Why Carry a Reserve Chute While Paragliding

Reserve parachutes are an obvious safety measure, but are often misinterpreted in the sport of paragliding.

It ought to be noted that the use of a reserve chute when paragliding is a very rare event. Many highly experienced pilots have flown for many years, even decades and never had to use one, but here's why they are carried.

When skydiving, the use of s reserve is clear. If the main parachute does not open, or opens somewhat complex, the diver cuts free from one chute, and deploys the reserve parachute. Voila... safe come back to earth.

Paragliding however presents its unusual issues. Firstly, a paraglider preliminary only will take off when the main mentorship is open and working perfectly. So just why is a spare chute needed? The answer lies in significant difference in design between paragliders and parachutes. A parachute is an air brake designed to slow your lineage in a controlled manner. Most parachutes go down in an aerodynamically stalled condition. That means that there is thrashing not for laminar flow extraordinary surface of the parachute.

Paragliders however are a true mentorship, and only fly when the airflow is laminar and not for thrashing. The mentorship packing is much lower in a paraglider and therefore the mentorship is less aerodynamically stable. If a paraglider mentorship is stalled, is no longer jigs... it becomes very unstable, and usually folds up into a horseshoe shape.

Due to this characteristic, paraglider pilots must fly there wings carefully. The relative airspeed of the mentorship and angle of attack need to be controlled by the preliminary using the brakes. Failure to do so may cause instability or mentorship failure.

Therein lies the requirement for a reserve parachute in the sport of paramoteur Québec. Many pilots flying competition wings (which are extremely high performance, but very unstable) actually carry two spare chutes. This is primarily because some main mentorship collapses can lead to the bundle re-writing. Releasing a spare safety chute simply twists into the main mentorship in a process called candlesticking. As you can imagine a candlestick doesn't fly too well, but the pair of sprained chutes usually stop re-writing. The second reserve is launched for a safe come back to earth.

This raises the next issue. The whole process described above takes time, and time is altitude. There is virtually no point in carrying a spare parachute if you are flying sand dunes at 40 meters above the bottom. Be well guided because of your instructor about actual equipment performance as it does vary. Most supplies need at least  meters to deploy effectively.

Naturally the market has demanded that producers develop fast opening reserve parachutes for the paragliding industry. The producers have responded with a dazzling range of equipment from plain round chutes to center pull chutes to steerable arrow formed supplies and even skyrocket propelled chutes for ultra fast openings.

Marco is a passionate preliminary of various types of planes. Marco recommends the following website as a complete guide to the sport of paragliding including resources and images.