Phil_P

The law in England requires the paramotor to have a fuel reservoir of no more than 10 litres. It is permitted to carry extra fuel in other reservoirs, but they must not be connected to the reservoir on the paramotor. I hope this poor translation makes sense.

A lei em Inglaterra exige o paramotor ter um reservatório do combustível de não mais de 10 litros. É permitida para carreg o combustível extra em outros reservatórios, mas não devem ser conectados ao reservatório no paramotor. Eu espero que esta tradução pobre faz o sentido.

It probably helps that I've got 100+ hours P1 in light aircraft, so the actual act of flying feels completely natural. The reason I've moved to PPG's is that I have been longing to get back in the air, but finances have defeated me. Transponders, radios, navigation etc. are all stuff I'm used to. Thus far, it has only been the take-offs that have perturbed me, and confidence grows with every take off. Reverse launches have been the norm for me, as I could do with some instruction in forward techniques that don't overload my bad shoulder. I guess there is a very real danger of being over confident, but while I'm in the air, I tend to be very circumspect, very gentle on the controls and give myself a good altitude cushion, as I don't suddenly want to find that I'm touching the edge of my performance envelope. I'm also very aware of my surroundings, and always have a forced landing option planned, should things go quiet.

My cold hand flight the other day was great fun, as I flew out a distance, and then circumnavigated Newark. Electrically heated gloves are on my Christmas list though.

Incidentally, there are some offers in Lidl starting today, a quilted overall and a battery charger for all sorts of batteries are two of the items that might be useful to PPGers.

Pesaroso para meu português, seu inglês é muito melhor. Boa vinda ao grupo. Você deve seja cuidadoso, ou todos os pilotos ingleses virão visitar sua casa se você os convida.

Phil

Hopefully one day, when there are many more 'fields' for us to hop in and out of, we can have dedicated 'fuel stops'. Or maybe mid-air refueling

Now THERE is a challenge, and a potential world first!

Anyone else up for it?

I like your idea but i think if your flying with fuel whats the difference whether its in your tank or in your harness??

If its ok to fly with fuel in your harness then why not have a oneway valve plumbed into the fuel line and have it to hand so you could connect up the res fuel to the valve wilst flying saves time and fuel burn taking off!!!

JUST A THOUGHT

The reason is, in order for a paramotor (FLPPG) to meet the UK ANO exemption, it must only have a fuel capacity of less than 10 litres. As soon as you plumb in an extra tank, you exceed the maximum permissable. As has been discussed in depth here, and in other places, there are potentially severe ramifications in terms of insurance and prosecution in the event of an accident. As a load of extra fuel bottles clearly aren't part of the motor, then (to my way of thinking) they wouldn't breach the ANO.

As for changing my motor, not a hope in hell, I'm about spent up, and if SWMBO catches me spending any more I suspect it would be much worse than anything the CAA could throw at me.

Well, I'm one of the (un)lucky ones whose motor conforms to UK air law, in that it holds less than 10 litres of fuel. Despite the fact that I'm losing weight, my fuel consumption therefore limits cross country flights (about 4 1/2 litres per hour.

So, I have come up with a possible 'work round'. I have bought four, 1 litre, aluminium camping fuel bottles, and will either stash them in pockets on the harness, or possibly secure them to my frame.

It will of course mean that I have to land to access the reserve, but by the time I'm doing adventurous cross countries and need the extra fuel, I should be competent at taking off again. Yes, I could probably come up with a 'plumbed in' fuel reserve, but I quite like my legality.

Anyone got thoughts on my solution, or other possible alternatives?

All UK PMR radios work on common frequencies. In theory, radios purchased accross Europe should all work with each other, as there is a common standard. It is also possible to obtain very similar American FRS radios, but these work on different frequencies and are highly illegal in the UK as they may interfere with users who are paying for the use of radios.

By using tone squelch (commonly referred to as sub channels), you can ignore other people working on the same channel (and therefore frequency) but if both groups transmit at the same time, they will still interfere with each other. This is a small problem, as due to the limited range, it is unlikely there will be two users on the same frequency who are close enough to each other to cause problems.

I can see no reason whatsoever why you and a flying companion shouldn't use PMR radios, but you will probably find if you fly with others, that many of them tend to use FM VHF radios (commonly using 143.7 Mhz, or one of the 'gliding' frequencies) to communicate in flight. I have also fitted out one of my cars with a full power mobile VHF radio, so I can talk to 'ground crew' AKA SWMBO AKA the good lady. And again, there are others, myself included, who favour the use of AM airband radios, to be able to talk to air traffic control agencies. My flight deck will allow me to use both VHF and airband through the same headset.

