Tandem jump? No let’s go paragliding
Many people when they call us they ask for a tandem jump or tandem jumps. They really mean paragliding but they just don’t know how to describe it. They also ask us questions like: “How many times do you jump per day?” Our answer is always: “Zero. We don’t jump!” And it’s true. Paragliders don’t jump. We run. We start. Like an airplane. And that’s what we are: a little single or double seater airplane, a glider actually. We glide down the mountain or use thermals to lift us up. What you are confused with is parachute jumping also known as sky diving.
Paragliding & sky diving: the difference
What are the differences between the two:
Paragliding
Sky diving
Paragliders are airplanes!
We paragliders are much more like an airplane than we are like parachutists jumping from them. And we are not even a small airplane: we are huge actually. A Cesna will have 18m2 of wing area. We have more than double that: 38-44m2 for tandem wings. Imagine a Boeing 747 has no more than 521m2. That’s just 13 times more (!!!!) then what we have. Yet since the take off speed is roughly 10 times bigger (300kmh vs. our 30kmh relative to wind speed) they can carry 102 x 13 = 1.300 x more weight than us, which makes for 1.300 x 250 = 325 metric tons (the real data are plane weight 184 plus 114 cargo = roughly 300 metric tons).
The miracle of paragliding
The miracle of paragliding is that out of one (solo) or two (tandem) rucksacks we build an airplane in a minute or 5 and also put it back in the rucksack(s) after the flight in less than 10 minutes. This is the reason that hang gliders have all but disappeared. Before the advent of paragliding at the end of the 80’s, hang gliding was a huge thing. But it was always so cumbersome to get the self assembly set of a hang glider up to the mountain (make an appointment with the cableways etc.) to put it together and after landing to pack it back in, that more and more hang gliding aficionados switched to paragliding in stead.
The exception when we do jump
To every rule there is an exception. Acro paragliders have discovered that it is possible to jump from an air balloon by dangling the paraglider below the wicker basket and jumping after it with a front flip. Again in this case there is no complicated folding of the glider: it’s just open and all the lines are checked before jumping.
So finally may we please ask you to run or start with us and not jump? Book via this page.