Rowan Ratnik from Australia won the paraglider in the Cross Country Subscribers’ Prize Draw last week – he gets to choose a new EN A, B or C glider from either Advance, AirDesign, BGD, Gin, Ozone, Supair or Swing.
We asked him what he hoped to be flying next season.
Rowan, congratulations on your win. What’s your current glider, and how long gave you had it?
Thank you, it was a big surprise. I fly a Phi Maestro 2 (high EN B) which is about two and a half years old.
How long have you been flying for?
I got my licence in 2001, however I only seem to fly about 30 to 50 hours in a good year despite intending to do far more. Life keeps getting in the way.
Where do you fly most of the time?
I live in Melbourne, so the closest coastal or inland sites are at least a 90 minute drive or futher, Bright being three and a half hours and Manilla 13 hours. Most of my flying time seems to occur in Europe.
For the last 12 years (bar Covid years) during our winter I have spent four or five weeks mainly on organised flying trips ranging from the main Alps, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Portugal, the Italian Appenines, Georgia and this year Macedonia.
Have you an idea which wing you’ll choose?
I haven’t had a chance to research new wings yet. I will certainly look at lightweight high B’s or perhaps even one of the new two-line EN Cs.
What’s your job?
I have been retired for three years. I would have retired earlier but since we were pretty locked down for two years in Australia during Covid I continued working so as to get permission to get out of the house. I worked in the Australian Air Traffic Control system for 30 years.
What did you think when you’d heard you’d won the glider?
I thought it was some sort of prank as several people were congratulating me on the win despite me not knowing anything about it. It turned out the contact details Cross Country had for me were long out of date so I was uncontactable.
I was obviously very pleasantly surprised when I realised it was genuine!
