CONVERSION COURSE · PILOT2WING
It all starts on the ground.
In Pilot2Wing, we start with the pilot.
A conversion course based on the Pilot2Wing method: understanding the wing, preparing the body, managing energy. The aim is the autonomy to keep growing.
Learn it right today, so you react naturally tomorrow.
The course at a glance
Correction is individual, even when the training is in a group.
The 4 days are a reference, not a promise. Some pilots need only a few hours and some need more training than this — both are normal. The hourly option exists for both cases.
Training delivered by licensed instructors through a partner school.
What this course is
Autonomy is being able to train on your own within your level: you understand what the wing is doing, you repeat on purpose, you recognise and correct your own mistakes, and you know when not to.
Nobody becomes experienced in 4 days. What can be done is give you a correct foundation and enough autonomy to keep training within your own level — which is a different thing, and it is the thing that lasts.
How it is measured
A manoeuvre demonstrates one specific skill; it does not measure overall experience. And experience is not just accumulating hours either.
Experience appears when the pilot no longer needs to think consciously about every small movement, without ceasing to understand what they are doing.
Where you come from
Before any exercise, the instructor needs to know which pilot they are working with. It is not a test: it is what decides where to start and how fast to move.
Paraglider
What you already bring
Parakite
What you need to adapt
Paragliding experience is an advantage. It does not replace adapting to the Parakite.
The method
Pilot2Wing organises the training into stages. Within each stage, learning follows the same cycle: understand, execute, correct, repeat, consolidate and respond naturally.
Each step only makes sense after the one before it. Executing before understanding gives you a movement that works once and cannot be repeated on purpose; repeating before correcting is what turns a mistake into a habit.
Speed is not trained before the quality of the movement. First you understand, execute correctly, correct, repeat correctly and consolidate. Only then is the time between stimulus and response progressively reduced — which is what the Pilot2Wing Quick Response Game trains.
Error and automatism
The path we want
The path we avoid
Once it is installed you are no longer correcting a movement: you are correcting a habit, and that costs far more than learning it right the first time.
It is not enough for the wing to respond correctly. The movement that produced that response also has to be correct. A wing can do exactly what you wanted through a technically wrong compensation — and a right result obtained that way is the worst teacher there is: it confirms the mistake and invites you to repeat it.
That is why both are watched at once: the result and the process. It is that double reading that catches the mistake in the moment, before it gets repeated.
Body First
First we learn to position and use the body. Then we progressively add the wing’s energy.
Eyes, posture, torso, hips and legs are worked before the wing starts generating energy. It is this order that gives the pilot time to understand the movement instead of reacting to it.
Body First does not mean replacing the controls with the body. It means preparing the pilot to use eyes, posture, hips, legs and controls in a coordinated way, before progressively adding the wing’s energy.
The controls remain part of flying the wing; at this stage, the focus is first on preparing the body.
Nor is it a set of memorised gestures. The logic is always the same: understand the movement, execute it correctly, and only then apply it with energy.
The harness and the legs
In a split-leg harness, the legs can work more independently. The position of the legs and hips influences how load is distributed in the harness and, through it, the response of the pilot–wing system.
Anyone coming from paragliding brings a different harness reference, and that is what gets adjusted first.
It is a conceptual chain of movement, load and response — not a rigid mechanical relationship, and not a fixed rule of the «this leg position produces this wing response» kind. It is there to understand the relationship, not to memorise answers.
The leg does not fly the wing on its own. It is part of a chain of movement that starts at the pilot and ends at the wing.
None of these parts works in isolation: body, harness and controls are coordinated while flying.
It is on the ground that all of this is worked first, with the wing already generating energy and the pilot still in contact with the ground. Groundhandling is not a warm-up: it is a stage of the progression, and it is where the pilot starts working position, movement, load and the wing’s response before the transition to flight.
Correction
This is not training reaction without reading. The point is not to be fast: it is to notice a change beginning, interpret it, and respond while the response can still be small.
Early reaction
Late reaction
Energy
A wing mainly holds energy associated with its height and its speed. By changing the trajectory, the pilot can convert one into the other and manage how much is conserved or transformed during the flight. On the course this matters because almost everything trained — body, legs, controls, early correction — exists so that this management is understood and practised consciously.
How you progress
You move to the next step when the previous one is consolidated, not when the calendar says so. Two pilots with the same paragliding experience can take very different amounts of time, and neither of them is behind.
Along the way there can be work without a wing, body exercises, mini-wings, gradual introduction of energy, groundhandling, transition to flight, flying and autonomous decision-making. The order stays; it is the time in each phase that changes from pilot to pilot.
Autonomy is also noticing when something is not happening the way you expected. This is not a manoeuvres course: it is the ability to deal with variation and with your own mistakes.
The decision
Nobody films the decision not to launch. But it is the same skill that makes a pilot slow down before needing to, and it is the last thing taught because it depends on everything else.
Who teaches, and where
Knowing how to fly and knowing how to teach are different skills. Teaching requires observing, diagnosing, correcting and adapting the progression to the pilot — and knowing when not to intervene.
Training delivered by licensed instructors through a partner school.
The training takes place at the sites around Lisbon and the Setúbal Peninsula where Happy Soaring flies, and each session’s site is chosen by the day’s conditions — not by the calendar.
The Parakite and harness needed for the training are included, and the course is run on the Mullet 2. You bring what you would bring for a day of flying: helmet, footwear that copes with sand, and clothing for whatever wind there is.
Questions
There is no number. What counts is what the initial assessment shows: experience, habits and responses already consolidated. That is what decides where to start, and it is why two pilots with the same hours can follow different paths.
No. They are the reference duration. Some pilots need a few hours and some need more — and the hourly option exists precisely for that.
The aim is autonomy to keep training within your own level, and that is measured by criteria, not by days. Autonomy is not experience: experience comes later, with the hours you put in.
It depends on what is consolidated, not on the number of sessions. The progression goes through assessing, preparing, introducing energy, groundhandling and the transition to flight — and you move on when the previous phase is solid, not when the calendar says so.
The Parakite and harness are included, and the course is run on the Mullet 2. You bring a helmet, footwear that copes with sand, and clothing for whatever wind there is.
A maximum of 3. Correcting body and position means watching one person at a time, and correction is individual even when the training is in a group.
We work on what can be worked on — body, positions, groundhandling — or we reschedule. Deciding not to fly is part of flying, and it is one of the things the course teaches.
Autonomy is being able to train on your own within your level — you understand, you repeat on purpose, you correct and you know when not to. Experience is what comes after: connection with the wing, anticipation, decision-making and increasingly natural responses. Autonomy is taught; experience accumulates.
Reflex is a characteristic of the profile’s geometry that influences the wing’s pitch moment and longitudinal behaviour, especially in faster configurations. It does not remove the need to fly the wing, nor does it make it immune to collapses. On the course, what matters is understanding how that behaviour influences flying and energy management.
Talk about the course
