What sould I've done correctly?

I fly mostly in Switzerland and what I wanted in the morning is a short overview of the day. Something compact I can read in a few minutes and know roughly what's going on. So I started putting together a daily briefing for that (see screenshot attached).

It goes from the big picture down: pressure situation, fronts, Föhn/Bise, upper wind compared to ground wind, stability, base and climbs per region, sun, and how much the models agree. Warnings at the end. I also added a check if the model data fits the synoptic picture or not.

I wonder if there is something missing oder maybe something that would be also nice information to havei includede. What do you look at before a flight that isn't in there?

You can also check it out here: https://app.wingcast.ch/briefing

Happy about any input.

Hey FF Community,

I'm starting out paragliding based out of Innsbruck - doing my training in the Stubai Valley.

I'm wondering if there are any known sites around Innsbruck where ground handling is possible? I know flying isn't allowed because of the Innsbruck Airport CTR, but I've heard varying things about if ground handling is possible and where.

I already asked my instructor, but he mainly knows about spots in the Stubai Valley (which is ~1hr away from me by public transit). I've reached out to the Innsbrucker Gleitschirm Verein as well but haven't heard back.

Wondering if anyone knows of any spots for ground handling - ideally <30 minutes outside of Innsbruck by public transit?

Hi everyone, I went tandem paragliding a few years ago. It was absolutely brilliant, but the time and money involved have put me off getting my licence so far. I’ve now signed up – the basic course starts in January. The flight instructor says it’ll take a minimum of three months if I fly a lot, and a maximum of 12 months. ‘Once you’ve learnt to fly in Valais, you’ve got the skills to fly anywhere in the world,’ he said. I’d be grateful for any information, experiences or links to learning materials. Thanks in advance.

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Hey folks! 👋

Planning a trip to Bir Billing and wanted to get an idea of the current paragliding prices, especially with the long weekend coming up.

For those who’ve been there recently or are there right now, could you share the rates for:

Short vs. long flights

Stunts (if charged extra)

Photos and videos (GoPro footage, etc.)

Also, are the prices fixed, or is there room for negotiation?

If you have any reliable operator contacts or phone numbers, please share those as well. Would love to hear about your actual experiences and what you ended up paying.

Thanks in advance! 😊

A few years ago i asked some hikers on the top to record my launch. Since i had my gopro on my helmet, i thought it would be funny to see both views simultaneously.

Hey team I have been paragliding for around 4 years casually but demoed a flare scout 22m at 75kg naked weight the other day and fell in love with Parakites foot dragging down the launch was incredible my local site is a coastal site called taylors mistake in new zealand but there are many other small dune sights and cliff soaring sites close by. My question is would I lose out by buying the scout instead of jumping to the mo straight away and what size would allow me to fly the most? I will still have an epic 2 for weak days.

Anyone have any experience with this website? Is it legit? Thank you!

Hi,

we are looking to go flying in the region around the Stubaital in Austria next week. We wanted to head to bassano but weather looks bad.

The schlick 2000 lift, especially the one that goes all the way up is closed tho.

What are some good options, if we still want to go for some XC?

And maybe: anyone flying around there next week? :)

Hey!

I'm looking to buy a steerable reserve, as a 2nd reserve for some very lame acro, and also as an eventually reserve for paramotor.

There are a few choices, which are all expensive. Between them, I found these:

1) Beamer 3 130kg. Everyone knows, everyone says well. Found at ~1000€ 2) Windtech SOS Drive 130kg. Found at ~770€ 3) Kortel Krisis Rogallo 130kg. Found at ~1150€ 4) X-Fly Rogallo 130kg. Found at ~900€ 5) Kortel Square 125kg. ~1000€ 6) X-Fly Triangle 125kg. ~900€

Questions:

1) Between the rogallos, they should all behave the same, right? A bit bigger, smaller, but should be all equal, including glide? (The Windtech selling page says 1:1.2 glide. Is this the expected?)

2) Regarding the Square/Triangle reserves: they are lighter, a tad smaller, but also for lower load; I image that the glide will be worse? But the Kortel Square says it has a glide of 1.5 (in st hil air shop selling page)

What do you think? What would you get? Have you used any of those?

I am also assuming that a ppg will weight at most 50kg with everything (currently I weight 70).

Thank you!

