Whittling Away

NEWS IS beginning to come in that Mike Klung, the self-styled ACRO guru and self-taught crotchet champion, has taken on the challenge of breaking Robbie Whittler's altitude record.

"What altitude record?", we hear you say. Well, the greatest height gain above takeoff has been held for years by "Whittling" Bob Whittler and was set way back in the days before electricity [1993 - Ed] in the South African heartland [XC-Rag take note - Ed] [They did Ed - Ed]. Very little is known of the "dark ages" of paragliding but, given the right motivation, very little escapes a Pie journalist.

Back in "the day", when sky-blue, yellow and purple were considered a good colour combo for your flight suit, it seems that setting records simply involved getting up early on a sunny Wednesday morning, clipping in and going for some flying.

Thus was set one of PG's longest standing records, taking off and climbing out 4526m above takeoff. In fact the record is so bloody old it's in the FIA records as record number five.

Yes, that old.

Over the years, many people have claimed to have broken the record, Le-Roy Westerhaus and those old jet-flap freaks down at Skytalk have made a claim and Eva Withoutskis was probably in with a chance back in 2007 had she only remained concious throughout. But when all's said and done, none of them seem to have been ratified by those old codgers down at the FIA, so the Whittler's record has remained virgo-intacto for nearly 20 years.

Until now, of course.

Next up is Big Mike Kong, the Big Klunk, the Kling, the Klang, the Klung. [Enough - Ed] Well, whatever you want to call him, that guy who showed us all how to walk over a Ford Focus is going to have a lash at it and in keeping with the spirit of aviation record breaking he's keeping it simple.

He's simply going to show up and "have a go" in the Himalayas with 7 or 8 fellow pilots and a small support team of 20 or so. Let's face it, carrying that wing to the 4700m takeoff would be a bitch without a few Tenzing's doing the hard work. He also seems to be armed with the full backup of the marketing dudes down at U-Burn and it's said they'll only have enough oxygen for 3 months. So the pressure will be on then.

Good Luck Mike!  [ overuse of sarcasm here - Ed ]

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1908 "Louis Bleriot Tree-Landing" helmet cam video

The Blozone Ali-G

EVER FOUND yourself on take-off wishing for a bit more peace and quiet? Often find yourself surrounded by loud-mouthed "experts" telling everyone the best thing to do? Regularly find yourself walking away from your gear just to find a rock to sit on away from the other pilots? Eat your sandwiches away from the crowd do you? Well, do ya punk?

This month we think we've got the solution for you and we're pretty confident your over-crowded take-off problems are soon to be a thing of the past. Or so it would seem.

Two weeks ago we received a demo version of some new kit designed specifically to tackle this problem and, we have to say, it certainly looks promising.
 
Introducing the "Blozone Ali-G: Bullshit Reduction Device".

That's right a shiny new bullshit reduction device from those top-cats down where all the good mountains are.

Upon opening the box, we immediately realised we were looking at something special. We were impressed with the stitching, and we felt the colour scheme meant we'd never lose it on takeoff. Of course, as they think of everything, they'd even included it's own little bum-bag so you can carry it with you at all times.

Keen to give the gear a quick test-run, we dumped the lot on the floor of the editors office and set about it. We found the compressed-air gas can (supplied) and hooked it to the input nozzle. Simple, quick and easy, and within 2.3 seconds we had a fully inflated red and white "Blozone Ali-G" sitting on the editors desk.

That's right folks, a metre-wide, red and white inflatable donut. Presumably for sitting on.

We felt it was pretty big though, but then not everyone has a bony arse, of course. It sure was comfortable too, and will be perfect for sitting on those cold mountain-top rocks away from the buzzing crowds and the interfering wuffo's.

So no more haemorrhoids for the Pie staff then. That's a relief.

[ Are you telling me that your comp wings are so damn efficient that you really want the option of a drag chute to get down safely? I take my hat off to the designers of what you guys are flying - Ed ]

[ You don't wear a hat, Ed - Ed ]

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1908 "Louis Bleriot Tree-Landing" helmet cam video

Blozone: The New Novum

YOU CAN imagine our surprise when a courier arrived at the Pie offices last week with a hand-written press invitation to this years Pamala award ceremony. It surely sounded like a great opportunity to dust off the old tux, re-teach ourselves how to tie a bow and see if the cummerbund still met in the middle.

