Kocot X-Pyr

17/11/2025

When you're a Candide Thovex or Jean-Baptiste Chandelier it's not easy to come up with something even more impressive and mind-blowing then you've done already. And yet they both keep delivering. This one is truly beautiful.

*In loving memory of Claude Lamielle* Jean-Baptiste Chandelier - Director, Pilot, Edit, Visual Effect, french voice overThomas Pierre-Bes — Camera, Drone, Ed...

25/09/2025

This is not something you see every day.
- not only Andrzej Bargiel has skied down the highest mountain on earth.
- not only he has made it all the way down as a continuous line.
- not only he has done it without any use of Oxygen
but look at the style!

It's always the same - doesn't go around for months, bragging, asking the public for money.

He just shows up one day, already packed to go, says out loud what is the goal and who is going to pay for it.

You get several updates on the way up, always good shots, and some weeks after - BOOM! A properly edited video, with POV, with drone shots. DONE. The new record has been served.

Obviously, the amount of research and preparation for such initiatives is insane, but somehow, as a fan, you don't need to get bother, you just get the best of it. Without milking the topics for months.

And I 100% respect that. Above everything else. And he is like that. Very cool.

06/03/2025

I still have mixed feelings about the Naviter Omni. I managed to set it up in a usable way and got used to the sound of it. However, with a tiny screen, not-ideal visibility and UI optimized for much bigger Oudie it's really hard to benefit from all its features. You also have the subscription to pay every year.

Knowing all that XCTracer Maxx feels like a really solid and reasonable compromise, also being lighter and cheaper. In fact, I have yet to find a single person unhappy with it!

Therefore the news that a new Maxx is coming, with a bigger screen and added maps, is definitely an exciting one and I'll happily test it whenever it's available!

Over the past few days, we quietly shared a prototype of the XC Tracer Maxx III with a handful of trusted pilots. Their reactions ranged from an enthusiastic “Boah!” or “Cool!” to silent amazement when watching the terrain screen with adaptive hillshading. Here’s what we can share right no...

11/09/2024

The world records are set every day. And even though it's surely hard to run 100m that 0.00001s faster; to me, those two achievements are a world apart from everything else that happened this year:

🪂 30th July Chrigel Maurer and Peter von Kanel have climbed all 84 4000m peaks in the Alps, in 51 days, They moved only by foot and paragliders, and they did it without any support except for the huts, etc. They came back home by train to rest, though.

🏃 Only a month later Kilian Jornet does the same within only 19 days. This time only running and biking, but also using a lot of support.

The numbers are of course insane - plain distance and altitude gain seems almost unrealistic. But this is not even the impressive part. As 'easy' as the most popular 4k peaks are, the majority of those summits are a serious undertaking on their own.

Some are technically HARD, some wild and REMOTE. Most are objectively DANGEROUS, with seracs, glaciers and tons of lose rocks. And this is true already for the normal routes, but linking those summits means taking unusual traverses and shortcuts. Kilian for example had to do Mont Blanc twice, as this was the fastest way....

Such shortcuts are sometimes safer flying.... but flying is also what makes it mind-blowing. Paragliding in those remote, high mountain areas is reserved for the best pilots on the best days. And those that carry their gear up mostly focus on just flying down safe, with minimalistic gear. Maurer and Kanel did a full blown, 50-days mountaineering vol-biv with tons of great XC flights, often against strong winds and unstable weather. Proving how accomplished pilots they both are.

And even if all that feels like just another stunt for you, imagine pushing those boundaries EVERY SINGLE DAY, waking up, and moving on, at highest pace, in dangerous terrain. While using all your skills and experience to do it FAST.

📖 Both of those records will probably fall at one point, become as abstract as the first ascent of the Eiger's nort face is now, but they go to my book as inspiring, that's for sure.

07/07/2024

NAVITER OMNI - FIRST IMPRESSIONS
With Oudie becoming the new XC comp standard and SeeYou stealing some XC Track die-hard users I got excited to see their new H&F monster - the OMNI! ❤️

📷Unfortunately, Naviter followed the worst industry standards providing only a short promo and almost ZERO INFORMATIION about the actual features or real shots of the screen. Even now the manuals present either Oudie or the phones. So, here I am, 800EUR poorer, but with an Omni in my hand, ready to tell you about it.

