On June 19th of this year Wills Wing pilot Owen Morse ticked off something he'd been chasing for six years- a new out and back world record. Owen flew an incredible boomer from Walt's Point in the Owens out off the end of the White's- AND BACK, flying 222 miles. A huge flight in some of the strongest air on Earth gave us plenty to talk about, but Owen also has maybe the most interesting job of anyone I've ever met. He's a professional juggler (where he holds world records for things like juggling chainsaws) AND he hold several world records in the sport of "Joggling".

I am convinced that with a good winch and good tow-technician, launching via tow is much safer than foot launching and gives the free flight world access to incredible flying in conditions when terrain flying would be too risky. If you are currently doing any tow launching, or plan to in the future, give this podcast a listen. Towing has risks, but they can all be mitigated with proper techniques, crew, good piloting, and equipment.

James "Kiwi" Oroc is a journalist, photographer, artist and pilot born in the small South Pacific nation of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Since 1998 he has been pursuing and reporting on the cutting edge of extreme sports in more than 40 countries around the globe and has written three books- the non-fiction cult classic Tryptamine Palace, The New Psychedelic Revolution and the just-published fictional Under the Influence, 20 Tales of Psychedelic Noir and has been flying paragliders since the mid 80's, when gliders had 7 cells!

Stefan Bernhard has only been racing paragliders for a short time and...

Lisa Verzella flew hang gliders for over 20 years (many of those competitively), has been flying paragliders also for over 20 years and is a professional meteorologist based in Salt Lake City, Utah. She competed on the US World's team in 1998 and 2008 in hang gliding. This show is in two parts. The first is our typical audio podcast that goes into Lisa's vast and fascinating history of chasing airtime, and the second is a video tutorial of a deep dive into XCSkies and Lisa's full weather flow (ie all the stuff she uses before she gets to XCSkies to identify good days to go flying).

Yael Margelisch began flying ten years ago at the age of 19. She's an Ozone and Swiss national team pilot, has been on the podium ten times on the world cup, is the first woman to fly over 500 km and owns the current female distance world record of 531 km as well as the current women's FAI record (263 km) and is gunning hard for a 2021 Red Bull X-Alps campaign (she supported Michael Witschi in 2015).

Charles Cazeaux began flying when he was 15 years old. Shortly after that he became the first person to enter the French juniors program that was created to build exceptional pilots who would represent the country on the world stage. Needless to say the program worked very well indeed for Charles! He's been on the French team every year since 1998, he won the Superfinal in 2009, won the world championships in 2011, holds multiple world records and instructs SIV and cross country with Seiko Fukuoka for the Airlinks Academy.

In 2008 Chrigel was heading into his first Red Bull X-Alps Campaign, and mountain guide and base jumper Thomas Theurillat was completing a degree in psychology. Thomas was passionate about figuring out how to help people not just change for the better in sport, business, or life; but transform into something better and stay that way. Chrigel wanted to win, but he didn't really have a plan to make it happen. The two met, Thomas put his wizardry into motion and Chrigel became the best hike and fly competitor and mountain pilot the world has ever seen.

Charlie Baughman has been flying hang gliders since 1973. That's 47 years...and he's still going strong. In 2011 at the age of 64 Charlie broke the Oregon state record (which still holds) when he flew 218 miles into Idaho, and then did a very styly self retrieve.  We have it on good authority that Charlie was the first person in North American to figure out how to thermal, and possibly the world. Charlie started sky diving in the 60's at the age of 22, then began hang gliding on Lookout Mountain in Colorado when the very first hang gliders were built.

Honza Rejmanek competed in the Red Bull X-Alps 5 times. His last was in 2015 but apparently nutty runs in the family and he and his son Martin have been doing incredible 8 day tandem vol-biv adventures for the past three years in the Alps. Their style is pure- no mechanical support is allowed (ie they fly or they walk), food is collected or carried, where they start and end is fixed so if they don't make it one year they just come back the next! Honza says compared to the X-Alps they move at about one quarter of the speed but with four times the weight and no support crew!