Trips for flying

At the end of the summer of 2006, 2 pilots from St Hilaire, France, made what could be the most incredible Vol-Bivouac flight in the history of paragliding. The story has already made it out to most of the free flight magazines around the world, so you may have already read about it, but a summary of their adventure follows:

"Finally we have a plan"! This sentence was in subject of my email to my friend Vlasta Puczok, when we solved our trip to the famous Brazilian take-off Patú. During my searching of several take-off places in the northeast Brazil I imagined in my head a line connecting some of them - YES, we´ll try to overfly whole of the Brazilian northeast from one take-off to another one with goal somewhere on the beach in the north! Total distance was over 700 km - it sounds pretty adventure!:-)

Already this week we are leaving to the north-east Brazil for an interesting expedition. Many of you heard about XC competition X-Ceará in Quixada or ultimate record flights from Patú. I enjoyed the hospitality of X-Ceará in 2002 and experience from this event stays in my mind as "cross country flying without compromises". We want to try now to fly and travel there on own hook without any organization.

We would like to invite you and your team to attend the KILLARNEY PARAGLIDING CLASSIC 2007 27^th January to the 3^rd February 2007 in Queensland Australia. This will be a great opportunity for you to get a feel for the Australian flying conditions as Killarney has a very similar weather pattern and conditions to Manilla NSW where you will be flying the World Championship.

As we already informed in May, several pilots were trying to reach some mountain tops in Hunza valley in Pakistan and overpassing the world record. Nearly to the end of expedition the weather was bad - either the wind was too strong or overcast. And if there was sun shining in the morning, there was overdevelopment very soon.

The idea of crossing Carpathian Ukraine was on my mind for some time already, mainly after seeing some pictures of grassy hills of my friend Kocour, but instead of a glider he had a boat. Magnifficent storytelling of my friend Spunt was more influenced by his love and marriage to a local girl then by the reality of thermals and simplicity of long flights. But the longing to learn more about this forgotten part of earth was strong enough.

After exactly 11 days Urs Lötscher and Stefan Bocks without any support and after some grandiosen flights over Pyrenees reached the Mediterranean Sea. For their adventurous bivouac flight they took off at July 30. from Saint Jean de Luz at the Atlantic coast and landed happy at the August 9, only few meters from the beach La Escala close to the Costa Brava. So they completed successfully their bivouac flight over Pyrenees "From Shore To Shore".