{"id":8516,"date":"2023-09-17T13:28:34","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T13:28:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enminubeparapente.com\/uncategorized\/what-is-paragliding\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T09:35:06","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T09:35:06","slug":"what-is-paragliding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enminubeparapente.com\/en\/paragliding\/what-is-paragliding\/","title":{"rendered":"What is Paragliding?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A paraglider is a flexible, engine-free wing that the pilot hangs beneath in a harness. It is launched on foot down a slope, flown by using air that rises, and landed on foot. Nothing about it is rigid, so it packs into a rucksack.<\/p>\n

What it is and what it is not<\/h2>\n

It came out of parachuting, but it is not a parachute. A parachute is built to slow a fall. A paraglider is built to travel much further than it drops, and that ratio between distance and height loss, the glide ratio, is around eight or nine metres forward per metre down on current wings.<\/p>\n

It is not a sailplane or a microlight either. There is no engine, no fuselage and no rigid surface. The wing holds its shape because air enters the leading edge and inflates its cells, which is why it can be laid out and packed away in minutes.<\/p>\n

How it is steered<\/h2>\n

This is the most repeated misunderstanding. The pilot does not steer the wing by leaning. Both hands hold a brake, attached to the trailing edge of the wing. Pulling the right brake slows that side and the whole wing turns right. Shifting body weight inside the harness helps the turn and is used constantly, but it supports the controls rather than replacing them.<\/p>\n

To fly faster there is the speed bar, pushed with the feet, which reduces the angle at which the wing meets the air. It buys speed and costs some glide.<\/p>\n

Where the height comes from<\/h2>\n

A paraglider always descends relative to the air around it. It gains height when that air rises faster than the wing sinks, which happens in two ways. Thermals are bodies of air warmed by the ground and rising. And wind that hits a slope and is forced up it produces what is called dynamic or ridge lift.<\/p>\n

Coming down needs no leaning forward and no particular technique. Leaving the rising air is enough, because in still air a paraglider descends on its own. That is its natural state.<\/p>\n

Where it came from<\/h2>\n

Not the late nineteenth century, as is sometimes written, but three dates in the twentieth. In 1963 the Canadian engineer Domina Jalbert patented the parafoil, the celled canopy that inflates with air. In September 1965 the American David Barish was running down slopes in New York State under a single-surface wing. And in June 1978, at Mieussy, three friends launched on foot from a slope in the Haute-Savoie, which is where paragliding proper begins. That story is told in full in who invented the paraglider<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What the kit consists of<\/h2>\n