Ground Launching

Another thing we have against parachuting is the fact that our sport doesn’t start and end at ground level. All of the other extreme sports stay at ground level near the crowd. This keeps the crowd more interested and gives sponsors more opportunities (impressions) with backdrops, flags, courses and more. Another important aspect with other extreme sports, which is also appealing, is the fact that they race against each other in “Heats” not against a “clock”. So in 2004 I decided to start developing “Ground Launching” as a sport to assist canopy piloting in our quest to reach the masses. People can try Ground Launching with a minimal investment in time or money. It doesn’t have an age limit and doesn’t require an aircraft. Ground Launching has been around for years but only recently has it gained international attention. It could be widely debatable on who was the first to start ground launching with skydiving parachutes but I can tell you that it was not I. 

I first learned to ground launch in Europe around 2001 during Team Extreme’s early expeditions for the “Out of the Blue” film. JC Colclasure took me atop a ski resort run and showed me the ropes with his Icarus FX 135. JC Colclasure and teammate Clint Clawson started ground launching around 1996 during the first “Bladerunning” competitions. The weather is typically harsh around the mountains and the plane could not fly the jumpers for the competition. JC and Clint both experienced swoopers, skiers and tandem masters decided to hook each other up tandem and launch off the top of the ski run. To their surprise it worked and that gave birth to a new craze among the competition swoopers of that era. These guys were learning things like swooping with rear risers that they wasn’t doing back at the DZ. It wasn’t before long that ground launching took a backseat to this new craze in skydiving called “Freeflying”. So even though the Americans started flying down mountains in 1996 there was another group from New Zealand that had discovered ridge soaring with skydiving parachutes a full decade earlier. In the mid 1980’s (around 1985) a chap name Ronnie Hughan and his mates from New Zealand started launching CRW canopies over at Pukerua Bay on the north Island. These guys taught them selves to ground launch their CRW canopies (200+sqft) and were turning CRW rotations on the hill! These guys had figured out how to practice CRW for competitions without the use of an aircraft. It didn’t take long and the self learning process caught up with them on November 27^th 1987 when Ronnie got “blown over the back” at the launch site and woke up in the hospital with broken bones. This is one of the drawbacks of being an early pioneer in a flying sport and a fate that would almost kill me too on Feb 12, 2006 at the Ground Launch Center in California.  With almost two decades in the sport and over 10,000 parachute flights I can tell you there is no substitute for experience and no reason to risk your life trying to teach yourself. We have schools now with the proper equipment for the job.

It took me many years to get people onto the idea of ground launching high performance skydiving parachutes again. I teamed up with NZ Aerosports and we started developing ground launch canopies specifically for the sport. Shortly after I got Mirage Systems to sign on and we started developing ground launching harness as well. I developed a complete training program and opened the “ Ground Launch Center” (GLC) in California, USA. This is currently the only place in America licensed to teach this new form of flying. The GLC has the most experienced instructors in the world and has created a variety of training techniques to accelerate the learning process. The paragliding communities are quick to dismiss this new form of ground launching as something they used to do in the old days with large docile skydiving parachutes. We continue to debate with them trying to educate the paragliders about swooping and our canopies. Ground Launching has come along way since the early days in New Zealand and now we have experienced swoopers getting involved. Canopy piloting adds a whole new dimension to the sport, which many people have never seen before.

It all started to take off in early 2005 when I released the DVD called “Gravity Pilots”. This video had footage from the first couple of years at the GLC and showcased high speed swooping down the mountain. It quickly became apparent that ground launching was the new “wind tunnel” for canopy pilots costing a fraction of the time or money. The video quickly spread around the world and across the Internet into the hands of paragliders. Suddenly paragliders everyone wanted to swoop down mountains so videos started popping up all over “Youtube” of these guys flying down mountains in Europe. We started to get all sorts of students at the GLC including Paragliders and people with no parachuting experience at all! We developed a training program for all experience levels including the first time flyer too. We have students that come to us with no prior skydiving or paragliding experience and we teach them to fly parachutes. In a matter of four days and around 25 flights we can teach someone to fly all their controls and land on an accuracy target! Some of these people continue on and become skydivers taking the AFF course. They make their first solo skydive having already landed a similar size parachute (200-270sqft) dozens of times!

The paragliders that showed up at the GLC expected to fly high-speed parachutes like the ones they saw of us swooping down the mountain in the video. These guys quickly realized how difficult and dangerous these types of skydiving parachutes could be. Some of these pilots were world class paragliders and they went back to their sponsored companies requesting that a new smaller paragliding wing be developed so they could easily transition to this new type of flying. This led to the development of a variety of new paragliding wings and a new sport. The top paragliders started to develop their own form of ground launching with these small paragliders called “Speed Flying”. When they use skis for ground launching these speed gliders they call it “Speed Riding”. Call it Speed Flying, call it Speed Riding or call it what you want but it’s really just “Bladerunning” which skydivers have been doing since 1996 and the advent of the first Bladerunning competition. It was BJ Worth and Australia’s own Reggie Estaugh that organized the first Bladerunning events.

The Ground Launch Center teaches multiple levels of training from GL-1 up to GL-3 including the “zero” course for first time parachutists. Students with previous skydiving or paragliding experience take the GL-1 course first where they get ground training to teach them the fundamentals of the forward and reverse launch on level ground. They then move up to the lower part of the training hill (100m) where they apply the forward launch and learn ground handling. As the students progress they move further up the training hill until eventually they are launching from the top. The group then moves on to learning the reverse launch and when everyone proves proficiency there they move on.  After the training hill students move up to the middle hill (200m) which is even higher. Here the students learn more launching techniques and different launch methods on various slope angles. At this part of the training students also get to practice “kiting” in the “saddles” of the hill. A saddle is the low-lying area between two hills along a ridgeline. Some saddles like the ones at the GLC create a “V effect” where there is an accelerated wind flow that provides a smooth area to kite without turbulence. This area can be used with canopies like a wind tunnel. After a couple of days of training and a dozen or more launches students graduate to the upper training area (300m) where flights can range from 2-6 minutes long. Training begins each morning in no winds with a wind limit of 12knts for GL-1 students.

The GLC is holding camp 13 and 14 in the first quarter of 2008 with many students coming from Europe and beyond. The instructors at the GLC will also be organizing the Swedish Ground Launch Boogie September 6-14, 2008. This will be the biggest ground launching event to date and will take place at a Ski resort in Sweden during the summer! There will be a variety of all-inclusive packages from first time flyers to experienced launchers. We will be running the ski lifts and have members of both Team Extreme and the PD Factory Team teaching and leading group flights down many slopes. For more information about ground launching, the GLC or upcoming GL events go to www.canopypiloting.com

About the author:

Jim Slaton is an experienced parachutist, producer, organizer and pro canopy pilot with over 10,000 flights. Jim created the first factory swoop team in 1999 (Team Extreme) and went on to create the Pro Swooping Tour in 2003. Later that same year he was responsible for getting the sport of canopy piloting accepted by the IPC and into the World Cup, which he organized at Perris Valley Skydiving. In 2004 he became the 1^st US Champion of Canopy Piloting and designed his own signature series of parachutes called the “JVX” with NZ Aerosports. Later that same year he created the Ground Launch Center and then in 2005 added the amateur swoop league called the Canopy Piloting Circuit. In 2006 Jim survived a parachute stunt at the ground launch center where he was in a coma with a head injury breaking his hip, femur, shoulder and more. After a year long recover Jim resurrected the old Team Extreme into the new World Parabatic Stunt Team which he travels with performing today.