August 2010


No Va

WE RECENTLY received an email urgently asking us to publish a missing person request. Obviously we're happy to do so and it's enclosed below in the hope that the more places it can be seen, the more chance there is of the person showing up fit, well, and in fine form.

Quote:

"Dear Za Editor,

Vee hope you can help us find our friend, he haz gone missing and vee are now getting qvite vorried about him.

He used to hang about zee forums and zee shows vith new ideas and release fantastisch new ving designs every few months or so. He vos also a highly active member of our local branch of zee Innsbruck Marketing & Media Rotational Dinner Club but he now seemz to haff dissappeared off of zee face of zee earth. Vee are getting qvite concerned. Ze Polizei have told us to go home and vait for him as he is a grown man and a free spirit and can look after himself, so don't vorry. But vee can't relax, vee are vorried for him.

Vee sink zat he may have gotten himself invoved viz some extreme acro or speedving freeks and vee sink zat maybe why he has not been in touch vis the mainstream paraglidschirm community for such a vile.

If anyvone sees Hands Pampas, chief designer, big manager and all round good friend from NovaBling International.m.b.H please call us immediately as vee are missing him. Tell him to bring a new dezign viz him.

Hands vee miss you. Please come home.

best regards,
Bendi Toner,
(test pilot)"

Here's hoping he gets in touch. Good luck Mr Toner.


Eclipsed

IMAGINE OUR delight at being invited to witness the total eclipse of the sun last month on the Easter Islands. It's not often we get invited to witness celestial events by paragliding clubs, but we got one 5 weeks ago and included with the invite were two first class air tickets. Can't say no we thought. So we didn't. We looked it all up on Google Maps, checked out the news stories to see if it was a big wind-up and started packing. Imagining a week or so soaking up the South Pacific sun on a tropical island while mixing in a bit of local culture, some sight-seeing, plenty of coastal soaring and then maybe witnessing one of nature's great events. Wow. What a nice bunch of pilots they must be down at the old Easter Island HPGA. Or so we thought.

Collecting his luggage and his secretary the Chief Editor headed off for the South Pacific Island Experience. With a look of "This ought to be fun" on this face.

That was before the 3 days of hell we went through to get there, of course. A trip during which we lost one glider, had one piece of luggage misplaced and another stolen and took a wrong connecting flight to somewhere god-forsaken place inhabited by three crazy biologists and a quarter of a million puffins. Eventually, of course, we arrived. 36 hours later than planned and somewhat bleary eyed we rolled into MataTodo International landing strip, which seemed to be the only place in the entire island that had worked out what to do with tarmac. Flopping down on our beds we slept for 24 hours straight to re-charge our batteries and get ready to meet the local pilots.

Tepano Makemake introduced himself as the chairman and founding member of the RNHPGA and fourth cousin, third removed from the ancient King of Easter Island MakaMakaBigFun InumAgua. He wasted no time with the frills and we soon found ourselves hiking up to takoff with a Pina Colada in each hand and a garland of flowers round our necks. Everything looked good so far. Even Miss Sudds, our secretary, was begining to relax and let her hair down. Which was a shame, as it rather covered things.

Arriving at the summit, a healthy 500m ASL, we prepared ourselves for takeoff and once again, thanks to the airline baggage handlers, it was me and Miss Sudds in the tandem again. Shame.

"Where's the rest of the club?", we enquired. "Conditions look great, surely they would all be out today?"

"The rest? Excluding you two temporary members?", replied Tepano.

"Uh-huh", we shot back.

"You're looking at him", he answered while tying some form of rope around his waist in what looked like a poor immitation of the worlds first rock-climbing harness.

"Ah. Ok. Right then", said Miss Sudds looking at the Chief Editor in the way one chicken might look at another when feeling a wall behind and backing away from the fox.

"Just in time for the eclipse too", said Tepe.

"But what about the sea breeze and the thermic activity", we said, "Surely it'll all shut down?"

"Nah, mate", he shot back, "The breeze here will keep you up, no problem."

Then he took off. And so did we.

We had some great fun. Soaring and thermalling out, flying way out to sea, gliding back and then thermalling our way back up again. Just what we came for. In fact we were so busy taking photos and enjoying ourselves that we totally forgot about the impending solar eclipse and we were cruising at well over 2500m ASL when we realised Tepe had landed and seemed to be chilling out on takeoff. This seemed strange given that conditions were stable and unchanging, no clouds in the distance or other clues to an impending change of fortunes. Within two minutes, however, we remembered.

Because in two minutes we were flying in the dark. Yes, the dark. The black stuff. Not a twinkle. The vario was informing us that the lift hadn't shut down, just as Tepe had said, so at least we were maintaining our altitude. Unfortunately, the GPS was warning us that it must have gone katabatic, synthetic, adiabatic or even diabetic or something down there and although we were flying towards the island we were in actual fact travelling backwards at 50kph and quite rapidly being blown out to sea. In fact the moving-map page was showing us well offshore already. So wingovers or a spiral it is then. Let's face it, it's better to pitch up in the water a few hundred metres out to sea rather than find yourslef 10k offshore. Damn! We were flying the tandem and I'd temporarily fogotten about Miss Sudds reasons for being there, which ruled out wingovers, unless of course I wanted another couple of black eyes from her not-so-fixed-in-place upper-body appendages. Nice, but not right now I thought. As I thought more about it, spirals were not on either, hitting the water at 18 m/s wouldn't do either of us any good, regardless of how large Miss Sudds airbags might be. The more I thought about it the more I was convinced that altitude was our friend as long as we were unable to see the land or water. Holding back the panic, I made a decision! These volcanic islands are in chains I thought, so I guess we'll just have to hope for another one. We turned and went with it. Of course, this turned out to be a big mistake. As they generally are.

