SIV Training — A Newbie’s Survival Guide

There exist precious few ways to better prepare yourself for the adversities attendant the big bad world of paragliding than to participate in SIV training. Yet selecting the right course can prove daunting and having a safe and productive experience is in no way guaranteed. This guide represents my attempt to craft something I wish had existed when I was beginning to dip my toes into this realm.

[Editor’s Note: The original text remains unchanged except for repairing typos. Where I have received constructive feedback I have distinctly inlined the reviewer’s feedback. All of the feedback has seemed valid but I want to maintain provenance authentically.]

Why Take One?

“I don’t know what I would do if that happened to me” a pilot once remarked at the LZ of “The V” in Centerville Utah after a midday September flight, referencing a video shared earlier that week of a new-ish pilot taking a big asymmetric deflation at Point Of The Mountain’s “Southside” which precipitated his riding a spiral dive all the way into the ground that somehow miraculously yielded only a fractured orbital socket as the worst injury as opposed to the fatality I thought I was watching. “You really want some SIV training before you find yourself in that situation”, I replied, hoping he got the implied suggestion that maybe he was assuming more risk than he actually wanted by playing in midday Utah summer air without having taken maneuvers training beforehand. All else being equal I’d rather not have to airlift another pilot out of there for want of a little education.

I don’t know of a more terrifying thing in paragliding than having your wing do something in the wild you have never previously encountered (though realizing you may have blown your glide in a highly committing situation is a close second). I’ve experienced novel-to-me wing faults close to hard ground with nobody on radio to guide me, I’ve done the same over water with thousands of feet of altitude and an instructor on radio, I know which I prefer, and I feel lucky to have survived my brushes with the former. SIV does not perfectly simulate the conditions you will encounter in the wild but it will let you capture a lot of low hanging fruit that stacks the deck in your favor.

How To Choose?

When calling the shot on venue, three categories of consideration should be at fore of mind.

Who is running the course?

Have a meaningful conversation with the instructor before you sign up to feel out whether they are right for you. Does their engagement style feel comfortable? Are they willing to patiently answer all of your questions? Will they help you navigate your anxieties in a generous and empathic manner? How well organized do they appear? Does their perception of risk and their attitude toward risk management feel congruent with yours? How motivated and flexible do they seem to be about ensuring that you receive a fun, valuable, and reasonably safe experience in exchange for your investment of time, energy, money, and risk? What is the community consensus on the kind of experience they offer and how consistent are they in delivering it despite the unavoidable randomness that comes with all paragliding?

Where is the course held?

There exist substantial pros and cons to taking a course locally versus traveling. If you stay local then you reduce your exposure to the “sunk costs” that can impair your decision making but you may give up the flexibility to choose the optimal instructor profile and course architecture for your needs. If you travel then you not only expose yourself to amplified sunk costs from greater time and money investments but also the threats of fatigue and unfamiliarity. When traveling you can partially mitigate these risks by padding your schedule and going somewhere with fun non-paragliding activities but that implies certain trade-offs and a willingness to write off sunk costs.

How generous and predictable are the launch and landing areas at the site? What is the weather generally like at the time of year your course will be held and how big are the error bars? How much of a slog is it to get from your local accommodations to the training site? With the launch there are (when towing) the competing variables of how much runway you have to get off and how much hazard you are accepting between the time the boat’s motor starts cranking and your body has gotten over water. With the landing there is the risk that you will be coming into a tight spot with a fried brain during thermic conditions. Volatile weather and last mile travel can pile on.

[Editor’s Note: One additional facet I neglected to mention and that a reviewer raised is the altitude of the training site. The higher the altitude, the more the power of the boat and the skill of the driver and winch operator matter for getting you towed to a good altitude efficiently. Inadequate power and skill are more likely to manifest in poor tows the higher up the training site is.]

What is the course structure?

Does getting in the air involve tow launches where a boat tows you to altitude or foot launches where you start at altitude? The former is more broadly available while more complicated which maybe implies more preparation, trust, and novel risk. The latter will feel more familiar at the launch phase but maybe comes with the pressure of a shared launch and perhaps the risk of not having a dedicated rescue boat. I have only done the towed variant of SIV and so there is some focus on that in this discussion though mostly the advice generalizes.

[Editor’s Note: A reviewer voiced the opinion that towing is the theoretically safer option while agreeing that the “error bars” governing whether this is practically true in a given situation based on operator skill is a problem. They further noted that towing is more efficient and effective overall when done right because course staff can ensure that the pilot is doing roughly the right thing at all times on the way to “the box” (the designated/optimal place to execute maneuvers) and furthermore that circuit towing keeps the pilot close enough to the instructor to ensure adequate visuals for good critiques whereas mountain launch setups often have the student pilot ending up in “the box” quite far away from the instructor which encumbers providing good feedback.]

