South America Travel Blog

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Paragliding the end

I finished my Paragliding training today, in total I did 9 solo flights. I have a prefect record for take offs 9 successful takeoffs out of 9 attempts. Landings are a different story though, my first 4 landings were all in the landing area, and except for the first one they were generally smooth, in my third landing the radio did not work again, so I had to do it all on my own, but I still managed to land in the middle of the landing area, the instructor told me I did nothing wrong, except that the maneuver I used to approach the landing area was an advanced one, which he did not expect me to do. Anyway after this time, I always had two radios on my flights, just in case one did not work.

After my first 4 flights, two other Israeli students started there flights as well, since they were just starting they got the basic school wing which I was using, and I got a more advanced higher performance wing, which is faster and has a better gliding rate. In my first flight with this wing I was so scared, I was just waiting for the flight to end. But during the next flight, I was prepared for the more thrilling nature of this wing, and I was ready for its more wild movements, and eventually I started to like it more than the basic one. Though I did not manage to have even one smooth landing with it, I always landed very near the landing field, but every time I would either overshoot my landing by bit, or land short by a bit. The roughest landing I had was in my first flight with this wing, when I crashed straight into a big bush at the edge of the landing area. My last landing was interesting as well, I circled around the landing zone for several minutes at low altitudes, since the wing just refused to go down, every time I was descending a few meters, I got a lift and went back up again, eventually I went for it and managed to land.

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