POWERED PARAGLIDING STORIES.

You are going to go flying, right? Says my wife as we drive back to St. Catharines from Toronto. Anne knows that when I stare at every flag pole that we pass by I am itching to fly. I have missed great day to fly on Thursday so there was no way I am going to miss another one. It was overcast, warm and almost no wind - great flight conditions. So go to Peaks, dress up, hook up the trailer .....you know the whole procedure by now, don't you? Upon arrival at the field the wind sock was showing 3 - 5 km/h. Just enough wind for reverse inflation.

Windsock confirmed that the wind strength is perfect. Also, with no sun there should be no thermal activity what so ever and if all goes well I will fly in "smooth as butter" conditions.

Lay out the glider. Inflation and aaaahhhhhh flying again...

So of I go. The conditions are perfect so let's go for short XC flight.                                    Destination: North shore of lake Erie. Distance there and back: 44 km

Silos in Stevensville look like some kind of castle...

I really like the unique Sky Paraglider design where the bottom part of glider is white and the design "notch" sort of radiates through.

After last two flights on very cold days 1.7°C (35°F) feels like summer - I am not kidding.

There was couple of things that I wanted to test on this flight. I have adjusted the cruise control power setting by filing the aluminum piece that I have added to my throttle trigger and I wanted to know weather there will be any problems with the rescue parachute mounted. So the cruise now has less power - I climb slightly when cruise is on. Therefore mission completed. The rescue was no problem what so ever but I may move it a bit towards the front of the left comfort bar as my elbow touched it here and there. But this will be very easy to do. I could not appreciate the added safety feature such as flying with rescue parachute as this was one of the smoothest flights ever.

So here is the lake. Lets descend and play on along the beach.

This is probably the best thing about powered paragliding; you get to go high but you can also fly very low. I have traveled about 5 km west along the beach 5 - 10 ft of the ground. This was just amazing and as smooth as it can be. Here and there, there would be people walking along so I would either add power to fly over them or would veer off to the left. I could tell they were thinking " my god this guy is flying like a bird"

Time to go back, my fingers are getting little cold and the visibility is decreasing.

As I had wind to my back it only took about 15 min to cover the 22 km back to my field. Land, pack the glider and paramotor, pee and start the car. All together 10 min - amazing.

This is the distance I have covered - 49 km.

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