The Paragliding Book

A paraglider is a wing with no rigid structure at all. It is made of fabric, it holds its shape only because air is forced into it through openings along the leading edge, and it packs into a rucksack. You launch it by running off a hill, you fly it sitting in a harness slung a few metres below it on Dyneema lines, and you steer it by pulling the trailing edge down on one side or the other.

It is the slowest and the lightest of the aircraft a person can legally fly. Trim speed is around 36 km/h, top speed on the bar around 48, and stall arrives somewhere near 22. A modern beginner wing glides about nine to one — nine metres forward for every metre down in still air — which sounds unimpressive until you realise that a thermal climbing at 2 m/s turns that nine-to-one into an afternoon.

What separates it from the other two books

This is volume three of three, and the three machines are genuinely different despite sharing ram-air fabric and a heritage.

A power kite pulls you along the ground. You stay attached to it through handles or a bar and harness, your weight is carried by a board or a buggy or your own feet, and it needs no licence anywhere in this book's territory.

A parakite is a paraglider-derived wing whose risers put steering and acceleration into the same two brake handles. You fly it in free flight, in the air, and every country covered here expects a paragliding rating before you go near one.

A paraglider is the thing those ratings are written about. It is the machine the whole regulatory apparatus of free flight is built around, and it is the one you have to learn first whether or not it is the one you ultimately want.

What it is not

Not a parachute. A parachute is designed to descend; a paraglider is designed to glide and, in lift, to climb. The reserve you carry is a parachute, and the distinction matters — it has a sink rate of about 5.2 m/s and no forward speed worth the name.

Not a hang glider. A hang glider has a rigid frame, flies about twice as fast, glides roughly twice as far and does not fold into a bag on your back. The two sports share British clubs, sites and a governing body, which is why the BHPA's name has both in it.

Not a paramotor. Bolt an engine and a propeller to your back and the wing becomes a powered aircraft, with a different legal status, different certification and a different set of skills. Paramotor wings usually have trimmers; free-flight wings almost never do.

A paraglider has exactly one engine setting and two controls. Understanding what those controls do to the wing's speed is most of learning to fly it well, because almost every decision in the air reduces to one question: am I trying to stay up, or trying to get somewhere?

The polar curve

Every wing has a curve of sink rate against airspeed, and four points on it matter.

Stall, around 22 km/h, is where the airflow separates and the wing stops flying. You never want to be there, and everything you do with the brakes moves you towards it.

Minimum sink sits just above the stall, reached with a little brake. This is the speed at which you lose height most slowly, and it is therefore how you climb — in a thermal, you want to be near min sink so the air carries you up faster than you fall through it.

Best glide is the tangent drawn from the origin to the curve, and on a modern wing it is at or very close to hands-up trim speed — around 36 km/h, giving roughly 9:1 on an EN-B progression wing. This is how you get somewhere.

Top speed on full speedbar is around 48 km/h, and the sink rate roughly doubles to get there. Speedbar is not a go-faster button so much as a trade: you buy ground speed with height, and in a headwind or heavy sink that trade is often worth making.

What the controls actually do

Brakes pull the trailing edge down, increasing the angle of attack and the camber. The wing slows, flies at a higher angle of attack, and — pulled asymmetrically — turns. Pull too far and you reach the stall.

Speedbar does the opposite, and it is the more important control for covering distance. Pushing the bar shortens the front risers relative to the back, reducing the angle of attack so the wing flies faster and flatter. Routing runs from the risers through pulleys to a bar under your feet. On a typical modern wing, bar contributes about 18 km/h — over half the usable speed range.

The two are not interchangeable and must not be combined carelessly: braking while on full bar can collapse the wing, because you have already reduced the angle of attack and are now asking the wing to do two contradictory things at once.

Wing loading

Wing loading is all-up flying weight divided by wing area. A solo paraglider runs at roughly 3.5 kg/m²; a tandem about 5; a hang glider 5–10; a sailplane 28–38.

The governing relationship is that all airspeeds scale with the square root of wing loading, so doubling the weight raises speed by only 41%. Critically, glide ratio does not change — a heavier pilot flies the same trajectory faster, not further. Measured effects from Flybubble: +20 kg raises trim speed by 3 km/h and top speed by 5.6; a 4 kg ballast bag adds no more than 0.8 km/h at trim; dropping a size gains about 1.5 km/h trim and 2.5 km/h flat out.

Flown heavy, a wing is faster, sinks more, handles more crisply and pressurises better — but any collapse carries more energy, and climbing in weak lift suffers. Flown light, it floats better and hits softer, but pressurises poorly, feels vague and collapses more often. The band where wings handle best is 50–80% of the certified weight range.

What the numbers mean in Britain

Flybubble publish top speeds on full bar in smooth air at about 1000 m: EN-A 44 km/h, EN-B 47, EN-B+ 50, EN-C 53, EN-D 56, competition 62. Trim is around 37 km/h, dropping to nearer 30 when cold and low.

That sets the first hard limit on a British hill, and it is not turbulence. Flybubble treat a base wind of 30 km/h (19 mph) as strong. An EN-A or EN-B pilot at trim has essentially no ground speed by about 20 mph and is going backwards above it. Ballast barely helps: about 1 km/h per 3 kg. You do not get to out-fly a strong day.

Every wing sold for free flight in Europe carries a letter — A, B, C or D — from the EN 926-2 flight-safety standard. Understanding what that letter is and is not is the single most useful piece of consumer knowledge in the sport.

What the letters mean

The standard's own wording:

How a wing earns its letter

The wing is flown through a fixed list of manoeuvres — 23 or 24 depending on which document you count from — each graded A, B, C, D or fail. The list runs: inflation and take-off; landing; speed in straight flight; control movement; pitch stability exiting accelerated flight; pitch stability operating controls during accelerated flight; roll stability and damping; stability in gentle spirals; behaviour exiting a fully developed spiral dive; symmetric front collapse; exiting deep stall; high angle of attack recovery; recovery from a developed full stall; asymmetric collapse; directional control with a maintained asymmetric collapse; trim-speed spin tendency; low-speed spin tendency; recovery from a developed spin; B-line stall; big ears; big ears accelerated; alternative means of directional control; other flight procedures.

Then comes the rule that matters: the worst single result sets the class. DHV put it plainly — "the overall classification results from the highest (= most demanding) rating that a device receives in a single rating category."

A real example makes it concrete. The 777 Knight in size L scored A on 18 of its 23 rows. Five rows — symmetric front collapse, asymmetric collapse, developed-spin recovery, big ears and accelerated big ears — came back B. So the wing is an EN-B. Eighteen A grades bought it nothing.

Each size is tested separately, at two weights.

The EN-B problem

About 60% of all pilots fly an EN-B, and the class spans an enormous range — from wings a fresh Club Pilot should be on to gliders that demand real skill. The trade has invented an informal three-way split because the official one is not fine enough:

Concretely: an Ozone Buzz Z7 (aspect ratio 5.15, 48 cells) and an Ozone Rush 6 (5.7, 62 cells, hybrid 3/2 line layout) carry the same B sticker. Ozone call the Z7 a low EN-B; XCmag's review calls the Rush 6 "the baby Delta", with performance very close to the EN-C Delta 4 above it.

What the letter does not tell you

Two caveats belong on the first page of any buying guide.

The grades apply only within the certified weight range and with the certified riser and harness configuration. Fly outside the range and the letter means nothing.

And the grades describe behaviour from a clean, induced entry in smooth air. They do not describe a collapse that arrives already rotating, in rough air, while you are looking the other way. The letter is a floor on behaviour in 23 test manoeuvres. It is not a measure of how much attention the wing wants on a real day.

EN 926-1, and LTF

EN 926-1 is a different animal: structure, not behaviour, and pass or fail rather than a letter. It covers a static load test, a shock test, line strength and line bending fatigue. Ozone describe the load test as "a brutal static shock test" with at least a 1000 kg weak link, then a sustained load the wing must survive at 8G, calculated as eight times maximum permitted weight. Line requirements: first-level lines at least 750 N, all others at least 200 N, bend-cycled 5,000 times before strength is re-measured.

A wing needs both parts to be EN certified.

LTF (the German airworthiness requirements, administered by DHV) is a parallel national route which since 2010 uses the same A/B/C/D letters and explicitly accepts EN test results. Most wings carry a dual EN/LTF report from a single flight.

The canopy

Two semi-wings divided into cells by ribs that carry the aerofoil section. Cell openings at the leading edge ram-inflate the wing in flight. The outermost cell is the stabilo, which influences the tip vortices and the stability of the canopy.

Rods — nylon, PVC, ABS, fibreglass or carbon battens in the leading edge — keep the sailcloth tight, hold cells open for cleaner inflation, improve the aerofoil shape and can hasten recovery after a deflation. They also let the A-lines sit further back while the profile still holds, which is what makes two- and three-line wings possible. The trade-off is real: during a collapse the profile can fold at the rod ends, giving a sharp corner with no camber, so reactions can be more violent than on a conventional design. Rods are also why you need a concertina bag (chapter 9).

