BIOGRAPHY OF BEN PINNELL
Weather has a always played a major part in how Ben likes to experience the world. Growing up in Southern Africa, his love for weather started early as he spent much of his time outdoors in the thick of it either fishing, hunting, riding dirt bikes and, eventually, flying. His father's interest in aviation exposed him to many modes of flight. At age 15, free-flight in the form of paragliding became the focus of his energy. A gap year after high school turned to four years exploring and flying in every environment and atmospheric condition he could find, living and flying in various parts of Africa, Australia, Europe and the United States. Settling in Boulder, Colorado, he completed a B.S. in Meteorology with a double minor in math and aviation technology, graduating with honors.
Ben has over 5000 hours flying everything from turbine engine aircraft to paragliders. His ratings include Airline Transport Pilot, Commercial Pilot Single and Multi Engine Land, Gold Seal Certified Flight Instructor Airplane and Glider, Advanced Ground Instructor, Advanced Instrument Ground Instructor, Advanced Paraglider Pilot, Tandem Paraglider Pilot and Powered Paraglider Pilot.
Meteorology
As a traveling paraglider pilot, much of Ben's eduction on the dynamics of the atmosphere came through empirical knowledge. From frustrating but benign lessons like a long hike up a mountain for an evening flight being snubbed by katabatic, downslope winds, to hard lessons like being sucked into a maturing cumulonimbus cloud and having to continuously stall his paraglider to fall out the bottom and escape. Both quickly led to more caution and the pursuit of better information. Ultimately, this fascination with interacting with weather led to Ben's choice in a meteorology degree. Throughout his studies, he always looked at weather through the lens of a pilot.
Corporate Pilot
Ben is currently a corporate pilot for good people from a great company based out of the Denver area, flying a Gulfstream GVII. Much of his initial time was flying turbine aircraft in the Rocky Mountain west, but he is currently flying throughout the CONUS and some Oceanic. Mostly, he loves instrument flying in and around interesting weather.
Flight Instructor
Ben is an FAA Gold Seal Flight instructor with over 2000 hours of dual instruction. He love to share his joint passion for flying and weather. He truly enjoys the people drawn to the aviation community and has helped many complete their Private, Commercial and Flight Instructor Certificates. Ben is an experienced Mountain Flight Instructor.
Powered Flight
Powered flight has given him the opportunity to fly with friends and family to some remote and unimproved airstrips to camp and explore. He especially enjoys the freedom of flying to remote fly fishing destinations.
Gliding
Ben learned to fly gliders at the Oxford Gliding Club in the United Kingdom. He is a member and glider instructor for the Soaring Society of Boulder. As a glider pilot living in the front range area, he has extensive experience surfing the mountain wave in the colder months of the year and exploring convective weather and running the convergence during the summers. He loves to share his passion for soaring with friends and students of soaring. Ben holds a Colorado Multi-place Speed record around a 100km course, is the 5th recipient of the Colorado 14er Challenge, and recently completed a local 1000km Border to Border Challenge.
Paragliding
Ben owned and ran Tocar El Cielo, a tandem paragliding business in northern Spain. He also worked for Windtech, assembling and test flying paragliders. He has competed around the world in everything from small friendly events, to the highly competitive French Open, Nordic Open, Manilla XC Challenge and the Paragliding World Cup competition. He has flown in nearly every environment on nearly every continent, from ridge soaring hotels in the South of Spain, to riding the powerful thermals of the Australian outback.
Powered Paragliding
Ben discovered powered paragliding as a result of some encouragement and support of a lifelong paragliding friend who now owns and runs a premier paramotor company in Phoenix, Arizona. He likes how you can take the meaning of "low and slow" to the next level, slaloming between the saguaro cacti of the Phoenix area, or cruising between the pinnacles and mesas of Monument Valley.
