Powered Paragliding. A most Personal form of Flight

Shell Creek #910

Feeling good about this morning. The wind was 5 out of the East. I launched across the runway and had no trouble leaving the ground before transiting SWFlorida Skydiving. There was some nasty air for the first 100 feet that I blew through quickly. The take off felt good after a string of bad and dicey launches. There was a steady 15 mph between 100 feet and 2200 feet where there was a layer of mild turbulence. I worked my way slowly to Track and Trails where I turned back and returned to the field with 50 mph ground speed. The landing was the similar, there was turbulence at 100 feet, the winds had picked up to 10 gusting to 15. The landing was almost vertical.

Shell Creek #909

No big Drama

Sketchy take off. I have to practice slowing down after the wing is overhead and concentrate on getting it stable. Nice 1:00 Flight. Winds were 10 mph from the East.

Lithia Mini Fly In #908

This was a fun day. I met up with Mike Lange and Mike Otten at 4:45. We followed a marginally quicker but significantly more convoluted route to Lithia Florida where London Ivy had obtained permission for us to fly a 900 acre sod farm. Miles and miles of flat.

Flight time 1:04
max.alt. 1300 msl
Steady breeze starting at 6 and building to 10 by 10:00am
I hung at the ceiling of 1200 and explored the area. there were several large sand quarries. The highlight was the state trooper gun range and fleet park where they had a large commercial airliner as lawn sculpture. Go Figure?

907 SHELL CREEK

No Drama

1:08 Flight time

1755 max altitude

36 miles covered

Notes: The trim cams are slipping unless I pull the cam arm and “set” the trims. After landing I noticed that the left side was half out.

Falcon is grounded due to a broken weld at the top of the inner cage ring. Time to visit Mike Lange and perhaps talk to Terry about building a new airframe. The whipping knot held it together but I noticed that the broken welds were not far away from cutting the lines. I doubt it would have held for very long. It’s a good looking knot but not good for this purpose. Perhaps, if I overlayed it with a second whip …..

Once again the wing overshot and crashed in front of the trike. Nice flight …. Wide ranging

906 Shell Creek Airpark

No Drama. I’m comfortable with the Eden again. 50 minutes at and around 500 ft. Light air.

I landed by the truck and nose dived the wing into the swale. For some crazy reason I rolled the wing inside out and bagged it. It did keep the wing dryer but opened the possibility of a terrible line tangle. Later back at the house it bugged me until i repacked it.

I’ve got a crack opening at the top of the first ring so I bound it with line using a whipping knot. It will be interesting to see how it fares when the weld lets go.

905 Getting reacquainted with the Eden III

It’s all good but… I miss my APCO.
The Eden was inspected by Paratour. I’m good for another 100 hours. It doesn’t crinkle anymore and it’s developed a bad habit of gaining weight from the morning dew. Elisabeth has shortened the brakes and sometime / somewhere, I shortened the pulleys, making it impossible to park the toggles while in flight. I did make the mistake of missing a wrap with the brakes but it was a non event.

#904 Palm Bay

This was a good one. I drove to Palm Bay where I was leaving the APCO with Joe Morris to give to Elisabeth when she gets back. We met at Valkire Airport (including Rex who was bringing my Powerplay 250. I cracked off a quick one with the Eden. It was 8:30 and the air was starting to percolate. The Eden was fine.

Blew Launch and Blended the Wing

I waited a week to write this one up because I’ve been trying to figure out what was the cause of a very expensive incident. During the last few launches I’ve been having trouble with the lines getting bit during inflation. Was it the keepers kicking out lines or perhaps it was the APCO Lift EZ doing some crazy dance where the outside lines were slack and getting grabbed while the center of the glider was going through the prop wash? I’m still not sure what the problem is but I’ve decided it didn’t have anything to do with this incident.

Here is what happened. The wing came up crooked and I pumped the brake to get it back on track, at the same time I was reducing thrust. I expected the wing to overshoot but instead it did what APCO said it would, it went overhead and stopped. Then, because I was still decelerating, it stalled and fell into the paramotor. I added power too late to get ahead of the wing and killed it only after the wing was being sucked into the hub. Apparently it’s a fine line between having too much power and not enough when you are trying to stabilize an oscillating wing. Too much and you get rolled, not enough and the wing stalls. Its also very possible it that there was a tail wind which would have stalled the wing almost as soon as I started to slow down.
One of the cons to flying at Shell Creek is that the vegetation on either side of the runway can make a wind shadow. I had motored out to the LZ leaving my wind sock 100 yards away attached to the truck where it showed very light and variable air. There could well have been a nice northern breeze just over my head and I didn’t catch it. The airflow at the Parking area has it’s own issues, between buildings etc.
No matter how I analyze it ….pilot error.

There are no pictures because I wasn’t of a mind to document a perfect wing slashed to ribbons.

No Fly Day

This is the second line strike in a month. I think it’s happening because the line keepers on the cage are holding the lines tightly together. When the A’s are immediately tensioned they might be throwing other lines out of the keeper while they are still slack. The outside may be very slack. The chevron layout exacerbates this and one part of the cure may be to layout the wing in a slight curve. Another thing I’m going to try is to inlay a zip tie inside the keeper so that the lines are laying in the crook instead of being gripped against the cage.

During inflation I heard or perhaps sensed the line strike. I didn’t immediately abort and instead kept accelerating. I looked at the lines and remarkably saw the damaged one. It was intact but the sheath was severed. That’s when I aborted. On inspection I could have continued the flight. The damaged line was the far outside Main D which does not carry a heavy load and is backed up by the brake lines. However, I could not have know at the time so it was the right thing to do.

903 Almost a No Fly Day … Shell Creek Airpark

Today was the second day of Tony’s instruction. Yesterday we did some ground school at the house and messed with the wing a bit. I replaced a line and showed him how to pack and lay out the wing.

This morning we watched a great sunrise while I set up for launch.

The first attempt was aborted when I felt/heard a prop strike a line. The second was a sckitchy launch with some of the lines getting under the keepers. Once up, I scanned the lines to check the previous day’s work and noticed that one of the mallions had the lines reversed and a brake line was under the main D that we replaced yesterday. This wing has a tendency to break o-rings. It may be the keeper and it my be that they are just old o-rings but it’s something to watch out for.

The third attempt was another abort due to prop strikes. I couldn’t find any damage but will make a thorough inspection when I fix the twisted lines this afternoon. I’m going to completely rebuild the keepers with heavy gauge coated wire and some foil tape to reduce friction where the lines rub against the outer ring.