Lines and risers

Lines run in cascades labelled A (nearest the leading edge) through D, plus brake lines and stabilo lines at the tips. School wings are typically three- or four-liners; performance wings delete a line level to cut drag. The BGD Adam 2 publishes a 3/4/3 main-line layout; the Nova Prion 6 uses only two galleries; the Rush 6 runs a hybrid 3/2 — two-line tips, three-line centre.

Load share is heavily forward: roughly 16 kg per A riser and 10 kg per B riser on a 25 m² wing with a 75 kg pilot.

Unsheathed lines cut diameter and drag but are vulnerable and much harder to inspect. Mixed construction is now normal even low in the range — the Buzz Z7 has sheathed lowers with unsheathed mids and uppers. Durability differs sharply: unsheathed competition line wants replacing every 150–200 hours, while sheathed line generally outlasts the fabric.

Shark nose

Patented by Ozone and introduced in 2011. The cell openings sit back from the very front of the leading edge, with both surfaces curving inward to the opening. The effect is that the stagnation point moves about less as angle of attack changes, so internal pressure stays high across a wider range — less collapse-prone, more stall-resistant. Ozone claimed +10 km/h usable speed on the R11 over the R10. It is now everywhere, including on EN-B wings.

What distinguishes the classes physically

Verified examples: Gin Bolero 8 at 4.80 / 36 cells; Nova Prion 5 at 4.42 / 33; Buzz Z7 at 5.15 / 48; Rush 6 at 5.7 / 62; Nova Mentor 7 at 5.50 / 66.

Lightweight versus standard cloth

Manufacturers ship parallel versions — Advance Alpha 8 in Classic and DLS, Nova Mentor 7 and Mentor 7 Light. Light cloth buys a kilo or two and packing volume, at the cost of abrasion resistance and generally of service life. For a first wing, take the robust version. You will drag it across more grass than you expect.

Single skin

No lower surface. Shorter line cones, far lighter, much less pack volume, quick recovery from low-amplitude stalls, very lively on the ground. Against that: poor upwind performance, unhappy in gusts and vulnerable when wet. Fabrics go as light as 27 g/m². A specialist hike-and-fly tool, not a first wing.

The canopy stays open because air is being forced into it. Anything that interrupts that — turbulence, a sharp control input, flying too slowly, flying too fast with the angle of attack already reduced — can deflate part or all of it. What follows is the standard vocabulary, with the sink rates reached in each.

Asymmetric collapse

Cause: turbulence, a thermal edge, wind shear, or a sharp A-line pull. Most likely on bar.

What happens: the tucked side loses lift and gains drag, so the wing turns and dives towards it.

What you do: look where you want to go and steer away from obstacles first; weight-shift to the open side and counter-steer to hold heading; then a slow, deep pump of about two seconds on the collapsed side. The classic killer is over-correcting with the open-side brake, which stalls or spins that side.

Frontal collapse

Cause: strong sink, rotor, or pulling both A-risers. Speedbar makes it far likelier, because the angle of attack is already reduced.

What happens: the leading edge tucks under, lift goes immediately, the wing pitches back and then surges.

What you do: release the bar instantly, then a short sharp pump on both brakes together. If it has not reinflated, wait, give a firm two-second pump, then damp the dive that follows.

Cravat

Cause: a collapsed tip caught through the lines, usually after a mishandled asymmetric or over-energetic wingovers.

What happens: the wing slows sharply, turns hard to that side, and enters a spiral dive if left alone.

What you do: counter-steer and lean away to stop the rotation; pull the stabilo line to pluck the trapped tip; pump that side; if necessary induce a deliberate asymmetric there and pump it out. Last resort is a full stall. High aspect-ratio wings with narrow tips are far more cravat-prone — one more reason the first wing is an A or a low B.

Full stall

Cause: both brakes held deep, below the seatboard, until flow separates.

What happens: the wing becomes extremely unstable, thrashes about trying to reinflate, and descends at over 15 m/s.

What you do: hold it stable; release smoothly and symmetrically only when the wing is forward or overhead; let the dive build airspeed; damp the surge carefully. Release at the wrong moment and you get a massive frontal. Not a manoeuvre to explore outside an SIV course over water.

Spin

Cause: too much inside brake in a slow, tight thermal turn — one wing stalls while the other still flies.

What happens: the glider rotates about its yaw axis, one wing forwards and one backwards, descending at about 5 m/s.

What you do: release the brakes the instant you feel the wing slipping rather than turning. Late release cascades into line twists or a cravatted asymmetric.

Deep or parachutal stall

Cause: too much brake near the stall point, entering a thermal too slowly, a wet or porous canopy, or out-of-trim lines.

What happens: the wing stays open overhead but the flow is broken. It descends near-vertically at about 6 m/s with no forward speed.

What you do: release the brakes fully and let it dive; some wings need a push of bar or a gentle A-riser pull to break out.

This is the failure mode most directly caused by an old, porous, out-of-trim wing, which is why chapter 6's inspection section is not administrative box-ticking.

Spiral dive

Cause: a hard turn with committed weight-shift, held.

What happens: the leading edge comes parallel with the horizon and the wing accelerates, reaching up to 20 m/s with very high G — disorientation, dizziness and eventually blackout.

What you do: eyes on the inside tip; ease the inside brake progressively; let it complete a full 360 to bleed energy; damp the exit dive with about half brake. Exit too fast and you can be thrown above the wing.

What the class actually buys

For every manoeuvre on the list, an A or B grade means the wing recovers inside the standard's limits — small course change, no cascade, no spin, no sustained deep stall — hands-off or with minimal input. C means recovery is often still spontaneous but faster, more dynamic and far less tolerant of a late or wrong input. D means pilot input is frequently required to stop a cascade.

That is the whole argument for flying an A or a low B for your first few hundred hours, and it is a better argument than any appeal to caution: on those wings, the manufacturer has demonstrated to a test house that the wing will sort out most of what happens to it while you are still working out what happened.

Every certified wing publishes a weight range, and it is not the pilot's weight. It is all-up flying weight: you, plus everything you are wearing and carrying, plus the harness, plus the reserve, plus the wing itself. Getting this arithmetic wrong is the commonest way a new pilot ends up on the wrong wing.

What goes into the number

Those are published component weights, not estimates, except the last row. The answer for a 67 kg pilot is an all-up weight of 77 kg light, 81 kg typical, 86 kg on a full winter build — and nothing realistic reaches 90.

That 9 kg spread is roughly one size step on most EN-A and EN-B wings, which is exactly why it decides the purchase rather than being a footnote.

Where in the range to sit

The optimum handling band is 50–80% of the certified range. Below about a quarter of range the wing is underloaded: it pressurises poorly, feels wobbly and vague, turns badly and collapses more readily. At the very top it is fast, crisp, and unforgiving of the collapses it does suffer.

Practical placement: middle third for small hills and weak inland lift; near the top for alpine climbs and windy coastal soaring. A British pilot flying the South Downs in spring wants the middle.

Inspection, porosity and trim

Wings age in three ways that matter, and the industry has numbers for all of them. The Paragliding Manufacturers Association standard is 3 years or 150 flying hours, whichever comes first, between inspections; Niviuk require 100 hours or two years.

Five tests: visual, fabric porosity, fabric tear strength, line strength, line geometry.

Porosity is measured at 20 mbar. Expressed in the familiar Porosimeter seconds: under 10 seconds is a fail, 10–15 acceptable, over 15 good. Rising porosity is what pushes a wing towards parachutal stall.

Tear strength by Bettsometer: ripstop must not break below 0.6 daN.

Line strength: at least one line per level pulled from the oldest unreplaced set. An aramid line is condemned once it retains under 45% of its original strength; Dyneema at 65%.

Line trim is the one that bites in practice, because aramid shrinks with age and UV while Dyneema creeps longer — the two drift in opposite directions. PMA tolerance is −12 mm to +12 mm on each total line length, brakes excluded. Out of trim, a wing launches badly, loses speed and becomes prone to parachutal stall.

Expect fabric to last around 500 hours before porosity degrades meaningfully. UV, salt, damp storage and packing wet shorten that considerably — a low-hours wing stored badly can be worse than a high-hours wing looked after.

Buying used

Insist on a recent porosity test and walk away from any seller who refuses one. Check the label and serial number match the model and size; reject a wing with neither. On the canopy, look for star-shaped white lines where the coating has broken down, heavy fading, and soiled seams at the leading and trailing edges. Patches are fine if rounded, well-adhered and flat. Inflate it and look for abnormal wrinkles suggesting stretched ribs. On the lines, darker and dirtier near the risers means hours; the thinnest lines on a low-category wing should not break by hand. Mirrored lines should differ by no more than about a centimetre — ask for a full trim measurement.

