Top Gun Flight School

At iParaglide Top Gun Flight School, we take pride in having taught over 1900 paragliding students in our 26 years of operation.

We are the the longest running school based in Metro Vancouver. Due to our central location, we are the only school that flies all of the relevant kiting parks, training hills and mountains within a 3 hour radius of Vancouver.  This empowers pilots to get to know the key training and flying spots early, optimizes and accelerates learning, and allows them to grow into great future pilots.  

We have the reputation of being an industry leader with an emphasis on engineered safety systems, quality instruction, the finest equipment and a positive learning environment for fun and empowering flying.

We offer the highest level of accreditation, with Senior HPAC and Advanced USHPA paragliding instructors, who coach from first flight to expert paraglider pilots and teach and qualify new paragliding instructors.

Top Gun References

We recently graduated a CF-18 Hornet Pilot from our Top Gun iP2 Novice Paragliding Pilot program.  Read about his impressions of iParaglide.

Social Links

iParaglide Location

Located at 962 - 51st Street Tsawwassen, near Vancouver, BC, Canada, for all your paragliding needs. We are ideally situated just minutes away from the finest training hill at Diefenbaker Park.

iParaglide Flying Sites

We are central to paragliding sites in the Vancouver, Chilliwack, Pemberton, Whistler, Bellingham and Seattle area so students enjoy maximum variety and we can work with weather to optimize selection of the best location each day.

Right Stuff Equipment

We regularly test fly the latest paragliding gear and select only the very finest for our iParaglide Right Stuff Paragliding Equipment Store. This ensures our paraglider pilots enjoy a state of the art performance and safety advantage to accelerate their learning curve.

Paragliding Webcams/Wind Stations

Vancouver Paragliding Webcams - get a view of cloud base to plan your paragliding cross country flight adventure.

Woodside Mtn Webcam

Woodside Wind Station

Bridal Webcam

Bridal Wind Station

Chilliwack Webcam

Hope Webcam 

Pemberton Webcam

Tsawwassen Webcam

Bellingham Bay Webcam

Tiger Mtn Webcam 

Reserve Parachute Seminar ($247)   Paragliding
Apr 13, 2024 @ iParaglide

Sep 28, 2024 @ iParaglide

 

 

Sign Up! (Click Here)

 

 

Our Paragliding Reserve Parachute Seminar teaches pilots to decide when and how to throw their reserve parachute.  It is highly recommended, particularly one week in advance of our SIV course.

Having a reserve parachute installed in your paragliding harness is only half the battle. Understanding the "throw or no-throw" scenario is a complex set of decisions and requires a well-understood decision tree.

The paragliding reserve parachute throw sequence itself requires a precise methodology that can be executed in extreme situations as an autonomous, systematic response.

 

 

Having the skills to inspect, maintain and repack your paragliding reserve is essential to being a pilot, especially when traveling in a third world countries. If you ever have a bystander lift your harness by the reserve handle; have it deploy on the ground accidentally; get your equipment wet and need to dry it; or deploy your reserve: you will especially appreciate your ability to repack on your own, as opposed to ending your paragliding holiday and waiting to return to someone who knows how to pack it. 

 

 

Course components include: 

  • Classroom theory including multi-media displays of paragliding reserve deployments gone well and deployment scenarios gone bad
  • Paragliding Reserve Parachute design brief
  • Pre-flight checks
  • Why to throw, flight attitudes and altitudes that warrant reserve deployment   
  • When to deploy
  • How to deploy your paraglider reserve parachute: mantra
  • Low altitude deploy reserve ride considerations
  • High altitude deploy reserve ride considerations
  • Dangerous landing sites
  • Parachute Landing Fall (PLF) 
  • Tree Extraction for paraglider pilots 
  • Multiple reserve deployments from a paragliding simulator
  • Multiple paragliding reserve repacks in a small group size
  • Tree extraction kit for paragliders practicum

 

 

Our paragliding reserve parachute seminar is conducted in a small group size so we can throw and repack sufficient times in an un-rushed environment.  The principle is that you will be able to repack on your own in the future provided you stay current and repack every 6 months.

 

 

We look forward to helping pilots thoroughly understand how paragliding reserve parachutes are designed to function; when and how to deploy their reserves; what to do during a reserve ride; and how to repack. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reserve Parachute Seminar ($247)

Apr 13, 2024

Sep 28, 2024 @ iParaglide

Sign Up! (Click Here)

Students must have their own complete set of paragliding equipment: Reserve parachute and harness. Full payment for the Paragliding Reserve Parachute Seminar must be received prior to commencement of training, with no refunds for partial course completion. Pilots must notify us of thier specific paragliding harness make and model and reserve make and model. Pilots must research and bring with them the manufacturers repacking instructions for their specific harness and reserve. We reserve the right to discontinue training any paragliding student not following directions or conducting themselves in a manner that may endanger themselves or others.