What is ParaSensei?
ParaSensei is for paraglider pilots who want to get better at thermalling. Upload your IGC flight log, and we'll break down your thermalling technique using three self-contained metrics — then show you how your flying compares to other flights at the same site.
We also do flight comparisons: two pilots flying the same route, same day (or same corridor on different days). The goal isn't to rank anyone — it's to understand what happened, where decisions diverged, and what each pilot can learn from the other.
The Three Metrics
Every metric is self-contained within a single thermal from your own flight data. No cross-pilot comparison needed in the metric itself — each thermal carries its own benchmark.
1. Turns to Lock-in
How many 360° turns does it take you to find the thermal core? We count turns from the moment you enter lift until your first full revolution with positive climb the entire way around.
A score of 1 means you nailed it on the first turn. A score of 5 means you spent 4 turns searching before centering the core.
2. Climb Consistency
Once you've locked in, how reliably do you stay in lift? This is the percentage of your post-lock-in thermalling time spent climbing. Every moment of sinking means you drifted out of the core.
97% means you almost never leave the core once you find it. 75% means you're losing it on a quarter of your turns — maybe drifting off-center or making circles too wide.
3. Core Extraction Rate
How much of the thermal's available lift are you actually capturing? We take your average climb rate across the whole thermal and divide it by your best 10-second rolling average in that same thermal. Your peak proves what was available — the gap between peak and average is what you're leaving on the table.
40% means you're capturing less than half of the lift that was there. The centering phase drags the average down, so this metric rewards both quick lock-in and staying in the strongest part of the core.
The Comparison Corpus
Your metrics are compared against a corpus of flights at the same site. For Dominical, Costa Rica, we have 154 flights — the top ~10% of performances (sourced from XContest and DHV-XC, sorted by score).
This means the comparison bar is high. Scoring at the corpus median means you're performing at the level of the best flights at the site, not average pilots on average days. If your metrics are below median, it doesn't mean you're bad — it means you're being measured against a strong benchmark.
What We Don't Measure
These metrics are specifically about thermalling technique — centering, staying in the core, and extracting lift. They don't measure:
- Thermal finding — whether you fly to the right places
- XC strategy — when to leave a thermal and where to go next
- Glider performance — metrics are relative to your own peak, which controls for wing class
- Conditions — each thermal is its own benchmark, so a weak-day thermal and a strong-day thermal are judged on their own terms
🪂 How to Get a Report
Right now, send your IGC file and we'll generate a report for you. We're working on a self-serve upload tool — stay tuned.