Introduction

[sight]

Hello,

Just wanted to say hi to everyone. This is my first year as a CHGPA member and just wanted to say hi to everyone and give a little back story I guess. I learned to paraglide while living in New Zealand for a semester abroad, I then back packed around Europe for a month, paragliding at a couple of places and making memories and friends of a life time, only to go back to Penn State and finish my senior year (Civil Engineering Degree). I was able to get my NZ rating transferred over to USHPA rating and go from there. Between graduating and starting work I went back to Switzerland for 2 months and flew every day I could! Now back to the real world... I live in Pittsburgh and work at a great environmental engineering company called KEY Environmental. I just got back from a week in Colombia flying with Terry Bono of Pennsylvania Paragliding. I have been flying for nearly 3 years now (boy time flies) and will be upgrading to a new Ozone Delta this season. I have been flying mainly at Hyner the past summers since it was a short drive from state college. Now that i am in Pittsburgh i am going to be expanding my flying sites and hopefully be making my rounds.

I can't wait to meet everyone,

Happy Flying, See you in the Sky

(PS if there is any other pilots out of Pittsburgh and would ever want to carpool let me know)

[mingram]

Welcome Jacob! Thanks for the back story! Very helpful in assessing new member skills. I assume you got a good deal of thermalling/XC experience in Colombia and Switzerland. Any personal bests?

The Pulpit and Bills Hill are two great PG sites - about the same drive from DC as they are Pittsburgh. You may also want to check out http://www.mountaineerflyers.org/ since you're a little closer to those sites than some of our other primary sites in VA.

Matt
P3
VP, CHGPA

[sight]

Thanks for the link Matt, I will check it out.

As far as thermalling goes I have had many great expierence some of my flights from my 2 months in Switzerland can be found on my website:

http://jcatt.smugmug.com/Swisstrip

I think the Grindelwald-First launch and flight was my favorite, had a great 4ish hour flight all the way up to the top of the mountains. A few people earlier in the day were able to make it all the way back to Interlaken, but the thermals were topping out to low when I got up.

I have always flown just for the fun of it, and never had to many opportunities (or maybe it was desire) to do really long XC's till my latest Colombia trip. There that is what you do, you fly the mountain range as far as you can and take the public transportation back to where you started. It was my first real taste and boy did I love it. In the week I was there we had 5 good flying days and was able to get three 30+ km XCs and a 50km one on the third day.

[mingram]

Sweet! I was in Colombia in December before the XC flying really got started. I flew mostly in La Union, but a few flights in Roldanillo. I had some 2 hour flights, but no one was getting much distance. On a really light lift day I had a sweet touch-and-go landing on top of a roof in the football field in Roldanillo!

Matt

[sight]

Nice!

We went from Roldanillo all the way to Ansermanuevo and a couple of the locals went even farther.

Jacob

[mingram]

Sweet videos! I was in Interlaken for 3 days in 2008 and couldn't believe my luck when I stepped off the train and saw paragliders in the sky! I did my first tandem there and was hooked. I wonder how long the flying season lasts there? Such a beautiful place.

Matt

[sight]

I have a paragliding friend that lives right in interlaken I stay and fly with while i am there. You can fly there or the surrounding area year round. But the good flying starts up around Easter and goes pretty good up to September. All weather dependent...

[keshob]

Hey man... I also learned to fly with Terry Bono... Pennsylvania Paragliding represent!