For most of our readers the highly regarded and somewhat prestigious Pamala's will need no introduction, but for those new to our sport a Pamala is about as high an award as you can get if you are a paraglider manufacturer. A Pamala, or "Pammy", is not just a fatuous blonde bint with big fake tits and a penchant for videoing herself, it's also the Paraglider Marketing & Arse Licking Awards.

A Pamala is given annually to those manufacturers deemed to have excelled themselves in the art of self promotion, exaggerated claims, or to have proven themselves more than competent in the art of floating bullshit across slow moving water. So, clearly we were happy to roll up and see if we could get a free drink or three.

Standing beside the red carpet in Piccadilly Circus last week in the gentle London rain, with Jenson "Snapper" Pargo the Pie photographer, our roving reporter Jasmine Dreamz could be seen thrusting her microphone into the face of anyone who looked like they might know the difference between a brake pulley and a speedbar connector.

Here's Jasmin's report as the stars arrived:

Jasmine: "Hands! Are you feeling confident this year? Novum usually do very, very well at the Pammys!"
Hands Pampas: "Fukk offt"

Jasmine: "Your recent move to Advansed must give you call to feel that all is not lost Bruce?"
Bruce Goldchain: "Fuck off"

Jasmine: "Luke, come-on just a quick word for our readers, they want the inside track on your latest 30 patent applications"
Lucky Luke Amour: "Fooook off"

Jasmine: "Gyn, long way to come huh?"
Gyn Tonic: "Phoook off"

Jasmine: "Pendry, what the fuck are you doing here?"
John Pendulum: "Job interview next door with Barclays Financial Services"

Jasmine: "Mike, surely with the BBpBHp, the BabyFace, the BabyBlue and your new SharkBait you must be feeling like you've got it in the bag?"
Mike Cavanagogorgogh: "Fuck off"

So not very forthcoming then.

Luckily, after the ceremony Jasmine managed to get into the post awards party and with the microphone hidden where only a microphone can be, managed to get a few illicit recordings of our high-rollers celebrating the outstanding sweeping of the board by Blozone this year. Unfortunately, most of the revellers were a bit worse for the wear and we're not quite sure who to attribute some of the comments to, but the unedited clips are here in all their glory:

"... I know, I know, we knew we had it nailed when the fucking thing came out the modelling software..."
"... Hairwave bollocks! I can't even spell it these days.. yes please, another white wine..."
"... Hands put that down, you didn't get one this year..." 
"... shark, fucking shark, can you believe it..."
"... fuck Blozone, they're full of shit ..."
"... it's genius boyz, we'z fuckin' genius's..."
"... patents my arse, it fucking marketing, the sly shits. Wish we'd thought of it..."
"... did you see when Mike slipped on the stairs, we nearly shat ourselves laughing..."
"... is that a microphone between your legs or are you just pleased to see me.."

So there you have it readers. Blozone, top marketeer of the year.
8-time Pammy Award winner, swept the boards, and pretty much sweeping the floor with all the other manufacturers as we speak.

[ for non-native English readers, "shark" is also a verb - Ed ]

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1908 "Louis Bleriot Tree-Landing" helmet cam video

Nigerian Trainees

KEEN TO spread the word about paragliding as far and wide as possible you can imagine our delight when we received an overseas request for more info from Nigeria, of all places. The guy seemed to be interested in one of the ex-demo wings we had for sale in our small ads on the inside back cover of our online magazine. Always happy to pass on PG news, views and advice, here's the story.

Happy to strike up an online conversation with M'Bwana B'nana III, a surpisingly keen young pilot from Abuja, we replied to his email immediately. He seemed happy to purchase our wing for the price we were asking for, which somewhat surprised us as we had expected to enter a long and winding road of negotiations. After all we believed Nigeria to be a relatively poor country, on a global scale. Of course, at this time we were unaware of M'Bwana's Royal connections, but as we later learned, he probably wouldn't worry too much about a couple of thousand for a used paraglider. After a few weeks of bouncing emails off each other we settled on a means of payment and awaited his bank transfer. As soon as it arrived we shipped the wing. We also sent the extra cash, because, as it turns out, from inside Nigeria you can only transfer 10,000 EUR minimum, otherwise they get stung with 120% taxation. Bastard governments, we thought.

