Many launch sites in Cape Town can be reached by Uber/Bolt. For others, you might want to share a ride with some other pilots (definition of airmanship: don’t be a dick; offer to share petrol costs and snacks).

For some sites (and most cross-country adventures), you might want to pay a retrieve driver who can pick you and your flying buddies up, no matter where you land. The general agreement is to pay them a daily rate, and they will drive your car and fuel (or quote you a price per kilometre if using their vehicle).

Drivers

Some retrieve drivers I’ve found over the years below (note that I haven’t personally used all of the people in the list).

Porterville-based drivers

These drivers are experienced and good for launching from Porterville Dasklip, Pampoenfontein, Kardoesie, or Piketberg in your vehicle. They will usually meet you at the Flyer’s Lodge.

• Carina (+27 60 441 6158)
• Janno (+27 84 540 1947)
• Scheldon (+27 76 229 5545)
• Enzo (+27 65 915 3898)
• Gideon (‭+27 (73) 221-5431‬)

Cape Town-based drivers

These drivers are good if you are driving from Cape Town and want to fly the Overberg, Swartland, or Porterville sites. Some have their own vehicles, others will drive yours.

• Quinn (+27 83 612 2459). Pinelands-based. Very experienced. Variable pricing, based on the number of pilots for the day.
• Lee (‪+27 72 929 5889‬). Durbanville-based. Driver with a luxury kombi and trailer for 9 pilots and gear. Price based on distance & time out for the day.
• Cassidy (+27 61 287 3529)
• Elo (+27 78 677 4997)
• Sybe (+27 73 034 5465)
• Andre (+27 76 731 1557)
• Mia (‭+27 663078978‬) Student; might have limited time from Feb 2023 due to studies
• Abdul “Manie” (‭+27 (65) 928-8250‬). Works for local paraglider Scott Baker.

Overberg (Hermanus/Kleinmond area) drivers

These are good for those who want to do XC along the Overberg (usually from Kleinmond or Hermanus takeoff).

• Thabani (‪+27 69 748 7102‬).
• Hermanus TukTuk & Taxi (‪+27 84 688 5885‬). hermanustaxi.com
• Hermanus Shuttle: hermanus-shuttle.co.za
• Dial a Driver Hermanus: dialadriverhermanus.co.za
• Jonwin. Hermanus-based. Has a Quantum minibus. +27 83 879 9874
• 0766820280 Lynton or 0815051755 Charlene. Hermanus-based. R400 per day.

Retrieve driver FAQ

(Send a link to this page to your retrieve driver to help them out!)

As retrieve driver, you’re the one responsible for picking up paragliding pilots after they’ve landed and getting them back to the launch, another car, or the ending point for the day. Good retrieves are a critical part of a smooth, safe flying day. A calm, reliable, flexible, and organised retrieve driver can turn unpredictable chaos into a well-run operation.

You’re basically the glue that holds a cross-country flying day together.

The basics

• Usually, you won’t have any expenses: the car and petrol will be provided and paid for by the pilots
• If using your own vehicle, come up with a price-per kilometre that you will charge for usage and petrol 
• Usually, you will be paid a fixed amount for the day: confirm your pay in advance (some retrieves charge less for for fewer pilots in the car, since there are fewer stops to be made)
• Occasionally, a trip goes overtime with pilots landing late. Confirm the after-hours rate for finishing late (and what time that kicks in).
• Very rarely, a trip will have to be cancelled the morning of or the night before (due to bad weather and other reasons). Communicate if you prefer a deposit guarantee (or full daily payment) if the pilots have to cancel on you (eg. if you said no to other paid work for that day)
• You will need to follow the pilots with your phone (WhatsApp live location or similar) and might need to call them, so you’ll need to have data and airtime on your phone for this.

Communication

An average driver with good communication skills is way more helpful than a great driver with bad communication skills. Understand and communicate clearly all things including your payment, overtime, the meeting point and time, and any relevant updates like your location and your next pickup point during the actual day.

Preflight

This is before the action where someone from the flying community will reach out about an upcoming flight. 

Paragliding pilots usually need a retrieve driver when they are planning to fly cross country (“XC”) and they’re not sure if they’ll make it to their planned destination or if conditions will change and they’ll either bomb out (ideally by landing on a farm) or change their flight path forcing them to land away from where they took off. A retrieve driver that follows their flight route takes away a lot of their worries.

They will arrange for a meeting point in the morning (a petrol station, your house, or often the Porterville Flyer’s Lodge, for those who live nearby).

