Richi's blog

Category: Paragliding

  • Paracuda walk & fly

    In the Paracuda paragliding club, we distribute the organization of the events among the members. So I agreed to organize a “walk n fly” event in October. Usually pilots go up with a cablecar to go flying. This saves us from having to carry the equipment for too far. But for people that want to do a bit more sport and see a bit more from the nature, there is “walk n fly”. It’s the perfect undertaking for autumn, where the thermals vanished and the temperatures retreat. The interest was stealthy from the start, but I still hoped some people would join. To my dismay, I was alone on the meeting point.  That didn’t stop me from going to hike though. The Wasserberg was covered in a cloud, and the description in the Internet described the trail as difficult to find. So I save this one for later. Instead I went to the familiar Pfaff near Glattalp. About once a year, I take the cablecar to the Glattalp, and do the half hour hike to the Pfaff. It has a huge take off area with two possible directions. After I was airborne, I headed straight to the Kupferberg with a nice little cloud atop. As I approached, the birds left, and apparently the thermals as well. So I went to the next one. This was the mountain straight on top of where my father grew up. I remember looking up the wall when I was a kid, visiting my grandmother. It looked enormous from below, but at the hilltop looks very friendly. It even spared some thermals for me. In October late afternoon it’s already very nice, if you can hold your position for a couple of minutes. After cruising around in the Bisital some more, I landed right behind my uncle’s cows. That was actually the most difficult part of the flight. There is a tight grid of power lines, and only from atop I could spot a cell big enough to squeeze into. I had a coffe at my cousin’s house, and then hiked back to the car. The signs indicated more than an hour, but actually it takes only slightly more than half.

     

  • Generating flight vouchers with LaTex

    Learning LaTex was on my todo list for many years. Like most people of my generation, I learned wysiwyg text programs in school, and used them for a long time for most stuff that ended up on paper. Actually, to be exact, the first text processing program I learned in school didn’t fall into the wysiwyg category, but was DOS based. I think it’s name was “Farsight”, but I can’t find any information about it on the internet. Since I am no friend of proprietary lock-in systems, I switched from MS Word to OpenOffice a long time ago, and more recently to LibreOffice. But even though their file format is open, it’s still binary. I know, I know, Word and ODF offer textual formats. I think they are mostly XML based. But the last time, I looked at one of them, I could not believe how overloaded with useless trash they were. The most annoying limitation of binary formats, is when you want to store the documents in a version control system, and compare different revisions. I used html for a while for documentation purposes. Although it is very good for these textual diffs between revisions, I’m not artistic enough to make it good looking. Hence, I thought for a long time that LaTex would be worth learning.

    Also, for a long time I wanted to automate the vouchers for our tandem flights at paraeasy.ch. Even-though I knew that this was a perfect match, I had too many other things to do. As I’m currently reading a book about LaTex, I have my perfect hands on exercise. Hence, I prepared a template tex file for the vouchers and one for the invoices. Then I wrapped a python script around, that handles the rest.

    The traditional way to keep track of which vouchers are active, and which ones were redeemed, is to keep a list. But after reading all the buzz about smart property, I figured that BitCoin is actually a perfect solution in itself. I generate a unique BitCoin address for each voucher, and load it with some coins. That way I can easily check, if the voucher is still valid. In fact, even other pilots that fly for us, can easily verify the validity of our vouchers. Now the perfect solution would be to load it with the full value, but since the BitCoin price is still quite volatile, the risk would be too high. After all, I need to be able to pay other pilots in case of a BitCoin crash. So I decided to load the voucher addresses with half the value. That way I can better tackle the risk.

    As an opensource believer, I pushed my scripts to github, hoping they might be useful for somebody. I didn’t go to full lengths, in making it a configurable drop in solution. So, if you want to use it, leave me a message, and I will help you set it all up, and make it more configurable along the way.

    Now, what happens if somebody orders a flight voucher on paraeasy.ch?  After the customer fills in all the required fields, and presses submit, I receive an email with a html table containing all the information. I then save the mail with evolution to a folder as an mbox file. Next, I start the python script which performs the following:

    • Generates a new unique number for the voucher.
    • Parses the information from the mbox email file.
    • Generates a BitCoin address that contains the initials of the passenger.
    • Replaces the placeholders in the tex files with the actual information.
    • Generates a qr code with the relevant information, and a gpg signature thereof.
    • Generate pdf files for the voucher and invoice.
    • Add the new entry to the list of active vouchers.
    • Add the pdf files, the updated list as well as the encrypted private key for the BitCoin address to my private git repository.

    The system is not finished yet, but it already looks like a big relief. In the future, it might also generate the email to send the pdf file back to the customer.

