Thrust or Sink  by John Wheeler

On Sunday 18th Aug, at 11 am, a mate and I went to our usual T/O field to fly our Paramotors, the day was sunny/warm and slightly over cast with a light S-SW wind peaking occasionally to a max. of 10mph, we planted the wind streamer and prepared our kit for flight.
This would be only my 8th flight to date so on this occasion I put 9 litre's of fuel into the tank instead of the usual 5 Litres; that I had always put in on my previous flying days, as I was hoping to fly a bit further than usual, I had checked my Tiny Tach on warm up and noticed it was peaking between 6.1 and 6.2, on previous flying days it had read 6.5 I had tried to adjust the carb to get more revs; but for some reason that was the max. I could get that day.
I was the first to take off and launched into what seemed like an ideal steady light wind. My field must be a good 200m long so there's usually plenty of room for T/O but on this day I found I was doing a lot of running before I got lift off, in fact! I was so tired from all the running that I jumped into the seat when only about a metre off the ground, (not a good idea) fortunately or (unfortunately) I had started to get some lifting air from a more westerly direction but which meant I was heading for the 1.5m high hedge to the right that borders the field, I realised that I was not going to make it over the fence so turned sharply to the left, and continued on down the field very low, there seemed to be no lift about at all , my engine was running at full throttle and I wasn't going up, three quarters of the way down the field I realised that if I didn't get some lift quickly I would be in serious trouble as at the end of the field is a canal with moored and navigating vocational barges, backed by a row of tree's then a railway line, then a road, then a lake, so I decided to traverse to the left and back a bit to try and find lift , I then found myself heading for the high voltage electricity cables that cut diagonally across the corner of the field, I quickly turned to the right and managed to find a small amount of lift as I did so, I carried on towards the canal thinking it would get better,(it didn't) as I went over the canal and the moored barges I noticed a woman standing on the deck of one with a look of horror on her face mouth agape as I headed towards the tree's behind her which I knew I wasn't going to clear, so I turned sharply to the right and was then suddenly heading for a big willow tree dangling over the tow path, my legs just brushed through the top branches as I flew parallel with the canal and over the tops of the row of moored barges, with still no lift to be found I turned sharp left again through an opening in the tree's and headed towards open fields to hopefully find some lift, with the engine on full power it was then that what seemed like a giant hand just pushed me straight down into the field below (splat!) forcing me to make a fast landing onto my knee's, and a face full of thistles, fortunately I just had time to hit the kill switch before the canopy collapsed on top of me, (one occasion when a centrifugal clutch could have proved disastrous as the prop would have carried on spinning after the engine had stopped) apart from a few scratches I was OK and glad I was down, all this had happened in the space of about ten minutes, it was weird, I'd never experienced anything like that before, even during my five plus years of hill flying, I pulled my kit together and headed off back to T/O.

When I got back my mate was looking a bit ashen faced and gloomy, he announced that just as he was taking off he was caught by a sudden gust from the side which drove him into the dirt, smashing his prop; and damaging his cage, we were not happy bunnies, stories were exchanged and we decided that there was some "weird air" about (again) and that in my case more thrust would have definitely helped, we decided to called it a day and headed off home for an early lunch, what started out as being a possible beautiful flyable day ended after only one hour with one broken prop; ,(fortunately no broken bones) a damaged cage and two "shaken but not deterred" (James Bond?) pilots.

The spec. on my machine quotes "247Kg of thrust", suitable for pilots weight of up to 100Kg", (my naked (not a pretty sight) weight is 90Kg) so it should have been enough, although I always had my doubts about whether it was powerful enough I never thought it would make a great deal of difference, just adding a couple of extra factors like the weight of the extra petrol and a sinky day, did, and proved to be a very frightening and near fatal experience, I am now in the process of upgrading my machine to give me more thrust.
I suppose the moral of the story is, IF IN DOUBT! DON'T! Fly a machine that is possibly under powered for you, as it seems that most of the time you can get away with it, but on those sinky days, or when your in a tight spot, and you need that little bit of extra thrust you could just get caught out.

J.W. Oxford. BHPA Mem: No. 4713. Email: Av8er@lineone.net

By Noel Whittall

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