fuzzybabybunny

What are the pros and cons to a fuel bag that you can just roll up? Obviously one of them is space savings, but might there be any issues I'm not thinking about? Say you land, take the soft tank off, and fill it at a petrol station. Since it's a soft tank, will the fuel squirt out really easily as you're carrying it back to your motor? Does the plastic crease and leak over time?

I haven't had the chance to spend much time in a split leg harness. I understand that weight shift is better, but what about other things like long term comfort and other things that I might now know about?

Other names for it include "carburator boot" and "air box rubber." I have the same engine and same issue. I took some silicone adhesive (Amazing Goop) and gooped it to hell. A friend of mine has the same part and same issue, but a different motor (Simonini). He takes the boot off after every flight and dries it with a paper towel and stores it by itself. The oil and gasoline dries out the rubber and makes it crack. It's a common problem apparently.

Guh, holy crap. That sounds awful. You're also using a motor without a clutch though right? Which one is it? I'm new myself and I'm wondering if a clutch is *really* that important for my next machine. But it seems like a prop strike when the motor is just idling is enough to destroy stuff, huh? I've done butt landings before and it was fine on my frame. I bought it used and it already had a crack in it but the fix was to simply insert a smaller steel tube inside the cracked section and rivet it in there. A clean straight crack in the aluminum I think is much better to repair than a part that's gets bendy and cracky at the same time. Good thing that cages aren't structural.

Hey dom whereabouts in Aus are you? I'm going to be in Melbourne in about two weeks and might have my Backbone with ROS125 engine and double hoop frame you could try. I'm trying to sell it here in NZ but it might not sell. I'm surprised to hear that the Rodeo frames aren't that solid? They look like they're double hooped, beefy, and certainly more solid than something like a Miniplane?

I've always been under the impression that having a clutch is a safety feature and at the very least can prevent lines from getting chopped up when you screw up something. But I also like the idea of the ultralight Air Conception Nitro 200 and as far as I know there's no clutch for it (they say it's coming but it never comes), so at this point I'm actually considering just getting one without a clutch. I'm a newbie though with only about 20 hours of PPG and 20 hours of freeflight. So what are some pros and cons of not having a clutch? Is it really something that you can do without and *never* have any real incidents?

First time up in the clouds. ~90km trip between Mangawhai Heads and Goat Island, New Zealand. Really makes me want to get a second GoPro, a gimbal with a follow cam, and a real camera (all photos taken with Samsung S5). Photos Here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10103356721145715.1073741836.411479&type=1&l=0a538c82b5 Short Video:

lol, well at least on the upside my massive number of failures was impressive. I had six forward launch failures and maybe two reverse launch failures. So total of eight. It might have been more because I was there failing for what seemed like three hours. I'm 30 but it just completely trashed me. I got there at about 1:30. I had 10 liters because I wanted to go for a 3 hour flight - had some destinations I had never flown to. Sun sets at 7:00 and I figured even if I didn't get up until 4pm I could still have a good scoot. I've also read that reflex wings like mine are harder to bring up. On the forward launch especially they need full commitment, something difficult to do if it's nil wind and you're already tired and lugging around a 37kg machine with zero feeling being transmitted through the high hang point. Sure, high hang point dampens turbulence better, but man, the loss of feeling and the complete loss of weight shift steering ability is just horrible. I can't wait until I can move to a low hang point. The thing that I don't understand is that I've had plenty of successful near-nil reverse launches in inland sites in the past, mostly thanks to the ultralight material of the Spyder. I dumped some gasoline on my wing yesterday and aired it out for a couple of hours so I'm not sure if that could be the reason for the wing not coming up easily today?

I think I just had my most miserable day. I've been having some pretty good flights recently. Today the weather looked good at this one sports field I've never been to about 10km by the coast. I didn't want to launch on the beach because the sand there is very fine and I didn't want to get sand in everything. Anyway, my full Backbone ROS 125 is 28kg empty. With 10L fuel it is 35.5kg. With reserve is 37kg. And it's a high hang point. I tried and failed to forward launch in nil wind literally six times. My Ozone Spyder would just hang back even with hands up or one side would go higher than the other and of course with each successive failure I got more tired and less fast at running. I had to unbuckle all five buckles and get the unit off my back at least five times because it would frequently lose its prime and I had to reprime it and put it back on my back again. A few times lines fell on me and got tangled on the cage and all the little knobby bits of the frame, requiring taking off the entire unit. Sometimes the wind would come and I would try reverse launching but with always the same result. Finally after three hours I stopped everything, thoroughly frustrated. I got out my PG harness just to ground handle and see what was up and I was able to get the wing up with minimal problem but keeping it up was difficult because it was an inland site and the wind wasn't very consistent and the direction would change. Still, if I had been under power I probably could have launched just fine. I wasn't even able to get it up with the motor unit, much less have it track straight on a run. Anyway, I have much much much less feel for the wing with my motor unit. I wonder if the high hang point contributes to this numb feeling. The 37kg weight probably didn't help matters much. Really makes me want to get a Miniplane with low hang points that's 28kg all up including 10L fuel. Anyone else have days like this, where you feel like you're back to being a clueless student?

