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Kiting a Paraglider with Preset Hands

This article has been written with the intent of teaching new pilots how to gain proficiency in this and also as a transition resource for the many pilots who learned kiting the Old School / Straight Handed style.

Kiting a Paraglider is managing and sustaining a Paraglider overhead in the wind. As a result of slight changes in the wind, the Paraglider moves back and forth over you and provides feedback through the harness and brakes. The combination of body movements and brake pulls enable a pilot to not only manage the wing, but to do a dance with it.

In the earlier days, most pilots learned to kite without the brakes set up for the turn. That is, they had to swap the brakes after or during their rotation from facing backward to forward. By the mid to late 90s, enough accidents had happened during the brake transfers that most schools began teaching some variation of preset hands to their students.

If you can consistently lift the wing to a solid overhead position, you are ready to start learning to kite. If you cannot consistently lift and check the wing in a stable position yet, you will need to practice this until consistent lifts are achieved prior to trying to kite.

In a wind as light as a few miles per hour, one can do some kiting by backing up at a quicker pace. Some paragliders will kite stationary in as little as 7 mph of wind, while others need a solid 10. A steady 9 - 12 mph is ideal for learning to kite. In lighter winds (4 - 8), you can practice and work on kiting by walking backward into the wind while using standard kiting techniques.

Why Kite with Preset Hands

In the earlier days of paragliding, most of us learned to kite with the old technique of kiting. This was done with the brake on the same side as the hand, not preset (I like to call this "straight handed kiting”). Using straight handed kiting, the wing is controlled similar to a two line kite (pull right hand, wing goes to right - pull left hand, kite goes to left etc. ...). In straight handed kiting, when it is time to turn forward, the brakes need to be swapped. The trade off is that during the swapping, there is a loss of control at one of the most critical times in the flight, when you are just leaving the hill.

On lighter wind days when the wind is steady and there is no threat of gusts lifting you into the air, straight handed kiting can be a great tool in your bag of tricks. It is easier to kite a wing in light conditions using this technique (There is no pull on the brakes if you need to re-lift the wing using the A risers). For mountain launches and launches where a sudden gust or thermal can lift you into the air, the safer and preferred technique is preset hands. This is because if you get lifted into the air while reversed, you simply rotate forward and fly. There is no need for any brake swapping. Some pilots with very good kiting skills use straight handed kiting even in mountain or thermic conditions, but for most pilots it is safer to use the preset method.

With preset hands, each hand holds the brake that will be on the correct side when you turn to face forward. When I say left brake, I am referring to the brake in the left hand and visa versa. The hands are preset with the brakes for after the turn. Prior to turning forward, the brake in the right hand will deflect the trailing edge of the wing on "your" left. Consequently, when you pull the left brake, it will deflect the trailing edge on "your" right side. This is because the risers are crossed and the brakes are preset for forward flight. This is a bit counterintuitive and the reason it takes some conditioning to get a good feel for kiting with preset hands.

Preset Hands Technique

I have found that the following steps will lead people to good kiting and make it easier for them to put the pieces together:

1. Learn how body movements effect kiting
2. Once you are moving correctly, add brakes and combining this with proper body movements
3. Learn to center the wing visually
4. Learn to feel and anticipate

Body Movement

I teach the following exercise to students without them holding the brakes. If there is a stronger wind, to abort, just grab the rear risers and pull hard to kill the wing.

Instead of thinking about which brake to pull and thinking left or right, it is better to learn the feel of kiting by developing a relationship to the wing. Once you have lifted the wing to a point that is mostly or perfectly centered, keep the airspeed up enough to maintain the wing overhead. Watch the wing and if it is or drifts to either side, think, "Which side is the wing on?". The next task is to learn to move your body under the wing. If the wing is on the right side, think of moving to the right, under the wing, as you back up. If the wing is on the left side move to the left as you back up.

Pilots new to kiting tend to have an instinct that tells them to face and pull against the wing. Instead, it is best to learn to move with and under the wing. In stronger winds, you can move straight sideways or sideways and back. In lighter winds, move mostly back with a slight veer toward the side the wing is on.

In all situations, you need to keep the pull from the body constant. In lighter winds, it is good to add power to the wing during any correction by backing up bit harder when doing a correction (See Bumping below). The directions of back up should be mostly into the wind but veering under the wing.

If there is around a 5 mph wind, you can learn to do this by continuing backwards after lifting. If the wing is slightly on your right, quickly angle backward enough to get your body back under the center of the wing. If you go too fast to the right, the wing might even begin to move to your left and will then need the oposite correction.

When the wing is close to center and not moving fast to either side, your lateral body movement will be faster than the wing above you. You can move your body right under the center of the wing. In a steady wind, you can actually kite a paraglider this way without any brakes.

Keep at the front of your thoughts, "move under the wing". If the wing is leaning toward your left side, move backward and to the left, under the wing. If the wing is centered, just move backward at a pace that will be enough to keep the wing powered overhead.

Once you have a feel for this (you can keep the wing up for 10 – 30 seconds), the transition to full on kiting will be much easier. Simply pull a little brake on the side you are moving toward. If the wing is a little on your right, you start moving backward and to the right. At the same time, gently pull a little right brake.

Body and Brake Directions for Preset Kiting

Add brakes to the process

Once a pilot has learned some feel for centering, they can begin to learn how to add brake to this process. Set up the brakes correctly for a preset launch.

