Driving back to the UK today we have been reflecting on the course. It was absolutely brilliant. I had assumed that I would just be taken through a series of maneuvers, like ticking off boxes, but that isn’t Fabien’s way. He made sure that we got the basics right first and the progressed each of us at the right level. He pushes you when you need it, but will allow you to back off if you want to. Having been through the course I feel more confident to deal with incidents generally and I have lots of ideas for skills to practise when I have height.

In hindsight, maybe I should have pushed myself more to do more maneuvers faster, but I discovered a lot about myself; both as a pilot and as a person. I really need to ease myself out of my comfort zone gently as far as SIV is concerned. In my heart I am still a hang glider pilot and I think it will take a lot more experience on a paraglider to convince me than all this collapsing is fine. Acro is definitely not for me.

I also learned huge amounts about the glider and my harness. We have a copy of the videos of all our maneuvers and I will be studying these in the coming weeks to learn more. I wish we could have also videoed all the talks and debriefs. Fabien gave us a huge amount of information and I wish we could have recorded more of it for posterity. Despite the fact that I was very nervous before the course, sometimes terrified during it, and very relieved when it was over, I am really, really pleased I did it. I couldn’t recommend it more.

Flyeo were a great company. Fabien is a fantastic instructor. Always smiling, he knows so much about gliders and he inspires huge confidence. We were amazed how he could instruct us on tiny details from 1000 feet below, being able to observe and correct us just by looking at little creases in the canopies, shadows, hand movements, etc. The whole set up was mega professional and ran like clockwork. Gil and Jeremy, our marshal and driver, were lovely and clearly the whole team work well together to make the operation seamless.

Finally, it was really nice to spend the weekend with such a nice bunch of people. I’d never met Cris or Richard before, but as a group we really gelled. All of us were there to learn and supported and encouraged each other. There was no machismo and everybody was quite open about any nerves or concerns. Having the others on hand to be able to ask questions or getting tips (like standing up before your b-line stall) was great. We all had a laugh as well as learning a lot. Roll on the reunion in Piedrahita. I think it’s Tony’s round….

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