Never buy a used reserve, and replace the carabiners.

At 67 kg you are a light pilot by the standards of the sport, and that has consequences in both directions. Most wing sizes are drawn around an 80–90 kg all-up rider, so you will frequently find yourself at the bottom of a size and the top of the one below.

The candidates, and where you land

All figures are certified all-up range; the "ideal" or "recommended" band is the manufacturer's own narrower advice where they publish one.

The answer

For a first wing: the Advance Alpha 8 Classic in 24, or the Gin Bolero 8 in S. Both are EN-A, both are wide enough in range that your winter kit does not push you out of certification, and both are forgiving in exactly the way chapter 5 describes. The Alpha 8 Classic is the more robust cloth and the better school-to-first-wing bridge; the Bolero 8 is the one whose manufacturer publishes an optimal band, and you sit inside it.

For the wing after that: the Advance Epsilon 10 DLS in 24. It is the only low-B here whose ideal band — 73 to 86 kg — swallows your entire operating spread from a light summer setup to a full winter one. Nothing else on the list does that.

The one to be careful with is the Buzz Z7. In size S it is a genuinely good fit at 81 kg, at 80% of range, which is the crisp end of the handling band. But its certified maximum is 85 kg, and a winter build at 86 puts you over it — not marginally outside a recommendation, outside certification. The next size up, MS, does not reach its recommended minimum of 82 until you are heavier than you normally fly. This wing forces a real decision rather than offering a comfortable middle.

Do not buy the Supair Eona 4 in M. Its range starts at 80 kg. Your typical build is 81. You would spend the whole season at 4% of range, which is the underloaded territory chapter 6 describes.

What being light actually means in the air

Being light within a range means you climb better in weak lift and hit the ground more gently, and it means you are more turbulence-sensitive and pressurise less well. Being light for the sport means something separate and more useful: on a given wing you will get up earlier on a marginal British day than the 90 kg pilot next to you, and you will be the first one going backwards when it picks up.

Weigh yourself fully kitted on bathroom scales before ordering anything. At this pilot weight a 4 kg error changes both the wing size and the reserve size.

The wing is the glamorous purchase. The harness is the one you sit in for every hour you fly, and the reserve is the one that matters on the single worst day.

Harness

Types: standard/seat harnesses are open-legged and upright, usually with a seatboard — the beginner default. Pod harnesses enclose the legs and recline you, recommended only after roughly a year. Reversible harnesses convert into their own rucksack. String/mountain harnesses run under a kilo with minimal padding, and most have no reserve container at all.

Protection comes three ways. Foam is "the most reliable and complete protection, as it is always present" — it works on rock, needs no inflation time, and is bulky. Airbag protects well on the first impact at the commonest angle, packs smaller, and is ineffective on rocky ground. Hybrid combines both. For a first purchase, take foam.

Certification is EN 1651 for load and LTF 91/09 for protection, and the distinction matters: EN does not require back protection to pass; LTF does. LTF sets three limits that must all be met — peak 50 g, 38 g for 7 ms, 20 g for 25 ms.

At 67 kg you are in a size S or M depending on torso length, not on weight.

Reserve

The rule is unambiguous: all-up weight no more than 90% of the certified maximum load. At 81 kg that means a reserve certified to at least 90 kg, and on a winter build at 86 kg you want 96 kg — so the 100 kg-class size, not the 85 or 90.

EN 12491 caps descent rate at 5.5 m/s, and the honest observation is that most reserves sit just under it.

The Beamer is worth a paragraph of its own. It descends at 3.7 m/s against 5.2–5.5 for everything else, opens in about two seconds, and is certified for 14 years with annual inspections rather than the usual ten-year replacement. Since impact energy goes with the square of velocity, 3.7 against 5.39 m/s is roughly a 53% reduction in touchdown energy. It costs £106 more than the Yeti Cross 2, weighs 360 g more, and is harder to pack. For a light pilot who will fly British hills with limited height below them, that is a good trade.

Mounting: front-mount is usually considered safest for visibility and access; under-seat helps the reserve drop away cleanly but can be compressed under high G.

Helmet

EN 966 is the free-flight standard. Open-face gives better hearing and peripheral vision and is what most UK club pilots wear; full-face adds jaw protection that matters for ground-handling faceplants and tree landings.

Ozone Shield £105 (390 g) · Charly Vitesse £139 (380–480 g) · Charly Insider full-face £157–175 (650 g) · Charly No Limit full-face with visor £235 (764 g).

Instruments

A phone is genuinely enough to start. XCTrack on a modern Android gives baro-assisted vario, track logging, airspace and live tracking; Flyskyhy does the same on iPhone. The two real limits are cold-weather battery life and the fact that a phone's pressure sensor responds more slowly than a gyro-fused vario.

The best first upgrade is not a GPS vario. It is a Skytraxx Tweety-Pro at £85 — 20 grams, 150 hours on a coin cell, audio only, no display — worn alongside the phone. Instant audio is what you need in your first thermals; navigation is what you need two years later.

Beyond that: Syride Alti V4 £175, Syride GPS V4 £309, Naviter Nimo £389, Skytraxx 5 mini £479, XC Tracer Mini V £490, Skytraxx 5 £605, Naviter Oudie N £805.

Radio

PMR446 needs no licence and is what to buy. Ofcom allow 16 channels at 0.5 W ERP on a licence-exempt basis.

The interesting finding is that a 2 m amateur licence buys you almost nothing airborne. Ofcom's condition is explicit: airborne use is permitted only where amateur radio is the primary user of the band and is limited to 500 mW EIRP — the same power as an unlicensed PMR446 handset.

The rest

Flight suit £179–249 · gloves from £27.50 · Hanwag Sky GTX boots £280 · hook knife £30 · speedbar £27.50–59.50 (most harnesses include one) · windsock £31.50.

And the concertina bag, £55–105, which is not an accessory. Modern wings carry rods in the leading edge, and crumple-packing bends them. FootFlyer flag "possible severe performance and safety degradation should rods become bent or permanently deformed." A concertina bag holds the leading edge cell-on-cell so the rods stay straight. On a rodded wing this is what stops you degrading a £3,000 canopy over a season.

New

Used

A UK school's own figure: new gear — glider, harness, helmet — "starts from around £3,850. Used equipment varies but is usually from £2,400." Dealer-checked used wings run higher and are worth it: Flybubble list a like-new Advance Alpha 8 Classic 26 at £1,965.

A sensible used build lands near £3,560, buying the wing, harness and helmet used at £2,400, the reserve new at £509, and the rest new. That saves roughly £1,000–£3,300 against new.

What never to buy used

The reserve. You cannot verify deployment history, repack history, storage or damp exposure, and you cannot inspect for them without an unpack you are not qualified to interpret. Most manufacturers recommend replacement at ten years, so a used reserve is often already partway through its life with no documentation of where. It is a one-shot item you will use exactly once, unrehearsed, on the worst day of your flying life.

The helmet. EN 966 shells absorb one impact by deforming. A helmet that has taken a knock can look perfect and be finished.

Carabiners and maillons. Load-bearing, fatigue-limited, cheap.

Any wing without a current documented porosity and trim check. Which is precisely why a dealer-checked used wing costs £1,965 and not £900.

The total, honestly

Course to Club Pilot £1,500–1,700, plus BHPA £174, plus a used setup at £3,560 or a new mid build at £6,862. Call it £5,200 to get flying on your own equipment second-hand, or £8,700 new. That is before a single trip abroad.

British paragliding has four ratings, and the gaps between them decide what you may do and where. This is the chapter that determines the shape of your next two years.

Elementary Pilot

Four to five days. The phases run: ground training and equipment; ground handling — inflation, directional control, flare; "first hops" ground-skimming under five metres; then four or more flights holding course and airspeed, four or more introducing turns up to 90°, and four or more completing simple flight plans. A theory exam covers Rules of the Air — which must be answered correctly — plus flight theory, meteorology and airmanship. Fly Sussex run it as a 30-minute paper at 70%.

What it entitles you to: nothing outside the school. Fly Sussex are explicit about it.

Club Pilot — the one that matters

Five to six days, though Flying Fever quote "around 6 to 10+ days" and mean it. Tasks: take-offs and landings at different sites, different launch techniques, rapid descent using big ears, the accelerator, landing approach patterns, dealing with collapses, soaring, and two multiple-choice exams.

Where schools publish thresholds: ridge soaring of at least 50 minutes with 180° turns (Flying Frenzy); ridge flying of 10–20 minutes plus top landings (Airsports); a minimum of 12 supervised solo flights on the equivalent IPPI-3 course.

CP is the legal threshold. Derbyshire Flying Centre put it directly: "The CAA requirement to fly unsupervised in the UK or abroad, is that you reach the BHPA Club Pilot level." It lets you leave the school, join a club, and fly unsupervised.

