World distance record in tandem paraglider / www.ojovolador.com

Tandem passengers usually fly in a total and pleasant carelessness, just enjoying the landscape or taking pictures. In the case of hanglider pilot Claudia Ribeiro, however, the flights she did in October of 2003 with her friend André Fleury were true challenges in which she played an essential role, both as a supporter for the pilot and to help him stay concentrated and motivated to achieve the desired goal: To fly 300 km, breaking the world record of distance in tandem paraglider.

Both were part of the expedition organized by the paraglider manufacturer Sol Sports “Nordeste 2003”, which goals were to test a new flying site in the north-eastern region of Brazil, Patu, and to beat some records in a Sol glider.

The proto tandem Kangaroo II, based on the perfo model Eclipse, was the one that showed the best results with this new world record. But the new Ellus, a beginner’s glider soon to be released by the company, also demonstrated its abilities for distance flight.

Claudia Ribeiro tells us the inside details of those exciting days of flights, until achieving the long awaited shared record.

By – Claudinha
(Translation: Claudia Riquelme / Ojovolador.com)

Brasilia, September 2003.

- Hello?

- Hi Claudinha, it’s André. How are you?

- I’m fine, just arrived from Ceara, it was a great trip, a lot of fun. How about you?

- We’re off to Patu to try to break some records. I want the tandem record back, so I need to fly 300 km.

- That’s fantastic, André. I’m sure you’ll make it!

- But I have a big last minute problem. Maylcar can’t come because she has a new job and can’t be out so long... What’s your weight?

- A lot, 60 kg.

- I’ve thought of you. We already did a 40 km flight together, for your birthday. But you’d have to weight 55 kg. What do you say, do you want to come?

- Yes, of course I want! But 55 kg it’s impossible!

- Well, you’ll have to eat only lettuce and water for a while, ha ha ha… And it’s not going to be so easy, it’s an official FAI record and they ask for many things. We’ll really have to fly together and you’ll have to help me a lot… bla bla bla…

And before I realized, I was free-falling into the biggest adventure of my life and I could not imagine what awaited for me in the Northeast…

SOL SPORTS PROJECT “NORDESTE 2003”

Launch: Patu / RN

Date: From September 23rd to October 19th, 2003.

Fernando and the Sol Sports Team organized this trip with the objective of testing the Ellus, the new paraglider that is going to be released by Sol. They wanted to fly more than 200 km with a glider for beginners and thus prove that these gliders can also fly cross-country very well. André wanted the tandem world record back. We didn’t have alternative, we needed to spend a time in the northeastern zone of Patu and fly as much as possible to have a chance to break the record.

The place had previously been analysed and chosen because its geography offered less obstacles than the route from Quixada. They all arrived in Patu on the 23rd of September and had a lot of work defining the routes for the flights and retrievals. When I arrived, 10 days later, the routes were already clear and André had flown 277 km solo, in the Dynamic. That day he learnt the way for the record.

The place is beautiful but it also has many very inaccessible areas, so lost that if you land there you become history... The dangers and the risks for life are real. Patu also has some tourist attractions like stone houses (they say that the bandits used to hide there), archaeological sites, dams... The days when we didn’t fly we had nice things to do to help us bear the heat, because the region is very hot.

Pilots:

04/10 – 15 days have passed since André phoned. I only lost 2 kg. I took a plane to Natal where Thalis, a local pilot, was waiting for me. We spent the day at the beach and at 22:30 I took a bus to Patu, 350 km. The other pilots, André (my pilot), Fernando, Frank, Christian and Preguisa were in the city since 10 days before, training; and when I called André to say I was arriving he told me that he (solo), Vermello and Preguisa had flown 270 km the previous day and that Fernando had managed to fly 180 km with the Ellus. With that wonderful news I thought: We are going it to make it, he already knows the way!

