Paragliding mistake at Ager Spain 

Glad that you are OK. There was several mistakes: 1) to fly over the cliff when there is thermal with other pilots on left, 2) when over the cliff, had to use speedbar and C risers to fly back, 3) If cannot fly back, go downwind to avoid rotor zone. Keep safe :)

Safest option after realising being too far back the ridge with no forward speed would be run down wind far from the ridge. Landing in rotor is not ideal. Glad you are safe

So glad you're ok and thank you for sharing this for the community. It's interesting to see how we respond to situations that we "know" the technique for, when we've made a mistake and get scared. I imagine that when you realized you were further behind the ridge than you wanted to be, you may have thought "oh, I'm in a bad place" and that story kept you from persisting on the speedbar. You knew where you needed to be, but you didn't persist in doing the things that you 'knew' you needed to do to get there. These are emotional lessons. The technical lessons - how to use the speedbar in active air, with confidence and persistence - can only come with time and only once the emotional lessons are integrated. The lesson might sound like "When I get scared, I lose confidence in my decision making and my technical abilities. So, when I recognize my fear, I fly immediately to a safe landing, and try again on my next flight." You really shouldn't be pushing through huge fear responses while paragliding. If you are, you're in over your head. A guide/instructor can help you in these moments. I make a lot of decisions for my students on XC Clinics that allow them to relax and do what they know. Here's a video about high wind, that also has a lot of lessons about using your speedbar in active air. Hope it helps. Again, thanks for sharing and safe flights!!! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lVuWWxcbka4.htmlsi=hh1HoGIzbtWr0o0g

Hi I did a Volbiv from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean last summer and came by Ager for a week because some friends were flying there. I will comment a couple of things: 1. Know your glider. On your EN-A its just difficult to correct such mistakes. I've been flying 2liners for some years now and you just have a massive safety margin in terms of speed and control during accelerated flight. (Not saying you should step up on a 2 liner) 2. Know the area (wind systems) and generally always know where the wind is coming from. Thermals are always better on their luv side. The lee side of a thermal is often very strong sink plus the wind that you now need to penetrate to get back into lift. 3. Learn how you fly active on speed bar. Start that high above the terrain. Best in not super aggressive conditions. At some point you can fly the whole ridge of Ager on speed bar using rear risers. (This is quiet advanced but you have to be able to push your speed bar in such a situation. You should have been able to get over the edge. 4. Commit: You basically had two and a half options here. Option 1: Speed bar over the ridge. Would be my first choice until I realize I won't make it. Then option 2: Turn around and fly downwind. If in sink, push some speed bar. Behind Ager I did fly some nice flat land thermals until I reconnected with the higher mountain ridges. To just stay there and top land is rather risky as you realized and not really a smart option. 5. Flying should be intuitive but in a way you should always have a plan B. Anyway, glad you're safe and nice greetings from Switzerland 🙂

Glad you ended up safe. As a Hang glider pilot; Ager was my first foreign, mountain flying holiday. I survived the week unscathed. But a paraglider pilot, with us at the event, did not! I had just landed at the ‘Campsite’, after a 40minute ‘Top to Bottom’, was packing away my glider; looked up saw a hang glider & paraglider, close together, approaching to land. The paraglider applied (too much) brake, to let the hang glider get ahead and land first. Next thing I saw was the paraglider collapse the left side of his wing. The chute span rapidly, tangling his lines and he proceeded to fall some 300ft onto the rock hard ground in the campsite. A colleague was just exiting the shower block and was shocked to see this poor guy hit the ground 10ft in front of him. Says he saw him bounce about 6ft. He was smashed up. There was no ambulance available! We struggled, initially, to stop the locals from moving him but, to no avail. After a while they decided to just pick him up, plonk him in the back of a landrover and drove him off somewhere. Never heard about him again. Hope he survived? It was a lesson well learned; Just how quickly things can go tragically wrong. I’m sure, seconds before the guys wing collapsed, he thought he was doing the right thing and had no idea what was about to happen! Ager is not for the faint hearted. The air can be extremely turbulent (even without getting behind the ridge!) and the weather can change rapidly. On a couple of days there, at the end of the day, I witnessed clear skies morph into large Thunder clouds in around 20 mins!!! Ager has a wonderful pair of high ridges which can provide for some great flying but, the place can be ruthless on those who are ignorant or disrespectful of the conditions. If you’re a ‘low air time’ pilot or new to Ager, I can only recommend you spend your first day there talking to other, more experienced, pilots. Watch what they do, observe conditions throughout that day, see how the more experienced handle them before taking ‘the leap’ yourself.

