Cross-country flying is where most paraglider pilots aim once they have mastered thermals. It is the point where you leave your home site, link thermals together and travel tens or hundreds of kilometres. This is the Vietnamese edition of Cross-Country Flying by Burkhard Martens, translated by pilot Dang Van My. It is written for both paraglider and hang glider pilots, from those taking their first XC steps to experienced competitors. 📕 246 pages, hardback, printed in full colour with over 500 photographs and illustrations.
📚 What the book covers
- Planning an XC flight
- Online competition rules and tactics
- XC weather and where to get forecasts
- Cross-country flying for beginners
- Tactics: dolphin flying, lee-side thermals, crossing valleys
- The final kilometres and how to analyse a flight
- Clouds, flatland flying and McCready speed-to-fly theory
- Six of the best Alpine sites and six top XC sites worldwide
- Eight interviews with the world's leading pilots
✍️ About the author, Burkhard Martens
Burkhard Martens was born in 1962 in Lower Saxony, Germany. He took up paragliding in the late 1980s, worked for paraglider manufacturers between 1994 and 1997, then founded and ran a paragliding school from 1997 to 2003. Since 2003 he has worked as a freelance instructor, journalist and author. Burkhard is a five-time German cross-country champion. In 2013 he set the German XC record at 397 km on a Skywalk Chili — also a world record for an EN-B rated wing. His book Thermal Flying appeared in 2005 and has since been translated into many languages. Cross-Country Flying followed in 2013, and together the two are among the most widely used books in free flight.