I just came back from a flight on my Ozone Spyder. I laid the wing in a rosette in front of me, got out of my motor, and as I was walking to the car I noticed that the motor had tipped over onto my wing. The plastic on my fuel tank is split at the brass fuel line fittings, so it leaks out if the motor is in the horizontal position. There was a small puddle of fuel on my wing and some inside the cell. I did my best to lay it out and even ground handle it a bit to get the fuel to evaporate. How big of an issue is this? Petrol is a solvent and will dissolve some plastics and compounds. Are our wings chemically inert to petrol, or did I just ruin my brand new wing? Most of the petrol got on the ultralight fabric layer of the wing.

Yeah, I'm not hot on their marketing angle of "this is a revolution in commuting!" Uh, no. No no no no no. When I talk to laypersons about PPG I get the same questions like "can I take off from my backyard?" "Can I fly to work?" "I can just fly around inside the city right?" "I can avoid rush hour traffic!" and I have to burst their numerous bubbles. I understand their desire to drum up interest from an audience that doesn't know anything about flying, but this may not be the best way to do it. As for the actual mechanics, the only real thing holding it back is battery tech. Tesla recently declared an increase in range of their cars, but it was due to simply re-arranging the cells of the battery to fit more into the same space, not from an advancement in battery chemistry. I think perhaps lithium ion chemistry can't get much better, but other chemistries probably have more potential. - A quadcopter with a broken prop or engine will still experience twisting and torque which software can try to manage. I'm not sure how advanced this company's software and sensor tech is should motor failures or prop failures occur in flight, but some drone companies seem to have this controlled to some degree. This is in comparison to something like an octocopter, or even better, one with a coaxial design, which more or less just experiences a loss of thrust in the event of a single motor or prop failure. - Petrol engines, by virtue of being a heat engine, can only be ~65% efficient, AT MOST. Electric motors are about 95%. But again you have the energy density issue. Efficiency doesn't solve all the ills if the energy density of batteries simply isn't in the same league as chemical bonds. - Batteries also carry around all their "fuel" all the time (ex. the Lithium, which simply moves between the anode and the cathode via the separator). The matter inside petrol gets combusted and released into the atmosphere (bad!) so the paramotor loses mass and weight to the outside world during flight. A battery does not. Your (heavy) launching weight is the same as your in-flight weight as is your landing weight.

Obviously you shouldn't fly in the rain, but sometimes you're in the air and it might start to drizzle and whatnot. According to a post on a paragliding forum, what happens in rain is that: - The upper surface of the wing gets wet and becomes more draggy. - The air isn't able to flow as quickly or smoothly over the upper surface of the wing, which increases the air pressure on the upper surface (Bernoulli's Principle). - Because the air pressure increases on the upper surface, less lift is created. - On some wings, if the upper surface gets wet enough, the upper surface isn't able to generate enough lift and the wing goes into a parachutal stall, even at trim speed with hands up. - Since greater airspeed means more lift, the general advice is to put on speedbar and fly with trimmers out and hands up to try and counteract the drag on the upper surface. Try not to disturb the wing profile, and land as quickly and safely as possible. If a collapse occurs the stickiness of the water would mean re-inflation might not happen or will be delayed. - Water can also get rammed into the cells and accumulate inside the trailing edge since there are no points of escape for water. 1. Now, how this all translates into PPG flight is where I'm hazy; our wings generally fly faster, BUT at the same time they produce less lift and have worse glide ratios than freeflight wings, BUT thrust plus an increase in AoA increases the climb rate, so would it be fair to say that in rain, a PPG is safer because we have an artificial way of generating more lift? If we feel our wing going parachutal due to rain should we go hands up, put on speedbar, release the trimmers, and add a bit of throttle (not too much)? 2. How much rain is too much? The problem I see is placing quantitative values on all of this. For example, today the weather report said there would be 0.3mm rain / hour in one spot I wanted to fly in. This *feels* like it wouldn't be enough run to affect flight characteristics, because 0.3mm seems like a really tiny amount. At what level of rain would moisture dry almost instantly after hitting the fabric and getting blown dry by the wind? I would think though that *any* level of moisture would lead to more difficult re-inflations due to the fabric sticking together should a collapse occur.

