It has been over a year since Nevil Hulett flew his epic World Record flight.

Without the assistance of an engine, our very own  SouthAfricanMan became the  first person in the world to fly over 500kms , suspended beneath a flimsy piece of cloth with incredibly thin lines, cocooned in a complex piece of webbing,  going where no man has gone before.

This is a mind blowing achievement that has many of us asking:

 - What will it take for the next human being to fly an unpowered  paraglider further?

Beware the unwary: - It is going to take A LOT.  And if you don't believe me ....

Read on ... This is Nevil's story as told to FLYGIRL:

Record Ratified by FAI - Straight Distance: 502.9km
Date flown: 14 December 2008
Location: Copperton, Northern Cape, South Africa
Leonardo Tracklog

List of past and present Open Distance World Records on FAI
Previous Record: 461.1km by 3 Brazilian Pilots Frank Brown, Marcelo Prieto and RafaelSaladini
Date Flown: 14 November 2007
Location: Quixada, Brazil

Where did you take off from and what is the area like?

There is no site per say.  I chose a stretch of dirt road surrounded by a flat nothing desert. The closest farm is Uitspan Pan (Afrikaans for 'The Place of Unharnessing') which is deserted as so many of these Karoo farms are.  The closest town is hot and dusty Copperton. Anglovaal Mining Group established a mineral mine here in 1973.  The place looks like it has all but been abandoned now, the dump still visible above ground.

James Braid who was also there with a group of  international pilots for two weeks, offered this description:

Copperton is a ghost mining town about 60 km SW of Prieska.  There's about 20 people still living there.  The surrounding area is flat flat flat and there's only one road going through it - the Prieska to Van Wyksvlei road.  The town does have an airfield, that I checked out years ago, quite a nice one in fact.  But since the roads are so empty and wide, one doesn't need to bother going to the airfield.  From his tracklog, it looked like he launched from the above-said road somewhere on the south of town, where the road obviously suited the wind direction.  Apart from that, apart from an old mine dump, there's nothing there.
 
There's a massive military airspace area, just to the west of town,  it's an active missile testing range that extends to Verneukpan, about 100km further to the west.  But his tracklog looks clear of it.

No one has flown before from Copperton, the reason simply being that there is absolutely no recovery until the pilot reaches the N10, nearly 100km away!  The road maps indicate a possible recovery route via farm tracks running west to east, to the N10, but I've driven them (the parts that I could) and they're not passable - too eroded or on private property.  So if he had crashed in the first 100km of his flight, ................. 

Why did you choose Copperton?

The Valic brothers had proven that 500kms was possible in South Africa.  Using Comp GPS, I plotted a 500km track that did not require me to fly over the 3000m high Lesotho mountains.  Copperton was the start and the foothills of Lesotho the landing.  I had deduced that in order to not to be stopped by the sea breeze as pilots flying from De Aar and Vosburg were, I would need to take off further North and West of those two launch sites.  Copperton was that place.

How did you choose your exact take off spot?

I had never been to Copperton before.  I knew roughly the geographic area I wanted to fly from.  I have a Garmin GPS Nuvi in the Pajero with the South African recreational and topographical maps loaded on.  I could see on the GPS there was a straight bit of dirt road, but as we drove along it, I could see it was not suitable.  There was an old phone line running right next to the road and the road was very narrow.  The wind was also slightly cross from the south.  I saw a bend in the road ahead so we drove a kilometer further up the road which then turned straight into the west wind that was blowing.  Here the phone lines were further away from the road, about 30m or so.  It was perfect.

What were the conditions like on that record breaking day?

You took off quite late 11h30.  Why did you take off so late and could you have taken off earlier?

So take me through your launch?

Started the winch at 11h30.57.  Altitude at launch was 1072m ASL    Released from the tow line at 11h33.17 at 1502m ASL.

Climb on tow  was 430m and I was almost vertical above the winch getting little front tucks when Penny announced all the line was almost out ….. then I released and the flight was on.

Whilst on tow I did have forward speed, but after I released and 15 minutes had gone by, I stopped moving forward.  For the first almost 2hrs of the flight I did not get higher than 2000m above ground which is low for Northern Cape flying. For the first hour the wind speed was 30-45 kms per hour.

Did you know that this was a Record Breaking Day?

