Really interesting. I REALLY enjoyed this video. As someone who taught a lot of people to either fly helicopters or improve their flying in some way, I always asked people why/how they started and heard all kinds of stories and found it fascinating. I myself always wanted to try Hang Gliding (not paragliding) but never had the chance. Then when I was working in the Hong Kong area sometimes we would see these people paragliding on the south side of Lantau Island and I remember thinking they were crazy. I thought a Hang glider would be much safer. But about 2 years ago after going through the first wave of Covid, my wife says to me that she would like to give this Paragliding thing a try. Initially, I thought she too was crazy but I started looking into it, and now that I had retired from the helicopter world doing this would allow me to continue flying and here I am looking at SIV courses! Ha ha, keep up the great work you two. Love your videos. As an aside, it would be really great if you Andre, and Gemma, if you wouldn't mind, do a video about your own journey(s) into paragliding. Those of us who are subscribers obviously know Andre got his start in all this first but it would be great to hear your individual stories too. I find it crazy that he was talking about the UK as if it was restrictive for paragliders. I mean I live and learned paragliding in China. The UK feels so free as far as restrictions go. The only thing better about paragliding in China is that there is always a van to run you back up to the top of the hill. That hiking back to the top in the UK nearly killed me!
The background situation assessment and Action/Friction/Doubt diagrams are really cool. Do they have a book on risk/fear/mental clarity & decision making?
Really good explaination again guys👌 As a pretty good groundhandler i also took some details i can do better🤗 Like the radius idea, Which is so obvious but i never thought of it really😅
I made an office chair flight sim rig inspired by Andre last year, and I have a hang tester I use quite a lot, and a projector. SO I'm now thinking of putting a giant stepper motor on the hang test rope to simulate getting chucked about during a stall, synced brake steppers for true force feedback ha ha!
It looks like "the bounce is about to go out of your bungees", so to speak and paraphrasing, in a couple of places in your brake simulators. Great lines of questioning. I especially liked the one about his advancement trajectory and "when was your fourth and fifth SIV". It might be interesting to do a video on sort of the envelopes of how those courses typically progress, ie what the low, average, high level serious flyers tend to attack on each progressive one. How much is advancing proficiency on the same maneuvers, if any, from previous individual course progression and how much is new material. I'm also interested in how much of that, if any, is driven by the student and how much is more course 'curricula', if you will. It's was a little bit interesting when Gemma asked about his first flight story of wanting to get above the clouds, for possibly apparent reasons. It's one of those things where the mind knows where the better safety actually lies (few mistakes high), but your basic instincts are having no part of it. Im not picking or funning because we all have them in some area(s) or another but just something I noticed. Maybe trying to find reasons to to push herself a bit beyond that self imposed constraint, which she very much should not until she's at least fairly comfortable with the idea? If that is the case, what I would suggest is maybe just taking it tiny comfortable bites at a time, until the elephant is consumed. Another 10 or 20 feet, yawn...anther 1000-2000 at one increment, maybe yikes. I'm sure you guys have thought of this and discussed it if that is the case. If it's not, never mind. I've also noticed that her envelope there has been rather steadily increasing over time, with some "that was too highs" thrown in. It's certainly not like you have to go higher to have more fun. I have noticed that you (Anthony) do a really good job of not pushing any of that and letting her drive her expanding envelopes if and when she is interested. Good job Gemma, on taking the SIV and expanding that knowledge significantly in multiple areas, safely and rather quickly. I have found that building confidence also contributes to being comfortable with expanding the parameters of any experience. I realize I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but just diarrhea of the mouth, stream of consciousness drivel that sometimes just seems to want to fly free. See what I did there? :-) I know, groan. Tons of good info, and entertainment in this current SIV series. The instructors on the beach mentor meeting story was funny. One of those where he says 150 hours and cue the hairs on the back of their necks, or not great chill. :-) They were like, "we'd better take this guy under our wing ...". Yeah, on a roll today. One was unintentional. Oh, and one other thing about wing progression I saw Tucker address with an entire video was him hearing people say that they needed to move up to a more performancy wing because they couldn't advance on the old one, where when Tucker watched them they hadn't REMOTELY maxed out the level they were at. To demonstrate that he took an A wing up and put it through some pretty serious aero paces to show, that while it wasn't as capable of doing some of it, it could very much do a LOT of it. He also made the statement that when the weather is still flyable, but reaching higher up into the less preferential levels, like higher winds, he will sometimes still choose an A to fly on because they are just so much more forgiving and able to tolerate some of those conditions more safely. At least I think I remember him saying that last part. For those that don't know, he is a member of the aerobatic/precision team that demos at Oshkosh, the largest fly in in the world, has run and won a race or two, and is quite an accomplished PPM pilot. His channel is very extensive, BTW, and includes videos like crash and significant incident assessments (best he can with just the vids, in some cases, with intimate knowledge of the event with knowledgeable watchers on the ground and the pilot that experienced it in others). IMO that is a valuable resource, even for non powered glider pilots. He also does some base jumping, but that is just a few videos. One other question, do they have distance diamond type task accomplishment awards like they do in rigid wing gliding? IIRC that one was 500 miles on one hop. Obviously Para would be considerably less.
