Maiden flight of the Ass-Fan
Finally! Today I took my paramotor for a spin.
The Shasta / McCloud area consists mostly of National Forest. Instead of asking ‘is it ok to launch a powered paraglider with a propeller the spins at 700 km/hr in your national forest?’ I opted for ‘where is a nice flat area to fly from?’ The ranger did not know where such an area might be and I did not linger much longer to make her think twice about the speed of props.
Surprisingly smooth launch considering the no wind conditions and the trees lurking at the far end of the field. For a split second I thought I was going to write ’so there I was’, but I easily cleared the trees and proceeded to hang from my leg straps for a couple of laps around the tree fringed field. I did not dare to adjust to a more comfortable flying position until I was a bit higher…ouch.
I wanted to get a picture with Mt. Shasta in the background but I accidentally hit the engine kill switch while trying to take this one.
Luckily my PAP machine has a clever kick-start system which made for another first for me - In-flight restart. Soon after I killed the engine again, but this time to thermal. Gaining a couple of hundred feet while drifting downwind I was trying to stay over my field when I fell out of the thermal and sunk like a rock in the sink cycle. It was time to land anyway which was fast and hard in the wind shadow behind the trees.
