I ought to correct you Dan, even though I don't do this stuff :>).
Please feel free to ignore it if you know it already ...
You are stalling the canopy by dint of increasing the angle of attack
(and therefore the lift) to reduce your rate of descent to something
manageable for your little pink body - called the "flare" in normal
aircraft. But at a certain AoA (the "critical angle") there will be
no more lift and the canopy stalls, but you are not aiming to stall
per se (I assume).
The trouble might arise if you decide to carry out this reduction of
the rate of descent at too high an altitude, but I suppose, from what
you have written, that this is not a normal error in paragliding.
... it *is* a normal error for my students to flare too high, and not
enough, and too low, and too much .... while I must try to appear
unconcerned so as not to undermine their confidence :>). Of course I
never made these mistakes when I was learning in the mid-70s, well,
not too many times!
Chris
At 08:02 -0600 8/8/02, Daniel J. Mitchell wrote:
> I don't know what your paraglider gizmos are like, but teaching
landing is the most difficult thing I have come across
Landing a paraglider's really pretty easy -- sure, when they're teaching
people doing it for the first time like me, they make sure it's easy landing
conditions, but I don't remember anyone in the whole class having any sort
of problems, or even falling on landing.
You just come in towards the ground, and just before you're about to touch
down, pull on both the control handles at once; that stalls the canopy and
you drop the last foot or so. Because you're flying into the wind at that
point, ground speed is low, but there's still enough airspeed to keep you
up, and when the canopy stalls it doesn't stall very hard.
Honestly, it's really easy. Takeoff is the hard part, if anything. (because
if you get that wrong, you're normally running down a slope, which isn't the
ideal thing to fall face-first onto. Not that I'd know or anything.. :) )
-- dan
--
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C M I Barker
Cambridgeshire, Great Britain.
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+44 (0)7092 251126
mailto:imagopus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.threeshoes.co.uk
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