways Airsports Alternatively, a whole set of tandem kit could be up for sale next year. This will include a Wills Wing Falcon 3 225 set up for aerotow (with castoring wheels and tailwheel), and a well-used but very reliable Pegasus Quantum tug, plus releases, cameras, tow ropes, etc. [Photo shows Judy with Gordon Rigg’s mum Sonia, on the occasion of her 85th birthday. Photo: Kathleen Rigg] Altitude Trips: no limits! Last spring a 35-year-old UK citizen living in the Swiss Alps contacted the Altitude Trips BHPA paragliding development school, based around Lucerne, Engelberg and Interlaken. Her mother, Regula, wanted to try paragliding. Nothing out of the ordinary here, except that Regula suffers from ALS, a rare neurodegenerative disease affecting nerve cells, and cannot walk. Altitude CFI Emi Carvalho has been flying people on wheelchairs for years. In 2019 he was featured on the BBC2 series Africa with Ade Adepitan, flying the famous Paralympian in Cape Verde. After a false start due to poor weather, the promised flight took place in June under sunny skies. Regula and Emi took off at 4pm for a 55-minute flight above Lake Lucerne and the Mythen mountains, where Regula had spent summers in her youth. Regula’s husband and daughter also flew to experience the freedom of paragliding as a family, and she has already booked a further flight. AUGUST 2023 SKYWINGS 7 Emi has been collaborating with a Swiss school that specialises in teaching wheelchair users to fly alone. This autumn he will be running a special training course with an introduction to alpine flying and thermalling for wheelchair users. The course, for a maximum of five students, runs from October 5th-8th (Pilots must CP Hill rated). Details are we will report here on how it went. Sponsorship success for Green Dragons Andy Shaw has secured sponsorship from US Manufacturer Performance Designs to supply four PD Zero parachutes for the Green Dragons Parascending team. ‘We have skydiving pilots from across the world training with us,’ says Andy. ‘We were able to nail the deal due through social media work promoting our parallel training system.’ Andy will be running further accuracy training camps at his Surrey base alongside skydiving instructor, accuracy coach and PD team captain Vittorio Guarinelli. [Photo shows recent accuracy returnee Wayne Black and others with the new PD Zeros.] Clubs & schools, please read! BHPA members have complained that some details of schools and recreational clubs on the BHPA website are inaccurate. These include details of EP and CP courses a school no longer offers, and in some cases a school or club that is uncontactable. Given that the schools and club web pages are updated daily from the BHPA database, and that schools that don’t renew their membership are immediately deleted, the source of these errors must lie with the clubs and schools. If you hold any management or committee role for a school or club, please check that the details of your operation that appear on the BHPA clubs and schools pages – accessed via the front page of the BHPA website your current offering and contact details. These pages are well used by new members and potential members; it’s important that they are accurate. BHPA AGM The Association’s 2024 AGM will take place at Loughborough University on Saturday February 24th. This will be an opportunity for members to learn what the Association’s many volunteers, and its small but effective staff, are doing on your behalf, and to make suggestions as to its future direction. Any member who wishes to raise a discussion topic should email details to the BHPA Office by December 31st. All members are welcome to attend; the meeting will also be accessible to observe online via the BHPA Facebook page. If you think you might want to join the Exec team steering the Association but are unsure of what is involved, contact any Exec member for details (or Chairman Jenny received at the BHPA Office by Monday November 27th; contact the Office for a form. Nominations are also sought for BHPA Merit Awards. If someone you fly or work with has put commendable effort into the sport over a number of years, don’t hesitate to nominate them. Citations for these must arrive at the BHPA Office by Friday December 22nd. The AGM venue will be Loughborough University’s Holywell Park Conference Centre, LE11 3GR. In brief 301km EN B triangle. On June 17th Nova teamster Toni Brügger flew a 301km flat triangle from Kandersteg in the Bernese Oberland. His 11-hour flight, aboard an M7 Light, is paragliding’s longest-ever EN B triangle; in 2014 Beri Pessl made just 300km with a Mentor 3. Proof, yet again: you don’t need a high-end wing to fly really long distances. In 2022 Toni flew a 214km triangle on an EN A Nova Aonic. World tandem triangle speed claim. On June 26th Slovenia’s Primož Suša pushed the world paragliding tandem 25km triangle speed record to 29.52km/h from Tolmin aboard a Gin Yeti Tandem 3, accompanied by Tina Bizjak. Primož