Depending on the size of the canopy, there can be a fair amount of pressure required to pull a toggle. Tandem rigs, which have 500ft^2 mains are somewhat difficult to guide by one person. Most TM’s that I know require their passenger to help out. Not that they cannot be flown by one person, just that doing that 10 times a day wears a person out.

My personal mains: PD Spectre 150 and 135, and Sharp Chuter (used for demo jumping) all had very different toggle pressures. The Sharp Chuter being the heaviest. It was also 90ft^2 larger (240ft^2) than my Spectre 150. My 135 had almost negligible toggle pressure. The smallest canopy I’ve ever jumped was a Velocity 103 and that thing has almost no toggle pressure what so ever. Plus with such high wing loading made it down right twitchy. Personally I was never one for ultra high wing loadings. Having 40mph approach speeds to landing was never appealing even when I was young.

Also skydiving canopies are a LOT more square than a paraglider. While I could not explain the physics there, it seems to me that a thin wing would have lighter toggle pressures. Canopies that I’ve jumped that were more tapered seemed to have a lighter toggle pressure of equally sized non-tapered canopies. A paraglider canopy is extremely tapered compared to a skydiving chute.

Also, don’t you folks have 6 risers? While there have been 6 riser skydiving rigs, they are very uncommon. So each riser requires a lot more pressure to pull… I’m assuming paraglides do riser turns and other maneuvers with them.

There is a Paragliding club here where I live. Even met one when he landed at a local park when I was out walking. I currently have one kid in college and another going to be there in a couple of years, so it’s not going to be anytime soon, but I would love to try it out. I’d love to get back into the air. Skydiving is pretty much out, as I have a back injury that could be made really bad with a hard opening.

To make a short story long… Yeah, I can see a skydiver being ham fisted with a paraglider. A jumper with a lot of experience with very high wing loading (over 2.0 to 1) might not, but me? Yeah, I’d probably ham it up for the first few hours. It would be interesting to learn just how much skydiving canopy experience would translate. I’m sure some would, but definitely not all.