Gliderbase.com

An online catalogue of paraglider wings. Equipped with a lot of structured wing data and color options, Gliderbase allows pilots to find fitting wings for their body weight.

Challenge

Paragliding is a sport that requires well-chosen equipment. Most pilots choose their wing based on personal recommendation, but they also take a lot of time researching the internet for opinions, reviews, test reports and more. The only available comparison platform before was para2000.org, which was a great project, but it hadn't been up to date in terms of usability and mobile friendliness for quite some time.

Solution

Gliderbase.com closes that gap. Gliderbase combines publicly available paraglider data and normalizes it to create a searchable database, suited for comparison. So when pilots decide for a paraglider, they may quickly pre-select a few models that fit their skill level, takeoff weight, color preference and more. Gliderbase has seen around 12.000 visitors after being online for around 6 months (Feb 2019).

My role

At first, I developed Gliderbase as a side project. Using all the best tools I could find, including react, node, gatsby, emotion, redux, I had a lot of fun creating the interface. Yet, most of the time I spend collecting and normalizing the wing data. Nowadays, I've started to partner up with people in the paragliding community to help with the idea, the images, and the data. Since digital tools for paragliding are only just about to appear, I'm really excited for the future of this project.