2012 WCSC Paragliding Sites Survey

Pilots, 

Hope everyone is off to a great spring and looking forward to the new paragliding & hang gliding season. 

We had a productive first West Coast Soaring Club (WCSC) 2012 directors meeting, special thanks to Jim DeLaHunt for chairing it so well. 

A new initiative for 2012 is to start to formally track WCSC paragliding sites status, so we can: 
-quantify which sites are presently still in use 
-quantify which sites need the most attention 
-identify specific works required 
-budget 
-raise funds if required 
-gather volunteers, contractors and equipment resources 
-and establish routine maintenance schedules for each

 
We want to get a baseline snapshot of the status for each paragliding site’s LZ, Road and Launch for spring 2012. 

So we need your help and vital input, to make the baseline assessment and hopefully revitalize interest for the resurrection of the less known and used paraglider sites and/or create new opportunities. 

We also want to involve ALL Flight Club pilots in site exploration, procuring, inspection, maintenance and preservation. This is our common interest and future in building the sport of paragliding and hang gliding!

Shouldn't take more than 30 minutes of your time and we will make this information readily available to all pilots. We want to capture and share this knowledge as we have a lot of eyes driving up and down remote roads and it well help all to share this info. 

Please only complete a survey for each specific paragliding site you have personally flown within the last 7 months, as we are looking for current information in terms of how much LZ/road/launch was overgrown end of season last year and road status prior/following the winter.

Each paragliding/hang gliding site has a separate status for LZ/road/launch and each component can be ranked on quantitative scale: 
- 100%: item is great, no obstructing: growth, trees, terrain or weather/drainage 
- 80%: item is good, but to make it safer, 4 pilots with hand tools and pick-up could fix in 4hrs 
- 60%: item is marginal, 8 pilots, two pick-ups and hand tools could fix in 16 hrs 
- 40%: item is unsatisfactory and will require small to medium machinery and 16 or more pilots to fix 
- 20%: item is poor, site should not be flown, and will require major machinery and manpower to resolve 
- 0%: item is closed and it is difficult to imagine re-opening without major equipment/manpower/funds 

The Sites we want to survey are: Woodside, Bridal, Sumas, Little Nic, Vedder, Deroche, Elk, Liumchen, Baldy, Grouse, Tamihi, Mercer, Mackenzie upper, Mackenzie lower, Miller, Pizz, East, Hurley and (add any you've been to not on this list)...

 
So please reply to this paragliding blog post in the following format to make data easy to compile: 

Site: LZ%/ Road%/ Launch% 
Details: spell out the specifics of why you assigned your numbers 

An example: 

"Woodside: 40%/80%/80%" 
"Details: Was there Mar. 18/12. LZ needs needs a good machine in it to beat the blackberries back all the way to each tree line once and make for routine maintenance in the future. Road has some minor ruts to fill. Launch needs carpet tacked down." 

Let's get the variety of sites and adventure in paragliding soaring to new heights in 2012!

 
Thanks in advance for your participation.

A Collective Noun of Paragliders

Ah, the off-season. There's not much local flying at this time of year, and even our kiting and slope soaring hills are pretty much unusable due to the amount of rain and mud. A lot of my paragliding friends have been travelling (Australia, Columbia, California...), but I'm grounded, saving for a trip to the Maritimes this summer. That leaves me lots of time to watch paragliding videos and think.

We need a collective noun for paragliders. You know: a murder of crows, a herd of cattle, a school of fish, a parliament of owls...

Picture by Mark Carter (Manilla, Australia)

The options I've heard most often are gaggle and flock, which do make sense given that we do resemble geese when we launch. Unfortunately, both words only properly apply to geese on the ground; geese in the air are a skein, a team, or a wedge, and none of those terms seem quite right. And one term that applies to paragliders both on the ground and in the air would be easier. For that same reason, I'm not especially fond of a flight, such as for storks and swallows, as it doesn't sound like it could be applied to us while we're on the ground.

We could name ourselves for hawks: a boil for when two or more are spiralling in flight or a kettle for when flying in large numbers. Or after eagles: a convocation of paragliders. Perhaps it is a little presumptuous to name ourselves after birds of prey, though.

Hang gliders sometimes call us jellyfish (all in good fun, of course), so perhaps we could adopt one of the collective nouns for jellyfish: fluther or smack... though a "smack of paragliders" has some unfortunate implications and a "fluther of paragliders" is just difficult to say.

