flying sunday anyone????

I plan to fly sunday if anyone is up for it.....

It Looks really promising

I have Tom coming round and I hope to try out his Bailyes 175 though I doubt it will be powerful enough to get me going as I want.

My paramotor is flyable on the old wooden prop but the performance is well down on the carbon one which is not going to be repaired in time. I,m only climbing at 200 ft/min instead of 350 ft/min and it is revving right up to about 12000 rpm instead of 9500rpm with the carbon prop, so I bet it is making twice as much noise and I cant really use full power in long climbs.

I was hoping to get another prop off ebay but they pulled the auction early, and if I cant get one cheap I am not going to pump more money into my old paramotor so might as well start looking for a whole new paramotor.

The carbon prop took a hell of a bashing when the end of the exhaust can came off my stupid H&E. I am trying to repair but the epoxy resins take an age to set .

Any way the gang is welcome to come round tomorrow and it looks like hardly any wind so we could go any direction we want.

Cool

I have to take the other half out at 9 so i can be round to yours by 945/10.... i have to pick her up again at 330....

Tom's Bailey should get you off the ground with 75kg's of thrust didn't think your h&e had more than that...

Anyway will ring you in the morning to make sure its all good up there.....

Sadly, i am teaching tomorrow so can't really come for a flight.

I'll have to do a dawn or dusk patrol here instead before/after my student is here.

Luke and I are both around for a flight on Monday though if you guys are about?

Cheers

Steve

I am planning to get up early for a flight tomorrow morning.

Any of you guys thinking of flying early (take off around 0830 or so) and if so - mind if I join you? Would be great to meet some other people in the area and find some new sites to fly from - I have just moved to south London from Wiltshire. Otherwise I will be checking out Basingstoke Common site tomorrow morning and flying from there.

Looks like the weather will be ace, will have to take my helmet cam!

Peter

I was thinking more like a mid day flight when it will be warmer and with the sea so much warmer than the land I wouldnt be surprised if there is a brisk northerly land breeze early in the morning. You could fly in, I believe Richard Symonds will try to fly down from Barry,s to my farm. My post code is RH20 2HZ and Tel 07875724540

Would have loved to but have to be back for lunch... I'll fly a bit closer to home early on, with down jacket and thick gloves- looks like it's going to be freezing! I would live to fly down your way one of these days though - thanks.

Peter

Hi Pete

Shame you can't make it. It looks so nice out there at the moment...light/mod north breeze should be good for some ridge soaring on the downs and poss ridge run to devils dyke...

Sadly, i am teaching tomorrow so can't really come for a flight.

I'll have to do a dawn or dusk patrol here instead before/after my student is here.

Luke and I are both around for a flight on Monday though if you guys are about?

Cheers

Steve

Hi Dude

I am around on monday.... but i have a guy over doing woodflooring so not sure what time i will be able get out poos fly by 11... It will have to be local as i won't have the time to travel up to you guy's... I am sure seymore will be flying if it s good.... Looks a little windy later on in the day tho.... give me a ring to let me know your plans and will try to fit in with them so how. Also my north field is now open for action

Had a really good flight today around Basingstoke, taking off from the common just east of the town, near Old Basing. It is a good spot to take off from, clear of obstructions except for some wires running across the south of the field parallel with the A30. I noticed some recent cow pats so presumably it is used for grazing on occasions which would obviously make it no-go. After takeoff I followed the M3 south west and then did a big clockwise circuit of the countryside around the town. Once out in the sticks I did some cool hedge hopping and circles around trees. GoPro was not recording which is annoying!

Such lovely conditions - steady gentle wind and excellent visibility. Plans for a morning flight fell by the wayside and I left London after lunch and took off at 1645 for an hour's flight. If I had more time I would have flown all the way to Andover to buzz a friend's house but while I had lots of fuel I don't think I had the daylight hours to make the round trip. My hands were getting pretty cold by the end - time to bring out the winter gloves...

All in all a great place to fly from and one I will use again. I would be keen to fly from Barry's Field at some stage though - I pretty much passed it on the way there going along the Hog's Back, even if you have to pay I would probably go for it to save time.

Steve - we talked about this on the phone, do you think that he would mind another paramotor taking off from his field?

Here is a trace of my flight.

http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=853379

Richard sent me this link for his photos for Sunday.

https://cid-8cea2e1e8d969d56.photos.liv ... SDX.Photos

We flew from my place to a friend near Devil,s Dyke, had lunch then back along the coast skirting Shorham airport and coming back along the Arun river. We were not down low over the pier it was just that Richard was high and had a powerful zoom.

Here is a trace of my flight.

Interesting to be able to see your track Peter. No critisism of your flight but an intriguing point comes to mind.

When you were following the M3 it looks like you were to the left of the motorway, Air Law says when following a prominent landmark you should follow it on the right of the landmark. Looking closer on the map shows it to be built up on that side of the M3, which would present me with a quandary.

