5 essential skills for safe & successful cross country paragliding
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 มี.ค. 2024
- In this story we will talk about 5 skills every paragliding pilot should master to become a better XC pilot and successfully fly BIG cross country routes.
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Flying site: Roldanillo, Valle del Cauca, Colombia
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#paragliding #crosscountry #colombia
Music:
Patrick Patrikios - Love Aside
Patrick Patrikios - Grut
Niviuk Peak 6 - กีฬา
Honestly the ability to take calculated risks or to simply know that it's going to work out is the #1 skill that I lack. I simply don't have the courage to lower my safety margins.
Maybe it's different because I'm in Japan where space is tight and landings can be tricky, I'm always worried about being able to reach a landing spot and end up being overly careful. Even in this video, when you cross from lee side, I'm looking at this and I'm thinking of the worst case scenario: what if after you crossed, you only encountered sink? Then you have nowhere to land.
Of course you know it's not going to be the case. The wind is hitting the relief, just keeping alongside it will let you climb and everything is fine.
The great XC pilots here *know* there is a thermal waiting for them, the *know* there will be lift here or there. And they don't hesitate to just go to that spot, even though they wouldn't have good landing options should the lift not materialize.
Countless times in a area where we need to cross high tension lines AND always have enough altitude to make it back above those high tension lines (no landing available after those lines), I'll see the XC gurus just go for it at an altitude that would leave no margin for return - and I just don't have the courage to follow them. Even when I do cross the lines, my lowest altitude tolerance at which I feel I need to go back is much higher than others, and so I'm less willing to wait and search for thermals beyond those power lines.
Thank you for this comment! Yes, it is a difficult topic. (BTW I have a video about risk management as well - I explain there how I cope with the risks, have a look if you're interested).
Essentially, every pilot should set their own levels of acceptable risk. When you just start flying your first XC flights, these levels must be very low, because you simply don't have the experience to judge about what is really risky and what works well. My safety margins for the first flights were huge. I always needed 200 m terrain clearance and never flew in winds stronger than 15 km/h. Slowly, step by step, year by year, I learned what works and what could be dangerous. I learned to control my wing. I observed what experienced pilots did and then asked them why they did it.
If you showed some of my recent videos to 8-years-ago-me, I wouldn't believe I would ever do things I now consider as completely normal. And that's okay! My personal approach is: never push too hard and always have a Plan B. Some pilots tell me that I'm too cautious and could fly much better by flying more aggressively. But I do my own risk management and don't want to push too hard. You know, there are brave pilots, and there are old pilots.
You might consider my approach for your progression, if you find it useful. Just don't push too hard and learn at your own pace. Try new things step by step but don't sacrifice your safety. There will always be pilots flying better than me and you. So what?
Good video, I just remember some of my first long flights (45km) a year ago, that with an A glider I managed to go faster than some B or C gliders, mostly because I was lucky and I was following good pilots. But in the end, as most of the time you are climbing, it's more important to climb fast than to make fast transitions.
Exactly!
Great video! Thank you 🤙🏼
🎉 thank you
Thank you very much for your advice. I'm still flying a low B and think I can squeeze much more juice out of it, and when things go south, I'm king
Surely you will have many nice and long flights with your low EN-B! But don't forget that you still need to practice active piloting. All wings can collapse or stall, so do not blindly rely on the passive safety of the wing.
@@dymanoid Very true. I've taken serious collapses on my wing that always remind me of how important active piloting is. Long way to go in the black art of managing turbulence, though. Thank you!
Overall lovely content. One point I want to make. Before going long XC, one needs to know how to thermal efficiently. Otherwise, your advise #1 i.e. 'Do not Thermal' will soon end most beginning XC pilots on the ground. I remember my first long flights came after I changed my approach to fly slow and thermal a lot but set the goal to fly throughout the day. Once I learned to fly throughout the day, I improved by finding lines, thermaling less and less over time, and increasing my average speed. It has to be progressive.
Absolutely! We first need to learn how to thermal to fly far. Then, we need to learn how NOT to thermal to fly even farther!
Perhaps I wasn't precise enough in the video: my advice is to first learn those 5 things and then go for a big XC, not just "apply those things now and you magically are able to fly far tomorrow". Thanks for your comment!
Great points.
I’m loving the content bro! Thank you for sharing!
