
How to get into Acrobatic Paragliding?
- Where to start?
The fundamental basics of ‘acro’ starts with SIV. A French acronym for Simulation D’Incident en Vol or Simulation of Incident in Flight. This should really be the fundamental basics for every pilot as we are really the only air sports industry that will give you a license to fly without teaching you incident recovery. Here you will learn how to recover from situations that can be dangerous such as collapses, spins and stalls. This will give you a taste for wing control and you can decide to go further.
- Who to train with?
In the UK there are luckily many providers who coach SIV and can help you start today! Below are a list of providers:
- Rise Paragliding
- Freeflight Academy
- Passion Paragliding
- Escape Paragliding
- Flyeo
- Best places to train?
Without a doubt, you will want to start somewhere high and over water. There are a few places in the world that can offer good altitude and logistics. Once you are safe and confident at performing the basics of accident recovery & acro, you can then head over to train over ground. This is potentially riskier, but if you learn how to correctly use your equipment and action the knowledge you have learned, these risks can be mitigated. Training over ground is much more efficient and allows you to really accelerate your learning!
Here are the top 3 places to train:
- Oludeniz, Turkey (over water) – the mecca for SIV. Good altitude, logistics and food. Great fun for the whole family.
- Lake Garda, Italy (Over water) – Amazing altitude and a great place to have a holiday. Although it can be complicated conditions at the take-off and in the landing, it is an amazing place to train.
- Organya, Spain (over ground) – If you want to progress and learn from the best, this is where you will need to be. Rather than 7 runs a day in Oludeniz, you can do this in 1 hour in Organya. One month here will change your life.
- What comps to start with?
Eventually, when you are good enough to compete, you can head to the ‘Acro World Tour: Rookies’. This is the world tour for rookies and a great place to learn how to compete. You will need to know how to do basic moves in order to gain entry but it is really worth going in order to learn how to compete. Spiral landings are a huge part of acro competitions and likely this will be the first time you have the opportunity to practice them. N.B. Do not practice spiral landings over the ground.