Flying the Kitchen Chair

Holy bug spat Batman!

I know these foot launched para motors have been around for some time now, but I wish "they" would quit coming up with new ways to get aloft, I'm finding it hard to keep up. I want one, bad, the portability of them is what really attracts me. Any compact car can easily carry one, some carry them on their motorcycles, and I expect some RV'rs carry them in their motor home storage bins. Their capability, as this video shows, has really improved.

I want a drone also.

The plus factors don't counter the negatives for me. In turbulence you have to actively fly the thing just to keep a wing over your head. When on turbulent final there are many long seconds where a turbulent collapse of the canopy would be unrecoverable. They largely replaced hang gliders because you can check them on a commercial flight.
The only bagwings I'm interested in are the minis, they are tiny rectangular speedwings that reproduce my old experience of flying down ski trails in old 4:1 1st gen hang gliders. If you build(sew) them with any more aspect ratio, they get squirrelly.
Many types of aircraft over the years have gotten somewhat more dangerous in the pursuit of performance, none more so than paragliders. This from a guy who still owns his 5th hang glider.

i see at 15000 feet hes doing 2 mph.

I'm sure he's really good, but I didn't enjoy the view of the electric wires just before touchdown.

Not sure what the average cruise speed is on those rigs, but one beautiful summer evening I caught up with one with my old "12" and with a handful of flaps and a bit of throttle was able to cruise with him (at a safe distance). We were at about 1500 feet. FUN !!

Just curious if ADS B requirements are the same for paragliders, etc. as for our aircraft. I never thought about it before but....those things probably don’t have a registration number either so I’m guessing no ADS B.

Those things are cool but I couldn’t do it. Just watching the video gave me the willys........don’t like heights unless I’m enclosed.

Skywalker said:

The plus factors don't counter the negatives for me. In turbulence you have to actively fly the thing just to keep a wing over your head. When on turbulent final there are many long seconds where a turbulent collapse of the canopy would be unrecoverable. They largely replaced hang gliders because you can check them on a commercial flight.
The only bagwings I'm interested in are the minis, they are tiny rectangular speedwings that reproduce my old experience of flying down ski trails in old 4:1 1st gen hang gliders. If you build(sew) them with any more aspect ratio, they get squirrelly.
Many types of aircraft over the years have gotten somewhat more dangerous in the pursuit of performance, none more so than paragliders. This from a guy who still owns his 5th hang glider.

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Saw it happen at a fly in the guy was on final and things went to hell. Didn’t hurt him much but I bet he needed to clean his pants. My brother in law bought a two place one and wanted me to teach him to fly it. After seeing the guy crash at the fly in I declined. Looks to me that you don’t have complete control and especially in the wind. We have wind in western Nebraska most all the time.


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I was thinking that too. Noticed the video was before 2020, though.

Mr. Ed said:

Just curious if ADS B requirements are the same for paragliders, etc. as for our aircraft. I never thought about it before but....those things probably don’t have a registration number either so I’m guessing no ADS B.

Those things are cool but I couldn’t do it. Just watching the video gave me the willys........don’t like heights unless I’m enclosed.

Click to expand...

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these guys flying around in these squirrel suits, where are they going to mount all there government required stuff?

tempdoug said:

these guys flying around in these squirrel suits, where are they going to mount all there government required stuff?

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Inside his skull? His brain isn’t taking up a lot of space in there. . Sorry couldn’t resist. That was fun to watch and certainly an accomplishment

Many now have alternators and batteries. This guy had electric start. But operating under Part 103 is enough to ban operation in rule airspace. Fun fact: electric starters on these things are popular mostly because the recoil starters on the popular engines are all crap.

Mr. Ed said:

J snip.

Those things are cool but I couldn’t do it. Just watching the video gave me the willys........don’t like heights unless I’m enclosed.

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I tried to see how high my Pitts would go one day and got vertigo. I'd s... myself and start crying in that thing. I don't even like to watch.

i see he didnt ground his airliner when he fueled it up

Skywalker said:

The plus factors don't counter the negatives for me. In turbulence you have to actively fly the thing just to keep a wing over your head. When on turbulent final there are many long seconds where a turbulent collapse of the canopy would be unrecoverable. They largely replaced hang gliders because you can check them on a commercial flight.
The only bagwings I'm interested in are the minis, they are tiny rectangular speedwings that reproduce my old experience of flying down ski trails in old 4:1 1st gen hang gliders. If you build(sew) them with any more aspect ratio, they get squirrelly.
Many types of aircraft over the years have gotten somewhat more dangerous in the pursuit of performance, none more so than paragliders. This from a guy who still owns his 5th hang glider.

Click to expand...

My first time seeing a bag wing fly, I was with some of my old hang gliding buddies, those who didn't transition into airplanes like I did, and we were at King Mountain, a world class big mountain soaring site in the Lemhi's. It was just starting to get thermally, but nothing real active. The guy took off, made a pass right in front of us, then I saw a wrinkle start on one side, then smooth out, then it started again, and it quickly turned into a full tuck (or whatever they call it) situation, started dropping like a rock from around 200', and just like that he threw his reserve and salvaged the situation, with no injury. I want one, but can't get that scene out of my mind, plus he was foot launched/un motorized, a powered unit would have only complicated things. Flying low level in hg's was so much fun, I think it's part of the reason I got into powered flight, I can now do it anytime I want!

The guys competing on the latest paras carry two reserve chutes these days. No thanks. A friend took some paraglider lessons, the instructor was frank. "It looks easier and safer at first, but when you want to fly in midday turbulence and go somewhere, it gets more dangerous than hang gliders."

