“I like being high”. New altitude record!

We have just received information that the FAI approved the world altitude record for a single-person powered paraglider with a trike (PPGG), that is RPL1T category.

On August 3, 2019, Aleksander “Sasza” Hirsztritt managed to climb his Hadron Cabrio 34 to a height of 6377 m a.s.l., breaking the previous record by as much as 674 m (ca. 12%). The whole flight lasted 4 hours and 51 minutes.

Sasha took off at 12:30 from the Makosieje EPEK airfield in Masuria region, on his improved Nirvana Instinct trike, taking 25 liters of fuel, 10 kg of nitro, 3 kg of oxygen, plus a lot of navigation, registration, communication and – above all – survival equipment.

“In total I had some 20 various batteries; to run all the electronics, to heat individual devices, to heat my body, and finally, to heat the power supplies themselves. All of this weighted around 200 kg, meaning that my Hadron Cabrio was still not loaded to the max and retained quite a lot of lift”, he says.

– Congratulations, Sasha! First of all: why the Hadron Cabrio?

– I flew several paragliders of various companies, but I’ve always held a good opinion of our native wings, so anything else did not even occur to me. I’ve been liking Hadrons for a long time, and because the Cabrio version has similar characteristics, it was the choice.

Nowadays I fly successfully and with great fun completely underweight, 150 kg in total (with a recommended take-off weight of 170-300 kg). First of all, the Hadron Cabrio has a great climb in such a configuration… trimmers closed, a lot of lift and perfect behaviour in free thermalling.

– How was the record flight?

– I had some unpleasant moments during the climb, because as a smartie I tried to use some nice thermals. I quickly gained height under a good cloud indeed, and then deliberately continued to climb within it. I got frosted a little bit all over, but that was allright. But when I got out on top of the cloud, I couldn’t clear strong sink area soon enough – for a couple of minutes I got stuck in a 15 m/s sink so in fact I lost almost everything I gained in the cloud. One can say that my brilliant tactics backfired a bit, haha.

Other than that, such a flight is rather tedious job, you just sit on this pot for 5 hours and follow the variometer. The perceptible ambient temperature is -50 degrees Celsius, but I escaped with just a bit of frostbite on the tip of my nose… but generally, it was quite nice. I started to oxygenate slowly from 3000 m. I didn’t have much oxygen with me and used up all of it. At the maximum altitude, some of my electronic equipment froze. Fortunately the transponder, recorder and camera held and worked till the end.

– What about the return and landing?

– You climb as long as your fuel lasts, and then you come back simply gliding down, so you have to stay within gliding cone of the airfield. The return leg took only about 20 minutes, because after four and a half hours of monotonous humming, you are eager to go back – so you enter a spiral and ride down!

Landing itself was another not-quite-nice event, there was strong wind about 8 m/s, so right after touch down I had to reverse and release part of the harness. The canopy got straightened up and fortunately so, for otherwise I could have done some serious ploughing on that field.

– Did you have to wait for any specific weather conditions?

– If you want to beat a world record, needing to get a sustained lift exceeding 5 m/s for a long time in thin air, it is rather difficult to count only on the engine. So first of all, I wanted to find inverse waves, usually appearing in this area on top of the fronts over 4,000. meters. And then there was the wind… such waves occur in stronger winds, which in turn can blow you off the rising slope of this wave, so it was a bit of fun to stay in the right place.

– What’s the hardest part of all this, have you had to prepare for a long time?

– The most difficult was configuring all of the equipment and formal preparations. You must have transponders, radio communication with the AIS and ATC services… you end up flying visible on the FlightRadar just like some passenger jet. Most of all, I had to get permission to fly in the EA51 zone created especially for breaking this record… and the rest went downhill. But it was just half the story – afterwards I had to complete many formalities to have the record officially approved by the FAI.

The whole process of breaking the world record lasted over 2 years, all in all it took 15 attempts and three engines. Just the Hadron Cabrio did well from start to finish despite being underweight.

– What motivates you to take up such challenges?

– I’m a very busy man, so it’s definitely not out of boredom. I guess I just really like to be high. It’s a nice feeling up there, and I’ve been flying things for a long time; gliders, gyroplanes, planes, skydiving… I like this fresh air, the sunshine, the views… I knew that such a record was within my reach, I was fascinated that you can squeeze that much out of a small lawnmower engine and I worked hard from the technical side to get this all right. After all it seems to me that it was those technical challenges that motivated me most.

– Finally: Are you planning anything interesting for the future?

– I have a few things on my mind, maybe related to the climb speed, maybe the flight distance, but it’s too early to talk about it. For now, it’s time for some rest and nice recreational flying.

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In breaking the record, Sasha was supported by FAN-TEX, Paranirvana, and Skyflar companies, while the wing was manufactured by Dudek Paragliders.