A Danish Pilot’s NZ Journey

By Lars David Lauridsen

Since I was very young, I dreamed of New Zealand.

I have good friends who have travelled around the country again and again who could talk for hours about the nature, sceneries and people down under. For ages I have envied them. Where did their courage come from? I just wished so much to go there and see for myself.

A lifelong passion for flying

I have been passionate about hang gliding for more than 35 years, ever since I jumped from a slope and flew for the very first time in 1983 on March 24th. From that very moment I was hooked - and I still am. I have been flying where ever possible in Denmark and at many interesting places in Europe and on four different continents, but flying in New Zealand remained a dream until this year.

As I was 57 I began to realise that if

my dream should come true I should not wait so much longer. And as my life situation and my economy allowed me to take three months off in early 2019, I found the courage to throw myself into it: Without knowing anybody in NZ I bought a three month ticket to Christchurch with a return from Auckland and left Denmark with my backpack, my sleeping bag and hiking boots. I also had a list of hang gliding clubs in my bag and a membership as a visiting pilot of the NZHGPA. Guided by intuition

I did not plan any details in advance. My goal was to travel light

Above; Hang gliders and paragliders in the air at Western Lake

and for cheap with an open mind and ruled by intuition rather than by time schedules. And so I did.

On the first day, I met a young Korean man who had rented a car and planned to explore the Southern island. He was looking for company and I was looking for transportation, so we joined forces and were both enjoying the two weeks we spent together despite differences in age and cultural background. We saw end experienced a lot, but still I kept wondering how to get in touch with fellow pilots and how to get to fly. Would I succeed?

And yes, indeed I did succeed! Now, when looking back on my journey and my amazing flying experiences with lovely people, I am deeply grateful. Flying in Able Tasman

The first time, I got in contact with

A Danish Pilot’s NZ Journey

Right; The Danish pilot, Lars David

other hang glider pilots was when arriving in Abel Tasman. I called the local club Tasman Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club, and I was advised to contact Kevin Rourke and Ashley Win. So I did – and I did not regret.

They appeared to be two friendly and welcoming fellows. Kevin picked me up at my hostel when I came to Nelson, and I felt really lucky to get the in contact with such lovely people sharing my interest of flying. We hit off immediately, flew together and had a good chat over pint on the local pub afterward.

Kevin even invited me to stay with him for a week. We flew together with other pilots both on Mount Murchison and Takaka Hill, and one of the days I even had a completely breathtaking experience flying out to Golden Bay.

In between the days of flying I was fortunate to stay and help out at two different orchards which I found through a contact I had in Denmark. Seeing and absorbing the beauty of NZ! Your nature is so much different from Denmark. Wild and mostly friendly, and I realised that NZ is virtually a big greenhouse! Almost everything can grow here! Moving North

I had spent five weeks on the South Island, but it was my ambition to see as much of NZ as possible, so one fine day I boarded an InterCity bus in Nelson and moved on to Wellington.

In advance I had contacted the local club, and after spending a couple of days in the city, I got in touch with Grant Tatham and his wife Kate. They invited me to visit them in their home North of Wellington. I took the train up there and Grant met me at the station with their two dogs. They were obviously an integrated part of the family.

It was a wonderful and exciting weekend I spent up there with Grant and about ten other pilots. To me it was like travelling back in time to one of the best periods of my life, when I was part of a large and active hang gliding community in Denmark.

Today, most of my old fellow pilots from in Denmark have stopped flying, and hang gliding is not a popular sport among young people. So, I often fly alone these days. It is quite lonesome and sometimes almost boring. But on the slopes north of Nelson, I once again experienced how great it is to be part of a wonderful community of enthusiastic fellow pilots. Welcoming new friends

Grant and Kate were incredibly accommodating. Funny enough, it even turned out that Kate had family in Denmark. They opened their home to me, and when you travel for months without a permanent base, it is nice to be able to spend some days in a welcoming private home and to share experiences with good people.

On Sunday night I went back by train to Wellington. Yet, Grant and Kate had invited me to return the following weekend. Unfortunately, the weather was not for flying, but I joint Grant as he was training a group of new pilots.

Although, they really were a good company, I said goodbye to Kate and Grant and the two dogs after the second weekend. I was a bit hard to leave such nice company knowing that I might never see them again. However, I had to move on and on Grant’s recommendation I went to Tongariro Crossing and enjoyed a unique hiking tour in that amazing volcanic landscape. Solitude and exploration opens for experiences

Before I ended my journey in NZ I wanted to see what I could manage to do with the short time I had available. After Tongariro Crossing I went to Rotorua, and met unexpected new people with my interest with personal therapy practicing.

I went on up north to Auckland and contacted the local club. The weather conditions where not so good at that moment. So I went up further up to Northland’s Paihia. I explored the area there, and took a tour to Cape Reinga. Beautiful!