Many collective nouns come from descriptions of a group's characteristics or habits of life, as in a singular of boars, a cackle of hyenas, or a vanity or a drunk of airplane pilots. Perhaps rather than simply name ourselves after another group, we should observe the characteristics of paragliders to choose something suitable.

Recently, Russ and I volunteered at the Outdoor Adventure Show for iParaglide, getting new people excited about free flight. Towards the end of the day, a bunch of our fellow pilots came by the booth and the conversation soon turned to everyone's newest toys: one person's new harness, another's new helmet with shiny visor, someone's new camera with helmet mount, another's new flight suit... there's always a new shiny coming out.

Our wings come in every colour of the rainbow and a fair number of combinations that Mother Nature did not come up with.

Finally, as a community, paragliders are camera-happy. We're very fond of taking pictures and video of ourselves and each other. We also love our gadgets, such as GPS trackers, varios, and all kinds of other tools, especially if they help us brag about our flights on the internet. Paragliders like their tech toys almost as much as computer geeks do. (I don't think it is a coincidence that there's a sizeable overlap between computer programmers and paragliders.)

Bringing together our love of shiny things, our use of bright colours, all our cameras, and our tendency as a community to attract outgoing personalities, I would like to propose we adopt the following as our collective noun: a flash of paragliders.

Outdoor Adventure Show - Featuring Paragliding - March 3 & 4, 2012

We are currently busy gearing up our paragliding booth for the upcoming Outdoor Adventure Show March 3 & 4, 2012 at the Vancouver Convention Center.  We are excited about our 11th year at the show, and especially the upscale location. iParaglide will have booth #935.

Always a great time, The Outdoor Adventure Show showcases the very finest schools and suppliers from a wide variety of recreational pursuits: paddle sports, scuba diving, rock climbing, biking, camping, travel destinations and much more. Read about the various sports highlighted and the show venue here.

 

Of course, the highlight of the show is...paragliding! An awesome day out, the chance to expand your knowledge of outdoor adventure and travel pursuits, with opportunities to purchase innovative outdoor equipment to ensure a fun 2012 season.

Showtimes:

• March 3 (10:00-18:00)
• March 4 (10:00-17:00)

Please note this year we will also be doing a special multi media presentation at the Adventure Seminar Theatre:

• Paragliding: The Sky is your Playground:  March 3 (15:30-16:00)

At our booth, iParaglide will feature presentations introducing the sport of paragliding and have our paragliding simulator set up for guests to use.

For iParaglide guests, we are pleased to provide this 2-for-1 Coupon (click here). You can print as many as you need, so bring down your friends to learn more about paragliding.

We look forward to seeing you at the show!

Paragliding: the Rule of Thirds: Draft

"I guess a little more info on the 1/3rd rule is needed here for me. I do like the concept though."

We cover iParaglide's "Rule of Thirds" over a series of lectures including hand drawn drawings/ diagrams, so a little tough to cover on this forum/format without drawings etc.  Needs at least 10 hours and a more detailed paragliding article: was planning on one in the spring. Here is a draft summary:

Like most rules of thumb, the key concepts, the "why", rather than precise math, is what is important. Please note: I am first and foremost an engineer, not a mathematician! It doesn't cover every situation in paragliding, but is a good general guide.

In general, asking the question "does the paragliding rule of thumb apply here?" often leads to greater truths, especially when dealing with the exceptions.

"If you are capable of flying in strong laminar air of 25 km, does that mean you should only go out in 8km?"

Not literally, 100% of the time. But darn hard to find perfectly laminar air, especially when it hits 25 km/hr, isn't it?  Turbulence varies as the velocity squared.  Maybe at Point of the Mountain?

The rule of thirds applies to the 80-90th percentile of the bulk of your paragliding hours.  And knowing which percent of your flying capabilities you are currently flying at. That is, you need to know when you are stepping out of the safety zone to learn something new, but then step back to a lower performance requirement for the bulk of your paragliding, in between learning events.

Can't draw a curve here to represent the discussion, but imagine a curve like a cardio gram with learning occurring during the brief spike (performance requirement is at or near 100%, while safety reserves are reduced) and the flatter lines in-between representing the bulk of your flying, relaxed, allowing you to flow, and have a significant safety margin.

