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F YOU HAVE NEVER FLOWN : Contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for advise on the best schools and paragliders for your tipe of location of flying over Tandem flight with me. I have over 1200 hours flight experience on Dunes, Ridges, Cross Country, ACRO, Land, water and Ocean Towing and flown on 3 Southern Hemisphere continents. I have flown the Gradient Range of DHV 1, 1/2, 2, 2-3 and Tandem gliders of sizes 22-26 Bright, Golden, Aspen, Avax & Bi-Golden) and distributer of this make in South Africa in Western, Southern and Eastern Cape. Contact me for a demo flight on the Gradient Range. ref http://www.gradient.cx/en-gliders IF YOU ALREADY FLY - WELCOME First of All, welcome and congratulations for being determined to becoming proficient to qualify thereby become a member of the international paragliding community. NOTHING you instructor ever told you was not said for a reason. Realise you have been taught the maximum info that can be fitted into a ~5 hours theory and ~35 flights course which is the minimum acceptable level of training required by the authoroties due to the maximum a human brain can effectivly digest on paragliding aviation, whilst making it marginally financially viable for an instructor. This was only the basic survival skills (If you paid attention, interpreted everything correctly and had a good, hard, patient but thorough instructor). On your course there are many things, conditions, situations not taught on due to time (and financial viabliaty), opportunity, relevant conditions and constraints due to the absorbsion of the human brain and reflexes to aviation (something not in our genes), and which is not part of our natural evolution. Now the real learning, starts, which is best done flying as many different sites like Beaches, Ridge Soaring, Mountains, Tow, Freestyle, Cross Country. When you are ready after a 50/100 (or 200 or more) hours or so you should consider a SIV course, perhaps after you build enough confidence to start experimenting with some Wing Over’s, ACRO, or demanding conditions on Cross Country. Learning the weather via trial and error, (without injuring or Killing yourself) is as important as learning to handle your glider, and some of the most important aspects of developing you as a pilot, would not only provide you with the confidence and skill as to where, and when, to choose to fly (or Not), but also survival when things go not as planned, before, during and after take off. Such self developed ground handling skills allow you to actually launch, and take of confidently when others, whom has less ground handling practice, and experience, with resulting lack of confidence are reluctant to launch, and thereby missing a great ridge soaring, cross country or a multi-hour flight of valley release. Do not be one of the pilorts launching under duress and make a mistake, resulting in injury or worse... Primarily, and ultimatly you are the only one responsible for your own development, but there are other pilots to show you where, when, and what to look for as well as how to do this. It takes great effort to ground handle in flying strength winds, after you have build up the basic skills in light winds. This is first done on flat fields in light winds, building skill to stronger winds before, taking to flying ridges in also first light building to moderate and strong conditions. It is often said that we are fortunate to "survive" the first 100 or so hours, and the moment you stop learning, or think you know it all, you are just about to make probably the biggest mistake in your life. However fear is never to be dominating your mind, it is natural however to be a little unsure, cautious or a little more if we move out of our "comfort zone". Realize No One Learns in a Comfort Zone ! We learn and improve only on + 200 hours per year flying experience. What we learn in those hours is more important than the time spent. There as pilots with 2 decades of experience that make mistakes, and are "man" enough to say they did and what the real reason was. Realise "what" you fly, "where" you choose to in "what" conditions, trying "what" manoeuvres are all your choices. Once you develop a taste for Wing Over’s and want to do them better it is sure sigh you are approaching maturity for a SIV. Do not expect to be spoon fed in a SIV, If you are not 100% sure from your study material you understand the manoeuvre "without" the instructor's voice in your ear, don’t do it.
P.S. You need to fly a lot (strive for 200 hours a year). If you cannot do that, fly regularly. ---------------------- Current Paragliding Safety Testing & Certifying Bodies Germany has many organizations for certification. DHV - German hang gliding and paragliding aviation certification body. The sport is more regulated in Germany than probably any other country and these certifications are required. They emphasize recovery behaviors. --- EN (CEN) - European standards body. Their website lists a 4-tiered naming convention, A through D, where A and B are like DHV 1 and DHV 1-2. C is like DHV 2 and D is like DHV 3. It was CEN when the committee was forming the standards, now it's officially just EN. ---- SHV (FSVL) Swiss Hang Gliding and Paragliding Organization. Adopted AFNOR standards ---- Former Certifying BodiesA.F.NOR - (was APCUL until 1994) French certification organization. Paragliders have 3 tiers: standard (similar to DHV 1), performance (similar to DHV 2) and competition (similar to DHV 3). These were pass/fail tests rather than the numbered results used by the DHV. FFVL French Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association. Only a very few paragliders were certified under this organization and I've never seen one. ACPUL became A.F.NOR in 1994.
Certification Rating Equivalents
| DHV Classification of Paragliderscourtesy www.DHV.de The classification scheme gives a scale for the level of pilot skills required for safe operation. The classification is obtained through test flights as part of the DHV/OeAeC type test procedure. These tests are meant to provide safety relevant information, but certainly not to measure performance. The overall classification of a glider is found by taking the highest (e.g. most demanding) classification obtained in any single test flight category. The classification of a paraglider may contain a suffix denoting the restriction to a certain class of harnesses to be used with this glider.
The performance of today's class 1 and 1-2 gliders is pretty close to the performance of more demanding gliders. As their good-natured flight characteristics give a high level of active and passive safety, they are recommended to anybody who doesn't fly regularly or whose motivation to fly is fun rather than ambition. On the other hand class 2 gliders, which were formerly used in training, due to their higher speed-potential today require an actively flying pilot who knows how to recover from abnormal flight situations. Experienced pilots of course will like their handling characteristics and their high rate of active safety, which is combined with a level of performance equaling that of high performance competition wings just a couple of years ago. When viewing test reports you should bear in mind that test flights are flown and evaluated in a well-standardized manner, as this is the only way to achieve reproducible test results. This gives you an objective scale to compare gliders, but any statement concerning in-flight characteristics applies in absolute precision only to maneuvers flown in a standardized manner under perfect test conditions. Any safety relevant observations of the test pilot which are not covered by the standardized test flight evaluation are quoted under "Additional flight safety remarks" at the end of the test report
courtesy www.dhv.de EN classification of paragliderscourtesy European Union
West Australian Site Guide DVD
Want to know where to launch and fly ? First look on the organization site guide website and photos, and educate (and enjoy yourself) with one of two (or both) 120 minutes site guides DVD from This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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