Categories
Stories

Learning to Fly with Geronimo

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.

Continue reading “Learning to Fly with Geronimo”
Categories
News

Red Bull X-Alps warm-up event Kampenwand-Lermoos

Wet weather won’t dampen spirits

May 24th and 25th saw the first ever X-Alps warm-up event. Organised by Flugschule Chiemsee with support of Red Bull, Nova and Skywalk, the event used the turnpoints at Kampenwand /Aschau and Lermoos to test-hike & fly the third leg of this year’s X-Alps route.It was open to all interested pilots in a relaxed non-race-format.

Continue reading “Red Bull X-Alps warm-up event Kampenwand-Lermoos”
Categories
Guides News

Paragliding in Western Australia

If you’ve flown in Australia it was probably somewhere in the South East of the country. It’s in the South East you’ll find most of the famous sites, the biggest hills, the comps and the clouds!

A few thousand kilometers away in Western Australia (WA) the clouds are almost as hard to come by as the hills. Don’t let this fool you though, there is flying here and the locals make very good use of what they have.

Continue reading “Paragliding in Western Australia”
Categories
Podcast

Sharing the Sky with Hang Gliders – Kathleen Rigg

Kathleen Rigg is an extremely accomplished hang glider pilot based in Derbyshire, England. She has flown at the top level of the Women’s World Hang Gliding Championships for years, has been the British Women’s Champion numerous times and has been awarded the Royal Aero Club Individual Gold Award. 

With the number of hang gliders declining in recent years, paraglider pilots are getting less opportunity to fly with hang gliders and are therefore often unaware of their flying, launch and landing characteristics, difference in speed, etc. This lack of understanding had sometimes inadvertently caused problems for hang glider pilots and lead to friction between the two communities.

In this podcast Kathleen explains some of the issues about sharing the sky from the hang glider perspective and talks about what we can all do to make things easier for everyone – and that includes paraglider pilots as well!

Listen to the podcast below:

Continue reading “Sharing the Sky with Hang Gliders – Kathleen Rigg”
Categories
Podcast

Testing and Demoing Gliders with Ziad Bassil (Dust of the Universe)

Ziad Bassil (Dust of the Universe) is passionate about testing gliders. He has flown a staggering number of them over the past 20 years. With his friends, he flies the mountains of his native Lebanon and makes glide angle comparison tests in moving air and writes up his reviews on his blog at www.dustoftheuniverse.com. He is completely independent and is not aligned to any company or brand. In this podcast we talk about what he does and he offers useful advice for other pilots on testing gliders and how to choose the wing for you!

Listen to the podcast below:

Continue reading “Testing and Demoing Gliders with Ziad Bassil (Dust of the Universe)”