This is what Raul tells about his life of paragliding: How it startet, what he has accomplished and what it means to him.
In 1987, my father started to teach pilots in his school in Albacete and amongst those were, of course, his two sons - my brother Felix and I. This was when we were twelve, and right from the very start the passion was there. I remember my first flights and how fascinated I was – an addict from day one!
The area surrounding Albacete is of low hills, but it did have constant wind for soaring so we never missed an opportunity to fly, however brief the flight was to be. You should have seen us sometimes on the take-off in really strong winds that required excellent handling. We got ourselves into plenty of risky situations: being blown back by high winds, flying in rotor and having to escape through extreme turbulence.
All of this with the basic paragliders of the day. But their limitations forced us to really know the equipment and its limits. We used to practice all of the emergency manoeuvres – spirals, and B-line Stalls, Big Ears and provoked collapses. We did it as much for fun as for the learning experience, but the result was that it allowed me to develop a better feeling for handling the wing. As the gliders evolved, I progressed alongside them, and bit-by-bit I got involved in competing and started to take paragliding seriously as a sport.
Things changed a lot for me with the birth of SAT (SAFETY ACRO TEAM) – the first acrobatic paragliding team. We were a group of cross-country pilots who were also really into acro. The exchange of ideas and experience amongst the team’s members was crucial to our progress and in leading to the discoveries we made. During this period, I had full control of all the manoeuvres that were around, other than the “Negative Centrifugal” which from the start really impressed me. This was a new type of negative in which the glider turned at the same level as the pilot. It was whilst practising this move that I stumbled upon a new discovery - that changing the way I weighted my body during a negative spin led to a SAT, a new type of turn that from then on was to open up an incredible range of new acrobatic possibilities.
I called it SAT in honour of the group of pilots who were with me at the time, working together to expand the boundaries of acro paragliding. It was thanks to them, their support, their courage and hope that it all came about. This kind of move had never been seen or even imagined. The SAT was the beginning of it all - the start of a new kind of dynamic piloting without which acro paragliding would not be where it is today. Once we discovered the SAT, plenty of pilots started to practise the move until they had it perfected. The first time I discovered the SAT manoeuvre was in Buenos Aires in Argentina at the end of 1999, and I already had Tumbling and Asymmetric Sat forming in my head.
The first competitions exclusively for acro paragliding started up in 2000, and quickly the “RED BULL VERTIGO” became the most important.of them, being the only competition for Syncronised Acro.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how to push the limits of paragliding, and the idea of whether it was possible or not to do “Tumbling” was always on my mind. Seeing as I had SAT under control I had a real advantage over everyone else, and other manoeuvres were starting to become clear to me. It was like I would see a new manoeuvre coming, imagine it, believe that it would work and then practise non-stop (sometimes with a big risk factor – I had to throw my reserve at least 10 times) until I would get a grasp on it and then continue working to get it completely perfect. Straight away I would share the details of the move with Felix my brother and the rest of the SAT team.
From then on, we had 6 consecutive years of unrivalled victories in the acro comps. During this time, from my discoveries and the development of them with the whole SAT team, there came a whole range of new moves such as the Mac Twist and the Misty Flip for solo pilots, and the “Synchro Spiral”, “Molineti”, “SAT Rodeo”, “Helico Rodeo”, and “Infinite Rodeo” in Syncro. It took me another five years to fully understand the full range of movements based around the SAT, and this finally happened in Granada at the end of 2004, when I succeeded for the first time in connecting the rotations of “Infinite Tumbling”, a radically extreme new move which revealed to me that all the limits we imagine in paragliding can be questioned and moved.
Practicing acrobatics also made me discover other moves which aren’t on the lists at the competitions, and other styles or flying which don’t really fit into any category, usually mixing other sports with paragliding; climbing rock walls with the wing above my head; jumping from bridges, helicopters or hot-air balloons; or snowboarding with a tiny canopy.