Someone will create a WhatsApp group with the pilots you are responsible for (the day before or on launch).

It is important to note that sometimes, for safety reasons, more people will be added to that group so that everyone can keep an eye on each other. You should take note of the pilots you are (and aren’t) responsible for on the day. If someone posts “safely landed” in the group, that’s to inform all pilots and generally the queue for the retrieve driver to go pick them up, but only if they’re part of your group (sometimes –to save time– another retrieve driver might be able to pick up one of your pilots, and vice versa, but this should be clearly communicated), but more on this below.

Consider packing something to drink and eat, and perhaps a book or something to keep yourself occupied with for the day. Also: take your own phone charger (and/or power bank). There might not be a spare one in the car and a dead phone means a stressed out driver and pilots.

Apps

Most people just use Whatsapp. Make sure you know how to use location sharing (including the difference between sharing of live location and sharing a pinned location) and how to view the map within Whatsapp when multiple people are sharing their live location with you.

(Some pilots may additionally share their location via Puretrack.io, Xcontest, Burnair or another app; ask beforehand so you can download it)

Radios

Sometimes mobile service can be patchy, and the pilots may give you a handheld radio (“walkie talkie”). These are really simple to use: there is an on-off button (make sure it is on for the entire day), a volume button (make sure it is full volume for the day), and a push-to-talk button. Pilots sometimes use it to communicate with each other in the sky and with their retrieve driver. 

Note that radio signal only works line-of-sight, meaning if there is an obstruction (like a mountain) or a large distance between the two radios, you won’t be able to hear each other. When using it in the car, it will probably get better signal if you put it higher on the dashboard or outside the window.

Launching

Once you’re in the car with all the pilots, you’ll head to takeoff!

At the start of the day, conditions are usually light, meaning the chances of pilots staying up in the air is lowest. It’s called “parawaiting”, and it’s a big part of the sport. You might need to wait for quite a while on launch until conditions have improved enough for them to launch. That said, pilots will often launch early, sink out and land after just 10-30 minutes. Expect that you might need to go and collect them and take them back to relaunch until conditions have improved enough to stay in the sky.

You are not expected to help with setting up the paraglider wings, but sometimes it can be helpful to help out if a pilot already clipped into their harness asks you nicely. 

Don’t leave the launch site before you confirmed that all your pilots are in the air and clearly on their way. You might drive away and the conditions changed and you’ll have a pilot stuck on launch. Also: some launch sites have a very long hike up back to the road or back to the launch from the nearest safe landing (called “turkey”).

Flying

And, they’re off!

Flying routes and flying time depends on a lot of factors. It’s helpful for you to confirm the flight plan before takeoff (e.g. “We’re going to try to fly from Dasklip launch north to Clanwilliam”) but also to remain flexible, as the weather conditions might be very different from the forecast (and the pilots are forced to fly south instead of north). 

Pilots use a combination of thermals (the sun heating up the ground and hot air releasing) and ridges (the wind pushing up against a ridge keeps the paraglider in the air). Most cross country days will consist of pilots following a mountain ridge, as this increases their chances of getting lift (and staying in the air), but sometimes they will just play around in one area (called “flatland flying” or “closing triangles”). 

Some popular XC ridges:

• The Overberg mountains from Hermanus to Stanford or the shorter one from Kleinmond to Betty’s Bay
• The Eastern side of the Porterville Valley ridge (Dasklip, Pampoenfontein, and Kardoesie launches are on this ridge) and the Western side of the Porterville Valley ridge (Piketberg launch is on this ridge)
• The ridge from Dutoitskloof/DTK launch going north (into the Porterville Valley) or going south (towards Franschhoek)

Additionally, pilots might jump from one valley over a ridge to the next valley and ridge:

• From the Porterville Valley east to the Citrusdal Valley (when flying north towards Clanwilliam)
• East into the Tulbach Valley from the Porterville Valley (when flying south) or from around Voëlvlei dam (when flying north from DTK)

We don’t expect you to be right next to the car the second we land (or bomb out) but it helps a lot if you have a general idea of where the pilots are heading and the best, largest road(s) that follows their flight path. Even though the Porterville and Citrusdal Valleys are a short hop, right next to each other, what takes a paraglider a few minutes to fly over a mountain might take you an hour to do by car. 

It makes sense for you to think about places along the flying path for you stop and wait. It’s nicer to sit under a nicely shaded tree or petrol garage café than baking in the car in the 30+ degrees summer sun.

