Robert & Boyd’s Excellent Adventure
Taking your flying craft with you affords this type of travel. Robert Kittilä tells little snippets about the trip with his friend, Boyd. One place they stayed for 3 days was the 1800-ft sand dunes pictured below. He says “Great Hostel very expensive. $4.75/night. Breakfast (huge) $1.85 Lunch, dinner $2.75. Loved it, great flying as you can see!
Picture of us with the hostel staff. After a day we were family. Guy 3rd from the right is their happy chef Aldo. He kept us fed and with a good supply of libations. Great food, people and town. Loved it!”
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Heavy Iron Meets Nylon
Details were sketchy on this, but it would seem that a group of lightweights (PPG and PPC’s) were allowed to fly from an airport not long after a pair of 727 charter flights arrived.
Lance Marczak of Kankakee, IL pondered how much runway it would take if he were pushing this aircraft with his motor. Our guess is that it would be just enough to get the door closed!
The 40 year old 727s, which are no longer used by U.S. Airlines, still ply the planet in charter service and for airlines elsewhere where noise is less of a concern. It’s nice to have something making more volume then us, just don’t get in their way.
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PPG as Watersport
Thanks to Marty for sharing their weekend. A group of Florida flyers set out for some fun and this is a glimpse of what it looked like.
1) We drove up to Daytona (Ponce Inlet) for an evening session on Disappearing Island. This is a very large Island at low tide but there’s no Island at high tide. None.
2) The boaters that surrounded the island enjoyed our flying there, as long as we didn’t linger to close.
3) Earlier in the day it becomes hard to find an open space to park your boat. Pilot’s here should be aware th
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More Gator Gotchas
Marty Hathaway shared some memorable flights with us in Florida. But be very, very careful where you fly: some of these sites would be most unpleasant with a recalcitrant motor. The site was on the St. Johns River along the Eastern coast. Photo 5/14/06 by Mike Britt.
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Over-Reacting in Austin, TX?
Paramotor pilot Jim King sent us an amusing account of how he became the focus of a false alarm involving two police cars, an ambulance and a fire truck Easter Sunday afternoon after he fell down while trying to launch his craft and
someone called 911.
“A gust of wind pulled me on my back and dragged me a short distance into a shallow ditch, but it must have looked a lot worse to some Good Samaritan,” said King, 63, who was not hurt. He has been a PPG pilot for nearly three years.
“I was setting up to try again when I heard all these sirens,” he said. “Then I saw a fire truck stop right by my pickup. A fire department lieutenant got out and approached me, and at the same time an ambulance came screaming across the grass from the opposite direction. Next two squad cars arrived with sirens and flashing lights.”
At that point the fire lieutenant, seeing that there was no emergency, began waving off other rescue officials. King apologized for the false alarm, but the officers did not appear upset. The fireman told King someone with a cell
phone had called 911 saying “an ultralight airplane had crashed” in this vacant field in far northwest Austin.
The ambulance left but four firemen and two policemen stayed, questioning King about PPG, and one policeman asked if it was legal.
“I told him it was, that we’re covered by specific federal rules, that I was familiar with them and the FAA sectional maps, that I was flying in Class E airspace at that location and I was allowed to fly as high as 700 feet above
ground,” King said.
Satisfied that no crimes were being committed, the six officials remained to watch another attempt. This time King pulled a reverse inflation without falling down and took off into winds that were definitely getting stronger. He made a couple of passes, taking pains to remain precisely above the 10-acre field, while his would-be rescuers watched from below. After they all left, King landed in increasingly turbulent air and fell down again. But this time he jumped up very quickly, moving around to show anyone watching he was all right.
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The Other Side Of the World
After the mutiny, the absconded vessel’s crew landed on this island and began a new life. While that is a fascinating story on it’s own right, what’s interesting to us is that the island’s first ultralighter is USPPA member, Route 66 Flyers member (Albuquerque, NM) and paramotor pilot, Derick DeGennaro.
He is doing video taping for a planned documentary on the island and has gone through enormous efforts to arrive at the island with his PPG and has recently become the first civilian to fly himself over the island. The trip will be covered in the June Ultraflight magazine. It is a fascinating adventure with some victories, some defeats and at least one close call. We’ll look forward to getting the rest of the story.
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Fast & Small
Shon from Paradrenalin near Phoenix may be a lightweight but, at 198 pounds with paramotor, he was still way overweight on a kiting-only Paratoys training wing. It was a short flight but sure covered a lot of distance. If you look carefully at the picture you can see that something just doesn’t look right! It was a short flight for another reason, this is incredibly dangerous! Photo by Gavin Harrison.
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Tinkering
One of our members, Ryan Trujillo from Rio Rancho, N.M. has been busy in his garage. The finishing touches of his tinkering has resulted in the craft seen in these pictures. It is a nice-looking 4-wheel PPG cart.
Lord willing we’ll get to see it at a fly-in sometime. As he says, it’s “all heavy duty, many bells.” No word on whistles.
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Dress For Success
Even in the south, cold air dips. Isaac Smith captured himself just before enjoying the wind chill on the shores of Lake Lanier, just north of Atlanta, Georgia.
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Ice Hockey
A group of Canadian flyers show their robustness by braving the snow, ice and cold for a winter romp in the Great White North. Frank Savignac tells us “who needs beaches, warm weather, We do! We’ll see ya in Florida Polk City!” Pilots flying this New Brunswick, Canada site were Roger Harris, Mark Dean and Frank. Thanks for sharing and we’ll all look forward to the March Florida warm-up.
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