Paragliding Evolution pt.1
I started paragliding in 1998, by accident really.
As a powered aeroplane pilot I’d been ‘cancelled’ by the CAA the year before - well, it’s bound to happen sooner or later - and I had met my new paragliding CFI while windsurfing in Barbados. His father had constructed the first hang-glider in Switzerland (you can see it in the Luzern Transport Museum, name IKARUS).
“I first flew it when I was twelve, at a beginner slope. I broke my wrist,” said the CFI.
He invited me to the Alps to give his paraglider’s beginners’ week a try. ‘You’ll like it’ he said, and I did, eventually.
Ab initio solo as a basic principle
The two-person large paraglider (a ‘tandem’) is seldom used for training. It is generally considered a money-making joy-ride device, even though it can be an excellent means of familiarising or demonstrating technique to those who could benefit, but the time taken and takeoff travel logistics do not make commercial sense as an economical way to teach flying. A fundamental principle of flight so close to nature is self-sufficiency - only limited hand-holding available.
The beginning was not easy for a non-athlete nearer 60 than 50, and putting the alpine takeoff technique together from scratch was a three day struggle, during which one can unwittingly learn a lot about paraglider behaviour and control for future flight. By comparison a normal Concorde takeoff is simplicity itself, but once you get the general idea, the flying thereafter seems relatively straightforward - for one who knows nothing of the future. Of course I was soon to discover that the traditions of professional flying remained valid, and of value: ‘Is this a good idea, do I know what I’m doing, is the weather OK, what shall I do if something goes wrong?’ And then there’s the most important question. Others are flying, so does that mean it’s safe for me? To take off when the answer should have been no is by far the greatest cause of paragliding accidents. Only the maturity of judgment borne of carefully acquired experience can protect against it.
These are fundamental principles of safe flight shared throughout the flying world. The birds, not to forget the bees, have functioned along the same lines for countless millions of years, and no doubt the flying dinosaurs from which the birds developed considered the same priorities as they went about their daily search for food or suitable places to park up. But this essay is about humans in the air. No millions of years here, in fact the evolution of organised competition in flight only started in 1903.
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI)
This organisation was founded in 1905, two years after the Wright Brothers’ first powered flight. Other human things had been happening in the air long before, and a natural enthusiasm for competition and record-setting required a responsible and fair-handed organisation to see fair play, so the FAI was formed. The fact that it survives today indicates that a sense of worldly diversity has not yet been totally washed away by notions of discrimination, and national flags are still allowed, aren’t they? Doing things with and against foreigners is always fun, educational, informative, and often involves great food, drink, and surprisingly enlightened opinion. Those of perception may discover that ‘We are the best’ may not be true, and the FAI’s global view of a great variety of different ways to compete in the air has a certain creditable consistency to it.
Here we should understand the difference between private risk, military risk and sporting risk. Should they be confused? It all depends, of course, but for the purely sporting event definitely not. The international policy is that sporting events should be safe.
The different sporting disciplines have their own international committees within the FAI, for example CIVA for powered aerobatics, CIVL for paragliding and hanggliding. Voltige Aèrienne translates to aerial dressage, and Vol Libre to foot-launched free flight. There are many others, but they all share the same challenge of coordinating the ideas and opinions of a collection of delegates from all over the globe.
Wisdom, good judgment, and what you can learn from the experience of others
My tenuous contact with this organisation was based on 30 years of participation in competition aerobatics, in one guise or another - as a part time amateur you understand. Was I any good? Not really, not competitive enough by nature, except with myself. But, over the years, one learns a lot about how a particular world can work, and the personal compromises required if fun and achievement is to accompany potential risk and continued life. All long-term flying requires this balance.
Should paragliding be a special case?
My own answer is no, but others disagreed. The paragliding people felt that they were different, although they had joined this multi-disciplined and inclusive organisation. Why was this? Because they were new to international concepts of recreational safety. And the pioneering spirit of Vol Libre, life and risk in the mountains, did assume a certain strength of character in its participants.
The cheapness and availability of this way to fly is one reason. It’s the people’s means of getting into the air where other forms of flight would be unattainable for a number of reasons. All human activity is accompanied by risk, even on the house stepladder, and the awareness of risk management is a recommended policy for doing the same thing successfully twice. This concept develops its nuances with experience, understanding and maturity, but if these qualities are thinly spread in one particular discipline it is understandable that the concept of risk management here might be different from the evolutionary mainstream.