Awesome interview! Thank you guys for sharing
This was a great interview!! A lot of very good info here. Thanks to you both for getting this together, makes we want to do another SIV ;)
Really interesting. I REALLY enjoyed this video. As someone who taught a lot of people to either fly helicopters or improve their flying in some way, I always asked people why/how they started and heard all kinds of stories and found it fascinating. I myself always wanted to try Hang Gliding (not paragliding) but never had the chance. Then when I was working in the Hong Kong area sometimes we would see these people paragliding on the south side of Lantau Island and I remember thinking they were crazy. I thought a Hang glider would be much safer. But about 2 years ago after going through the first wave of Covid, my wife says to me that she would like to give this Paragliding thing a try. Initially, I thought she too was crazy but I started looking into it, and now that I had retired from the helicopter world doing this would allow me to continue flying and here I am looking at SIV courses! Ha ha, keep up the great work you two. Love your videos. As an aside, it would be really great if you Andre, and Gemma, if you wouldn't mind, do a video about your own journey(s) into paragliding. Those of us who are subscribers obviously know Andre got his start in all this first but it would be great to hear your individual stories too.
I find it crazy that he was talking about the UK as if it was restrictive for paragliders. I mean I live and learned paragliding in China. The UK feels so free as far as restrictions go. The only thing better about paragliding in China is that there is always a van to run you back up to the top of the hill. That hiking back to the top in the UK nearly killed me!
Really enjoyed all of these guys. Malin is brilliant. thankyou
The background situation assessment and Action/Friction/Doubt diagrams are really cool. Do they have a book on risk/fear/mental clarity & decision making?
Really good explaination again guys👌 As a pretty good groundhandler i also took some details i can do better🤗 Like the radius idea, Which is so obvious but i never thought of it really😅
You should contact Alain Didier. He's got a nice setup for a physical flight simulator.
I made an office chair flight sim rig inspired by Andre last year, and I have a hang tester I use quite a lot, and a projector. SO I'm now thinking of putting a giant stepper motor on the hang test rope to simulate getting chucked about during a stall, synced brake steppers for true force feedback ha ha!
It looks like "the bounce is about to go out of your bungees", so to speak and paraphrasing, in a couple of places in your brake simulators.
Great lines of questioning. I especially liked the one about his advancement trajectory and "when was your fourth and fifth SIV". It might be interesting to do a video on sort of the envelopes of how those courses typically progress, ie what the low, average, high level serious flyers tend to attack on each progressive one. How much is advancing proficiency on the same maneuvers, if any, from previous individual course progression and how much is new material. I'm also interested in how much of that, if any, is driven by the student and how much is more course 'curricula', if you will.
It's was a little bit interesting when Gemma asked about his first flight story of wanting to get above the clouds, for possibly apparent reasons. It's one of those things where the mind knows where the better safety actually lies (few mistakes high), but your basic instincts are having no part of it.
Im not picking or funning because we all have them in some area(s) or another but just something I noticed. Maybe trying to find reasons to to push herself a bit beyond that self imposed constraint, which she very much should not until she's at least fairly comfortable with the idea? If that is the case, what I would suggest is maybe just taking it tiny comfortable bites at a time, until the elephant is consumed. Another 10 or 20 feet, yawn...anther 1000-2000 at one increment, maybe yikes. I'm sure you guys have thought of this and discussed it if that is the case. If it's not, never mind. I've also noticed that her envelope there has been rather steadily increasing over time, with some "that was too highs" thrown in. It's certainly not like you have to go higher to have more fun.
I have noticed that you (Anthony) do a really good job of not pushing any of that and letting her drive her expanding envelopes if and when she is interested. Good job Gemma, on taking the SIV and expanding that knowledge significantly in multiple areas, safely and rather quickly. I have found that building confidence also contributes to being comfortable with expanding the parameters of any experience. I realize I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but just diarrhea of the mouth, stream of consciousness drivel that sometimes just seems to want to fly free. See what I did there? :-) I know, groan.
Tons of good info, and entertainment in this current SIV series. The instructors on the beach mentor meeting story was funny. One of those where he says 150 hours and cue the hairs on the back of their necks, or not great chill. :-) They were like, "we'd better take this guy under our wing ...". Yeah, on a roll today. One was unintentional.
Oh, and one other thing about wing progression I saw Tucker address with an entire video was him hearing people say that they needed to move up to a more performancy wing because they couldn't advance on the old one, where when Tucker watched them they hadn't REMOTELY maxed out the level they were at. To demonstrate that he took an A wing up and put it through some pretty serious aero paces to show, that while it wasn't as capable of doing some of it, it could very much do a LOT of it. He also made the statement that when the weather is still flyable, but reaching higher up into the less preferential levels, like higher winds, he will sometimes still choose an A to fly on because they are just so much more forgiving and able to tolerate some of those conditions more safely.
At least I think I remember him saying that last part. For those that don't know, he is a member of the aerobatic/precision team that demos at Oshkosh, the largest fly in in the world, has run and won a race or two, and is quite an accomplished PPM pilot. His channel is very extensive, BTW, and includes videos like crash and significant incident assessments (best he can with just the vids, in some cases, with intimate knowledge of the event with knowledgeable watchers on the ground and the pilot that experienced it in others). IMO that is a valuable resource, even for non powered glider pilots. He also does some base jumping, but that is just a few videos.
One other question, do they have distance diamond type task accomplishment awards like they do in rigid wing gliding? IIRC that one was 500 miles on one hop. Obviously Para would be considerably less.