🗚 And it's... SMALL. Well, I should have known what 90mm looks like... but it's also THICK! 25mm is like 3 phones on top of each other. It also weights double XCTracer Maxx2. That is similar to NAV C, but nowhere close to its display size. BATTERY Life => a day or more (11-13h).

✨Still, it's small and LIGHT ENOUGH even for the H&F comps. Plus everything else about the build is TOP-NOTCH. The materials are good, the finishing is perfect, precisely matched USB-C socket and SIM card tray, pre-cut velcro. Solid FLARM antenna. Even the string is kind of satisfying. Love it.

🗺️The SOFTWARE makes good first impression too. It just works. Little setup, Android backbone barely visible. The app is clean, not overloaded. Surely NOT ANOTHER XCTRACK REMAKE. The map has it all too - satellite, topo, thermals, landings, obstacles... just toggle any layer while flying, boom💥 It also shows FANET pilots and Skysights layers. No meteo stations, though.

☀️ And it's only really as great at home. While the screen is massively bright, it has a lot of REFLECTIONS too. Lean to the side and all the small fonts and the map are gone. To see the altitude or speed when thermalling you need to put it on white background and scale up.

👎But it's not the display that disappoints - any technology has its limits. It's the software that I find frustrating. It was clearly designed for the bigger Oudie, and doesn't offer options that would help use space efficiently.
- you can't remove the field titles and the margins are huge. Increase the field, it takes half screen but digits are still small.
- Vario widgets are odd, with 'average' field built-in, scale poorly
- the aispace notification takes tons of space and offers little
- little you can do to differentiate the screens, as there are no triggers and the map setup is shared across all screens. So you can't have a basic map with the weather on one and navigate on the other, and the map gets overloaded quickly.

🔥And nope, there is NO CUSTOMIZATION of the thermal assistant too! You get the same fields, default setup, no trigger customizations. The old tracks never fade away, which is annoying in weaker lifts or soaring, but even longer thermals. Every other vario does it, not Omni. Oh, and no way to manually exit assistant too.

🔊I was surprised seeing little VARIO SOUND adjustment, especially coming from XC Tracer ecosystem. But the vario seems good overall, beeps slightly earlier than my Flymaster backup, it's rather peaceful too. Some other presets would be nice, though.

🙏So do I think it's BAD? Absolutely NOT, I really like Navtier's approach. I think the software is promising and the hardware is decent and I plan to keep it as my main vario for now. But I also wonder WHO IS REALLY THIS DEVICE FOR?

Sure, it can do ALMOST EVERYTHING, including XC or airspace navigation, weather forecast or even comps. But the phone does more, on bigger screen and needs no 2nd sim card for connection.

As simple vario Maxx II wins due to visibility (but also size, weight, battery life). And you can't even use Omni as BT vario for your mobile app - big fail here!

❓Soo... buy Maxx or Oudie instead? Maybe, but there is still a niche of people who want more from the vario, or occasionally do H&F or fly without a phone and appreciate Naviter's ecosystem... What are your thoughts. I think it would be much easier with screen 20% bigger :) The sales will tell.

01/04/2024

After Brazil and Colombia, it's time for South Africa. This very underrated winter destination is unfairly considered difficult and dangerous. While actually it can much better accommodate beginners than e.g. Roldanillo.

With some of the most beautiful spots, reliable conditions and easy access it should be on everyone's list. Let me show you exactly why, I promise it won't take long!

As winter enters northern hemisphere a great migration of paragliding pilots starts from Europe and North America to numerous warmer destinations. It seems t...

31/03/2024

It's been years since I've first realized kites can be used to move fast in the mountains, but only now it all worked out to try it.

I'm amazed how easy it actually is with the mountain kites and even though it might not be the best fit for the northern alps or Aravis, there is definitely a lot of potential in the south or Scandinavia.

