Hi all,
Paragliding Reviews has now a new website: http://www.paragliding-reviews.com.
Please feel free to post your comment and give us your feedback.
Best Regards
Paragliding Reviews Team
PG Task Force report and recomendations
Posted: December 14, 2011 in NewsTags: paragliding community, pilot skills
From FAI Website:
“The CIVL Paragliding Competitions Safety Task Force has produced its first report, which includes a summary of the work that has been undertaken and a number of short term and long term recommendations. The Task Force was constituted by CIVL after the tragic events at Piedrahita in July, to try to determine and analyse the causes of the high number of incidents at this Category 1 World Championship, and to identify areas where they considered that safety could be improved.
With a mix of expertise and experience including paraglider designers and manufacturers, competition pilots and organisers, the Task Force has concluded that there were multiple factors contributing to the incidents, and that although the type of glider was deemed to be a factor in most of the incidents, it was not the sole cause of any of them.
The work of the Task Force has covered a wide range of subjects, including a study of pilot skills and experience, competition structure and task setting as well as lengthy discussions concerning the wings themselves.
Their already extensive work has been further compounded by the recent announcement that some ‘competition class’ performance gliders have just completed the flight test portion of the EN certification process, the subsequent reactions of the paragliding community, and especially the situation initiated by the test houses to temporarily suspend the testing of this type of wing.
As a result, it has been difficult for the Task Force to come up with a definitive set of short term recommendations, as the situation is likely to change. However, the Task Force firmly believes that the re-introduction as soon as possible, of some form of competition class for paragliders should be considered. It emphasises that such a move, must be in conjunction with other actions, including a significant increase in the qualification criteria for pilots to be eligible to compete in Category 1 events, and the introduction of class (competition class and serial class) based Championships.
The Task Force sincerely hopes that their work will help all interested parties (CIVL, PMA, competition organisers and pilots) to discuss the issues involved in this complex situation and collaborate to determining both short term and long term solutions that will both improve safety and provide a satisfactory way forward for the competition scene.”
You can find the report here Task Force InterimReport Dec08_2011
Fly Safe
Hi,
“CIVL and the Paragliding World Cup Association (PWCA) have agreed on a continuing programme of cooperation aimed at creating a worldwide synchronised paragliding competition system. Stage one is early publication on the FAI competition calendar of all the planned PWC Cat 2-sanctioned tour events as well as Test Events for FAI Cat 1 competitions, followed by a merging of pilot databases.
Both organisations are keen to work together to ensure that there is a single premier individual event and a single premier team event on the FAI calendar. This may require some restructuring of CIVL’s Cat 1 Championship format to split the FAI World Paragliding Championships into separate individual and team competitions.
Both parties see 2015 as the earliest possible target date as bids for 2015 FAI World Championships will be made in 2013. Further discussions will most certainly be taking place at CIVL’s 2012 Plenary in February” – FAI WebSite
Hi all,
we are preparing some good news for this Christmas. The whole paragliding reviews blog will suffer a upgrade 
we are really thrilled with this. We are also preparing a new project associated with the blog. We thank your support and constant good feedback we have been receiving everyday.
Stay Alert…more news soon
Hi,
The accident that occurred with the test pilot Alain Zoller, made Air-Turquoise stop the tests on top end EN D glider.
According to Air-Turquoise:
The pilot from the accident last Friday just went to his home from hospital. He is still in bad shape, but every day we see big steps. The pilot has received overwhelming many “best wishes” and he would like to thank everyone for nice thinking and support. When he find the power, he will return your emails and sms’s.
Since this accident, we have done few meetings and discussions between different parties and for Air Turquoise, who is working for the safety of the sport, we have come to the conclusion that we will not certify high-end performance gliders in the frame of EN standard. This kind of glider doesn’t belong into EN philosophy. It doesn’t matter which brand the tested glider was. It is not only because of this accident that we wish to get out high-end performance gliders of EN standard, it could have been any of them. Also we want to point out that we have had other type of gliders in the past, where the pilots have felt black-outs and the g-force. It happens that the glider fails the tests, it is a test pilot’s job to find out the gliders behavior.
We have learned how important it is to test above water with any kind of gliders and of course to have the boat on the lake. What we also have learned is that everyone of us should update the first aid skills. Last Friday we were followed by one luck after the other, but we don’t want to trust on good luck. We have learned to take care of each other, and that a person’s life is worth much more than continuing test such gliders.
We have had internal briefings and concluded that our infrastructure was good, it was working well last Friday. However, we have already found many details which can be improved and that will be improved. There are so many parameters involved in such accident; the pilot, the harness, the rescue-chute+extra one, g-force, the gliders behaviour, black-outs, the boat driver, the rescue team/accessories and so on. All these parameters are deciding the outcome of the pilot’s health.
We want in the future, share our experiences especially to those who running SIV courses, testing paragliders, acro-pilots etc. It is important to speak about and how we can make this activity safer.
Next Friday, there will be a round table meeting. We will try to find out the next steps.
Hi,
our friend and Redbull X-Alps Athlete Nuno Virgilio has sent us the new X-Alps 2011 DVD.
The 2011 X-Alps DVD is full of great footage of what most of us consider the most challenging and hardest adventure race in Paragliding. Thirty athletes and 864 kilometers thrive this amazing adventure from Salzburg(Austria) to Monaco(Italy) all across the Alps.
The DVD is full of content, such as the movie of the whole race, details about tactics, positioning throuhout the race and amazing aerial views of pilots on their way to Monaco. This DVD also contains some extras: the route explanation, a special video about 2011 winner (Chrigel Maurer) and the best bits of team’s cameras.
The footage is amazing and show us all the difficulties, bad weather , decisions , etc, that X-Alps pilots went through this year. The helicopter images are a great plus.
There are 2 languages for narration: English and German. No subtitles.
Final Conclusion:
We believe this is a great DVD to all paragliding pilots. It’s thrilling, and show us the difficulties pilots felt together with great landscape scenarios of the Alps. If you like adventure and paragliding this DVD is a best buy!
Reserve your’s at nunovirgilio@gmail.com