The start is exactly the same as before, lift the wing as close to center as you can. Now if the wing moves toward or is slightly on one side, you can pull a bit of brake on the side you are moving toward. So, if the wing has drifted slightly to the right, you will be backing up a little to the right. The magic here is that you are already concious of which direction you are moving and you just need to form the habit of pulling a little brake on that side.

How much brake to pull will depend on how far the wing is over or how fast it is moving to the side. What you want to learn to do is to react quickly and sense how much brake to pull. With the combination of correct body use and correct brake usage, you will soon be on your way to fine tuning your ability to center the wing. The key is having relaxed arms and a light touch on the brakes. As you progress, you will learn to feather the brake so that the wing moves smoothly back to the center.

One of the more common issues for students learning to kite is pulling both brakes at the same time. This usually happens when a pilot has extra tension in their arms and upper body. When pulling one brake, make sure that the other brake is not also being pulled. If upper body tension is present, pilots can pull the opposite brake without being aware of it. If the wing is not moving back to center, check that your other (non pulling) hand is relaxed and releasing the brake all the way up to its pulley. Being relaxed is the starting point to awareness of the hands and where the brakes are. If just a slight bit of opposite brake is pulled, it will block the wing from moving in the direction desired. By being relaxed, you will feel what each hand is doing much better than when the upper body is tensed.

In stronger winds, the Paraglider will allow kiting further to the side and can come back to center more easily. In lighter winds, if the wing goes too far to the side, it will be extremely difficult or impossible to return to center.

Bumping

In light winds, the wing will need to be managed as close to directly overhead as possible. When the wind is that light, if the glider starts to go over to the side, you can add power to getting the wing back overhead by using a technique called "bumping the wing". Bumping is pulling back and moving under the low side of the glider with the hips as you give the correction. Pulling too much brake when the wing is on the side will result in the wing falling back to the ground as the high side of the wing (the brake you are pulling) will back up the most stable part of the wing. Bumping allows the pilot to avoid over-pulling the brake. With the bump, the energy to get the wing to react will be increased because of the increased airflow resulting from the pilot backing up and moving under the low side of the wing. The bump will also add power to the wing enabling it to stay overhead while adding enough brake to re-center it.

A common issue is for some students to turn to face the low side of the wing and pull in the opposite direction. Corrections will not work well with this, instead, it is best to keep backing up and move diagonally back slanting back under the low side of the wing.

Wings are different

Some models of paragliders need a moderate amount of brakes on both sides pulled when kiting in lighter winds to keep from moving too far forward and collapsing. Others tend to fall back and don't need any brake. With the first glider, you will need to keep some tension on both brakes to keep the glider from over-flying, with the second, you would have to be off the brakes most of the time other than for centering. Play with your wing and you will get a feel for how it kites and what pitch characteristics it has.

Using Your Eyes / Sensing Feedback

At first attempts, you will kite by watching the wing's movements overhead. If the wing moves to the right, you pull a little right brake to stop it from moving. Continue pulling the right hand enough to get the wing to begin moving back to center. Try to adjust the amount of pull based on what your eyes see. As soon as the wing begins moving back toward center, you can ease off on the right brake so that it does not pass center.

If the paraglider moves past the center point, pull just a bit of opposite brake (enough to stop it quickly) and try to lock it in the center. Keeping the paraglider locked in the center will make kiting much easier. This is because the most power is achieved with the wing in the center and the wing will react quicker as well.

After you have gotten to the point where you can kite using your eyes for your adjustments, you can begin to look for the feedback from the harness. The wing will give some feedback when the wind gusts on one side etc. prior to it moving. If you tune into these subtle forms of feedback, you can begin anticipating what the wings next move will be and what direction the wing is about to move before it begins to move in that direction. You can also feel a gust of wind before the wing reacts to it.

Body Position

In stronger winds, it is important to squat down a bit in the harness to keep your legs firmly on the ground. This means, to bear most of your weight on the wing by sitting down a little on the harnesses seat area. When a gust comes along, if the wing lifts you slightly, your legs will have enough extra to remain on the ground during the gust. As soon as your weight is enough to lower the harness back down, do so.

In lighter winds, just find a comfortable and balanced position. Keep your weight on the balls of your feet, this will force you to keep your balance. If you find you are falling backwards repeatedly as you back up, it is likely that you are backing up on your heels instead of the balls of the feet.

Using Hips

When first learning to kite, keep it simple and do not use the hips. Later, when you can keep the wing up a bit, you can add in some help from the hips. If the paraglider is on the left side as you face it and you are backing up to the left and pulling a bit of left brake, you can also turn your hips to the left. By turning your hips this way, you are loading the same side of wing as the brake you are pulling. This gives it more power to use the brake on that side.

How to hold the brakes

When you first lift the wing, it is best to hold each brake at the bottom of the handle. It is important to not have the brakes engaged when lifting the wing. Once the paraglider has become stable, walking the fingers up to grab the brake where the line attaches will provide better sensitivity for the braking action.

The arms should be relaxed and supple to feel when each brake is pulled or fully released.

Note the fingers grabbing the brakes where lines connect ...

Photo Credit - Andy Stocker

Practice and More Practice

Once you have gotten to a point where you have the basics down, you will need to practice kiting in good conditions. Kiting is a fun and rewarding activity and, with good skills, will make your launches much safer. You can even practice in winds of about 5+ mph, by walking backwards in at a steady pace you can get to the threshold wind speed to keep the wing up.