How to Choose a Paraglider

Video Transcript

"CHAD BASTIAN: Hi, this is Chad Bastian, welcome to Expert Village. We're here to talk about the trike buggy and PPG triking with paragliders. Alright, in this clip, we're going to talk about how to choose a glider. Basically, what we're using for our trike buggy flight is a paraglider. It's a standard paraglider. It's not in any way specialized for powered flight. Most regular paragliders will transition over to powered flight quite well. And paragliders are really simple aircraft and there's not too much mystery with them. This is a riser set. And this is a regular paraglider so we don't have trimmers on this. Quite often with powered paragliders, the distinguishing factor that people will tell you is that it has a pair of trimmers on it that you can slow it down or speed it up. You don't really need that. It is a good thing to have. Most of the time, I would recommend a very low level glider especially initially as you're getting started, a DHV 1 or 1-2. If you don't know what that means, you need to get with an instructor so you can understand what we're talking about there. But it's a glider that would be suited to beginner flight and not a competition or high aspect ratio glider. Lots of old gliders are available in lots of places but if you don't know what you're getting and you don't know the flight characteristics of it, it's very easy to get something that is considered by many in the industry as a death ship or something that you would not want to fly or even play with it. It's just going to make your life harder to learn this and give you less success in the beginning. So, get a good glider, that's going to work good. Talk with someone who knows or other pilots that are already flying wings in powered paragliding and you'll be able to choose a glider."