Phil_P

As long as it's not been peeled off, the settings for the F3 are on a sticker on the left hand side of the fibreglass chassis. The WB32 and WB37 carbs are essentially the same in terms of base setting. Has this machine just been bought off ebay, and got alternate blue and orange cage netting perchance? Phil

I've certainly seen references to trikes/quads with balloon tyres, which would be the sort of thing you're after. Ask on the ppgbiglist on yahoo, that's mostly US based, and they fly a lot of trikes and powered parachutes.

In that case, I withdraw my comments, he's just a nosey git

So in PPL terms, it is up to the point at which you first solo, so I can see this being within four hours on a PPG trike. Even after a PPL has a first solo under his belt, there is still a lot of instruction to do, I guess the NPPL is no different. My only thought is that I understood the requirements to be that you needed a minimum of 32 hours flying in order to gain your full ticket. Presumably your free flight does not contribute to this? Phil

my synth 34 why? you ask alot of questions!! If I was thinking of spending 3 or 4k ish, I'd be asking questions too. I have learned to my cost that not asking specifics can allow the unscrupulous to avoid giving you all the info you should have. The wing used could give info about how hard the engine has been worked in it's short life. Don't let it get your back up, you might just have a genuine prospective buyer who is using good sense to guide his purchase. Phil

Well, you don't need to talk to the airfields unless you wish to penetrate their ATZ. If you DO wish to talk to them, you will need an airband radio such as one of the icom sets (IC A6, A22, A24). or one of the dedicated Yaesu Vertex radios which are prefixed with VXA. In order to use an airband radio, I would advise getting your flight radio telephony operators licence. This is actually a legal requirement unless you only operate on the dedicated 'glider' frequencies, which would be of no use talking to ATC. Technically, you should also have an 'installation licence' for your radio in your aircraft, but this is almost impossible in practice, as none of the newest hand held sets carry the required type approval. I would not be over concerned about this , and think it is unlikely you would ever get into trouble for it unless you were being very silly on airband. You CANNOT converse with your mates on the ground with airband, this would be a gross misuse of the frequencies, and would likely get you into trouble. There are NO radios I know of that will work on airband and a suitable frequency to talk to your mates on the ground. The closest to that would again be yaesu sets (like the VX2 or VX3). With these you will be able to HEAR ATC frequencies, but not transmit on them, but you will be able to transmit and receive on some of the common VHF frequencies that are routinely used by paramotorists (albeit illegally). It is possible to interface two radios with one headset, and switch from one to another, or you could use a set of ear buds inside a conventional headset, with the earbuds going to one radio, and the headset the other. For this to work, you would need two microphones however. The only alternative would be to plug and unplug a headset from your two radios. If your mates need the radio to track your progress, why not use a SPOT tracker instead. They can then use a laptop to see exactly where you are with GPS accuracy, and no dependence on the mobile phone network. It will also provide you with a means of simply calling for help in a crisis. Do not underestimate the problems of RFI and wind noise when trying to use a radio in the air. Hope that lot helps.

I suspect that 'stretch' should read 'shrink'.

Sorry Simon, as long as it remains a race, you're going to get a thumbs down from me.

Personal feeling is that it would be better to organise a non competitive holiday. While there may be some who relish the competition, there will be plenty others put off by it. Dare I also say that competitions tend to bring out the very worst behaviour in people, and with a £20K carrot, the incentive to be less than scrupulous might well be there. Don't judge everyone by your personal standards, there are some real t**ts out there who would go a long way for that prize money, especially if they have had to front up a sizeable wedge of their own, just to be able to take part. By having a relaxed and informal journey of like minded souls, it would still raise the profile and even have the potential to still attract sponsorship. Centralised recovery and help for flyers would reduce the required infrastructure, together with the number of ground crews, desperately trying to get from point x to point y in order to refuel their pilot. That is all not to say that there couldn't be competitive elements, like nav and economy built in, and maybe even a planned day of stick kicking half way through. Phil

Like I said, two schools of thought and I don't know which is best. My personal feeling is probably to disable the main, but who knows what I'll do in those moments of crisis. If I've thrown a reserve at 500', there probably won't be much time to do anything.

How about a locked in spiral or SAT? You and the wing will be in the same horizontal plane. It will only go above you after you deploy your reserve.

There are certainly circumstances where the wing will NOT be above you, although I wouldn't like to be in any of them. Cutting away is a luxury we probably don't have time for. Once the reserve is deployed, there are two schools of thought about the main wing. The first says to pull it in to disable it and prevent it interfering, the second is that as long as it is trailing and not tangling you reserve, leave it there, as any drag it creates is a bonus. I hope I never have to investigate what's best.

Norm, great posting, but I have a slight modification if you will. Your initial action should always be to 'fly the aircraft' anything else comes after that. Phil

Flying doesn't do it for her, she much prefers horses. Definitely a star though.

Had an engine problem that put me down yesterday on a fair cross country. I had forgotten my mobile phone (naughty I know) but had the back up of my satellite phone. I was however running my 'SPOT' tracker. I put down in the middle of a meadow, near a road, and pressed the 'Help' button on the spot. The sat phone reception was a little flaky, but the farmer who took me to the farm house and plied me with cake and tea let me use his home phone. By the time I actually got hold of my wife, she was already half way towards me with a full GPS fix and 'Google' map of my location courtesy of the notification text my SPOT had sent. Full marks to the SPOT, first time used in anger. 110% big 'up' to Tom the farmer who, together with his wife, watered and fed me, let me use their phone, dug out an old WD map of England from 1945 showing all the old RAF airbases, and to top it off, took me back to the motor in the Pick-Up so we could bring the motor to the road from the middle of the field. This country is full of some of the nicest people! Phil PS, no amount of pre-flighting would have prevented this one.