They found us 3 weeks later on Sala & Gómez Island, an uninhabited rock with nothing more than grass, ferns and plenty of puffins, some 400km ENE from where we'd taken off. Miss Sudds was looking rather the worse for wear, more so than yours truly it has to be said, mainly due to the fact that certain parts of her had acquired more sun than is generally good for you. At least we'd survived though, all be it on a diet of small fish, crabs, eels and other assorted seafood. In point of fact, we'd eaten just about anything daft enough to swim into a 38D cup.

If anyone knows of a good secretary currently looking for work, we may have an opening.


G'n'T'n'Safety

G'Yn Gliders released a safety notice a few days ago relating to a couple of wings in their product range. Clearly they are concerned for their loyal customer base and are taking steps to ensure the safety of the pilots. Once again it's good to see a manufacturer being pro-active in helping pilots to "stay safe".

Please find below the full safety notice just in case you missed it. To assist the reader we've added a few notes [Editorial Notes - Ed] especially aimed at those for whom English is not their first language.

Quote:
"We strongly advise you not to fly in the rain on the BoomBoom GTi and the BoomBoom Seven [No shit - Ed] These high performance gliders are very susceptible to deep stall in the rain." [No shit - Ed]

"The development path of modern high performance paragliders (etc, etc) bears no allowance for these kind of gliders to fly when wet." [No shit - Ed]

"If you see a shower coming during a flight, even a light one, we strongly advise you to go to land immediately." [No shit - Ed]

"If you do fly in the rain, and if you enter a stall, which generally happens when you enter lift, do as follows. Do not perform any actions with your brakes, do not steer the wing, push on the "A" risers. [No shit - Ed] If this is not sufficient to recover the flight, push the speed bar and maintain the action". [No shit - Ed]

So there you have it reader: "Don't fly in the pissing rain".

No shit!


An Indian Sun

HOT NEWS is coming in that Sunni paragliders are relocating from wet old South Korea to sunny India in an attempt to solve specific corporate issues they've been having.

Hung Li KaMule, chairman and chief executive of Sunspot PG's, was quoted as saying, "It just became too much for us, to be honest. If we can't get DHL to understand it, how can we expect anyone else to get it right?". He went on, "After many years we've just given up, quite frankly, and have relocated ourselves to India in an attempt to get things flowing smoothly. It's going to be good for us, the future is blight."

After many years of missing wings, failed DHL deliveries and a FedEx van delivering 25 rolls of SkyTex-39 to Pyong-Yang by mistake the Sunshine Team appear to have simply given up and relocated. It seems that (Gwandgju City, Gyeonggi-Do) is too difficult for the worlds delivery services to understand.

So here's hoping their problems are behind them and, here at Pie, we wish them all the best in their new location. For pilots wishing to contact Sunshade PG's please contact them at their new address: Warehouse 24, Utkarsh, Mahaveernagar, Vakharbhag, Sangli.416416, Maharashtra. Paragliders have also asked us to qoute their full postal address; to ensure nothing goes astray from now on.

Good luck Mr KaMule.


An Indian Sunset

HOT NEWS is coming in that Sunni paragliders are not relocating from wet old South Korea to sunny India in no attempt whatsoever to solve specific corporate issues they've been having.

Hung Li KaMule, chairman and chief executive of Sunspot PG's, was quoted as saying, "It did not become too much for us, to be honest. We can get DHL to understand it, and we expect everyone else to get it right". He went on, "After many years we've not given up, quite frankly, and have not relocated ourselves to India in an attempt to get things flowing smoothly. It is good for us, the future is blight."

The original story posted online has not been taken down to avoid further confusion.

We like confusion.


Gravius Painium Inum Arsicus

LATIN IS a fantastic, historic language and it's great to see it being kept alive in some circles. It's still in full use in certain groups around the globe, medical doctors use it to give clear and precise instructions to patients, catholic priests occasionaly raise their cassocks to give a choir boy a lesson or two and recently we've noticed it being used in some conversations on paragliding forums. Amazing!

Of course, it's only amazing if you actually understand it. Which is why we were left a little confused when we recieved an email recently in this amazing, but dead, language. So.... if there are any formally educated types out there who learned Latin while studying, or maybe a doctor or a priest, we would appreciate your assistance with the following. We simply don't know where to begin and have no idea what it's about, so would like to open it up to the community for assistance.

Quote:

"Id Windtecum Zephyrium est absoluta maximus.

Is est optimus wingum umquam flownum inum mi spiritus vita. Il designmator est a genitor. Commodo tellum como super il isum.

Il glideum lapsus est optimus in mercatum procul 10.2 l/d mas maximus da illas Novatums. Il colori cultum es perspicuus especialus in redum mas da los Blozonums. La linea es cleanium e crispium como est no tenen wingleticuses como los feisimus Advancicums. Autem no ni necessitas RigiFoilicus como ilis Ginisantimums.

Il wingum riseum facile quod adveho overum vestri headum capitis sinum nullus problemums. Landum facilinious a humus est smoothicus e softicus. Comum il slightimum flareum.

Commodo dico todo pilotums como fantasticus is illa wingum.

Luvum e etc,
Veni, Vidi, Vici"

Anyone chipping in with a traslation or offering suggestions will receive one of our coveted "Pie in the Sky" coffee mugs by way of a thank you. By email.


see you soon,
Team Pie