03 Handling the Wing

The greatest indicator of success in paramotoring is how well you can handle the paraglider. There is a wealth of skill that’s fun to acquire on its own right, let alone how much it will improve your launch success.

Kiting the wing, the process of keeping it overhead and under control has some surprising fine points. From holding it airborne but just above the ground to touching a wingtip and bringing it back to level, you’ll learn techniques and ways to practice them in a realistic environment.

This chapter and additional information is meant for you to be wearing only a kiting harness. Among the skills covered are inflating the wing in various wind conditions, turning around when appropriate, handling stronger winds and ways to depower the wing. Also included are various ways to kite without a harness.

More advanced kiting information will be included here on FootFlyer. Skills that are particular to using with a motor are covered in Chapter 4 which puts wing handling together with motoring.


Folding your Glider

Newer gliders with weed-wacker leading edge reinforcements don’t like those reinforcement folded over so most pilots use some form of concertina or accordian fold. The book has an example, as does this video, but you see plenty of videos on the subject just by...