Alex Colbeck
Alex started paragliding in November 2004 whilst he was in the Air Training Corps at the age of 17. His passion for flight meant he had already flown in fixed wing aircraft such as the Grob Tutor on Air Experience flights, the Grob Viking motor glider and sailplanes. He enrolled on the hang-gliding course based down in S.E.Wales at the Joint Services Hang-gliding and Paragliding Club (JSHPC) when it was offered to his Squadron. The instructors on the course decided to teach the cadets paragliding instead of hang-gliding due to the weather conditions being more suited to it. In 5 days all the cadets on the course completed their EP ratings.
Once the course was finished, Alex knew that he had to take up paragliding, a new passion was born. He took his CP with Airborne in the Pennines (BHPC not BHPA registered), passing in spring 2005. He did a conversion to the BHPA CP rating at a later date.
Alex bought his first wing and harness 2nd hand for £600 and in 2005 when he was still in full-time education at 6th form, managed to get 35 hours airtime in the remainder of the year. His eagerness earned him the "Cock of the Dales" trophy awarded by the Dales club for being the most enthusiastic pilot. He also won the Baildon Sod in 2005, a fun and traditional glide competition held at Baildon near Keighley. He also learnt to paramotor with AXB Sports near Doncaster and got a few hours in cruising around the sky when it wasn't windy enough to paraglide.
For 5 weeks during April and May 2006, Alex went back down to S.E.Wales to work for Welsh Airsports flying school, teaching people to fly and seeing how a school is run.
When he came back, he continued to rack up his airtime in the Dales, Pennines, Lakes, North York Moors and Peak District, sampling a large number of different sites nearest to him. It was around this time when he bought a new wing, the Niviuk Hook and instantly fell in love with it. He also spent a lot of time helping AXB Sports by going down and teaching groundhandling and other aspects of paramotoring as well as demonstrating launches, flights and landings to the students in his spare time. Most of this was in summer and right through the July/August heatwave and the hottest day of the year!
At the end of August, Alex went to Canada on a family holiday right across the rockies, sure enough the wing and harness went too and he managed to get in some coastal soaring, thermic hill flying and also tried to fly at the mecca of the paragliding world, Golden, but the weather didn't co-operate.
In 2007, Alex went to Oludeniz, Turkey with Andy and co to stay at Sam's place, and it was here he first tasted the booming thermals of Babadag, dust devils, tiny, rocky launches and smooth sea air - loving every minute of it!
He took part in the BCC and BP Cup as his first National Competition, getting to grips with turnpoints, races to goal, declared flights etc and the general competition atmosphere.
In June, he came 2nd in the Lakes Charity Classic beaten only by Kitt Rudd, the local skygod, and coming above many hugely more experienced pilots on higher rated wings!
In August he went back to Sam's place in Turkey with some friends to show them the fantastic flying and brilliant people as well as returning to one of his favorite flying places.
During the end of 2007, Alex moved up to the Niviuk Artik XP and Advance Impress harness combo in preparation for the 2008 season.