Paragliding Greece: Ronny Helgesen

Ronny Helgesen – XC seminar

Olympic Wings offers an exclusive XC seminar

with Ronny Helgesen

from 15.06. to 22.06.2019

XC seminar topics:

Active flying – the way to avoid glider collapses
How to fly together – flying with other pilots
Controlling your flying speed
Safety while flying on a cross country
Advice to keep you safe while flying near clouds and terrain
Reserve parachute – Advise on how to use it and what to do
Tips to help you climb fast and efficiently
Psychological techniques to help you perform at your best
In-depth guides to flying the flatlands and mountains
Skills and tactics to help you fly bigger cross country distances
Straight-forward illustrations to help you maximize flying conditions
Simple explanations of diverse wind and thermal flow patterns and structures
Insights into modern gliders – what do the modern design features mean to the XC pilot

Program:

Introduction and establishment of pilot levels
Review of pilot equipment
Area briefing and weather
Daily tasks and group flights with radio support
Daily debrief on individual and group basis
Final assessment and summary

About Ronny Helgesen:

XC seminar Ronny Helgesen with Olympic Wings

Ronny is a long-time paragliding pilot and paragliding instructor, with international flying experience who comes originally from Norway, and has been dedicated to free flying for more than 30 years. He began his paragliding journey very early-on in time along with the pioneers of our beloved sport.
Starting with skydiving in 1979 with a record of 3.000 jumps. In 1987 he met paragliding and together with the sport evolved from its early stages by very quickly becoming a paragliding instructor.

Today he has more than 4450 flying hours and more than 41 thousand kilometers distance flown.

In his home country he is one of the founding members of the OPK, Oslo Paragliderklubb, which was created to spread the joy and know-how of paragliding.
Ronny along with those first paragliding instructors traveled to many different sites and other countries for that same reason. Back then he shared with eager student pilots not only important technical knowledge and a deeper understanding but also the importance of flying safe. Something he actively pursues until this day supporting new as much as performance pilots.

Ronny Helgesen is also an active known competition pilot, first starting in 1989, still recently entering world-level competitions (PWC, Superfinals) year after year. He is considered a national champion in his country while competing at the Norwegian Cup and Championship many times.

Bellow are links to the official CIVL and PWCA pages:
CIVL rankings Ronny Helgesen
PWC competition results Ronny Helgesen

Equally important is his ongoing experience in glider craftsmanship and as-well his experience in reserve parachute packing, the passion for both of which came from his skydiving years. These skills were developed even more with his early time working at Sky Design as much as his love to create that still remains.

Location:

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain range in Greece with its highest peak Mytikas at 2.917 m. The south western area of the mountain has fantastic cross country and thermalling conditions. The large flatland area of Thessaly towards the south offers a big potential for open distance and triangle XC flights. A challenging flight is the cross country towards the Aegean Sea on the eastern side of Olympus with a beach landing.

The main take-off for the XC seminar is located on the western side of Mount Olympus, on top of the village Kalivia. It is called Tourtofolia and provides take-off directions towards west, south and east at a height of 1.250 m. Several paragliding and hanggliding competitions up to world cup level have been organized here already.

Alternative take-offs nearby are KEOAX, Elassona, Kalipefki.

Organization:

Olympic Wings organizes the XC seminar at Mount Olympus and offers accommodation and all transfers during the flying days for the pilots taking part at the seminar.

All necessary retrievals from XC flights are included in the transfers.

The pilots accommodation is located in an area close to a local flying site with short drives to the take-off.

You can book the XC seminar together with your accommodation and transfers directly through Olympic Wings.

For bookings and any further information please contact us.