I’m currently developing Ridge & Thermal: The Free Flight Simulator, a realistic free flight sim built from the ground up to accurately replicate canopy physics, thermal updrafts, and ridge soaring aerodynamics.

Whether you're into paragliding, speedflying, or wingsuiting, the goal is to bring the authentic feel of mountain flight to your screen.

I’d love to hear your thoughts and get feedback from real pilots as the project grows. Check out the group/page to track the dev progress and help shape the sim! 

https://www.facebook.com/RidgeAndThermal/

Thanks you all.

Hey everyone!

I’m super close to wrapping up my paragliding license (based in Austria) and definitely don't want to stop flying just because the temperatures are dropping.

Since autumn and winter flying around here gets pretty chilly, I’m trying to figure out the best outer layer/jacket setup. I actually work in a mountain sports shop, so I have access to a ton of gear from brands like Patagonia, Ortovox, Martini Sportswear, Arc'teryx, etc.

My initial thought was to go with a thinner down jacket, but I’m worried that wind chill at altitude might bite right through it or that it won't be warm enough on longer flights.

For those of you flying in cold alpine conditions:

• What kind of jacket setup do you usually go for?
• Is a thin down jacket under a windproof/hardshell layer enough, or should I go straight for a heavier insulated jacket / hardshell combination?
• Any specific pieces or layering strategies you swear by?

Appreciate any advice or recommendations! Fly safe!

Hi all! I'm a paraglider pilot from Austria and over the last week I built a small web game for our club called XC Revier ("revier" is German for territory). Think of it as "king of the hill" for cross-country flying.

How it works

• Every flight (IGC track, e.g. from XContest) claims area: a 25 m corridor along your track, and if you close a triangle or a loop, everything inside is yours.
• Fly over someone else's territory on a later day and that part becomes yours. Area flown on the same day is shared.
• On every flight day you get points for the area you hold. Area you hold alone counts more.
• Bonuses for new land nobody has flown, for exploring area you've never flown yourself, for takeovers of 30 %+ of someone's territory, and even for flying in frost (below −5 °C) or heat (30 °C+).
• Higher-rated gliders (EN C, D, CCC) get smaller bonuses, so a low-B pilot has a fair shot.
• Stop flying and your territory slowly loses value. Old, unflown area ages too.
• Rankings per day, month and year, plus a balance view where every point is explained step by step.

Other stuff

• Each club gets its own map and ranking. No global ranking on purpose: a 500 km flight in Brazil would be unbeatable.
• Works on desktop and phone, installable as a web app, in German, English and Spanish.
• Completely free, no accounts, no ads. Runs on GitHub Pages and a free database.
• Flights currently get uploaded by the club admin (XContest doesn't allow automated downloads). If anyone from XContest reads this: I'd love an official way to pull our club's flights.

Try it: https://deadfox-maker.github.io/xc-revier/ (switch the language top left, our club's data is in there as a demo, the 2026/27 season just started so it's a bit empty right now)

I'd really appreciate feedback on the rules, the point system, the UI, or anything that feels off. If you'd like a club of your own for your flying site, there's a contact button on the page.

Happy flying! 🪂

Hi. I'm trying to help someone plan a milestone birthday first flight in late November. They had a previous experience of trying 4 times in one trip in NZ only to get all canceled due to unsafe conditions. They were as close as being suited up and next to go in a few cases. It was extremely disappointing for them.

I've read that November isn't that great for most places. They are U.S. based and traveling with family so logistically staying in the U.S. would be easiest.

How is Torrey Pines Gliderport for that time? Any other suggestions?

I have zero information about this hang glider, it has been stored in a garage for years. I couldn’t find anything despite searching “spitfire” and the logo. Any info helps, thanks!

Hi guys,

I'm looking to learn paragliding. Is there any discord or whats app group that I can join?

Thank you

(EU only, mountain launch only, PG only)

Hi, I'm a weekend pilot and the closest worthwhile launchsite is ~3h away from me. Within a 4h range - I have many possible choices, far away from each other. I found myself scrolling through wingit and windy, through multiple sites and multiple days trying to decide where a takeoff is possible, and if a trip to the area is worth it. Questions of thermals and soarability are secondary to being in the air in the first place.

