From Idea to Origin

The path to creating SkyGear Hub

by Shane Parreco

:Most of us would agree that learning to fly a paraglider is one of the most exciting and rewarding things humans can do with a bit of their time on this planet. Feeling the wind on your face while leaving the ground for the first time is thrilling and usually hooks us for life. I’ll never forget my first flights. I knew right away that I was always meant to do this kind of flying.

In 2009, my training started in an unusual way. I connected with a colorful, older paramotor instructor, and after a long and exciting phone call outlining the details, I officially started my flying career. At first, my instructor seemed like an unusual cross between Gandalf and Viper from the original Top Gun: equal parts impressive and eccentric. I quickly realized that he was further off the beaten path than I anticipated. Regardless, his introduction to the sky affected me profoundly, and I was hooked.

Soon after, I made my first pilgrimage to the Point of the Mountain, Utah and fell in love with everything paragliding—from the vibe at the hill before an epic sunrise to the sound and feel of a crispy new glider to the smile that happens when you realize you’re the first one in the sky. It all felt like a dream that I hoped would never stop.

It was at the Point, almost 15 years ago, when the idea first struck me: How cool would it be if there was a way to research and compare gliders from every manufacturer and see them in a unified infographic layout? In my head, the visual looked similar to how most companies showcase their glider portfolio but built so that it would include every paraglider in the world.

Most of my new friends back then laughed at my wideeyed enthusiasm for such a crazy idea, but it stuck with me, and I eventually started to take steps to make it a reality. The way SkyGear Hub came to be is far less dreamy and took way more time, energy, effort, and talented people than I might ever have imagined, but the journey has easily been one of the most rewarding experiences in my life.

Before the spring of 2018, the closest I came to building a website was asking my one coder friend, Mike Wathen, if he would consider making something for fun. He usually obliged and used all kinds of words like ‘Drupal’ or ‘Javascript’, which meant nothing to me. So, to say I was a novice in web development was a bit of an understatement. The event that set all of this into motion in 2018 was when I became a paragliding instructor. During my

training, I discussed the idea of building an online education resource for paraglider students with some of that same wideeyed enthusiasm from my early days of flying. But this time, it didn’t feel quite so impossible. As soon as we finished training, I began working on a website to host a student training syllabus and make educational material accessible for anyone learning to fly. The syllabus was written by Doug Stroop, Denise Reed, Marty DiVietti, and Chris Grantham, and after a couple of encouraging phone calls, it was clear the time to make this idea happen was now. Not long after the first basic version of the site launched in the fall of 2018, the requests for improvements from students and instructors started pouring in. Can we make it more interactive? Can we make the quizzes functional and record the answers? Can we put more pictures in the section about clouds and weather? What about video? Can our students log their flights? What about a P2 checklist? And that was just the beginning. It was clear that constant improvement and building additional functionality was the name of the game, and the time to start was yesterday. The workload was significant, and I needed consid-

erable help to support an online training platform that worked well and had room to grow in the future. It started with just one part-time freelance developer, then two, then a dedicated engineer, and finally, a designer to help build the infographic gear research website. And so it went for several months until I got an email from a paraglider pilot in Oregon offering to help. That first call with Steve Roti would end up being one of the most important calls for the future of both websites and the small team we were building.

If you don’t already know him, Steve is one of the kindest humans you might ever meet. His experience in technology and database management is grand wizard status. You might never know it because his passion for flying, nordic skiing, hiking, biking, and travel keeps him outdoors most of the time. However, when it comes to data modeling and database management, Steve is on a level most people don’t even know exists. I can say without a doubt that the SkyGear Hub and Glider Training websites would not have been possible without his guidance, insight, support, and many hours of coding, troubleshooting, and brainstorming. With Steve’s expertise lighting the path for our small bootstrapped team, we set clear goals for getting both sites ready to introduce to the world. Early versions of the Glider Training platform have been around since my feeble attempts in 2018, but the SkyGearHub.com and improved GliderTraining.org websites officially launched in early summer of 2022. The response from the community has been amazing, and we see more students and schools joining the platform every month.

Ultimately, my goal has always been to make something that would positively impact the whole free flight community. SkyGear Hub has become a platform where you can research almost every glider, harness, and reserve. It is a place to visually understand how you fit your gear and learn about other brands an all-in-one place to access links to equipment reviews and gear manufacturers, and a way to find the Glider Training site that provides access to educational materials and allows people to sign up for online courses with some of the world’s top pilots and instructors. Above all, it serves our mission is to encourage people to approach the world of flying with curiosity and a desire to learn more.

Steve Roti.

USHPA PILOT 17