Jonathan A. Hutton is a very optimistic guy. Not in a glass-half-full sort of way, but really, thorougly, astonishingly optimistic. He has nose cancer, very rare and almost unheard of in 30-year olds like him. His memoirs, written up in his book Unflappable, tell his journey through treatment, cure, recurrence, repeat. And between all that he decides to learn paragliding.

Once again, Théo de Blic won the Acro World Tour 2025, securing his 5th solo AWT championship by winning all competitions and the Superfinal in Ölüdeniz (Turkey) in September.

(Photo: Meetingpointstudio/Naomie Gallon)

Sebrand Warren eindigde (voor Nederland) als 21e — en als allerlaatste die de goal haalde — in de Red Bull X-Alps 2025. Zijn taaie eindsprint dwars door de buien leverde hem een dikke portie respect en applaus op. Een paar dagen later crashte hij, overmoedig door zijn prestaties, bij een toplanding in de Dolomieten en zit hij nu met een gebroken hiel verplicht op de bank. Tijd om terug te blikken.

On large, popular launches like Annecy it's easy to be convinced that you're not really part of the scene unless you're flying a pod harness. Open or sit harnesses are rare and if you fly one, inevitably someone will ask: "When are you going to get a pod?"
The reality is, there are many disciplines where an open harness is much more convenient. They are very popular and manufacturers tell us they sell more open harnesses than pods. There are so many types that there is an open harness for any flying style. And they are most definitely not only for beginners.

Met onder andere: WK Deltavliegen | Drieluik climb&fly deel 2: Mönch | Terugblik Red Bull X-Alps met Sebrand Warren | Ozone Chabre Open 2025 | Fly&hike Oostenrijk | Na 15 jaar weer paragliden | Oldtimers op het strand | NK Vlakland paragliding 2025 | Overland met de paramotor

Aaron Durogati ended Chrigel Maurer's dominance of the RedBull X-Alps when he won the 1283km race in style in June. Bastienne Wentzel talked to him and the other final four about what was extraordinary and at times controversial, edition of the competition.
Bastienne Wentzel and Erwin Voogt contributed to reporting the race for Cross Country with photos, videos and interviews on social media, online as well as in print.

We talk about arc in the design of a paraglider, but what does that actually mean?

Met onder andere: Red Bull X-Alps special | Interview met Sebrand Warren | Live tracking | Vol-bivouac avontuur in Frankrijk | Soaren op Madeira | Harnassen en protectie deel 4 | Vliegen rondom een CTR | Lessen na een ongeval | Langs de Liftlat: Mark de Lange | Drieluik hike&fly rondom Alpenreuzen deel 1: Jungfrau.

Naviter is a new race partner this year in the Red Bull X-Alps, which kicks off on 12 June 2025. It means they will be supplying all athletes with a flight instrument for tracking; the brand new Naviter Omni. But behind the scenes, Live Tracking is a lot more involved than just following the tracks of the athletes. Let's take a look. (Image: Naviter)

During the CIVL Plenary meeting in March, a proposal to allow performance equalisers in competitions was approved. The purpose is to reduce the inherent performance advantage of larger over smaller gliders by putting foam tubes on the lines of larger gliders to add drag. (Photo: Ozone)

Kanan
"When I was about six years old, we saw gliders on a family holiday in Panchgani. My dad asked them 'Will you take my daughter?". So I was strapped to the chute and in my memory the person behind me was just hanging from the two lines he was holding. Later I learned that the pilot sits in a harness too, and I thought, ah, that makes a lot more sense now!"
 
Josh
"I was around paragliding before I could walk or talk because of my dad Jocky Sanderson. I used to go tandem with him all the time. I initially learned paragliding at 13 and passed my exam at 14."

Met onder andere: Hike&fly in Colombia | Stubai Cup 2025 | Interview Greg Hamerton | Harnassen en protectie deel 3 | Recensie Gin Calypso 2 en Camino 3 | Langs de Liftlat

Have you seen the videos of paraglider pilots flying through tunnels? How do they do that? (photo: Adi Geisegger)

Finally, the day arrived that you can fly free. You just passed your exams and received the coveted pass to free flight: your pilot's license. Classic psychology tells us that you have graduated from 'unconscious incompetence' - when you started to fly you didn't know what you didn't know - to 'conscious incompetence'. You've become conscious of the fact that full competence in flying is still a long way away. Or as one instructor put it: you've learned to launch, land and not hit anything. But there is so much more to learn when it comes to flying. Where to start?

