125 Top Paragliders Face Off In Mexico
Now, this is aero-sport. They're coming locally, from Mexico and
the USA -- but also from distant Norway and Taiwan, from tiny
Slovenia, Slovakia, even Luxembourg, from great Russia, from arctic
Finland and tropical Brazil, from all the corners of the earth.
They're coming to face each other in a monumental paragliding
championship, the Monarca Paragliding Open.
Named after Mexico's own Monarch butterfly, the appropriate
symbolic insect of paragliding, the Open takes place in the
beautiful Valle del Bravo, a resort area west of Mexico City that
resulted when a remote agricultural valley was flooded to make a
reservoir in 1946. The picturesque mountains provide good launch
points and oodles of lift, making for awesome paragliding
indeed.
How does the competition work? The glider pilots launch from the
launch point and thermal to altitude in what is called the "start
cylinder." Rules and thermalling protocol ensure both sportsmanship
and safety as many gliders spiral up at once... then, they're off.
Each day's task is different, but generally they're cross-country
distance glides with best time winning.
There's a special treat on Saturday, the 29th -- a demonstration
of paraglider aerobatics.
Paragliders may look like the parachutes skydivers use, but
these specialized rigs differ from sport parachutes in many ways.
They're much less robustly built, because they're not subject to
high-speed opening shock. They don't have sliders, for the same
reason -- the wing is open and overhead before the pilot steps off
terra firma. They have an elliptical planform for best L/D. And
they usually have many more cells than a freefall chute. (The
current military MC-5 square, which is bigger than most civilian
freefall chutes, has fourteen cells. One common elliptical
paraglider, for example, has 37).
They may be the easiest of all flying modes to master -- a fit
and enthusiastic student can grasp the basics of take-off and
landing, and be ready to solo, in as little as an hour of
instruction on a "bunny slope." But like everything that flies,
"teaching yourself" is a lousy idea -- historically, it's been
strongly correlated with accidents and injuries.
It's too late to sign up now, as all 125 slots in the
competition are filled, but Aero-News will keep you posted on how
the results shake out as the week wears on.