Paragliding: the Rule of Thirds: Draft

"I guess a little more info on the 1/3rd rule is needed here for me. I do like the concept though."

We cover iParaglide's "Rule of Thirds" over a series of lectures including hand drawn drawings/ diagrams, so a little tough to cover on this forum/format without drawings etc.  Needs at least 10 hours and a more detailed paragliding article: was planning on one in the spring. Here is a draft summary:

Like most rules of thumb, the key concepts, the "why", rather than precise math, is what is important. Please note: I am first and foremost an engineer, not a mathematician! It doesn't cover every situation in paragliding, but is a good general guide.

In general, asking the question "does the paragliding rule of thumb apply here?" often leads to greater truths, especially when dealing with the exceptions.

"If you are capable of flying in strong laminar air of 25 km, does that mean you should only go out in 8km?"

Not literally, 100% of the time. But darn hard to find perfectly laminar air, especially when it hits 25 km/hr, isn't it?  Turbulence varies as the velocity squared.  Maybe at Point of the Mountain?

The rule of thirds applies to the 80-90th percentile of the bulk of your paragliding hours.  And knowing which percent of your flying capabilities you are currently flying at. That is, you need to know when you are stepping out of the safety zone to learn something new, but then step back to a lower performance requirement for the bulk of your paragliding, in between learning events.

Can't draw a curve here to represent the discussion, but imagine a curve like a cardio gram with learning occurring during the brief spike (performance requirement is at or near 100%, while safety reserves are reduced) and the flatter lines in-between representing the bulk of your flying, relaxed, allowing you to flow, and have a significant safety margin.

For example, when we first teach students paragliding SIV: they are clearly out of the comfort zone, outside the rule of thirds, and flying at 100% of their abilities. We control the safety margin, by coaching them through the maneuvers, and only doing them over the water, with freshly packed reserves and reserve training, with a rescue boat on standby. But one of the very last things we do at the end of the SIV seminar, is to remind the pilots that the intent of the seminar was to encourage them not to fly stalls, spins, wing overs or spirals over hard ground! Conversely, we teach paragliding advanced maneuvers to increase the performance/knowledge headroom and help prevent, intercept and recover from adverse situations.

 

Without getting into writing the full article, here are just some flying situations where the rule of thirds works reasonably well, again, for the bulk 80-90th percentile of your RECREATIONAL paragliding, assuming you want to have a safe, fun, relaxed and long flying career to your old age:

• set up to be able to safely achieve takeoff within the first 1/3 or your launch. Gives you 2/3 of runway to abort.
• set up your paragliding landings to land in the first 1/3 (furthest downwind) part of the LZ. Allows for getting popped by unexpected thermal or other lift. Allows for wind gradient and ground effect. Keeps you out of the rotor zone generally in the last third of most LZs surrounded by trees.
• fly the bulk of your turns keeping your speed up on your paraglider, using weight shift and up to 1/3 brake (and occasionally 1/2 brake), saving the remaining brake travel for interception moves to counteract turbulence, loss of pressure in your wing and/or associated big pitch/yaw/roll oscillations. Flying sustained in brake ranges beyond  1/2 is recipe for inadvertent deep stall, spin, or stall, when you use up control headroom...
• if you have flown maneuvers at SIV over water and incurred roll and pitch angles up to 90 degrees off level flight: do not exceed 33 degrees over ground.
• if you have flown an SIV spiral to -20 m/s, keep your over the ground spiral to -7 m/s to learn higher control, precision, and prevent black-out due to g-force.
• if your paragliders top speed is 50 km/hr, keep your launch velocity base wind below 17 km/hr.  Will also prevent you from being inadvertently plucked.
• if you have flown in thermals beyond +14m/s sustained (I have, not fun) keep the bulk of your flying in the 4-5 m/s range: a lot more relaxing and stress free.
• if you have flown all out un-certified competition paragliders (been there done that), try flying the latest ENC class wings. Almost the same performance, at a fraction of the stress, with lots of safety margin, better and more intuitive handling: adding up to a lot more fun. 

If the above seems overly conservative, remember, most paraglider pilots are recreational pilots flying some weekends only.  Recreational pilots fly first and foremost for fun. The above was about optimizing SAFETY and enjoyment.  If you want to compete or fly acro, you will likey need to revise the rule of thirds, which is a perfectly fine choice, but recognize by optimizing performance, you are sacrificing safety margins.  But even here, the concept from the rule of thirds will still help you.  And more important than the "what", the numbers you assign, having a rule and understanding and being able to justify to yourself the "why",  is key. 

 

What paragliding flying rule are you using? Rule of: 1/3s? 1/2s? 2/3s? 3/4s? 4/4s?

Why?

Christmas Paragliding Gifts

Greetings from iParaglide, 

We've updated our paragliding accessories for the Christmas Season.   

These items make great holiday paragliding gift ideas:  guaranteed to bring joy and fun for loved ones (or self gifts)! For details of each product, please click on the links below.

Please place your order by clicking here for our contact form and indicating quantities and specific items you require. For the Fly Helmet please specify size, color and also color of visor.  For paragliding flight suits, please specify size.

