Chapter 1

Paraglider takeoff (not PPG)

Did you ever look at the spec sheet when you purchased your Paraglider? You probably noticed the suggested weight range, the size and some other specifications. The total weight includes everything: glider, harness, pilot, clothing and of course, your spare underwear. During the total time you touch the ground, before you get airborne, you should try to load the Paraglider by leaning forward (wing loading) and by resting your belly on the harness. By loading it, you will realize that your running distance is reduced to a couple of steps, only if you are centered and you are not accelerating in front of the paraglider. Remember that a paraglider is controlled by slowing it down but it has to fly first and before you take-off you should feel pulled up and forward. By loading the Paraglider you will also be able to keep it stable. Basically, what you try to do during takeoff is similar to what you encounter in flight ... always centerthe paraglider, with maximum wing loading by not looking up at the wing but instead feeling it, with enough brake to keep good pitch stability. "Always make sure there is pressure in the wing by feeling tension in the controls during the take off and elevate your hands slowly to accelerate gently"

Paramotor takeoff

It looks easy and it actually is quite easy. You hold on to 2 risers (to inflate the Paraglider), the throttle control, the Paraglider controls (to steer the Paraglider). A good technique is to use 50% throttle after a few steps to help inflate the Paraglider, not to push air into the cells, but to create a constant forward motion that you need when the Paraglider is half way up.Here are some other points to keep in mind:1. Position your hands behind you and below the belt. Start running and lift your hand vertically without pulling forward to prevent deforming the leading edge, which would slow down the inflation and induce YAW. During a forward inflation, If you do not use the thrust of the Paramotor to help you move forward, the Paraglider will slow down and may yaw because of the high angle of attack and you might have to abort.2. If you wait until you feel tension on the lines, the delay for the air to travel from the propeller to the Paraglider will give you enough time to elevate the Paraglider to prevent being pulled back and fall.3. You can release the throttle, reducing the RPM to 20%, slowing down the motion of the Paraglider, preventing it from going in front of you and deflating.4. Once the Paraglider is stable above your head, slow down the paraglider to ensure stability and squeeze the throttle progressively to maximum RPM (if needed) while accelerating the paraglider (by raising your hands) and then reduce RPM to climb gently with your hands up. It will be quieter and prevent a forward surge if your motor stops.5. During the run after the glider is inflated, you will have to straighten your back (like a Russian Cossack dancer) to minimize the running distance. Every degree off the vertical will result in more running. Every degree off the center of the Paraglider will also result in more running and could also make you oscillate. Running in a jumping manner also disturbs the air above the Paraglider, resulting in a longer running distance. If you follow these rules, you should get airborne after running less than 15 steps even in calm wind!

6. After lifting off the ground, you could get into a pendulum caused by over controlling the Paraglider, combined with the torque of the Paramotor. My suggestion reduce the RPM and turn left for a few seconds while sitting back against the harness by pushing the bottom of the harness forward and lifting your knees.

Landing it softly and precisely!

The Paraglider is the easiest aircraft to land! At about 200 hundred feet above the LZ, I kill the engine, clip the throttle handle to the harness and align the glider into the wind. I then straighten my body to make sure I end up on my feet to prevent slipping on landing, good hiking boots will help a lot. To insure a soft landing, fly the Paraglider with hands all the way up to build speed that you will later transfer to a nice pendulum that ends in an upward pattern, not downward, which would happen if you over control during the last 30 feet of the flight. Hand motion should be very regular and even in the last 5 or 6 feet to finish the flair without an impact. Do not slow down, i.e., flare, before you are lower than 5 to 6 feet because you will stop the pendulum that you need at the end to land softly. Thermals can make landing a little tricky sometimes because closer to the ground there is more heat and that could extend your flight. Choose a clear path.Small landing areas and slope landing techniques. You will have to, at some point, land in a tight area or in a slope, especially if you like cross-country flying. The problem is to decrease your glide ratio without stalling. You know that breaking more than 70% will increase your sink but could also cause a stall in turbulent air. A good way to reduce your glide ratio is to stand up to create more drag and pump the controls gently. It will also increase your chances of landing on your feet instead of your butt.

