Dear All,
It's amazing what you see on the internet!
There's always something that pops up and makes me want to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and last night, while idling through the videos that YouTube had suggested for me I came across a few little gems which I urge you to watch.
The first is a stunning chase-cam video in hi-def which makes me want to go out and see the whole world by paraglider, or at the very least go flying in the Dolomites! It's a fantastic advert for our sport and well worth a watch; I even forced Mrs S to sit through it to try and show her what it is that I love so much about flying.
The second involves a low-hours pilot doing some coastal soaring over the cliffs and landing in the rocky surf. It's a salutary lesson in landing options that can be equally applicable to inland sites as it is to coastal. While watching this see if you can decide on the moment where you would have given it up and headed for the beach and also the moment where he makes his key decisions. What worries me most about this video is the apparently lighthearted attitude they have towards what was a potentially life-threatening situation. He could easily have been dragged under by his harness and wing, even in a foot or so of water.
My final video recommendation of the day is another of those daredevil acro vids. Our man here is clearly highly skilled and knows the performance of his wing to within inches, which is a good job given what he's doing. That said, and I may be a bit of a boring stick-in-the-mud here, I think his margins are pretty damn close and he could easily have spanked in big-time on a couple of occasions. I've got no issues with him doing this on the beachfront in Rio of course, but here in the UK it would be against the law in terms of the Air Navigation Order and the rest of us mere mortals need to understand that this doesn't give us free licence to go showboating around our hills and putting ourselves, passers-by and the good name of our sport in danger.
Anyway, please enjoy these 3 vids for what they are and I really would like to invite your comment and discussion on each of them either on the JustParagliding Blog or the Facebook page (PLEASE DON'T REPLY TO THIS E-MAIL).
Happy landings,
Nick Smith
Safety Officer TVHGC
safety@tvhgc.co.uk
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