This year PARAnoia ACRObatixx will be an APWC Competition. The event will be held 16th till 19th July 2008 above the city of Zell am See in Austria.

It will be a competition in one category only - SOLO. The registration limit for solo pilots is 40. At the first day there will be the qualification run in the morning for all pilots who never flew before an APWC. The FAI runs are planned for Wednesday till Saturday. The Expression Session out of the Helicopter (limited Pilots) will be on Saturday in the late afternoon. After the heli drops ther will be the very well known "Zeller Seefest" with fireworks and good music.

The registration will be open from 1st May till 15th June 2008.

For further information and registration please visit www.acro.cc

Some information and new interesting concept of the upcoming Vertigo Swiss Riviera APWC event:

"The Vertigo Swiss Riviera will host the world cup, and also the 2nd Swiss Championships during 24th to 29th of June in Villeneuve, Switzerland.

This year, the focus is on synchro! There is a registration limit of 20 teams and 20 slots for solo as well. For the hanggliders, 15 slots have been opened.

The runs will be completed by some of the Swiss pilots who will compete to obtain the title of Swiss Champion.

Four CM FAI runs are planned from Wednesday to Sunday, exception made of Saturday, during which a brand new concept of paragliding competition is planned: The Vertigo Open.

The Registration for the FAI event is between the 29th of March and the 5th of May!

The Vertigo Open is an aerobatic paragliding competition, with two categories: solo and synchro.

Two pilots will compete against each other, with direct dismissal. A new way of “live” scoring will inform the pilot and the public of the result of each run, with a delay of one or two minutes.

The jury is composed of FAI judges and of personalities selected by the management of the Vertigo Swiss Riviera.

See you soon!
Team Vertigo Swiss Riviera"
www.acrovertigo.ch

Stands on Niviuk's website:

"Raul Rodriguez, a new destination

We announce, by mutual agreement, the end of the engagement of Raul Rodriguez towards Niviuk Gliders. The complete Niviuk staff thanks Raul for these 3 years of collaboration with many big sensations and pictures."

Info: Niviuk.com

Chrigel Maurer - despite his young age - is without doubt one of the best XC pilots since many years, winning the world cup series one after the other...But not everybody knows that behind the scenes he is also a rising acro star! Flying acro in his free time, just for his own entertaining step by step he learned all the figures and arrived to a world class level. On 19th of March he took-off at Jungfraujoch in Switzerland, soar up the three famous mountains of the Alps - Jungfrau, Mönch, Eiger - then flew over the valley of Grindenwald and made 158 Infinity turns with his Advance prototype (current official record 120 turns by Antoine Montant by jumping from helicopter).
We catched him for a short interview just after he became father, his son was born this Monday!

Name: Chrigel Maurer

Age: 25 years old

Place of home: Wilderswil, Interlaken

Started to fly paraglider in 1998

Started to fly XC competitions in 1999

Overall PWC winner in 2005, 2006 and 2007

European XC record holder, 323 km (in 2004)

Website: chrigelmaurer.ch

justACRO: You are a real competitor character and for several years you were participating in all the cross county World Cups, this is actually your main profession?

Chrigel Maurer: Yes, my first PWC was in 2001 - when I was 19- and I won the series overall in the last 3 years.

jA: Beside focusing so much on XC how is your relation with acro flying?

Chrigel: I love the fascination of the maneuvers...

I can't find the words...such a great loss...The always-smiling Mathias Roten, world class paraglider pilot left this world on Friday by a speedflying accident. He went out riding alone to Lötschental, not so far from his hometown (Thun) in Switzerland. He flew a small sky-diving parachute with not so good take-off ability - as he said earlier. Nobody knows exactly what happened, because as far as we know there are no witnesses of the accident. He attempted to take-off close to the peak of Hockenhorn at 3000 meter from the top of a cliff, but probably his glider did not inflate properly and he fell down 100 meter from the rock and died immediately...Soon after a rescue helicopter came for him, but they couldn't help anymore.

He was not only one of the best paragliding acro pilots with his unique, agressive style (1st in synchro overall world cup in 2005 with Dominique Steffen), but a very expert cross country pilot as well (1st team in overall world cup in 2004 and 2005 ). Despite these great successes he never took the stress of the competitions, only flew for fun and the results were not really important for him. In 2007 he also mastered Infinity Tumbling and expressed himself in speedflying (he also run the biggest speed-flying site on the web)
He had incredible talent and enthusiastic passion to everything he touched: he was kitesurf and ski instructor, test-pilot, sky-diver, speedrider and probably the best drum player I've ever heared. He stopped paragliding competitions 2 years ago and his attention turned to film-making. At the end of 2007 with some of his friends they released the Play Gravity movie, a masterpiece of extreme sport cinematography created by the ideas of Mathias.

He was truly the artist of life...a great person and friend...

We will miss you so much!!! :-(

The talented french acro pilot and movie maker Alexandre Aimard is now organizing an amateur online video contest for free flyers. Any airsport related videos are welcome such as paragliding, speed-riding, base jumping etc. The only criteria that it has to be amateur.
At the end of 2008 a jury will select the best videos and the winners can win some prices offered by the sponsors. Visit his website, Feelosofly.fr for further information and rules.