In flight, you Fly smoothly to get the best glide ratio possible, minimizing the roll and pitch BUT, If you want to go down, you can increase the roll by pulling on one side then the other until you get comfortably low. Do not spiral over the area - you will build too much speed and you could miscalculate your sink rate and drift with the wind. The last 50 feet should be straight or minimal changes that will not increase pitch and roll. My favorite technique is to come downwind and do a sharp turn close to the base of the LZ, align myself in the middle and roll or pump if I need to lose more altitude. Pulling Big ears is also a good technique, especially for slopes. It stabilizes your glider and allows you to steer by weight- shifting.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 2

STALLS, SPINS...

Note to motor heads: it is strongly suggested to stop using the engine (idle is good) or the speed system when entering any of the following situations or conditions.

Stalls

Your Paraglider will fly as long as you keep sufficient airflow around the glider. If the airflow is disturbed to a point where there is no laminar flow on its surface, the glider will stop flying and fall. A stall occurs if the angle of attack* is too high, caused by applying too much brake or braking and giving too much throttle. If a stall occurs, we suggest you release the brake pressure slowly back to your shoulder level and stop using the power of the engine.

Spins (Motor heads)

A spin is caused by pulling too hard or too low on one control. In general, you should be able to turn without pulling on the toggles below the chest level. Note that the engine torque rolls the glider to the right and at the same time makes it turn to the right. Reduce the RPM before turning left.

Spins

(to prevent spins, never keep your hand down more that 2 seconds. Pull down gently to execute a turn and bring your hand back up a few inches then pull again. This will prevent a spin and will keep your glider nice and flat and at the same time you get a better sink rate!)Spiral dive

To enter a spiral, pull on one toggle and slowly increase the pulling to a point where you will feel the centrifugal force... at that point you will be losing up to 30 feet/second in altitude! To stop the spiral, lift the toggle back to your shoulder level, but be aware that the glider might surge forward, if you lift it too fast.

Deflations

Deflations may happen when flying light on the controls and/or using the speed system and/or flying in turbulence. The airflow usually comes from under the canopy creating a positive angle of attack. As the angle is reduced to a point where the air pressure in the cells is minimum, a pilot feels the effort to pull on the controls is reduced to zero! Paragliders are designed to make a beginner pilot feel safe by increasing the drag around the profile, drag will act as a stabilizer by reducing the pitch action which will at the same time reduce chances of deflations. Beginner models will also accept more piloting errors and will not need any input from the pilot to re-establish straight flight. Remember to keep you original heading by turning in the opposite direction of the induced turn. In a fraction of a second you can prevent a deflation from happening by pulling down on the controls until you feel pressure. This is especially important if you are just taking off from a hill, scratching along a hill, or are about to land. Feeling the tension on the controls, flying slower (between best glide and minimum sink speed, but closer to minimum sink). Of course, if you fly with too much brake (slow) or if you pump the brakes, you will not get a good glide ratio. Generally, if you fly with your hands around shoulder level, you will stay out of trouble(for paragliders) and around ear level for powered flights.Just after the Paraglider deflates on one side, it will Roll, Pitch and Yaw on the side of the deflation (Just like if you were doing a dynamic turn). Your body will be off centered but should have a tendency to return under the middle of the Paraglider.You may have to steer to keep your body from being centrifuged! If you try to re-inflate before steering to keep your heading you may enter a spiral and lose altitude which may result in a CRASH.Afternoon thermals can be strong and cause changes in the angle of attack every time you go in or out, or partially go out of thermals. You may have to pull fairly hard for a fraction of a second to prevent a deflation.Pulling hard on the controls when your Paraglider is surging forward after coming out of a stall, a spin or a strong thermal is OK. Synchronizing the pulling with the surge is the best approach. You cannot stall when the canopy is in front of you. If you bring your controls above you shoulders when the glider is above your head, you can avoid a stall.Remember that when your Paraglider is 50% deflated, the wing loading doubles. To effectively stop a rotation, you have to apply more pull on the side that is still flying. Pull on that control slowly, but enough to feel that the rotation is reduced and you are no longer centrifuged. Newer paragliders recover by themselves after rotating less than 90 degrees, but if you are close to the ground, you still need to react quickly to stop any rotation.

