Top Gun Flight School

At iParaglide Top Gun Flight School, we take pride in having taught over 1900 paragliding students in our 26 years of operation.

We are the the longest running school based in Metro Vancouver. Due to our central location, we are the only school that flies all of the relevant kiting parks, training hills and mountains within a 3 hour radius of Vancouver.  This empowers pilots to get to know the key training and flying spots early, optimizes and accelerates learning, and allows them to grow into great future pilots.  

We have the reputation of being an industry leader with an emphasis on engineered safety systems, quality instruction, the finest equipment and a positive learning environment for fun and empowering flying.

We offer the highest level of accreditation, with Senior HPAC and Advanced USHPA paragliding instructors, who coach from first flight to expert paraglider pilots and teach and qualify new paragliding instructors.

Top Gun References

We recently graduated a CF-18 Hornet Pilot from our Top Gun iP2 Novice Paragliding Pilot program.  Read about his impressions of iParaglide.

Social Links

iParaglide Location

Located at 962 - 51st Street Tsawwassen, near Vancouver, BC, Canada, for all your paragliding needs. We are ideally situated just minutes away from the finest training hill at Diefenbaker Park.

iParaglide Flying Sites

We are central to paragliding sites in the Vancouver, Chilliwack, Pemberton, Whistler, Bellingham and Seattle area so students enjoy maximum variety and we can work with weather to optimize selection of the best location each day.

Right Stuff Equipment

We regularly test fly the latest paragliding gear and select only the very finest for our iParaglide Right Stuff Paragliding Equipment Store. This ensures our paraglider pilots enjoy a state of the art performance and safety advantage to accelerate their learning curve.

Paragliding Webcams/Wind Stations

Vancouver Paragliding Webcams - get a view of cloud base to plan your paragliding cross country flight adventure.

Woodside Mtn Webcam

Woodside Wind Station

Bridal Webcam

Bridal Wind Station

Chilliwack Webcam

Hope Webcam 

Pemberton Webcam

Tsawwassen Webcam

Bellingham Bay Webcam

Tiger Mtn Webcam 

Wednesday
Jul272011

Red Bull X-Alps 2011: the ultimate paragliding and mountaineering race

Red Bull X-Alps: the ultimate paragliding and mountaineering adventure race. As of July 27, 2011: It's Swiss pilot Christian Maurer only 67 km from the finish line in Monaco, followed by paraglider pilot Toma Coconea of Romania at 207 km, with Austrian paraglider Paul Guschlbaauer hot on his heels at 227 km.
Paragliding athletes may either hike with or fly their paraglider through a grueling 864 km course through the alps starting in Salzburg and finishing in Moncaco on the Mediteranean sea.   A buddy in a support vehicle can follow and provide logistics, planning, food, hydration medical aid, but cannot carry the athlete or their paraglider through the course. 
Follow the Red Bull X-Alps paragliding competition live complete with real time gps tag tracking on the pilot athletes, videos and more.
Wednesday
Jul272011

Mike Kung joins ICARO R&D

Mike Küng has joined ICARO paragliding R&D. Mike is a legend, having been a pioneer in paragliding aerobatics since inception. He joins top ranked Xandi Meschuh, integral in developing the Nikita acro paraglider series and its acro competition success. The team is destined to continue to create paragliding's most cutting edge acro wings and contribute to outstanding handling of the entire range of ICARO paragliders.

Here is a video sumarizing Mike's many accomplishments in the paragliding scene.

Mike is a 2011 participant in the Red Bull X-Alps paragliding cross country and mountaineering event where 30 athletes from 23 countries around the world hike or fly with their paragliders on an epic quest to conquer 864 km of the alps starting in Salzburg and finishing in Monaco.  He is flying a ICARO MavericK RX prototype. 

Monday
Jun272011

iParaglide Flight Club

Great time at the last Friday night Paragliding Flight Club.  

A place to meet paragliding friends in a fun, social setting over a beer and some good food.

Degas provided some extra entertainment this time round with his Magic Act! :)

He's gone back to his art auctioneering gig on a cruise liner in Australia for a couple of months.

Thanks to Degas for some great landing field instruction and we hope to paraglide with you again soon, have a great summer adventure. 

Next Paragliding Flight Club Friday, August 5th!

Saturday
Jun252011

Watching is Good Too

We're grounded again this weekend – more rain – so I'm thinking about paragliding instead of flying.