Porosity is one of the main properties that should be checked when your glider gets its periodic inspection. But we may be measuring it wrong, experts say. "We should be measuring flow, not time."

Met onder andere: Hike&fly naar de top van de Mt. Blanc | Parakites in opmars | Mount Manganui (Nieuw Zeeland) | Red Bull X-Alps 2025 - interview met Nederlandse deelnemer Sebrand Warren | Harnassen en protectie deel 2 | Vliegdagen voor paramotor, delta en ballonnen | Recensie: Moyes Gecko | Paramotorvliegen over Lelystad Airport | Afsluiting Acroseizoen 2024 | Liftlat: Doseah Morriën

'Extreme botany' - Paramotors help conservationalists to protect ecosystems in Peru

Bij radiotherapie is foutloze identificatie van patiënten essentieel. Biometrische technologie maakt dit proces efficiënter en minder belastend. Hiermee wordt zowel de veiligheid als de patiëntenzorg verbeterd.

Ever stopped and looked at your karabiners in flight? Bastienne Wentzel investigates our most critical links.
They weigh less than 100 grams – the two karabiners that connect us, via our harness, to the glider. But each one of them is essential: failure of a karabiner in the air inevitably results in a reserve ride. Isn’t it strange that it’s the only part of our equipment that doesn’t have to meet a standard? They deserve a bit more TLC than we usually give them.

FLOW consortium to acquire a complete understanding of the cell's quality control network.

In the 2024 round of NWO Gravitation grants, the new consortium FLOW was awarded 23 million euros. Running from 2024 to 2034, FLOW will investigate the cellular factors that determine the fate of proteins throughout their life and learn how to influence that fate.

A chemically modified version of the antibiotic vancomycin is much more effective against MRSA and other Gram-positive bacteria than the original. Leiden university professor Nathaniel Martin and his group developed this guanidine modified lipoglycopeptide. They recently published their findings in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

A promising target for cancer therapeutics is the protease family of cathepsins. Researchers from the Swiss EPFL institute in collaboration with Dutch researchers from Radboudumc in Nijmegen succeeded in developing a highly specific, targeted way of inhibiting cathepsin activity. The results were published in May 2024 in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.

Postdoctoral project: Innate immune activation and sterile inflammation in microglia in human brain

Timo Oosenbrug is fascinated by immune receptors. "It is the first line of defense against viruses," he explains. "But what makes it even more interesting is what happens when these receptors keep firing all the time, causing sterile inflammation. The translation to this clinical condition is exciting."

Een nieuwe toepassing voor een bestaand geneesmiddel betekent dat nieuwe patiëntgroepen sneller, beter en vaak tegen lagere kosten behandeld kunnen worden. Investeringen in deze repurposed drugs zijn hard nodig. Daarbij kan octrooibescherming voor de nieuwe toepassing van het bestaande middel als vliegwiel fungeren.

“Dive, swoop, climb, soar…” Launched in a blaze of high-octane glory in 2022 parakites have now definitely come of age – attracting new pilots from disciplines like skydiving and kiting as well as paraglider pilots who want to go high-wind soaring at the coast. Bastienne Wentzel dials in...

Met onder andere: Vliegstekken: Mons Klint (Denemarken) | Sospel (Frankrijk) | Gran Paradiso (Italië) | Harnassen en protectie deel 1 | Dutch Open deltavliegen | Chabre Open paragliding | Delta Free Air festival | Liftlat: Marcin Krawczyk

"Welcome to the Harness Files – where science writer Bastienne Wentzel explores what we need to know about paragliding back protection and why. If you’re thinking of changing, going lightweight, or upgrading your harness, then this is eye-opening stuff. Essential reading."

