Brakes vs Risers in Speedflying | Which one works best?

Speedflying guide on rear riser piloting vs using your brake toggles on a Speedwing.
The first part of the video covers some basic aerodynamics about understanding the angle of attack and how it is affected by trimmers, rear riser steering and brakes, which is essential for understanding how they work.
Take in mind that I'm not an instructor.
The intention of this video is not to provide a guide on HOW to speedfly, as this should only be done under certified instruction.
Instead, my aim is to showcase the different techniques for piloting a speedwing, as well as compare them with its advantages and drawbacks.
This will allow you to gain a better insight if you're already a pilot, but it will never replace a professional instruction.
If you should have trouble understanding my English pronunciation, you can click on the subtitles button to activate them.
Instagram: / alexamplatz
00:00 Intro
01:10 1) Know your risers (A/B/C*)
01:48 2) The angle of attack
03:50 3) Brakes, C & BC (which is best?)
04:40 3.1) Brakes (Pros & Cons)
05:52 3.2) Rear risers: C (Pros & Cons)
07:00 3.3) Rear risers: B+C (Pros & Cons)
09:47 4) Brakes, C & BC (when to use them)
10:11 4.1) Flying with: Brakes (summary)
11:40 4.2) Flying with: Rear risers (summary)
13:31 Summary + Outro
Keywords for visibility, just ignore
#speedflying #speedfly #paragliding
paragliding tips
speedflying tutorial
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speedflying lessons
speedfly tips and tricks
rear riser piloting in speedflying
how to use your rear risers in speedflying
how to use your back risers on a speed wing
back riser flying in speedfly
rear riser steering with speed wing

[@ricoreyes6044]

I've been binge watching dozens of paragliding videos and none of them have explained the finer details about working with the risers/trimmers/brakes as well as this video has! Great job explaining how everything affects everything else, its a complex topic but you made it easy to understand.

[@alexamplatz]

Thanks for your great feedback, I appreciate a lot 🙏🏼

[@scotty_dobbo]

Awesome video!! I'll be referring a lot of pilots to this. So detailed but also so straightforward. You nailed it!

[@alexamplatz]

Thanks alot mate! I really appreciate your great feedback 💪🏼

[@fl0ups]

I'm flying paragliders way more than speedwings but I found this video really helping about something I kind of knew but it's now super clear Thanks ! Keep it up ;)

[@alexamplatz]

Glad it could help!

[@amirbazz1735]

Enjoyed watching this very useful and informative video. thanks.

[@alexamplatz]

Thanks for the feedback Amir! Glad it could help

[@AdventuringEden]

Great video! Simple, clear and objective. Bravo 👍

[@alexamplatz]

Thank you!

[@leharteriksen3990]

Great video and explained easy! I will show this to my students! However i miss speaking more about «active flying». For example the added reaction time it takes to correct an collapse while flying on rears etc. Active flying also means that you fly with pressure on your stearing lines, and if you have a collapse - your hand will fall down regaining bigger angle of attack that inflates the wing again. This might be the little margin you need when shit hit the fan. Personally i dont consider flying on rears as active flying. Therefore i highly agree with what you say in this video, to use the rears as a tool for flat lines etc, but not mainly for «normal flying». Thanks for making this!

[@alexamplatz]

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it alot! I’m not an instructor neither an expert, so i didn’t want to talk about how active flying should be done, as I believe there there are many other pilots talking about that in other videos, doing it much better than i would ever be able to. Active flying is a lot more than just applying brake when you feel the loss of pressure. You also need to know when to go hands up. depending on the collapse you need as you said to brake to inflate the wing again, but it can also be the opposite. in some scenarious you need to go hands up after a collapse. Learning to fly actively on a speedwing in my opinion isn’t the best choice. Controlling the angle of attack of your glider with finding the right balance between hands up and applying brake, is something that would be better to be learnt on a paraglider, as movements are much slower there. If you try to learn it on a speedwing without pg experience, in my opinion the harm you could possibly do is much higher than the benefits. Even on a pg, if the glider shoots forward, this happens already very fast, and you sometimes need to give a VERY strong brake input. On a speedwing, this happens even much much faster. The chances of applying too much brake are high and to react in time is even more difficult.

