Flying with an Ultralight

Yesterday, Alexander N. took me out on his ultralight, on a glorious day, from the Natakhtari Airport. The runway in itself was an experience (there was no runway). Flying in this ultralight felt incredibly immediate, and fun. The only thing that you crave is turning off the engine as you're approaching a big cloud and beginning to feel how it draws you in. But that is not what this toy is designed for.

Cloud base somewhere above 2200 m, which would be plenty for flying over land, even if it's on the low side for the foothills of the Caucasus. Again, we were thinking that the one thing we need is either a winch (the first thermals start 200 m above the ground, or less) or eventually one of the electric motors.

On a day like yesterday, after three days of strong wind from the Northwest, the Northwest wind breaking down around noon, there would be plenty of potential for epic flights -- to be sure, only in one direction, since the wind is pretty zippy up there (around 50 km/h above Mtskheta), but distance nevertheless. There is so much potential that's waiting to be explored...

[Pictures/film to follow soon.]

Israeli Pilots in Paragliding Festival

Among the guests in a paragliding festival we had two pilots from Israel, Teddy and Tal.



This was gentle evening soaring. Typical for mountain weather, it had actually been raining, briefly, around noon. The launch site is just about the Austrian hut, and accessible by car.

Caucasus Paragliding Festival | Gudauri

Irakli Kapanadze organized a great paragliding festival, the first Caucasus Paragliding Fly-In, at the end of June.



On the Monday, we went out flying to Gudauri. Here we are flying over Kudebi, with Mik Broschart from Nova. It's tough working your way up to over the peak, since you risk flying into an isolated valley. But if you stay close to the mountains, you can soar up. Launch is just up from the Austrian hut.

Georgian Paragliding on Facebook

For the day-to-day things, check out Georgian paragliding on Facebook. They have an excellent site, with many photographs, videos, and as you can see the group is very popular. The moderator does a great job of bringing nice new material in.


We are keeping up the blog with tags & labels, for more site-specific information. It's a little more searchable for people who want to figure out the main locations, their flying conditions, and also directed at more experienced pilots.

Paragliding in Armenia

Armenia has a vibrant paragliding club, with a good dozen experienced pilots, and formalized instruction.

There are excellent flying sites close to Yerevan, and Armenian pilots also participate in the Leonardo cross-country contests. Cloud base often is quite high, offering excellent opportunities.

The club has a good website, with much more information than we can provide here.

It's a great group of people to fly with!

Find their website by clicking here.

Rustavi Soaring | April

Here are some impressions from soaring in Rustavi. Wind like this (NW, 300-320 degrees, 10-12 knots at TBS airport, frequency 138.500) is rare, but when we have it it makes for great flying.



You see Alexander flying, and Roland launching. We were in the air for more than two hours. Generally, we stayed well in front of the ridge line, to be ready to descend in case the winds get too strong. (A few weeks earlier, winds had increased from around 25 km average to about 50 km average, within 30 min.)

Flying in Tianeti

This has been a wonderful site for thermal soaring. No cross-country beyond 10-15 km yet, going East. We did our very first flight there in 2007, and Roland did the largest distance in a single flight towards Akhmeta, landing in a small clearing. In 2008 two further distance flights East, beyond Tianeti town, and in early 2009 one more flight East, also of about 10 km.

Here for the soaring, which on a typical day can last for hours.



An even better day was this:



Super easy takeoff and landing. This is a very forgiving site.