4 ms·
I've just been getting into paragliding (i.e. without the motor), and have been absolutely loving it. It blew my mind to learn that by riding thermals, paraglid
by austinl 5y ago
I've just been getting into paragliding (i.e. without the motor), and have been absolutely loving it. It blew my mind to learn that by riding thermals, paragliders can essentially stay in the air indefinitely. My longest flight so far has only been about 15 minutes, but people are regularly in the air for hours.
For some more inspiration, check out "speed flying" — essentially, paragliding with skies:
https://youtu.be/UwWLnaME0CI https://youtu.be/UwWLnaME0CI
- ngngngng 5y agoUtah has a couple spots that are popular for paragliding. I'll never forget the time we visited one of the popular launch spots and saw a man get so high within minutes that we couldn't see him anymore.
- mrtksn 5y agoI used to do paragliding back in college, definitely prefer it to paramotoring because no engine noise and much more agile wings. However I wouldn't relate it with "speed flying" because speed flying is a truly an extreme sport with extremely high mortality but paragliding is a chill flying unless you choose to make it extreme. Paragliding is so safe these days, the wings are very stable and spontaneously return to airworthy shape if disrupted. Flying is very chill, to do something at high speed you usually need to build up energy by spiralling or swinging the wing. Speed flying on the other hand uses much smaller wings and that makes them very dynamic. They fly at much higher speeds and they have high kinetic energy all the time which results in very large movements even at small inputs from the pilot.
- panick21_ 5y agoLiving in the Alps I have seen so many of these. I always prefer to stick to riding on the snow, rather then flying.