How does Flyeo select which products to recommend?

Flyeo is not trying to be the largest online paragliding shop. We also do not wish to list each and every paragliding product with the same standard descriptions found on all the other shops and which are provided by manufacturers.

The approach we have chosen for our paragliding shop is in line with our teaching approach: to establish a close and ongoing relationship with the pilots who trust us and to support them in their progress to acquire the experience they need to become more proficient, safely, in the paragliding discipline of their choice.

We have identified three key principles to achieve this:

1. Deep understanding of each pilot's needs

The progression path in paragliding is not linear. The obligation we sometimes feel to update equipment every two years by moving from a beginner wing to a B wing and eventually to a C wing or to switch to a cocoon harness as soon as possible is simply unfounded.

Identifying your comfort zone and discovering the type of flying that puts a smile on your face, seem to us to be more important goals that help determine the path of progression and suitable equipment.

If what makes a pilot tick is finishing a 100 km triangle after 5 hours of cross-country flying, great! If it's more about enjoying a nice flight on their home site in magic air at sunset, why not? And finally, if it's about doing a TTB on their single skin glider after a long mountain hike, perfect!

It is therefore important to equip each pilot with the necessary skills to achieve this goal in the most optimal way, always emphasising safety, and to provide them with the most suitable equipment to do so.

The practice of paragliding, like any other leisure activity, is supposed to be fun, and the best wing for a pilot remains the one they feel the most comfortable under.

2. Good understanding of each paragliding product, its optimal range of use and the type of pilot for which it is designed.

It might be obvious, but paraglider manufacturers target a specific type of pilot for each product they design. For example, the "Epsilon" series of paragliders from Advance clearly targets pilots in the progression phase looking to purchase their second wing and aiming to progress in thermal flights. Dudek, with its Hike & Cruise wing, rather targets intermediate pilots who do not want to compromise on weight while being able to perform beautiful cross-country flights.

Things get a bit more complicated when a given product targets the intersection of several disciplines, in particular. Or when technical innovations change the potential range of use of an existing product.

That's why it's important to understand, for each recommended product, its intended range of use and the pilot profile it targets.

To make the task easier, Flyeo has developed a Flygram for each product range, aiming to categorise all the products we recommend based on two specific criteria:

• The paragliding discipline most suitable for the product's use
• The pilot level the product targets for safe use.

3. Recommending only products we have personally evaluated

Let's be clear: there are far too many wings, harnesses, and reserve parachutes available in the paragliding world for one single organisation to be able to fly them all. It is impossible to form a well-founded opinion based on product testing for all or even a significant fraction of paragliding products.

Therefore, at Flyeo, we have decided to recommend products for which we have formed our own opinion by experiencing them:

• Products that our pilots have had the opportunity to fly. These are products that our pilots use regularly themselves or that manufacturers lend to us for demo flights,
• products that we see during SIV courses or progression courses and that we can evaluate through use under the instruction of our students.

This does not mean that other products are not worth considering. It simply means that we are not familiar with them.