The harness

Sup'air are kindly sponsoring me with an excellent harness. It's a lightweight version of the Altirando XP with a few minor modifications to save weight. The modifications are:

• No comfort padding on the inside. The normal Altirando XP has some rather luxurious padding for your back, but Sup'air have removed this to save weight. The race harness keeps the full airbag back protection found in the standard version.


• Lighter buckles. These are a lighter, simpler and a touch more fiddly than the normal light clip buckles. However, it saves a few grams!


• Fewer pockets. Once again, just to save weight.

Sup'air have added a lightweight removable leg cover. This is streamlined and warm in the air, and can be removed and put in the van if there's a long walk ahead. In rucksack mode it's very comfortable to carry.

The reserve parachute is a Sup'air Xtralite Small which is a fully certified reserve parachute weighing less than 1kg. It packs in to a very neat combined front mount container which doubles as a cockpit for mounting my instruments in plain view.

These are the final pieces of gear, I'll get the scales out tonight to find out how much it all weighs.

Weather strategy

Right now there's a thunderstorm in Geneva. The lightning is spectacular and the rain torrential. There's just a thin sliver of clear sky sandwiched between the towering clouds and the crests of the Jura mountains. The light has an metallic blue quality, illuminating the city in eerie surgical glow. I've never quite seen anything like it.

Despite the years of preparation, the months spent training, route planning and tuning gear, the winner of the X-Alps race will most likely be decided by the weather. Maybe the strong pilots and aerial tacticians will be able to weave a thread through the mountains, keeping them in the air and covering hundreds of kilometres day after day. But if the rain falls and the wind blows then the runners will be kings. Positions in the race will rise and fall based on each team's abilities to exploit the weather to play to their own strengths.

Alex and I have a whole host of weather information sources at our disposal. For the general long term forecasts we use TopKarten which publishes the output of the American GFS model (click on the link then click on GFS). This gives us forecast pressures and wind speeds at different altitudes, precipiation, cloud cover and more esoteric variables like CAPE which allows us to predict the chance of thunderstorms. You can click on the "+6" and "-6" links to animate through the forecast for the next two weeks. We'll use the output of this model to make the grand strategic decisions, for example do we take the north route through Chur or the south route through Bellinzona?

Here's a quick guide to interpreting the output of the GFS model so you can predict the teams' strategic decisions during the race.

The first thing to look at is the wind speed. Meteorologists prefer to use pressure altitudes rather than elevations. To first approximation, 850hPa corresponds to about 1500m -- the altitude at which we normally fly -- and 500hPa corresponds to about 5000m -- the summit of Mont Blanc. Wind speeds less than 10km/h at 1500m are "go anywhere" days and paraglider pilots can fly in any direction. Up to 20km/h pilots can still fly but it's difficult to make progress against the wind, and above 30km/h we are grounded.

If there are also light winds at 500hPa then expect some very long flights, if you see a "snake" of strong winds (Stromlinien) over the Alps then it means that jet stream is near and flying will be difficult.

The precipitation (Niderschlag) is accumulated over several hours, so a little bit of light blue is not a worry: it means the occasional shower at worse. However, once you start seeing purple on the forecast charts then you can expect a wet day with limited flying opportunities between the rain clouds.

As I'm finishing off this blog post at my kitchen table the sun has set and the cloud above is as black as ink. Out on the road and in the mountains it will be a long and dark night.

Getting geeky

During the 2007 race I was glued to the internet, following the teams' progress through the Alps. Suddenly my phone rang: it was Aidan Toase: "Hi Tom, it's Aidan -- I'm trying to find a take off but I'm in the cloud and I can't see very far. Can you have a look on Google Earth and see if there's one near me?" Thanks to the live tracking I could find Aidan's exact position as he was on the phone, and was able to tell him that if he walked a few hundred metres north through a forest he'd come to a clear area where he could launch.

Technology has made an incredible difference to how we paraglide. Through the internet we have access to the latest detailed weather forecasts and up-to-the minute information from the sites. Using Google Earth and online databases like Paragliding Earth and XContest's incredible Skyways Map we have fingertip access to experience that would otherwise take years to acquire. Once in the air live tracking systems like Leonardo Live allow others to follow our progress in real time and are a great safety feature. Pilots who were flying ten years ago may remember analysing every word of the TV news forecast and somehow organising to go flying without using mobile phones. How archaic it seems now.

We'll have a whole host of technology on board to help us in the race. Here's a quick overview.

The 2009 live tracking, written by Harry Gergits, will be even better this year, with live updates every minute. Red Bull Mobile are supplying us with Sony Ericsson C702 which talk to our Brauniger Compeo+ altivario GPSs via Bluetooth. The Compeo+ collects a minute-by-minute log and packs eight track points in to an SMS which it sends every eight minutes.

Alex will use the live tracking to find me using a satellite car navigation system, and we'll both be watching the other team's movements to observe their route choices.

We'll also use the mobile phone to connect to the internet for the latest weather information and plan our moves on Google Maps and the Skyways Map. We'll make regular diary updates though MMS messages from the phone, which should be able to to text, photos, audio and video.

Suunto are supplying us with their new Suunto Core watch which includes an altimeter, compass and thermometer. All these features will be very useful for navigation in the mountains. For example, you can use the thermometer to measure the environmental lapse rate as you walk up to launch to get an idea of the atmospheric instability on the day.

I'll also be flying with the Leonardo Live tracking system created by Manolis Andreadakis which means that you'll be able to follow my flights in greater detail, it'll act as a backup tracklog in case I have problems with the official tracking devices, and will be further safety device.

Those of you who know me will know that I have a bit of a fetish for computers and have written quite a lot of software for paragliders. If you're an XC pilot then be sure to check out my XC planner and to analyse your flights with my Google Earth flight analyser (now integrated in to Leonardo). There are also a few geekier projects on my GitHub home page.