Smells like team spirit / AirDesign over the Achensee!

Three days, 13 team pilots, 130 flights, eleven water landings (nine of which were planned) and a priceless amount of learning and laughter: nobody will soon forget the AirDesign Austria team meeting at Lake Achensee. Because it was so much more than that! #breakyourownrules reports Marlies Czerny.

After gloomy and windy weeks, finally the sun could smile easily again over the turquoise-blue Tyrolean lake from August 11th to 13th. Maybe because the AirDesign team pilots met for a safety training at the Achensee paragliding school. On Friday morning, a colorful group of passionate pilots and top alpinists got together at the Karwendel cable car station and left to new adventures on Sunday with a much better feeling for flying.

Laugh together, learn together

With 540 meters above the water and flight instructor Stefan in the bright red lifeboat, everyone could fly and refine the desired maneuvers – from stalls to SAT, from spirals to heli. Getting to know your own limits was one thing. Pushing them further was the other thing that became possible within this (relatively) safe framework. Improve nuances and try new things – « break your own rules » became more than usual the motto of the pilots. Talking shop during the video analyzes was at least as exciting as exchanging ideas about (the flying) God and the (mountain) world over dinner together. And because it’s not always about the hard stuff, the Friday evening sky hung full of soaring SuSis, Soars and Volts over the Zwölferkopf for a long time. It suited the team that so many, instead of using the mountain railway, undertook the ascent to the next training flight with their own legs. No wonder, with this light equipment…

Just in case

On the last day of the training, the Achensee flight school experienced a surprise: Never before have so many participants in a safety training course decided to throw the rescue with a refreshing water landing. One after the other, the « donuts » trickled into the water on the last run, which our Hike&Fly pilots prefer to choose as their savior. Your conclusion? This was 100 percent positive in terms of the sink rates and pendulum stability of the light reserve. Of course: In real life it shouldn’t get that far in the first place, in case of an emergency it gave everyone a good boost in self-confidence and their equipment. Once ashore again, still soaking wet, another finding stuck after this weekend: This team surfs on the same wavelength!