[@markmcgoveran6811]

I love you man. "I'm not an instructor neither am I an expert". I hate to go along with somebody when they're lying to their self and delusional because when you go flying along that ground like that with your ankles crossed that far for that long at that same altitude you're flying speaks louder than words. I'm learning ground handling because I bought an epsilon 9 and I'm a potato not a pilot. I'm not even getting a pilot's license I'm just getting an insurance ticket that says I'm not too fat to fly my wing because I got the biggest one they make and I'm right on the border of weighing too much for the wing. I'm not really a gangster but I played one in a small town for 40 years.I'm coming heavy I have to fly like a gangster. The advanced company has a guy out there that I look at as almost being a god. He sat at his desk and he studied wings and calculations until he built the epsilon 9 and he said this about that Wing."this Wing will fly you through turbulence if you will put your hands up it will fly you better in turbulence then you can fly yourself however active piloting is still recommended". One of the number one causes of paraglider crashes is pilot error. It seems to me as a payload instead of a pilot that my best bet with no guarantee is to put my hands up and just let the damn thing fly meanwhile weight shift to keep going straight or turn or get out of trouble. As far as I can figure out if it shoots forward brakes hard, then hands up. Other than that hands up hands up. From what I can tell, flying heavy and coming in at trim speed is the low risk option for me. I think you could put a bag over my head and give me a mouthpiece to bite and just let me fly into the ground at trim speed and I'd be ok. As a mathematician it looks to me like when you do that swoop landing where you slow down then you put your hands up and dive and then you get in the brakes, you are making decisions, on a 4-second feedback loop. If you miscalculated at the bottom of your swoop you're going to hit the ground at a very steep angle and at a very high speed. I thought perhaps my best bet was to unbuckle my chest strap put my hands up and fly all the way down to 1 ft above the ground or less. Then instead of a nice transition like my hero that put this video out can do all I'm going to do is get away from the concept of transition. I want to go to the mathematical concept of transient. I want to be leaning way forward to land on my feet. When I get close to the ground I want to jam on those brakes all the way as hard as I can to the hold position for landing at the bottom of the stroke. If I would swing 90° from my normal position I would hope to have my body bent forward more than 90° so I can't swing into the ground on my back. I look at proximity flying as having to pay my dues I have to be close to the ground when I take off and I have to be close to the ground when I land but the rest of the time I want to have a limited number of things in my proximity like none. I have some lAunch zones where I live that I think will work. They are on private owned land. I have to take a box of cornstarch with me, and seed the clouds every time I fly. Then when I tell the other Farmers with nice hills my friend is getting rich because there's only so much rain in the county and it's all falling on his land. I just wanted to put my brakes away after I got above 1,000 ft and look through a telescope for a place to land. When you consider the conditions where I live for landings it's mostly a wide open inviting plane with small steel booby traps. Long swooping less than 3 ft off is high risk. Is it possible to fly in epsilon 9 with your hands up as much of the time as you possibly can and barely ever use the brakes just weight shift make the wide turns?

[@alexamplatz]

@@markmcgoveran6811 well, i'm not an experted was referred to the active flying part. i mean, i know how to do it, but teaching it is another level. And i know very well how to speedfly, but this doesn't mean that i'm an expert. i follow some rules in speedflying for myself to go safe, and don't do the crazy staff like 720° swoops when landing in and low barrel rolls, therefore i neither feel like a speedflying-expert. As for the rest, i have to be honest i didn't understand most of the context your wrote, maybe it's my english, sorry 😅 For your last question if you can go hands up most of the time of your flight (if i understood the question right), that's something i cannot answer. It depends on your wing, your skills, and your flying location. my pragliding school teacher always told me that on beginners using beginner wings, rather than making wrong movements with the brakes, its better to go hands up in case of doubt. if you're flying in the alps, you might want to learn active flying, because things will get much more turbulent there with all the mountains that act as obstacles. if you fly in laminar wind like it is in most of the coasts where you can soar, than going hands up most of the time will not bring risk with it like when doing it in the alps because there are no turbulences. also hands up in strong wind soaring spots is often safer because you have more forwards speed against the wind. but again, it depends

[@markmcgoveran6811]

