Powered Paragliding Training
Days Three & Four | | Tim and Steve make their first solo flights (Write up from: Powered Paragliding Ontario) | | After two windy days at the weekend Tim and Steve returned to continue their training. I was back at my regular day job, so the write up and videos are all courtesy of Andre Zeman | Monday April 10/06 - day three
At 6:30 am I have checked the weather for Monday. The forecast was showing 5 KT winds from SSW until 9 am, then increasing to 8 KT and by 11 am the winds were supposed to be 11 KT and staying like that for rest of the day. The only chance for Steve to go on his first solo flight would be early in the morning. I called him at 15 min to 7 am and revealed the plan. 45 min later we were at the field.
55 min later the trike was ready to go. 1 hr later Steve was in the air, enjoying his first solo flight. After about 10 min of flying and 5 min of discussing the level of bumpiness we decided that 15 min was a nice first solo flight, so we decided to land - Perfect landing.
CONGRATULATIONS pilot Steve!
VIDEO OF STEVE`S FLIGHT
Tuesday April 11/06 - day four
Tuesday morning - weather was perfect. Both Steve and I were very excited in anticipation of some awesome flying. We mounted the new RR on the trike and proceeded attempt some take offs. The unit worked well for the first 5 mins and then we started to have problems. The machine would not run well at all and started to act really strange. We tried about 10 inflations during the time the paramotor was working OK but no success. After a while I got sick of fiddling with the carburetor screws and decided to pull the new XC from my funky trailer.
Prime, spin with ignition off, turn the ignition on, spin again and wrrrrroooomm. She runs like a charm. So I run it for 3 mins to warm it up. Then I try full power for about 30 sec, no problem. OK we will use the W 130 instead the W 200. I fill the gas tank* and we are set to go. Line up the trike, good inflation, Steve goes to full power and all of the sudden the XC starts to choke as well. I administrate another `what the heck - fiddling with the carburetor screws` but we can not get the machine to work. | I can`t believe it. Again we have couple of minutes where things work OK so we try to inflate but both of as are getting very frustrated and I have to leave the field by 11 am, so I know te time is ticking and that is getting me even more frustrated. I think Steve is having his own problems, on most occasions he would either not push enough into the A risers or he would push too much.
Also a couple of times all went well but Steve did not let go of the A risers once rolling and instead of using brakes for control he would apply downward pressure on one of the A risers, causing a frontal tuck and that would be the end of all those take off attempts. Did I mention that we got not one, but two flat tyres on our trike? We looked at each other at 10:30am and said `I think someone is trying to tell us something`. We packed up and made plans to meet back at the field at 4 pm. I went to Peaks and drained the fuel from both machines then put new fuel in, that I purchased from a different gas station. I fired both units. They both started to worked great so bad fuel was the problem. GRRRRR!
At 4 pm winds were nice and light. We quickly assembled the trike and after several attempts, Steve finally leapt into the air. At this point the air was still a bit bouncy, but that could not wipe the smile from Steven`s face when he landed. Since the conditions were perfect I suggested that he should go for another flight. 5 mins later Steve was flying around like a bird. The weather forecast for Wednesday was not favourable so Steve decided to drive back to Toronto just as Tim pulled in.
We went over the trike landing, what to do if we lost radio contact and how to trike land. Tim got ready and took off on his first try - great stabilised take off. At this point the wind was quite smooth, so after about 15 mins of Tim enjoying flying I decided that it would be a good idea to practice landing approaches. Tim came in at about 20 ft, started to descend and proceeded to touch down and land even though the plan was to pass at about 20 ft. It was a perfect landing so I asked Tim what happened on radio. He replied `Dude I meant to go around but it sort of landed it self`. Yeah right! Anyway, it was a very good landing.
We took 5 mins break and Tim took off again. This time there was a very very minor oscillations on take off. Tim enjoyed air for about 15 min and then we proceeded to landing. This time the thing did not sort of landed itself and Tim completed a bunch of low passes, finally landing quite close to one of the mud piles. Terrible morning. Very successful afternoon.
CONGRATULATIONS pilot Tim!
VIDEO OF TIM`S FLIGHT
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So you`ve read this far. Maybe you`ve been following our training blogs for a while now, or maybe you just stumbled across the website. Either way, if you think you`d like to fly powered paragliders get in touch. I promise you it`s a lot of fun.
Contact Andre Zeman by
E-mail: info@poweredparaglidingontario.com or Phone: (905) 988 5013 Fax: (905) 988 9884
for any information on Powered Paragliding Training, Paramotor servicing or Walkerjet Paramotors and Sky Paragliders. Andre Zeman now distributes Walkerjet Paramotors to the following US states (in addition to the whole of Canada)
ND, SD, MN, IA, WI, IL, MO, AR, LA, MS, MI, IN, TN, AL, GA, FL, WV, OH, NY, PA, VA, NC, SC, DC, MD, DE, NJ, CT, RI, MA, NH, ME.
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