Yes, because I had analyzed the Valic Brothers tracklog on Comp GPS and I had the aviation weather forecast for that day. This revealed the sea breeze they hit at end of their flight and the synoptic factors required.  In my planning I had emailed Deon Van Der Mescht, the senior SA weather forecaster all the information I had regarding the Valic Brothers flight - tracklog, weather that day etc and he identified Sunday as being a similar day to what they had, with a wind of 35- 40 knots at altitude.

What weather conditions do you need then?

The weather conditions you need is a cold front (a trough)approaching from west with high wind speeds and very hot and dry air with strong thermals in.  Basically a berg or 'fern' wind. (i.e. dangerous flying!)

Here is the PDF with all the weather information collected to plan Nevil's World Record flight:

PAGE ONE – Required very high thermal strenghths on an axis roughly from Upington to De Aar.

PAGE TWO – Actual world record flight track (in Green) and the proposed flight path to avoid Lesotho and the late afternoon Sea Breeze.

PAGE THREE – Actual ground speed achieved by the above world record flight  but the  requirements for a 500km world record would be no sea breeze encountered at 18h30 to allow a flight till sunset.

PAGE FOUR – Actual SAWB spot graph for 7 December 2006 showing high wind gradient with altitude and high convective cloud base with no storms.

PAGE FIVE – Barograph and track trace for 7 December 2006 world record flight showing ground speeds. (Red indicates ground speed of over 100km/hr.

PAGE SIX -  Barograph and track trace for 7 December 2006 world record flight showing the influence of the SE sea breeze (highlighted in blue) at 6:15pm  forcing the pilot to abandon further distance and turn back.

Why would you take off if you knew it was dangerous?

 It is the only way to break the World Record. Why would you climb up the north face of Everest when you know it is dangerous?  Because it is there!

Knowing that retrieve was going to be a problem if you landed in that first 100km stretch of no-mans stretch, what was flying that first section like?

The first 100kms was slow.  Height was less than 2000m above ground. The time at 50kms was 12h25 which made it almost an hour.  At the 100km mark the time was 13h14 which would make it 1 hour and 44 minutes.

I thought that I needed to push more if I wanted the record, but I was not prepared to land out in the middle of no-where and walk (if I survived the landing). Recovery was a real problem with almost no roads and no cell phone reception for the first 100km.

At 200 kms where were you mentally?

At about 200kms I was thinking that the conditions were slowly improving and that I was looking forward to flying past De Aar which is the launch site for my previous Personal Best distance in South Africa.  I had flown 305kms from De Aar so it was kind of special, a milestone in the flight.  My previous Personal Best distance anywhere in the world was in Brazil where I flew 337kms in the XCeara competition.

What was the land you were flying over at this point like?

Dry, reddish coloured desert with low scrub, mostly very, very flat with a few deserted farmhouses and fewer inhabited houses. No cellphone reception.  This area is still remote. 

I was never further than 15 kms from a road, but the problem with the roads in this area is that sometimes they only get two cars in a week passing on the road which may not be enough to stop me from dying of thirst if I was unlucky and did not get picked up.  Having no cellphone reception in this area is a real life threatening problem.

As the day progresse, how did the conditions change?

It was blue sky for the first half of the flight, then cumulous clouds in the second half.

From your tracklog it looks like you were dolphin-flying cloudstreets .. not turning?

I only dolphined in the last 100kms of the flight.  It may look like I was dolphining on the tracklog in the second 100kms, but that is because the wind was so strong and although I was turning perfect circles, when coming round into wind I was going backwards at 50kms so the track log indicated an almost straight line.

For this section of the flight there was no convergence. In the air it was like a normal flying day, turning in thermals. I was getting 3ms - 4ms lift under those clouds and my speed average was 90-100km.

Explain dolphin-flying.

Dolphin-flying is where there is a section of clouds that allows me to slow down and fly straight in lift then jump back on bar in between clouds without losing altitude.  Basically it is the convergence of two wind systems which often sets up South East of De Aar.

You were alone, out of contact with anyone for the majority of the flight.  Does that not concern you?  How does it effect your decision making?

Obviously it is a concern.  It also makes it easier to concentrate when you are low down knowing that there is no-one to help you if you land (or crash)

Are you an analytical pilot or do you fly by feel?

Both.  I was always checking my instruments,  calculating how many kilometres I had flown (by checking the Garmin CX 60 map that was set to take off)  and how many I had still to go to reach my declared goal (By checking the Brauniger Compeo competition route that I had set with my declared goal.)  I was analyzing the whole time, reading the sky, plotting best course.

What technology do you use in flight and why?