It

There will almost certainly be no issues in going up from a M6 to M8 thread in your prop pulley. Removing the remains of the old bolts may be tricky. If you can get a sharp centre punch on the centre of the bolt remains, then drill out, preferably on a good pillar drill or lathe, that would be my choice. Whatever you do DON'T use e-z out stud extractors, cos if the remains are even slightly seized, the extractor WILL snap and leave you well and truly kyboshed. The other alternative would be to go half way between the existing knackered holes, and have some new ones drilled, either for M6 or M8.

Once the prop has settled down environmentally, unlike Pete, I probably would use loctite. I'd torque down the nbolts without it initially, then after a few hours running, remove each bolt in turn, loctite it, then replace and re-torque to spec.

The alternative would be to replace the bolts with studs (threaded externally both ends). Then loctite the end that screws into the hub, and put nylock (or similar) nuts on the outboard end.

Adventure actually state in their manual that you can remove the nylock nuts up to five times before you need to replace them, and they also supply a spare set of four in the toolkit.

The prop bolts are the only fasteners on my motor that I tighten with a torque wrench.

With the new prop being fitted, it has possibly dried out slightly, and thus shrunk. It wouldn't take much shrinkage to loosen the bolts.

Because the bolts rely on friction between the assembly components to minimise torsional loads and thus the risk of shear, any loosening at all is potentially disastrous. Although the normal tensile load on the bolts would all but disappear, the sheer force mentioned above, and secondly, a small but significant bending moment on each of the bolts would increase. With each acceleration and deceleration of the engine, this bending moment would reverse direction, increasing massively the risk of fatigue fracture.

As long as there is a grip and a throttle arm almost parallel to each other, and the distance between them varies as you squeeze the throttle, I should think it would work.

I have a box of assorted 'O' rings that I bought off Fleabay for about £15 with sizes from about 4mm through to 50mm diameter, although a local car parts place, or garage may have similar for you to choose from, and therefore only cost a few pence.

My original plan was to use a length of glider line, but I like the 'O' ring, as the rubber makes it non slip so it stays very nicely in place.

For those that worry about the throttle open/reserve deploy scenario, I have seen pictures of a very simple system that shorts out your ignition if your reserve is thrown. I know it's more complexity, but quite neat nevertheless. As for closing the throttle in the event of a collapse, I'm not even sure that is the best action in those circumstances, I'd have thought anything that helps keep up your airspeed would be beneficial, but happy to learn otherwise.

Pics here;

From my experience in the cold the other day, if you have your fingers held in the same position for any length of time, you can actually find that they don't do what you want them to do, when you need it. By being able to relax your fingers, you are able to improve circulation and keep them warmer and therefore more functional.

I too, love with a passion, my Breitling (it was my 40th birthday pressie from my wife). I have a 121.5 epirb that I originally bought for diving, but is small enough to tuck away on the motor somewhere, together with my SPOT.

I am sure that any of the small 406 units would be perfect back up for the SPOT. I am a little concerned that the Globalstar constellation that SPOT uses, is rather degraded at present, pending them getting more birds in the air. I find that my Globalstar Sat phone suffers from frequent loss of signal, and have found on the Globalstar web site that there is even a tool that allows you to plan when there is likely to be coverage. The saving grace of SPOT is that it will continue to send the distress signal, so should ultimately produce a response. Also, as the communication is only simplex (one way) it is more likely to get a contact.

Alan, I certainly wouldn't depend on your Breitling to activate an emergency response. As 121.5 is no longer satellite monitored, you would be exceptionally lucky to have your signal picked up, unless by a passing airliner, that routinely monitor the frequency. What the Breitling WILL do, is to bring a search party straight to you, once SPOT has got the ball rolling. Even with GPS co-ordinates, it can be quite hard to find someone in amongst some of the larger dunes (I've helped with recovery on the Emirates 4x4 challenge, so know what the desert is like), but 121.5 will provide an extremely effective means to locate you. What you MUST do however, is make sure that in the event of an emergency, that the search party know that you will be transmitting on 121.5, otherwise they are unlikely to bother checking. It would be useful if this was a piece of information that SPOT held on record, or even the optional GEOS service, but to date, I've not found that facility.