  • celebrating 2’000 flights

    Last week, I didn’t even realize that I completed my two thousand’th flight. Only when I updated my flight log book, I found out. I knew that I’m close, but that day I did lots of short speed flights, and one of them was the one.
    For the first one thousand flights I needed only four years. I celebrated the event with a couple of friends and a big bottle of Champaign. It was in March 2006 from the Zugerberg, and I top-landed after twenty minutes.
    Since I don’t fly as much as back then, the second thousand flights took eight years. I held up the tradition with the Champaign, though. Not on the 2000th flight, which I missed. Instead, we celebrated the 2005th flight today, after I did three tandem flights for Peter from the Rigi.
    So here is a small statistic:

    Gliders 61
    tandem flights 265
    speed flights 145
    flights with competition gliders 540
    countries 20
    flying areas 164

  • Lauchernalp Speedflying

    During our family ski holiday last week, I went one day to my favourite speedflying location: the Lauchernalp in the Lötschental.

    Enjoy the footage:

  • Mountain Wagas

    Every season has its virtues. What I like to do during the winter season is Wagas games, and the Fronalpstock is perfectly suited for that. Wagas are usually performed by flying close to sand dunes in the constant sea breeze, but powder snow is just as soft as sand. Instead of the constant sea breeze for soaring, we have some altitude difference in the mountains. Well, to be honest, the snow didn’t look particularly soft last Sunday, hence my Wagas games ended up being even more cautious.

    Here are some pictures:


    And a video:

  • Chiemsee Holiday

    Like for most people around here, summer holidays for us usually means going south. And that is what we usually did in the past. This year, we wanted something new. The countries north of Switzerland were unexplored territory for us in regards of holiday destinations. We had ideas to go to the netherlands, Belgium or the Provence. The Nordic countries, we wanted to save for later, for a bigger trip when the boys grow older. After some brainstorming and discussing, we settled on the north sea cost of Germany. It would be a long drive, but manageable wit the current age of our boys. Then we found out that Levin is still allergic to fish. So we figured, that going to the sea might be not such a great idea. At least a lake we needed so that we could do some kayaking. Thus, the next best thing was the Bavarian sea: the Chiemsee.
    We both didn’t know the area. The closest I was before, was Berchtesgaden, where I was competing in the 2005 German paragliding championship. Lots of people told us that it is a very nice area. So we looked forward to it.
    The day we drove there was full of postponings. We left only in the middle of the afternoon, and so we didn’t make it in time to check into the camping. Consequently, we had to sleep the first night parking in the driveway, with all the luggage still in the camper.

    Our first canoe excursion was not so pleasant, as Noah didn’t sleep enough, and so he complained all the time. The area was nice indeed with lots of activities for the kids. Definitely the highlight was the fairy tale theme park in Ruhpolding. It is a paradise for kids, full of ingenious playgrounds and stuff to explore. Neither the flyer nor the homepage can describe how good it is. If you’re in the area with children, you have to go there!

    The Chiemsee is on the flat land but very close to the mountains. As it’s on the flat, the underground is all mud. I had heard of two nearby flying sites before: Hochfelln and Hochries. One day we wanted to go to the Hochries, but the easterly wind was not suited for flying there, and the one person chairlift was a no-go for Mirella anyway. So we went to Kössen just after the Austrian border. I was very positively surprised of the flying area. It was well protected from the prevailing wind, and had enough room for many paragliders on takeoff and in the air. It reminded me a lot of Gstaad. After about an hour flying in the gentle thermals above takeoff, I decided it’s time to look after my family. Then I found out that landing next to the cablecar was the trickiest part of the flight. There were lots of small thermals close to the landing area.

    One day we took the boat across the lake to have a ride with an old steam train. The boys were totally excited by the ancient technology. Next, we visited the castle on the main island. It was built for the fairy tail king Ludwig the second, who also built castle Neuschwanenstein. The castle on the Chiemsee island is a copy of the french Versailles palace, and although not finished, full of excessive splendour.

    On the way home, we stopped in Munich to visit the BMW world with our two car fanatics. From every model sold in the BMW group, there was a piece in the exhibition. The kids could sit into all but the Rolls Royce. We had a hard time to get them out again.

  • BitCoin hits CHF 100 mark

    Yesterday one BitCoin was, for the first time, worth more than CHF 100!

    When I first learned about BitCoin in early 2011, CPU mining was still enabled in the default client. I mined for a few days, but it was probably already too late for the CPU. GPU’s took over before that. Last year, you needed FPGA’s to profitably mine, and now it’s shifting over to fully custom ASIC’s. I still sometimes mine with the GPU in the background while the Computer is running anyway, and I don’t use the GPU for anything else. It didn’t find a block so far. But for me that’s kind of like playing the lottery. The chances are slim, but if my computer could find the proper hash, that would cash in 25 BTC at the moment which would equate to CHF 2’500. And that slim chance starts over roughly every ten minutes.

    There is a site somewhere on the net (I forgot the location) where you get free BTC. Back in those days, you got 0.05 BTC. That’s how I started off. This would now equate to CHF 5, but these days you get much less.

    Since July 2011, I accept BitCoins as payment for the paraeasy.ch paragliding tandem flights. In fact only one guy payed that way so far. In October 2011 the flight cost 75 BTC at a rate of less than CHF 3 per BTC. If I still had those 75 BTC, they would be worth a whopping CHF 7’500 today.

