The August long weekend was filled with pilots, students and passengers filling their boots with air time.  Conditions allowed for many students to get early morning flights a few had their first taste of thermalling.  Every day we had tandems taking to the sky with some of them soaring over 8000 feet!

The summer's not over so come on out and fly!

Shay Galor, the local community reporter from Global Okanagan News in Kelowna came out for a tandem paragliding flight.  Check it out here:  httpsglobalnews.ca/video/4308837/paragliding-over-lumby-with-the-freedom-flight-park://globalnews.ca/video/4308837/paragliding-over-lumby-with-the-freedom-flight-park 

Two Albertans, Ron and Kyle, came out to the Freedom Flight School to take their P1 course.  Over 6 days, they did ground handling, small flights from the training hill, ground school, towing and finished off with some solo flights and a thermalling tandem.  Congrats guys!!!

Saturday morning started with an amazing tandem with Holly from Nova Scotia.  Holly was hit by a drunk driver 6 years ago and lost the use of her legs, but that didn't take away her desire to fly like a bird.  We rigged up an interesting looking "sled" to keep her legs up for landing and it worked magnificently.  Thanks to the help from a number of other paragliding and hang gliding pilots, the launch was smooth, the flight magical and the landing, well, a bit splashy (we skidded in to a puddle on the runway).  Holly was grinning from ear to ear as was everyone else.  Thanks for coming to fly with us Holly!

Two students graduated as well.  The cool thing is that they are stepbrothers.  Great job Joey and Jacint!

And on Monday the flight park was full of free flyers.  Nine hang glider pilots and over 20 paraglider pilots including some tandem flights.  The conditions were super and there were lots of smiling pilots!  Great way to finish the long weekend.

On Monday we had a group of 10 recent university graduates from Ottawa come to the Freedom Flight Park to paraglide.  They were on a road trip from Calgary to Vancouver and back and thought they'd stop in for a flight.  Everyone flew and loved it.  As Chau said "This is one of the best things I've ever done in my life!"

Thanks for coming out to fly with us guys...it was super fun!

The flying season has begun!
Spring has sprung and some pilots have had some amazing flights. A couple days ago some paragliding pilots were up over 6000' and a few went cross country 10-20 km. One pilot, whose previous best was 30 minutes crushed that with a 2 1/2 hour flight!
A few new students have started their ground handling sessions and yesterday we took a guy on his bachelor party for a tandem.
It's time to fly!!!

Matt Paley: Dog Day Out

Don Herres/Bala Edit: Elika's First Flight

Matt Paley: Paragliding in the Okanagan

Matt Paley: Alisha's Tandem

​What flying for the August long weekend... A tandem yesterday was an hour long and up to 9300' and could have gone higher but that's when we realized that shorts and a t-shirt was not quite enough clothes for that height! Two more tandems today, 40 minutes and an hour and 10 minutes up to 7400'! Our average paragliding tandem is over 35 minutes this year...amazing!

Three international au pairs working in Vernon decided that they couldn't pass up trying out paragliding while they were in the beautiful Okanagan region.  Julie's from France, Katie from Australia and Sophia from Germany.  The young ladies were hoping to fly the weekend before but the snow up to Cooper's launch was preventing us from being able to get up to launch.  Thankfully enough snow melted over the week so we were able to get all of the young nannies flying and their post-flight smiles said it all...they loved it!