The majority of XC flights are “A to B” (where the planned takeoff and landing are different places) but sometimes pilots will try to fly “triangles” where they take off, fly one direction, change direction (once or a few times), and try to land close to takeoff again. Depending on the weather conditions and flying skills of your group, flying time can be as little as one hour to as much as six or seven (although, that is pretty rare). 

All the pilots in your group should have shared their live location in WhatsApp, and you can follow them from there. Some pilots use different tracking apps/links. If this is the case, ask them to show you where you can track their movements.

On good days, you will probably want to head over to a restaurant or a padstal and monitor for updates from there, since there is no point driving 20km/h following them along the ridge. 

Landing

Since they have no guarantee that they’ll find the next area of lift, pilots know that they should always keep an eye out for safe landings. The best ones are open fields that are close to a paved road with some shade to wait in nearby. That said, it’s not always possible, and sometimes pilots might bomb out in a very inconvenient place and will need to hike for a long time out to get to you and the road. 

Pilots might still be sharing their live location, but it’s good practice for them to post “Safely landed” and then share a fixed pin in WhatsApp after landing. When a pilot shares their location pin with you, you can tap on their name and then on the car icon (as below) and then use a GPS app (like Google Maps) to give you driving directions to them.

Generally speaking, you should try to get as close to them as possible, but this isn’t always possible and you’ll have to monitor their chats, talk to them on the radio, or otherwise judge what the shortest walk out for them would be to reach the vehicle.

Some more notes: 

• Share your live location with the pilots so they can see where you are.
• Make use of the first pilots to land in the car to help with communication and navigation while you are driving to fetch the others.
• Communicate! Respond with relevant details (e.g. “OK, coming to pick you up after I’ve picked up Steve”) after a pilot said they’ve landed.
• It takes between 10 – 30 minutes for a pilot to pack up their glider (and a while more to hike out) so you’ll usually have ample time to get to them.
• You can usually take dirt farm roads that don’t have closed gates. Drive slowly and be be courteous towards the farmers and staff.
• If you reach a closed gate, you should not proceed (unless the farmer/staff give you the go-ahead) and message the pilot that you are as close as you can get.
• Pilots might climb over a sturdy locked gate otherwise over a strong supporting pole along the fence, but shouldn’t bend or damage fences. 

Post-flight

After a good (or bad!) flying day, the flight crew might want to stop for a snack and a drink. If you’re the designated driver, you shouldn’t drink any alcohol until your responsibilities are officially done.

Payment to you usually happens via EFT, so make sure you know who will pay you and that they have your banking details. 

Emergencies & tips

Although XC accidents are rare, they do occasionally happen. If you are the person closest to a crash or bad landing, do the following:

• If you can’t communicate or safely get to them you should contact the other pilots to tell them what you saw and call for help.
• If their wing is left open / unfolded, it is a signal that something is wrong.
• WSAR (0219370300) can provide emergency medical and helicopter airlift assistance.
• Call 112 from any mobile phone in South Africa to be connected to a call center that will route you to the appropriate emergency service. 10111 can be used for police emergencies and 10177 can be used for roadside ambulance services.

Some more tips:

• WhatsApp will show when the last location update was for each pilot. Sometimes there might be a long delay where the pilots (or you) are unavailable. If a pilot’s location hasn’t updated for 30 minutes, they could be far away from where it was last registered. 
• If WhatsApp doesn’t work, try the two-way radio.
• Make sure you have airtime and data on your phone.
• The pilots are trusting you with their vehicle; don’t abuse that trust. Drive the way you want a stranger to drive your car
• On long XC days, the pilots’ car might run low on petrol. If you’re topping up at a garage, keep the receipt to get paid back. 
• Ask Werner if you want to be put on the list of available retrieve drivers in the Western Cape.
• I don’t want to mess with relationships: If you usually drive for someone and another random pilot  asks you to be retrieve driver for a day, perhaps first check with your usual pilot if they didn’t plan on paying you for the day. 
• Some retrieve drivers charge a flat rate for the day (R500-R600), others charge a rate based on the number of pilots that they have to take care (e.g. R500 for one pilot, R275 per pilot for two pilots, R200 per pilot for three pilots and R150 per pilot for four or more) – discuss with your group.
• Pilots are exhausted after flying and might not think about your compensation/needs when working very late. Communicate beforehand what your per-hour rate is if flights run late (and what time “late” is, since flights often start late too); otherwise raise it with them in the car when it seems you’re likely to end late. Payment is usually made from one pilot to you via EFT (who will in turn collect payment from the others), but some pay in cash.
• If you know of other reliable retrieve drivers, share this with them or if you have comments on this doc, please get in touch!