Ever since Icarus and Daedalus flew across the sea with wings made of feathers and wax people have imagined flying like the birds. Some people do – glider pilots, hang glider pilots, paraglider pilots, wingsuit pilots… all these and many others pursue the dream of human flight. But what does it take to really fly far? To fly further than any human has before, powered only by the sun, wind, thermals and your own skill? In this collection of four true real-life short stories, an elite band of hang glider and paraglider pilots reveal what it takes to set a world record in hang gliding and paragliding distance flying. They include: 1. Dragon Slaying, with Nevil Hulett South African pilot Nevil Hulett goes big-game hunting in the South African outback and comes back with a 500km record. "I could have died up there," he said. 2. Final Glide, with Jonny Durand and Dustin Martin Possibly one of the greatest sporting battles of all time – and all played out in the hot, dry, high skies of Deep South Texas. Jonny and Dustin go head-to-head over 11 hours and 760km. 3. Heroes of the Brazilian Heartland, with Frank Brown, Donizete Lemos, Marcelo Prieto and Rafael Saladini Three Brazilian heroes plan and execute the perfect raid – flying 514km in an 11-hour racing epic that saw the world record brought home to Brazil. 4. The Dream Team, with Donizete Lemos, Rafael Saladini and Samuel Nascimento Almost a year to the day of their 514km record, the Brazilians were back – smashing the paragliding world record to 564km. This short collection of world record stories from Cross Country Magazine has been specially brought together in an ebook, with an introduction by Cross Country Magazine editor Ed Ewing. To fly far, fly fast!

A collection of thrilling excursions from aviation including paragliding, hang-gliding, paramotoring and micro-lighting. Soaring over forest fires, a moonlight New Year’s Eve flight over the Pennines, bungee-jumping from a paraglider as a birthday celebration, jumping off Mount Everest, or numerous several-hundred-mile flights over open country and on different continents. This book covering many exhilarating and enthralling stories from New Aviation – including paragliding, hang-gliding, paramotoring and micro-lighting – has them all. There is even the story of a pilot using flexwings to teach geese how to migrate – and of a marriage proposal at 500 feet. The challenges explored by the renowned New Aviation expert Brian Milton includes Rich Pfieffer’s legal charges of assault with a deadly weapon for flying a hang-glider over California’s Rose Bowl American College Football competition, or Judy Leden’s balloon drop from 40,000 feet over Jordan, with Israel on one side and Saudi on the other, despite her eyes being frozen shut. Along with this latter story, the author also discusses how women overcame prejudice and scorn to take on the men in the deathly arid wastes of Owens Valley, and the ways in which eagles and vultures – and sometimes crows – reacted violently to humans flying in their air and at their speed. The author describes the return to competitions in which the original British innovators lost their dominant status and how new champions emerged. A chapter is also devoted entirely into the tragedies that have befallen some pilots. This includes a chilling account of the Great Italian Killer Storm of 1989 when six top pilots lost their lives in just one day. As well as relating the dramatic stories about those that died, the author explains why, despite the risks, the New Aviators keep flying. The final story is about the Beau Ideal, the great Swiss pilot Didier Favre, ‘Vagabond of the skies’, who traveled 1,111 kilometres from Monaco to Slovenia. Brian Milton also explains how the ultimate ambitions of the best flyers is to learn how to migrate, using only the power of the wind and the sun. The author concludes this book by exploring what the future might hold for the various forms of New Aviation and those who enjoy the thrills that they create.