05/10 – Fernando woke me up at 7:00. We had coffee and then went to adjust our harnesses and the rest of the gear that we would need. As it’d be our first flight together, we needed to check and re-check everything, so we took off a little late. All the other pilots were already landed before 20 km, so we decided to try to fly back, but the face wind was very strong, making it difficult. We landed after 55 km flown. It was a perfect test flight.

06/10 – In the morning the wind was very strong making impossible to take off. In the evening we launched to test the new trimmers that would help us to increase our speed. They were perfect, we gained 12 k/h.

07/10 – We landed after 42 km because we took off late, we were very slow.

The view from cloudbase

08/10 – We took off (André and Claudinha) at 9:30 for our flight to declared goal to Santa Cruz do Banabuiu, 275 km. The first 90 km were very difficult with weak thermals and many blue holes. We were very low so I threw my 6 kg of ballast, ready to land on top of the mountain range of Aimoré, in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t even want to look at the ground. Then, the first ‘bomb’ of the day saved us, all the way to cloudbase. The flight really began at that moment, along with the desperation of André who wanted to take a piss but couldn’t, because he was using a condom with a hose for the long flights, which was quite uncomfortable, and also the turbulences and the presence of the passenger inhibited his organ, despite his efforts, and prevented him to urinate during the whole flight. That affected his concentration, as he felt that his bladder was going to explode!
At km 100 the flatlands began and the flight got worse above a difficultly accessible zone of about 70 km, without houses nor roads, in the region of Ceará. We were forced to go parallel to a highway distant about 30 km to our left, because the condition was there. We lost altitude again in the middle of nothing except a dam. In km 170, the ‘lost zone’ ended when a beautiful road appeared below us, but we were too near the ground. André threw his 6 kg of ballast, but another lagoon and two pretty sparrowhawks showed us a great thermal that took us back to the cloud again. From then on all the thermals were like big living rooms. In Milha, km 180, we were low over the city, ready to land again and another bomb in which we must have looked like mad birds to the 'urubus' that came flying very close to watch us, saved us: Cloud base, 2400 m above launch. There were many burnt areas that helped to form a mattress of warm air that held us all the way to Pedra Blanca, where the ground raised 400m at Sierra de las Pipocas. We flew over a bombfire that lifted us and was the last one of the day, up to 2200m. It was 4:40 in the afternoon. We glided low above the city of Santa Cruz do Banabuiu so that some people could see us. We went at the limit of our finesse and landed on some bushes, safely. We achieved our first objective, we broke two world records: World record to declared goal in a tandem paraglider, 275 km, and world distance record in tandem paraglider, 283,374 km. Thanks, my Lord!!

Some areas are so dificultly accesible that if you land there you become history...!

I have to remark that this flight had everything not to become true. André decided to change the hang point of my harness, which made my position and also his much worse. He spent the whole flight pushing me! He was also very uncomfortable because could not urinate, which affected his concentration all the time. He thought of landing many times but we were always saved and kept on going until we reached our declared goal almost without noticing. As he always told me: "In a paraglider, the flight ends when your feet are on the ground". He could bravely make it till the end… Well done, André! That day, Frank flew 110 km with the Ellus and Vermello did 85 km with the Dynamic.

09/10 – Some rest for us, but Fernando flew 70km and Frank 170 km, both with Ellus.

10/10 – 27 km

11/10 – 8 km

12/10 – Local flight to make pictures and video recordings. It was a funny evening and the city loved the aerial show.

13/10 – We took off at 8:30 am, and 15 minutes later we were already at cloudbase. I thought, today is the record day; we’ll surely make more than 300 km. Within the first 10 km we had to release our ballast when we were very low… We reached Iracema at 10:45 but it took us 2 hours to cross the Sierra of Aimore, which made us very late. That day we almost became history as we almost landed in the middle of the mountains, maybe higher, maybe lower… But we could finally escape from the most inaccessible place in the world and we decided to abandon the flight on km 105 because it was too late to make the record, and also to make the retrieval easier. We landed beside the road BR 116. Fernando flew 60 km with the Ellus and Vermello flew 65 km in a Dynamic.