Pilot

The prerequisite is CP. The practical tasks are completed in the club, signed off by BHPA Club Coaches — this is the point where you stop paying a school and start progressing through a club, which is also the point most people stall.

The exam is one paper, one sitting, 1 hour 45 minutes, in three sections: Air Law and Navigation, Meteorology, Flight Theory. Pass mark 70% — and critically, "failure to achieve the seventy percent minimum in any section will result in total failure of the paper." You must have completed all the Pilot flying tasks before the invigilator hands over the exam. A failed resit carries a four-month wait.

Why it matters: it is the minimum rating for cross-country flight, it opens sites Club Pilot does not, and it equals IPPI 4, which is the level most foreign associations demand for unsupervised flying.

Advanced Pilot

Pilot rating first, then: at least 100 hours logged airtime; cross-countries of 10, 20 and 30 km; a flight of over 10 km to a declared goal; a 20 km out-and-return; recovery from a 50%+ asymmetric collapse; spiral dive or B-line stall; spin recovery; full stall recovery; and the Advanced Pilot written exam. The last three must be flown over water with a recovery boat, buoyancy aid and emergency parachute.

The gap that catches British pilots

A UK Club Pilot is IPPI 3. SAHPA require IPPI 4 or greater for a visiting recreational pilot to fly independently — at IPPI 3 or below you "must fly under supervision of an approved school."

So the rating that lets you fly alone in Britain does not let you fly Signal Hill alone. For that you need Pilot.

And if the parakite in volume one is where you are ultimately headed, SAHPA's position there is one rung higher again: a Sport rating, IPPI 5, is the only way a pilot may fly an unrated wing in South Africa. That is the Advanced Pilot rating, and it wants 100 hours first.

Three ratings, not one.

The BHPA's own task sheets are not readable from outside — the domain refuses automated access, and nine attempts during the research for volume one failed the same way. Exact flight counts and airtime minima for the Pilot rating are therefore the one figure in this chapter that could not be established from source. The best available proxy is that the Slovenian school xTc requires 25 hours airtime before starting its Pilot-rating course.

Before you commit

Almost everyone starts with a tandem flight or a taster day, and it is worth doing. UK tandems run £159–160; taster days £190–200 for one day, £350 for two. Airsports confirm that all taster training counts toward the Elementary Pilot rating, which makes their two-day £350 taster the efficient entry point rather than a separate expense.

Minimum age is 16 at most schools, with parental consent under 18. There is no upper age limit. Pilot weight is generally 45–100 kg, because school gliders are weight-matched.

The day itself

You arrive at a training slope, usually shallow, and spend the first morning on the ground: laying out, inflating, holding the wing overhead, walking with it, killing it. This is unglamorous and it is the most valuable part of the course, because ground handling is the skill that keeps turning up later.

School equipment is included everywhere — wing, harness, everything — along with instructor-to-student radio. Helmets are usually included, though Flying Frenzy charge from £120 for one. Derbyshire Flying Centre charge £100 to inspect gear you bring yourself.

Weather days

You are not charged for a cancelled day, but you do not get cash back either — you get a reschedule or a credit. Fly Sussex require 48 hours' notice and keep the course valid 12 months. High Adventure text the evening before and issue 12-month credits, no refunds. Flying Frenzy cap the EP at 6 days and the CP at 8 within a year.

Plan for this. It is not a small effect in Britain.

The schools

Green Dragons is the nearest to London.

BHPA membership

£174 a year, consistent across three independent school pages, plus a first-time student insurance supplement of about £35. Short options exist: 24 hours £30, three months £109.

The insurance is £5,000,000 third-party liability and nothing else. It does not cover personal accident, medical treatment, search and rescue, your equipment, or repatriation. You need separate cover, and specialist cover to fly abroad.

Membership is not a statutory requirement — Mid Wales PGC note there is "no legal requirement to be a member" — but every school makes you join before flying and every club requires it for site access, because the clubs' landowner agreements rest on that third-party cover.

How long it actually takes

Course time is roughly 9–11 days. Flybubble's figure is "around 10–15 days of training to reach the level needed for safe solo flying."

Elapsed time is the real cost. Britain gets roughly 100 days a year suitable for flying, and those days have to land on your weekends. Airsports advise training mid-April to end of October. A long-standing UK pilot's summary on getting a CP: "anything from a few weeks to a couple of years depending on weather conditions."

For a Londoner driving to Sussex or Surrey at weekends, one full season — six to nine months — is the honest expectation to Club Pilot. Two if you are unlucky or busy.

And then the gap nobody mentions

A new Club Pilot is not a finished pilot. Ten hours airtime is the informal industry threshold before you are flying safely alone: Dunstable issue red ribbons to new Club Pilots with under 10 hours so coaches and other pilots can spot them, and post-CP development courses are explicitly aimed at pilots with under 10 hours.

Getting those ten hours in Britain, at weekends, in a sport that needs the wind to be both present and in the right direction, is the part of the journey that takes the longest and that no price list mentions.

For a Londoner the arithmetic is worth doing properly. A UK EP+CP costs £1,500–1,700 and takes a season of weekend drives. A BHPA-registered school abroad awards the same BHPA rating in consecutive days.

That last point is the one that matters: use a BHPA-registered school and you get a genuine BHPA EP or CP, not a foreign certificate that needs converting.

Spain

Fly Spain (Andalucía): EP €1,650 for six days, CP €1,650 for six days, EP+CP €3,000 over 12 days. Twin accommodation with a pool, airport transfers, tuition and equipment included; flights, BHPA membership and travel insurance excluded.

Airsports Spain: Elementary £1,100 for six days, Club Pilot £1,150 for six days, including shared self-catering accommodation, transport, retrieves and airport transfers. Note their own warning that Spanish summer conditions "can be strong and not recommended for low airtime pilots" — go in winter.

Zero Gravity, Algodonales: CP €1,350 over six consecutive days, awarding BHPA Club Pilot plus IPPI-3 plus APPI 3, including gear, third-party and accident insurance, and Málaga transfers. Requires a BHPA EP or IPPI-2 within the last 12 months. Their post-CP development course is €590.

Airborn Parapente: CP €950, or €1,195 with seven nights; six days; minimum 12 supervised solo flights.

Morocco

Sky Paragliding BHPA EP £950 for six days and seven nights plus €420 half-board on arrival. Flight Culture CP completion £950 plus €420, six flying days in seven nights.

Slovenia — the efficient one

xTc run a BHPA Pilot rating in a week for £595, seven nights included, requiring 25 hours airtime beforehand. That is the rating that unlocks South Africa, and it is the cheapest line in this chapter.

Turkey and Nepal

Ölüdeniz: basic course €899 from, 5–6 days; standard plus €1,480 over eight days; a VIP zero-to-hero at €3,000 over 14–15 days. Pokhara: Babu Adventure €2,400 for 15 days fully inclusive, ending in a "Basic Solo Pilot" certificate.

Flagged: both advertise an "international licence" but neither states an IPPI stage, and no formal conversion path from a non-BHPA foreign certificate into a BHPA rating could be established. In practice a UK school will assess you and sign off tasks, but that is not documented policy. If a BHPA rating is the goal, use a BHPA-registered school.

The verdict for a Londoner

£3,000 for EP+CP in 12 consecutive days in Spain, in winter, against £1,500–1,700 spread across a British season. The abroad option costs roughly double in cash and roughly a tenth in elapsed time, and it removes the single biggest cause of people never finishing: the weekend that was forecast to be flyable and wasn't, eleven times in a row.

The IPPI card — International Pilot Proficiency Information, run by FAI's CIVL — is a standardised cross-reference that lets a site manager or instructor abroad read your national rating. Introduced in 1992, issued either per level as a physical card or as an annual logo on the national licence.

Two things it is not. It is valid only alongside a current national licence. And it includes no insurance whatsoever.

The SafePro Para stages

South Africa, specifically

SAHPA is a CAA-approved Aviation Recreation Organisation. Its ladder runs Learner → Basic Licence = IPPI 4 → Sport Licence = IPPI 5 → Tandem = IPPI 6.

For a visiting pilot, temporary membership runs 3 or 6 months, and the rule is explicit: recreational pilots need an IPPI 4 card or greater to fly independently. Pilots at IPPI 3 or below must fly under the supervision of an approved school. No card at all means assessment and sign-off by an approved school. Foreign membership includes third-party liability aviation insurance; landowner permission is mandatory; foreign instructors may not train or fly commercial tandems.

Fees: foreign short-term R500 for two months, foreign standard R750 for six months. Learner PG R440 for six months. Recreational new R1,940 for a year.

If you wanted to train there instead, SAHPA's Basic Licence demands materially more flying than a UK CP: a minimum of 35 logged flights of at least 60 seconds, 4 hours total airtime, one soaring flight over 20 minutes, 20 flights from over 100 m, two flights in light thermic conditions of 10+ minutes, from at least two different mountain sites, plus over 85% in a written open-book exam.

