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My magic feather
Jun. 7th, 2011 08:28 pmI've been having trouble with my kiting skills. Part of getting my novice paragliding license is being able to keep my wing in the air for at least three minutes while ground handling, but that requires some skills that don't come naturally to me, such as hand-eye coordination. I enjoy my attempts, but I do tend to just pull the wing up, have it drop down, sort the lines back out, and then start again.
We couldn't fly on Sunday, but the weather was good for kiting so Russ, Craig, and I went to Vanier Park. As I was struggling with my layout, I thought about something on my harness that I'd noticed before: the carabiners that are the attachment points for my wing to my harness face in different directions. They'd always been that way: one facing inwards and the other outwards. Russ' carabiners both face inwards. Now, since much of steering in paragliding is done by weight shifting - in essence, is done with the hips through the carabiners - it occurred to me that the subtle difference in the shape of one side of the carabiner versus the other might be giving me a slight disadvantage, which I definitely don't need. I had evidence in that it was my right carabiner that was backwards and the right side of my wing is always the side that's falling.
Russ helped me flip the right carabiner, and I pulled up again. This time, the wing came up perfectly straight and parked above my head, steady for about thirty seconds coming down. It was probably the best pull-up I'd ever had.
Unfortunately, the wind got wild very shortly after and I didn't have much time to test my new set-up, so I'm not sure yet if that was luck, an actual fix to an actual problem, or a magic feather. I'm eager to get out again soon to find out!
We couldn't fly on Sunday, but the weather was good for kiting so Russ, Craig, and I went to Vanier Park. As I was struggling with my layout, I thought about something on my harness that I'd noticed before: the carabiners that are the attachment points for my wing to my harness face in different directions. They'd always been that way: one facing inwards and the other outwards. Russ' carabiners both face inwards. Now, since much of steering in paragliding is done by weight shifting - in essence, is done with the hips through the carabiners - it occurred to me that the subtle difference in the shape of one side of the carabiner versus the other might be giving me a slight disadvantage, which I definitely don't need. I had evidence in that it was my right carabiner that was backwards and the right side of my wing is always the side that's falling.
Russ helped me flip the right carabiner, and I pulled up again. This time, the wing came up perfectly straight and parked above my head, steady for about thirty seconds coming down. It was probably the best pull-up I'd ever had.
Unfortunately, the wind got wild very shortly after and I didn't have much time to test my new set-up, so I'm not sure yet if that was luck, an actual fix to an actual problem, or a magic feather. I'm eager to get out again soon to find out!