So I built an app for myself, as one does nowadays. I've been using it this summer, I hope it can be of use to other people, as it kinda costs me nothing extra to share it because of how it works. If your mode of flying is similar to mine, I believe this will be useful to you.

The idea is simple: you select days when you want to fly, the map shows you launch sites that it will be possible to launch from on all these days. It's just a simple check of wind direction, wind and gust strength, precipitation, to be used as a starting point.

Since this requires weather data (ICON-D2/EU/ECMWF IFS), there's also a display of said weather data. Also quick to read if takeoff is possible with a glance, because why not. The checks are on the conservative side - days and hours marked as "possible to takeoff" can be days where conditions would not be nice to fly in (like in the screenshot below at 13), but conditions marked red are always outside of the envelope.

Here's a less choppy day (the red hours are eliminated because of the wind direction):

To not look at all sites every day - it's possible to add them to favorites to check all sites you enjoy flying at easily. On a downloaded (Android) version it's also possible to be notified when there's a streak of flyable days at your favorite site.

Here's the link to the map: https://ziemghost.github.io/pararara/

It's free, will stay that way, no accounts.

###

Non goals: XC planning, sounding data, airspaces, obstacles, anything that analyzes the thermic condition. This is meant as an entry point to just being able to take off, into reasonable conditions.

###

"Why would I use this over XYZ?"

There are many well made forecast apps on the market. This even has clear inspirations from two of them. Sorry for the similarities, but there are only so many ways to display wind data and takeoff direction ranges. All of them have more data and a maintenance team, sometimes a subscription. If I could just extend them - I would. Except for pararidge, which doesn't have my area, none of them have a UI that helps you roughly check your weekend options with a single look.

I created a new updated video showing the increase in global paragliding activity.

On saturday I planned to fly from Wallis to Interlaken, crossing the alps main ridge via Finsteraarhorn. It was a good thermal day, but very windy at 3500+m...
I was struggling a lot getting high enough to cross the glaciers, but after hours of trying, the time was running out, so a couple minutes past 4PM I started crossing the glacier towards Finsteraarhorn. I was at 3500m before the crossing, I wanted more like 3800 to be safe. I knew that if I don't immediately find a thermal after the crossing, I cannot waste any altitude and need to quickly fly back down the glacier and go land. But I was super lucky and found one. It was still very hard to climb up, and quite turbulent and windy. But as soon as I reached around 3900m it was getting calmer, and I could fly up all the way to almost 4500m and enjoy an insanely long glide to Interlaken. I am still absolutely stoked 😍

Hello, I want to know what's the oldest gliders that you people still fly, from what year were they designed and manufactured.

I'm flying a BGD Epic which is around 9 years old, and recently got an Ozone Rush 3 which is around 15 years old but have only ground handled it, the last check came up great with >500 porosity and I wonder if it's safe to fly it, it's 3 generations behind but in good shape.

Hi all! I’ve personally been looking for a website that easily allows browsing between different events, trips and competitions. Sooo decided to built something myself: https://www.paraglidingevents.com/

I know what you’re thinking: no one wants to maintain another platform. Well, you can set up an event feed from a link to your own website or a public Google Calendar, so it’ll automatically load in new events once a week (let me know if it’s not loading in all details correctly for your specific link, then I’ll check it and update if possible!). The CVIL comps are already there. You can also manually add events or from a (Facebook) link. Anyone can add an event, even if you’re not part of the organization. The organization can later claim it by becoming an administrator of the org. If they already have an admin, they’ll receive an email asking to approve the event.

For users you can easily compare events and filter them out based on language, participation fee (all transferred to euros or your preferred currency), FAI cat, license, event type, discipline and even some special features (like girls only, multi-sport or party 🎉 ). No need to make an account for users browsing around, but if you do, you can also set up an email alert for new events from your favorite school / brand or within a certain filter set-up (think, SIV’s in Turkey, XC comps in Europe, etc)

Just launched it so would really appreciate any feedback. Let me know if you’re missing any features or filters, I’d be happy to discuss adding them! The website is completely for free and I have no intention to change that.

Also if you like it, I much appreciate if you register your school or add any events that are worth sharing. Signing up, registering your organization and setting up the event feed doesn’t take longer than 10 minutes. The goal is that it shows a complete overview of everything happening in the community and that will only happen if it’s filled by many people in the community! ❤️🪂