The Big 5-0

4 months ago I did my first tandem flight as the pilot-in-command. Yesterday I flew my 50th passenger! It's been a blast so far & I'm so glad to have been able to pursue this facet of my favourite sport. Tandem flying has made me see things differently, given me more confidence in my flying, and brought me endless joy in living vicariously through everyone of one my passengers thrill of discovery on their first flight.

I had originally hesitated each time someone asked if I was going to get my tandem rating. I figured that turning my passion into my job would make it feel like "work" and kill my love for the sport. I thought that tandem flying would "cut into" my solo time and I'd start resenting it.

Of course now I've found that the opposite is true. Nothing beats a phone call or email from someone offering me money to fly! In fact, as the days get shorter & fall is approaching I'm sad to think tandem season is almost over.

My dream is to get enough experience so that I can work around the world flying tandems one day. Head to South America or New Zealand in the winter & fly tandems in their summer and basically get a paid vacation.

Dare to dream!

Delta flight report - a techy post

My new Delta taking me to cloudbase



Finally had a chance to soar my new paraglider - the Ozone Delta. I love it! Here's why:

Launching: Super sweet. In light winds or strong it inflates smoothly, then a quick tap of the brakes seems to tell it to stop overhead & stay there until you're ready to go. The risers are super tiny which took me some getting used to (just to look at!) but they help me go faster so I like them.


Flying: My first FOUR flights were sled rides (I already whined about the weather in an earlier post) but even from those short flights I could tell the glide was outstanding. When the sun finally broke through yesterday I got a chance to thermal it. I'm sad to say that it did not magically make me a better pilot (damn it!). My boyfriend with years more flying experience still out-flew me. I was hoping I wouldn't have to actually improve my skills and this wing would do it for me, sigh. That being said, I did out-thermal him a couple of times! The wing seems to love it when I turn really tight in the thermal, today I just went screaming up and felt completely stable the whole time. All I had to think about was staying in the core & boom, I was in the cloud mist. Instead of applying big ears right away to avoid the clouds I decided to play with my speed bar. First step I was still going up so went to full bar. Stayed on full bar for 30 seconds or so even though I was flying through transition areas I knew could be rough. My wing felt stable the whole time & never made me want to back off the bar, even with a little pitching.

Acro: It's not really designed to be an acro wing but from videos floating around the internet it seems to do the basics just fine. I haven't tried anything yet besides some spirals. More like spiral entries since I was too low by the time I thought about doing acro to really wind it up but after one 360 I could get the "whoosh" going. Whoosh whoosh.

Landing: I didn't realize how "hot" I used to come in to land on my old wing before until I floated in to my first landing on the Delta. However I did move from a small Addict 2 to a medium Delta so that accounts for some (I was a couple of kilos over the small & right in the middle of the medium). Anyway, setting up my approach is stress-free, lots more time to watch the wind sock from over the LZ as I float around waiting to come down :)

It's a "hybrid" 3 liner, which means 3 lines at the risers & 4 attached to the wing (C's split into D's up top) but in my flying I don't know what difference that makes to me. I've heard concern from coastal pilots who launch in strong winds that they prefer having 4 risers so they can launch with A's & D's, but since I'm a mountain pilot I can't comment on that. There is lots of talk in the manual (& on the wing placard!) not to drag your wing around the ground as it could damage the material, but I think that's just common sense. Most of the new "rules" regarding care of the wing seem to be from more of a liability/warranty place, as if someone tried to complain their wing didn't last after continuously dragging it through rocks or slamming it repeatedly on it's leading edge.

The official glide ratio hasn't come out yet (Thermik magazine is independently testing it & will release results soon) but it's projected to be similar to the M3 which I think is 9.8-1. I believe it.

So there's my techy/non-techy report. Feel free to contact me with more questions and as this week looks sunny I'll be able to get a better feel for it too.

2 thumbs way up on this one!

New Wing

There's a hot new little number in town. It's called the Delta & it's the wing a lot of pilots have been waiting for. It's promising all kinds of technical stuff like increased performance & better glide and the hype surrounding it has gotten people all excited on the world wide paragliding forums.

I got one.

The only problem is, of course, the weather. The weather that is supposed to be awesome and flyable because it's summer. The weather that is supposed to be warm and sunny instead of rainy & windy. The weather that no matter how hard I plead with it will not cooperate & let me fly more than 20 minutes on my new wing. ARG!!!

Almost every day I get someone asking me on Facebook how I like my wing, does it live up to its reputation, have I flown 8 gazillion kilometres on it yet. Almost every day I cry as I look out the window at the weather and think about my new pretty wing sitting all along begging to come out and play.

I think it's time for a road trip. The neighbours aren't too keen with all the burning effigies on my front lawn to the weather gods and it might be a good idea to leave town for a while til things cool down.

Or warm up, as the case may be...

Look Mom! I'm on TV!

