Hugo Hadaš breaks EN-B record

At the age of 18 and just seven months after breaking his back, the Czech pilot Hugo Hadaš has flown the longest distance ever recorded in an EN-B wing. On 13 October he flew 498km across north-east Brazil, flying for 10h 27m in a Sky Apollo 3 alongside his father in a Merlin (EN C), adding 70km to the previous record of 425km.

Launching at 7.27am from Caraúbas, he flew the west-north-west route that would have been familiar to him from a year previously when he became the youngest person to fly 500km. The line has become something of a superhighway for those chasing 500km flights in recent years.

“It was an amazing flight,” he said. “I’m absolutely satisfied — last year on the EN-C I was thrilled when I flew 512km, and this year I flew almost the same distance on an EN-B. When I surpassed the previous record, I felt such a strong urge to scream with joy — and then I caught another thermal and flew another 60km.”

The EN-B record is all the more extraordinary since earlier this year Hugo suffered a spinal injury and spent two months in hospital. The accident occured after he tried to make a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ landing. After releasing the speedbar he climbed too high and he fell to the ground, breaking his C1. To make matters worse he contracted meningitis and spent another month in hospital. “I returned to flying as soon as I possibly could,” he said.

Initially Hugo did not have a good feeling about the day. “In the morning we looked out the window and saw a lot of high clouds, not a good sign at all. But since we hadn’t flown for two days, we decided to give it a try anyway.”

At take-off there was almost no wind, no cumulus and lots of cirrus and Hugo at first attempted to persuade his father Lukáš and Standa Klikar to call it off. Standa launched first and immediately bombed out. (He would eventually get back in the air and fly 112km.)

“At first it was tough – no clouds ahead, all of them forming behind me, and around 20km I got quite low. I saw some birds circling, so I followed them. That turned out to be a mistake. I gained a little altitude, but then sank again, down to 130m AGL. Luckily, I caught a thermal, climbed out, and soon after joined up with Lukáš,” Hugo wrote.

“From then on we flew together. He could’ve easily flown faster since he had a Merlin, but he used only a third of his speedbar so we could stay side by side. Without him, this flight definitely wouldn’t have been so successful. The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful,” he added. Lukáš would eventually fly 496km.

“Just before 445km I managed to catch the last good thermal up to 2600m, and we had an incredible final glide, about 40km. I tried to stretch the flight as far as possible, but there was nowhere to land, only endless forest. I picked the last possible landing spot but as I got over it, I noticed a power line running right through the middle. I used my precision landing skills and managed to touch down on a 15×15 meter patch.”

The adventure didn’t end there. The landowner thought Hugo was an intruder and fired off two gunshots. Hugo quickly made his way to the nearest village and reunited with his dad where the two celebrated. “It was super awesome,” he reflected on making the flight with his father. “We are flying much in our country together.”

The previous record of 425km was set by Konrad Görg in 2016.