Dr. Bill Beninati has a lifelong love of flying that led him to a career in the Air Force. He served as a physician specializing in pulmonary/critical care medicine, sleep disorders and operational fatigue, and flight medicine focused on medical and physiologic fitness to fly. For 13 years he was physician leader for the Air Force critical care air transport teams, and deployed multiple times to interesting and unfriendly places to do this mission. His civilian career led him to Utah where he...

John Heiney started hang gliding in 1978 and he’s still going strong today. His photographs of free flight have been on more than 50 magazine covers. He broke the Guinness World Record for looping in 1988. And then he broke his own record again ten years later! He was crowned the world aerobatics champion four times. He’s a machinist; diesel rabbit aficionado (he’s driving his fifth these days); hang gliding instructor, has more than 40 wings in his garage; worked on numerous commercials and...

Kinga Masztalerz gets after it. She picked up paragliding not too long ago, but has been pretty fierce about chasing it hard from the beginning. She’s tackled the Red Bull X-Alps twice, flown all over the world, runs her own hike and fly race in New Zealand, and instructs at home in New Zealand and in places like Bir, India. But her journey has had quite a few scary bumps on the way. We start off with her experience in the X-Alps. She shares her initial excitement and overwhelming feelings...

Tom flying the Peregrine “In comparison [to the flying scene] the rest of my life has been a disappointment.” –Tom Peghiny. This quote came into my inbox a few months ago from Hugh Miller at Cross Country magazine with the words “you’ve got to interview Tom!” If you’ve seen the incredible film “Big Blue Sky” which documents the early days of hang gliding you’ll recognize Tom Peghiny (if you haven’t- watch it, it’s awesome). Tom started flying hang gliders at the age of 13 in...

Something pretty special is happening right now in the US when it comes to competitions. This is of course subjective, but in my opinion we have the most dynamic, fun, inclusive comp scene in the world. And it is being led by our women. Our US National Champion this year is Galen Kirkpatrick, who was on the previous show and been lodging some incredible results- 1st, Red Rocks Wide Open (overall), 3rd Chelan (overall), 3rd Monarca (overall); Alexia Fischer is the top ranked PILOT in the WPRS...

Galen Kirkpatrick came into flying just seven short years ago and is the 2023 US National Champion, the first female in the history of paragliding to do so. Not long after her first flights she quit her day job and dove into into the deep end of the paragliding pool. She sought the best mentors, got into acro, became a sought-after tow tech, became and instructor, got into comps and hasn’t looked back. Her story is a remarkable climb to the top against a stiff headwind. It began with a...

Pierre flying off Everest South African pilot and adventurer Pierre Carter has been at this game for a very long time, and he hasn’t wasted any time chasing thin air dreams. Pierre has been knocking off the world’s seven summits for nearly 20 years (some of them several times), and has flown off all but Denali (because it’s illegal) and has only Antarcticas Mt Vinson remaining. In between his efforts to summit and fly off the worlds highest peaks (including Carstensz Pyramid in Papua...

Marcus King has been flying pretty much full time since 1991. He spent many years with the early Ozone team and has been on the design team with Cross Country Magazine for ages. All those gear and wing reviews you see in the magazine (and a TON of the photos!) are compliments of Marcus. In this chat Marcus shares his background in paragliding, his work in the industry, the rise of the sports class competitions, his involvement in the Red Bull X-Alps, and his passion for flying in the French...

Jake Holland is a British filmmaker and adventure pilot based in Chamonix. In this episode we discuss his totally wild experiences this season and last in Pakistan with professional climbers Will Sim and Fabi Buhl, and pilots and adventurers Aaron Durogati, Antoine Girard, Veso Ovcharov and others, and the challenges of capturing these high altitude adventures on film. We discuss the mission of using paragliders as an access tool to explore remote mountains, the economics of filmmaking in the...

Adventure often runs in the blood of Kiwis, and in Louis Tapper it runs thick. Long before Louis got hooked with flying he broke a world distance record in kitesurfing in Brazil and was (and remains) a pretty hard-core paddler. When he discovered flying he dug in hard. Louis competes regularly in World Cups around the world; is a 5-time New Zealand National Champion; and currently holds the out and back triangle records in New Zealand. In this episode we explore many aspects of managing risk,...

Thad Spencer returns to the Mayhem to discuss a very different topic than we did in our previous chat. A little over 18 months ago Thad went out with his friend Alex Peterson for what looked like a pretty good day to go big in western Minnesota. Alex towed up first without incident, then Thad hooked in and began to tow up and things went pretty quickly from good day to lights out. Thad discusses the selfish nature of paragliding and its impact on relationships. He also talks about his...

Phil Hystek “Flat out Phil” Hystek has been instructing free flight in Australia longer than anyone. It began with a fascination of hang gliding in the 70’s, becoming a hang gliding instructor in the late 80’s in California, being “forced” into paragliding in the early 90’s and his energizer batteries are going stronger than ever today. Phil has racked up 171,000 meters of vertical ascent in his back yard to date this year (at age 65!), just returned from a 4 weeks of vol-biv flying in...