It's so helpful to see a mistake happening and then what it's like in the rotor. Thanks a lot for sharing!

Thanks for sharing your experience with us. I bet you learned more in that 10 minutes than many learn in years! Glad you're safe.

Throwing your reserve on top of the cliff would’ve been a huge mistake in my opinion. Very strong winds, no control of landing, I don’t think it would’ve ended well. I would say if you have a flying wing over your head you should not throw the reserve.

Oh man, there's more than one lesson to be learned here. Do yourself a favor and come back to this video in a year or two. There were two moments where it looked like you could come back, even without speedbar, but you kept flying along the ridge. Glad you're ok, happy landings!

im glad that your ok! thank you for sharing this video so other can learn from this situation too!

Thanks for sharing ! I learned from your experience !👍👍🍻

Thanks for sharing, glad you are OK. Good job putting a study on what went wrong and learning from it.

Thanks for sharing, very good lesson!

Thanks for sharing, that's a mistake everyone could have made. Happy to hear you're ok.

Very good control in the lee side! Glad you are safe :)

Huge props to the wing as well. Took those rotors like a champ. As beginners we often don't even realize what we are flying in and in this case it was a good thing. When I got into such rotors on my 2 liner I just nope straight out of there into the valley to land... No fcking around and finding out.

good lessons learned... most of the time we need do make a quick decision and the first thing is to keep our 180-degree view around... you've got a good ending for this time... thanks for sharing

Thanks for sharing. Yes it is good to get reminded of what we learned long ago.

This was pretty awful to watch. Based on your situation I was really sure you were going to have a very nasty fall because of rotor. Looks like you didn’t make any decisions in you flight at all - you didn’t decide to fly the ridge, you ended up drifting back over it. Once you were over the ridge you didn’t decide to fly away from the ridge and get out of Venturi and avoid inevitable rotor. Once your indecision had committed to you landing had plenty of time to turn into wind so you had a gentle top landing. Thanks for sharing, really glad to see it was a lot less dramatic than it could of been. Safe flying

I made exactly the same mistake at the same location but in the lower ridge (I uploaded the gopro video to my channel just to share the mistake as well). I was very scared, can't imagine what you felt up there! Glad you are ok man!

Thanks for sharing, this will help beginners a lot. It's good to see what happens when you are on the wrong side of the mountain. Glad that you didn't hurt yourself (besides a few scratches). Wondering, were you not able to fly away from the ridge to see if you could get some lift to create enough clearance and try to fly back over the ridge? Seems that the weather was very active.

Wow, good to see you are save. I also fly the Symphonia and for me it's nice to see how the glider react in this situation. A perfect mix of savety and performance. But, yout don't want these collapses on (full) speedbar. I'm right back from SIV and can tell, in this situation on full bar the symphonia react's pretty agressive. So, for me the right choise were to turn around and land save in the next valley.

coupling the structural integrity of the lighting body to the stall is a HUGE design flaw

Never spend time close behind the ridge!!! When you realize you are stuck, turn and get away!!! Land down on the flats as far from the ridge as possible! Never linger in the rotor, or worse: try to land there!! Lucky guy you!

Gliding is constant life and death decision making. We should always have contingency plans and know what we are going to do in case those contingencies arise. This is a good learning incident for you and others, thanks for posting.

Thanks for sharing so we can all learn and experience. Looked scary 👊🏻

That is the exact way I feel vulnerable when on my PG. With my Hang Glider I just blast around pretty much where I like no worries.

Good scary video. Definitely should have made a right down wind while you were still high. Looks like there were plenty of roads to get retrieved.

You lucky, bastard! I'm glad you're OK. Thanks for sharing this!

Can you give us your decision process? You wrote that you were freaking out after the collapse, which is kinda normal :) But wondering why you kept doing the same thing until the landing. You wanted to go back to the other side, no matter what? Else? My assumption : you had plan A and never considered a plan B, C or D. Thanks for sharing in any case, it's never easy to show our mistakes but it's there that you and us can learn the most :) Cheers and glad you are fine!

Happy you are safe, of course. Just wondering why you didn't consider flying off to land below on the lee side? Why go back over the ridge?