A week or so later we were chuffed when our new friend and Royal Prince, got in touch with us again and asked if we would like to be involved in helping his grandfather get some of his money out of Nigeria. It seems that since the decline of a moral and decent democracy, the new junta has clamped down on anything over 10 million leaving the country. Keen to help a fellow paraglider pilot we agreed to let his frail, aging gramps use our business accounts to transfer the funds. Like you would. Fellow pilot in need, and all that. M'Bwana said his grandad would let us keep about a half a million or so as a kind of thank-you. Well, that would come in handy when the Christmas party rolled round for sure.

Well that was 4 weeks ago now and, since then, we've started to get a bit worried about M'Bwana. If anyone knows if EasyJet fly to Nigeria we'd be pretty keen to have a timetable of their scheduled flights. We're quite desperate to get a cheap flight out there, because we've been checking and it seems M'Bwana may not be fully qualified to fly the EN-D wing we sent him and the last thing we would want is for him to hurt himself. We thought we'd take a trip out there and help train him ourselves and while there, maybe take in some of the tourist sights, some local cuisine and hopefully get a bit of our own African airtime.

M'Bwana must be away from his email at the moment. He hasn't replied to our requests for info on the nearest airport to all the paragliding sites out there. Be sure though, we'll let you know how we get on.

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1908 "Louis Bleriot Tree-Landing" helmet cam video

The Heuvos

ONCE AGAIN things are looking up in the world of ACRO. Never a day passes without some long haired hippy looking pilot having a lash at killing himself and failing.

It seems that Pax Taxit, the man with bigger hair than a 80's Glam Rock band, has been at it again. This time he's invented a new move, "The Huevos", which means eggs in Spanish.

To do the "Huevos" the pilot goes from SAT on one side, through Infinity Tumble, to SAT on the other side, and the name of the move comes from the part of the body most likely to be in pain during the manoeuvre.

"It is probably the only great connection we have left that we knew about and that was still undone", he was quoted as saying recently. Not that we knew what the fuck he was talking about. Let's face it, here at Pie, ACRO is something that happens to other people, or occasionally in the lee-side when one of us has really naffed it up.

“I managed the first ever successful execution of the ‘Anti-Arrhythmic’ coming down to a SAT from Infinity”, he was quoted as saying. “Soon after the dream of the ‘Huevos’ came true”.

Obviously, we were stunned that a man with a heart condition and on such medication should choose to do such high risk moves like the 'Huevos'. Hats off to the man. Although we were a little concerned that his dreams included such things, each to their own, of course!

We tried contacting Pax for a quick interview, but apparently he's too busy with his new commercial venture, selling tickets for tandem infinity tumbling. We contacted his secretary, who said, "Pie in the Sky? You're joking right? Yeah, well he told me that if you ever called that I was to say 'sod-off' as politely as possible. So he's busy. Sorry."

Right. So there you have it reader, if you've got the huevos for it, Pax is your man.

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 1908 "Louis Bleriot Tree-Landing" helmet cam video

Reviewing

REVIEWING NEW wings is a thankless task, but one we rise to with all the professionalism expected of any quality paragliding publication.

Here at Pie we are unencumbered by high-powered advertisers willing to simply give us money, or the occasional 'permanent' demo wing. We do, however, appreciate the finer details of the delicate balance needed when producing a glossy magazine that gives the paying pilot quality reviews and yet at the same time placing enough ads to give slack-arsed journalists sufficient income to take out a mortgage, raise a family and then swan off on flying holidays for the other 360 days of the year. It's a fine line between selling your soul for every last cent and producing a well-balanced review full of useful advice that let pilots know the wing is a dog and will likely kill them as soon as they touch the speedbar. A fine line indeed.

So let's get down to it and give you the latest ad-free, brutally-honest and up-front review of one of the fleet of newly-arrived-to-market world-beaters. We took the latest TopStack Floater3 (EN-C) and put it through its paces and what follows are our conclusions after several test flights and based on years and years and years of testing wings. Years!

The following report conforms to the same standards of reporting as traditional paragliding magazine tests.

"As with all wings delivered from TopStack Gliders the wing arrived well packaged in a sturdy box. The glider arrived with a rucksack, manual, inner bag, compression strap, riser bag and speedbar. TopStack Gliders know first impressions count, and the attention to detail just on getting the glider out of the box impressed us. The manual was well written and very comprehensive in both Amharic & English. Very useful. Laying out the wing in the office we were very impressed with the wing itself, it was really well put together, great craftsmanship and the standard of finish on this glider is among the best in the business. They've clearly made a perfect choice of materials, both for weight and longevity. We noticed the stitching was in really straight lines except around the curvy bits and the colour scheme went very well with the rucksack we felt.

