Adam Stott has broken the South Australian paragliding record with a flight of 154km.
Despite an abundance of beautiful coastal sites that provide year-round flying, South Australia isn’t known in the Australian paragliding and hang gliding scenes as a hot spot for XC flying. However the area has already produced a +300km hang glider flight.
Riverland district has hosted international class sailplane competitions, and it was to the west of this flatland region on 11th October 2008, Australia’s mid-spring, that Adam Stott was towed up by his wife Verity and proceeded to fly a new state paragliding XC record of 154kms.
Clad only in a T-shirt on his top half ex-sailplane pilot Adam flew his brand spanking new Niviuk Peak to a chilling 3,300m in the flats during a flight that lasted more than six hours. Adam eventually landed only 9kms away from neighbouring state Victoria.
Whilst not huge in international terms – in 1998 Godfrey Wenness broke the Open Distance Paragliding World Record from Manilla in New South Wales with a flight of 335km – nor even nationally, this is quite still very significant for the State’s small paragliding scene, as the previous record of only 123km from a hill launch in the Mid North was held for 14 years!
200km+ flights in this area look achievable as Adam landed mainly due to feeling utterly trashed and not for any lack of late afternoon thermals.
For images of SA flying sites, please see the ‘South Australian flying sites’ photo set at www.flickr.com/photos/kymfielke
