peter_6095

Stevie, Where in Wales is that? I am flying round the Black Mountains area - anywhere close? Peter

Thanks - I will try that. How is the USSR going? Wish I could have joined you - I only got back from holiday late last night.

My bird of prey recognition is not that good - I should have taken a photo when it was a bit closer, it was flying right next to me at one stage but I did not have my camera ready. Maybe a buzzard.

Here are some shots from a flight I did this morning around Hay-on-Wye, including Hay Bluff, the Black Mountains and the Golden Valley. The wind was a little strong and a bit blustery. I was up for over two hours and topped out at 2300ft. On a calmer day I would like to fly around the mountains, or onwards to Brecon. I will be on the hunt for petrol stations by the side of the road - any suggestions?

It's good Simon and Pete!

Fantastic talent - great filming too.

Could we all recognise how jolly clever and well read Francis is? I have often thought that there are not nearly enough references to Kierkegaard, or any philosopher for that matter, on this forum. This example demonstrates how it can reinforce your arguments and add clarity to your logic. There is no danger of other forum members detecting an intellectual inferiority complex, or thinking that you are trying to baffle them with nonsense. My observations: it is pretty clear that those 'clip-board wielders' (probably, but not exclusively, bearded) who argue that we should be pushing the authorities to regulate us, usually stand to gain financially in some way from the exercise. The kite-surfing example is excellent. As various other users have stated, there are sufficient laws in place to prosecute people who act irresponsibly and endanger others - let's not actively encourage any interference from boring busy-bodies with nothing better to do than police our fun. And for those boring busy-bodies within our ranks: get a grip - go regulate yourself! Immanuel Kant was a real piss-ant who was very rarely stable. Heideggar, Heideggar was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table. David Hume could out-consume Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel. And Whittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as sloshed as Schlegel. There's nothing Nieizsche couldn't teach 'ya 'bout the raising of the wrist. Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed. John Stewart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shanty was particularly ill. Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day! Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, And Hobbes was fond of his Dram. And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart: "I drink, therefore I am." Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed; A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed. There you are Francis, I managed to get the names of 12 philosophers into my post. I hope you are impressed.

Good effort - wish I'd been able to join him!

It was a paramotor with a royal blue wing flying in an easterly direction at around 200ft. It flew over the buildings to the north of the runway. Apparently the pilot was on and off the throttle a lot and was pulling circles over the station - a number of people assumed that he was in difficulty and was looking to land. Continuing in an easterly direction he flew over a C17 which was stationary on its pan with engines on. there are reports that it was thrown around a bit at this stage by the turbulance. The RAF guys that I have spoken to say that there are loads of airspace incursions over Brize Norton but they can't remember one like this before. Apparently microlights, light aircraft and helicopters are always flying over the station - the enormous green / grey aircraft, the hangars and the runway must be hard to spot. From what I can gather there isn't a formal investigation. One of my friends said that the guy in charge of ops didn't even know about the incident, despite the fact that paraglider flew over the ops room and people all across camp saw it.

Talk to Steve Haze, wingandachair.com, probably your nearest instructor.

Apparently someone flew straight over the top of RAF Brize Norton yesterday in a paramotor .They say it was a blue wing. More details to follow no doubt...

Took the iPhone into the Genius bar at the Apple store and told them the problem, and how I did it. They hadn't had anyone destroy their phone by wiring it up to their aircraft before. They confirmed that it was totally fried and swapped it on the spot for a refurbished one for £55. I was astonished, not even in guarantee period and it was totally my fault. Excellent customer service. Would have cost £139 to do the same with an iPhone 4. Mine is a 3GS. Not sure I'll bother with voltage regulator. Might leave my amateur electronics for a while and go for an external power pack... Not worth the risk, the nice guys at Apple may not be so kind next time!

A lesson to all - get a voltage regulator if you plan to do what I did above. Worked fine until I started up and the iPhone fried itself completely. Clearly more than 12 volts surging when the engine is running at high revs. On a positive note - I had good flight with Luke today. Around 6 balloons flying too. One of them dropped a parachutist (shush) which gave us a surprise. Phone goes in tomorrow for new battery / fuse / whatever. And down to Maplin for a voltage regulator...!