Just thought I'd pass on the results of an experiment that I tried on a flight yesterday;

My throttle on the Adventure, has no simple means of providing a friction lock to hold the throttle at a set level. So what I tried, was to select a large 'O' ring, who's diameter was such, that when placed round the throttle grip and the throttle lever together, was just large enough not to actuate the throttle when positioned so it was at the point where lever and grip were closest together. By pushing the 'O' ring further up the grip and lever, it progressively actuated the throttle to a greater extent. This worked very well indeed, and allowed me to completely relax my throttle hand, which in yesterday's cold conditions was a real boon.

This obviously won't work with throttles like the Parajet, that have a trigger rather than a lever.

If what I've posted doesn't make sense to readers, then please say so, and I'll take a photo and post it up.

Some UK prisons have no fly zones, but I think that they specify helicopters only. The ones that are affected are indeed marked on CAA charts.

Hi Nirmal, might be worth while giving Mark at Leavesley Aviation a call. He's importer for Adventure and a VERY active paraglider and might be able to point you at sites and possibly other flyers.

Just thought a little update on the ANR was in order, now that I'm flying;

The battery box that I have fitted, is designed to turn off the power if the headset isn't used for about 10 minutes. While airborne the other day, I thought that it had turned itself off, as it was quite noisy. So I reached into the pocket that had the battery box in it and flicked the power off to reset it and WOW, the noise level shot up massively. The active system is truly impressive, and I wouldn't like to be flying without it, now that I know how loud it is with the system turned off. With the power back on, relative peace was restored.

Happy to let anyone in my neck of the woods try it out.

An overpitched prop will really hold your revs down.

Consider a new plug too. My motor was coming up about 500 rpm short at full throttle. I fitted a new plug, and all the parts from the carb (Walbro 32) service kit bar the spring and valve (cos I didn't want to reset the pop-off pressure). This included three diaphragms and two filters plus all the gaskets. RPM's were immediately restored.

NB there are two of the large oblong diaphragms supplied in the kit, made of different materials. I'm not sure of the differences although I understand the brown/grey semi transparent one is supposed to have a longer life.

Those extra revs made all the difference to me getting off the ground.

Why do a nil wind rewverse??????

Foward launch

Pete b

Cos if you are like me, a frontal launch tends to sublux (partially dislocate) my right shoulder!

Transponder - Can't wait to hear how it all works... got the pix and the installation looks great. When they miniaturize the wretched things they will be mobile phone or perhaps PDA size.

Trouble is, that with such a small market, there is no great incentive for a company to do so much required development

My complete installation comes in at just over 3 kg, so not particularly light. The Pelicase on it's own is probably over a Kilo though, so a natty carbon fibre case would help, or dispense with the case and just fit it all into cutouts in the under seat foam.

Just started a serious diet this week, so hopefully I'll lose rather more than the weight of my avionics stack so I can maintain or even improve ROC. Starting at 117kg there is plenty of scope

Please forgive thread hijack, but the use of transponders may well influence permissions being granted to enter zones, so kind of relevant.

Seen my edit to last post Norm, we obviously have too much time on our hands right now (too windy to fly)

Agreed that you could phone through an intended flight plan, but then you would be expected to adhere to it. Airband comms would make life so much easier.

PS batteries now arrived and fitted to the Xponder pelicase. Just enough room to fit in a hard drive video recorder too, to be wired to bullet cam(s).

A MATZ is typically ten NAUTICAL miles in diameter, plus any stubs that are configured on approach and departure lines. This would place your beach, at 5 STATUTE miles, well within the MATZ. You might conceivably obtain permission from the ATC agency to fly, as there are examples of airfields that lie within MATZ's (eg Sherburn in Elmett within the Church Fenton MATZ) but I'd of thought another location would be best. At very least, you would need airband comms.

[edit]

Norman is of course correct in that you are not obliged to have permission as long as you are outside the ATZ but within the MATZ. I would consider it grossely poor airmanship if you were to proceed without talking to the controller. Fast jets and paramotors do not mix well, and in the event you had entered a MATZ without clearance and were involved in an incident, would not bode well for your flying future.

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phil what ever hand u use to throw the reserve.ie if u r right handed put the bridle up the right hand side of harness.u dont want to throw a reserve to the right if u have it threaded up the left side .it could inflate and take ur head off,always thread a reserve on the side u would throw it///that is the advice of a pro/reserve packer and 20 years skydiving exp/gave me and when u think about it it makes sence///

Indeed, does make sense. My reserve is routed on my right side and my right hand is my throwing hand as I have a left hand throttle.