Flight Skills

Improve Your Top Landing Approaches

On hills and coastal sites, paraglider pilots usually prefer to top land. Easy when you know how, and have plenty of practice. In this quick guide we examine the six essential steps to making a safe landing on the hill.

How to get great slope landings

Landing on the sloping side of a hill can be a very useful skill to have, to allow you to land when thermals pause, and relaunch when they return. Or perhaps there's no safe landing in the valley, and you need to put it in on the slope? With this simple, straightforward approach you can achieve a gentle touchdown.

Reserve Deployment Breakthrough!

Dr Matt Wilkes has produced an outstanding contribution to paragliding safety. Together with his many supporters, sports professionals, regulators and the team at the Thames Valley Club he ran a study on emergency parachute deployment during the annual reserve repacking event ... and reached some valuable conclusions about rescue systems and how to use them.

Using Tip Stalls to get down

The tipstall (B3/C3) is a relatively new descent technique that not many pilots know about. It is an effective alternative to Big Ears, but only on some wings – it depends on the wing design. It relies on the outer B or C line stack being in just the right position to create a neat stall that gets swept back in the wind.

How to do Big Ears safely

Big ears: a flappy flight manoeuvre, misunderstood, maligned and even feared by beginners, this stalwart of the cloudbase regular is an essential skill for all pilots. Let’s strip it down to the basics, so you can tuck with confidence.

The Flybubble Challenge 2019

The concept was to fly or hike around most of the Southern sites in a day, a 65km course that would be challenging for everyone. The forecast was for moderate northerly winds and good thermals. Carlo shares his insights from his winning route.

Paragliding safely in strong wind

Strong wind and paragliders don't play well together (generally best avoided) but at some point you'll be flying in 'stronger' conditions, and knowing how to handle this can improve your safety. We've put together some paragliding techniques which we've found help us stay safe on our paraglider when the wind picks up.

Paragliding safely in the mountains

Flying a paraglider above mountains is an amazing experience but has some risks that you don't face when flying over the flatlands. Where are the danger zones? How do the winds work? Where are the best thermals?

Sailing in the Sky (X-LAKES 2019)

The forecast was normal for the Lake District – in other words, dire warnings of rain and wind. But I’d arranged time off for the weekend and Team South partner Andy was up for a long drive, so we set off for The Flight Park in Keswick.

Landing safely in a valley wind

In the morning, the wind begins to whisper through the grass. It tickles the trees. By noon, it tugs at the flags and nudges the umbrellas at the café. Landing is easy: point into wind and touch down. But by afternoon, it’s blowing over 30km/h and you’re getting worried. You had a long flight and now you’re dangling over the town. What’s a good approach when the wind is strong?