Sky Paragliders recently brought in new blood from young company Drift, attracted by their two-line EN-C Merlin. Erwin Voogt and Bastienne Wentzel find out more

It reads like a storybook. In 2021, fundamental research conducted at AMOLF formed the basis for the startup company Lumetallix. The company developed an easy to use
and affordable method for the detection of lead. Two years later, Lumetallix has sold thousands of test kits and now has collaborations with scientists, NGO's and even forensic experts.

Ron Heeren established fundamental research in the field of mass spectrometry and imaging of molecules at AMOLF. When fundamental physics gradually changed to applied medical and biological research, he moved his group to Maastricht University. His M4i institute's research, which enables the visualisation of molecules on and in cells to help clinicians improve their therapies, is renowned worldwide.

Remarkably, we don't know everything about the common cold virus HKU1, part of the coronavirus family. ICI researcher Joost Snijder (Utrecht University) and his team recently not only proved where and how HKU1 binds to the host cell, but also showed how this binding triggers a remarkable conformational change of the spike protein that is fundamental to how this virus enters the cell.

Early 2024, a remarkable publication appeared in Science in which Florian Winau at Harvard and his team describe how they discovered the function of a specific glycolipid called Gb3 found on B cells. From their results, they conclude that Gb3 has the potential to act as an adjuvant to improve vaccines against viral infections such as influenza.

PhD project: Targeting metabolism of the enteric glial cell in Parkinson’s disease

The enteric nervous system possibly plays a key role in Parkinson’s disease, making it a target for possible treatment. Anastasia Markidi at Utrecht University set studies the effects of bacterial metabolites on enteric glial cells.

PhD project: The role and effect of pathogenic amyloid proteins on neutrophil extracellular trap formation in the central nervous system

Enebie Ramos Cáceres is a jack of all trades: his PhD project comprises chemistry and immunology and he is doing all that on his own. He not only develops chemical probes to study key enzymes related to NETosis, relevant to Alzheimer's disease, but he also collects, prepares and studies human blood samples to test his probes.

Omics data sets are an increasingly important part of the research of wet-lab cell biologists and immunologists. But they are usually not equipped with enough bioinformatics or coding skills to be able to analyse these data sets. A first for PhD students in the ICI program, this spring they had the opportunity to participate in the online training "Omic data analysis and visualisation using R" which focuses precisely on these skills.

Met onder andere: Reizen - Wilder Kaiser in Oostenrijk, soaren op Lanzarote, De Portugese Algarve | Technora zeil voor delta's | EN-C tweelijners | Liftlat: Anne-Jan Roeleveld

Met in dit nummer: Stubai Cup 2024 | Hike&fly in Stubai | Tenerife | Welk scherm vlieg jij? | Recensie Airdesign Vivo 2 en LiVi | Interview Fatemeh Eftekhari | Zelfbouwcockpit voor paramotortrike

Op de startplek op de Babadağ hoog boven Ölüdeniz in Turkije loop ik Fatemeh tegen het lijf. Alweer, want een paar maanden eerder vertelde ze mij in Oostenrijk al over haar leven als paragliderpiloot in Iran maar toen was ze snel weer verdwenen, op weg naar andere vliegstekken in Europa. Deze keer laat ik haar niet gaan: ik wil meer weten van deze bijzondere dame. Dit is haar verhaal.

We krijgen niet wekelijks de kans om een directe vergelijking te maken tussen de ‘zware’ en de ‘lichte’ variant van hetzelfde scherm. De Vivo 2 en de LiVi van Airdesign die we afgelopen najaar uitgebreid mochten vliegen zijn helemaal identiek ontworpen, behalve dat de LiVi van lichtgewicht materialen is gemaakt. Het zijn beide EN-B schermen en ze hebben dezelfde vorm, afmeting en strekking. Wat merk je daarvan als piloot?

Where there is not even a hillock in sight a winch is the only way for paragliders to get airborne. All that is needed is a long open space roughly in the direction of the current wind. "Towing opens up a completely new range of flying areas," says Michael Gebert, a guide with the Swiss company Fly with Andy organising trips to fly from tow in Uruguay, Argentina, Brasil and the Balkans. "And it's a supersafe kind of flying," he adds.