@@alexamplatz here is one question. Can I fly straight down to the ground, at trim speed with my hands up, no flare, flat ground huge place, level wing into the wind, do a parachute landing fall with no flair and have a 10% chance of injury? I love math. Please don't think of yourself as teaching me as much as you are telling me witness testimony for an accident reconstruction. You said one of your rules was you don't do the 720° turn close to the ground. All my equations and calculations suggests as the radius of the turn decreases, the bank angle in the centrifugal forces and the yaw axis being out of alignment and every other thing add up in a nonlinear way... Mathematically the equations of turning too tightly at too low of speed, are somewhat similar to the locked in spiral.here is a question.... If you had to fly around in a great big gentle turn because I was paying you to make that kind of a landing with a 720 of turn, what would be your minimum radius in wingspans or meters? I would really love two numbers. 1 radius where you're making the $720 degrees in a circle as a landing approach and I'm paying you $1,000. On the other one you're flying in to pick up my kidney then I'm donating to save your dog and your mom. (Lol).... I'm very curious myself because I'm going to figure out what my normal mental expectation to turn a corner 720 degrees in that epsilon 9. I think if you turn with weight shift only and you don't use the brakes you can't make very much pilot error that is hard to straighten out and takes a long time. If you could just give me an estimate it's not your fault that you told me a number and I really appreciate it after I saw the way you flew. Here's what I think. If you had a bathroom sink full of water and you pulled the plug out and you waited until it whirlpool and had all of that water turning, it would be shaped like all the possible paths that a paraglider could fly. When you tell me about that 720 turn that you won't do close to the ground, that is the radius of the top of the whirlpool,where I loose steering authority.in some ways the curve is the same but there's no water required to decide where the whirlpool shape is. All you have to do is fly along and turn a tight radius 720 degree turn and you are looking at the whirlpool face not the nice flat spot on the top by the edge of the water in the sink. Did that question make sense? My next question sits on top of that question. I believe the most important thing in the whole world of aviation is the fly at trim speed in a straight line. Aviate and always fly straight. If you're just a potato sitting there and you have some kind of a fart going on in your wing your main goal is to fly straight ahead so you don't waste any altitude. Buy the very nature of any Wing if it's turning its trying to dive and go steeper. If something happens and you get tangled up on one side you need immediately to shift your weight as quickly as you can to the other side so you don't even get a turn started. If you can do it and go completely with weight shift and hold it straight and no break on the other side that's not a bad state of affairs. This would be the lowest sink rate you could probably have or at least reasonably close to a low sink rate and you buy time to play at the strings and see if it comes out. As long as you don't put brakes on the side that is flying you shouldn't have worries about a stall. I'm not going to fly in an Alpine place for a long time. I will probably be pulled into the air over a great big flat friendly landing zone. I live in a state that was once all glacial till now it has topsoil of varying sorts over it and more miles of riverbank than any other state. Some of these banks have high bluffs. I think I can do ridge soaring here. These are not wonderful big Oceanside laminar air. They're kind of like a random washboard of hills with valleys in between that are maybe 500 ft tall . Some places are great wide flat river bottoms, with a 100 ft tall curving ridge along one edge. Would you consider this any possibility of soarable?

[@steveo726]

Lovely flying you take care

[@VilleValpuri]

Great advice. Subscribed!

[@alexamplatz]

Thanks, appreciate it!

[@oddgeirtjelta9930]

This is awsome! Well put togheter and answears everything 👏🏻 I think every pilot that have just finnished their speed course should watch this video! 💪

[@alexamplatz]

Thanks alot! Really appreciate it 💪

[@ben-j]

Quality content! This must have taken you hours! Thanks for this great video. ❤❤

[@alexamplatz]

Thanks Ben! Yeah.. it was a lot more work than it could seem😂

[@Gabriel-Molitor]

Nice video dude

[@alexamplatz]

Thanks Gabriel!

[@brieucmyr4010]

suceur

[@markmcgoveran6811]

I'm only a potato not a pilot and I'm trying to get an insurance certificate so I can fly under my epsilon 9 I'm flying heavy and it's the biggest one they have. I understand how wonderful it is to fly so close to the ground. I'm hoping I can just learn how to land but you give me a great thrill watching how easy this is for you with that Wing hopefully I'll be able to come in and land without too much trouble.