14/10 – Strong wind, forced rest.

15/10 – Bad conditions, local flight.

16/10 – Blue sky, 42 Km.

The day of the record was the easiest of all. André and Claudia launched at 9, finding thermals of +5m/s that took them straight to cloud base. At 9:30 am they had covered 20 km...

17/10 – We took off at 9:10 with the objective to fly 300 km. At 9:30 we were already at almost 20 km from launch and at cloudbase. I saw it was the day... The flight itself was the easiest of all until today; we didn’t have any low point. The thermals were weak and the ceiling was low during the first 100 km, but after we crossed the sierra of Aimoré the thermals became stronger, although cloudbase remained low and the flight followed without tail wind to help in the drift. At km 180, we arrived late for the cycle and it took us almost one hour to get out of there. This delayed our flight and we were forced to fly over the ‘lost area’, this time on the right side of the highway. Then Vermello, who came flying with us up to here, stayed back. I felt very cold whenever we climbed to cloudbase but as not to break André’s concentration I didn’t say anything, I just shook and shivered quietly.

At 4:30 we still had 40 km ahead but the conditions were not the same anymore. Still I kept on saying to Andre that we were going to make it, it was our last chance. As ever, by the end of the flight we approached a ‘land of nowhere’, the only way to reach the 300 km. For our luck, a small village appeared exactly by the end of our route. We passed very low, shouting and screaming, so that the people could see us arriving in a paraglider (necessary for the record) and went with tailwind where only God can go. We landed well and a while later the people who had seen us arrived to help, and to see with curiosity what the thing that had passed over their heads was. We lost contact with the retrieve and they couldn’t find us. Finally, André got a ride from a motorbike to the city, where he called our mates to say we were ok. I stayed there with the gear and at about 2 am a car came to take to me to where André was, at the house of the city councilman. We slept there and the following morning we went to solve the paperwork to register our new record that, in spite of being 500 meters short for the 300 km, it’s OUR WORLD RECORD OF OPEN DISTANCE IN TANDEM PARAGLIDER: 299.471 km!!! Thanks Lord, for helping us to make it...

That day, Vermello flew 193 km with the Dynamic and Fernando flew 112 km with the Ellus.

18/10 – Back to Patu. We arrived home at 22:00, very tired but very happy... Frank and Vermello did local flights.

19/10 – Last day of our journey. Frank flew 50 km and Fernando did 193 km with the Ellus, landing in Quixada. I went in that retrieval and I can say that without a GPS it would have been really difficult to find the roads, many of them not even registered in the maps. But it could not have been better for a closing day. André stayed in Patu and did tandem flights with some people from the city.

The wide and beautiful northeastern region of Brazil

All the pilots in this project broke their personal records and agreed in one thing: Never, in any other place, they’d had the chance to take off so early (between 8:30 and 9 am, and sometimes even earlier) and 15 minutes later be at the first cloudbase… That was unique!! Nevertheless and despite the project’s success, we didn’t enjoy any classic day. The conditions didn’t help us: Many cirrus, long and irregular cycles, and good flights only one every 8 days. We were lucky to fly every possible day.

Unfortunately, the day to go home arrived. I have no enough words to thank the hospitality and care from the people of Patu and the city hall, who treated us really well and helped in all they could do. I also want to thank Fernando, Frank, Vermello and Preguisa for being with us in all moments, for the union and determination in pursue of the best records, flying together and supporting eachother; the Almyr Fitness Club and Radio Transamerica for the support they always offered us; Sol Sports, for this wonderful idea and a safe glider that flies so much!!! And thanks God, for being always with us.

Last but not least, a very special thank-you to André, for thinking of me for this adventure, and making true the best experience I’ve had in my life. It was 860 km flown and I never ever felt threatened or afraid of anything. The guy is amazing, really a bird, who flies knowing exactly what he’s doing. Thank you very much André, I learnt a lot…

GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!

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