In October, Till Gottbrath stepped down as manager of the NOVA Pilots Team (NPT) after 17 years and symbolically handed over the captain's hat to Timon Weber. Till is realising a big dream and wants to hike the Te Araroa Trail, a long-distance hiking trail of more than 3.000 km across New Zealand. Timon has been part of the NPT for ten years and is…

For the 16th time, we have awarded our Pilots of the Year at the annual Pilots Team Meeting. This year the awards were given to Werner Luidolt (AUT) and Ole Dalen (NOR), the newcomer trophies went to Philipp Hänggi (SUI) and Ali Heydari (Iran); Roland Mäder (SUI) received the new Lifetime Achievement Award. These awards are given in recognition not…

For years Team Pilot Toni Brügger has been flying extremely long distances with EN A and EN B paragliders. On 17 June 2023, the Swiss succeeded in flying a flat 301 km triangle with his NOVA MENTOR 7 Light. From his home in Kandersteg (Bernese Oberland), he flew in a good 11 hours to the turn points Mont Blanc and Lake Lucerne with an average of…

Nick Donini participates for the second time in the Red Bull X-Alps. Two years ago, he had to pull out of the race after a crash landing when he almost flew into the cable of a material ropeway. Until then, he had been doing quite well, displaying his outstanding skills as pilot. The documentary movie “Vulnerability” (really worth watching) showed…

Junming Song is the first ever Chinese to be selected for the Red Bull X-Alps. He is an experienced comp pilot, but has never been flying in the Alps. He doesn’t even speak English. The race will be a fantastic experience and a unique adventure for him and his team.

Richard Binstead will represent Australia in the Red Bull X-Alps 2023. Together with Nick Donini (Italy) and Junming Song (China), he is one of the pilots who will compete on a NOVA XENON. Before the race, we will introduce all three of them.

The paragliding scene is now recording more and more women and thus we flying women are slowly but surely moving out of the niche within the paragliding niche.