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PPO Training - Saturday July 10th - View the entire paragliding news archive |
With an 8 o?clock start to the ground school some of us were looking a bit bleary eyed. Dennis and Dennis junior were first to arrive at the school, followed by Darryl with no shirt (always no shirt?even when it rains!). Imad arrived in style on his ?superbike? with personalized plates, complaining about how early it was and promptly disappeared to Tim Horton's to get a coffee. Now I don?t know if these guys thought they would be flying straight away but they soon found themselves back at school learning the basics of how lift is generated, basic layout of a paraglider etc etc. It was obvious they were itching to get their hands on the equipment. After a couple of hours of theory came the bit they had been waiting for. One after the other they were suspended from the roof of Andre's climbing Gym in ?The simulator? and talked through the flight controls and landing procedure whilst Andre moved the paramotor and harness to simulate the reaction they would feel in the air.
Now we took a break for lunch in the local Wendy?s before driving to the field to get to grips with the paragliders. The weather was looking perfect and we were informed by those who were already there that the wind had just picked up as we arrived. The aim of the day was to learn how to connect the risers to the harness correctly avoiding tangles and inflate the glider using the reverse launch technique. This always looks easier than it is when performed by an experienced pilot. After Andre had demonstrated the technique everyone seemed confident that this was going to be easy! By the end of the day everyone was in agreement that it was not as easy as it looked, but all were making good progress, building their walls, centering the wing and inflating rapidly with straight arms. It was clear to me by the end of the first day that these guys were hooked. They will all be flying very soon. |
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The content of this site is � Mark Andrews 2005-12, mandrews1973@gmail.com
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