How do I learn to soar paragliders?

Once you've completed your Elementary course (Ep) then you can join our popular Club pilot course (Cp) it's a six day course, again mostly practical although we go into more detail about weather and airlaw and there's a relatively simple exam at the end of it which we'll help you with lectures. 

The more interesting part of the BHPA course is that we teach you the finer and subtler details of how to turn and fly and stay up on a paraglider. We teach you how to get down if the weather deteriorates. How to launch in stronger soaring winds and some basic theory on how to stay up in thermic lift. 

The most important aspect of the paragliding club pilot course is learning to soar. To achieve this you need consistent soarable winds of 10-15 mph,  a variety of flying sites for most  wind directions and good equipment for all sizes of pilots. Obviously this is difficult to find in Alpine conditions but the lower hills of south western Spain make for perfect paragliding soarable and top landing conditions. 

Part of being able to soar needs a basic ability to reverse launch, a technique mostly used in windy conditions. FlySpain have published a paragliding tips and tricks  video to help new and rusty students work on their techniques once their back home or before coming out. We put a lot of time aside to ensure you leave with a high standard of control so once qualified you can go out with confidence alone or rather in the club environment. 

FlySpain have over twenty gliders for course participants, so lots of  small and extra small wings for lightweight students for instance.

We are one of the few schools to fit all our cp students with reserve parachutes for soaring tasks, not that we expect you'll need it but they are standard equipment once qualified so you might as well learn to fly with them within the paragliding school environment rather than wing it once you've left us. Our dedicated team of instructors are not just fluent in English but are Bristish pilots who know Uk and European conditions alike.

Details about all our paragliding flying courses is available on our website calendar page. Their are some discount options when you by kit together with booking your course, try our equipment customiser tool to put a mix of equipment together on helmets to harnesses. Or drop us a line here for advice.