Before I took off from Copperton, I started Live Tracking on my Nokia N95 cellphone to send to Leonardo, but because there was no cellphone reception at the start, the application shut down, which is unfortunate.  It had worked from De Aar where there was signal on the launch.  My IQ Compeo Plus was programmed with the Declared Goal of 404kms.  My Garmin 60cx Map had Go To to the start point so I could read continuously what the straight line distance was.

FOURTH 100 KMS

What was the worst moment in the flight?

Flying 50m over ground going backwards at 50-70km.  It was a  Record Low Save and could have cost me my life if I had not been successful in getting back up.

This was about two thirds into your flight. Did ever you think it was over? 

Never thought it was over because my life could have been over as well.  I  had a ground speed of 115 km/hr and was going down at 5ms. 50 meters above a small farm dam  I remember thinking “s**t I am going to hit the water when I found lift over the water that was so strong that I had to turn the glider on its wing tip to achieve maximum cell pressure, but the turbulence still causing a cravat in both wing tips.  This was probably caused by the rotor turbulence.

I was going up at 5ms and backwards at 50km/hr towards a low ridge. After a few turns I had to speed bar into the wind to crab to the side of the hill and avoid dropping straight into the rotor. My ground speed crabbing was 70km/hr ! At the side of the hill I again found 5ms lift and started turning tightly. Unfortunately after a few turns the turbulence behind the 400m hill was so severe that a major collapse resulted in 3 cascades (a series of serious collapses) and if I had a 4th or 5th I would have had to throw my reserve.

With a 90km wind speed it is unlikely that I would have survived the dragging under reserve.  Fortunately I stretched my hands up as high as could towards the glider, allowing it to dive out of the 4th cascade at 120km/hr ground speed.

Was it worth it?

Yes. We are all going to die at some point. What is important is what we do with the time in between being born and dying.

That low save turned into a massive climb .. how strong was it and how high did you go?

I had a nice 6-7ms average on a 30s averager.  This was the first time of the day when there was a well formed cloud above and the first time I got up to cloudbase at 5600m asl.   I was feeling very dizzy and light headed I did not realise at this stage that the oxygen master switch had turned off in the violence of the cascade events. (During the cascades that caused the oxygen master switch to be bumped into the off position, I remember seeing my speed probe flying above my head like a model airplane and thinking “this is not good”.).  

When I got down to below 4000m I regained enough mental capacity to notice that the oxygen switch was in the off position and I turned it back on, continuing to fly on oxygen for the next hour.  The reason I had not noticed it was off was that it is well known that at 5600 hypoxia causes one to have the mental capacity of flying chimpanzee! 

When you went past 350km, what were you thinking?

I am 54kms from the Declared Goal, I had just gotten my highest climb of the day, 5600 km,and things were looking good.  From 4600m I went on glide and reached my Declared Goal of 411.3km. Half way I noticed the oxygen was off and turned it on.

LAST 100 KMS - THE HOME STRETCH

At what point in the flight did you allow yourself to think 'I might do this.. I might get 500 km..'?

After achieving the Declared Goal, I knew that if could get to base two more times I could make 500 kms. I climbed back up to within 100m of cloudbase. I knew then that it was possible.  Historically if you can take the slow climbs at the end of the day you can get much longer glides.  I was quite sure that I had 50-70kms left in the day. After 462km I was dolphin flying.

How did you feel when you flew past the previous record of 461.1 kms?

Passing 470 km was important, but what was more important to me was to pass 500km.  That was the psychological objective.

In the last 50kms I did not know whether I would make the 500 km milestone and about 10km from the end I used the 2000m Lesotho peaks to ridge soar and fly the extra 3kms I needed. 

When did you notice the lift start to die off?

OVER THE 500 KM MARK

At 500km I flew over the only tarred road and a small village called Habojo. The villagers had erected a white and red marquee next to one of the grass roofed huts for a wedding or some such occasion. I let out a whoop of joy as I flew over enjoying the amazement in the upturned faces of the villagers.

Where did you land?

Near Habojo village in Lesotho about 10 mins before sunset.

Was it windy when you landed?

No, it was a smooth normal landing with forward speed.

Did you realise at the time that you had broken the 500km barrier?

Yes, because of the reading 502.6 km I got from the Garmin cx Map set to Start Point.
 
So what was the emotion on landing?

:-) Landed with a shout that echoed into the 3000m Lesotho mountains which seemed to impress the approaching kids (who came from village 2 km away.)