Foil tape or a fibreglass leading edge mod to your prop can really lengthen it's life in a sandy environment. A thorough rinse of the wing once in a while to remove salt crystals which I have read can be very abrasive and damaging. Watch out for offshore breezes developing that might catch out the unwary. An onshore breeze off the sea is likely to be really smooth and laminar, giving you take-off opportunities in perhaps slightly stronger winds than a lot of us could contemplate when there is the possibility of gusts. Consider a life jacket, or an Agama flotation device, and maybe even a small epirb (just in case). Not much use on the flying site information I know, but hopefully stuff worth thinking about. Phil. PS if it's stuff you've already thought about, please forgive as I tend to think with my fingers on the keyboard, and a painful hip stopping me sleeping gives me too much time to do it.

It was certainly very relaxed when a crowd of us went over earlier this year. We had 3rd party insurance, and we took whatever flying qualifications we had with us, but no-one seemed bothered enough to check us out, even the airfield at Avranche where we spent most of our time. Just found out, you can see 'my' ditch on Multimap http://www.multimap.com/s/goB0WCzr Phil

I'm sure the 'Paramotor Pirates' will be able to point you in the right direction; http://www.paramotorpirates.com/ hth Phil

Dan, you will probably find that even a brand new motor will carry the caveat that it is not certified for aviation use, and has no guarantee of airworthiness. Manufacturers also often say (as do many pilots) that you should not fly over anything that you would be unhappy to land on, unless with sufficient height to be able to glide to somewhere that you CAN land safely. An engine out should be a simple case of reassessing the most recent landing option that you considered, together with any new options that are now available. Make an appropriate choice and land safely. There is a current thread about a relatively new pilot that has had loads of forced landings, and hasn't yet encountered serious problems. I personally have had a couple of out of fuel episodes. Both cases where I underestimated the wind strength, and also a couple of mechanical failures of the type that I think you will find, most paramotorists accept as an occupational hazard. None of these was any more problematic than any other landing, the most difficult bit being the hike out of a large area of fields to where my wife could pick me up. This can I admit be something of a difficult mind set for someone with a GA background to come to terms with, but when you consider our flexibility in landing sites, you will soon realise that fear is not required. My personal feeling regarding your costs estimation, is that with good choices at the purchase stage, you are at least 100% over what I would think is reasonable. Remember that you would also pay a huge premium in GA flying to have 100% aircraft availability for your sole use. There is nothing to prevent you having a PPG syndicate, and defraying the costs that way. Good instruction may well save you some unpredictable costs in terms of broken props and damaged cage sections. Again, these are pretty de riguer in PPG circles and having a few bob spare for such eventualities is no bad thing. Here is to low flying costs (I sure as hell can't afford to fly the club Warrior at about £120 per hour wet). Phil

Here you are paying for the time of an instructor, not the cost of flying, so I would expect it to be comparable. That said, With a bit of pre-practice with a wing, you could probably be flying within 3 days, and an instructor might charge you £200 a day if you use your own kit Just a small point, on the one hand you say you can't compare GA with paramotoring, but that is exactly what you are choosing to do. Why is it scary? there are no 'lifed' components on a paramotor. Everything bar engine internals are visible, so a worst case scenario might be you would need to replace a crank, barrel and piston. An engine out on a paramotor is a non event. Many people land 'deadstick' as standard. You should always be assuming your engine might quit, and have a viable alternate landing spot. Nothing to scare you there then. It can be done quite easily. I was airborne well within that budget, and have only upgraded because I want to, not because I need to. Motor 2K, Wing £600, bits and bobs, £300. If you want the paramotoring equivalent of a Glasair or a Mooney, you will have to pay top dollar. Horses for courses. Well I'm hoping my Bailey will give me a couple of years service before any major mishap, so that is 200 plus hours. As in GA, I'd look to replace the engine not the whole kit, so £3000 ish over 200 hours (which if you are keen is not unreasonable) gives you £15 per hour. But that is a worst case scenario, assuming a complete engine swap at minimum time. It is far more likely to be a barrel and piston and maybe a handful of bearings after rather more hours. Insist on a wing test and report before purchase, and you'll get a porosity report. Together with general condition this will tell you if your investment is worth it. Take up tandem flying and split the costs again Not taken as criticism, happy to give my opinions. I've managed nearly 100 hours in my first years flying, here in the UK. A figure I never got close to in GA. I bought a motor for £2000 (ex demo) and a half decent wing off ebay for £600. I sold on after about 60 hours for £1500 and £400 respectively. So a total spend of £700, that's just under £12 an hour. I could have carried on flying on the kit probably for a couple of years, and not lost substantially more, bringing the cost down proportionately. Phil

If you do find out anything, post it here. I love to know the best spots to fly, and the ones to avoid. Phil

What about forward launching whilst juggling on a unicycle? Ah, but it wouldn't be footlaunched. You'd have to pass your microlight licence to launch with a unicycle. You'd also have to pass a sanity check I think Doesn't the legislation say that it must be capable of being foot launched, not that it actually must be foot launched? So as long as you can reach the floor on your unicycle, then you'd still be covered by the exemption

You obviously haven't watched Dell's 'promotional' videos

In this country you need no qualification, and I believe the same is true of the USA. If you learn out there, it will mean you are able to fly in the UK once you have your kit. Getting a good grasp of UK air law however would be useful, as there are subtle ways in which it is at variance with the States.

I'm actually designing a single skin 'tent' that will use the motor as it's support, and therefore cover the motor as well. I think I can get the weight down to about 500g