My thoughts exactly. I carry a parachute, and it's an _emergency_ device. But my wing - which most people seem to think is a parachute - is flying before my feet leave the ground. Or they wouldn't.

@Plasmo - you might not like thermalling paragliders then; round and round up in the thermal, maybe a couple of g if you're trying hard, and then all rock and roll when you get to the top! But you can have really gentle ridge flying, particularly at a coastal site.

Neil

(Jump master to the recruits: "Ok, last reminder: out the back, the static line releases your main. If that doesn't work, pull your reserve. If that doesn't work, flap your arms and shout 'Geronimo!'
And on the flight back, they hear a knocking on the window. The jumpmaster looks out and sees one of the squadies, flapping like mad, and asking "What was the name of that bloody Indian again, sarge?")

I also flew gliders as a kid. Soloed at the minimum age of 15 here in Australia. Unfortunately, didn't keep it up.

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Cheers
Troy

[My introduction]

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Interesting day, interesting new wing. I'll be giving it some more time on Tuesday, with luck and a headwind... an interesting change to go from a too-big top-end 'A' wing to a mid 'B' a size smaller

Neil

Seen a few paraglider videos - looks awesome. Not sure there's much of a paraglider scene around here (too flat for it), though there might be? Also watch paramotor videos on occasion (Tucker Gott, etc.). My gliding has always involved fibreglass (or aluminium) wings - never fabric

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Cheers
Troy

[My introduction]

Yeah, there are a few(!) paragliders in Australia - they tend to go long distances, I think.

I live in the flat of the German plains - we have a 'mountain' here (it must be a mountain; it's called 'cherry mountain' / Kirschberg) which rises a stunning thirty-eight meters above the surrounding land...

Locally I fly with tow launches with about a kilometer and a half of tow line; gets me to six or seven hundred meters above takeoff on a good day, and after that it's up to me

Neil

p.s. to see what happens when you get lots of people trying out wings they've never flown (and in most cases probably shouldn't fly) have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syk4KKWGMZ4

Albuquerque is 5000 feet above sea level where I live. Immediately east of the city is Sandia mountain rising up over 10,000 feet. There is a tram service from the city to top of the mountain and the tram has an undercarriage specifically for hang glider. In the summer it is very common to see people riding up the tram with their equipment and jump off the mountain and do ridge soaring for hours. They stayed so long in 10,000 ft that most gliders have cocoon to protect them from freezing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIIuh3TagL0

Yep, I was flying at cloudbase close to Mt Blanc a few weeks ago and my eyebrows had frost in them...

Temperature goes down (roughly) ten degrees C for every thousand meters of altitude. Which is annoying when you're just nice in your flight suit at a couple of thousand metres and then you land, sweating like a pig

My personal altitude record is 3,700 metres, starting from about 1,300 in Ager, Spain (a touch over 12,000 feet - the air is a bit thin there, but I've hiked at 5,000 metres plus in the Andes)

Neil

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Over here, we've had so much rain that the kitchen gutters are flowing back into the house.

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JGH - http://mdfs.net

It's worse than that, BDD: I did further test flying on the wing today, and deliberately collapsed 50% of the wing (twice - once on each side) to see how it behaved when I recovered it (better than I had expected, surprisingly!).

But on the other hand, the legroom is _amazing_. And it doesn't say 'Boeing' on the side...

Neil

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

Yeah... Boeing has been run by bean counters, not engineers, for too long. Mentour Pilot has some excellent videos on the subject.

Neil

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x86?  We ain't got no x86.  We don't NEED no stinking x86!

I want to say I had seen something that basically confirmed exactly this. That after the MDD acquisition the cost over safety mentality quickly permeated through the upper management of Boeing. Even after the most recent issues, it seems they still haven't quite figured it out and are more interested in costs over safety. Maybe time for me to start making sure I only fly on the A320s now.....