Paragliding Weather

Here's an introduction to the messy world of weather forecasting for paragliding, condensed from various online resources.

Based on the axiom "A little knowledge is dangerous", I hope we can be a little more wary of each other on the hillside from now on.

Yelagiri Topographic Map

Click on the image to see it in full scale

Sites : Favourable winds
Hanuman (Muthanoor) : NW
Ramakrishna (Ramakrishna Madam) : W, SW
JK (Raneri) : S, SE

Yelagiri panorama

Click on the image to see it in full scale

Ramakrishna site, Yelagiri.

Isolated cloudbursts on the plains as we perfect our parawaiting skills.

I used Autostitch to create this panorama from a series of snaps from my cellphone - that explains the twins on the left.

A weekend at Yelagiri

Here is a first hand account of my first high altitude flying experience at Yelagiri. Since I already put it down in my personal blog, I'll just link it here.

Vijay

Liability Insurance for flying in Europe

Liability insurance covers injury to other people and damage to their property. You need liability insurance to fly legally in most European countries even if a PG rating license is not required.

Here's a contact for obtaining PG third-party liability insurance for flying in Europe.

Sepp Himberger
AXA Insurance
axa@fly-koessen.at

I've never had to actually test if they pay up (thankfully), but Sepp was friendly enough. He even invited me to fly at his home site in Koessen, Austria.

It costs 70 euros for a year. You need to fax him an application form with the details of your glider and license, in my case the FAI license from the Aero Club of India, New Delhi.

You can find more details about their third party liability insurance coverage here.

Note that emergency rescue and world wide coverage are only available to EU citizens. Last year, Sepp told me that I was covered only for liability and only for flying in the EU.

Traffic in the Sky

Was at yelagiri the past weekend, the 30th and the 31st of May.
Turned out to be rather brilliant, the monsoons hadn't quite penetrated that far east yet and for the most part, we had beautifully clear skies to dive into. :)

Got around to my first, and more importantly; solo, high altitude flight from RK (if I'm not mistaken) take off site. Was a bit nervous actually, not a simple task jumping into a 600m void for the first time, but I found that all that disappeared once I was in the air.

Wriggled into my harness, sat comfortably and had a most pleasant flight down.
While landing though, in the process of avoiding the ditch on the left side, I managed to veer off into the thorny bushes to the right, but luckily enough, I manged to land in a slight clearing so I didn't quite suffer the inch long thorns that so many of the other para-gliders faced on the same landing patch.

Managed only one flight that day though, exhausted as we were from the drive and the psychotic tamil nadu heat. Tried another by the evening after a nice lunch of parotas and curry but someone forgot to pray to the Indian wind god (Vayu) and he therefore, rather pettily, decided to punish us with the most beautiful of breezes going in entirely the wrong direction.

Sigh! C'est la vie.

Wasn't a total waste though, we manged a nice bottle of beer each, with pleasant conversations of arbitrary plans ahead of wonderful glide-able mountains in distant lands... and of course, all this sitting on top of a mountain with a view of orange lightning striking the landscape.

The next day was quite good I'd say, got to fly twice, and even managed to get a video, a minute or so long from about 400m off the ground. Lots of wind, weirdest possible positions to accommodate the camera while trying not the drop the same while I switch hands to control each of the brakes.
Attempting to maintain a course to the bases as well.



Didn't quite work out though, realized that I'd drifted off too far to the right when Vrata told me so. At which point in time, I stop gawking at the beautiful scenery and concentrated on landing. Bit of a messy landing, but nothing to complain about I'd say.

We managed to get up again, and had another round of flights before lunch.
I've forgotten actually, did we have lunch? Hmmm...

Anyway, amazing flight, tried leaning and turning instead of just braking on one side, found it to be rather comfortable. The glider behaved brilliantly, and I managed not to get that bit of churning/nauseating feeling when you free fall.

We managed to get back again, hoping for another flight, though the winds had died down by then.
Vrata managed a forward take off in the low winds and some time later Robin was off and some more time later Vijay got off too.

In the process of course, we went thought around seven million forms of uncertainties, about whether we'd get to fly or not. Some times there'd be no wind, sometimes too much and other times the wind would just have some sort of mood swing and arrive towards us in the most inconceivable of directions. And of course, the rain!

I'm quite sure it was a para-glider that composed the nursery rhyme...

Rain rain go away,
Come again another day,
Little Johnny wants to fly!

I think there was some loss in translation somewhere and someone turned fly into play. :)

I wonder if there are other sports that are so heavily governed by the weather. I guess one would call off a cricket match or two if it rained, but I doubt a few degrees of change in the wind direction or a sudden lack of it ever kept anyone else from whacking a tennis ball around.
For some reason, I get the feeling that para-gliders would make excellent meteorologists!

