Every Monday we will be writing a short story or interview on one of the many amazing pilots who fly with us here in Dubai. Tell a little bit about their story, get some handy tips about flying and hear of their adventures in the sky.
This week we kick things off with Alex Ctitor
- one of our amazing packers at Skydive Dubai Desert Campus. He has been flying with us for just over one year - and speaks a little bit about why he loves paramotor.
My name is Alex, I am a packer for SkyDive Dubai here in the Desert Campus.
In my spare time, it's nice to go out and fly paramotor around the desert area - you can play low and fly for a long time in the dunes. I like to play in 3D, to fly over the dunes and move with the terrain out here.
When I was small, my dream was to become a pilot. I started by flying gliders, though after my school closed, I moved onto Skydiving. In Skydive you have two parts, the freefall and the canopy. I like the freefall but it is short, paramotor is more like flying the canopy - but you can keep flying and play low down as long as you have fuel.
To learn paramotor was not so difficult. I was flying paragliders first, though with the paramotor it's more to manage. You have the weight of the engine on your back and have to think not just about the canopy but about the motor as well.
“I like to play in 3D, to fly over the dunes and move with the terrain out here.”
It's not so difficult but there are some very important parts to learn. It's important to have a good instructor, learn the theory to go with the paramotor and do it properly - as its easy to think its simple to move from Skydive or Paraglide to paramotor.
In Skydiving, if you have a problem, you have steps to follow in an emergency. You cut away a bad canopy and have your rescue for example. In paramotor when you are flying low you don’t have this time. If something goes wrong you have 2-3 seconds to react. It is important to be careful and learn slow, but it is a lot of fun.
