PARAGLIDING SAFETY TRAINING and AEROBATICS COURSE

Panajachel, Lake Atitlan, Guatemala

Imagine the following: You are breathing... You open your eyes and find a volcano in front of you... Water is between you and that volcano... You feel your toggles in your hands... You feel the wind on your face... You feel your heart beating... you start running into that huge water surface... You are flying... You are airborne above water and your heart starts beating faster...You are about to face your fears related to paragliding... You create an emergency situation you have only heard about, or seen on videos... Made it... Through your radio you hear a calm voice telling you to go on to the next maneuver... You feel stronger and with less fear to perform it... It happened... You feel great self confidence... Peace... You breathe... Look at your surroundings... You see volcanoes and a magic lake...

This course will give you the chance to learn a little bit more about the limits of paragliding in a safe environment, surrounded by a spectacular landscape. We will all share our experiences, to learn from ours and from the others. We will face our fears, and that will make us stronger and more secure...

Dates: April 23,29,30 and May 6th

General Contents:

  • Theoretic classes
  • Practical classes
  • Emergency parachute deployment
  • Packing of emergency chute
  • Optional: Didactic tandem flight

Objective:

Give the student pilot the tools to react correctly to the most common emergency situations in paragliding in a safe environment above water. During theoretic classes we will extensively talk about emergency configurations in flight, mistakes that can be made trying to correct them, and how to exit in a safe way.

All this knowledge will be used afterwards practicing above water, creating provoked emergency situations to be controlled by the pilot under the supervision of an experienced instructor by radio. The student decides his / her own learning rhythm pushing the limits each time further.

Contents of Theoretic Classes

a) Emergency situations:

  • Collapses
  • Asymmetric collapses
  • Negative spins
  • Crevattes
  • Full Stall and Tailslide
  • Parachutage or deep stall
  • Emergency chute deployment

The student will learn to recognize these flight configurations, which reactions can lead to making the situation worse and correct countermeasures. The basic idea is to get all these processes into the mind, so that the student won´t have to think what to do in emergency situations losing precious seconds, but to instinctively react correctly, solving the configuration in an effective way.

b) Fast descent- and/or aerobatic maneuvers:

  • Big Ears
  • 360 Spin
  • B-Line Stall
  • Wing Overs
  • Asymmetric Wing Overs
  • SAT
  • Asymmetric SAT
  • Tumbling
  • Helicopters
  • Mc Twist

A detailed description of the maneuvers will be made, how to fly them safely and what to avoid during the learning process. Maneuvers in red will be explained to the interested student, according to his experience level. Each pilot decides which maneuver he or she wants to learn, after being checked by the instructor and approving it.

Practical Classes:

Practical classes will be held in a place, where all emergency situations and maneuvers can be performed safely above water. A Rescue Boat in constant communications with the instructor will be available during the whole course. The whole program to be performed by the student pilot will be previously planned together with the instructor, and he or she will start with it, after approval of the instructor.

At the last day of the sessions an emergency parachute deployment procedure will be provoked by the pilot, to fall safely in water and be rescued by the boat afterwards.

A briefing will be held after each day to talk about all the experiences gathered by the pilots.

Instructor:

Tomy Schwarzer

For more info contact:

Autana