The Power Kite Book
Foils and inflatables flown on handles or a bar, built to drag you across sand, grass or snow. The wind window, why the gust decides your size, the kites to buy at 67 kg, and the access rules that decide which British beaches you can use. No licence, anywhere.
Read → Volume Two · the waterThe Kitesurfing Book
The discipline the other three borrow their hardware from. What the bar and the quick release actually do, why every sizing chart assumes a rider 13 kg heavier than you, the two ladders that do not convert, and the best injury data in the series — 82% operator error, 3.4% equipment.
Read → Volume Three · the airThe Paragliding Book
The wing free flight is built around, and the licence ladder built around it. EN classes and what the letter hides, sizing at 81 kg all-up, the BHPA ratings, weather, technique, and the British incident data. The prerequisite volume, whether or not it is the destination.
Read → Volume Four · the new oneThe Parakite Book
A paraglider-derived wing whose risers put steering and acceleration into the same two handles. The FLARE system, why hands-up is the safe place, sizing at 80 kg all-up, and the licence routes — which turn out to run through volume three.
Read →The names are close enough to cause real trouble. A power kite pulls you along the ground and you stay attached through handles or a harness; no certification regime, no licence. A kitesurf kite is the same idea rebuilt for water — an inflatable structure so it floats and relaunches, flown on a bar whose second control, depower, the land kites mostly lack. A paraglider is flown in free flight under rules written for gliders, and it is the machine every rating in this series is written about. A parakite is a paraglider whose riser geometry has been rebuilt — no certification standard exists for it at all, and South Africa will only let an Advanced Pilot near one.
A British Club Pilot is taken as IPPI 3 — the one rung inferred rather than quoted from a BHPA document — which flies Britain alone but needs school supervision in South Africa. Pilot is IPPI 4, which flies Cape Town and unlocks cross-country. Advanced Pilot is IPPI 5, which is the only rung SAHPA permits on a parakite — and it wants 100 logged hours first. Three ratings, not one.
The books say where in Britain you are allowed to fly. The spots atlas says where in the world it is worth going — kitesurfing and paragliding by continent, each spot with its conditions, its year, the local knowledge, the rules, the schools and a map, and a note on whether a parakite belongs there.
Take them with you
Each book as one file, with the stylesheet and all three typefaces embedded. Once it is on your disk it needs no network at all — and it still carries the A4 print stylesheet, so printing from the downloaded copy gives you the typeset book rather than a web page.
Compiled from manufacturer specifications, school and federation pages, retailer pricing, club site guides, UK legislation, the CAA, and the peer-reviewed literature. Every figure that could not be established from a primary source is marked as a gap in the book it belongs to rather than quietly filled in. None of these books substitutes for instruction.
© Richard Weakley 2026. All rights reserved.