Extending the tandem envelope

I had an interesting tandem yesterday - might as well jot it down.

Peter was keen to experience paragliding but he's (probably) well into his sixties and has an arthritic knee which was causing him to limp somewhat when he showed up at the meeting place. He's also a fairly solid guy - taller than me and weighting a good deal more.

I always worry more with older passengers - their bones are more brittle (sometimes very brittle indeed) and it just takes longer to process and react to things. It's also unlikely they are able to run very well for the launch and landing, and extra care needs to be taken to land them softly.

Fortunately, it was a nice North-Easterly day at Bright, so around lunch time we went up the hill. The cycles were starting to come through pretty regularly, and soon pilots were staying up and climbing above the hill. I briefed Peter on the launch and was getting a good vibe from him - he seemed pretty switched on - clipped him into the lowest loop on the spreader bar, checked the wind in the LP, waited for the peak of a cycle (more wind = less running for Peter), and pulled the Takoo2 up.

This glider is very new, and while I really like the Takoo, the '2' just seems to do everything a little better. Sure enough he only had to take a couple of steps and we were off the hill, heading left towards the house thermal "Marcus". Once I had Peter settled in his harness and comfortable I worked on connecting with a climb. I could feel the effect of the extra weight, both through extra wind noise and sink-rate, and the amount of extra effort it took to turn the glider.

After figure-of-eighting for an uncomfortable time (for me) down low on the ridge, we gained enough height to circle in the lift and soon climbed up towards cloud base, then flew out over the town, crossed a spur on the other side of the valley, and glided down to land.

Before takeoff we'd checked that the wind was blowing nicely up-valley to make the landing as slow and soft as possible, and I loitered around in lifty areas until I saw the windsock straighten out up-valley (indicating a thermal lifting off behind the LP and sucking air across the LP) before going down. I got Peter to stay in the harness during our approach, and lift his legs up when we were within a couple of meters of the ground. Because he was in the lowest hang-point he was sitting only a bit higher than my feet, so I flared for my feet (great flare on the Takoo2, landing into a nice breeze helped) and he sat down on the airbag from about 20cm up.

The launch and landing were a piece of cake for him, and he deeply enjoyed the flying so overall he was pretty happy. I'd been most worried about the landing (but also the launch), which had gone smoothly and trouble free, but I'd also really enjoyed the flying so I was happy too!

A good reminder that the right conditions and planning can turn a potentially dangerous flight into a safe and enjoyable flight.

-pic taken by Hamish Barker