Paragliding Cross Country
From your first XC to mountains, competition, and the Alps — 17 parts
Fly With Greg's 17-part cross-country curriculum — from leaving a small hill on your first XC, through leesides and mountain flying, gaggle and competition tactics, to designing routes in the Alps. The art of flying far, safely.
1. Cookies Are for Closers — A 25 km FAI Triangle Record Attempt
Pause each time Greg calls out his height (700 m, 570 m, 1,000 m), decide whether you would stay or go, and only then watch what he does. On a day with no retrieve, a triangle small enough to walk back from makes a good task in its own right.
2. Getting Away From a Small Hill — Picking the Day, Finding a Strong Thermal
If you often climb in thermals at your hill but rarely get much above it, watch how far each thermal drifts against the ground over a few turns. The ones that stay almost in place are the ones Greg says will take you away.
3. Learning From Your Flight Tracks — Comparing Lines in Ayvri
Overlaying tracks like this pays off straight away when several pilots flew the same course on the same day, as in a competition or a group XC. Collect your friends' IGC files, pick one or two spots where your decisions split, and watch just those together. Any tool that plays several tracks at once will do; it doesn't have to be Ayvri.
4. Staying Safe on the Leeside — Working Lee Lift in Snowdonia
Episode 16 covers the leeside too, but from the outside: the reading Greg does before he goes in. This one shows what happens once you're in, how he reads the air and handles the wing. Watch them as a pair, and in ordinary flying make a point of checking ground speed and which way the glider wants to yaw in your turns.
5. Do You Really Want the Red Bull X-Alps? — A Plan for a 70-Hour Pilot
Only the last couple of rungs on Greg's ladder are aimed squarely at the X-Alps; the rest works as a plan for building any XC career. Put your logbook next to it, mark the rungs you've done and the ones still empty, and you have next season's plan. Read the British and Alpine race names as your own national XContest league and local events.
6. How to Fly Cross Country (For the First Time) — The Seminar
This is an 84-minute live recording: roughly the first seven minutes are chat and announcements, and the Q&A starts at 52 minutes. If the main session feels long, start with the four-minute episode 8, which covers much of the same ground, and in the Q&A pick out only the questions that match your situation.
7. Mountain Flying Shortcuts — From the Forecast to the Morning's First Transition
On the first morning of a mountain trip, watch from launch to see when the breeze starts coming up each sunlit slope. Knowing that time keeps you from launching before the circulation has started and landing early.
8. Shortcuts to Your First Cross Country — Tasks to Start Now
Take Greg's hill tasks one per flight and you can keep working through them all season; comparing heights with other pilots needs a day when plenty of people are flying. The full livestream linked in the description is episode 6 of this series, the first XC seminar.
9. How to Win Competitions — Advice From a British Champion
If you have a comp coming up, have your own answer ready to the question Greg puts to Andy: what makes you believe you can win? Go through your past flights for days you outflew other pilots at the same site and write them down; that's your answer. The Grand-Bornand and Aravis terrain Andy describes is what Greg flies through in episode 10.
10. My Simple System for the Alps — Flying New Places Safely
A good one for pilots heading to the Alps to fly sites they've never flown. Before you go, look up the landing field rules in a guidebook and on the club website, and load the local airspace into one of the apps Greg mentions, such as Navigator, XCTrack or FlySkyHy.
11. Racing at the Front Line — Tactics for Staying Ahead
Greg's review of Noé's line against his own is the track comparison from episode 3, applied to a single comp day. If on XC days you keep arriving later than pilots who flew the same route, overlay your track on a faster pilot's and start by finding where you sat in weak climbs and where you arrived low and had to scrape back up.
12. Lifting a Thermal From a Crowd — Positioning in the Start Gaggle
The clip runs almost nine minutes without a cut, so answering Greg's question means watching to the end and writing down what you think Ceri missed. Then check your list against the results and the Airtribune replay.
13. An Easy Thermal-Hunting Method — Finding the Next Climb
Before you fly, pick candidate sources off the map: fields facing the afternoon sun, rising slopes, tree lines along an upwind edge. Then all that's left in the air is to check the wind with your ground speed before you reach the source and cross its back.
14. Landing Somewhere Random — A Setup for Unknown Fields
One to watch before your first XC if you've only ever landed at your school's field. The L-shaped pattern and reading the wind from ground speed can be practised on every landing at the field you already know, and that's the routine you'll carry into a field you've never seen.
15. Where's Your Focus? — Splitting Attention Between Hazards and Lift
Greg's half-and-half split gives you a quick self-check when you're flying close to a ridge: is my attention stuck on the rocks, or is some of it on the sky? He suggests watching this alongside the Austria flight log (episode 17) and his system for flying the Alps (episode 10).
16. How to Read a Leeside — Finding a Thermal in the Lee of a Light Northerly
The habit to copy from this clip right away is checking the wind direction from cloud shadows on every glide and comparing it with the forecast. Greg says the full version on his website explains principles you can apply to any mountain range.
17. Paragliding in Amazing Austria — An Alpine Route from Greifenburg
The opening section, on why Greg chose Greifenburg, is directly useful if you're looking for somewhere to fly your first Alpine XC. Visualizing the planned flight on launch doesn't need a trip; you can add it to your preflight checks at your home site. The French Alps flight Greg suggests watching next is episode 10.