Advice for Your First 100 Paramotor Flights
When you’re first getting into Paramotoring there is a lot to take in, and it’s easy to get sidetracked or distracted. Proper training from a good instructor is your first and most important step, but after the training when you are on your own, there is a speed of progression and level of respect for the sport that must be maintained in order to enjoy the sport safely. These are my recommendations and advice for your first 100 flights.
First 15 Flights
Before taking flight on your own after training I recommend planning a specific order of setup and preflight events from preparing your gear to clipping into your harness and launching. Following this order of events sequentially every time you go out is important in your first several flights to ensure you don’t miss a crucial step, but also to build a good long-term habit as you progress in your paramotoring journey.
Your first 15 flights should focus on smooth takeoffs, a little bit of air time, and soft landings. You don’t have a lot of experience in different conditions yet and the first 15 flights on your own there will be a lot to take in. Focusing primarily on building a good repetition and consistency of action at this stage is important. I recommend taking off, circling the area after climb out, and then setting up your approach and landing. These short flights will give you much needed reps for building consistent habits, but also get you programmed to circle the immediate area after launch which is recommended to get acquainted with your surroundings and to feel out the conditions before committing to your flight plan.
Missions vs Leisure Ratio
In the beginning most flights are information overload and you’re just trying to get comfortable. Once you settle in, its good to set mini missions or flight plans geared toward working on things or getting more comfortable on specific areas. Early missions may simply be smooth quick launches or dialing in your spot landings. Balance these little missions with nice enjoyable leisure flights. As your flight numbers climb, continue to input missions and don’t just slowly replace that element of your progression with leisure flying.
Spectators
The excitement of human flight is captivating. For new pilots, family and friends are eager to share in the experience. Spectators however, can add some additional excitement, temptations, and stress to a paramotor pilot. It’s best to limit spectators as much as possible in your first 50-100 flights. Though unintended, the distractions of excited spectators can disrupt a pilots focus. With quality repetitions being so important for a newer pilot to build consistency and memory of action, these early potential disruptions can be very harmful.
During flight, spectators are almost unavoidable. As soon as a paragliding wing leaves the ground they begin to draw attention. The excitement of seeing a paraglider or paramotor in the air is almost universal! These situations can often be tempting to put on a little extra show. It’s imperative to ignore this as a newer pilot and continue to focus on your progression. This will not only prevent you from unreasonably pushing beyond your current skill level, but also set the tone for your future in Paramotoring as well. In short, fly for the enjoyment of flying, and not to show off for others.
Keep Kiting
Ground handling is the nucleus of paragliding. All pilots should try to get kiting reps anytime they can. Its easy to steer away from kiting in favor of flying after training. Stay focused on it and embrace opportunities to kite. It’s not uncommon to plan a flying opportunity based on the forecast only to arrive on site and the conditions are different. Often these situations are great opportunities for kiting and may even still be flyable but in you don’t need to rush into the air. I recommend ground handling any new conditions or any conditions you are unsure of. Get a feel for it, and build the confidence before committing to a launch.
Depending on where you live, weather can often ground you for decent stretches of time. I am based out of Central Montana. We typically get grounded for weeks and sometimes months at a time between November and April. Anytime you have been grounded for a while or have taken some breaks from flying, it is a great idea to start back into it with ground handling sessions.
Down Time
Paramotoring is a sport you do when you get to, not when you want to. There will be times when you are unfortunately down for awhile most often due to weather as mentioned above. These down times are great opportunities to further your knowledge in the sport. This comes with some responsibility however.
Newer pilots often get immersed in the exciting Paramotor videos on YouTube or side tracked researching their next wing or some new gear and gadgets. This can be a poor use of your time at this stage in your journey. Your time is better spent kiting when the weather permits, or reading the “Paragliding Bible” and the weather book, ‘Understanding The Sky”.
YouTube can be a great resource for information, but it is also flooded with bad content. Even the good stuff can be misleading to newer pilots. Keep in mind, that videos are edited and typically only the best content makes the cuts. It’s not always as easy or glamorous as displayed in the content. Videos also mostly tailored toward getting views and interactions. That doesn’t mean the content isn’t valuable, but imparting good information onto you isn’t always the highest priority. Its also near impossible to understand the conditions from a video. Just because the pilot in the video does or can do something, does not always mean it will work or be easy in the conditions you have when you go out Paragliding or Paramotoring. Ingesting the content is fine, but definitely keep an open mind and balance your time with other resources.
Understanding the Sky
Progression
Maintain an understanding of the progression. Enjoy the journey and don’t be in a big hurry to be able to do all the things. This isn’t a sport to be rushed. In your first 100 flights you should be focused on enjoying the flights, refining your basic skills, building a little confidence, and gaining experience.
Tracking hours is an important part of Paramotoring for maintenance of gear and equipment but also tracking appropriate progression of you as a pilot. Hours recommendations are intended to expose pilots to many variables and conditions. A lot of new pilots lose there way on this. Ten 1 hour flights are way more valuable than one 10 hour flight. The seat time in both examples is the same, but ten 1 hour flights exposes the pilot to 9 more flying days or sessions of complete set up, warm up, launching, flying conditions, landings, etc. These extra reps and exposure to different conditions are invaluable especially to newer pilots. There are no short cuts on this. Pilots who ignore the value of the reps in favor of the time in seat, or pump up there hours records, do themselves a disservice.
Logbook
Keeping an accurate logbook is an important part of paramotoring. A paramotor logbook helps you keep track of flight numbers, flight hours, hours on your gear (wing and motor), flight locations, flight times, flight conditions experienced, specific flight elements and reps such as takeoffs and landings, and your overall progression as a paramotor pilot. This information can be very helpful to look back on. Naturally, it’s important to be accurate as possible when logging your flights. Consistently rounding your numbers up, will cheat your progression and falsely accelerate the degradation of your equipment rapidly. For example, if you fly 20 flights for 45 minutes but round them up in your logbook as 1 hour flights, you will have falsely added 5 hours to your total progression as a pilot and robbed 5 hours of lifespan from your paramotor and wing. As you can imagine, that number will continue to climb. Surprisingly, this is a very common mistake.
When logging entries into your paragliding logbook, I prefer to log each outing as one journal entry. In that entry, I count each flight as its own flight which is defined by putting the wing down. (I do not count Touch and Go’s as multiple flights. For those, I log it as one flight and will record the amount of touch and go’s or any noteworthy flight conditions in the description). I log the minutes of each flight for that session, as well as the total minutes or hours of the outing. This will make it easier to track your total hours of experience accurately. I also make note of the Paramotor and the Wing that I flew. If you ever need to get an accurate total of hours on your wing, or your motor for maintenance, these logs will come in handy! I also log the weather conditions, the location of the launch, the location of the landing, and any pertinent information of the flight such as if I worked on anything specific. If it was an nice scenic flight, I may make a quick note on that as well to help trigger my memory if I ever need to refer back. If I had any issues such as blown takeoffs, rough landings, or equipment related issues, I log that in the description section as well. These entries are great for new pilots to refer back to later as it paints a nice picture of your growth and progression!
Wingmen
When starting out, only fly with smart, respectable, experienced pilots. I encourage this policy indefinitely, but for sure in the first 100 flights. Flying with asshats could tempt you into bad ideas, impart bad information, or lead you into bad situations. If you play stupid games, you will win stupid prizes. It is much better to fly alone than to fly with a shithead.