I'm pretty sure that what he's flying is an ultralight rig, so not an "aircraft" but a "vehicle" that's exempt from many of the FAA rules (like ADS-B compliance). I believe ultralights are prohibited from flying in Class A, B, C, and D airspace, and within the lateral boundaries of Class E, unless they obtain permission from the using or controlling agency for that airspace. Since he had no radio, I'm glad he at least stayed below FL180. And although I would certainly have preferred to see him using a light-weight oxygen system for the flight, I'm glad that the obvious hypoxia he was exhibiting at altitude (couldn't even remember the names of his digits!) did not cause him to do something really dumb... Although like many of you, I was VERY uncomfortable with the proximity to those wires at the end!

https://www.facebook.com/447115332046720/posts/2941663625925199/?vh=e&d=n


Transmitted from my FlightPhone on fingers...

In 1978 Lake Champlain froze nicely and I hooked my hang glider to a single cylinder Moto-Ski with 4 people aboard for traction. I was on skiis and every time I tried to take off the combination would slow down. I learned to increase AOA only when the machine was on a patch of snow and slowly stair stepped up to 100 ft or so. Impossible without skiis. This guy on the gyro is good.

Just when you think you've seen everything....along comes a foot launched gyro, wow! It took me a second to understand just what in the hell I was looking at.

I used to fly HG's with Dave Kilbourne, which is like a powered pilot saying he used to fly with the Wright Brothers. He was a early kite ski flier in the Bill Bennett water ski shows, and is said to be the first or one of the first to foot launch a rogallo wing instead of towing them up, and was for sure the first to soar one. He told many horror stories of the very early kite towing days, the flat ones, before the rogallo wing came along. He got busted up pretty good a few times while they sorted it all out, once the rag wings came about, things were relatively tame. http://forum.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=20747

There’s a really good YouTube video of a tow-behind gyro-boat, to be pulled behind another boat.

A very good friend of mine had broken his neck flying delta wing kites behind skiboats, but it didn’t stop him from continuing to do so. Some of my fond memories as a kid was watching him fly the length of the lake and back in tow.

In my 20’s I was lucky enough to drive for him. We had two lines, a 500 and a 1000 footer. One real calm evenings we would hook both lines together and pull him 1500’ back. You had a hard time seeing his ski signals at that height, but spooling out 1500’ of line across the lake before we started was the scariest part.

He wanted me to fly it since I was a pilot too, but I never had the nerve to push the bar forward and climb off the water.


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tempdoug said:

these guys flying around in these squirrel suits, where are they going to mount all there government required stuff?

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They keep their radios in their pockets. Ear buds under the helmet and a PTT some where handy, like down the sleeve.

Web

I met Dave Kilbourne on top of Hull Mtn in Northern California. He had his yellow Riser biplane glider. We flew down and Donita was running the whippets with a dirt bike on the dirt strip. Dave hooked a line to the bike, bit down on a piece of inner tube tied to the other end. That was the only connection to the ship, his neck muscles! He knew he couldn't get out of ground effect without lifting the rear tire, but I've never seen or heard of anything like it.

That is going way back! I remember the whippets! Donnita was a 110 (95?) lb bad ass pilot, and probably the first female to fly a hang glider. Dave's Easy Riser (best name ever for an aircraft, post the film Easy Rider) days were after my time with them.

When I met them, I was living in Carmel CA with a (in retrospect) very wealthy girlfriend, and after meeting them at the Coyotes Hills site, we hooked up after they found out I was quite close to Big Sur, and knew the area. He had his eye on that area for potential launch sites, and just needed a local to point him in the right direction, I helped with finding ways to get up to the various launch sites. The best one was San Martin Top, 2600' vert, pretty much above Jade Beach, at least within the 3-4 to 1, glide ratio we had back then. The catch was the tide, high tide and it got real tight, so tight that you were going to get wet. I've got a few pictures of me flaring for a picture perfect landing in knee deep surf, then seconds later damn near getting swept out to sea when the next wave came in. Dave and Donnita overnighted at our Carmel place several times, and I clearly remember one time he showed me this new high tech device, a hand held calculator! It was about the size of a WW2 era walkie talkie, and had just basic functions, ( no texting or internet access!) but it was the prototype of the first hand held calculator. As I recall, Dave was a tool and die maker at Hewlett Packer, his day job, and this prototype was a near top secret device. This would have been 1972.

As long as we are in the way back machine..... I found out years later, that my girlfriend's step father, who, along with her mother, we had a very formal dinner with, served by their butler no less, with once a month at "our" Carmel house (her mother and step father had a big place in Carmel Valley) was, without going into a long story, was Dwight Marrow Jr. Yes, the brother-in-law of Charles Lindbergh. HE NEVER let me know that fact, even after I remarked one time at dinner, after a HG flight off a hill at the mouth of the Carmel Valley, that the ranch caretaker made a casual remark "you know, the last person to fly a glider off this hill was Charles Lindbergh." In retrospect, it was probably because of the Marrow/Lindbergh families habitual avoidance of the media after the baby got kidnapped.

Out of the many (but true) aviation related BS stories I have in my, around the camp fire file, that right there is my best.

Skywalker said:

..... But operating under Part 103 is enough to ban operation in rule airspace. .....

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They may be banned in A/B/C/D/E airspaces, don't even know about that (esp E), but I'm thinking they're probably legal in G airspace inside the 30NM mode C veil which is also ADS-B rule airspace.

Come to think of it, I did used to fly those contraptions they have at Crow Island, just inside the Boston veil.