Even when I'm not flying, I love watching it. I watch a lot of paragliding videos on the Internet. I've watched a lot of landings from the shade of the one tree on the landing zone (the "LZ"). While waiting for my turn to launch, I've seen some beautiful forward and reverse launches, some tandem launches, some hang glider launches, and a couple of top landings. I even love hanging out while people kite their paragliders, especially hearing the sound as the wing rises into the air and snaps into stability.

A couple of weeks ago, I was left alone on the launch for twenty minutes or so when our instructor from iParaglide went to pick up other pilots while the weather settled down a little. As I was sitting out in the sun, enjoying the quiet and scenery, a beat-up truck rumbled into the parking lot. A bunch of young men with sturdy builds piled out, beer cans in hand, and clambered up on to the launch. Being a female alone at the top of a logging road... I stood up and tried to look friendly and confident.

"You flying?" one asked me.

"Not yet. The wind's too strong still and I'm waiting for my teacher to come back with the other students. Hopefully I'll be launching before the sun starts to go down."

"This is perfect wind for me," a guy with helmet hair says. Turns out, he's a hang glider who flew earlier and just caught a ride back up to his truck with these guys. There was no reason to walk up to launch with them, but maybe he was being a bit cautious about leaving a woman alone with these strangers. The hang gliders I've met so far have been very mannerly; two of them supplied rags and clean water and helped mop me off after I fell into some mud upon landing last year.

"Did you fly earlier?" a guy asks.

"Not yet. Two other paraglider pilots from my class did; they are stronger than I am, so they could launch in more wind."

"Cool. So, this is where you jump off?" a guy with a beer asks, peering over the edge a bit.

"They don't jump; they fly," the first guy says to him, and then to me: "This is the first time he has come up with us."

The guys, apparently, come up all the time to watch paragliders and hang gliders launch. It's a thing to do on a sunny day: drive up the mountain, drink some beers, watch people fly. I told the new guy a little bit about how paragliding works and answered everyone's questions. It was all pretty friendly, except when I got a bit annoyed with them when they set off a firecracker on launch while my wing was bundled just off to the side.

They got tired of waiting and drove off before my teacher got back, which was good because the wind never did mellow and no one got to fly again that day. Driving down from launch isn't the best way to end a day, but there are still worse places to spend a couple of hours than at the top of a mountain, looking at one of the best views in the world.


The next week, as we were packing our wings on the LZ, an old man came roaring through the field on a motorcycle. When he saw us, he stopped and greeted our teacher, Dion, warmly. The guy on the bike is Joe, the owner of the land we have to pass through to drive to our LZ. He doesn't fly himself, but he is a huge fan of paragliders and hang gliders. Before his stroke, he used to drive people up to the launch for free, just to hear their stories. Now, he is looking at buying the LZ land from his neighbour to make sure it continues to be available to us.

Dion has offered many times to teach Joe to paraglide or to take him on a tandem flight, but Joe's too worried about breaking a hip. He is happy to just watch:

"I can just spend hours watching you all fly. It's the ultimate in beauty and relaxation. It's like a ballet. When a bunch of paragliders and some hangies are up there, it's like paradise to me."

I plan to quote Joe when trying to convince a nearby city to let us launch and land in some municipal parks. What a sales pitch!

Wednesday
May252011

Flight Club - Yaletown Brew Pub - Friday June 3,18:00 - Paragliding Social

The Paragliding Flight Club has been growing steadily with a great mix of free flyers, free spirits and their friends getting together on the first Friday of every second month.

We invite all down to this upcoming paragliding social evening Friday June 3, 2011 18:00 onward.  

To  ensure maximum enjoyment, convenience and above all, safety, Flight Club Paragliding pilots social has been selected to be walking distance from Skytrain and in the heart of Yaletown's high energy venues.

Yaletown Brew Pub is at 1111 Mainland Street (Mainland@ Helmcken per blue location marker) one block north of Skytrain Roundhouse Station:

 

Street view of Yaletown Brew Pub. 

At the hostess stand ask for the paragliding "Flight Club" and we have a section reserved on the Pub side. 

A great venue with good tunes, big screens, pool tables, good beer and great nooks to hang out and talk paragliding.

We encourage all paraglider pilots to utilize public transit, and look forward to a flying Friday night!