500 km on a paraglider…
Wind on launch was gusting 35-40 kph with lulls before the thermals. “The lulls were 10-15 kph so it was possible to winch fairly easily,” says Hulett. “I pulled the glider up twice because the first time the tips picked up bushes on the side of the road...”
He took off at 11.30am. “The first thermal release occurred 15 minutes before I took off,” he says. “Downwind was a section of no-man’s land for about 100 km.” It was important to stay up. “If I had landed the record was off.” Not only that, he would have been stuck: “It would have been a difficult retrieve, and there’s no cellphone reception.” As it was, a malfunctioning radio meant he only had communication with his retrieve driver, girlfriend Penny Frost, for the first seven kilometres of his flight. Copperton sits at 1,229 m asl. He winched up to 1,502 m before releasing. The 273 m climb was “almost vertical” above the winch, and he was getting “little front tucks” when Penny announced the line was almost out. “Then I released and the flight was on.”