Is paragliding like parachuting?
No, nothing like it. Of course parachute devices were thought of long before they became a reality, and have been closely associated with aeroplane flight since WW1, when the artillery spotter under a balloon had a parachute in case an enemy aeroplane shot the balloon down. The same luxury applied to airship crews - not sure about the British.
Paragliding began when the French discovered that you could take off by running down a steep hill while towing a square parachute into the air; but the parachuting/paragliding connection ended there. The paraglider was born. It’s a glider, but so unlike a modern slender wing fibreglass sailplane that any interaction with the principles of gliding is minimal - except for the Swiss civil aviation people who asked their sailplane community to design the paragliding licence exam. This was a smart if authoritarian move. Few other countries have such a hard paragliding licence requirement, but the Swiss qualification has no conditions. Once attained, you can fly when and where you like without supervision. This is Vol Libre as intended, but it requires real airmanlike judgment if personal safety is to be guaranteed once one steps across the border of the normal flight regime into the departed area. This instant and considerable expansion of experience is essential for those who wish to paraglide safely under racing pressure, and it’s all done solo.
How difficult is paragliding?
Good question; as difficult as you want to make it is the answer: it all depends on the weather and the manoeuvre syllabus. The simple and light flying device can be the easiest thing to guide from the highest mountain top to the deepest valley landing place. It’s a chairlift ride, say the hang glider hard men. I have seen a talented and rightly confident South African teacher conduct a one day course at the end of which his candidates are guaranteed to make a 45 minute coastal soaring flight. All solo, of course, admittedly with mentor takeoff assistance and radio advice, but a 45 minute solo soaring flight in the logbook in one day! This demonstrates the easy end, but no enthusiast should be misled. The other end of the paraglider skill and judgment spectrum extends well beyond the demands of acceptable aeroplane behaviour, by comparison. The low wing loading and slow speed of the paraglider are safety points in its favour, but its sensitivity to turbulence and a variety of off design behaviours when nature takes control can ramp up the difficulty quotient (and fright factor) considerably.
Here it is pertinent to mention the advanced training available, but which is not part of the licence requirement. Typical manoeuvres and their recoveries include stalling, spinning, the spiral dive and wing collapses (a local loss of lift due to a change in angle of attack due to turbulence. Paraglider structural strength relies on a positive lift force but this structural failure does not always mean disaster. In fact it’s a safety valve. These exercises are based on certification procedures which are simulated under calm air conditions. This gives the student an idea of behaviours to be recognised, countered and/or corrected, but these are unlikely to occur spontaneously in calm air. The real thing and resulting complications can be different and considerably more difficult to correct, especially with better performing, higher aspect ratio designs.
A local race. Competitors mill about looking for a first useful climb. The proximity to others is not a real problem here, but the sense of competition cannot be denied, and this should not be allowed to significantly modify a pilot’s assessment of risk. Before this picture was taken, one pilot had spun out of a low-level thermal in front of the takeoff, and another flew into the hillside shown, while attempting to circle in a thermal which was following the terrain. Neither of these meteorological phenomena is unusual so the question remains: would they have made the same mistake of judgment had they not have been involved in a race? Neither injury was fatal, but more experience of this environment would have helped.
What happens if the wrong people go racing?
This is best answered by inviting a look at the YouTube videos of the Nurburgring public motoring sessions. This is obviously good fun, but invariably a good number of hotshot street drivers discover surprise flaws in their technique. Could such a display be accepted as an organised international event? I have no experience of paraglider racing, but local events I witnessed have had a hint of the Saturday Nurburgring about them. Not universally, but elements of enthusiasm overriding good judgment were frequently evident. All good village fun, perhaps, but not what you’d expect at a world championship. An experienced acquaintance and record holder saw me preparing to take off while one of these rustic events was waiting for its second takeoff clearance. A crash soon after the initial start required a recall. “Are you in this?” he asked. ‘No’, I said. “Never, ever, do racing,” he begged.
I had no intention of doing so, and, like many paragliding legends, he had no experience of other kinds of flight. My forty years of assorted aeroplane flying, including many which involved aerobatic competition, would mean nothing to a paraglider pilot. ‘It’s different, you wouldn’t understand.’ But I understand very well, if we take the FAI’s view about international competitions.