What to carry abroad

Current national licence. IPPI card or annual endorsement. Proof of third-party insurance — the BHPA's £5m does not automatically travel, so check. Separate personal accident and medical cover, because the BHPA's does not exist. And the local club or association's temporary membership, bought before you arrive rather than at the hill.

This is the chapter most beginner guides skip, and it is where most people leave the sport.

You finish the course with a Club Pilot rating, under ten hours in the logbook, no equipment, no club, and a British winter arriving. The sport's own informal standard says you are not yet safe alone. The gap between "qualified" and "competent" is real and nobody is paid to walk you across it.

What actually closes it

Join a club immediately, before you buy a wing. Club membership gets you the sites, the coaches who sign off Pilot tasks, and — more importantly — other people going to the hill on a Tuesday who will tell you whether today is a day for you.

Go to the hill and ground handle when it is too windy to fly. This is the single highest-value activity available to a new pilot and it costs nothing. The incident data in chapter 22 says 60% of injuries happen at takeoff or on approach; ground handling is practice for both.

Get a post-CP development course. Zero Gravity run one at €590 for six days, explicitly for pilots with under ten hours. Six consecutive flying days in reliable air is worth a British season.

Work towards Pilot, not towards a better wing. The rating opens cross-country, opens sites, and is what makes you portable. A higher-performance wing opens nothing and closes several things.

The wing-upgrade trap

The temptation at 30 hours is to move from the EN-A you learned on to something with more performance. Chapter 3 is the argument against doing it early: the B class spans nearly the whole distance from your school wing to a C, and the letter tells you about behaviour in 23 clean test manoeuvres, not about how much attention the wing wants on a rough British spring afternoon.

The German association's own long-term analysis names pilot self-overestimation as "die größte Gefahr" — the greatest danger — and notes that material defects almost never cause accidents. The wing is not what is holding you back at 30 hours.

Kiting

Practise in 10–20 km/h of wind on an open slope — a slope rather than a flat field, because it reproduces the airflow you will meet on a launch.

The drills, in order: hold the wing overhead and stationary in reverse, centring it with footwork rather than brake; small brake corrections paired with larger foot movements; progress to feeling the wing without looking up at it; forward-facing balance work; controlling the wing's rise with body position and its descent with A-line input; finding where it stalls; tip touches for fine brake control.

Load the chest strap before you accelerate, to cut the pendulum swing. Wear everything you would fly in — helmet, back protector, gloves, boots. People break ankles on training slopes.

This is the highest-value hour available to a new pilot, and it is available on days that are unflyable.

Forward and reverse

Forward launch — facing away from the wing — is for nil and light wind, where you need to run to make airspeed. Reverse launch — facing the wing — is used once there is enough wind to inflate it without running, and its advantage is that you can see and correct the wing before committing.

No source publishes a wind-speed threshold for the changeover, including USHPA, and the honest formulation is behavioural rather than numeric: reverse once the wind will lift the wing without you running; forward when it will not.

One technique point worth memorising, from USHPA: once the glider is stable overhead, keep moving. "Once a body is in motion it tends to remain in motion." Standing still lets the wing fall behind the apex. Lift-off happens when the wing is directly overhead, fully loaded and at proper airspeed — not before, and you do not get to decide otherwise.

The launch decision

Twenty-one per cent of UK injuries happen at takeoff. The decision is a checklist, and it is the same every time.

Is the wind inside the range for my wing and my skill? US instructors teach a beginner maximum of 12 mph base wind, gusts no higher than 15, gust rate no more than 5 mph in 5 seconds, crosswind launches limited to 10°. Is it on the hill, or off to one side? Is it gusting more than 100% of the mean — the point at which SkyNomad call the air too turbulent for beginners? Is there anything upwind of me generating rotor? Do I have somewhere to go if the wing comes up badly?

Answer those five honestly every time and you have removed most of a fifth of the sport's injuries.

Active piloting is not holding brake. It is continuously damping the wing's pitch and roll so that it stays above you and stays pressurised, and it is the difference between a pilot who gets away with rough air and one who gets collapsed by it.

Three components:

Feel the wing through the brakes and through the harness. The information arrives before the movement does.

Check a surge forward with brake, and release as the wing comes back. A wing that surges ahead of you is about to be at a low angle of attack, which is where frontals live.

Catch a roll with weight-shift first, and brake a beat later. This is the ordering beginners get backwards — reaching for brake first makes the wing slower on the side you are trying to hold up.

Rapid descent

Three tools, in increasing violence, with figures from a certified manufacturer's manual:

Big ears: −3 to −4 m/s. Pull the outer A-lines down and out; the tips fold in. Speed drops 3–5 km/h, handling becomes limited, and both angle of attack and wing loading increase. Re-inflate asymmetrically to avoid an unnecessary angle-of-attack change, especially near the ground.

B-line stall: 6–8 m/s. Both B-risers pulled down symmetrically at the quick links. Exit by raising both hands together in one positive movement.

Spiral dive: more than 10 m/s. Covered in chapter 5, along with its several ways of going wrong.

Worth knowing: on high-performance wings, big-ears and B-line capability is limited. That is another quiet argument for the EN-A or low-B, because the tools you use to get down in a hurry work better on them.

The three kinds of lift

Ridge or dynamic lift is air deflected up a slope. The FAA give 15–20 kt perpendicular to the ridge as optimal for gliders and caution below 10 kt, and note that wind within 45° of perpendicular still works. A paraglider soars in considerably less, because its sink rate and airspeed are both far lower. Lift typically extends up to about twice the height of the obstacle above the crest.

The practical advice is operational: soar the upwind edge of the lift band, staying away from the venturi over the crest, because that leaves you room to move if the wind increases. Avoid the back of a bowl, where the wind funnels and thermals lean over too far to use.

Thermal lift is a bubble or column of warm air rising from a trigger on the ground. Climb-rate bands, which match British experience:

Convergence forms where two airmasses meet and one rides over the other. Thermals in convergence are more concentrated and often stronger because the surrounding air is already going up. Look for the line where cumulus stop consistently with blue stable air beyond, and for a lower cloudbase on the sea-breeze side. It can work in wind as light as 10 kt. It can also be too shallow to use — a Beachy Head convergence recorded at "perhaps only 1000 ft deep" gave nothing but weak climbs.

Wave needs strong wind and a stable layer, and in Britain it is essentially a sailplane discipline. The FAA's bands: weak 15–20 kt, moderate 20–40, strong above 40, with rotor sink reaching 2,000 fpm or more. Worth a paragraph and no more in a paragliding book.

The atmosphere

The dry adiabatic lapse rate is about 3 °C per 1,000 ft; the dewpoint falls at only about 0.5 °C per 1,000 ft. The two converge at roughly 2.5 °C per 1,000 ft, which gives the one rule worth memorising:

Cloudbase ≈ 400 ft per 1 °C of spread between surface temperature and dewpoint. Metric: divide the spread in °C by 8, multiply by 1000, get metres. Add field elevation for AMSL. So 20 °C with a 10 °C dewpoint gives about 4,000 ft — which is exactly the British good-day figure below, a satisfying check.

Stability is whether the environmental lapse rate is steeper than the parcel's. Steeper means unstable and thermals accelerate; shallower means stable and they die.

An inversion shows as a layer where temperature rises with height, capping everything below it. Recognise it by cloud forming at that level, poor visibility from trapped pollution, a distinct brown line seen at an angle, and — the giveaway — repeatedly topping out at the same altitude. British ground inversions run "anything from a hundred to about a thousand feet deep" and may take until ten in the morning to burn through.

Overdevelopment is the day getting away from you. The number to print: if the temperature–dewpoint difference is less than 3 °C at or near cloudbase, there is a good chance of spreadout. The visual warnings are dark, sharply defined bases; tops mushrooming fast; clouds merging into sheets; large areas of ground losing sun. One instructor's formulation is worth repeating: "a strong day can become a dangerous day in under 30 minutes."

What a British day actually looks like

The trustworthy numbers come from logged UK flights rather than from alpine textbooks.

A UK FAI triangle: RASP forecast 3,500 ft base, actual 3,200 ft early rising to 4,000 ft+ later, 66 km flown. A February cross-country from Devils Dyke in Sussex to Kent: base rising to 4,300 ft ASL, max height 3,200 ft, −3 °C at base, 81 km straight-line.

A cloudbase between 3,000 and 4,500 ft is a normal good British day. Alpine figures are irrelevant to a Sussex hill and should be ignored when planning one.

For scale on what is possible: 2025 produced a record UK streak between 17 April and 23 May with 15 flights over 100 km and four over 200 km. Tim Pentreath flew 195 km and Joe Dart 185 km from the Malverns on 9 May; Dart also flew a 139 km FAI triangle from Mount Blair in Scotland, the UK's longest declared.

