Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.
Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/339662
32 Vol.3 No.7 / July 2014 ULTRALIGHT WORLD JULY 2001 I LOVE INSTRUCTING AIR Force Reserve Of cers' Training Corps (ROTC) cadets. My student, Philippe will be in Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training in a few months fl ying T-37s, then T-38s and F-16s if he gets his way. I'm jealous. We are both still college students, but chances are that in a couple of years I'll still be instructing from the right seat, putt-putting my way up the freeway at 6,500 feet from Provo to Ogden, Utah, at 120 knots while my now student is off flying fighters! Awww! I need some stick time! How am I ever going to be able to afford my own plane? The paraglid- ers are down below me to the right on the south side of the Point of the Mountain (aka Traverse Mountain), cruising back and forth in the ridge lift. I think to myself, "Hmmm, that looks fun." JUNE 2003 I have been learning to fly paragliders with Chris ( www.SuperFlyInc.com ), and the big day has fi nally arrived when I will fl y a paramotor! You would think a pilot with hun- dreds of hours in small planes and several fl ights in paragliders wouldn't be so excited about soloing, but I'm stoked! We are out on a salt fl at by Great Salt Lake near the old Salt Palace, a dilapidated old turn-of-the-19th-century resort shaped like the Taj Mahal. It's late afternoon and there is a smooth, ocean-like breeze coming in of the Great Salt Lake, perfect conditions for launch- ing a powered paraglider. Prefl ight check complete and of I go! Just like every other well-planned and well-instructed solo, it's so easy it's almost anticlimactic. Perfect reverse infl ation, stabilize the wing overhead, turn and accelerate, keep running, and of into the air! I follow the fl ight plan to the tee, and we accomplish everything very rapidly; then it's time to just enjoy the fl ight. Chris even hits the transmit button on his handheld radio and holds it up to the car radio so I have a few tunes to fl y by. Up and down the beach I go: First high, then low and slow into the wind. It's so amazing to be sitting in a harness that allows 360 degrees of vision! The best description I have ever been able to come up with for someone who has never been paramotoring is the Disney- land ride called "Soarin' Over California"; just imagine that instead of being taken on a ride that you decide where to fl y! Yes, you can smell the fruit trees on a calm morning fl ight or kick your feet through the water at the end gun of a pivot ir- rigation sprinkler. My memory stores that fi rst paramotor solo in the same company as my fi rst solo in a Cessna 150 at age 17 in windy Cody, Wyoming. It is up there with the fi rst leg I fl ew as a newly Discover Paragliding More fun than you imagined! BY DON MCNIVEN E A A E X P _ J u l y 1 4 . i n d d 3 2 EAAEXP_July14.indd 32 7 / 1 / 1 4 9 : 5 7 A M 7/1/14 9:57 AM