peter_6095

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

Steve - early Saturday sounds great to me. I'll keep an eye on the forecast and get back to you later in the week. Can you send me a grid / directions for the field? Thanks, Peter

I would be really up for Saturday morning if the weather is still good - would be great to check out Barry's field.

Sold! I will definitely buy another one of these in two year's time when I move out of London though!

My MUCH LOVED paramotor wagon is up for sale, as seen at the Flagpole and at Membury. Now that I am in London I will use the wife's car when I want to go paramotoring - no need for two in town It is a 1995 Toyota HILUX Surf SSRG 3.0 Diesel automatic in blue. 110,000 miles (so just run in...). Fits a compact paramotor in the back without taking frame apart no problem. A bit tatty in places with minor cosmetic wear and tear but awesome mechanically with 11 months MOT, 7 months tax, recent cam-belt change and work done on the suspension. Even has paramotorclub.org sticker pre-installed - I will throw this in for free with the wagon. Bargain! As everyone (excluding Simon W) would agree - like a Land Rover ... but better. £1700 ONO to paramotorclub.org members - PM me if interested. South London (Wandsworth). Please delete this Simon if it is a total abuse of the website...!

Good point about weekend flying on the edge of that MATZ. Anyway, it is Chinooks that fly from Odiham and they are massive - you can't miss 'em! I guess that I could always ring up their flight ops to confirm how busy it is. I will have to check out the site as it is also pretty easy to get to.

Cheers Dan. Went to Membury today but it would be far easier to get out to Guilford on the A3. Do you have the contact details for Barry's field?

Mmmmm... Just looked at my airmap and you would have to be very generous to say that the common is not just inside the circle of the RAF Odiham MATZ. Even if you were pushing it your flightpath out would be a bit dodgy as in most directions you would be in the stub of the MATZ and that's a bit of low altitude to be going over built up area. So cancel my last message, probably not going there tomorrow. Does anyone know any good sites near there though?

Surrey branch I have just moved to London from Wiltshire and I am looking for somewhere closer to here to fly. Searching on the site I have seen a few references to the Reigate / Guilford area. I live just off the A3 up in town so this would probably be only half an hour away for me. Is there any chance that someone could PM me and share any good sites in the area with me? Anyone local want to meet up for a fly?

Searching for the nearest place to fly from SW London. Getting out to the M4 and then to the take off sites I used before I moved to London is ok, but I did a search and found this thread and saw people talking about Basingstoke Common, north-west of the Black Dam roundabout. It is a fair bit closer to me. The post is quite old, can anyone confirm if it is still ok to take off and land from here? I might try it tomorrow morning (Sat 2nd Oct) but don't want to wreck it for any local flyers by breaking any locally arrangements or rules.

Can you try and find a camera with a better zoom? I couldn't see his face at 5600 ft.

I like that photo Simon, I can't tell who it is from that angle though...

Loving the "Where Eagles Dare" music in the middle - may favorite film as a kid!

Frank - "Snorvliegers" has to be the coolest word I have heard for a long time!

Those hedges can be quite annoying...

Editing for GoPro: I found that my laptop could not cope with the huge files. It was three years old so quite out of date anyway. It wouldn't play the clips back smoothly on any of the editing programmes or movie players that I tried. On a new mac, however, it works like a dream. I use iMovie which is fine. Maybe I will need other software eventually but it does everything that I want at the moment.

I didn't think that I would be but I was very impressed. My two year old was so excited she cried when they finished and screamed for them to come back!

I have got the GoPro HD and enjoy using it. I am new to filming and editing but it is fun to learn with this camera. I got it from USA at $299 when the x-rate was 1.6 so good value. Seems over priced here in UK. My only criticism is that the LED menu screen is pretty rubbish and it is quite easy to make a mistake and end up taking one photo rather than 60 mins of film, but on the positive side it is really compact, light and high quality. While I muck around with it as I am learning I do not use it at the highest quality setting. The results are still quite good though. Here is a sample clip below which is compressed further for YouTube (though you can select 720 HD). Much of the time I was filming directly into the sun and with the horizon in the centre of the field of view it under exposed the land, but I guess this would be a problem with any camera. [youtubevideo] [/youtubevideo]Next step is to try different mounting positions (on foot looking up / forward / under wing pointing down etc). Quite a few examples of footage taken like that on the site. No real experience of any other camera but I hope that this helps.

Thanks for posting these. Good to know what is going on in my engine!

... the NOTAM says from 1155 but I have been told that they will be doing the display over Defence Academy in Shrivenham at 1300 tomorrow if anyone is interested. Battle of Britain flight doing a display in the evening too.

And here's the route that we did: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=700867

Here is a two minute clip of a flight that I did with Colin yesterday evening. A 43km trip around the Oxfordshire countryside, taking in Devil's Cauldron and the White Horse at Uffington. It was pretty quiet out there as it was during the first half of the world's most boring football match. I did catch the second half when I got down though - hadn't missed much. A gentle introduction to low flying for me up on the open fields of the Ridgeway, following Colin. Perfect conditions into wind (sadly for photography purposes also into the sun). No animals were harmed during the taking of this video, but a lucky deer caught sight of something that he had never seen before, for which I am sure that he will thank us when he gets to tell all the other deer about it later at the pub. What a great feeling it was to fly over such stunning scenery in my little flying machine. The laughs at the end of the clip say it all. Watch in HD. [youtubevideo] [/youtubevideo]

Yup - this is exactly where I wanted to fly. I was hoping to take off from the Drop Zones that they landed at during the war and then fly over the bridges. Many thanks for the video and the map - it must have been a good day's flying. Shame that it will not be possible for me to do it as a visitor, but if the rules change then I would jump at the chance to take part in a flight like this!

Thanks for pointing us to that great website. I have downloaded the app onto my iPhone and I used it this evening to record my flight: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=696780 I recommend it. The way that you can bring up the flight data by clicking the little mountain sign at the bottom right of the map is awesome. Easier to use than any other GPS logging that I have used so far. I have also found a good way of securing the iPhone to the flight deck. I stuck velcro to the back of my Otterbox case and then drilled some holes through the back so that I can tie it on just in case. It was a fun hour in the air with my shiny new Paramotor after a few weeks away from home and flying.

My last post was in jest, but it did get me thinking that you must be able to buy spare retractable mirrors for baby carriers. I found this one: http://www.naturallyhappyslings.co.uk/b ... rrors.html you could probably make it cheaper yourself but if you can't be bothered this might do. Apparently it is made of " heavy-duty chrome reel with over 1 meter of quality retractable cord" and most importantly you can even "clip it to your skirt"...