Sea breeze

UK sea breezes run 4–8 m/s, develop late morning, strengthen through the day, and can reach 70 km inland by nine in the evening. Flat coasts let them penetrate further. The ground signature is abrupt — the windsock swings from offshore to onshore in minutes and the air feels suddenly cooler.

For a pilot on the South Downs this is not a curiosity. It is the thing that changes your site's wind direction mid-afternoon.

Turn in circles

Not figure-eights. Turning in circles is by far the best way to track a thermal, and the lift is generally strongest on the upwind side — work towards it by straightening slightly each time the circle points you into wind.

You know you have centred it when you complete three 360s in a row in constant lift, with the vario beeping the whole way round. If the surge comes on the inside of the circle, tighten. If it comes on the outside, tighten and come round 270°.

How tight

An analysis of 100,000 flight logs gives the real distribution. Time for a full 360 runs from 15–16 seconds at the tightest to 41–42 at the widest. Half of all pilots sit between 24 and 32 seconds; the commonest value is about 28. In good conditions pilots plateau at 25–26 seconds. Experts are at 20 seconds or below, and tighter turning tracks directly with cross-country distance.

Bank angle by condition: 30–45°+ for small strong cores, 15–30° on lower-pressure days, nearly flat in wide light lift. Inside brake roughly twice the pressure of the outside. Judge on a 20-second average climb, not on vario spikes.

Measured paraglider circling from one study: radius 24.9–26.0 m, bank 17°, speed 8.7 m/s, average climb 1.4 m/s — and the birds sharing those thermals used 20–26 m too.

Entry and drift

In strong cores of 4 m/s and above, turning about two seconds past the core brings you back round onto it.

Thermals lean downwind with height, and the stronger the wind the more this matters. Every five turns or so, elongate the circle upwind. Small regular adjustments beat one large correction. There is no published drift-per-thousand-feet figure because there is no such constant — it is simply the wind speed at that height.

What the vario is telling you

Rate of change of height, with lag. That lag is exactly why you fly the feel of the wing first and use the vario to confirm, and why the twenty-second average matters more than the beep.

Flybubble are explicit that the aircraft-style circuit is not always safest for a paraglider: "the aircraft landing approach (downwind leg, crosswind, into wind) is not always the safest."

The sequence

Establish wind direction from ground drift and any visual indicator. Pick a long rectangular field aligned with the wind. Identify power lines, trees and obstacles before you need to. Plan the longest, straightest final glide you can. Pick a specific spot rather than a general area. Fly the lower legs at about 20 m — 50 ft — above terrain, higher if it is turbulent. Keep forward speed on. Then flare.

Alternatives to the circuit: a slow approach from one side, or figure-eights at the downwind end in light wind and the upwind end in strong wind.

The warning that matters: low turns "guarantee a hard, perhaps ankle-breaking landing." Fly straight and run over a minor obstacle rather than manoeuvre near the ground.

Flaring

A teachable method — the 7-5-3. Begin a smooth brake application at about 7 ft to test the wing's energy. At 5 ft, read how it responded. Complete the flare by 2–3 ft.

In winds of 8 mph and above, use only a partial flare from chest position or you will be dragged backwards. If the glider climbs on the initial input, pause the flare immediately — climbing burns the airspeed you need for the real one.

Look at the horizon, not the ground; ground rush makes you misjudge height. The classic errors are flaring too high and dropping, letting the brakes back up mid-approach so the wing surges and dives, waiting too long, and landing with straight legs.

The wind gradient

Friction slows air near the ground, so your airspeed bleeds off as you descend on final. Stated precisely: as the glider descends through the gradient, "airspeed decreases while sink rate increases, and there is insufficient time to accelerate prior to ground contact."

Over cities and rough terrain the gradient cuts wind by 40–50% of the free-air value; over open water or ice, 20–30%. The logarithmic profile holds to about 100 m. No paragliding-specific figure exists for how much airspeed you lose in the last 50 ft, which is itself worth knowing — this is a hazard you handle by carrying speed, not by calculating.

Top landing

Approach at an oblique, shallow crosswind angle, tracking just downwind of your target and heading slightly upwind of your intended track to allow for drift. Be higher rather than lower: overshooting and going round again beats stalling in.

The core difficulty is airspeed management — too fast near trim and you overshoot or skid, too slow and you risk a stall near the ground. Flybubble name this as "one of the key reasons some pilots struggle with their top landings." Both the wind gradient and the venturi over the crest are working against you here.

What British pilots actually use

A UK club's own weather page puts it well: Windy is "great for forecasting everything except thermal strength and soundings — use RASP"; RASP gives the thermal forecast; the Met Office surface pressure chart is "a good place to start with a general overview"; XCWeather is common and useful for live data but has lower forecast resolution and live data often more than an hour old.

Their method is worth copying. Start with the synoptic chart. Then compare models — agreement means higher confidence, disagreement flags something worth investigating. And the caveat that matters most: no model predicts local wind behaviour around hills and valleys. You apply the topography yourself.

Why resolution decides everything

Numbers to read a forecast against

Updraft velocity: 1.5 m/s minimum acceptable, 2 m/s good, over 2.5 excellent.

Thermal Index: −3 means a high probability of reaching the forecast soaring altitude; −2 to 0 is marginal and you probably will not get there; above 0 is insufficient.

Soaring Index: 5–15 good; 15–20 good with shower risk; 20–30 excellent but with rising thunderstorm probability; above 30, over 60% thunderstorm probability.

RASP's OD parameter: positive means overdevelopment is likely, more so the higher it goes.

Published caveats

Meteoblue state that the Soaring Index can read artificially high in winter despite poor actual conditions — directly relevant to British flying. The BLIPMAP guide warns that the average soaring ceiling is slightly lower than the forecast top of the convective boundary layer. And GFS skill degrades with range, with only the large scales surviving at long lead times.

The routine

The night before: synoptic chart for the airmass and fronts; RASP or SkySight for thermal strength, thermalling height and overdevelopment; check that two or more models agree.

The morning of: re-run it, because the 1.5 km UKV will have updated. Check actual observations and local station trends rather than yesterday's forecast. Look at the sky for the inversion signature and the first cumulus. Then apply the local topography the model cannot see.

The best data on British paragliding risk is Wilkes et al. 2022 in Wilderness & Environmental Medicine — a survey of 1,655 pilots plus 1,034 BHPA and EHPU incident records from 2012 to 2020. It is genuine UK data and this chapter is built on it.

The rates

1.4 deaths and 20 serious injuries per 100,000 flights. Per hour: 1.6 fatalities and 23 serious injuries per 100,000. Among BHPA members that works out at 3.0 fatal and 44 serious injuries a year.

For context, that is roughly twice the fatality rate of general aviation (0.73 per 100,000 flights) and of skydiving (0.74 per 100,000 jumps).

The median pilot flies 44 flights and 42 hours a year.

Where and why

Pilot error features in 86% of a thousand incidents: skill-based errors 79%, control input errors 66%, decision-based 44%, perceptual 9%, routine violations 6%. Equipment failure: 0.6%.

By phase: landing approach and landing 39%, takeoff 21%, ridge soaring 20%, everything else 20%. By flight type: local flying 59%, training 25%, cross-country 6%.

Injuries are overwhelmingly to limbs — 67% — with spine 8%, head 3%, pelvis 3%, ribs 3%.

The same pattern shows up abroad. Germany's DHV long-term breakdown puts landing at 20%, start and takeoff at 30% combined, landing approach 14%. A study of 241,420 flights at Mount Babadağ in Turkey found takeoff 46% and landing 44% — 90% at one end or the other. Fatality data skews differently: a Swiss study of 39 deaths found 65% mid-flight, because the incidents that kill you are not the ones that injure you.

Experience is not a shield

The regression in Wilkes et al. found incident likelihood increased with more flying hours and with higher risk perception, and decreased with longer gaps between flights. Read carefully — more exposure means more incidents — but it undercuts the comfortable idea that experience will look after you. DHV name pilot self-overestimation as the greatest single danger in the sport.

The reserve

This is the uncomfortable part. Of 270 UK incidents with serious or fatal injuries, the reserve was not deployed in 256 — 95%. Of 12 deliberate deployments, six opened successfully, five had insufficient altitude, and one failed to open. France's FFVL found the reserve undeployed in 90% of accidents.

Germany's 2024 figures show what happens when it is thrown: 28 deployments, 22 successful, of which 19 walked away uninjured or lightly injured. Six were too late — two fatalities and three serious injuries.

A University of Portsmouth zipline study of 55 pilots found 96% deployed successfully under test conditions, with a mean of 1.85 seconds from releasing the brakes to releasing the deployment bag. But 68% of pilots with under-seat reserves missed the handle on the first attempt, 85% instinctively felt for their hip, and 70% pulled upwards or upwards-and-backwards. Single-sweep actions took 1.70 s against 2.26 s for compound ones.

