this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2025
144 points (97.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

35199 readers
1109 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

For me it's probably speech therapy and everything pertaining to that. I'm yet to encounter someone on here who is one apart from me (in training).

What about you?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] PodPerson@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Neat - paraglider here, but I know zero things about skydiving. It does seem to be common though, from talking to PG instructors, that skydivers learning PG tend to be very heavy handed with the controls. Just remember smooth and light if you ever try it out. :)

[–] Canopyflyer@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Depending on the size of the canopy, there can be a fair amount of pressure required to pull a toggle. Tandem rigs, which have 500ft^2 mains are somewhat difficult to guide by one person. Most TM's that I know require their passenger to help out. Not that they cannot be flown by one person, just that doing that 10 times a day wears a person out.

My personal mains: PD Spectre 150 and 135, and Sharp Chuter (used for demo jumping) all had very different toggle pressures. The Sharp Chuter being the heaviest. It was also 90ft^2 larger (240ft^2) than my Spectre 150. My 135 had almost negligible toggle pressure. The smallest canopy I've ever jumped was a Velocity 103 and that thing has almost no toggle pressure what so ever. Plus with such high wing loading made it down right twitchy. Personally I was never one for ultra high wing loadings. Having 40mph approach speeds to landing was never appealing even when I was young.

Also skydiving canopies are a LOT more square than a paraglider. While I could not explain the physics there, it seems to me that a thin wing would have lighter toggle pressures. Canopies that I've jumped that were more tapered seemed to have a lighter toggle pressure of equally sized non-tapered canopies. A paraglider canopy is extremely tapered compared to a skydiving chute.

Also, don't you folks have 6 risers? While there have been 6 riser skydiving rigs, they are very uncommon. So each riser requires a lot more pressure to pull... I'm assuming paraglides do riser turns and other maneuvers with them.

There is a Paragliding club here where I live. Even met one when he landed at a local park when I was out walking. I currently have one kid in college and another going to be there in a couple of years, so it's not going to be anytime soon, but I would love to try it out. I'd love to get back into the air. Skydiving is pretty much out, as I have a back injury that could be made really bad with a hard opening.

To make a short story long... Yeah, I can see a skydiver being ham fisted with a paraglider. A jumper with a lot of experience with very high wing loading (over 2.0 to 1) might not, but me? Yeah, I'd probably ham it up for the first few hours. It would be interesting to learn just how much skydiving canopy experience would translate. I'm sure some would, but definitely not all.

[–] PodPerson@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 days ago

Cool - thanks for the details about your gear. Fun to learn about the other adjacent disciplines.