Powered Paragliding Ontario - Paramotoring PPG course - May 8 and 10/03                   

May 8, 2003.       Flying with Chris and ground handling with Sunny: 

It was a beautiful spring afternoon, Chris called and said. "Lets hook up for some flying today." It has been a while since I had a nice flight so I was all over that. We decided to meet at 2 pm at the field but since I did not have anything planned for the afternoon I hooked up the trailer just after noon and headed out. The conditions at the field were perfect. 5 knots wind and 80 % overcast. Perfect amount of wind for reverse inflation which is much easier then the slave your ass, sweat your brains out forward launch. 

Flawless inflation and wroom wrooom  wroooooooooooooooooom I was flying again.... The sky was still overcast so there was very little thermal activity. I have practiced  50 % glider collapses and recoveries and snapped few pictures here and there.  

I was keeping my eye on the field since I knew that Chris was coming. And here he was so I have landed to have a chat and help him to set up. Well it did not take long and Chris was ready to go. 

Worm  up the engine, inflate, turn, full power and go!!!

I have jumped in the air as well planning to take pictures of me and Chris in the air together but after I took these two pictures I have accidentally opened the battery cover and watched my batteries to disappear. I am glad they did not find their way down via the prop. So no pics. Bummer. We flew about 5 km north towards the Niagara Falls and started to look for thermals. The sun was out now so we knew they have to be somewhere. After about 20 min of trying to center small thermal bubbles I thought there is no thermal worth of mentioning until I saw a hawk over large forested area circling quickly gaining altitude.  I did not hesitate a second and flew over the join the bird. So there it is - my variometer goes beeeeeeeeeep    beeeeeeep    beeeeep    beeep   beep  beep beep beep. Wooooow, what a strong thermal - I turn my engine off and start to circle looking for core, the strongest part of this rising column of air. I look around and besides me and the hawk there also is a farmer holding a pitchfork, someone with wheelbarrow, completely drank lady, bunch of hey and a small cat....that is how strong this thermal is.... ;-) We all circle counter clockwise ascending at approximately 600 ft per minute. Sweet. I have spent about 20 min in the same area which was generating constant lift. It was so nice to fly "motor off" just listening to the whistling of wind and sound of my vario telling me where the rising air is...

All right, back to work. I have another student - a dentist from India - Sunny that was supposed to show up around 3:30 pm so again I was keeping my eyes on the field. OK, I see a car driving to the middle of your field - that must be Sunny. One brake down to below my seat and in 30 seconds I descend from 2000 ft AGL to about 100 ft. I do one low pass to check on flare to see the direction of the wind and land. Chris is right behind me and he lands as well being pretty pumped about his nice flight and very smooth landing.

I meet Sunny and his wife Komal and take off again to do the usual demo. Since we have the perfect weather for ground handling we get right to it.

We work for 2 hours until  wind changes to very weak and variable. Perfect for flight not so good for training so we quit and decide to meet another time.

Since the weather is perfect I decide to fly over the Niagara Falls and take some pictures.

Off I go keeping my power up since One has to be over 3000 ft AGL to be able to fly over the Falls without notifying Niagara 1 Radio that keeps track of all the helicopters and other planes around the Falls

2800 ft AGL - still climbing.

So here I am - right by the falls. There is a lot of people who dream to see something like this...

   The view is spectacular....

This was supposed to be advertising picture for Walkerjet SIMON XC Plus with Niagara Falls in the background. Well it did not quite work out as the cage is covering one of the world wonders...too bad...

May 10, 2003.       Ground school and ground handling with Kelbe family: 

8 am Peaks. I meet Rick, Melissa, Davie and Bobby. Very nice people.  Pleasure to work with. We have accomplished all that needed to be done as far as theory goes, looked over the equipment and completed the simulator part of ground school. Davie and Bobby are twins so I thought here I go I will not be able to remember who is who. Well it was not so bad - Bobby's white T-shirt was a big help until he put on gray sweat shirt identical to his brother's...

So I said. "This piece of cloth is your new glider and you better to be nice to it otherwise it will collapse on you and you will die.... So they all decide to suck up to it by kissing the trailing edge ???!!! Well OK that is little weird but kissing trailing edge??? That is pretty much the equivalent of gliders behind guys uchhhh. I could possibly kiss the leading edge but not the trailing edge NO NO NO!

OK Just kidding.... I have brought up the fact that the cloth is absolutely air tight and an easy way to test it is to try to suck air through it. This is a simple way to test the porosity of used or actually any glider. So here is the Kelbe family sucking/testing.... ;-)

Here is the simulator practice. Everybody was able to practice getting in and out of the seat, turning by use of brakes, using the throttle. 

Then it was off to the field for ground handling. We started with variable winds of 3 - 4 knots so not so ideal for training but we managed to learn the Andre's "magic" way how to untangle the lines, how to put a harness on, how to hook up paraglider. We have then proceeded to reverse and forward inflations. After two hours wind has picked up and reverse inflations were way to go. Bobby and Davie both just 14.5 years old has actually picked things up bit quicker then the parents Rick and Melissa and near the end there were two glider floating effortlessly in the air for couple of minutes straight. Guess who's?  Well it was Bobby and Davie - WAY TO GO KIDS! Anyway, we have accomplished tons of work and since the Kelbe family was up since 4 am we finished for the day. 

There were two other people that came. Matt who took off for 50 min and 35 min flight and finally perfected his landings and Jim who showed up late but managed to jump in the air for a nice XC 40 min flight. The nice part about this was the fact that he had his new Comtronics helmet and we were able to communicate through the whole flight even though he was completely out of sight.

Good work and thanks you Rick, Melissa, Davie, Bobby, Jim and Matt.

           Flight to Niagara Falls and back

Too bad that I have screwed up when I was downloading pictures from my digital camera to my computer. I have changed the size and resolution by mistake so all the pics from May 8 are small which is too bad since those would be amazing pics of the Falls... 

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