Let's help build a stronger powered paragliding community!
Pilots and members of the Motorized Paragliding Association, the year 2025 is here and with it a great opportunity to move our sport one step further. How? Simply – by recording tracklogs of your flights! It is a step that will contribute not only to better flight records (flight logbook), but also to a better understanding of our activities. We have great news for you! The Board is working intensively on new competitions, which will soon be available to all Czech pilots on the Xcontest portal. You can look forward to further challenges and opportunities to show off your aviation skills.
Why is this important?
Thanks to the overview of registered flights, we are able to declare the frequency of activities for the National Sports Agency (NSA). Last year, only 38 pilots out of more than 600 members of the Motorized Paragliding Association managed to register at least six flights on six different days. Unfortunately, this is a very low number that does not provide a complete overview of the pilots' activities and the overall state of our sport.
What will change?
If each of us starts to regularly log our flights, we will gain a valuable tool for:
• Better overview of your activities – you will have a more objective overview of hours flown, kilometers and other statistics.
• Community support – necessary data for the use of our airspace for SFD.
• It's easy You can easily log flights using several apps that are available for free. If you don't already use one
of these tools, there's nothing easier than getting started.
XCTrac app for Android and Flyskyhy for iOS
If you are using an iPhone, there is an app available in the App Store FlyskysBoth applications are great for recording flights including real-time location and then uploading tracklogs to XContest (www.xcontest.org) in the Paramotors tab, where the entries can serve as a flight log, or can be entered into a competition. A small disadvantage is that this platform only supports the . IGC format. If you have an Android phone, you can download the app XCTrack from the Google Play store. The XCTrack platform is described in detail in the article by Kamila Večeři in Pilot magazine 5/2021. (Older Pilots can be downloaded from your "My LAA" account https://sprava.laacr.cz/).
PPGLOG
You can now use the platform www.ppglog.com. A platform from Honza Laše, which is an ideal tool for keeping a flight log. This platform does not count the competition evaluation of flights and triangles like XContest, it serves to record your flights. The platform www.ppglog.com offers many advantages:
• Easy flight logging – you can easily upload flights to the website and add photos or videos (support for . tracklog format).GPX a .IGC).
• Bulk display of all flights – you will have all your flights in one place and you have the unique opportunity to view them at once.
• Overall statistics – you will see not only the total number of hours flown, but also fuel consumption, average distance flown and much more.
• Writeback option – if you don't book some flights right away, it's no problem to do it later at any time.
• 3D flight display – you will see your flights in 3D and you can enjoy a panoramic view of the take-off point and the flight path.
• News: Possibility to upload flight log without recording altitude – if you do not want to specify the flight altitude.
• Competitions – the possibility of entering flights into some simple competitions that are in development.
The big advantage is that the PPGlog platform supports both of the most common formats. If you use another way of recording flights, such as a smartwatch or the like, you can use any tracklog in .IGC or .GPX format, which is supported by most applications and GPS devices. You can then simply upload these files to www.ppglog.com under your account.
It's about all of us.
Registering at least six flights per calendar year is sufficient to declare your sporting activity as a member of the Motorized Paragliding Association. Registering six flights is easy and requires only a small investment of time. We believe that when more pilots get involved, we will not only gain a better overview of our sport, but also create a stronger and more connected community. Competition flights will be selected only from those that are entered into the competition of your choice. Let's do it together - register your flights, share your experiences and show that motorized paragliding has a strong and active base!
Learn about the ability to log flights on the PPG log platform (www.ppglog.com), where you can see all your flights at once.
Richard Kaňok
Chairman of the Motor Paragliding Association