For example, when we first teach students paragliding SIV: they are clearly out of the comfort zone, outside the rule of thirds, and flying at 100% of their abilities. We control the safety margin, by coaching them through the maneuvers, and only doing them over the water, with freshly packed reserves and reserve training, with a rescue boat on standby. But one of the very last things we do at the end of the SIV seminar, is to remind the pilots that the intent of the seminar was to encourage them not to fly stalls, spins, wing overs or spirals over hard ground! Conversely, we teach paragliding advanced maneuvers to increase the performance/knowledge headroom and help prevent, intercept and recover from adverse situations.

 

Without getting into writing the full article, here are just some flying situations where the rule of thirds works reasonably well, again, for the bulk 80-90th percentile of your RECREATIONAL paragliding, assuming you want to have a safe, fun, relaxed and long flying career to your old age:

• set up to be able to safely achieve takeoff within the first 1/3 or your launch. Gives you 2/3 of runway to abort.
• set up your paragliding landings to land in the first 1/3 (furthest downwind) part of the LZ. Allows for getting popped by unexpected thermal or other lift. Allows for wind gradient and ground effect. Keeps you out of the rotor zone generally in the last third of most LZs surrounded by trees.
• fly the bulk of your turns keeping your speed up on your paraglider, using weight shift and up to 1/3 brake (and occasionally 1/2 brake), saving the remaining brake travel for interception moves to counteract turbulence, loss of pressure in your wing and/or associated big pitch/yaw/roll oscillations. Flying sustained in brake ranges beyond  1/2 is recipe for inadvertent deep stall, spin, or stall, when you use up control headroom...
• if you have flown maneuvers at SIV over water and incurred roll and pitch angles up to 90 degrees off level flight: do not exceed 33 degrees over ground.
• if you have flown an SIV spiral to -20 m/s, keep your over the ground spiral to -7 m/s to learn higher control, precision, and prevent black-out due to g-force.
• if your paragliders top speed is 50 km/hr, keep your launch velocity base wind below 17 km/hr.  Will also prevent you from being inadvertently plucked.
• if you have flown in thermals beyond +14m/s sustained (I have, not fun) keep the bulk of your flying in the 4-5 m/s range: a lot more relaxing and stress free.
• if you have flown all out un-certified competition paragliders (been there done that), try flying the latest ENC class wings. Almost the same performance, at a fraction of the stress, with lots of safety margin, better and more intuitive handling: adding up to a lot more fun. 

If the above seems overly conservative, remember, most paraglider pilots are recreational pilots flying some weekends only.  Recreational pilots fly first and foremost for fun. The above was about optimizing SAFETY and enjoyment.  If you want to compete or fly acro, you will likey need to revise the rule of thirds, which is a perfectly fine choice, but recognize by optimizing performance, you are sacrificing safety margins.  But even here, the concept from the rule of thirds will still help you.  And more important than the "what", the numbers you assign, having a rule and understanding and being able to justify to yourself the "why",  is key. 

 

What paragliding flying rule are you using? Rule of: 1/3s? 1/2s? 2/3s? 3/4s? 4/4s?

Why?

Christmas Paragliding Gifts

Greetings from iParaglide, 

We've updated our paragliding accessories for the Christmas Season.   

These items make great holiday paragliding gift ideas:  guaranteed to bring joy and fun for loved ones (or self gifts)! For details of each product, please click on the links below.

Please place your order by clicking here for our contact form and indicating quantities and specific items you require. For the Fly Helmet please specify size, color and also color of visor.  For paragliding flight suits, please specify size.

A. ICARO Paragliding Fly Helmet: $227 including visor 

B. ICARO Paragliding Flight Suit: $397 

C. JDC Paragliding Windmeter:  $59

D. Digifly Paragliding Varios (most recommended - Leonardo Plus: $497)

E. ICARO Paragliding Concertina Bag: $84

F. ICARO Rosette Paraglider Bag: $74

G. Paragliding Book: Airborne - At One with the Alps: $47

H. Slope Soaring:  First Flight Paragliding Course: $197  

I. Discovery Solo: Paragliding Mountain Flight Course: $547

The above prices in CAD do not include taxes, duties or shipping. 

Once we have reviewed consolidated all paragliding orders in the upcoming week, we will send you a detailed quote with all costs including shipping. 

Please feel free to call us at 604-681-4459 with any questions.  

If you are interested, please order by Dec. 8/11, we need to get our bulk orders in to our suppliers to beat the Christmas rush.   

Best wishes to all paraglider pilots and their friends, for a great upcoming holiday season!