Great thanks to Kite Legende for showing us around

26/03/2024

At one point you know the mountains so well you stop checking the map. It was one of those days, there were no tracks, but I've felt so confident about the route.... that we ended up going up the wrong couloir 🫣

To be fair it was the best choice anyway, and the IG content is decent, but it left me with some doubts for the rest of the day.

Photos by Tomek Gola ᴾᴴᴼᵀᴼ that will turn any fails trip into art 😎

26/03/2024

The winter started pretty good this year. You had to be smart about choices, but both the quantity and quality of the snow was pretty decent. Unfortunately some options are more and more rarely in conditions every year.

26/03/2024

Living in the Alps I never have much time for the water sports, especially those requiring reliable winds. It's been a missing part for sure as I've spend big part of my childhood around sailing. 3 weeks kiting on Brazil this winter finally let me get a good grasp of this sport.

08/12/2023

Flymaster NAV C - FIRST REVIEW. I've got quite EXCITED about this vario so I rushed to Coupe Icare earlier this year to pick one. It really SEEMED PERFECT for my needs, but how good really is it?

First, why would you want it?
✅ it's a dedicated device, with proven vario hardware and sound, coming from a solid brand, and not some Chinese android remake.
✅ has a big color screen, with a map, so it can double or replace your phone completely
✅ relatively low weight and size (slimmer than NAV SD body) and 200g. Acceptable for H&F.
✅ can send data via Bluetooth to XCTrack
✅ and it still has FLARM and Live Tracking (both optionally)
✅ pages are fully customizable and colors help organize fields

When it looks so good, why the hell it's SO BAD?
💥 UNRELIABLE. The unit I've got had persistent GPS issues - it could not fix position for 15-20min and then it hanged at random moments and required a restart, or 5. Never worked more than 20min...

🐞 BUGGY. The software has numerous bugs. Once it decided to indefinitely switch to Goal screen, even though I had no task defined. Other it would just not shut down. I've also never managed to upload airspaces through the phone as it throws a generic error. It did connect very nicely, though.

📱 Discussable SCREEN. The screen is 50/50. On one hand it's not bad in sunlight, and a good compromise for the battery life, it has sufficient colors and resolution to use maps.
But it has no backlight meaning in the evening it's barely visible. It also flares much more than I expected. So if your goal is to just see the basic numbers from every angle it's just not as good as older, B&W screens. It's almost never (never?) more readable than my Samsung S22 Ultra at full backlight. It also refreshes slower, but if you set maps with north up, it's not an issue.

🗺️I had high hopes for the thermal assistant. However, it's hard to see the track as it's faint green on grey, and in comparison I can't tell where the lift was strong as well as with XCTrack. You also need to customize this page to get it bigger.

📡 FLARM. I don't disagree with the statements that their antenna has best signal and was tested throughout. It's probably true, but it doesn't really matter much if you lose it, break it, or just give up using it, and I'm 100% sure this would be my case. It just sticks out too much and seems fragile. And might be gone after accident, thanks.

💻 PC SOFTWARE. The windows designer for the screens, airspaces, maps, etc has been improved, but it still feels more like some dev tool, that no one had time to finish. It's not clear what buttons do, aligning controls around is a pain, fields have no description, etc.

❌To sum up, unfortunately it seems like Flymaster didn't learn with the DS and once again we're getting a device that is simply NOT YET READY for the end customers. I didn't even mention details like hardware buttons not being easy to use in gloves (multiselector + middle button is a terrible choice). That you can turn off vario accidentally with just 2 clicks... etc.

And sure, I was probably unlucky with mine that was UNUSABLE. And Flymaster did the right thing promising to replace it/take it back. But it took tons of LOST TIME on my side, and lost flights, to figure out the issue, and then even more stress during my trip to Brazil where it ultimately failed. Also I considered Flymaster support super solid until not, but I wouldn't say it's 10/10 anymore.

So if mine wasn't broken, would I keep it? Not sure. It will surely be more polished for mid 2024, but for 880eur you have quite several alternatives. Any you'd recommend yourself?