Major 3rd mistake: trying get in front for a long time even if it's already too late. You end up in the nastiest aerological place and have to improvise a dangeous landing. You're very lucky to only had a simple collapse without change in direction, rotation or cascade after. When you can't go were you want : don't force it. ESCAPE ! fly away from the cliff, on the right side in your case. With that height you could go far away in a safe place.

your biggest mistake was to stay near the cliff at all costs..... the moment you knwo that you are not going to make it you need to turn 180° into the lee side and go fully accelerated in the direction of the lee and leave it behind..... happened also to me already... and if you fly ore often in this area maybe a fatser glider could be a solution to prevent futher problems.... stay safe bro

Thank you for posting this it's interesting to see how high in the air you realized your mistake. I always try to watch these videos because I'm learning to be a pilot and I'm flying an epsilon 9. I'm heavy on the wing. Does the height of the cliff effect how deep the Ventura effect goes? How far away do you see this landing place or did you just guess that something would appear?

Question, When it was clear that you were in bother, ie May not, unlikely to get on front why did you not elect to fly downwind?

Very nice control. When in doubt, fly the wing. Great job.

Thanks for sharing the video- I learnt a lot

Thank you for sharing this.

Glad you’re ok. Bet you don’t do that again :). So can’t you just pull the a and b risers and it work like a speed bar? I’m not a pilot… was in the early 90s. Dixon white was my instructor. He was cool :)

Lesson 1: Don't panic! Lesson 2: Have plan B and C Lesson 3: Stay away from the terrain

Yeah next time just fly downwind and land far behind any cliff where there is no rotors . Thx for sharing.

Looked like at 2.40 amd 2.50 you were close to making it, butbtehn you crabbed to the right, losing your forward gains. Hard to judge on a wide angle lens tho. And once commited, turn and run as far as you can

Glad you are ok bro. Why you not go left on 02:45 ?

Why did you not choose to fly away from te mountain and land somewhere in the valley

Glad to hear you're safe! How far did you have to walk to get picked up?

It would be much clearer and more understandable if the video had no music, also if there was no speeding up of the video. A very unpleasant situation, it all ended well.

Quel dommage, on met souvant trop l'accent sur le parachute de secour alors que l'accelerateur est aussi vitale, un accelerteur a fond t'aurait sauvé. Finalement la plus dangereuse des erreurs que je peux pointer, c'est d'avoir decider de te poser dans les rouleaux de la montagne surtout avec des vents si forts. Si tu te rend compte que tu te fais assipirer, il faut accepter sont sort et ce laisser emporter par le vents pour t'éloigner le plus loins possible de la montagne et atterir dans la valé suivante fuyant ainsi les rouleaux potentiellement mortel de la montagne. Ce faire aspirer comme ca est tres fréquent quand tu vole principalement en vent dynamique et Il ne faut pas se laisser tromper par sa vitesse au sol, par exemple un vent dynamique de 35 km/h frappant les falaises est dévié et passe d'une direction parlelle au sol a diagonale au sol, Sa vitesse au sol parait moindre (ex:25km/h) car les autres 10km/h sont convertie en ascendance ce qui te donne un faut sentiment de sécurité, seulement une fois derriere la montagne(ou trop loin devant) tu perd l'ascendance et tu retrouve a nouveau avec un vent parallele au sol a 35 km/h. Merci d'avoir Partagé :) ! (désolé pour l'orthographe)

I don’t know if it’s just the camera but your risers look way too far apart. They’re right at your elbows

Coool you are fine!!!!

Your lucky you didn’t get big front tuck seen it happen and pilot hurt badly.

I am a beginner pilot and I always where jeans for protection and a long sleeve shirt. What type of wing are you using?

Stop flying these dangerous sheets. Fly a hang glider,

3:40 too*

You should've never gone to the right of the ridge

Got lucky

OMG Very poor airmanship, (you could have been seriously injured or worse) please concentrate on flying its a serious matter, & get proper training, you had plenty of opportunity to escape the rotor by flying directly downwind immediately but you did the worst possible by flying directly behind to the cliff edge where the rotor is maximum so training / understanding is very poor

Looks like this guy was sleeping on paragliding course and that's why he had to learn the hard way, that it's not a good idea to fly over the cliff to downwind side at low altitude. The lesson is: pay attention when experienced instructors are explaining wind behaviour and meteorology.

Most of the colapses you get is because you sit too stif in your harness a your chest strap is too tight. Loose the strap an your body and the roll movements will prevent most of the tucks.👍🙂

No no no, many people do NOT make these mistakes (plural). You learn this from reading a theory book at the start of school. You are very lucky. But please choose a different sport.