But such is the way of the para-glider I guess, if I could call myself that quite so soon.

Yelagiri Taj gardens

Found this great little garden retreat at the entrance of Yelagiri this w.e. They are a little strict on alcohol which albeit has it's upside in that there are only quiet families staying there. Anyhow, the place is set on 12 acres with a lovely garden space and the food is quite good. So we've booked for the coming w.e. a 4 bed room suite (with bathrooms, 2000 Rs plus tax, additional bed for 200 Rs) a rather good deal if you ask me. Bfast for 100 Rs, Lunch 150 an Dinner 150, veg or non-veg. A Delux (dbl) room is 1200 + tax and the premium rooms (very nice) go at 1500 + tax.

If you guys want to book, here is the number: 04179 245 231/295 445/245 376, or you can call Mr Salman on +91 9840029445.

There is also a web site: www.zeenathtaj.com, email: zeenathtaj@gmail.com

folks, its mas(s)ala Tee time

This sketch is the basic tee concept, depending on your likes/dislikes answer the questions in the link below - the tee is (likely) to be produced based on the majority answers to each of the questions (afterall, we are a democracy)

Take the poll here

Advance course and new recruits

The one goal of the school set up between pgMassala and GetOffUrAss.com has been primarily to get get more paragliders in the air and form a critical number so as to get the snowball rolling effect for the sport here in south India. With places like Pune and Bir/Manali having really developped the sport, it is about time that South India got it's fair share of pilots as well. Hence the club, hence the school. So it is with a little pride that we announce today the start of our very first Advance course. We have already finished 3 batches of basic course out of which 6 students are now taking the next step to become paragliding pilots. We start tomorrow with Naveen, Vijay, Bharath and Sam. We hope to have Kanishk and Vinay join us next w.e. to make it 6. The outline of the course is as follows:

Day 1 & 2: Chotta Hill flying. The student will be required to continue from where (s)he left of in the basic course. Emphasis on perfecting take off technique in order to ensure a minimum amount of independence on the take off. The student will do 2 to 3 chotta hill flights with the goal of achieving autonomous flight (no guidance on the radio) by his/hers third flight.

Day 3: Tandem flying. The student will be taken on a tandem flight with the instructor. The take off will be done by the instructor from a certain hight. After settling into the flight the student will be given the commands and asked to do a few turns in order to gain an awareness of the basic piloting skills required for executing turns in the air, straight and level flight as well as maintaining a heading in a cross wind. The instructor will demonstrate the "big ears" technique to the student. We will then proceed to the landing field where the student will execute the approach to the landing field under instruction. The final approaching and landing will be done by the instructor,

Day 4, 5 and 6: The student will be guided through 3 or 4 flights from the top of the mountain. (S)he will be asked to take off from the mountain under the supervision of the assistant instructors and under radio guidance will manoeuvre over the landing field. The instructor will be at the landing field to guide the student through the approach and final landing. Eventually the student should be able to fly with minimal radio guidance in order to become autonomous in take off, flight and landing. At this point the student will be able to continue evolving within the flying club.

So we hope to have some new recruits into the pgMassala club for the start of next season.

If its spring it must be billing

Spent a month in Bir/Billing this spring. Didn't attempt a single XC flight ... while Debu Choudhry broke the Indian site record twice in the space of two weeks with flights of 176km and 211km !

Here's a video from the trip. Njoi maadi ...

Bir / Billing Spring 2009 from Hari Nair on Vimeo.

Heres whats been cooking

Spent 3 days around end Feb at Kamshet. In terms of flying the trip was just about worthwhile, with the expected West winds not stabilising and the days being spent between Shellar and Tower East face. The best flight of the trip was the day I landed at Kamshet, and it being a weekend it was just me and Anish soaring in the silky smooth evening conditions at Shellar. The rest of the 3 flights that I managed to get in the trip were bombed-out affairs with a memorable one being riding a big thermal in front of Tower taking me upto 1300m and then finding sink around it that dumped me as fast as I had gone up and with all four of us flying at that time bombing out in quick succession. But apart from flying, as usual, the Kamshet trip was fun, with all the pilots and students at Pendu's base camp at Khandala. To round off the trip, before getting on to the flight back to Bengaluru to be in time for work, had to drop a friends RD350 to his place at Chinchwad after riding for 40kms starting at 4.30 in the morning from nippy Khandala, which was an awesome trip by itself.