Practising acro has been an immensely valuable experience for me, allowing me to experience unique sensations, of both joy and fear. Another thing it has taught me is respect for the sport, and to always practise it in the safest possible way.
The area surrounding Albacete is of low hills, but it did have constant wind for soaring so we never missed an opportunity to fly, however brief the flight was to be. You should have seen us sometimes on the take-off in really strong winds that required excellent handling. We got ourselves into plenty of risky situations: being blown back by high winds, flying in rotor and having to escape through extreme turbulence.
All of this with the basic paragliders of the day. But their limitations forced us to really know the equipment and its limits. We used to practice all of the emergency manoeuvres – spirals, and B-line Stalls, Big Ears and provoked collapses. We did it as much for fun as for the learning experience, but the result was that it allowed me to develop a better feeling for handling the wing. As the gliders evolved, I progressed alongside them, and bit-by-bit I got involved in competing and started to take paragliding seriously as a sport.
Things changed a lot for me with the birth of SAT (SAFETY ACRO TEAM) – the first acrobatic paragliding team. We were a group of cross-country pilots who were also really into acro. The exchange of ideas and experience amongst the team’s members was crucial to our progress and in leading to the discoveries we made. During this period, I had full control of all the manoeuvres that were around, other than the “Negative Centrifugal” which from the start really impressed me. This was a new type of negative in which the glider turned at the same level as the pilot. It was whilst practising this move that I stumbled upon a new discovery - that changing the way I weighted my body during a negative spin led to a SAT, a new type of turn that from then on was to open up an incredible range of new acrobatic possibilities.
I called it SAT in honour of the group of pilots who were with me at the time, working together to expand the boundaries of acro paragliding. It was thanks to them, their support, their courage and hope that it all came about. This kind of move had never been seen or even imagined. The SAT was the beginning of it all - the start of a new kind of dynamic piloting without which acro paragliding would not be where it is today. Once we discovered the SAT, plenty of pilots started to practise the move until they had it perfected. The first time I discovered the SAT manoeuvre was in Buenos Aires in Argentina at the end of 1999, and I already had Tumbling and Asymmetric Sat forming in my head.
The first competitions exclusively for acro paragliding started up in 2000, and quickly the “RED BULL VERTIGO” became the most important.of them, being the only competition for Syncronised Acro.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how to push the limits of paragliding, and the idea of whether it was possible or not to do “Tumbling” was always on my mind. Seeing as I had SAT under control I had a real advantage over everyone else, and other manoeuvres were starting to become clear to me. It was like I would see a new manoeuvre coming, imagine it, believe that it would work and then practise non-stop (sometimes with a big risk factor – I had to throw my reserve at least 10 times) until I would get a grasp on it and then continue working to get it completely perfect. Straight away I would share the details of the move with Felix my brother and the rest of the SAT team.
From then on, we had 6 consecutive years of unrivalled victories in the acro comps. During this time, from my discoveries and the development of them with the whole SAT team, there came a whole range of new moves such as the Mac Twist and the Misty Flip for solo pilots, and the “Synchro Spiral”, “Molineti”, “SAT Rodeo”, “Helico Rodeo”, and “Infinite Rodeo” in Syncro. It took me another five years to fully understand the full range of movements based around the SAT, and this finally happened in Granada at the end of 2004, when I succeeded for the first time in connecting the rotations of “Infinite Tumbling”, a radically extreme new move which revealed to me that all the limits we imagine in paragliding can be questioned and moved.
Practicing acrobatics also made me discover other moves which aren’t on the lists at the competitions, and other styles or flying which don’t really fit into any category, usually mixing other sports with paragliding; climbing rock walls with the wing above my head; jumping from bridges, helicopters or hot-air balloons; or snowboarding with a tiny canopy.
Practising acro has been an immensely valuable experience for me, allowing me to experience unique sensations, of both joy and fear. Another thing it has taught me is respect for the sport, and to always practise it in the safest possible way.
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