3rd Year Special Annual Double Issue Vol 4 Issue 1 & 2 Jan - Apr 2 3rd Year Special Annual Double Issue Vol 4 Issue | Page 21

Knees bent to load the wing, foot adjustments to
remain central and minimum use of C’s or Brakes
to keep the wing horizontal. Pirouette when
the feet are close to lifting. This option has two
distinct advantages. a) The pilot can see the
wing centre marker (an aid to centering the feet)
and, if necessary, b) the pilot can move briskly
towards the wing to assist with an emergency
deflation.
With either method it is essential to check “traffic”
across the launch face before committing to
flight.
Towed launch
In flatter countryside, pilots can also be launched
with a tow. Once at full height (towing can launch
pilots up to 3000 feet altitude), the pilot pulls a
release cord, and the towline falls away. This
requires separate training, as flying on a winch
has quite different characteristics from free
flying. There are two major ways to tow: pay-in
and pay-out towing. Pay-in towing involves
a stationary winch that winds in the towline
and thereby pulls the pilot in the air. The
distance between winch and pilot at the
start is around 500 meters or more. Pay-out
towing involves a moving object, like a car or a
boat, that pays out line slower than the speed
of the object, thereby pulling the pilot up in the
air. In both cases, it is very important to have a
gauge indicating line tension to avoid pulling
the pilot out of the air. Another form of towing
is “static line” towing. This involves a moving
object, like a car or a boat, attached to a para-
glider or hang glider with a fixed-length line.
This can be very dangerous, because now the
forces on the line have to be controlled by
the moving object itself, which is almost
impossible to do, unless stretchy rope and
a
pressure/tension
meter
(dynamometer)
is used. Static line towing with stretchy
rope and a load cell as a tension meter
has been used in Poland, Ukraine, Russia,
and other Eastern European countries for over
twenty years (under the name Malinka) with
about the same safety record as other forms of
towing. One more form of towing is hand
towing. This is where 1−3 people pull a paraglider
using a tow rope of up to 500 feet.
The stronger the wind, the fewer people
are needed for a successful hand tow. Tows up to
300 feet have been accomplished, allowing the
pilot to get into a lift band of a nearby ridge or
row of buildings and ridge-soar in the lift the same
way as with a regular foot launch.
Vol 4 | Issue 1 |Jan - Feb 2019
Landing
Landing a paraglider, as with all unpowered air-
craft which cannot abort a landing, involves
some specific techniques and traffic patterns.
Paragliding pilots most commonly lose their
height by flying a figure of 8 in over landing zone
until the correct height is achieved, then line
up into the wind and give the glider full speed.
Once the correct height (about a meter above
ground) is achieved the pilot will ‘stall’ the glider
in order to land.
Traffic pattern
Unlike during launch, where coordination
between multiple pilots is straightforward, land-
ing involves more planning, because more than
one pilot might have to land at the same time.
Therefore, a specific traffic pattern has been
established. Pilots line up into a position above
the airfield and to the side of the landing area,
which is dependent on the wind direction,
where they can lose height (if necessary)by
flying circles. From this position,they follow the
legs of a flightpath in a rectangular pattern to
the landing zone:downwind leg, base leg, and
final approach.This allows for synchronization
between multiple pilots and reduces the risk of
collisions, because a pilot can anticipate what
other pilots around him are going to do next.
Techniques
Landing involves lining up for an approach into
wind and, just before touching down, “flaring” the
wing to minimise vertical and/or horizontal speed.
This consists of gently going from 0% brake at
around two meters to 100% brake when touching
down on the ground.
In light winds, some minor running is common.
In moderate to medium headwinds, the landings
can be without forward speed, or even going
backwards with respect to the ground in strong
winds, but this would usually mean that the
conditions were too strong for that glider.
Additionally, at around four meters before
touching ground, some momentary braking (50%
for around two seconds) can be applied then
released, thus using forward pendular momentum
to gain speed for flaring more effectively and
approaching the ground with minimal vertical
speed.
For strong winds during landing, two tech-
niques are common: the first, “flapping” the
wing to make it lose performance and thus
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