What sort of reception did you get in Lesotho?  
 
In the beginning the kids were a little afraid, but then they found the courage to come up and touch the glider. Three of the thirty could speak English so I said to them that I would buy them sweets and cooldrink if they carried my glider back to the village where there was a tuck shop / shebeen (informal drinking house) I suddenly had 30 kids carrying my glider for me.  At the tuck shop I made a mistake when I bought and handed out 2 x 1 litre cooldrinks.  A riot ensued as thirty children all tried to get a drink from two bottles.  The eight year olds fought each other and I am sure that a few now have chipped teeth.
 
Were you in radio contact with your retreive the whole way? 

No.  There was no communication between Penny and I after the first 7kms until she was 1 km from where I landed. My radio was faulty. 
 
Penny followed alone in the Pajero, guided by my IQ Compeo Plus which every 15 minutes sent my height speed and  coordinates via a blue tooth link with a Nokia N95 to Penny’s cell phone (Sometimes due to no cell reception she would not receive coordinates for two hours then receive eight in a row). Penny would then enter the most recent co ordinate into the Garmin Nuvi GPS in the car which would then route her along the quickest route
 
Penny  did very well with that.  An hour and a half after I had landed the elders from the village and myself were finishing off the last of the shebeens Black Label quart beers. Penny called on the cellphone to say that she was on the tarred road 1.5km away from the shebeen and that the GPS showed there were no roads for her to get to me.  I asked the locals if there were any roads to the village and they said there was.  I told her to take the road. Penny said again that there was no road.  I did not believe her so I paid one of the teenagers R10 to run to the tarred road and show penny the way.  Forty minutes later I was amazed that Penny had still not arrived.  Penny was talking to me on the radio and now scared.  It was dark, the Pajero was in low range, and the terrain very bad.  She had two black teenage youths in the car with her, in the middle of nowhere and did not believe they were taking her to me!  Penny speaks Sesotho, but this did not make her feel any better about the situation.
 
Speaking to her on the radio 1.5km from me  I told her I could see her lights. She was relieved and arrived 15mins later at shebeen.  We bid farewell to tribes people and made our way back towards the tarred road.  It was only then that I realised that there was absolutely no sign of a road.  We were driving slowly across the side of a mountain. Amazingly Penny managed to find our way back to the tarred road, but on the final steep embankment, I engaged the diff lock and the 4x4 system failed.  We could not get onto the tarred road. The thought of sleeping beside the road did not seem like a problem to me at the time as I was still enjoying the moment knowing that I was the first pilot to fly 500kms. 36 minutes later of juggling the gear shift back and forth from low to high range, there was a clunk from the automatic transmission the car engaged 4x4 and we managed to climb up the steep embankment and get onto the tarred road.
 
The border post closed at 10pm so we had to sleep in a dodgy boarding house for the night.  The next morning we drove back to Prieska arriving back at 7pm..
 
Penny had our passports and instruction that should my sms’d coordinates show that I was high and it looked possible that I would reach the Lesotho border, she was to go immediately and arrange clearance for me to fly over the border from  the Lesotho Border Officials. (If she could not arrange clearance she was to have radioed me to land). She then went ahead to the Lesotho Border and got permission for me to fly over the border.  The Lesotho border officials just said that next time, if I did this again, I must fly with my passport as it was against Lesotho law to travel with someone else’s passport.  The Border Patrol agreed to send a police escort with Penny in case I landed in “no mans land” and needed local assistance to be retrieved.  When the Compeo Plus sent landing coordinates  and I phoned to say I was 3km from a tarred road they turned back and Penny continued on alone.

The drive home was epic. 11 hours to get back to Prieska by 7pm. We started back Monday morning after spending the night in a dodgy boarding house in Lesotho.  The Borders closed at 10pm.

Penny Frost is my girlfriend and although she drove a retrive for me, she is also a pilot. She was born at Barkley East which is 10kms from the Lesotho border and she speaks fluent Sotho, taught to her by the families Basotho Domestic and her father.

Would you change anything about your in-flight setup, following this flight?

I never took any inflight photos. The camera (unfortunately) was last on the list because prior to taking off on the day, I had a few problems which I had to fix first.  My oxygen had a leak , the radio aerial was faulty and we had to go and fetch the Declared Goal form from James Braid. 

James was in the area and had been winching with the Slovenians for two weeks.  I understand that one of the Slovenians was the World FAI Triangle holder having a go at the World Record.  On the Record Day they decided to have a rest day after coming back in the early hours of the morning from a 300km plus flight.