If you are towing then there are three roles in which anywhere from one to three course staff members may serve — maneuvers instructor, boat operator, winch operator. The more separation of duties exists likely the safer and more effective the setup assuming that each person is reasonably competent in their role. On one extreme you will find your instructor on-shore with radio comms to a boat that has one person controlling the power and steering and another person controlling the winch. On the other extreme you will find a single person on the boat playing all three roles with maybe just an assistant on shore doing safety checks and launch monitoring. In the middle there may be an on-shore instructor with a single person managing all the boat tasks.

[Editor’s Note: A reviewer voiced the opinion that the safest setup has the boat driver and winch operator as the same person. The main reasons centered on “split brain” and “bandwidth consumption” problems. In some scenarios safety hinges on tight synchrony between boat motor power adjustments and and winch pressure reconfiguration. In other scenarios, such as a winch failure, only boat motor power adjustment can save the day, and delays can be catastrophic. There is also the issue that often a dedicated winch operator is the “trainee” which compounds issues. This reviewer did nonetheless emphasize the criticality that the instructor is on shore and focused solely on instructing.]

Is there a substantial front-loading of ground school? Does the ground school component take gear inspection and tuning seriously? Do you get to sit in a simulator with your unfamiliar additional gear attached and go through the motions of a reserve toss? A lack of rigor here, especially if you are new to SIV, and furthermore if you are towing, can result in unsafe launches, uncomfortable tows, awkward maneuvers, and even the horror of a reserve toss where the reserve fails to open owing to a botched or stale pack job. A little bit of diligence and education goes a long way toward avoiding senseless bad outcomes. This is especially valuable for your first SIV.

How To Prepare?

A good instructor will provide the essential education you need but there are many quality online courses that illustrate and discuss all the maneuvers. An open minded perusal of this material can help you prepare, if just by letting you know what questions you would like to ask, but also by preemptively filling gaps and providing triangulation. Take the time to do a self-guided survey. Know how all the non-standard gear works so you can handle its setup yourself and rely on others only for quality assurance.

Figure out how to optimize for comfort so that when you’re in the thick of things you have the most energy and brains possible available to you. Will it be hot or cold? (spoiler — often both by turns) Will the sunlight be pleasant or oppressive? How will you stay hydrated and nourished? What happens if you and your gear get wet? Ensuring that these basics stay on an even keel can keep you in the game and making good decisions instead of gratuitously missing opportunities or getting into trouble.

Have your launch technique dialed. Be very current and confident in your forward inflations since that will usually be the game for tow launches. Be ready to competently perform reverse inflations when the conditions get more complicated. And make sure your instinct is never ever to sit down because you’re in a hurry to get off the ground instead of waiting for the wing to pluck you while keeping your legs ready to run again if the need arises. If you’re worried you’re rusty on your forward inflations then find some opportunity before game day to just practice that in isolation until your arms are covered in love bites from your risers.

[Editor’s Note: A reviewer observed that the “love bites” might have been gentler if I hadn’t rolled up my sleeves before spending an hour doing forward inflations.]

On the gear front, you can often borrow stuff at a course or make just-in-time purchases but this pales in comparison to acquiring and dialing all of your own equipment beforehand. You’re going to be sufficiently stressed by unavoidably novel and high pressure circumstances so why pile on more complexity, awkwardness, and unfamiliarity? Get your own secondary reserve, tow bridles, life jacket, and radios with ear pieces. Make sure those ear pieces include soft rubber tips instead of hard plastic ones, have your own tape to secure them, and check that the cabling has enough slack. Know how to use your radios ahead of time and have one for each ear. Opt for an auto-inflating life jacket to avoid undue encumbrance. Take systems integration seriously by conducting some test flights at your easiest home site with all this gear attached and don’t worry about people laughing at you. Ensure you can get easily seated in your harness post-launch and get a stirrup if you can’t. Have two hook knives integrated into your setup such that you can do a quickdraw with either hand or deal with losing one. Try to find a camera whose field of view can capture your whole wing, ensure it has a small foot print to reduce snag risks, and attach it in a way where if it does get snagged it gets ripped away instead of locking in a mishap.

[Editor’s Note: A reviewer noted that to get the full value of your “systems integration testing” you should specifically be practicing your forward inflations with all of your gear attached, especially the tow bridles, to get as close to a realistic experience as possible.]

How To Participate?

