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.

FMI: www.monarcaparaglidingopen.com