Climbing conditions have improved, and the two gaggles indicate the competence (or luck) level of the field leaders as they make their initial top-ups before setting off round the course within this valley, which will require further climbs on the way. The contest director has wisely issued a ban on flying within a radius of 2 km from the peak, middle distance on the left. Why should this be? This is very pleasant June weather, but the N/S pressure gradient will reinforce the low level daily thermal (up the) valley wind which splits at this point of valley junction. Dangerous turbulence can be expected in this area.
The FAI takes a strong line
Over the winter of 2008/9 the paragliding magazines published the FAI General Secretary’s concerns about the regular deaths that had historically recurred at world paraglider championship events. Why should this be?
I wrote to suggest that while the paraglider pilots at the top could manage the self-imposed pressure, some of the others clearly could not, and chose to put themselves in hazardous situations due to their lack of adequate experience in the competition arena. At the high end of paraglider performance, encounters with the turbulence that lives with the desired thermal and orographic conditions can cause instant handling problems that can only be countered or corrected by high level skills, attained by much training and practice. My experience of FAI powered aerobatics told me that nobody took part in a world aerobatic championship unless their national body responsible for the sport approved them as being suitable. The General Secretary invited me to Lausanne for lunch.
An interesting day at the office
I duly went to Lausanne and spent an interesting day with the GS, our office discussions punctuated by a nice al fresco lunch down the road. He told me that, over the last ten years, the fatal accident rate in FAI sanctioned paragliding contests was ten times that of all the other FAI sports put together. In real terms the paragliders averaged one per year: all the rest - one per ten years. (Powered aeroplane aerobatics came off well.) When CIVL are confronted with this history they only say “You don’t understand: paragliding is different.” ‘This explanation is unacceptable, and I insist they do something about it’ was the Gen.Sec.’s position.
My explanation for the paraglider statistics was a combination of two simple factors. Paragliding as an international sport was a fairly recent addition, with a limited history of collective experience of safe individual decision-making under contest pressure. And the handling skill required to safely manage a state-of-the-art competition glider under challenging conditions was clearly above that of some enthusiastic competitors. In terms of handling difficulty, compared with the relative simplicity of aeroplane flying - and here I include competition aerobatics - the paraglider top end is off the Richter scale. But the really good competition pilots can manage it, and, crucially, have enough competition experience to remain within their individual experience boundaries. Can one assume the system restricts FAI contest entry to such seasoned competitors, for safety reasons? It would appear not so where major paragliding competitions were involved.
At the end of our discussions he said “I want you to go home and write down everything you’ve told me. It’s exactly what we think. Your report will be our official opinion, and circulated to the CIVL members before their next general meeting.’
Discovering evolution on the train home
I looked through the coffee table Book of FAI History he had given me. I had already decided that paragliding was an isolated offshoot from the parachute, and therefore constituted a new evolutionary origin without much of the shared history and opinion of other flying sports. I thought this was a revolutionary insight of my own, but was disappointed to discover that contributors had already thought of it. It was in the book.
Something completely different: The author makes his lonely way to his car at 8 pm, flying along the north face of the Wetterhorn, with the assistance of the late evening summer sun heating the rock surfaces. Speed is not of the essence, but careful glide ratio control is critical if an inconvenient walk is to be avoided. This is not a race, except with the sun.
My Report
I had already researched the opinions of some very successful paraglider competition pilots who managed their own competition participation with consistent success. They tended to have considerable paraglider flying experience, and were often those who also contributed to the industry as test pilots, and enjoyed flying the uncertified prototype and competition gliders whose performance and handling they seemed to relish. I asked their opinion as to what percentage of the pilots in a typical FAI sanctioned contest had adequate skills for this competitive arena. The answers were very consistent - about 20%, they said. This implied that the other 80% should not be exposing themselves to the risks of getting it wrong. This horse’s mouth assessment fitted perfectly with my comparison of the accepted range of piloting demands for aeroplanes and paragliders: the paraglider line extends farther up the graph.
I duly sent the finished document and heard nothing more, except that in Cross Country magazine I read that a member of the British CIVL contingent had said the report was ‘interesting’. Apart from that there was no further contact, or another invitation to lunch.
But a lot of things did change from this point, twelve years ago, the result being improvements all round, and a growing experience base at all levels, but this will be discussed in part 2. In the meantime this is my report from 2009. I still agree with some of it, but now have more sympathy and insight into 2009’s tragic competition death despite the pilot’s ticking almost all my suitability boxes. This particular incident appears to have been the real instigator of the pressure brought to bear on manufacturers and handling certification requirements.