An in-depth narrative that stitches together the history and evolution of hang gliding, a pastime enjoyed by hundreds of thousands around the world. The New Aviation began with a hang-gliding meeting on a sand-dune in southern California on 23 May 1971. The longest flight that day was 196 feet, the longest time in the air just 11 seconds. But it was a start – the start of a movement that has grown exponentially world-wide with every passing year. The essence of the New Aviation is to stand on a hill, spread your wings, and climb into the sky by your own skill. It is the fundamentals of flight as it is meant to be, and this is the story of the development of this exhilarating sport, and of its largely unknown pioneers. The first of these was German pioneer aviator, Otto Lilienthal. Despite dozens of deaths before him, Lilienthal was the first to establish that manned flight was actually possible; before him, flight was just a dream. His tragic death in 1896 inspired the American Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, to their own experiments on a wind-swept beach in Kittyhawk, North Carolina, where the first powered flight there on 17 December 1903. The book begins and ends with two significant tales, opening with the life and death of Englishman Alvin Russell, and ending with the fabled Swiss flyer Didier Favre, who traversed the length of the Alps ‘by foot or by flight’. It is full of terrific stories, often repeating exploits of the mainstream aviators but flying just a kite and a trapeze bar, flying with eagles and teaching orphaned geese to migrate. It has exclusive accounts of record-breaking distances, on adding engines to ‘rag wings’, on how women broke into the machismo world and an English girl led a team in which every other competitor was a man, and beat them all. A History of the New Aviation is the first in-depth ‘narrative’ to stitch together the history and evolution of a pastime which is enjoyed by hundreds of thousands around the world. It is told by Brian Milton, the man who formed the British Hang Gliding League and led the first two British teams to beat the mighty Americans, for which he won the Prince of Wales Cup from Prince Charles, now King Charles III. Brian went on to make the first flight around the world by a powered hang glider. Two men set off on this flight; Brian returned alone.

William Langewiesche's life has been deeply intertwined with the idea and act of flying. Fifty years ago his father, a test pilot, wrote Stick and Rudder, a text still considered by many to be the bible of aerial navigation. Langewiesche himself learned to fly while still a child. Now he shares his pilot's-eye view of flight with those of us who take flight for granted--exploring the inner world of a sky that remains as exotic and revealing as the most foreign destination. Langewiesche tells us how flight happens--what the pilot sees, thinks, and feels. His description is not merely about speed and conquest. It takes the form of a deliberate climb, leading at low altitude first over a new view of a home, and then higher, into the solitude of the cockpit, through violent storms and ocean nights, and on to unexpected places in the mind. In Langewiesche's hands it becomes clear, at the close of this first century of flight, how profoundly our vision has been altered by our liberation from the ground. And we understand how, when we look around, we may find ourselves reflected in the grace and turbulence of a human sky.

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A bold exploration of modern psychedelic culture, its history, and future • Examines 3 modern psy-culture architects: chemist Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, mycologist-philosopher Terence McKenna, and visionary artist Alex Grey • Investigates the use of microdosing in extreme sports, the psy-trance festival experience, and the relationship between the ego, entheogens, and toxicity • Presents a “History of Visionary Art,” from its roots in prehistory, to Ernst Fuchs and the Vienna School of the Fantastic, to contemporary psychedelic art After the dismantling of a major acid laboratory in 2001 dramatically reduced the world supply of LSD, the psychedelic revolution of the 1960s appeared to have finally run its course. But the opposite has actually proven to be true, and a psychedelic renaissance is rapidly emerging with the rise in popularity of transformational festivals like Burning Man and BOOM!, the return to positive media coverage of the potential benefits of entheogens, and the growing number of celebrities willing to admit the benefits of their own personal use. Along with the return of university research, the revival of psychedelic philosophy, and the increasing popularity of visionary art, these new developments signify the beginning of a worldwide psychedelic cultural revolution more integrated into the mainstream than the counterculture uprising of the 1960s. In his latest book, James Oroc defines the borders of 21st-century psychedelic culture through the influence of its three main architects-- chemist Alexander Shulgin, mycologist Terence McKenna, and visionary artist Alex Grey--before illustrating a number of facets of this “Second Psychedelic Revolution,” including the use of microdosing in extreme sports, the tech-savvy psychedelic community that has arisen around transformational festivals, and the relationship between the ego, entheogens, and toxicity. This volume also presents for the first time a “History of Visionary Art” that explains its importance to the emergence of visionary culture. Exploring the practical role of entheogens in our selfish and fast-paced modern world, the author explains how psychedelics are powerful tools to examine the ego and the shadow via the transpersonal experience. Asserting that a cultural adoption of the entheogenic perspective is the best chance that our society has to survive, he then proposes that our ongoing psychedelic revolution--now a century old since the first synthesis of a psychedelic in 1918--offers the potential for the birth of a new Visionary Age.