I woke James up at 10am to get the forms and raced off to launch.

EXTRA QUESTIONS

Did you eat and drink in the air?

No food.  My fluid intake was a combination of Red Bull and Energade Mega Load ( pre-mixed with carbohydrates).
 
7.5 hours is a long time in the air. Did you need to wee and how did you do it? 

I have an external catheter attached to my leg.  After 3.5 hours of flying I was very relieved that I could stick my left leg out of pod harness and ... well, relieve myself.

Can the record be broken again?

Anything is possible and these types of days will happen again.  You just have to be stupid enough to fly on a day when the wind is blowing 80kms hour!

Do sailplanes fly this flight?

I am not familiar with the sailplane routes. They base themselves at Gariep dam (I flew just to the north of the dam) and do 1000km + triangles so that may be possible.

If you took off earlier/further west, could you go further? How could it be extended? By how much? Is there potential for bigger flights here?

If you are prepared to accept the obvious risks, 600kms is on the cards.  Anything is possible.

What was your max height? And height gain? 

1229 - 5689 = 4460m 

What was your max ground speed? 

126.7kms

How cold was it at 5 689 m?

I was about 100m below base.  It was cold and when I started coming down it took 15 minutes of hitting my hands on the sides of my harness to get the blood going again.  It stung like hell.

What was the hardest bit of the flight?

Staying up for the first 100kms and not landing (or getting killed) when I got that low save

What was the best moment in the flight?

Flying into Lesotho with the clouds turning pink, the CU's with streaks of rain falling from them and seeing the thunderstorms hit the side of the Lesotho mountains, knowing that every single assumption that I had made when planning the flight turned out to be correct.


Personal inofrmation about Nevil

Age
Born 28 Feb 1959 =  49 years

Occupation
Real Estate Developer. 

Where do you live?
My father Leighton Hulett founded the small seaside village of St Francis Bay where I live with Penny Frost.

How many years have you been flying?
Since 1995 = 13 years

Local site?

Rondebosch, 14km from the coast where I live.  I flew 120 km from this little hill.

World Record Breaking Equipment

Wing?

Mac Magus 6 proto

Harness?

Kortel Cannibal Race

Nevil Hulett's very first Cross Country Flight

It was in the Drakensberg (Dragon Mountains) at Authurs Seat. I did  a “safety course”  with Pete Wallenda. I only had 9 mountain flights, but  had read Denis Pagen's “Understanding the Sky”, so when mynew Flytec vario went 'beep beep' for the first time ever, I pulled my inside brake down to the karabiner and grabbed it, releasing the outside brake when the 'beep beep' got less and pulling it down when the 'beep beep' got more. Luckily it was a Nova Challenger Corrado and did not stall out of the sky and I was able to follow the instructions Pagen had written and get to cloudbase.
 
Meanwhile my instructor Pete Wallenda had gone cross country on his proto high aspect wing and dropped out, landing 6km from take off. When I asked where he was on my (new) radio he directed me over head and proceeded to instruct me to do a number of “B lines” asymmetricals, full frontals and spiral dives.  Every time I would complete a manouevre the vario would go 'Beep Beep' and I would refer to chapter 3 and go back up.
 
After half an hour of this I asked Pete Wallenda “I think I have done everything now can I go XCountry?”
 
He reluctantly agreed and off I headed to the main berg at Champagne Castle. I remember the day clearly as the dry husks from the “Mielie” (maize) fields below were drifting up in the thermals in big clouds (sucked up by dusties I presume). As I got to the Main Berg (3000m high) Pete Wallenda’s girlfriend Carolina (A pretty German girl famous for flying with her poodles) came on the  radio: “Nevil the road is bad, very bad.  It is ending.  We are not going further.  If you want to carry on you are on your own”.
 
So ended my first  16km XC flight and I elected to spiral down and land at the Kombi.

What are your views on competition flying?

I went to my first comp after a few months of flying. I maintained then (and still do) that comps are the best places to enjoy paragliding because you fly with the best in the sport (to learn from them and your mistakes!) on a route that has been planned by the most knowledgeable local pilots with the best Met. Then there is the organized retrieve and having a “bokdoos” (double brandy and coke in a beer glass with lots of ice) with your friends in the pub afterwards. It does not get better!

 
Flygirl notation:  Only one other South African has ever before held this World Record and that was Alex Louw in 1992.