Comment by psyc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by psyc | Hacker News Reader

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The transitive PTSD from your fellow pilots dying is real. I quit after 800+ flights (including motored, and yes it is incredible) after the 5th death of someone I'd either been close to or at least on adventures with. Not to mention all the broken vertebrae which is a lot more common than death. In the span of a few years I saw three ridiculously experienced instructors (one had like 8,000 flights) smash into the ground, then spend 2 months in the hospital and a year recovering.

The fact that we know what mistakes they made is a red herring. You'd have to be a fool to think you're going to be the first paragliding pilot in history to never make a potentially fatal mistake. One of them, a friend and a very good pilot, simply pulled his brake half an inch too far. It was a perfectly calm evening.

There were two warring factions at my local mountain. One organized around the idea that paragliding can be made safe. My camp maintained that 'safe' and 'paragliding' should never be in the same sentence without an 'isn't' between them. Hikers always opened conversation with "Is it safe?" The other camp would say "Oh yes, quite, and would you like a ride for $200?" Our camp would try not to laugh. I'd usually reply with, "Does it look safe?" We said it was all about risks and percentages, with the understanding that the risk of dying or being crippled with a slow glider in perfect conditions is always > 0.

I'm not saying it isn't worth it. It's totally worth it, though it's easier for me to say since I got out unharmed. Rather, I developed a discomfort that prevented me from enjoying it. Not fear - but a kind of disillusionment. Because even though my instructor said "It's not safe." over and over, and even though I repeated it to others, secretly I believed it was and it took 8 years for observed events to wear that belief down. A big part of me hopes I return, maybe after my parents are gone or I'm their age or something. There is really nothing like it in the world and I doubt anything I ever do will ever energize my soul the way free flying did.

On the flip side, your chances of dying if you don't go paragliding are about 99%, which is awfully close to your chances of dying if you do go paragliding. It's terrible and traumatic when your friends die (or your children, Jesus), and enormous caution is worthwhile, but not in order to survive. You're guaranteed not to survive.

Is paramotoring safer (i.e., longer life expectancy) than paragliding?

> Is paramotoring safer (i.e., longer life expectancy) than paragliding?

The stats are skewed in favour of paramotoring, althout the added complexity means more margin for error. The safety plus to paramotoring is that you can fly on a day without any wind, while paragliding requires at least a 2 m/s wind to descend from the top of a hill or moutain and about 5 m/s to soar next to a slope, dune or ridge. Paramotorists also rarely engage in aerobatics which is probably why the stats are skewed. They also almost never need to perform special altitude loss procedures like big ears, tip stall, B-line stall or spiral dive.

This is untrue, paragliding doesn’t require any wind for descending. You generate your own airspeed. There are also other ways of staying up than soaring (thermals). Additionally, wind isn’t the source of the risk, rather wind variability and turbulence. Flying in low wind doesn’t add to the risk profile.

Yes, you could take off in zero wind and fly off a cliff but it's quite boring. I wouldn't even bother hauling my paraglider up a cliff on a windless evening when the there are minimal thermals. Not without a lift. The risk profile is is quite debatable. But the general consensus is that paramotoring is safer. I see it simply carying other risks, like tangling your lines in the propeller, improperly operating the engine etc. Also the number of yearly fatalities is smaller, which doesn't actually say anything without total hours of flight. For paragliding I think most uncontrollable risk mainly revolves around weather.

Hmm, so maybe one reason paramotoring is safer is that the safest time to go paragliding or paramotoring is when there's no wind and thus no wind shear (etc.), but that's inconvenient and boring for paragliding?

Estimating total hours of flight in the US seems like it would be difficult since there's no licensing regime.

Yes, pretty much. Once can paramotor on a flat field with no features on a clear windless day. Plus there's no need for altitude loss procedures which carry some risk, no aerobatics, the wing is almost always properly loaded because you carry a 30 kg motor on your back and you don't need all the wing area that you normally need for paragliding, so the risk for wing collapse is smaller. There are simply other risks involved.

I would disagree on boring, thermal flying on a windless day is amazing, proximity flying, a chill sled ride. Many fun ways to play without wind.

I wouldn’t comment on safety comparisons with paramotoring without more statistics.

Thermal flying implies wind or updraft.

I haven't found any proper statistics, just fatalities without hours of flight for each activity. Which are really just anecdotes masked as statistics.

Sure, but you’re twisting words. Wind is pretty much always used to refer to horizontal air movement.

Thank you!

Have you considered sailplanes? Requires quite a bit more organization than paragliding, which I guess is the main drawback. But you do have a rigid frame around you that will absorb a lot of energy if you end up making enough bad judgements for it to be a problem.

Flying is nice but shaky and unpredictable weather still makes me uneasy. If I'll ever try it again it will be in a sailplane or a light airplane.

The best comment I've read today. Thank you for sharing your experience.

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