There was this guy ( i think he died in a hail storm finally) but anyway there was this guy who used to show up at fly-ins. He was a little off. He would show up on a magic carpet and set up camp right there on top of it. We felt sort of uncomfortable having him there because he slept in, and watching a grown man go through REM sleep is always odd I think.
He could pretty much go anywhere we would go and beat us there most of the time. The stupid magic carpet didn't make much noise, so as you can imagine he never got laid. We were discussing it one night at the fire--seems like there were about 50 of us guys there. We all agreed he probably never got laid. He did make the most marvelous jerky. We all consumed the hell out of it.
I finally took a ride with him and it was sort of sluggish. It took him four times as long to get off of the ground. He would usually get off the ground in about an inch, sort of hover there, and then pull up hard. It looked dangerous. We all knew he would die someday flying that stupid carpet around.
We let him get in the line for the STOL competition, because we sometimes felt bad for him camping over there, thinking he owned an airplane. Plus he made some hella-good jerky, so it was good having him around... We would just sort of disregard his numbers at the end of the day, because, let's face it guys, he has an 8 ft wing span, and it didn't even have StainMaster® on it. We were talking about making a new line for people with magic carpets, Estes rockets, and helium balloon lawn chairs, but never got around to rewriting the STOLman's constitution. We knew it wasn't the absence of StainMaster that kept him from hauling a Moose around during the STOL competitions. We looked and looked for a dead Moose, but they are so hard to find in the Midwest. We asked around camp, but as luck would have it, nobody had a dead moose in their baggage area. Freaking figures, the one time we need a dead moose and there isn't one around. We made some phone calls and we couldn't' even get our hands on a lion or a tiger anymore. Now that's a real sad story. That guy would have loved a magic carpet ride. Those two would have hit it off...anyway, we look over and he's got a couple of dead groundhogs strapped on with Velcro. I guess hook-n-loop would stick to that carpet pretty good.
My buddy told me he showed up in the middle of the summer wanting to hit all these beaches. It was hot out. My buddy was in an O-7zillion with nitrous, slats, flaps and full country line-dance bar in the back. He hung it on the prop all the way up and down the beaches doing one-point landings and never did overheat the thing, well it was in the yellow most of the time I guess but that A$$h)#!e on the carpet was hurting by the end of the day with a really bad sunburn. Stupid guy was smiling the whole time too. We knew he would die of skin cancer someday. My buddy who does the one point landings is pretty open minded and didn't complain much about his wing-man without the long prop or bungee gear. He just bragged about the beef jerky they made on the beach. -Guess it comes from groundhog. We always wanted to get the recipe from him. My O-7zillion buddy said it seemed really simple to do on the beach.
Anyway, if you want a magic carpet ride go for it, but you probably won't get laid much and good luck finding a mechanic who will work on it.
Great engine, great plane. My go-to plane lately is a CC Sport Cub S2 but I would take either one, both great flyers and fun. The Rotax has some great features that are definite improvements over traditional air-cooled aircraft engines, namely more even cooling and reduced cracking of cylinders and associated components. They use solid state ignition modules which are generally more reliable than mechanical magnetos. Most people who distrust the Rotax have developed their opinion from here-say, or have known owners who abused or were ignorant of how to care for a 2-stroke Rotax (they're less dummy-proof), which is understandable. The 4-strokes are more reliable, and while the higher RPM sounds scary, there is no reason it would reduce reliability. Harder to hand prop with the PSRU, but these little props are like machetes anyway, hard to grab. I plan to buy one.
