Paragliding

Peo­ple have always want­ed to fly. Sure­ly every­one knows the ancient Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus. His­to­ri­ans believe that it is more than 3 thou­sand years old. For many cen­turies, the desire of peo­ple to “soar into the sky and soar there like a bird” remained a dream, 300 years ago they could only dream of fly­ing. But soon every­thing changed. The first hot air bal­loons appeared, fol­lowed by con­trolled air­ships, planes, heli­copters… human­i­ty was rapid­ly con­quer­ing the skies.

The desire to fly freely and light­ly, like a bird, fad­ed into the back­ground for a while, but by no means dis­ap­peared.

And in the last cen­tu­ry, thanks to the devel­op­ment of sci­ence, and the emer­gence of new mate­ri­als and tech­nolo­gies, sig­nif­i­cant progress in this direc­tion has become pos­si­ble. Like mush­rooms after rain, sky­div­ing, paraglid­ing and hang glid­ing appeared one after anoth­er, and an old dream final­ly came true.

Paraglid­ing or “how to take off quick­ly and con­ve­nient­ly?”

Mankind has come up with quite sim­ple ways to take off with­out using com­plex equip­ment and with­out spend­ing a lot of resources and time. To date, for short flights are used:

Paraglid­ers and paraglid­ers. The light­est air­craft. Their weight is only about 6 kg with a sur­face area of ​​25–29 square meters. m, and when fold­ed, the paraglid­er fits into a small back­pack. Despite such a mod­est weight, this lit­tle one, after 5–10 min­utes of prepa­ra­tion, is able to lift you into the air and reach speeds of up to 60 km / h. Soft, with­out rigid bear­ing ele­ments, the wing with lines and a seat for the pilot con­sists of two shells that are filled with air through the air intakes. Struc­tural­ly, the wing tapers towards the trail­ing edge, due to which there is a lift­ing force suf­fi­cient for the flight of the appa­ra­tus itself and the per­son in it.

Plan­ner. It has a rigid shape and a small, stream­lined body with long wings. The glid­er is launched from a tow and is the most effi­cient air­craft for long-haul flights, although of all it is the most com­plex and expen­sive.

The flight speed of the glid­er may well exceed 100 km / h.

Hang glid­er. This is an air­craft in which the basis is a fold­ing wing with rigid car­ri­ers. The pilot, after take­off and take­off, hangs under it and con­trols the flight with the move­ment of his body. The weight of hang glid­ers is usu­al­ly about 30 kg with a length of 5–6 m when fold­ed. Those. they can be eas­i­ly trans­port­ed by car or car­ried over short dis­tances, say, to the launch site.

The max­i­mum speed of the hang glid­er is up to 150 km/h with a good wind.

In the future, speak­ing of air­craft devices used in paraglid­ing, we will mean paraglid­ers or paraglid­ers. Flights on glid­ers are called glid­ing, and on hang glid­ers, by anal­o­gy — hang glid­ing.

Paraglid­ing safe­ty

Gone are the days when paraglid­ers for the pilot were not an air­craft, but rather a fly­ing machine. Today, paraglid­ing, sub­ject to safe­ty pre­cau­tions and basic pre­cau­tions, guar­an­tees high safe­ty for the pilot.

A high lev­el of safe­ty, in com­par­i­son with oth­er relat­ed sports, is achieved due to the rel­a­tive­ly low flight speed and the abil­i­ty of the paraglid­er to enter a sta­tion­ary flight mode in case of pilot errors.

Despite the absence of any seri­ous age or oth­er restric­tions for paraglid­ing, you need to under­stand that paraglid­ing is an extreme sport and a pilot can find him­self in an “abnor­mal” sit­u­a­tion at any time. When every­thing will depend only on his abil­i­ty to cor­rect­ly assess the sit­u­a­tion and make the right deci­sion. Will you suc­cumb to pan­ic or cold-blood­ed­ly make the right deci­sion? No one will say this but you. So, it’s up to you to decide whether you are ready to fly or not. Of course, such a dilem­ma takes place only after pass­ing a full brief­ing.

Giv­en all of the above, we can sum­ma­rize that the main ene­mies of paraglid­ing, apart from your­self, have been and remain only pow­er lines and change­able weath­er.

Paraglid­ing train­ing

Paraglid­ing clubs will help you learn how to fly a paraglid­er. The price will be 20–30 euros for the first flight with an instruc­tor, and if you wish to fly a paraglid­er on your own, then the price will be dif­fer­ent: from 400 euros for a pilot train­ing course. In the process of learn­ing, you will learn about the design of a paraglid­er, air cur­rents, the influ­ence of weath­er, the the­o­ry of launch, flight and land­ing, con­trol of the device, emerg­ing “extra­or­di­nary” sit­u­a­tions and much more, and then you will be able to con­sol­i­date the acquired skills in prac­tice. You can take a paraglid­ing train­ing course in Kyiv, Kharkov, the Carpathi­ans and, of course, in the Crimea on Mount Kle­men­tyev and in the Qui­et Bay.

The desire to buy your own paraglid­er and a set of equip­ment (reserve para­chute, hel­met, instru­ments, etc.) will cost you 2–3 thou­sand euros.

It is inter­est­ing

The dis­tance record for paraglid­ing is 461.6 km

The max­i­mum height con­quered by paraglid­ing is 4500 m

The longest ever paraglid­ing pilot was in Hawaii — in the coastal breeze, he stayed in the air for more than 36 hours!

Author: Vladimir Seli­v­anov

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