Hello everyone, I'm a free-flight instructor. I've been a professional for 15 years and I deeply love my work and my students. I work in Tuscany and I'm supported by my partner, who works alongside me. She isn't an instructor but she's just as good, maybe even better than me. (But don't tell her, or it'll go to her head.) I want to write just a couple of lines, with no pretense of being a reference, to share with you an incredible experience I had last year.
This incredible maneuver had always fascinated me, from the very first days it appeared, when the superb Raul Rodriguez who invented it would show us, through breathtaking performances, just how spectacular it was. To be honest, it also scared me. The centrifugal force generated is considerable, and botching the entry or the exit means trouble. Indeed, the entry has a precise trigger point, and anticipating or delaying it leads you into other rather unpleasant configurations.
It so happens that one of my former students, very talented and motivated, decides to do an SIV clinic on Garda under the supervision of Michael Nesler. For the record, Nesler, besides being one of the most skilled wing-profile designers in the world, is also an acrobat you have to take your hat off to, and he is, together with his partner Gudrun, a DHV test pilot. I decide to go to the clinic too. We instructors sometimes, simply by being instructors, think we've learned it all. Well, that's not the case. Evolution is continuous and you have to keep pace with the new techniques. There's always something new to learn so that you can then pass it on to your students. So, every now and then, you have to rescale yourself and put yourself back into question if you want to keep growing and improving as professionals.
We arrive at Garda in June. The place (Malcesine) is simply fantastic. I go to inspect the takeoff: an immense meadow (paraglider-eating cows included) where 100 people could take off at the same time. The view is superb, and knowing that in a few hours I would be taking off from this spot gave me an almost tangible emotion.
I meet Nesler. I had already known him in the past during an instructors' clinic (he was a speaker) but it had been a fleeting encounter. The character is a 1.90 m giant who speaks in a voice with a strange accent and a cadence that works on the mind like a tranquilizer. He makes it clear right away that if he doesn't see me doing stalls and spin exits properly… there's no way he's going to let me do the SAT. Good, I appreciate his seriousness… it was exactly what I was looking for. It's not an easy commodity to find these days.
First flight, takeoff, I have years of experience behind me but my heart is in my throat. I reach the vertical above the center of the lake. The lake, which is enormous, from 1500 meters looks like a miserable puddle. There's a ferry beneath me, one of those that carry dozens of tourists, and from up here it barely looks like a little rowboat. Nesler's voice comes through the earpiece, “head south”, he has me turn to face the wind. I'm a very practical person and I have my feet firmly on the ground (so to speak), but that strange, slow, cadenced voice has the magic power to calm me and to give me determination and confidence. After a few exaggerated frontals done with the brakes in hand and the “A” risers pulled “to death”, the big guy has me do a held stall, I come out, another stall and yet another. I have height to spare and beneath me there's a rubber boat with three experts aboard, ready, in case of a fall into the water, to recover me. After the full stalls, Nesler wants to see spins (the real ones, not the asymmetric collapses often passed off as spins). All right, I do it: held spin for about three full turns, then the rotation slows and there, exit in a stall on the brakes. Quite a thing. I had never done it. I had never dared before to do more than one turn of a spin. A beautiful thing. And what experience gained. We go on like this all day and, after several rides up by cable car and new jumps, Nesler convinces himself that our group can afford something more: the SAT.
I can't sit still at the idea that the next day I would be doing this maneuver. I studied it for months. I watched 100 videos of the maneuver. I studied the dynamics of the SAT down to the smallest detail, but only now do I understand that I was a thousand miles from imagining what the maneuver really is.
We go up to the takeoff and, as an instructor, I expected Nesler to put on “a whole show” with the description of the maneuver, and instead nothing: he calls Gudrun and she, in a couple of words and with the help of a simulator, explains the execution to us. I set off in flight and I'm annoyed. I would have killed one of my own students with technical explanations if I had to explain the SAT to them, and they instead nothing, a couple of little words and GO. During the flight and the approach to the vertical above the lake, I was assailed by countless doubts. And a little voice in my ear whispered: “but what on earth is making you do this”. Nothing. I reach the vertical very high up. The rescue rubber boat circles beneath me and the sight of it is reassuring. That usual “chamomile voice” comes over the radio: “Ok Mirco, head south, if you can hear me do the big ears”. I do the big ears and again that voice… that voice has the power to give me energy, bite and determination. If someone had told me about it, I wouldn't have believed it: I'm certainly no mystic and I only believe in what I can touch with my own hands (alas).
He has me enter a positive spin and, at a precise moment, when the wing has exactly that energy and exactly that bank angle, Nesler shouts a sharp: “NOW… GO!”. I don't lose a millisecond, we're in the game, so let's play. A delay or an anticipation of the maneuver could lead me into another configuration and then having to do a full stall to reset everything. The sensation is one of those you've never felt before. I rotate violently onto my back, the pressure I'm putting on the outer risers is strong, it almost bends my arm, but I absolutely must keep my weight shifted to the opposite side. It's simply… incredible, I'm in a SAT… on the first try. A few turns and Nesler has me come out: he wants me to control the wing immediately, there's no time to congratulate myself. The wing comes out violent but clean. In practice like the exit from an engaged positive spin. I just have time to settle back into the harness and immediately I hear the voice: head south… right away… SAT again. And there, new entry into the SAT and then yet another. There's certainly no lack of safety height. On the last SAT, I stay as if hooked onto the brake, continuing to push on the risers… what's happening? …I don't want to come out… it's too beautiful. Nesler's voice comes over the radio and, probably understanding the rush of adrenaline boiling through my body, he steps in half amused and half ironic, saying: “Right Mirco, now it seems to me it'd be about time to come out”. I come back to my senses. I exit the figure with more than 200 meters above the lake and head toward the little landing field of Malcesine.
I'm in a state of bliss. It's incredible to describe. You have to live it. A thousand words written with the greatest care wouldn't be enough to describe, even in the smallest part, the sensations I'm feeling. I land. I walk on that little strip of meadow that is the landing field and I feel like I'm levitating above the ground. I want to jump and shout. But I can't, I've been an instructor for so many years and I have to hold myself together. But who says so? I let myself go, I give a great shout and I throw my helmet, I go to see Nesler, I'd hug him for what he managed to make me do and for the inner joy bursting from every pore. I hold back once again. I give him a good handshake, trying, with that gesture, to make him understand how grateful I am to him. Now I'm done for. My senses, which I thought were sated after so many years of flying, have awakened in a new enthusiasm I never thought I could renew. Now I have new motivations and a great desire to learn and to grow. In practice, I've gone off the rails. But how beautiful it is!
I'll close these lines, which were supposed to be two lines and instead I let myself get carried away (by the pen, rather) and out came a sort of Divine Comedy, by saying that despite the enthusiasm that shines through in my writing, you mustn't let yourself get carried away. You don't joke around with acro. It takes patience, preparation and a lot of humility to be able to do it. And it is absolutely necessary to have the presence of ultra-qualified people, as I was lucky enough to have, who assist you at every step of progression with seriousness, competence and, why not, also a lot of friendship.
I take advantage of this space to thank with all my heart my friend Nesler and his partner Gudrun for what they were able to teach me and pass on to me. From this experience, which will surely continue over time, I drew a great lesson that will certainly help me to be a better instructor.