great article "Non skydivers learn canopy piloting" a solution?

[crotalus01 0]

with all of the people killing and maiming themselves under perfectly good canopies, has anyone else seen the article on the homepage of DZ.com and thought that it may possibly be a solution to that problem? or am i too far out of the box in thinking that? curious to hear what you think....

edit to add i know nothing about ground launches, all of my post is based on info from the article.

As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD...

[mdrejhon 8]

Although this is not the same thing, I will be learning paragliding next year. I've got a friend (licensed instructor) that will be teaching for free...he's also a skydiver as well.

Very interesting. Using real parachutes instead of paragliding canopies, and using it as canopy instruction even before the first skydive!

[kelpdiver 2]

I like the idea of kiting to play with all the inputs. For those living nearby, perfect opportunity to speed up the learning.

Sadly, this year has proven that no one is safe until they're on the ground.

[jakee 1,498]

Quote

with all of the people killing and maiming themselves under perfectly good canopies, has anyone else seen the article on the homepage of DZ.com and thought that it may possibly be a solution to that problem? or am i too far out of the box in thinking that? curious to hear what you think....

Doesn't strike me as any less dangerous than skydiving. After all the ground is generally what kills you, and with ground launching you are very close to the ground all the way. Still looks awesome fun though.

The other thing is that most people getting seriously hurt under canopy don't lack the basic skills needed to land a canopy, its bad atitude and lack of awareness that seem to be the big killers.

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[billvon 2,998]

>Doesn't strike me as any less dangerous than skydiving.

I think it's a bit more dangerous. You are near the ground (the most dangerous part of the jump) twice, you can't use your reserve, and your choice of landing areas is much more limited. I've gotten far more scrapes and bumps launching paragliders (and canopies) than I've gotten skydiving.

[crotalus01 0]

nevermind then....

As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD...

[tdog 0]

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>Doesn't strike me as any less dangerous than skydiving.

I think it's a bit more dangerous. You are near the ground (the most dangerous part of the jump) twice, you can't use your reserve, and your choice of landing areas is much more limited. I've gotten far more scrapes and bumps launching paragliders (and canopies) than I've gotten skydiving.

I agree... I quit paragliding and opted for skydiving because paragliding was too dangerous for me. Seriously – running downhill on a very rocky launch point tore up my left knee (dislocation on uneven surface), broke a friends ankle, and killed another friend. And, unlike swoops gone bad, these were conservative launches with tame paragliders.

I have many paragliding flights where I barely got 20' off the ground... One of which a branch got stuck in my Ds and I was airborne before I could shut it down - so I ended up landing with little control as I was using my right toggle at 50% to fly it straight.

But, on topic of the first post - I read the article about learning to ground launch for non-skydivers... I found it really weird, meaning different, because I learned ground launch before skydive (paraglide) – and my progression was much different...

I learned by spending a day kiting the wing in a park... Once I could run for 2 minutes with it overhead (talk about aerobics) - then I progressed to the "bunny hill." My first flight was a sled ride 500' down the hill followed by a flare and tip toe landing... Repeat a few times... Then launches from the top of the mountain. Always on radio, but much less instructor interaction. I never had a tandem on the learning progression until I was licensed and went up with a friend, and I found my paragliding progression much faster than what they teach in that article...