And I thought nothing exciting happened in this sleepy little town!

A couple of months ago I got an email from a girl (Tiffany) at our neighbourhood cable TV station. She wanted to do a human interest story on a local paraglider pilot so had contacted the president of our flying club and he'd recommended me. Since I'd just gotten my tandem rating they thought that could be a good part of the story. That, and I'm awesomely cool. Heh.

The day of filming was really fun. My friend Kevin came out to shoot it with me and we did a couple of solo flights in the morning then I took Tiffany tandem. They interviewed Kevin afterwards as well which I'm sure will turn out great (he is also awesomely cool) then we did all the close ups on my gear, clipping in, and various other shots. Now I just have to wait. Have I ever mentioned my issues with patience? Waiting is NOT my forte!

Unfortunately they don't give out copies of their stories so I won't be able to post my 5 minutes of fame. There's a chance it will be on their website some day, they're working on putting a local page together with their news stories but don't have anything up yet. In the meantime I'll be watching channel 4 whenever I'm at home and hunting down a blank tape to sick in the VCR - I knew I hung onto it for a reason!

Goofy grins

How can I not smile when getting paid to have this much fun???


My passengers have been using a camera to film us during our flights and there's one consistent thing I've noticed when watching the videos. There is always a huge goofy grin on my face for most of the flight. Not just here and there like when my passenger squeals with delight or we hit a nice thermal but throughout the whole flight. It got me wondering if it's just the infectious energy from my passenger or if I rock the dorky smile when flying alone, so I took the camera out on my solo flight last night. Besides some big grins cheesing it up for the camera, it seems I have a much saner face when flying by myself. So the task at hand is to practice looking serious & professional while the camera's rolling on tandem and leave the 5-year-old-on-too-much-sugar look for just a few precious moments during the flight. I mean really, flying tandems is my job and you're not supposed to have *that* much fun at work, are you?

Flying for money

Getting paid to do something you love is even better than it sounds. Getting paid to share what you love & getting others hooked on it is even better! My tandem yesterday (seen woo-hoo-ing above) was having so much fun it was hard not to be just as excited as if it was my own first flight.

It's also interesting to see where my flying addiction is taking me. Paragliding has many directions you can pursue, and I'm passionate about almost all of them. At first my goals were simple - safe launches and landings. Then I wanted to stay up for a whole hour instead of doing sled rides, so I'd practice coring thermals and staying up in the air even when it was rough & I wanted to land. When I got better at that I wanted to try flying cross-country and thought maybe that would be my focus - flying far, making personal bests every time I flew and the overall thrill of adventure. After attending a maneuvers course I decided to try my hand at acro and would finish every flight off with a spiral or wingovers...until I went to the Rat Race and turned my attention to competition flying. The strategy and sense of accomplishment were addictive! Last summer when I started kicking the idea of becoming a tandem pilot around I wondered if I would ever decide which direction to go. Would I have to give up flying cross-country to be an instructor? Would I forget how to fly solo after doing a bunch of tandems in a row?

Not to worry. As my friend Julian in Ecuador says, "Everything is possible". While I'm still fairly new at taking people up and sometimes feel awkward flying solo again after so much focus on my tandem flying, as I gain more experience I see a greater possibility for improvement everywhere. A tandem pilot needs to be confident and choose better launch & landing conditions that they may fly in solo. That confidence & decision-making transfers over to solo flying and (hopefully) helps you become a better pilot overall. I'm excited to see where this flying road leads me, but I'm happy to say that here and now is better than I thought it would ever be.

Giving Back

While at the Rat Race I was amazed at the efforts of all the volunteers. People came on their personal vacation time from work to drive us around, be safety checkers, feed us and help out in every way. It made me think about something I heard at a Fun Run once. A runner said it was common in the race circuit to volunteer one time for every few races you do.

So this year I've stepped up and started doing more for my sport. In the past I've joined some work parties to clean up the roads to our launches and volunteered for a couple of hours here and there for certain events. But recently I've gotten a few opportunities to really give back. A few months ago I was offered the position of membership director for our local flying club. Volunteer board positions are notoriously hard to fill, and the girl in charge of this position was having trouble & they needed someone to step in. So I signed up, and through that found myself volunteering to help with our local fundraiser this past weekend too. At first I thought I would just be helping to organize & plan the event but since my tandem rating came through in time I got to help in an even funner way. Each year our club offers discounted tandem flights to the public & the pilots donate their time and the funds to the club. I was lucky enough to do 2 tandems yesterday and couldn't care less that I wasn't paid for them. The joy of bringing people into the air is amazingly fulfilling!

I'm looking forward to helping out more. There are many competitions this summer that attract a much higher level of flying than I'm at (yet) and I'm thinking about heading to some of them for a few days & giving back. Funny that it should be referred to as "giving" since you end up "getting" so much out of it.




Letting my tandem passenger take the controls :)