| Powered Paragliding Training - Day Two With the spring finally here, four new recruits are put through their paces |
| (Powered Paragliding Ontario) |
| So you want to learn to powered paraglide? Get ready for 4 hours of ground school, and 7 hours of wrestling with a paraglider (and that`s just day one!). By the end of day one you`ll be ready to have a wash, a good sleep and prepare for your first flight. By the end of day two you`ll be flying...
Francois and Steve arrived at the field first. I was flying when they turned up, unable to land due to some amateur rocketeers testing their rockets. That made me a little uneasy, so I waited until they were gone before spiralling down to land. The air was too bumpy for students and definitely too windy to attempt any trike launches. Tim and Cindy arrived a little later. Umang and Dan also made a repeat appearance to brush up on some of their skills. |
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| Steve was soon kitted up with his own glider, harness and helmet to practice some gentle hand towing. He was demonstrating very good kiting skills already from the previous day`s effort. He was still finding puddles with some regularity though! |
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| Tim really enjoying the progress he had made in just one day. By the second day he was regularly keeping the glider still overhead and only using a much lighter touch than the previous day. Conditions were still challenging, however and the forecast of a gentle breeze was way off. |
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| Umang (a student from last year) turned up at the field once again. He had also put some practice in on Saturday, and was keen to fly once again. Unfortunately the predicted wind conditions did not materialise until much later in the day and Umang did not get to fly on this occasion, although his ground handling skills are now refreshed and he should be ready to go next time we get lighter winds. |
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| We took a break for some food after a few hours of hard work. As usual Natalie (Dan`s wife) provided an excellent spread of delicious goodies, so we all tucked in to some grub and rested up for a while. Steve was already looking like the creature from the swamp, at this point, having already made a few full body drags through some of the wetter areas of the field. He was still smiling though. |
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| Francois made a switch to a smaller training glider, and really made good progress with it. He had been struggling on day one with the power of the larger wings. This was the perfect training wing for him, and it showed when he switched back to the largere wings. He now had much better control and was managing the full size wing in really strong conditions. |
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| As the day progressed, it was clear that the conditions were not going to die down to the level that we would like to enable any solo trike launches. It was simply too windy for that.
 We took the opportunity to do some hand towing and Tim managed to get his feet off the ground. Actually we thought he might be able to go cross country if we released him. Later as the wind calmed down a bit Andre decided that we would attempt to launch the tandem trike. If we were able to do so, we would certainly be able to give the students a taste of flight at least. We made a successful launch, but the wind strength was at the top end of the launch window. After we landed, it was clear that we should be able to manage to launch the students. The balance points were set up for the lightest pilots, so Tim went first. Next up was Steve. Everything was going just great until the engine quit. This was no big deal, but it did mean that Andre and Steve landed well short of the runway, in a bunch of weeds. Unfortunately Francois missed out on his flight, as did Cindy, so they`ll just have to wait until the next course. That`s powered paragliding I`m afraid! It also demonstrates quite nicely that you should always fly within an easy glide of a safe landing spot. |