Patrick Von Kanel approaches the Tre Cime Turnpoint in the 23′ race Tarquin Cooper has been the voice of the Red Bull X-Alps the last few editions and this year was joined by your host and four-time X-Alps competitor Gavin McClurg to add some commentary and live footage from the air. In this episode the two of us sit down to share our own unique perspective of the race as we chased the athletes and teams around the Alps and had our own adventures (and misadventures!) in our mostly...

Paul competes in the 2011 Red Bull X-Alps Paul in the 2023 Red Bull X-Alps Paul Guschlbauer has been on the podium more than anyone in the Red Bull X-Alps other than of course Chrigel. He began his X-Alps journey back in 2011 when by his own account, he was a pretty beginner pilot. But that year the weather was horrific and he is a beast on the ground and he managed to nab 3rd place. This result lead to becoming a Red Bull athlete, a spot in that year’s Dolomitimann,...

On June 19th this year in the blackness of night Gordon Boettger and his copilot Bruce Campbell donned expedition clothing mountaineers use to climb the highest peaks in the world, stepped into a specialized high performance sailplane, put on their night vision goggles and took to the skies of the Sierra mountain chain at 0230. They didn’t know it yet, but they would be in the air flying “wave” (aka the “monster”) for over 17 hours and go farther than anyone ever has in a glider, ultimately...

Martin wins the PWC in Aksaray, Turkey 2022 Martin Jovanoski has been flying his entire life. Sailplanes, Hang gliders, Paragliders- in any and all forms. He got started in accuracy, moved into cross country competitions and pretty much does it all when it comes to free-flight. He’s one of the big reasons Krushevo, Macedonia has become such a mecca for competitions, and he instructs, guides, flies tandems, designs wings, consults and more. I’ve been lucky enough to compete with Martin...

The French own the podium at the Targassone PWC. Maxime Pinot, Honorin Hamard, Baptiste Lambert It’s no secret that the French are operating on a very different level. If you’re French and into flying and lucky enough you can start young at the Polisport (the French Olympic training center) which aims to develop pilots into the future French team members. The objective is simple- be the best in the world, and win championships. In other words- you can go to University to paraglide!...

Jim Mallinson has a lot of titles. Baronet, Sir, Professor, Doctor, Mahant, and of course Pilot. Jim is the world’s leading expert on Hatha yoga and Sanskrit. He has translated texts that go back thousands of years. Jim became fascinated with India on a trip there when he was 18 years old and for every year since other than during Covid he has spent 6 months of every year there living as a Sadhu, or “one who has renounced worldly life”- basically a vagabond, but then during the other 6 months...

Calef Letorney was a professional whitewater kayaker back in the early 2000’s who made the switch to paragliding and has never looked back. When you think of places to fly, you don’t often put the North East US on the list. The mountains are relatively small and flat, there’s a lot of trees, cloudbase is low, and the weather is fickle. But after a few seasons in the Colorado Rockies, Calef moved home to Vermont, and soon realized that to continue enjoying paragliding he needed to build a...

Welcome to the 200th show of the Cloudbase Mayhem! And this week we’ve got one heck of a story that honors that number. Pilots and friends Pierre Carter, Jeremy Holdcroft, Scott Baker, Richard “Barbs” Barber and legendary mountaineer Andy De Klerk set off this June to attempt to break the altitude record by flying up the Baltoro Glacier to K2 in Pakistan. Everything was going well…until it wasn’t. Andy suffers a heart attack (in the air!), and Scott breaks the rule of not making a tricky...

We have a saying in our sport, “never avoid inconvenience.” But it’s easier said than done. An easy field a kilometer away from the train station, or a really tricky field right next to it? Landing in strong wind across a river that means a long walk, or landing in strong wind near a road that will have rotor? In the 21′ Vercofly a number of pilots were injured and the race was cancelled due the unusual level of carnage. Some were due to rowdy conditions, but several were just because of...

Eliya Zemmour is an Isreali-born climber, endurance athlete, hike and fly guidebook author and…formerly incarcerated conman, but that’s another story to be told soon on the podcast! In this show we take a deep dive into his recent 228km flight from the southern tip of Israel past Jerusalem, which broke the country record. Flying in Israel isn’t without it’s difficulties (tricky borders, sea breeze, no fly zones) but for the adventurous conditions can be amazing and the scenery mind-blowing....

Andrey Kuznetsov has been on the national sky diving team for many years, holds several world records and the genius record (100 way canopy formation record) and has been a long-time test pilot for reserves. He made the transition quite easily from sky diving to paragliding in 2009 and skipped the C class altogether as he found it too slow! He recently flew across Vermont and landed on the beach and owns AirQuest paragliding, a professional reserve packing and line-trimming company. In this...

The toughest adventure race on Earth starts in a few hours! 32 athletes go head to head in a mind boggling journey by foot and by sky across the Alps for 12 days. I sat down with many of them- Aaron Durogati, Celine Lorenz, Damien Lacaze, James Elliot, Lenart Oblak, Logan Walters, Markus Anders, Nicola Donini, Tanguy Renoud-Goud, Tom De Dorlodot, Rich Binstead and Tommy Friedrich a day before the gun goes off to find out how they are feeling, what are their biggest concerns, thoughts on some...