The track for pilots on our XC trips. We take the XC day apart on three levels: planning the day (a three-day forecast and the working window), planning the flight (the line along the terrain, glides, height margins) and the execution — launch, route and landing as three separate skills. Plus working in a group with a guide, radio, tracking and retrieve, equipment, insurance, and the parts of SIV you actually need on a route.
⏱ 100 min📖 20 sections✓ 65 questions
Who this track is for and what should already be behind you
This track is for pilots coming with us on an XC trip. It does not teach you to fly: it assumes you already fly on your own. It is about something else — how an XC day works, and why decisions on it are taken differently than in an ordinary flight at a familiar site.
What we assume you already know (this is the level of the advanced track and SIV):
Active piloting and weight shift — without thinking about them.
What to do in an asymmetric and a frontal collapse, in a cravat, in a spiral.
What a parachutal stall looks like and how it is cured.
Where your reserve handle is and what your hand will do without looking.
If anything on that list makes you pause, start with the “Advanced Pilot” and SIV tracks. A route does not forgive pauses: you leave the familiar slope behind and buy information with height.
The format of our trips (this is canon, the same on all our sites): a group of 4–8 pilots, with one guide per four pilots; a larger group gets a second guide. A 30 % deposit, non-refundable except when the group does not fill. Insurance is mandatory.
A fine point for pros. The hardest thing about XC flying is not the technique but the fact that decisions have to be made in advance and in an unfamiliar place. At home you know where you will land if it does not work out. On a route you have to settle that in the air, ten kilometres before it becomes relevant.
Who decides: the guide sets the task, you are in command
This is the first thing to understand about our trips, and it is not a legal formality.
What the guide does: works through the forecast and picks the area for the day; sets the task in two or three versions of different difficulty; runs the briefing and talks to you on the radio; organises transport up and the pick-up; goes through the tracks in the evening.
What the guide may do: change the task or the route, refuse a launch, stand you down for the day, turn the group back to an alternate landing field.
What nobody may do: make you take off; make you fly what the guide says if you are not comfortable; demand an explanation for refusing a flight; guarantee that someone else’s track is repeatable by you.
You are the pilot in command. The decision to launch, to continue, to turn back, to land or to throw the reserve is yours alone. The briefing, the task, the forecast, the words “it is working here” or “we are heading for that ridge” — these are information and teaching by advice. Not an order, and not a guarantee.
And a rule worth learning word for word: chasing someone else’s track is forbidden. What a pilot with a thousand hours on a class-D wing did is no proof that it is doable for you. That is exactly why the task is set in levels.
Case study. The group sets off on a glide and you realise you are not going to make it on height. On the radio you can hear the others climbing on the far side. The right action: turn back and land to your own plan, saying so on the radio. The wrong one: to press on “with the group” on the height you have left. The second option is the commonest cause of landings in awkward places and the commonest cause of injuries on a route.
Three different jobs that all go by the word “flight”
It helps to break the XC day into three levels. This is not a formality: each level draws on different knowledge, produces different mistakes and carries a different price for them.
Level
When it is settled
The main question
The day
The evening before, and in the morning
Do we fly at all, where, and in what window
The flight
At the briefing and at launch
What my task is, what the line is and where my alternate fields are
The execution
In the air
Launch, route, landing — three separate skills
Mistakes at the different levels look different. A mistake at the “day” level means you flew on the wrong day or in the wrong area; it cannot be fixed in the air. A mistake at the “flight” level means you took on a task beyond you; it is fixed by turning back. A mistake at the “execution” level is tactical: you crossed in the wrong place, you decided to land too late.
Which of them matters most. Against intuition, the most expensive mistake is at the top level. No amount of technique saves you from the wrong choice of day. That is why the sections of this module run in this order: first the day, then the flight, then the execution.
A fine point for pros. Pilots grow from the bottom up: first they learn to launch and land, then to read a route, and only then to read a day. Accidents are distributed the other way round. That is why an experienced pilot differs from an average one not in technique in the air but in how many days in the season he did not fly.
Planning the day: a three-day forecast, not a morning one
An ordinary flight needs a forecast for today. An XC day needs something else: understanding the weather two or three days ahead, working out the window hour by hour, and knowing where the day will break before your eyes see it.
What the guide looks at, and what you should look at too:
The synoptic picture — what is going on at all: a front coming in, a high sitting over you, an air mass changing.
Wind at altitude — not only at the surface. A route is broken by the upper wind more often than by the lower one.
The working window, hour by hour: when the thermals switch on, when they peak, when the day starts to collapse.
Cloudbase and cloud cover — how high you can work, and whether overdevelopment is a risk.
Signs of overheating: cloud developing earlier than calculated, early shower cells.
The main conclusion of this section: a forecast is not “do we fly or not”. It is a window: when it makes sense to launch, when the task stops being achievable, and when you have to be on the ground.
One detail specific to our destinations: the temperature falls by about 0.65 °C per 100 metres of climb. Cloudbase on a route is often above 4,000 metres — warm gloves and layers are mandatory even on a hot day at the bottom. A cold pilot stops making decisions long before he notices it.
A fine point for pros. The beginner’s mistake in XC is to plan for the strongest hour. Experienced pilots plan the limits: not “when is it best” but “after what hour do I no longer start a glide” and “by when must I be at a landing field”. The first gets you kilometres, the second gets you seasons without injuries.
Where the day breaks before you see it
There are places and moments where the conditions go off faster than the general picture changes. On a route it matters to know them in advance, because in the air you see them late.
What
Why it is dangerous
The lee side of a ridge
A rotor forms behind the obstacle — a turbulent eddy. German statistics link a significant share of accident-causing collapses directly to lee-side areas.
Funnel valleys and narrows
The wind accelerates, and what was light down low becomes impassable higher up.
The valley wind after midday
It strengthens on a schedule rather than on a forecast, and it closes the way back.
The shade of growing cloud
The thermals switch off earlier than calculated, and a glide that was possible half an hour ago stops being possible.
The boundary between air masses
A sharp rise in wind speed and turbulence at the transition.
A practical rule: on a route you must know two things at any moment — where you are going, and where you will turn back to if it goes bad. The second one matters more.
Case study. The day was going smoothly and the group headed down the valley downwind, climbing easily and quickly. By three o’clock the valley wind had strengthened, and nobody flies back into it. What happened: the ease of moving downwind hid the fact that the way back was closing. How it should be done: when flying downwind, count not only the distance covered but whether you will still be able to get back or land somewhere convenient — and name in advance the point beyond which you do not go.
What follows is for our students
The full module text, the practice sessions and the exams are open to those who train with us. Access to the theory is included in the course fee: it runs for the whole course and for three months after it ends.
If you are training with us now, or have trained with us before, sign in with your access code. If you are a pilot from another school, access can be bought separately.
Language: the sections above are in English. Behind the code the full module text and the question bank are currently in Russian — the English versions are being prepared.
