The Paraglider Podcast

Kathleen Rigg is an extremely accomplished hang glider pilot based in Derbyshire, England. She has flown at the top level of the Womens World Hang Gliding Championships for years, has been the British Womens Champion numerous times and has been awarded the Royal Aero Club Individual Gold Award.

With the number of hang gliders declining in recent years, paraglider pilots are getting less opportunity to fly with hang gliders and are therefore often unaware of their flying, launch and landing characteristics, difference in speed, etc. This lack of understanding had sometimes inadvertently caused problems for hang glider pilots and lead to friction between the two communities.

In this podcast Kathleen explains some of the issues about sharing the sky from the hang glider perspective and talks about what we can all do to make things easier for everyone - and that includes paraglider pilots as well!

Ziad Bassil (Dust of the Universe) is passionate about testing gliders. He has flown a staggering number of them over the past 20 years. With his friends, he flies the mountains of his native Lebanon and makes glide angle comparison tests in moving air and writes up his reviews on his blog at www.dustoftheuniverse.com. He is completely independent and is not aligned to any company or brand. In this podcast we talk about what he does and he offers useful advice for other pilots on testing gliders and how to choose the wing for you!

Phil Colbert and Barney Woodhead (Niviuk UK) are part of the Pennine Posse - a lose gaggle of pilots who fly and party together. Their strategy of sharing info, planning flights, travelling and flying together and then helping each other with retrieves has made them one of the most successful flying buddy groups in the country. And it works - the Peninne Club have won the UK XC league every year since 2011. In this podcast Barney and Phil talk about their philosophy, the secret of their success, the tools they use and how good sharing useful info can be. And anyone is welcome to join them... just contact them or tune into Barney FM (143.95 Long wave).

Apologies for some of the sound quality in this podcast, but the content definitely makes up for this. Warning: best not to listen to this one with small kids around.

Heike Hamann learned to fly in 1992 and recently completed a Masters in Process

Oriented Psychology. After a few paragliding incidents she developed a fear of

being high and as part of her thesis she started to examine her fears and thought

about how she could tackle them. The result is an article called The Seven Steps

of Fear Management in Paragliding. The article can be read here.

In this podcast she talks about how she came to develop the seven steps, how to

use them to control your own fear and what practical things you can do when you

feel anxious. This will hopefully lead to you getting more enjoyment out of your

flying and improve your performance.

Heike offers one-on-one coaching for people who are dealing with fear in paragliding. The coaching normally lasts for a series of 4-5 sessions, each 60-90 minutes in length. If you would like to connect with her about receiving some coaching, or if you have any questions or comments about the article, please contact her at [email protected]

Tim ONeill started flying 44 years ago in sailplanes and has been hooked on aviation ever since. He began flying paragliders in 2002 and has been an avid XC pilot for the last 9 years. He makes his living flying 747s for a US airline, but spends much his home time assessing whether the day is flyable or not...

His interest in the safety aspect of our sport is based on his 26,000 hours of accident-free experience in civilian aviation, coupled with his occasional bouts with injury and over-enthusiasm in paragliding. If you want to see more about him and his flying adventures you can view his blog here: www.timospgblog.com

Tim loves to have fun and in this podcast he talks about his personal attitude to safety, communication, attitudes to risk and how to balance having a great time while trying to stay safe...

Jug Aggarwal, Matt Beechinor, Alan Ford and Iain Frew. When you land out, you often find yourself in somewhat bizarre places, as is proved in this collection of funny retrieve and landing stories. In this podcast you will hear about why going cross-country can be the best adventure youll ever have; one of the coolest ways of getting back home ever, running from bulls and why to avoid yellow trucks in Oregon. Whether you fly XC or not, we hope you find this new series of paragliding anecdotes entertaining. If you know someone with a good story (or you have one yourself) please contact us at [email protected]

Jugdeep Aggarwal (Flymaster USA) - there are many formats for competitions. Larger international competitions usually run over one to two weeks. Smaller, national or local competitions have the luxury of being more flexible, since competitors dont have to travel quite so far to attend. The North California League uses a completely flexible approach and has been going from strength to strength since it was first founded over a decade ago.

Jugdeep Aggarwal is in charge of the organisation of the competition series. He has been working on reducing the infrastructure required to run the competition and this has several advantages.

Jug calls the league Cross-country flying with a mission!. The league isnt just about having a competition - it provides a valuable mechanism for building and consolidating the paragliding community, providing an opportunity to meet and fly cross country collectively in a safe way, with retrieves provided. This podcast is aimed at potential competition organisers and anyone with an interest in comps at a local/national level (depending on how big your country is).

Timothy Bishop - in this podcast Tim and I discuss safety, including human factors, attitude and how we can improve paragliding safety culture. Tim comes from a military and civil aviation background and the discussion is informed by this knowledge of flight safety training. In the podcast he mentions his home-made paragliding flight simulator, pictures of which can be seen here and here.

Her-Hsin Tsai - as well as being a keen XC flyer, Hamish (as he is better known in the paragliding community) lives and flies at the coast. In this podcast he discusses a wide range of aspects of coastal flying, including weather, hazards, coastal XCs, sea breezes, convergence, sea thermals and more. It makes valuable listening for people both familiar and unfamiliar with this flying environment.

Chris Trow (Fast Retrieve) - following my interview with the PWC and British Open retrieve manager for the Marshalling podcast, here Chris talks about possible future technological developments in comps, including live tracking, Spot and other satellite tracking devices, radios, etc. All these developments are aimed at making competitions safer and more fun. He also talks about what you can do to make it all work more efficiently.