So, you carefully read the advice from the previous chapter, learned everything, climbed into the sky and stuck into the lift zone.
If you follow my advice, after a couple of revolutions you will center the flow and, processing it, will confidently gain height. In this section I will write what to do next.
First you have to select from the stream all the height that is possible. It may seem difficult and a little boring. In calm weather the average flow has a climb rate of 1.5 m / s. You will gain 1000 meters of height in 10 and a half minutes. All this time you must actively handle the paraglider, not letting it fall out of the nucleus. It happens that the core that you so hard to center has disappeared somewhere - then you need to search the surroundings to find another suitable core and continue typing. It’s useful to set yourself goals, like “today I’ll climb the highest, or at least I’ll get 1,200 meters above the start!” Your goal is to get to the cloud base or inversion layer. The cloud base is hard to miss. The inversion looks like a layer of muddy air - it is very beautiful, only the flows above it hardly rise.
Sweating, you gained a thousand or two thousands meters. Do not rush to relax, your flight is just beginning. Take a look around - how beautiful our landscape is from a bird's eye view! Have you decided where to fly? Intelligent people usually fly along the road when they fly for themselves. In competitions, the route is set based on the same considerations. If the wind blows where there is no road, you’re hit. However do not be upset. In the forests and fields, as in the sky, no one has remained. Somehow, get out. Go to the unknown distance!
We direct the wing in the right direction, arms up, forward! But stop, it's not that simple. A fly on quality in the wind will not suit us. We must immediately begin to search for the next thermal flow.
What we pay attention to:
1) Clouds and blue holes. If the clouds are highly developed, it is better not to meddle in the hole between the clouds - there is most likely a minus. Although it happens in different ways. But it will be safer to rush to the nearest promising cloud, even if it is a little aloof. Even better if you do not waste all the height during the transition. Make a mental path from cloud to cloud and beyond.
2) Smokes. Take a look around. Smokes from bonfires will be shown by the surrounding streams. Choose a suitable smoke, and fly to it.
3) Type of surface. Get your route over the plowed field, and you’ll probably be well thrown over its center.
4) Ripples on ponds and streams are produced by a stream passing over water.
5) Sun spots. Fly towards them when the rest of the earth is shaded by clouds.
If the sky is strewn with a large number of small clouds, in front of you is an endless homogeneous steppe in which no one burns bonfires - fly right where you want and hope for good luck - in this situation it will not let you down.
The above refers to flying over the plain. In the mountains, everything is a little different. Flying in the mountains differs mainly in that you cannot fly as high above the terrain as on a plain. Yes, in Kurai it is sometimes possible to climb 1,500 meters above the tops of mountains three and a half thousand meters high, but this does not happen every day. And even when it happens, flying from top to top does not work: either a minus, then a wide gorge, or an anti-missile defense in the valley. More often than not, the lower edge of the clouds is not much higher than the mountain peaks. The height of the mountains is comparable to the height of your flight. Therefore, it is necessary to build a route taking into account the terrain. This, on the one hand, is a big plus: the flows are arranged more predictably. On the other hand, you need to carefully choose what to fly over. In the mountains, in which case, evacuation is difficult. There are gorges that cannot be flown into without a certain reserve of height - otherwise you are guaranteed to land somewhere inside it. I'm not talking about what quirks a wind can throw in a mountainous area.
So, you are getting ready to start from the slope. Look around: for sure your take off is on the south side of the ridge. This is because in our northern hemisphere the sun tends to shine from the south. The slope of the mountain heats up, bubbles break from it, which create a headwind, convenient for taking off, and also form a standby flow in the place laid to it. In the future, you will probably also have to fly over the southern slopes. If not, don’t worry, flows over the slopes of the northern exposure are also possible. In the middle of the day, the sun heats them, although not so much. In any case, if you have a choice, always head towards the southern slope.