[@alexamplatz]

Don’t worry, with normal paragliders landing is no issue even if you’re just starting. The important thing is that you get teachet properly by an instructor. Whish you all the best ✌🏼

[@markmcgoveran6811]

@@alexamplatz oh yeah I go to the school but the instructor doesn't seem to know much more than anybody else. Mainly I just I'm going to come in with a flat wing and try and flare hard at the very bottom and fly in at trim speed without any swooping and diving and putting my hands up to go fast and then putting on the brakes. Those curves are too hard to see in your mind while you fly until you've flown for a while. I thought my best bet for my first landing was to just unbuckle my chest strap lean Way Forward and fly in and trim speed from 100 ft. Keep the wing level no matter what don't use the brakes until the last minute bite down on my mouthpiece and flare hard. If I'm leaning Way Forward and settled for the last hundred feet then it would be hard to swing me up and swing down and hit my back. I don't know if I can land like that but I'm not sure I can do the curve as the instructor is telling me in the air looking at the ground. You can stand more turbulence and more wind gradient no matter what if you are hands up and flying it trim speed. You can take more turbulence more rotor and everything with your hands up flying fast. I'm a cross-country tourist type person I'm hoping I can do some ridge soaring where I live and every time I go riding if I manage to catch a thermal I'm going to try and fly to my house. Every time I go up I'm going to throw out a box of cornstarch to seed the clouds and Make It rain on my friend's farm that is Rich and lets me use his space. There's no one here to fly with and there's some good launch sites probably they're all private farmland and they're all going to think I can make it rain and make them rich just like my friend that got rich from hard work and free rain.

[@wazzywoz]

how is BC steering with a Mirage RS+?

[@alexamplatz]

Never tried it sorry

[@fl0ups]

Maybe a stupid question, but how much do you speedflying guys use weightshift to pilot ?

[@alexamplatz]

I would say that it’s as important as in paragliding, it’s always the first thing to do. With the only difference that due to the fact that the wing is so small, it is much more reactive and sensitive

[@Summitspeedfly]

Many don't use it at all, mostly those that never flew paragliders, and that's a shame. One big difference is that SF harnesses have independent leg loops instead of a rigid seat board, so you can make weight-shift like inputs by just dropping one leg while lifting the other. Helps because with the higher wing-loading, you are effectively heavier in your seat, making it hard to do full-body weight-shifts. Instead, you see mostly head turns/tilts and leg position shifts.

[@alexamplatz]

@@Summitspeedfly Why do you say many dont use weightshifting at all? Weightshifting is as important as in paraglidig, if not more import because of the much higher stall point. Also nowdays (atleast in my region) most paragliding pilots use a split leg harness also for paragliding (especially for hike and fly), so i would’nt say its a speedflying thing

[@Summitspeedfly]

@@alexamplatz - I'm not saying that not weight-shifting is a good thing. I am saying that a lot of SF pilots just don't weight-shift much, and I don't know why, it's bad pilot technique. With many of the videos you see on youtube, you don't see any weight-shift. Part of that might be that a lot of SF pilots were never PG pilots, and also never took any lessons.

[@simoucci6307]

Not a problem anymore with the flare LINE😂

[@alexamplatz]

Still need to try it, but i guess you’re right 🤣

[@Summitspeedfly]

If you like landing at rocket speeds.

[@simoucci6307]

@@Summitspeedfly no, you can just half break and do a normal circuit landing, you never tried it right? And the sport is called speed-flying, i would be paragliding if i wanted to go slow

[@Summitspeedfly]

@@simoucci6307 - Not according to everyone I talk to that flies them, they all say they land extremely fast. I also watched many land this winter in the Alps, yup, rocket fast. Just one of the few downsides of the design. Fine if you're still young and don't mind a swoop-style landing, but not for me. It's called speed-FLYING, not speed landing.

[@Summitspeedfly]

@@simoucci6307 - From a review: "LANDING - Our pilots as well as Flare advise finding a large landing area for your first landing with the Moustache. You need to land into wind and you can’t flare for touchdown, that will just lift you up. Beni advised: “The biggest problem is the high stall speed. When the wind speed is less than the stall speed, top-landing can be super difficult.” Luke said: “It’s really tricky to land. The key is you have to think like landing a hang glider. You have to land with an approach. You can’t go crosswind and flare it. Make your last leg as long as possible, don’t turn at the last moment but fly into wind. Then don’t bury the brakes but kill it slowly.”