A. ICARO Paragliding Fly Helmet: $227 including visor 

B. ICARO Paragliding Flight Suit: $397 

C. JDC Paragliding Windmeter:  $59

D. Digifly Paragliding Varios (most recommended - Leonardo Plus: $497)

E. ICARO Paragliding Concertina Bag: $84

F. ICARO Rosette Paraglider Bag: $74

G. Paragliding Book: Airborne - At One with the Alps: $47

H. Slope Soaring:  First Flight Paragliding Course: $197  

I. Discovery Solo: Paragliding Mountain Flight Course: $547

The above prices in CAD do not include taxes, duties or shipping. 

Once we have reviewed consolidated all paragliding orders in the upcoming week, we will send you a detailed quote with all costs including shipping. 

Please feel free to call us at 604-681-4459 with any questions.  

If you are interested, please order by Dec. 8/11, we need to get our bulk orders in to our suppliers to beat the Christmas rush.   

Best wishes to all paraglider pilots and their friends, for a great upcoming holiday season!

Keeping up with iParaglide

Not so much a paragliding related post, as keeping-up-with-paragliding related. If you're like me, every so often you'll find yourself on the iParaglide site (likely at 5am, looking at the weather) and you'll skim through a few articles that have come up over the last few months. Close the browser, walk away, go paragliding, no problem.

You can do better! In my technology life, I find that anything that isn't either on my RSS feed or my Facebook feed gets ignored. So when I find a site, in this case about paragliding,  that I'm interested in following, I do my best to find out how to integrate it with either of those two.

I found this afternoon that if you use Google Reader (you really should), you can just Subscribe to the top-most page of this paragliding blog ("http://www.iparaglide.com/paragliding-blog-vancouver/") and GReader will figure out the rest for you.

So now you have no excuse to have not read about the CF-18 fly-by this weekend, or about Melissa's thoughts about boots or flying sans-instructor.

Happy Interneting!

Top Gun fly-by of Grey Cup

Just heard news that Daniel Walters, a 2010 iP2 paragliding graduate, and CF18 Hornet pilot, is doing a fly-by for the Grey Cup Parade: tomorrow, Saturday November 26, 12:00, in front of Canada place, over the harbour. 

Hoping for some clearer skies for the CF-18 squadron fly-by, as right now there are some weather issues trying to leave Cold Lake and the Vancouver forecast is for rain. 

I'm pretty fired up about the game, I played high school football and love contact sports.

Although the Lions this season had a slow early start: I personally think Lulay was throwing and moving the ball well from the beginning, the receivers just kept dropping balls, and the running game was absent.

But now, hard to find a flaw, with all the angles being covered. Lulay rocks and with McCallum kicking right through the posts consistently from 40 plus yards out, tough to beat!

Apparently a common jab in Dan's squadron is that he flies one of the fastest and loudest aircraft (CF-18) on the planet and also the slowest/lightest/quietest aircraft, a paraglider.

We'll watch for you in the skies on Saturday.  Godspeed,  Dan!

Go Lions!

How Much Does It Cost?

When we go to the park to kite our paragliders, we get a lot of questions. People want to know if we've just landed from somewhere ("we wish"), if we're sky drivers ("nope"), what's in our harness ("mostly air; it serves as an additional layer of protection for our backs"), and why we're doing what we're doing ("practicing ground handling makes us safer on the launch and in the air"). One of the most common questions is how much the equipment costs.

I can give them a rough breakdown of the cost of the paraglider, the reserve system, the harness, and the lessons, which does add up to a bit of an intimating sounding number. But do not cheap out on the equipment or classes; they are keeping you safe.

My partner, Russ, and I bought all our equipment and our P2 course together; doing it all at once for two people made for quite the bill. But, as I always tell those people in the park, paragliding is the least expensive way to become a pilot, and it is an incredible bargain to gain the ability to fly. To get to glide through the air at 3000 feet, just you and your wing and the wind (and sometimes a beautiful bird or two), is worth every penny you will spend and then some.

After Russ and I made our big purchase, we went out to get the other equipment a paragliding pilot needs: a helmet, gloves, and boots with good ankle support. The first two were pretty straight forward: go into a skateboarding store and pick the right size for your head, then go to a hardware store for a couple of leather gloves. Done. The last though... there are a lot of choices out there for boots. And we did a silly thing: we cheaped out. We went to a bargain shoe store. Our only excuse is that we'd spent so much money so quickly, and this was something we felt we could control the budget for. Mistake!

If you've already spent over $4000.00 on lessons alone for two people, plus equipment, saving $100 on boots is silly. Also, it is a waste of money. See, one of the first things we did with our new wings was go to an early morning slope soaring session to practice our launches.

Early morning means dew. The grass on that hill is wet. And within half an hour of being out there, our feet were wet too.

From the training hill, we were off to the mountain. No time to go home and change; we were going paragliding in soaked socks all day.

The next day that we weren't flying, we went to an outdoor specialty store and bought better boots. I highly recommend Gore-Tex; my feet are dry no matter what. And those cheap boots that got worn once sit in the back of my closet.

Another reason to invest in good boots: Once you are comfortable paragliding, you will be almost lying down in your harness, which means a common photo from a helmet camera looks like this:

If your boots are going to be all over FaceBook, they might as well be nice.