I recently did a bit of a road trip in which I drove and flew around a bit of the north island of New Zealand. I've done similar solo drives before in NZ with my PG gear, but this was the first time with my PPG gear. One of my main frustrations after getting my PG license was that I just wasn't flying. Wind not strong enough, wind direction not good enough, no accessible launch sites, no accessible landing sites, logistically challenging to get back to the car, etc. The list just goes on. And on. And on. And on. And on. Did I mention it goes on? I figured that wth a PPG I would be able to fly at least twice as often. Holy crap. Let's try 10x+ as often. And in more places, always seeing different stuff. I remember driving up to Te Mata, a mountain range close to Hastings, and had the standard tourist view of the range at the scenic overlook. And wow, the PG launch looked sketchy as hell. The wind was blowing parallel to the ridge instead of on it. And the landing was a 20min drive back up to the launch so I would have to hitch a ride back up. Didn't feel very safe for PG (what's new?) Called in to the local PG club and they said the landing paddock isn't allowed for motor launching, but that didn't stop me. I drove down to a nearby sports field and took off and commuted the 10km distance via the air. Flew over Te Mata, got the you-would-have-to-pay-hundreds-of-dollars-to-charter-a-plane view, played around there, and then buzzed many kilometers over a river, over some flats, over some rolling hills, to the ocean, next to some cliffs, and flew back and landed at my cheap econocar and chucked everything in the boot. Flying Te Mata would have been impossible on PG, and that's not even counting the cross country roundtrip over flats, hills, a river, to the ocean, and to some cliffs. The next day I drove to a little town by the ocean (Wairoa) and was like "hey it's not raining and there's no wind - I'm going flying!" So I went to another sports field, took off, buzzed above the town, above the endless stretch of beach, along the river, over the nearby mountains, landed back at the car, and basically had another great time in the air. On the way back to Auckland there was rain in the mountains way in the far distance but nothing on the flats, so I took off again from a sports field, went for a fly around a bay, observed the nice looking rain in the mountains, felt a gust front coming, and landed back at the car. And during this entire time there was not a single flyable day at the ridge that all the PG people go to fly. So I got to fly more, see more different spots, and launch and land from the car. I mean, MAN. I was missing a LOT with just PG.

"it says recovery from a collapse on the S2 will require moving back to slow trim" Really? Holy crap, this would kill me. I have the Spyder and I can't imagine having to find and then grab and pull both trimmers in if I experience a major collapse in reflex mode. You'd have to release the tip steering handles, find the trimmers, pull them in, and then find the brakes that are flopping around, all while falling and probably spinning around.

Uh, well, everyone I know in New Zealand doesn't. For me it's just a question of chemistry. If the compression ratio my motor is capable of isn't going to predetonate, say, 92 octane, then I'm just going to save money and use that.

Would you happen to know which octane ratings should be used for which compression ratios? And I always thought that a predetonation would create a loud knock and just flat-out destroy the engine?

I talked to SkyMax Paramotors on Facebook and this is what they said: "I asked my colleagues, they say that it didn't happen in Russia yet. We talked to Vittorazi, they said that they fixed the problem by choosing different welding points. That is all I know unfortunately." How many years old are the motors that people have been having issues with? And is it the Plus, Factory, Silent, Classic?

So the compression ratio of these engines seems to be anywhere from 10:1 to 12:1. As far as I know, higher octane gasoline simply delays spontaneous detonation until higher compressions. That and it has some additives to clean fuel injectors and stuff. But is 98 octane really necessary? Can I fill it with the same octane that my car uses, 91? During the first few weeks of owning the motor I didn't know any better and ran probably 20 liters of 91 octane fuel through it with no problems. What about even lower octane like 87 or 85 that you can find in the US?

Guh, I'm wondering if I should just get a Top 80 and call it a day...