Not wanting to fly above the built up area, particularly to avoid causing a noise nuisance, how far away from a prominent landmark should you be to comply with air law when on the wrong side

Admittedly at the height you were flying it is going to be unlikely to meet any other traffic, other than PPG

Cheers,

Alan

Right-hand traffic rule:-

16.—(1) Subject to paragraph (2), an aircraft which is flying within the United Kingdom with the surface in sight and following a road, railway, canal or coastline, or any other line of landmarks, shall keep them on its left.

My humble advice is to totally ignore the rule, in fact do the opposite!

Why?

1 Safety!

We fly very slow and it's much safer to have faster traffic heading towards you from the front where you can easily see them and take evasive action to get out of their way, rather than have them zooming up behind you, it seems a lot of them have a lot of other things to do in the cockpit, rather than look out of the window!

2. No one else seems to pay much attention to the rule anyway.

The other week i was following the Hogs Back, it was on my left, the correct side (by luck rather than judgement) and a light aircraft then a chopper (probably both out of Farnborough) came straight at me, (same level) neither of them took any evasive action or even acknowledged my existence, despite me having to make steep spiral dives to get out their way. I am sure one or both of them weren't looking out of their window, so it was lucky they were coming towards me from the front and not from behind, where i may not have seen them.

Stuart

A very pertinent point Stuart.

What altitude were you flying when you 'met' the light aircraft and helicopter?

Alan

About 1300 feet above sea level, probably about 1000foot AGL.

Stuart.

Seymore

Cant access your photos dude

It was a shame i didnt spot you guy's... I was thermaling just under cloud base in front of the dyke while all the PG's were just floating above the ridge struggling to stay up

I kepted a good look out for you all but i didnt think to look down lol i thought you would be thermaling too as it was starting to get nice an active out there.... Shame i didnt have enough time to come and land at dichling as planned.

I was about 2 miles out when i spotted tom taking off butt looked like he was on a misson to get to you.

Glad you all made it back ok

I am annoyed to have missed it, it sounds great, man flu has kept me grounded all weekend!

Stuart.

(looking for sympathy and not getting any)

Man flu is a myth

suck it up take it like a man

I am not sure how his photo album thing works . I seem to be able to view but not download from an email richard sent me this morning. Try this link :

http://cid-8cea2e1e8d969d56.skydrive.li ... zaB8M0U%24

Just tested it and the link seems to work and get you into a slide show . It is a pretty good set of photos. This link should let you download but you have to join windows live first

http://cid-8cea2e1e8d969d56.skydrive.li ... zaB8M0U%24

just checked out those photos. They are really good amazing quallity. do you know what camera he used???

There is a panel to the right of the pictures that gives these details :-

Camera make: GoPro

Camera model: YHDC5170

hth.

Great pics!

The fish eye shots were stills from a video clip using a gopro on a stick and the other shots were with a Panasonic LUMIX DMC-ZS7 / TZ10 which is the camera of choice at the moment with all the critics and cost about £230. Richard is a professional artist and has a side line doing arial photography for estate agents using radio controlled 4 prop vtol helicraft to fly the camera around and control it with a iphone. I was wearing such thick warm gloves that I could,nt press the buttons on my camera, even though it was quite a warm day, and so never took anything.

Here is a trace of my flight.

Interesting to be able to see your track Peter. No critisism of your flight but an intriguing point comes to mind.

When you were following the M3 it looks like you were to the left of the motorway, Air Law says when following a prominent landmark you should follow it on the right of the landmark. Looking closer on the map shows it to be built up on that side of the M3, which would present me with a quandary.

Not wanting to fly above the built up area, particularly to avoid causing a noise nuisance, how far away from a prominent landmark should you be to comply with air law when on the wrong side

Admittedly at the height you were flying it is going to be unlikely to meet any other traffic, other than PPG

Cheers,

Alan

Interesting points! As you say Alan, in this instance I kept the motorway to my right because I thought it better to be over the fields than the built up area. I did cross over some built up areas later on, clipping the corner on the SE of town and then again approaching my landing field, but at a good altitude.

A few weeks ago I was approaching Membury to land, flying with the M4 on my left when two Army helicopters (Lynx) came towards me at high speed with the motorway on their right! Fortunately they were higher and no evasive manoeuvres required by either party - and one would hope that with two of them flying at least one of them would have seen me and told the other if we were on course for an airborne RV.

I suppose it is debatable whether you are actually following a road or feature or not. In this case I was actually just boxing round the urban area to get in a position where I could make a clear line to my objective, rather than using the motorway as a navigational aid. I suppose that the rule would apply nevertheless.

I would certainly prefer to see a fast mover coming towards me so that I could take evasive action, but then again do you run the risk of increasing the chance of a near-miss (or worse) and then being the party at fault for not obeying the rules? An interesting dilemma - I would be interested in other's views.