Even knijpen en je weet of de avocado, perzik of tomaat rijp is. Zo doet een zachte robothand dat ook, bijvoorbeeld bij het geautomatiseerd oogsten. Maar tot nu toe had zo'n grijper sensoren nodig in zijn 'vingers' om te kunnen vaststellen of de vrucht rijp genoeg is. Shibo Zou en Bas Overvelde van AMOLF’s Soft Robotic Matter Group ontwikkelden een manier om van buitenaf, zonder ingebouwde sensoren de interactie van zachte robots met de omgeving te meten. De techniek is bovendien eenvoudig toepasbaar op allerlei bestaande zachte robots. Het onderzoek is op 15 januari 2024 gepubliceerd in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Nature Communications. (Foto: AMOLF)

"I'm Fatemeh Eftekhari, one of the most well-known pilots in Iran. I'm one of the owners of Xagros Clouds air sports club in Iran. I am an active XC and competition pilot. My best flight so far was 241 km on a Skywalk Chili 5 in 2022. But my goal is to bring more ladies to the women's sport community."

As free flyers, we are exempt from quite a number of rules and regulations that apply to larger and motorised aircraft. A lot of our sport is self-regulated which makes it such a beautiful and free sport.
An example of this self-regulation we find in the certification process of paragliders and their maintenance. When you think all the norms, checks, inspections and repairs must comply with laws, rules and regulations, you could be disappointed. But the lack of a legal framework doesn't mean these things aren't important. It just means we can't hide behind a law but have to take responsibility ourselves.
(Foto: Nova)

Met onder andere: Coupe Icare 2023 | Lofoten, Noorwegen | Luke de Weert wereldkampioen acro 2023 | X-Swiss | Hike&fly: Grindelwald | Climb&fly | NK Berg paragliding | WK deltavliegen | Recensie: Gin Evora

Targeted anti-cancer therapies are the future of cancer treatment. Immunotherapy is booming, and antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) are a fast growing class of therapeutics. These consist of a cytotoxic drug connected to an antibody that targets a tumor marker. Although much research is aimed at elements of ADCs such as the drug payload or constructing nanobodies, the international research program TACT is bringing all aspects of this research together, from fundamental chemistry to the initial stages of biological assessment. ICI-partner WUR is involved.
The EU-project TACT combines state-of-the-art research in antibody-drug conjugates with extensive training of new researchers. (Image: TACT)

Herpes viruses can invade the nervous system and stay there unnoticed for a long time, before causing disease. But not much is known about the interactions between the virus and the nerve cells. Sabrina Krepel finds out using advanced techniques such as mass spectrometry and electron microscopy.

Microglia play a crucial role in neuronal diseases such as MS or Alzheimer's. But there is a large gap in knowledge about the processes involving microglia and the development of these and other neurological disorders. Without understanding of the fundamentals, there is no chance of a cure. PhD student Viktor al-Naqib at NIN studies these fundamentals in cooperation with chemical immunologists in Leiden.

Een fictief nieuwsbericht - 4 dec 2038.
Milieuvriendelijke, veilige en betaalbare batterijpakketten voor opslag van elektriciteit thuis, dat was jarenlang een heilige graal. Door Nederlandse onderzoekers in samenwerking met het bedrijfsleven wordt dit nu realiteit.

This year's acro competition scene was more exciting than ever. There was a change of competition rules for the better, a neck-and-neck battle between the two top pilots of the year: veteran Théo de Blic and upcoming star Luke de Weert and there was a good effort to make it all more accessible to the public. Here's an overview of the year through Luke's eyes.
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This article was published in Cross Country magazine #246, December 2023.

Being a lightweight pilot in paragliding is a disadvantage. It's no myth that the smallest paragliders fly worse than larger ones. Some competitions such as the BGD Weightless even have a separate ranking for light pilots for this reason.
But recreational pilots struggle as well. Reader Angela Bonato ("considered lightweight by most wing manufacturers") emailed us: "I unfortunately only fly with much heavier guys and at almost every flight I have the feeling we flew in a very different air from what they say to me."
Lightweight competition- and ex-test pilot Joanna diGrigoli can fully relate. Among other wings, she flies an XS EN-B glider below mid-weight range. "I feel light against the wind. It has no bite." On a lightly loaded glider it can be harder to enter thermals, Joanna says. "But the main problem is into wind."

This article was published in Cross Country magazine #246, December 2023.