    I was thrilled last August, when it had an 80% increase within two weeks. But what happened this year was just insane. The price went from CHF 11 to CHF 110 in just three months. There were weeks with 10 to 15% increase every day.

    The other day I walked past a local bank, and saw an advertisement for a defensive savings plan with an 8 year obligation where you get 1% profit. Of course it’s an unfair comparison. Noone knows what will happen next to the BTC value. It could drop any day for any number of reasons, or it could keep rising. I wouldn’t invest my savings so far.

    There is a lot of speculation going on about the future value of BTC, and how certain events could influence that. Last week I read an interesting article about that. But there is also a lot of speculation about a bubble about to burst. Indeed the recent rise in value was so unnaturally fast, that it looks like a bubble. But such a bubble already bursted in 2011, and BTC recovered remarkably well.

    Let’s not concentrate on the value itself. I think for BTC it would actually be better if the value was a bit more stable. The system was designed as a means to transfer money quick and easy. The main motivator was being able to transfer funds around the globe without waiting for a couple of days to arrive, and paying ridiculous transfer fees, as with current bank wire transfers, credit cards or paypal. That’s where BTC really shines. Of course it’s nice to see the value of your Coins rise, but I hope a possible bubble will not harm the system too much, and I strongly hope if that bubble should really burst, BTC will recover even stronger.

    Update : additional links to good articles:

    The bitcoin bubble and the future of currency

    Are BitCoins the future?

    The target value of BitCoin

    BitCoin in the 3rd world

  • Skiweekend in Hasliberg

    Last weekend I was in Hasliberg wih the ski club “Schneefreaks” from Steinhausen. They booked two full days of tandem flights. So I did ten flights with skis and two with snow board. The weather was almost perfect and so was the snow.

  • One legged speed flying

    Today, I took a day off, to go to the Gemsstock for speed flying. It was almost as sunny as the forecast predicted. The cirrus became dense in the afternoon. Although the prevailing wind was north west, sometimes it blew down the slope, especially in the lower parts. But it was well within the comfort zone. The first few runs were from the galcier to the Gurschen (the middle station), along the glacier ski slope. Once the sun was higher, I switched to the Felsental (rock valley) which runs from the top all the way to Andermatt. That’s about 1’500 meters altitude difference and takes less than five minutes with the speed wing.

    I did lots of touch n goes and some longer skiing sections along the different terrace steps. Then, all of a sudden in a straight section that didn’t look so bad, one ski jumped off my foot and stayed there in the deep snow. The next two terrace steps were not suited for landing, and I was too fast anyway. Walking up from farther down in the deep snow of the steep slopes seemed too exhausting. So I flew down to Andermatt, intending to try and fly to the place where I lost the ski. I was not sure how easy it would be to take off with only one ski. Turns out, I succeeded at the first try without any problem. No idea if every attempt would go so well. I looked for a good place where I could slope land in the tight valley, close to where I anticipated the ski. Again, the one foot landing went smooth. But then I walked around in the deep snow for more than half an hour searching for the missing ski. Walking one of these slopes uphill was indeed exhausting. So I took the one ski and descended to the next terrace step. When it was too steep, I sat on it, almost like a sledge. Once I found it, the rest of the descent was a lot easier…

  • Pilot 4 a day with a Jaguar driver

    Every once in a while I get to do a pilot for a day. That’s our premium offer at paraeasy.ch, and admittedly the most fun to do. Depending on the weather we either do a cross country flight or multiple flights from various mountains. This time, the weather looked promising, but not good enough for cross country. So we set out to do the first flight early from the Rigi. Christoph, todays passenger came with a beautiful Jaguar E-Type, and he is also member of the Jaguar Driver’s Club. The residual cloud cover that should disappear quickly in the morning was lower and more durable than was predicted. So we spent more than an hour para-waiting in the fog. When the fog finally lifted, we had a nice flight with some weak thermals and a couple of tight circles down to Goldau.

    After having lunch on a lakeview terrace in Lauerz, we drove with our two Jaguars to Brunnen. Then we headed to the Fronalpstock. From the main takeoff, we followed the ski slope down to Stoos, flying along the rock cliffs to the alp above Morschach. Next, I took course straight to Brunnen and with lots of excess altitude, we floated around and did some sightseeing. The smooth landing was on the Auslandschweizerplatz, one of my favorite landing zones, near to the lake front.

    For the third flight I came up with something very special. With the steam boat we crossed the lake, and took the bus and cablecar to the Niederbauen. Like on the other mountains before, the view was marvelous. Sadly, the wind at takeoff had an unusually suboptimal direction, hence I was not certain if we really could cross the lake. We took off, and heading towards Seelisberg town I grew more and more confident that we would make it. Along the rock cliffs of the Seelisberg mountain we soared with the birds, making ground without loosing altitude. Above the lake, we did another photo session, and we even had enough altitude left to fly to the Auslandschweizerplatz.