Thx. for another great video!
Great video man!!
Just shared it to a bunch of pilots!
Fantastic man, thank youuu😊🙏
Wieder mal ein sehr interessantes und informatives Video! Danke dafür!
Excellent 😊
Thanks
I'd be curious to hear a bit more from you about efficient thermalling. Particularly when to leave a thermal. Personally my biggest source of time waste is climbing a bit, then not being sure if I reached the ceiling, if the thermal stopped or if I lost the climb and just circling around losing the precious altitude that I just gained.
There is no definitive answer. The theory is to exit the thermal when you know you can safely reach the next one. But where is the next one, and how do you know how much sink you'll encounter on the way there? Maybe a separate video is needed on how to climb efficiently in XC flying. But I'm not a paragliding god, I try things and sometimes fail...
Is that an Ikuma 3? Any opinion? Great video!! :D
Thanks for watching! That is a Peak 6, an EN-D. Opinion: a great wing, but with a couple of peculiarities 😁
Hey man! New pilot here, I've got a bluetooth vario to connect to my phone and I'd love to get an app to review my flight tracks in 3D, any recommendations? Been learning a lot from your videos so thank you very much!
Thanks for watching my videos! I don't use any apps for 3D flight review, so I can only suggest some online services. You can either export your recorded flights as KML files and load them into Google Earth, or analyze your IGC files on ogoy.app, replay.flights, or sportstracklive.com.
Blabla, just push the bar 🤘😉
No worries, your summary is perfectly on point. But, pilots never make intentional mistakes. In their world they are always in the strongest core with the tightest circle and they are always in need of that extra height. Telling them to make less mistakes does not help them.
The only thing pilots can actually influence is the speed bar. Having full bar as your default glide angle shows you which thermals are in your reach. Cruising full speed on your EN-A with a glide ratio somewhere around 5 will teach you a lot about XC. On an EN-B, full speed will then feel like a sailplane. And as full speed leads to full speed collapses, EN-B is a nice class to learn to handle them. Full speed on an EN-C is the only way to chase Zenos and if we know how to accelerate high performance wings we can finally smash these sweet XC kms.
Thanks for your comment! Well, according to MacCready we should actually be flying full speed all the time on a decent XC day. In theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is 😁
Have you seen the video of Baptiste Lambert telling how he flew the FAI world record 350 km? He didn't fly full bar all the time, he used different techniques - sometimes slower, sometimes faster.
I also disagree with your point that the speed bar is the only thing pilots can influence. Not all pilots think that they always do everything in the best way, especially the beginners. And finally, you can also smash those sweet XC kms on EN-As, as you as a Swiss surely know (hint: Aonic).
Flying world records and competitions is a bit different story, I agree. It was interesting to get an opinion from a competition pilot! I really appreciate it! 🙌
_"The only thing pilots can actually influence is the speed bar"_ - that is pretty blind-sighted. Pilots can also decide which next thermal trigger point to fly to, which cloud to fly to, whether to follow the low ridge or the high one, how tight to turn in a thermal, how elongated to make your thermal circles in strong wind, when to leave a thermal, etc.
_" In their world they are always in the strongest core with the tightest circle"_ - the pilots who are like that, are likely also the ones who think they are always using the right amount of speedbar.
In my experience, most pilots are not like that, but are willing to learn instead.
@@renedekker9806 Sure, they do make decisions, but always under their own view of optimality. But I assume they are always going for the best decision (in their view), so there is no decision at all. Only after you spot all the possibilities with alternative thermals, soaring spots and lines, we can speak of an active decision making process. But these people mostly fly competitions or equivalent XC tracks.
@@MrTozuyi _"But these people mostly fly competitions or equivalent XC tracks"_ - and what makes you believe that for flying competitions you don't need to spot the possibilities with alternative thermals, soaring spots and lines?
What makes you believe that for flying competitions you only need to make decisions about the speed bar?
Have you ever flown a competition yourself?
@@renedekker9806 Sometimes I do. But I prefer to put these concepts to test in air, rather than discuss them online. Maybe you should try the bar too. Or at least read my post again, so far you did not got my point.
Stopped and unsubscribed!
I'm joking:) Video was really good!
Thanks for watching an *not* unsubscribing 😁
Thank you, real good xc points to consider