Two failure modes, then: height, and finding the handle. One is a decision you make early; the other is practice you can do on the ground in your harness, for free, this week.

SIV

Simulation d'Incidents en Vol — controlled practice of collapses, stalls, spins and rapid descent, flown over water with a boat, radio and lifejacket. UK pilots go to Ölüdeniz or Annecy. Elevate charge £800 course-only or £1,000 with seven nights; Passion Paragliding £1,350 for eight days.

No published evidence exists that SIV reduces accident rates. Providers assert it; the academic literature does not measure it. What can be said is that skill-based errors feature in 79% of incidents and control-input errors in 66%, and that SIV is the only structured way to practise exactly those. Treat it as strong professional consensus without published effectiveness data, which is an honest description of where the evidence stands.

Cloud

A paraglider flies VFR in Class G and must remain clear of cloud and in sight of the surface. The CAA's Skyway Code requires, for Class G at or below 3,000 ft AMSL at 140 kt or less: 5 km flight visibility, clear of cloud, in sight of the surface.

Cloud suck is the mechanism that gets people there against their intentions — latent heat release inside the cloud sustains and amplifies the climb. One logged British example reached 5 m/s, then 8 m/s, with the pilot still going up at 6 m/s while spiralling hard on a wing that normally achieves −14 m/s in a spiral. The warning sign: if clouds have more than 3,000 ft of vertical depth and crisp cauliflower tops, expect lift to increase within 1,000 ft of base.

Entering cloud is not a grey area. It is a breach of the rules of the air, and every tool for getting out of it works less well the deeper you are.

British free flight is almost entirely ridge soaring on privately owned or National Trust hills, held by clubs under negotiated access agreements. The club, not the BHPA, holds the relationship with the landowner, and that single fact shapes everything about how you get to fly.

The four gates

Wind direction must fall inside a narrow arc perpendicular to the ridge — typically ±30–45°. Sites publish degree ranges: Dunstable Downs is "220°–320°, best 270°–300°."

Hill shape. A bowl concentrates lift and allows top-landing. A straight ridge gives a soaring band and nothing else. A shallow slope — Butser South is 35 m top to bottom — is a training slope, not a soaring site.

Club membership. Derbyshire Soaring Club's wording is typical: "all Derbyshire Soaring Club sites are for MEMBERS ONLY, or for guests invited by the D.S.C. Committee," and "no reciprocal membership schemes currently exist."

Rating. Clubs grade sites as CP, CP+10hrs, CP+25hrs, CP+50hrs, Pilot, or Pilot+100hrs. Several clubs note that a Club Pilot flying beyond easy glide of the official landing field voids BHPA insurance.

Sussex — Southern Hang Gliding Club

Founded 1974 "to acquire and protect flying sites." Eight sites, all rated CP+ — Club Pilot with top-landing and slope-landing tasks signed off.

Membership £60/year. Visiting BHPA pilot £10 for seven days. Overseas pilots get a free 14-day temporary membership once per 12 months, requiring IPPI-3, national association membership, £5m third-party cover uploaded as proof, and a site briefing from a club coach before the first flight.

Dunstable Downs

The nearest real hill to London and, for a new London pilot, the most important entry in this book.

Wind 220°–320°, best 270°–300° — which covers Britain's prevailing wind. 797 ft AMSL, 230 ft top to bottom from the Middle Car Park launch. Club Pilot (Hill) minimum; new CPs under 10 hours must discuss flight plans with a coach before launching.

Airspace is the defining feature. Dunstable sits inside Luton's Class D control zone. The recreational area ceiling is 1,500 ft AMSL, with the Dunstable Gliding Area to 3,500 ft when signed in, and an orange exclusion zone you may not enter below 800 ft.

The briefing is mandatory and enforced: "All pilots must have received the mandatory Airspace Briefing from a DHPC Senior Coach before flying at Dunstable." You get a lifetime helmet sticker, and "Airspace Helmet Stickers are checked."

Membership £20/year full, £5 limited. There is no visiting-pilot option — join or do not fly.

Elsewhere

Kent — Dover & Folkestone HGPC, £15/year, £5/month for visitors. The Warren has the best drop in Kent at 110 m. Crete Road is Pilot-rated and needs the Channel Tunnel police contacted before flying.

Hampshire — Sky Surfing Club hold Butser Hill. Butser West 265°–325°, 92 m TTB, CP, with an emphatic warning: "Turbulence from Rake Bottom can be extreme in all conditions… NEVER FLY INTO RAKE BOTTOM." Visitors and guests are not permitted at either face.

Peak District — Derbyshire Soaring Club, £30/year, £25 associate, £5 for ten days temporary. Mam Tor launches at 500 m. Midweek flyers must notify the RAF on 0800 515544.

Wales — Mid-Wales & Borders is £10/year. South East Wales requires CP (Hill) with top-landing, dynamic ridge soaring and ground handling in up to 15 mph signed off.

Long Mynd is run by the Long Mynd Soaring Club, which owns its take-off field: £30 joining, £3 day fee for non-members — though that figure comes from a council directory rather than the club's own site, which is robots-blocked.

Sites are being lost

This is not a theoretical concern. Wessex lost its top-landing agreement at Bell Hill after a 2012 ownership change. Dales HGPC list Bishopdale as closed since March 2020 "until further notice." South Devon list Trethill Cliffs as closed. Mid-Wales put it bluntly: "Please do not fly any of these sites if you are not a member: you risk permanent loss of the site for everybody."

The etiquette in the club site guides is not fussiness. It is the mechanism by which the sport keeps its hills.

There is no hill inside London. Everything is a drive, and the drive is the real cost of the sport for a London-based pilot.

Distances marked ~ are road estimates rather than sourced figures. Be sceptical of the "best paragliding near London" listicles — the one that tabulates drive times gets Devil's Dyke's wind direction wrong by about 140°.

Which site you will actually use

Dunstable, and the reason is directional rather than geographic.

Britain's prevailing wind is south-west to west. Dunstable's 220°–320° arc with a 270°–300° sweet spot is the only nearby site aligned to it. Devil's Dyke needs a northerly component. Mount Caburn needs a southerly. Bo Peep needs a north-easterly. On the statistically commonest British day, Dunstable is the site that works.

It is also CP-minimum where most Sussex sites are CP+, and £20 against SHGC's £60.

The trade-offs are real: only 230 ft top to bottom, inside Luton Class D with a 1,500 ft ceiling for new Club Pilots, and the mandatory airspace briefing before you may fly at all.

The sensible arrangement

DHPC at £20 for Dunstable as the default westerly day, plus SHGC at £60 for the Downs to cover northerlies, southerlies and easterlies. Eighty pounds a year on top of BHPA membership, covering most of the compass within ninety minutes of London.

Green Dragons at Woldingham is the only flying operation genuinely on London's doorstep — 18 miles, M25 junction 6, and reachable by train to Woldingham with a 20–30 minute walk. It is a school with private sites rather than a hill club, and its membership terms are not published. For ground-handling practice on a windy Tuesday it is the closest thing London has.

A UK pilot travelling in Europe needs an IPPI card and adequate third-party liability. The minimum differs by country and is worth checking before you buy the flights.

Note Switzerland's requirement carefully: it is IPPI 5 for cross-country, which is BHPA Advanced Pilot. Interlaken is not a place a Club Pilot goes to fly XC.

The destinations

Annecy / Doussard, France — the default first Alpine trip. Season April–October, cloudbase 2,000–3,500 m, easy mountain thermals with a valley breeze that sets up down the lake from the north-west every day. Montmin launch 1,240 m, Doussard landing 460 m. Spring is stronger; midsummer goes stable.

Ölüdeniz, Turkey — best XC in May, June and October; September–October dry and reliable; July–August hot and stable. Cloudbase 2,500–3,500 m. Four launches, the largest at 1,700 m, landing on the promenade at sea level — a genuine 1,700 m sled if nothing works. Registration is mandatory: register online with a valid licence, then buy a ticket in the app generating a QR code for launch access. Roughly €10 launch access plus €5 transport.

Bassano del Grappa, Italy — spring strongest, 100 km out-and-returns possible from January. Cloudbase 1,500–2,500 m, launches 700–1,550 m, landing 160 m. Visiting pilots must register with the local club via a FlyCard, and carry a green smoke flare for unexpected landings.

Algodonales, Spain — flyable year-round, best March–May and September–October. Punchy 5 m/s thermals to 3,000 m by 2pm in season; smooth and beginner-friendly in the mornings. Levante launch 1,027 m, Poniente 908 m. Camping free in the landing zone, shuttles about €10.

Piedrahita, Spain — the flatland XC school. Launch 1,900 m, landing 1,000 m, cloudbase 3,200 m and often above 4,000 in August. Thermals start 11:30 and you must launch by 13:30 before the afternoon wind. 50 km to Ávila is a regular run for inexperienced pilots; 200 km open distances are regularly possible.

