We have just returned from the Coupe Icare at St Hilaire, the annual flying festival near Grenoble in France. As always the festival provided an exciting mix of acro, films, partying and exhibition, and once again the sun shone and the days were flyable, making for another successful event.

Highlights include the Fancy Dress “Icarnaval of Masquerade Flights” with all manner of strange and wonderful costumes including an incredible inflated dragon 10m high, pirates of the Caribbean, miners, Concorde, and many more… Good fun for pilots and non pilots alike, kids love it.

St Hilaire is also famous for it's International Free Flight Film Festival now in it's 25th year. All the top flying films from around the world get shown and it's a great place to preview the best.

This year saw loads of aerial demos from top hang glider and paraglider pilots, speed gliding, speed riding, ultralight and paramotor demos, parachuting, wingsuits, kites, boomerangs, acrobatic sail planes, gyrocopters and light helicopters, paraglider drops, and spot landings!

One of the highlights was Antoine Montant's D-bag jump from a helicopter to beat the world record of Infinity Tumbling with 120 consecutive tumbles (paraglider loops) although we counted 122!