Paul Remde wrote:
That is a very interesting video. What would cause a spiral dive like that?


In most cases the pilot. Deliberately. :^)
Paragliders don't have elevators, so a spiral is
the fastest way down.

It wasn't very clear from the video, but my guess
is that this was a tuck caused by turbulence which
lead to this very steep spiral.

The canopies are only tested at spiral descend speeds
of upt to 14m/s and what they do beyond that is not
very predictable. Some even steepen the spiral. It
doesn't help that thinking is harder at 4G.

Regards,

Iwo