- When you say "normal" exhaust you mean the black one? Not the silver one and not the titanium one on the Factory, because those break? - I've read around and it seems like a cracked exhaust can lead to some serious issues, namely if it cracked explosively it can kill the entire prop while you're in the air. This seems like a MAJOR safety issue. - It seems like the Moster Factory has traded a lot of durability for light weight? Do people with the Moster Plus have any durability issues? - Has anyone ever needed to replace a major part on the Moster, like a cylinder or something? Someone mentioned that a Top 80 is cheap as chips to fix (new cylinder being 200 euro?). A Moster Factory, by virtue of it being so light and made in small quantities, would almost certainly cost 500+ euro for something like a cylinder.

What exactly do you mean by a cracked exhaust? Where does it crack? And does a crack lead to any serious problems, such as the engine not being able to run due to insufficient back pressure from the exhaust for... something? And is this crack something you can just fill with some kind of putty or sealant?

I've been doing a lot of research on engines lately and I've decided that the Moster 185 seems to be the only clutched engine with the best weight / power ratio (Nitro 200 doesn't have a clutch and isn't available for separate purchase). There are four levels of Moster 185: Classic - 13.4kg, no clutch, standard materials Silent - 13.6kg, no clutch, standard materials, quieter exhaust Plus - 14.5kg, clutch, standard materials, quieter exhaust Factory - 12.5kg, clutch, light materials, smaller exhaust - probably loudest? Apparently it's basically a completely different engine because they have to make the entire engine out of different materials to get to the light weight. It seems that the Plus is the most popular model because it's got everything except for the light weight and it's only about ~$150 USD more than the Classic. The Factory, on the other hand, is *$1,500* USD more than the Classic. Now, a 2kg weight saving is significant to me, especially because I plan to be traveling with this engine, so it could save on airline baggage fees and definitely if I need to ever *ship* the engine via FedEx or something. I'm looking at the SkyMax Expedition and I really want a clutched model: http://skymaxavia.ru/en/product/skymax-expedition-moster/ With the Moster 185 Factory it would only weigh 20kg ready to fly with harness and prop and everything. That's exciting. With the Moster 185 Plus it would weigh 22kg ready to fly. Still not too shabby but my current Backbone with ROS 125 is 25kg and it feels like a hog. My friend's 20kg Miniplane is just beautiful in its light weight. So has anyone flown the Moster 185 Plus vs Factory? Do you think it would be worth the extra money for the Factory? Are there are "gotchas" to this, like shorter life, lower durability, greater maintenance, etc?

Cool, thanks a lot for the info! Bugger, why can't manufacturers just be straight-up and clear about their item weights and such?! Considering the frame + harness weighs 12.4kg and the Polini Thor 130 is 15.4kg, the whole kit would be 27.8kg, NOT the "Weighs only 23Kg with Polini 130" as it says on their website. Even without the APCO harness the total weight would be 25.3kg, which is still NOT 23kg and in no shape to actually fly.

Gah.... and sorry to do this, but would you mind weighing the unit with and without harness? I've been contacting Claude but even though I asked him for the weight of the unit minus the motor he replied with "it's ~50lb with the SNAP 110," which doesn't help, and it doesn't specify if there's a harness or not. I think what Claude is really interested in is just selling tandem rides and making videos of his tandem rides. Completely different vibe compared to a company like Blackhawk or Parajet that seems to want to focus on the equipment. And even more different from companies like Backbone that seems to not focus on anything and has a website that looks like it was last updated in the 90s.

I don't really understand why weight-shift arms need to have an opposite bend for motors that are belt-driven. Correct me if I'm wrong: - motors, by themselves, spin counterclockwise. - a reduction drive that uses a gear reverses the direction of spin of the prop, so the prop spins clockwise - a reduction drive that uses a belt doesn't change the direction of spin of the prop, so the prop spins counterclockwise So looking from the back: - a prop that spins clockwise will induce a counterclockwise yaw in the cockpit (more pull on the left riser) - a prop that spins counterclockwise will induce a clockwise yaw in the cockpit (more pull on the right riser) The Miniplane uses a geared reduction drive for their Top 80 motor and the Minari motor uses a belted reduction drive. http://www.miniplane-usa.com/pages/models.htm It says: "Because the Minari is a belt driven engine, the ABM arms have the opposite bend to them, compared to the standard ABM to counteract torque produced by the motor." What "bend" are they referring to? The S-curve bend? Here's are the S-curve arms on the Top 80: Here are the arms on the Minari: Ummm... they look the same to me? What opposite bend are they talking about? Or is the "bend" they're talking about a bend towards the left or right, so that one riser gets more weight as the other?