Maybe you’re eager and want to go first in the line-up. Maybe you’re scared and are happy to go last. Consider the happy medium of going somewhere in the middle if this is your first rodeo. Allowing other people to go first gives you a chance to observe but avoiding the end of the rotation reduces the risks of your missing out on a tow if unforeseen developments curtail festivities early.

Own your safety checks but always ask a buddy to double check your work. Novel and high pressure situations increase the chances of making mistakes so backstop yourself accordingly but never rely solely on someone else for your safety.

Make the most of your day but don’t be greedy. Personally I can’t deal with more than three good tows in one day, particularly when dealing with novel maneuvers, conditions, or locations. Be mindful of your limits and a little suspicious of your brain. Don’t amplify the risks of your instructor wanting to show you a good time by ignoring your gut feelings about fatigue and risk.

Heed everything your instructor has to say about preparatory safety. Follow their guidance if things get out of control. Don’t ignore them if they say to throw your reserve. But be sure to own your decision making. I’ve watched pilots ride maneuvers almost all the way into the lake because they lost the plot while relying too much on an instructor when a radio failed. I’ve seen pilots wait way too long to throw a reserve because the instructor left it up to them. Remember that you are never obligated to initiate a maneuver from stable flight or continue a trajectory just because you can. If you’re feeling overwhelmed or exhausted then it is always your right to say “enough” and head back to shore.

Have an idea of what you want to accomplish in the course. If you’re a new-ish pilot then you can capture the majority of the potential value for a fraction of the potential risk exposure. You will come away a dramatically safer pilot with just some basic exposure to deflations and spirals since these represent the most common “surprise acro” scenarios a pilot will encounter in the wild when making their first forays into thermic flying. Don’t feel like you need to check all the boxes during any given course. If you finish without undue drama you can always come back for more. Spins, stalls, and wingovers are wonderful things to figure out but forcing them when you aren’t ready is a terrible idea.

Take your time choosing your moment to launch, own the go decision, and be ready to abort. Better to cause mild annoyance to impatient compatriots than to face plant in the lake because the conditions switched from no-wind to tail-wind at just the wrong moment. IYKYK.

Be conservative about last-minute gear changes. Ease into them by backing off to more conservative approaches and working incrementally forward to previous aggressiveness. It’s far better to be too conservative, have a boring outcome, and then have to dial up more aggression than to realize too late you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. IYKYK.

If your brain is fried and you would benefit from some guidance on setting up an optimal landing approach then don’t hesitate to communicate your needs clearly. Trying to land in strong conditions at an unfamiliar LZ after engaging in manufactured emergencies can push you past your limits if you are not careful. I got myself into one of the most stupidly dangerous situations ever during a “safety” course because a rising lake was eating the LZ coincident with strong and dynamic conditions unpredictably further depleting my margins and I avoided my mistakes being life changing by inches.

Don’t believe the instagram highlights reels. This can be one of the most valuable and thrilling experiences of your life but there can be substantial setbacks and peril along the way. Stay humble, stay frosty, and stay the course.

How To Integrate?

You’ll hear wise instructors say at the end of SIV things like “this course has made three of you safer and one of you more dangerous” or “you’ve taken three steps forward as a pilot but now you should take two steps back”. There are lots of ways you might misread the experience and overshoot your perceived attempt at “risk homeostasis”. Some pilots get got by subsequently being over confident in their ability to do risky maneuvers over hard ground with marginal altitude. Others imagine that they can now recover any situation, neglect to throw a reserve when they should, and ride an out of control cascade all the way to a landing on something far less forgiving than water. “Won’t happen to me” I thought to myself and was right. “Won’t happen to me”, of course, is a recipe for getting tagged by some other under-appreciated scenario of which there are infinitely many.

My story arc involved an early deflation-to-stall subplot just a few months after my initial training that took me from over-confidence, to a near miss and a fear injury, to over-compensation with heavy hands, to splat’ing with mild physical injuries and a far worse and much stickier fear injury, to surmounting that fear injury after more than a year of serious struggle, and then back to excessive confidence in a new way that I didn’t appreciate. As it turns out, if you have a debilitating fear injury associated with flying in turbulent air in your home state, then maybe you unwittingly protect yourself from yourself with regard to, say, errors in estimating your glide during dynamic conditions in highly committing situations. Who knew? I didn’t. How will your next victory lead to a new vulnerability? I have no idea and neither do you. Keep pushing but maintain those margins, limit how many variables you change at the same time, and accept that this sport will always find some new way to surprise you.

For more reflections on how not to die doing what you love, perhaps consider the following as a companion read — Protecting Oneself From Oneself.