Piperactive

As I sit here in late July in England with a gale blowing outside and rain on the way I thought it useful to make a couple of points on Simon’s post of 20 July. Where to train - 1. Weather: Concentrated training is important when learning new skills. So, as a beginner it is important to have a sustained period of reliable training weather in order to become competent at wing handling and use of the engine. It is also important that you have the best chance of calm weather for the first few flights: This is simply not reliably available in the UK. A lot of UK schools ( light aircraft, parachuting, Paragliding and Paramotoring ) bring out the old chestnut that you should train in the weather you will fly in at home: This is nonsense. You should train in a climate that gets you the most concentrated training time. (I fell for the UK line when doing my light aircraft training and so spent over a year getting my licence when I could have achieved the same in about 10 days in Florida, I made the same mistake with Paragliding and spent a week on the ground learning nothing much as it was too windy/wet to even ground handle. I learnt my lesson and have since done paragliding, paramotoring, sky diving and sub aqua courses almost exclusively abroad.) 2. Instructors: Instructors need to be regularly training students, preferably year round, and this is not possible in the UK because of the weather. Instructors operating abroad with better weather or changing locations as the weather window dictates are training students almost daily and so are fully and daily actively current with the (possibly dangerous) quirks of student behaviour. This is why many excellent UK instructors spent so much of their time abroad. 3.Equipment: Students need to have access to appropriate kit with spares and repair facilities readily available - All this demands significant investment from the school. A foreign based (benign weather) school with a high through put of students has generally better financial resources and so a higher business incentive to replace equipment as and when needed. 4. Cost. Time has a value for all of us and most have to take holiday leave to train. To complete a one week course abroad at the cost of a £30-£60 Ryanair flight is a lot cheaper than spending months commuting to wet and windy UK sites on the off chance you might be able to train. What you get from training courses. A beginner will spend about a week becoming safe with wing handling and dealing with the engine and will manage a few supervised flights. A beginners course is a heavy workload and so good instructors concentrate on making you safe for flying and safe in benign air conditions - anything more would be dangerous for most people. After that you either join a UK club for further monitoring as you build your skills or, as I did, go on to complete intermediary and advanced courses (abroad for the reasons given above). Intermediate courses consolidate the skills learnt before and introduce further flying techniques, such as cross country flights, use of speed bar, trimmers and wing tip steering. A point here from Simon’s post - as you cannot safely land your wing with trimmers out you must be at a sufficiently adept level to be able to manage trimmer controls calmly and to be able to automatically reconfigure the wing for landing ( especially in the event of an engine failure) - it is most unlikely that a beginner, in his first weeks training, would be able to do this reliably and safely. Advanced courses build on previous skills and teach more advanced skills which are best learnt only in the hands of expert instructors. I have completed 4 training courses ( 3 in Spain, 1 in Italy) and 2 overseas expeditions with SkySchool and have a third expedition with them this winter in Oman. (I have also done about 5 weeks Paragliding with them in the Alps & Spain and 2 SIV courses with them in Turkey). Insurance is a simple issue - get an insurer who will pay out if you have an accident - Axa & BHPA both do the job you pay them for.