Chapter 3

 Evaluating weather conditions

Observing is the key. Before, during and after driving up to the takeoff site, you should keep your eyes open to nature's indicators. Windsocks are also very good indicators. Keep in mind that conditions can change. Use binoculars to observe the wind at the Landing Zone. A good way to evaluate the wind is to look at the clouds - their speed, shape and also, their shadows. From the air or from the ground, you can always see their shadows. Wind meters are not always reliable, especially when the air is unstable. A thermal can generate a 20 mph air flow on the takeoff and then drop to zero if the wind is calm. Do not confuse wind and thermals. Thermals come in cycles and between those cycles, you should evaluate the wind. If it does not calm down between cycles... think twice about taking off. You will often find out that the wind direction and speed above and below inversions and marine layers are very different. Plan your flight in a way that will assure a plan B or a back up landing zone.If you're having difficulties evaluating conditions, do not take off first! Always bring a good wind dummy!...If you can't find one, observe birds in flight. They can give you enough information about the conditions. Another good practice is to be patient ... just relax for 15 minutes or more and observe the conditions. Generally after the sun goes down below 45¾ in the sky, thermal conditions start decreasing. Also expect conditions to change before sunset, remember that air masses do not mix so when the sun goes down and the hotter air mass disappear or elevate, at that point, one can expect the wind to increase or decrease, keep an eye on tree motion etc. ... especially in narrow valleys.

Ridge soaring is safe in winds up to 20 mph, only if you are skilled enough to takeoff

Chapter 4

Thermal flyingUp you go, in this big and strong warmer air current ... 3, 4, 6, 9, 12 m/s to the sky! How will it be today? Turbulent,calm, windy... The question is, what do I measure with my wind meter before launching? Is it a thermal or wind or a combination of both? By looking down toward the LZ, you can see the wind strength on the ground and also the shadows of the clouds which you can compare with the speed of people walking or cars on a highway. If the windsock at the takeoff moves violently at 10:00 in the morning, it is probably windy.Dynamic of a thermal: You can probably visualize the shape of a thermal and you can visualize that it is increasing in diameter as it goes up. That means there is a horizontal motion on top of the vertical motion. Sometimes in flight you suddenly stop moving because you are close to one of these strong babies and/or you are probably close to the top of it. Other times, you may drift away from a ridge or a mountain, thinking the wind has changed direction. But no, it is thermal activity. Of course if you are pushed for a long period of time, the force at work is probably wind. The theory says that as it gets bigger it should slow down but it is not always the case. When the thermal travels through a colder air mass like at the snow level in the high mountains, its strength increase and your climb rate increase sometimes by 3 folds.
Turbulence caused by wind around thermals and clouds. Air masses usually do not mix, because of their characteristics: density, humidity,temperature, speed etc. Wind will push a light thermal more than a strong one and also will cause more turbulence around the strong thermal. Turbulence will be mostly behind or on the leeward side. A cloud deflects the wind like a mountain would. You will feel lift on the windward side of the cloud and sink plus turbulence on the leeward side. The best way to fly a thermal is to extend as long as possible the upwind part of the spiral until you hear your variometer decrease substantially, then turn tightly on the downwind part. Light wind will not affect the thermal much; just try to stay away from the thermal's edge. If you do fly partially out of the thermal, you might feel your outside control going soft. At that point, you pull on the outside brake to increase the angle of attack and to keep your glider inflated. Then release it and pull the other brake to reenter the thermal. Try to weight shift toward the core of the thermal. The position of the core will also change as the wind increase. The weak part of that thermal is more affected by the wind and will be shifted back, this is why you come out of the thermal as soon as you enter the core in some occasion.How to climb high? First you have to understand how the sun heats up the ground (mountains, lakes, trees, rocks ...). Ninety degrees is the optimal angle for the heat transfer from the sun to the ground. It means you could get some excellent thermal flying in the morning on an east facing site ... as early as 7:00 am! If you want to go high through an inversion, you need to stay close to the hill, if the hill is taller than the inversion's altitude. The sun heats up the ground with the same strength or better at 2000m as at 1000m. Knowing that the inversion is at 10 degrees Celsius and the thermal looses 0.7 degrees per 100 meters, approximately,you will have better success flying closer to the hill to fly over the highest thermal source (rock face or other dry areas) A long smooth rock face would also be more efficient than one shaped like stairs, due to the accumulation of heat along the surface. In French, this is called "suradiabatic"or extra adiabatic, meaning the air is hot enough to pierce the inversion. Many of my flights which resulted in gains of 1000m to 2000 meters where based on this principle. I admit, I had a little help from the birds, as well ... 100 vultures in the same thermal in Venezuela, a hawk flying over the small ridge in Pemberton B.C. And my best hang gliding flight was in Tennessee,where I was saved from landing in the trees by a couple of eagles thermalling over a dark field. I often see pilots flying in a good thermal, then they lose it and they give up right away without ever coming back in it. Usually,if you know there is a thermal somewhere at a certain time, it means it will reappear following a cycle! Don't give up.Keep your eyes open and you will go high and get cold! Chapter 5MiscellaneousHow to choose the right Paraglider?The most important thing to consider is stability, then handling and speed. These days, you can stay up for hours with a beginner model, so it is not necessary to buy a competition model to have performance. You should always look at the suggested weight range to ensure good performance and stability. Contact a dealer before buying second hand on Ebay! Flight mechanic and aerobatics