Try Red Bull. There is a rumour going round that it gives you wings.

Luke - I would have recommended my old paramotor instructor in Saudi but sadly he piled in not long ago (which tells you a bit about flying in Saudi Arabia). I would certainly take your own wing!

In the end WeatherPro won hands-down. It was v gusty on Friday, but managed quite a fun 30 min flight to cloud level nevertheless!

I fly a Parajet volition macro and I am having this minor problem - wondering if anyone else had experienced this. When I shut off the engine in flight sometimes I cannot re-start for a minute or two. It is almost as if a circuit has been broken, the green button does nothing at all, not even turn the engine over. Then after two minutes or so the engine will turn over and start. I cannot get this to replicate on the ground, there is always a circuit and it starts first time, so it must only be when the engine is really warm. The engine has never failed to start up again inflight - just takes some time. Would be handy to know if anyone knows what causes this and whether there is a work around.

I am no lawyer but .. there surely cannot be any legal reason why the owner of a piece of land would be responsible for the harm that someone does to themselves while engaged in an personal activity that they have no part of. The concerns over damage to the grounds and property are valid though - so worth tagging details of your insurance with your future requests. Doing this rally at the weekend will be quite a challenge on the permissions front - it will be very tricky to ask for permission before landing, as we won't know which way we are going until the evening before when we study the forecast. Generally I have found people to be pretty onside though for 'land-outs', as long as there are no crops or livestock around.

So what's the verdict on XCWeather vs. WeatherPro? The former tells me 2 mph on Friday, gusting 3. The latter says 10 mph gusting 18. Quite a variation. I know which one I want to believe.

Oh yes, only £20 to register, but I had to send off that insurance form which I'd been meaning to do for some time.... £65 with Joint Aviation Services, who sorted it v quickly! They don't require membership of any club and they don't seem to be holding to the requirement to register 30 days out (we only signed up last week). Need log book though showing 30hrs experience.

Tim, sounds great - any of you want to join us for the weekend? The details of the event are here: http://www.bmaa.org/pwpcontrol.php?pwpID=2404 We'll probably take off really early on Sat and try to get as far as we can that day, returning Sunday night. Might have to drop in on you if we are running too late to get back to Sywell. Useful to have another option so that we can make use of the whole 50hrs.

You aren't suggesting that I might land in a hedge are you? By the way SImon, I was wondering if you have any pictures of people who had flown into a hedge, I seem to remember someone doing that in our club...! We tried out Google Latitude and it is pretty good - probably the option we will go for. Sadly we don't have a ground crew now so we will probably stay within visual of each other. Unless of course anyone else from the PMC wants to fly with us (and could bring along a friend who could do the ground crew role). I have just read an article about vol bivouac, it could be fun - though guessing there will be a few long walks to the petrol station without a ground crew: http://www.paramotormag.com/2009/01/par ... basse-ham/

I'm taking part in the paramotor rally at the end of the month (called the USSR, which starts and ends at an airfield near Northamptonshire). There will be 3 of us flying with a ground crew following with a van. It would be really useful to be able to track where each other are and so I have just downloaded Google Latitude on the iphone. Waiting for the others to download it too so that we can test it out. Question is - has anyone else tried this to track people flying? I hear some reviews saying that the update rate is pretty slow. Are there better apps out there which do the same thing? Not too worried about the battery consumption now that my in-flight charging is sorted!

I would be up for it Morgy. Photos of the last trip looked awesome.

That would be a good weight saving, and I would consider it, though for the cost I would probably be better off running to work every day to get rid of 1kg of excess weight instead! Looking at those figures, it appears that the alternative offers considerably better performance. Would it be possible to go down a size to save even more weight - I can't imagine needing better performance than the battery currently fitted to the machine. The only time that I ran it flat was when I flooded the engine (I shouldn't have kept trying - my fault).