While learning to fly many of us were taught to keep our hands at earheight. If you wanted to make the glider fly at its minimum sink rate, 30 to 50% brake or hands at karabiner-height was recommended. Many of us fly that way now because we have always done so. However, in our book Paragliding: The Beginner’s Guide we make a point of explaining that for most modern gliders, it is best to keep your hands higher. We say to keep a small amount of pressure on the brakes to let you feel the movements of the glider, but to take care not to brake the glider because minimum sink is achieved without any brake applied. The apparent contradiction between the two ways of flying understandably confused some of our readers. Their understanding was that min sink is achieved with quite a lot of brake on and now we are saying this is not true? What’s going on?
Read the full article in Cross Country magazine 234, October 2022.