is also claiming a European record. The existing records of 27.66km/h were set in 2015 by Maxime Bellemin and Laurie Genovese. New hangie second-hand sales website. Since the demise of XC Mag’s Skyads site earlier this year, it has become difficult to sell, or find for sale, second-hand hang gliders and equipment (Skywings small ads notwithstanding). Now a new site along the lines of AFORS, the established marketplace for PPL-type aircraft and equipment, is being set up. HFORS is run by former hangie Alex Paterson to embrace flexwings, rigids and sub-70 trikes, plus harnesses, radios, instruments, parachutes, spares, etc. It will also cover hang gliding tuition and holidays. HFORS will soon be live letter on page 25 of this issue. Argentina in April? Flight Culture are running one last trip to Argentina, in April 2024. CFI John Welch says it offers some of the best paragliding on the planet. April conditions in the Central Sierras are mellow and easy. Pilots stay in luxury catered accommodation but also enjoy local culture and events. From Cordoba the team will travel to La Cumbre and later to Los Nogales in the Traslasierra valley. If you are CP rated and like the idea of flying among condors, with guidance on instruments, phone apps and XC, the trip runs from April 8th - 20th. Details are BHPA licence suspended. At a Flying and Safety Committee meeting on June 23rd, following an investigatory hearing attended by UKPPG CFI Nigel Davies, the FSC took the decision to suspend Nigel's BHPA Senior Instructor licence with immediate effect. 8 SKYWINGS AUGUST 2023 news product news BGD Adam 2 The successor to BGD’s longstanding EN A school wing is a whole new design, which they say is even safer and more comfortable to fly. The Adam 2 adds two more cells (now 36), slightly increases the aspect ratio to 4.8, and comes in five sizes including XS, certificated for just 50kg all up. New construction methods means it’s lighter than the original too. As you’d expect for a beginner wing, it’s designed to withstand hours of ground- handling practice and heavy use in schools. It features increased brake travel for safety at low speeds and easy landing. 20mm risers are labelled and colour-coded, and all lines are sheathed. Details from BGD dealers or contact UK Airsports on 01768 779800, Apco’s 2.5-liner Apco say their new 2.5 liner high-end B wing is very pitch stable and surprisingly easy to fly: ‘It doesn’t require too much active piloting and the performance is impressive.’ Lightweight construction sees the M size (76-96kg) weigh in at 4.55kg while retaining Apco’s noted durability. There’s double-siliconised 40g/m2 cloth on the leading edge, 33 g/m2 elsewhere and 27gm/2 for the undersurface. It also features remarkably low line consumption; all lower lines are unsheathed Aramid/Kevlar, connected using Apco’s unique and rather clever V-links. C- steering handles operate without effort on ball-bearing pulleys. The Nestra Light is certificated EN-B in sizes S, M and L (XS pending). Nevertheless Apco’s recommendation for the wing is for pilots to be flying at least 50 hours a year. From Apco delears everywhere; details are Regular entrants Aerocycle 301 and 302, and Southampton University’s Super Lazarus, were joined by Max Polkinghorn’s Disco Volante. This last entrant embodied John Edgley’s original EA-12 canard fuselage mated to wings from another HPA. Unfortunately Disco Volante crashed early on and didn’t fly, but Max is undeterred and plans to rebuild it with a more conventional planform. As always with this sport, wind levels limited the flying to early morning and late evening sessions. Although the wind direction was not ideal, on most days there was plenty of opportunity to score points. Kit Buchanan and Lewis Rawlinson battled it out for the top pilot prize in Aerocycle 302. In the end Kit took 1st place on 7,935 points, with Lewis close behind on 7,278. Le Dash pilots made up the remaining top five spots: David Mansell was 3rd with 954 points, Tom Stapelton 4th with 930 and David Mauro 5th on 833. Le Dash eventually earned 2nd place in the aircraft category, splitting up the two Aerocycles after 302 placed first. A highlight of the competition was seeing Alan Blundell fly Aerocycle 301 at the age of 85 [Photo: Barney Harle]. Alan flew for an impressive 42 seconds to become the oldest human-powered aircraft pilot ever! Alan is already excited about flying next year, targeting a flight of over a minute! Another highlight was the first-ever simultaneous flight of two HPAs, Aerocycle 302 and 301, flown by Kit Buchanan and Bill Brooks. Full report next month. 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The Icarus Cup Tamara Ivancova reports from Manston A total of five human-powered aircraft gathered for this year’s Icarus Cup at Manston Airport in Kent (June 24th- July 2nd). Alongside four British aircraft, it was great to welcome a new French contender – Le Dash from the University of Bordeaux.Next >