This was followed the week after with I, Hari and Venu driving down to Vagamon for another long weekend. Cranky weather meant that the first 2 days were spent PGwaiting with just one small exploratory flight by Hari, but with some good timepass hops at the bunny hill. Day 3 looked promising, but after launching at midday and getting caught in between the west winds at takeoff and the east ones higher up, mixed up with the infamous mid-day thermals meant that I had a tough time keeping the wing over my head. After a few botched toplanding efforts and a big assymetric, had to give in to the punchy conditions and I took the long glide down to the smallish school ground in the valley for landing. Again, though not much flying, had good fun with Vinil and friends at his new cottage. And, had an important realisation during the to and fro drive from Bengaluru - the Gypsy is fun when at the drivers seat, anywhere else sucks.

So whats been the rest of the club been upto? Vrata, Rajesh and Chetan have been flying at Yelagiri on and off, Avinash did some good airtime at Virar and Hari is just returning to base after a month long trip to Billing.

And whats coming up? With Nandi still out of bounds, the hope is that Nandi 2 and Yelagiri will get us some airtime with the west winds expected to kick in soon.

keep soaring,
arvind

Spread the word

Guys, we need to spread the word for the paragliding school.  There is a batch being organised by GetOffUrAss.com for the end of the month, I am also planning on starting an advanced course for mid-april.  Spread the word and let's get some people enrolled.

Yelagiri JK Take off videos

A couple of Videos shot by friends at take off.




A lovely frontal collapse in thermic conditions as Rajesh fails to stabilise his glider after take off resulting in a nasty surprise for him.

Next batch announced

We are planning a 2nd batch for beginners during the last w.e. of March, 26, 27, 28 and 29th. For more information please contact Robin from GetOffUrAss.com (+919980785225). We are also starting an advanced course for those who have completed the beginners batch#1 or #2. The advance course will start in mid-April.

A Sunday in Yelagiri

Some of us went out to Yelagiri last Sunday as the winds were predicted from the SSE, ideal for the Jayakrishnan take off. It was a wonderful day, hot and with a lovely set of smooth thermals kicking in at regular intervals. Rajesh had a short flight to start with and then I managed a respectable 45 mins as I caught several thermals that sent me some 500 m above take off over the Yelagiri plateau. I eventually landed back on the plateau in order to grab some lunch and get a good nap under a tree. The afternoon saw pleanty of restitution winds sweeping in and I had a lovely little flight down to the landing field in order to reception Akshay on his first solo flight. Akshay has enrolled on the advance course and has really got to grips with the paraliding. We need to work on his landing aproach, but overall he was happy with his first flight.

Here is a short video of the photos that were shot on that day



more photos on our picasa page

For those aspiring to do a cross country flight in Yelagiri, I would say the conditions are just ripe and will probably stay optimum for another couple of weeks. This is my first real season there and the thermals were very clean and large enough to catch. A couple of years back I did a 60K flight in Nandi around this time of the year, but Nandi degrades in early to mid April as large thunder clouds develop in the mid afternoon. Yelagiri I think will stay dry as it moves into April, but I do expect the increase in heat to render the air hotter and more homogeneous, thus making the thermal very choppy and small. I hope to get a little more flying experience later in April.

More photos cont...

Ramesh landing at the bottom of chotta hill

More photos from the first batch of Basic course

Climbing up to the chotta hill

Resting under the Big Banyan

Big Banyan chill out at we wait for the winds to die down

Ground handling session at the Big Banyan

Basic Course: batch 1, Jan/Feb 09

Ground Handling at Hoskote

Ground Handling at Hoskote

Chotta Hill take off

take off from chotta hill

Read up Vijay's account of his completion of the Basic Course

Completion of First Paragliding course at Bangalore

PG Massala is happy to announce that it has completed the first paragliding course conducted at Bangalore in collaboration with BMCindia.com and GetOffUrAss.com. The course saw the participation of 8 students, Akshay, Ramesh, Vijay, Anand, Barath, Krishna, Abha and Kanishk. It was a successful Basic course with everyone managing at least 1 flight from the chota hill, with the most ardent participants achieving 3 solo flights. Some videos will be posted later on.

After completion of each course, PG Massala inspects each gliders for any wear and tear, this means inspecting the sailcoth as well as each lines to make sure no damage has occured. If any are found, these are repaired in the Sailloft facility of Raj Hamsa Ultralights Pvt Ltd, the only company in Bangalore with such facilities. The gliders are then cleaned and packed properly awaiting the next batch. This inspections ensures the longevity of the gliders as well as safety for the next students.

Ten Men Flying under Giant Paraglider

A friend of mine recently sent me this video of ten mad French men taking off under a giant paraglider.... 9 men jump off in flight and sky dive. It is interesting to watch the solo landing of the pilot at the end of the flight. The wing is so large that he is barely making any head way and looking at the previous landings of the parachute jumps, it looks like there is very little wind!