Maybe some of you like to show off! Or maybe it is just for fun! Wing-overs are fun but watch out, pilots lose their lives doing so. It is important to keep a good distance above the ground to experiment your first ones.

Roll, pitch and yaw. The right combination of these three will result in some nice aerial figures unless... Start a wing-over the same way you start a spiral dive but a soon as your body is swung on one side, steer on the other side and release the opposite toggle at the same time. You have at that point two choices, being aggressive or smooth on the toggles because between the two, you might get a 50% deflation or more! The roll associated with the maneuver cause the Paraglider to move beside the pilot and at that point if you do not keep on pulling to add some yaw to the recipe, you will drop and the airflow will the circulate from on tip to the other instead of circulating from the leading edge to the trailing edge. The yaw will make the glider point toward the ground and you will obtain lots of speed that you can transfer in another wing-over. If by any chance you feel the lower side of the glider soft, it is possible to save the deflation by pulling on that same control until you feel a good tension.

Big Ears (descent technique)

You may someday need to go down! By decreasing the surface of your aircraft you will still keep control of it by steering with your harness (weight shift, rolling) and at the same time it increases the angle of attack and stabilizes it (pitch stability). Pulling the ears can also help you land in a small LZ or land in a slope. You can trust this configuration, many pilots go through strong turbulence without any incident. You may stress some lines if you do it too often or if you combine it with a spiral, due the added centrifugal force on a reduced number of lines. You can also combine it with the speed system, you will go down a little bit faster.

Steering without toggles

It is possible to steer without the toggles. This could be useful if you have a knot in the line or if the knot that hold the handle gets loose. Pulling on one of the back risers will result in a slow turn but you will keep control of you direction. Note: Controls, toggles and brakes are the same. Do not confuse with the throttle control.

Flying in the rain

We suggest not flying in the rain. Make sure you dry everything, especially your Paraglider, if you do not fly again, for an extended period of time, MOLD. Do not be scared of dropping from the sky if you get caught in the rain, the result is an increase in sink rate but not noticeable. You might also get cold!

 

To learn more, contact Claude Fiset, Senior instructor and Tandem instructor ... 16 years in the sport!

*3000 + tandem flights, hundreds of students trained and thousands of solo flights around the world, presence at a World championship.