Afterwards down to Whangarei. I again met unexpected new friendly people, and one who I would meet again!

Then back to Auckland. No, the weather hadn’t improved. So I made a detour out to Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula. I met new friendly passengers. I would meet them again when reaching to Whitianga. Again I saw the beauty of your country. Walking, biking and having the opportunity to see it all from above from a Cessna. Very good! Then back to Auckland.

My NZ journey was rounded in the Auckland area. There I also managed to get in touch with a local club pilot,

John Burton. He showed me around Auckland and took me to an event for paragliding pilots. Yet, we didn’t get to fly together.

My last detour went to Waiheke Island where nothing happened until I met some locals. Good for me! I stayed at a private home, and could explore the island, it´s vineyards by foot and from a scooter. I was also privileged to meet a daughter of a Maori chef, and be invited into their culture.

Then back to Auckland where I intended to stay at a yoga retreat and hopefully soon was able to fly again. Amazing flights

Fortunately, I did that with Aaron, a really nice guy who also lived near Auckland. Together we flew the most fantastic, beautiful tour, Karioitahi Beach, along the coast to a lighthouse up the coast just before sunset. A great trip and a great day!

As we were flying, I thought this would probably be both the first and last time we got to fly together. of the coastline and over the sea. It But in real life, Aaron lent me his was so amazing, so beautiful! car so I could go flying if he wasn’t All the four of us - Aaron, Brendan able to leave work early. I said yes Sean and I, flew for two or three to his offer, and drove back to my hours there. It made me feel so alive, stay in middle of the night, on the as I haven’t felt for long time. It was left side of the road;- terrifying for as falling in love with life again. a Dane who is used driving on the There were beautiful hours in the opposite side! air, and also wonderful to be together

The next day Aaron phoned me and with these great guys! Unfortunately, said he was able to leave work earlier this was the last time I saw them and so I should pick him up at work. We the last time I got the opportunity went flying again at Raglan above to fly in NZ - at least for this time. Ngarunui Beach where we also met Thank you so much! the local pilot Sean. Now, as I am back home in

Later the weather was on again Denmark, I just want to share a south of Raglan. Aaron took a day bit of my NZ experience with you, off work and Brendan and Aaron and send all my best wishes to the fetched me at my new location at open-minded, warm and welcoming Morningside, Auckland. We drove a fellow pilots I met on my journey. long pleasant drive together, south On buses and hostels and all sorts of Raglan, to a site above Ruapuke of other places, I also experienced Beach. There we met Sean and many beautiful meetings with New drove across many fields, and finally got to the ridge with a fantastic view Right; At Raglan; Aaron &

Sean Below; Western Lake Panorama; Dave flew twice while Grant and Florian watch

Zealanders all over the country.

I feel so grateful for these experiences, so I want to thank the lovely friends and fellow pilots, I met.

I hope to see you again some day! If you by any chance should come to Denmark, don’t hesitate to contact me. I will be able to provide you with a glider and a harness, and a place to stay! And of course also come around and fly with you!

Lars David Lauridsen, Hylkevej 37, 8660 Skanderborg, Denmark. larsdavid@gmail.com

Radio Winch Yourself!

by Lars M Falkenström

With radio control, modern pilots can winch themselves to cloudbase without a winch team...

Every rural pilot’s dream is coming true - the radiocontrolled winch is finally here! It is small, it is battery powered and most important of all - you can winch yourself completely on your own.

So radio controlled winches can revolutionise paragliding in countries with limited access to mountains such as Sweden, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands.

Pilots in Stockholm have 350 kms to the nearest mountain so we have to rely on towing organised by the club. So we can only go for XC in the weekends - if weather permits

For more than ten years I had been dreaming of a radio controlled winch while I have been queuing at the Tärnafältet. So when I saw on the Paragliding Forum that a pilot in Florida claims that he built a radio-controlled electric winch, I arranged a trip to Miami in order to test his prototype.

His nickname at Paragliding Forum is ‘The Flying Lawyer’ but his real name is Greg Bryl. When I saw his thread on the forum about his eWinch, I had only one thought in my head - want! After email bombarding him with lots of questions to check who he is and if it’s all credible, I ask if I can come over to the US and test it myself. To my surprise, he answered yes.

His project with the radiocontrolled winch began a few years ago. Greg and his flight mates used to tow each other to hang

Above; Paraglider instructional tow by Greg Flymeister

out at the high-rises along Miami’s beaches. Just for fun, they tried to build a small winch by putting a small spool of rope on a drill. Greg actually managed to get up 15-20 meters before the drill caught fire. Thus, the eWinch was born!

A QUI CK JUM P TO 2016. I only have three days in Miami so the schedule is tight. The forecast promises at least two days of decent weather, so we make an appointment at a café to quickly get to know each other before we head to the winch field.

