Landing Procedures of Paragliding

Video Transcript

"My name is Patrick Eaves with Wingenvy Paragliding. In this clip, we're going to be talking about the procedures for landing. In any landing, you're going to plan far ahead for exactly where you're going to land. Following the different sights protocol, you're going to follow that landing approach. So now that you have your landing sight and you're coming into land about 15-50 feet off the ground, depending on my speed coming in all the way out of my harness so I'm ready to come in quick. Sometimes in that last few feet you can drop quickly or you can come in really slow. Remember, when you're landing always land into the wind. That's going to give you a nice soft landing. About 20 feet off the ground if I'm coming in pretty slow, I'll go ahead and hang all the way out of my harness ready to run once I come in for a landing, my knees bent, legs together, and about 5 feet off the ground. Depending on my wind speed, I'm going to start my flare. If I'm coming relatively fast, I'm going to wait until those last 5 feet. As I'm coming in I'm going to flare at about this speed. Relatively fast and I'm going to hold it until I touch down, then I'm going to run for a few feet and let the glider fall behind me. Now, if there's lots of wind when you're coming in to land, you don't need to have that aggressive of a flare. Just a nice and slow flare until you're barely moving over the ground, touch down, take a few running steps so that the glider stays up in the air. As soon as you're safe and on the ground, pull both brakes down to kill the wing and stop the wing and make sure it's not dragging you anywhere. Okay, one common mistake people will often make when they're coming in to land is they'll start their flare a little bit too early. So let's say you're 10 feet off the ground and you've started your flare and you get a 1/4-1/2 through it and you realize you still have a long way to go to the ground. The best thing to do in this case is just hold the brakes where they were until you get close to the ground. In the last few feet, go ahead and finish the flare really hard. When you're coming in to land, remember to avoid making any hard turns the last 100-50 feet."