Transitioning From Skydiving To Paragliding
Competing in skydive parachute swooping in 2011
Competitive parachute swooping (Skydiving)
Speed flying in Switzerland
Speed flying on the North Shore, Hawaii
Transitioning from Skydiving to Paragliding was one of the most rewarding journeys of my life. I personally had a very interesting transition and experience but that is because I went about it completely backwards and sideways.
I thought, because I had thousands of skydives and was a competitive parachute pilot, that I could teach myself to speed fly and paraglide on a mini wing. Wow, I was wrong. Thank god for the paragliding instructors along my journey that at first had to pull me aside and tell me literally the simplest of tips.
‘Do not jump as you launch that cliff, this is not a BASE jump. You must weight the wing for it to fly.’ That was an instructors advice to me after watching my first speed flight almost a decade ago in Northern California. Thankfully hearing him say the words instantly made me realize that if I could do something so obvious and inherently wrong I might want to get some instruction on this new sport.
Although through out the years that followed that flight I tryed to teach myself a lot of it, I did seek out instruction and advice from numerous paragliding instructors along the way.
In the end I became a paragliding instructor because so many skydivers are making the transition to speed flying/riding and paragliding, and so many can benefit from the lessons I learned on my journey.
Kiting… oh you sly mistress… kiting (ground handling) my wing took me the longest to master. Because that particular road was long and frustrating to say the least, it is probably the thing I am strongest at both doing and teaching at this point. Funny how that works out.
The interesting thing about paragliding is that if you have experience in paragliding it can only help your skydiving progression but that is not true in reverse. If you have experience skydiving it can help your paragliding progression in some ways but also can causes blocks in others. The easiest way to describe this to an already experienced skydiver is getting into the simple aerodynamics of our ram air parachutes. Paragliders are basically the same design as a skydiving parachute in that it is an air foil made from a top skin and bottom skin (made of nylon), with an open leading edge that inflates and pressurizes the wing. The pilot is suspended below by lines that give the foil structure and controlability. From that relatively simple description skydivers have the mistaken belief that their expert knowledge of skydiving parachutes simply transfers to the design and flight characteristics of paragliders, and it is here that they could not be more mistaken. In this is where the danger and lack of knowledge can kill someone.
Someone with no prior knowledge of ram air foils will come to paragliding with an open mind ready to learn and progress at a certain rate. Where a skydiver approaches paragliding with an assumption of knowledge that is in fact missing important sections or worse assumes they need no instruction and attempts to wing it.
Lets switch our train of thought to the positives of approaching paragliding with a skydiving back ground. Like skydiving paragliding has you suspended below a wing in a harness above the ground. A skydiver is used to this feeling and is somewhat content with that state of being, especially after having hurtled through the atmosphere at 120 miles per hour in freefall. Where some one without that previous experience finds it far more intimidating to enter that state from the relative safety of having their feet firmly planted on the earth. Believe me, coming from an instructor, that is one of the biggest hurdles for both tandem and regular students in paragliding (and skydiving by the way). Learning to fly the glider is a cake walk compared to the initial anxiety of getting your feet off the ground which can actually last for a long period.
Another benefit of coming from skydiving is that you understand the basics of how the wing flys and lands. Also the familiarity and trust in the harness, riser system, lines, and wing, although more complex is due to the similarity to your skydiving gear. However, the wing is far more sensitive and responsive than even the most high performance swooping canopy out there.
One of the common misconceptions for skydivers is that because the paraglider seems to be slower and slower to turn, that it is safer and easier to fly. This is completely the opposite actually, although a skydiving canopy does have a higher airspeed, it is in fact easier and more stable to maneuver than a paraglider. Because a skydiving parachute is less than a third of the size of a paraglider and has a far lower aspect ratio it is much safer and easier to fly. Combined with the simple fact that for 95% of your flight under a skydiving canopy is far above the earth, the earth being the hard surface one prefers not to hit uncontrollably. When learning to paraglide you are flying close to the ground the entire flight and do not have heaps time to recover from mistakes.
Design
Miniwing Design (small paraglider)
Paragliders are designed to be efficient in flight and lift. They are long narrow air foils and the wingtips are lightly loaded (softer air pressure) and easily misbehave in turbulence and poorly flown maneuvers.
Aspect Ratio
Paraglider has a higher aspect ratio, ratio of its span to its mean chord. It is equal to the square of the wingspan divided by the wing area. Thus, a long, narrow wing has a high aspect ratio, whereas a short, wide wing has a low aspect ratio. Skydiving parachutes have drastically lower aspect ratios and have low performance, and are more stable.
In the photos below the difference in aspect ratio can be clearly seen across the different designs of wings starting with highest (full size paraglider) to lowest (skydiving parachute, and even lower BASE jumping parachute. The size is added as well to give reference.
Fullsize Paraglider
BGD XS Punk B+ 21 m2
Miniwing Paraglider
BGD Seed 14 m2
Speed Wing
Swing Mirage 9 m2
Speed wing
Gin Fluid 8 m2
Skydiving Parachute - high performance
Scirocco 64 ft2 / 5.9 m2
BASE parachute
Apex Flik 220 ft2 / 20.4 m2
The aspect ratio is only one difference, but probably the easiest to explain and see.
Leading Edge
If you look at the leading edge of each foil, you will notice subtle differences across the board as well. Higher performance wings will have smaller and more air inlets. The profile of the nose will be narrow and create less drag where as the speed wing has larger air inlets and less cells.
The BASE parachute is a great visual reference of this with a massive leading edge and only seven cells. This is the least efficient wing with the least flying performance, however it does have the best opening performance and reliability for deployment during free fall. And this, is another huge difference between paragliders and speed wings verses skydiving and BASE wings. BASE and skydiving wings are predominantly designed for their opening characteristics where paragliders are not, they are not deployed in free fall at all but launched from the ground.
Material and Porosity
The material the wing is made from vary hugely as well. Paragliders are made from more robust and less permeable nylon. Skydiving and BASE parachutes are made from more porous material to withstand opening shock and also be more forgiving through the opening process. Because of this the flight performance takes a hit.
All of these subtle differences all up to very different flight characteristics. Think about how differently a student parachute or BASE canopy flies to a swooping parachute. Now take that difference and implement it from swooping parachute to even a speed wing - which looks like it would be similar - but in reality is a far more high performance machine. It steps up again to minwing and then again to full paraglider. Each step in aspect ratio is adding performance in both efficiency of the wings glide ratio and also in its ability to retain and maintain energy through turns.**
As you step up in efficiency you lose stability.
To be continued in a later edition… theres a novel to be written here.