It feels a little strange to have taken me all the way across the Atlantic to meet someone I came in contact with online. But Greg turns out to be a nice guy with a lot of humour. He has just had his second child but he has his real baby in the trunk. Funny how paragliding can bring people together.

An hour later, we arrive at the winch field along Highway 27 that cuts right through the swamps of the Everglades. The strip is along the channel that you can see in his films. Unfortunately, the wind direction was not optimal, so we move on to a better place. I am extremely curious about his winch and when he finally opens the tailgate I am overwhelmed. The minimalist design is very sleek. It is just a rope drum screwed into an electric motor which in turn sits in a frame. Everything is mounted on the towbar and from the motor runs a thick cable to a gray box. Love at first sight!

But I’m still sceptical. Does it really work? Greg has so far had

Above; Ready to tow a friend and when he´s at cloud base I’ll tow myself Below; Anders Eklind is one of the winch team at the club field Tärna 100 kms west of Stockholm. Although an electrician, he has a hard time believing that the small electric motor can deliver as much power as a regular winch. But when the day is over, he calls the Koch winch a dinosaur

Above; eWinch Tandem with linecutter, beacon and a 4 stroke minibike for line retrieval

very convincing answers to all my questions but I still listen for variations or contradictions that can cast shadows over the dream winch. The big question is of course is if this little electric winch with its twenty kilos can really do the same job as a Cirrus stationary winch with a car engine...

Greg rolls out some rope and hooks in a water ski handle and asks me to hold on as much as I can. So I lean back and take hold of my feet. But when Greg presses the shutter button, I do not have a chance to stay put. The enormous torque that starts already from scratch pulls me away and I have to let go not to be dragged into the gravel. I can not help but laugh at the enormous and unexpected power from the small motor. Greg just grins contentedly.

The next test will be with his Triple Seven King wing, but we can’t even put out the entire wing before Mr Private Property shows up in his big black car and politely asks us to leave the area. So we pack up and go to La Belle where the local winch pilots usually stay.

La Belle is a part of the American dream that never came true. The area was intended to be a luxury residential area, but only the roads had time to be asphalted before the project was abandoned. What

Below; Happy hangies Mario Holmström & Joel Ponce De Leon are being towed with eWinch Tandem

remains is a grid of roads in all directions in a vast area of open air. The place is perfect for towing.

Finally, it’s time to subject the eWinch to a difficult test. A light breeze and me in Greg’s medium wing loaded to the maximum of 110 kg. To be on the safe side, I let Greg run the radio control.

At first, the pull feels like it usually does at home at Tärna, even a little harder than I’m used to. So it works and I am happy to listen to the Flymaster vario’s happy song. I keep an eye on the altimeter and am already at 250 meters altitude. 300 would be okay but 400 meters is my goal.

At a height of just over three hundred meters, the pull suddenly stops. There is still a lot of line left to pull in so I do not understand why Greg interrupted the pull prematurely. I’m sure 400 meters was within reach so I’m a little disappointed when I land. But it turns out it’s not Greg’s fault.

When we get back to the car it turns out that the winch is on the ground and the cable is stripped after being pulled out through the gap under the tailgate. The plug has also been pulled out of the control box, which is the direct reason why the pull had stopped.

It takes a while before we realise that we hung on the winch temporarily to roll on more line but in our zeal, forgot to lock it to the towbar. So it was only a matter of time before the winch would fall off.

The next day we return to La Belle but then another problem arises. It turns out that the winch is not optimised to pull up a heavily loaded wing in zero wind. In any case, Greg quickly figured out how he could modify the prototype to

do it. Although we cannot solve the problem on the spot, I am still satisfied - the track log from previous tows show an average climb of 3.8 meters per second. An incredible result considering that the motor is so small. It is the incredible torque of the electric motor that is the key to it working.

Greg promises that he can fix the winch during the evening and the next day we have lunch at Miami South Beach and I buy the prototype from him. I pick the winch into pieces and pack it in a bag.

HOM E TO SWEDEN I GO , waiting for Greg to send over the new control box as well. Once I get it, I go to Nytorp’s fence near where I live. By having a sandbag attached to the rope that I drag over a lawn, I can check that all modifications have been made according to plan. The next day I go to a 700 meter field in Dingtuna outside Västerås and it’s just relax and drive - almost.

First I get stuck with the car in a hole. Then I realise that the starting point is in radio shadow because of a small hill between me and the car. And when I’m just about to start, it’s a back wind. To top it all off, even an angry farmer shows up that requires me to move the car.

So I unplug, cycle to the winch, hang it and park the car. Then it’s bike back again. With a small waterfall dripping from my eyebrows, I’m actually pretty scared when I press the trigger and feel the torque stretch up the line.