Tolmin, Slovenia — May to early June and late July to September. Cloudbase 2,200 m early rising to 2,800 m late. Air "never that rough or rowdy." Kobala 1,080 m, Stol 1,425 m. Site fees €3–4 per visit, and mountain rescue is free in Slovenia.

Greifenburg / Emberger Alm, Austria — launch 1,740 m above a 620 m valley, very little valley wind, reliable and comfortable. Beginners fly 50 km routes when base reaches 2,500 m.

Manteigas, Portugal — May, June and September ideal. Flyable late February to October, cloudbase up to 3,000 m. 100 km+ cross-countries are common in summer, and the club runs a shuttle whenever it is flyable.

South Africa is more regulated than the UK, not less, and this is the section that changes how you plan a trip to see your parents.

What the law requires

Every pilot flying a paraglider in South Africa must hold a valid SACAA licence, third-party liability aviation insurance, membership of an approved recreation organisation such as SAHPA, and landowner permission. SAHPA membership gives access to approved sites as listed in AIP ENR 5.5.

For a visiting UK pilot, that means:

SAHPA Foreign Temporary Membership in 2, 3 or 6-month terms — R500 for two months, R750 for six. It includes the third-party liability aviation insurance that satisfies the Civil Aviation Act. Apply early; delays are common.

An IPPI 4 card or greater. "Every visiting recreational pilot must have an IPPI 4 card (or greater)." At IPPI 3 you fly only under approved-school supervision. IPPI 6 is required to carry a tandem passenger, and foreign instructors may not train or fly commercial tandems at all.

A SANParks Table Mountain "My Activity Permit" (Level 2) for Lion's Head and Signal Hill. Level 2 covers paragliding, hang gliding and sport climbing.

Your own medical insurance. South African healthcare is not free to non-residents, and specialist policies may still exclude competitions, search and rescue, and repatriation.

Lion's Head

Wind W to SSW, plus a thermic lee-side in light south-easterlies. The best conditions are "typically from 3pm during South-East wind-shadow conditions" — you fly the shadow, not the wind.

Bottom launch 400 m ASL, top launch 450 m, peak 669 m, airspace ceiling 1,200 m ASL. Landing at the Edgar Lipsett Oval at the Glen Country Club, with Camps Bay High School field as the alternative. The lower slopes may be slope-landed only in an emergency.

Requirements: valid SAHPA membership and a Basic Licence with a minimum of 55 flights, with the first four flights supervised by an instructor or a Sport-rated local pilot. The site is rated Basic but "challenging in stronger wind and must be treated with the utmost respect."

The rule that gets repeated: "Only launch at the two designated launch sites. Do not pioneer a new launch site."

Local technique: south-westerly is best, needing at least 15 km/h at the top take-off to soar. A yellow-marked circle defines the safe soaring zone; green-marked side areas carry a venturi that can push you over the back. Whitecaps offshore are the cue to land.

One experienced local pilot's wiki is blunt: the site "has a history of fatalities among experienced pilots" and needs a proper briefing in person. Take it.

Signal Hill

Wind NW to W, car-park launch for north-westerlies, "The Bench" for westerlies. Maximum 35 km/h for paraglider take-off and landing. The hazard named in the site guide is a "strong wind-gradient during North-West conditions" with the wind also increasing rapidly.

And here is the crucial difference from Lion's Head. Signal Hill requires Sport rating, IPPI 5, as a minimum. "No Paragliding Basic-license pilots are permitted, not even under supervision." Foreign pilots may fly only under supervision from a Sport-rated pilot or instructor, and all first-time pilots must report to an instructor for a site briefing.

Landing on the Sea Point Promenade grass in front of Winchester Mansions, or the fields by the stadium if caught in a southerly. Slope landings are forbidden and must be reported to SAHPA as an incident.

Crossing to Lion's Head needs 150 m above take-off at the Kramat in a north-westerly.

The Glen Paragliding Club holds the landing rights and sells temporary weekly membership at R50.

The rest of the Western Cape

Sir Lowry's Pass — NW to SW, launch 320 m, ceiling 1,200 m. Severe wind gradient in a north-westerly, very turbulent if it swings south. Basic licence, IPPI 4. Beware baboons; keep windows closed.

Du Toit's Kloof — light westerly. Car park launch 800 m, tower launch 1,294 m, ceiling 1,300 m. Recently re-graded from Sport to Basic. This is military helicopter training area D159 — check with Ysterplaat Air Force Base. Jan Minnaar has flown 93 km from here.

Hermanus — S to SE. "Beware of the East wind," which wraps up deceptively and turns severely turbulent. Do not launch west of the radio tower.

Porterville — the cross-country site, season November to March. Strong inland desert flatland and ridge flying; thermals typically stop between 1,200 and 1,800 m, legal ceiling 4,000 m. Dasklip Pass launches 450 m high at 700 m ASL. Classic runs: the Renosterhoek ridge at about 90 km, and 100 km to Clanwilliam. Site fee payable to the landowner, and skipping the Flyers' Lodge day fee "results in lifetime bans."

The safety note that matters at Porterville: most summer afternoons around 16:00, "a huge mass of dangerously fast-moving wind (often up to 40–50 km/h) comes from the Atlantic Ocean."

Wilderness and the Garden Route — mellow coastal soaring, November to mid-April, launches 18–150 m, landing on the beach. Airspace is the constraint: most take-offs have a 465 m ceiling. Contact George ATC before flying.

The season, and the Cape Doctor

The controlling factor is the south-easterly Cape Doctor, which blows from August–September through to March–April, peaking in November, and can reach 160 km/h around Table Bay.

The implication for you specifically: the British winter, when you would naturally visit, is Cape Town's peak season and peak Cape Doctor. You would fly mornings and late afternoons and lose the middle of every day. April–May is the better flying trip — smoother, quieter, still warm.

And the rating you need

The honest summary of this chapter is a single line. Your Club Pilot will not fly Lion's Head unsupervised, and will not fly Signal Hill at all. Lion's Head wants IPPI 4 — BHPA Pilot — plus 55 logged flights. Signal Hill wants IPPI 5, which is Advanced Pilot.

If flying in Cape Town is part of why you are doing this, the Pilot rating is not optional and the Advanced rating is not far-fetched. Plan for them from the start.

Britain

Roughly 100 flyable days a year, and they have to coincide with your weekends.

April to October is the training season, and schools say so explicitly. Spring — April and May — is the strongest thermal period, which is also when the record UK cross-country streak of 2025 happened: fifteen flights over 100 km between 17 April and 23 May.

Summer goes stable and often blue. Good for hours, less good for distance.

Autumn brings reliable ridge days as the Atlantic fronts return, and it is when the wave season starts at Aboyne, which is a sailplane matter rather than yours.

Winter is not a write-off. One of the cross-country flights cited in chapter 18 was an 81 km February flight from Devils Dyke with a cloudbase at 4,300 ft and −3 °C at base. Cold air is dense and the thermals are sharp when they come. But daylight is short, the ground is wet, and the number of days you can actually use is small.

The trip calendar

The two-year view

A realistic plan from a standing start in London:

Season one — taster day, then EP and CP across a British summer, or EP+CP in twelve consecutive days in Spain over a winter. Join DHPC and SHGC. Buy used. Ground handle relentlessly.

Season two — accumulate the ten hours that make you a real Club Pilot, then work the Pilot tasks through club coaches and sit the exam. An SIV course. That gets you to IPPI 4 and unlocks cross-country in Britain and independent flying in Cape Town.

Beyond that, if the parakite in volume one is the destination, Advanced Pilot with its 100 hours and its over-water stall and spin recoveries is the gate, and it is a multi-year project rather than a season's.

The numbers

The money

Pre-flight

☐ Helmet on and fastened ☐ Leg straps and chest strap — both, checked by hand ☐ Reserve handle located by feel, pin secure, bridle routed ☐ Risers untwisted, brakes free and correct sides ☐ Lines clear, no knots, no line over ☐ Speedbar connected and free ☐ Wind direction and strength, gust factor under 100% ☐ Airspace and ceiling for this site ☐ Landing field chosen, obstacles identified ☐ Escape plan if it comes up badly

The five things this book would say if it could only say five

1. Ground handling is the cheapest safety you will ever buy. Sixty per cent of injuries happen at takeoff or on approach, and both are ground-handling problems.
2. Weigh your kit before you buy a wing. At 67 kg the difference between a light and a winter build is a whole size step.
3. The EN letter is a floor on behaviour in 23 clean test manoeuvres. It is not a description of how much attention the wing wants in real air.
4. Club Pilot is not the finish line. It is IPPI 3, it does not permit cross-country, and it will not fly Cape Town alone. Pilot is the rating that matters.
5. The equipment almost never fails — 0.6% of incidents. Everything else is decisions.