Heli’s

Something I’ve always been intrigued by but didn’t think I’d get the opportunity to try are Heli’s. When I think about Heli’s, I always envision Russell Ogden and Jerome Canaud doing them on Performance Flying. Finding Parachutage, or the point just above stall, easing up a bit on both brakes and then initiating a turn by further easing up slightly on one side – my heart beats faster just thinking about it!

Under guidance, I was first asked to find the deep stall point , which I did, and then full stalled my way out of it. Great, I’ve got it! The next try was the actual heli. I found the deep stall point but then continued pulling a bit passed and tried to ease up on the brakes to initiate the heli, but by that point I had already pulled too much brake, so I had no choice but to stall my way out again. My third attempt was much the same.

So, my experience with heli’s was pretty much a series of full stalls. I actually really like full stalling my glider – the feeling of your wing slowing down then dropping backwards and feeling weightless is so cool! I’ve been wanting to do a series of full stalls just for practice sake anyway, so having to do them as a result of bad heli attempts actually worked out quite well.

I feel pretty comfortable stalling my glider, but I’m not sure that I would attempt heli’s on my own without any sort of supervision, or at the very least, a boat on standby. Maybe if it were a 3500 meter base day and I were feeling particularly ambitious and maybe a bit hypoxic I’d try it on my own, but I think since heli’s involve playing with the stall point, and with the risk of riser twists, that makes things a bit sketchy. I don’t want to have to throw my reserve if I don’t have to.

In terms of “tricks” I feel confident enough doing SAT’s on my own and I’ll have to keep working on bigger and bigger wingovers – ones that are almost as big as loops. I have no problems locking into spirals, but I do need to keep working on my asymmetric spirals and ideally get them even on both sides. Hah, this kind of sounds like a list of chores or something but man, paragliding acro to me reminds me of the ultimate amusement ride, except not only am I the passenger but I’m also the one in control. Awesome.