I make a few attempts but lose the right brake handle all the time. My stressed brain simply can not hold the A-straps, the brake lever and the remote control at the same time, so I have to interrupt and get pulled along the ground several times. Then

Left and below; Greg Flymeister and Lars on a day that towed to over 800m

I try to start by first threading a hand through the brake handle and then grab the remote and then it works!

At first it feels strange to control your own tow, but then I discover that it is actually very nice to determine the tow by glider angle and how the variation sounds. When I land, I make another tow with the same nice feeling and return to Stockholm with a grin all over my face.

The next test is to rig the stuff on my home field in Tärna. So I put the winch on the towbar next to the stationary winch trailer with its big car engine. With so many new gadgets to keep track of, I accidentally forgot to bring the line guide so I have to find a quick emergency solution by attaching a tube to the winch to be able to control the line.

At first, you can sense a slight scepticism among the other pilots in the field, but when the first tow sends Tor Jansson with his 110 kg up to 380 meters, they start to soften slightly. It goes a little slower with Fredrik Lotse who weighs 120

kg and he only gets a little over 200 meters. It’s unclear why.

Then it’s time for Elin Lavonen’s turn. She weighs only 70 kg in total but the first move sends her up to 580 meters. The next tow, she rises like a symbolic champagne cork towards the sky and releases at a fantastic 640 meters. It turns out later that almost all tows with eWinch gave the same or better heights than the stationary winch.

In May, Tor Jansson and return to Tärna to fly XC. The plan is to send him up first and then winch myself up and together try to beat the then Swedish record in declared distance - 116 kilometers.

The first tow does not look good. Thor does not get any height and it seems as if the winch does not really have the strength. I do not understand. But then I discover that the remote’s trim knob for the throttle is set to almost zero. The reason is that I practiced low pulls together with Tomas Peterson earlier this week with successful results. But in order to do low tows I had reduced the throttle range. When I readjusted the dial back to normal, I could tow Tor straight into a thermal. The idea is that he will wait for me at cloud base until I am up.

But I get such a complicated tow that it takes all my focus to get it out, so once it’s out, it’s time to land. Very frustrated, I tell Tor over the radio that he can move on as it will take a while before I can try again.

When I can finally start again, it feels just like normal. After a climb of a little over three meters per second, I release at an altitude of 500 meters in thermal air. I leave the field at 4pm thinking that the day is basically over already. But at least I want a small distance, so I turn in everything I find. Suddenly I hear Tor on the radio that he has landed 30 km away, so I don’t expect to get very far either.

But to my surprise, the day was not over yet and after two and a half hours I land in an old aunt’s garden east of Tierp about 80 kilometers away. Guess if I was happy!

The aunt drives me to the train station and Tor drives the car home after a tough retrieve, so for me the day ends like a fairy tale. eWinch had realised my old dream - to be able to winch myself up and pull on XC whenever I want! And with battery capacity that lasts for 40-50 tows on a charge, radio-controlled electric winches can revolutionise rural flying already this year!

Now Greg is committed to complete the prototype for sale this summer. Electric pay out function might also be available. The price is said to be around 6000 USD but given the minimal maintenance and that both winch and batteries will last for over ten years, it can be an investment to consider for all rural pilots.

Left; Towing on a lake with eWinch Single. I’m testing the remote controlled line cutter mounted at the end of the line guide Above; Me leaving home for a XC day! “Honey, I’m taking the ‘little one’ for a walk - I promise not to be away for long...”

eTowing Evolution

Since this article, the system has evolved with mainly internal modifications to make it stable. Lots of amps involved...

The original design has now ended up as two brands - eWinch and DaWinchi - as me and Greg have come to focus on different uses of the winch. He´s more into operatorassisted pay out, while I want to realise the grand potential of towing oneself without any help from others. Given the respective needs in different areas, I mainly sell in Europe, while he covers North America. We´re still friends :)

Now I’m making four sizes - single, tandem, club (heavy duty) and twin (dual spools). It can do both pay in and pay out. With the latter there´s a regen function that charges the battery so non stop operation is possible. Regen can also be used when retrieving the line. Or else you can connect an inverter and charge the battery while towing. I only make pay out for SIV with boat and thus with water proof batteries etc. A single battery provides 10-15 tows per charge.

These days even the skydivers have discovered it as being a great and time saving machine for training accuracy landings. They tow themselves up to 150 meters, release and try to hit a 20mm spot. The Danish army special forces is one of my customers. I’ve been towing hang gliders too and the Club version was originally made for towing hangie tandems but I haven’t been able to try that yet.

It’s possible to do step towing with it but I don’t condone that due to the inherent risks. My own towing field is 1300 meters and my record when self towing is a release at 800 meter (2624ft) AGL so that’s more than plenty.

The whole story behind how my DaWinchi looks and works today is to be found on the DaWinchi forum and blog on Facebook.