Based in Dundee and having 4,000+ hrs airtime since the late 90’s, Murray Hay is teaching paragliding to both those new to the sport and to BHPA ‘pilots’ seeking re-training.

This is certainly a place you want to check out if you seek taring around the area.

You can also check quite a lot of his video clips posted on YouTube before deciding who to train with.

You can reach him on 0783-11-22-480 (but not too late at night, hei? ;-) )

The bernoulli priciple tells us that: ‘when a gas increases in velocity , its pressure decreaces. ……..

This is one of the classic ‘miss quotes’ of Bernoulli Theorem….

What Bernoulli in fact states is:

Total Pressure = Static Pressure + Dynamic Prressure, there is a specific requirment under Bernoulli that the value of Total Pressure MUST be a constant (for any given altitude)

What this means is that as the velocity of the flow past a surface increases (i.e. greater airspeed) the result is the Static Pressure acting on that surface will decrease.

It is important for PG pilots to understand that in the case of a PG wing it is the diffrence in Static pressure acting on inside/outside the wing membrane that gives our wings their ‘rigidity’, hence the concept of ADDING some brake in rough air to ‘pressurise’ the wing will in fact result in a REDUCTION in the diffrence in out/in Static pressure and so INCREASE the risks to the pilot as the wing in fact becomes less ‘rigid’ and of course any gust is now a higher % of the airspeed!

NB. Fly at near 20kts and a 5kt gust is 25% of your airspeed and the glider (tail gust situation) remains above 15kt ‘instant’ airspeed… while slow to 15kts and the gust is not 33% of your airspeed and a ‘tail gust’ drops the gliders ‘instant’ airspeed to below flying speed i.e. 10kts!

Note: there are significant safety implications inherent in the core Bernoulli theory errors that were introduced into PG ‘normal’ flight theory in the early days of the sport (due to the fact we fly ’soft’ wings!)

The safety implications can be seen in the fact that 95% of the PG wing theory I teach DIRECTLY (yes I did use Capts!) contridicts what is normaly taught…..

As a result over the last 10+ years the accident rate my students have seen (75% of my students are RE-training BHPA ‘pilots’ is less than 5% of the accidents rates of the ‘normal’ trained UK PG pilots…

In case you were wondering there are differences in the way different states regulates the usage and furchase.

Sure many people would say that the US doesn’t require a lisence for ultralights but in fact the definition of an ultralight there is slightly different then the definition in the U.K

Ultralights that are slightly heavier then the standard ultralight or that have two seats are considered now light sport aircraft in the US and one has to have his sport pilot license in order to fly it.

The lisence requirements in the U.K are considered harder but they are actually very similar to the requirements in the US.

Using ultralights or microlights between borders even inside Europe can be tricky as there are different requirements. I suppose flying from the U.K to France is easier then the other way as France has almost no regulation for ultralights.

But there are no international accepted standards and in an era when In most affluent countries, microlights or ultralights now account for about 20% of the civil aircraft fleet, I suppose the next step is to have the ICAO acknowledge this category to enable international flights more easily.

There are much more men then women that are into paragliding, there are much more young people then elderly ones in the field, but is there really a good reason? I’ve read this post stating the world age records and found out the people in their 70th are a rare but existing phenomenon in the paragliding field.

In Israel, paragliding has some history, starting with the Zoom Club pioneering efforts of Yair Shachar. He in turn taught a certain Baruch Gurwitz to fly, at the age of 70! In fact, in 1998 Baruch earned an entry in the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s oldest paraglider pilot. He was 77. That record has not lasted though! Since then, a short film has been made about the exploits of a 79 year old Polish pilot. Miroslaw Dembinski produced the film, winning a prize in the Banff Mountain Film Festival.

As for gender, paragliding is fun and there are women that enjoy it but it still appeals more to men. Can you imagine your mother paragliding on their free time? Why not it sounds cool!

I happened to visit this post and checked a link to an online glide simulator that was claimed not to work but as I checked it out it worked just fine. If you want to try and play online gliding check it out. It took some getting used to but it is fun.