The Paraglider
By Sebastien Rider
A few years ago I watched a fantastic You Tube video of some paragliding amongst the most magnificent rock towers. I would later realise I was watching flying the Dolomites, alpine peaks in Northern Italy renowned for their spectacular flying. At the time a trip there was something I could only dream of!
By Rolfe Oostra
“YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO BIG EARS MATE!!” shouted the instructor down the radio. “What?” whimpered the student being sucked up rapidly to 3000 meters “what the fuck is a big ear??” A big ear procedure involves gathering the outermost cords off your wing and pulling them in towards you; basically reducing the size of your wing by collapsing the outside. The result is that you fall out of the sky pretty rapidly. It’s not the thing you want to be told on your first ever paragliding lesson. “NOTHING ELSE FOR IT MATE, I’LL TALK YOU THROUGH IT” shouted the instructor cheerfully.
In June 2014, 26 year old Berni Peßl from Styria (Austria) was the first pilot to complete a 300+ km FAI triangle on an EN B paraglider (Nova Mentor 3). In July he completed another XC hat-trick, flying 687 km in three days. Read his report about his 30 hours of happiness and satisfaction.
A combination of tandem flying and flying sites with limited landing options has meant that pushing for even short XC flights hasn’t been much of an option for me recently. But over the last few weeks I’ve had a bit more of a chance to explore the skies, as well as being able to bomb out properly in a number of different ways!
Love is in the air… getting hooked on flying
Remember those first few hops, when your feet first left the ground? Sweaty palms, beating heart, loss of appetite, feeling queasy? And then you couldn’t talk to anyone about anything else? You checked the weather obsessively?