The harness attachments seem well placed just at the end of the risers, we liked this. Pilots should take note that the risers are skinny risers, but that's standard for wings of this class, although TopStack Gliders informs us that pilots may, when ordering, specify fat-risers if preferred. All the accompanying accessories were well presented and we really liked the choice of colour for the speedbar. We found the riser-tidy bag quite useful for our sandwiches and the compression strap worked very well. We tested it.

The line attachment points seemed really strong, definitely a plus, and they use the Gibi-Rigi-Arch, plenty of Mylar and weed-wacker inserts for the leading edge. All of these technological advances are fantastic news for pilots unless, of course, someone is offering you a lift back to takeoff and you've got to get your arse on the back seat in 5 minutes. The reinforcements in the leading edge were very clever and allow the attachment of the A's to be a bit further back. Several cm's back actually. This was simply clever design we thought.

Once on-site, we test inflated the wing several times and it came overhead very easily with little effort required and very little brake needed to control the surge. So no inflation problems to report for the Floater3. None whatsoever.

Ridge soaring is a dream with this wing, the turns are flat and controlled both with and without weightshift. When at altitude we threw in a few wingovers to see how it handled and it coped magnificently. The turning was both smooth and incredibly dynamic giving the pilot the feeling of confidence through complete control. The brakes are neither too heavy, nor too light and brake travel is neither too long, nor too short for a wing in this class. The TopStack designers have outdone themselves with the control acheived through such average brake use here. It turned beautifully in thermals which we liked, as this prolonged our test flights by several minutes in some cases. Thermal centering is left up to the pilot and not automatic on this wing, a good choice we felt.

The speed system is light and easy to use. We used the full range of a two step speed bar to get the pulleys touching, but with the bar being so light it's not a problem to use it at any setting. Trim speed seems very good for a glider at this level and seems to comply with the published data. Big ears are easy to do with the split A's and they come out very quickly when released. Fantastic.

This wing certainly has an improved glide ratio over the previous model, the Floater2, and no mistake. The glide may possibly be better than all other wings in this class, but we'd shy away from such bold statements as the other magazines wouldn't like it much. But we could say it if we wanted to. When using the speedbar we felt we could maintain pretty good pitch control and we could steer it with the rear risers too if required. This is bound to be a plus when considering the target market for wings in this class. A winner, for sure.

Normally at this point in the review we would show you a pointless table of different aspects of the wings performance and manageability with the usual 5-star column on the right. This wing, like so many others, would definitely score a couple of five-star entries and the rest of the table would be filled with 4 and 4.5 stars with one 3-star entry for some obscure tested feature no-one cares about. Unfortunately, we are pressed for time with this review and would invite the reader to simply imagine the table or maybe cut/paste a table from any of our previous reviews and insert it here.

So to summarise, a fantastic glider with mid to high-level agility and handling for its class, making it a great choice for long comfortable cross-country flying and your first competitions. For the more experienced pilot this is a delightful glider to fly around with almost no effort, blending impecable handling with such high levels of performance is an impressive feat, what other wing offers such fantastic performance in such a comfortable ride.[WTF? - Ed] For pilots ready to embrace C-class wings this is a very satisfying wing that will carry you well into your early competition career and beyond."

As with all reviews, we advise pilots to test fly any wing they may be considering buying. While much time and many years of experience has gone into throwing this review together, we recognise that each pilot has different requirements and we cannot stress enough the need to fly it yourself. As such, the Pie test team cannot be held accountable should any pilot choose to buy a TopStack Floater 3 based solely on this review and find themselves stuck with a dog of a wing that does not seem to match our test pilots experiences. You have been warned.

This cut/paste job has been brought to you by Pie. The healthy choice. [WTF? - Ed]

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 2009 "A320 Hudson River" bridge collision

Remember

CLIPPING-IN, we all do it. Unfortunately, or so it would seem, not doing so makes for a rather shorter flight. Fucking short, in fact.

So please try and remember to do it.

Find a system that works for you [Yes you, Ed], then tell everyone else to sod-off when you're doing it.

If you don't, you might be back on terra-firma much earlier than you planned, and here at Pie, we'd wager the conversation you were having when you were distracted from checking your leg straps will seem much less important.

JFDI.

[not much humour, but WTF - Ed]

Pie in the Sky
Funnier than the 2009 "A320 Hudson River" bridge collision