There’s a range of hills (roughly 200m high) in my area, where soaring is a big thing when winds are coming from south.
Problem is there’s only a ramp for those delta hang gliders up the hill. paragliders can not launch there.
in the landing spot, a few meters south, down the hill, (have a look on the map: Google Maps ) they do towing with ultra light planes. this is also purely for those hang gliders, as the ultra light planes are too fast for us paragliders.
you drive down a road and slowly let the line out
There simply is no space to use a car or a winch to pull us up - hence I will be using my OpenPPG to get in the air and start soaring.
but there are tons of other paragliders, who do not have a ppg license.
The only option would be to use a drone.
You could probably buy a tesla car for cheaper
a Tesla is what, Model S 120,000 USD ?
seriously speaking, I doubt that a drone that would have enough thrust/lift to pull a paraglider would cost more than 5.000 dollars.
Hey, even the OpenPPG has enough thrust to push us in the air - the only difference is that we’ll be carrying it on our back, which means it does not have to lift it’s own weight.
just check this video, this drone lifts a whole person!
It would definitely be able to pull a paraglider into the air: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At3xcj-pTjg
tow up to cloud base
No need to go up to cloud base, 200m above ground level is way enough to start soaring and catch thermals to go even higher.
So @dzubot since you do have some experience with winch towing - would you let a drone tow you?