Blog for ZREA

Since the Open letter from Alain, nothing has changed. Well, we never thought a letter would make any difference.
Alain often says that "Only stupid man cannot change his mind"....I think we are surrounded by stupid persons?

I am personally trilled about that there weren't any dead accidents in Mexico during Super Final. Anyhow Super Final and the world championship (Piadrahita last year) are two different competitions. The competitors in the super final are only top-level pilots while in the worlds is not the case. I would have felt very very bad if there were some dead accidents in last competition, partly because I wasn't able to stop the evolution of competitions wings entered the EN standard and because we (test laboratories) were pushed to certify those gliders. I felt as a test laboratory, we did crossed the line, we are not speaking about the safety in our sport (Paragliding) anymore, we are only speaking about to make few percentage of the total pilots happy with huge performance gliders with a lot of speed. Before, I always with a lot of joy followed the competitions (by internet) and the ranking of course. Super Final, I didn't. And the future competitions, I feel not to follow that either. Would somebody die?

Myself, I gets afraid about the future. How can I, an average pilot, handle such gliders? I have to fly my Aspen3 until it brakes...and then would I be able to find a new glider which is suitable for me? Well, the future will show me.

THE RUMOURS

Maybe it is the time to tell (here on the blog) WHY I stopped working in Air Turquoise, because there are so many rumours going on of why I stopped. Ridiculous rumours, rumours made by grown up men!!!
It is not because I was afraid after Alain's accident...Afraid about what? I was quite shaky same day it happened, but afterwards I was just amazing happy I had him alive. He has deceived death 3 times, and I am surely grateful he survived this time as well!

There are many reasons why I stopped;

A)Too much administrative work; manufactures (and others) cannot believe that 60-70% of certification is administration. -After a long testing day, I still had to work 2 more hours to finalize some of the administrative work after such test day.

B)Many manufacturers, doesn't take much care about certification and how to fulfil the EN standard. You can repeat yourself thousand times, but nothing goes in.

C)Some manufactures knows how to push their products which is not into the EN frames. This is very hard to handle, each time they acting differently.

D)Because of my own health and because we crossed the line last month....and maybe some other reasons?

I think it is a shame, because I had so many great ideas to improve the safety in our sport and because I loved to work with my husband. He is just fantastic to work with and I will for sure miss that.

Secondly, I hope there will be changing in the standard and maybe the philosophy of it. We have to maintain the small passive safety we had before, in same time following the evolution of the gliders.

Last thing I heard, it was that PMA will make a competition class for themselves and that will be valid for future competitions. So far they haven't shown any good results in the creative way, we have many bad examples of how they are handling votings and meetings (f.ex). I hope they can do something...as the wise man says "at least we must not lose the hope".

I will try to find a way to bring my ideas on the table and I am planning to attend in future WG6 meetings. So most likely I will somehow stay in this sport or to be connected to it. Anyway, I have a lovely flying season ahead of me....which begins now!


Maybe next post will be about my g-force training?