Downwind X-Country - by Kevin Taylor

Keen to extend my flying opportunities I’ve been looking for ways to make use of my paramotor on those windier days when penetration is difficult. How many of you have launched into a breeze that seems gentle enough on the ground but when you clear 500ft your GPS is struggling to get above 4mph and even when you kick on the speed bar you look down to see a man walking his dog making faster progress than you? You can fly tight circuits of your local field but after a while you wonder what the neighbours are thinking. You can turn downwind but you know you’ll be swept away and have no means of getting back.

Or have you? With a bit of planning, it’s surprising how things open up. You might have friends or obliging relations who’ll pick you up. I’ve relied on that sort of kindness more than once… but there’s a limit to the number of retrieves you can ask for. My solution has been a good old-fashioned combination of foot-slogging and public transport. You get some exercise into the bargain – and who wants to spend all their time sitting still in a flying harness? (Well yes, OK, I know you do…).

Imagine this. You live in York but work in Scarborough. You notice that on Wednesday the forecast is showing a moderate south-westerly with clear skies. So on Tuesday you drive to work, leave the car overnight in a lay-by near the beach, and come home by bus or train. Wednesday morning you get up nice and early and launch your paramotor from the field near your house. You fly to Scarborough, blown by the south-westerly, and land on the beach right next to your car. It’s a fabulous morning and you’ve flown 40 miles along the scenic Derwent Valley in less than an hour while most people are still in bed. You pack the kit into your car and are in work by 9 o’clock.

Or this. It’s a Friday, beautiful flying conditions. You live in Oxford and there’s a smooth northerly setting up. You have the day off but there’s no-one around to finger for a retrieve. You could buzz around your local field but you fancy an adventure. Who would think that you could fly to the south coast on a single tank of petrol? You fill to the brim and launch pessimistically but once you gain some height you realise you’re averaging 45mph with the tailwind. It’s 85 miles to Lymington but hey, that’s less than 2 hours and you have 10 litres. It can be done. You do it. Towards the end you skirt Southampton airspace and switch off to soar the sea-breeze convergence before landing on the shore. You hide your kit away in some trees and walk a few miles to the railway station. A couple of train rides later you’re home. You crash out for a while and then take a long pleasant evening drive back to the coast to get your kit. It’s midnight by the time you return and you’re exhausted but you have that buzz. Fantastic flying. Something achieved. More than any other aircraft, a paramotor allows this flexibility, this opportunity for lone adventure.

That’s the theory anyway. My own latest downwind began early last Saturday in the field behind my home near King’s Lynn. My destination was the Paramotorsuk field at Alconbury. The charts showed a brisk north-easterly of which I found no evidence whatsoever on the ground. One of those mornings when you throw grass up and it lands back on your head. Nil-wind and then some. A breath of air arrives from the wrong direction and you realise it’s just some trees kicking off. A moment later it’s gone and there’s a similar lick from some trees in a different direction. Nothing doing.

In flight photo

I was wearing two vests and a shirt, three jumpers, track-suit trousers, jeans, a balaclava, a scarf, several pairs of socks, and Hangwag boots. Oh, and a thermal flying suit. My engine weighed 25kg plus 8kg of fuel. The ground was frozen so hard that when I tried to launch the lines got caught under solid clods of icy mud: one of those delightful hazards not mentioned by Mr Whittall in the guidebook. It was -3deg.C but I was sweating profusely. A while later, as the sun rose higher, the field thawed rapidly and the mud became sticky as treacle, clogging up my boots and soiling the canopy. Now when I tried to launch I adhered to the ground. Velcro man, I was going nowhere.

Eventually I got off, like you do if you persevere. As soon as I was airborne the tension and frustration of the launch evaporated and I got that glorious surge of exhilaration: the freedom of the sky. It must be the adrenaline combined with the relief of having got away, as well as a touch of hubris. The sheer impudence of this sport. For a while you feel like a king.

 2,000 ft above my navigation landmark: the roundabout on the A141 south of March
I turned downwind and headed out over the River Great Ouse, fixing my throttle to a slow steady ascent rate of about 0.5m/s. Gradually I gained height over the Middle Levels with Fenland opening out around me. The straight blue lines of the sixteenth-century drainage projects extended by nineteenth-century engineers stretched out in parallel along my direction of flight: the Old and New Bedford Rivers, the Middle Level Drain, the New Nene. Some of them converged at the nerve centre of fenland drainage at Denver. Every field as far as I could see was bordered by lodes forming regular patterns.

I watched my groundspeed creep up on the GPS to 25mph, 30mph, 35mph. Here was the following wind. Over Outwell and Upwell I saw myself outpacing the cars. And then, at 2,000ft just east of March, I broke through the morning inversion. There was a jolt and my groundspeed increased to 50mph within seconds. This is where the real wind was hiding.

From the ground the sky had looked blue, but now there seemed to be a veil of occluded air right beneath me forming an atmospheric barrier. Downward visibility decreased but up there in the sky everything was suddenly crystal clear. I continued the ascent to 3,400 ft and levelled out. It was cold but I was happy. I was going faster than any of the cars way below.

Usually I don’t fly much above 1,500 ft and the perspective up here was very different. Glancing to my right I was surprised to see a city sprawling out along the edge of the Fens. At first I mistook it for March, but then I realised I was looking all the way across to Peterborough 12 miles further west. It seemed to be almost beneath me.

Following the line I’d drawn on my chart I squeezed between the controlled airspace around March prison on one side and the Chatteris parachute drop zone on the other. Steve Munday is a great guy but I didn’t want him free-falling through my canopy. (This happens. I spoke to someone recently who threw his reserve at 400ft AGL after such an incident and survived). Ahead, I could see the curvature of the earth. The area around Alconbury and Huntingdon where we normally fly was condensed into a small square of my vision, and our favourite landmarks like the giant Monk’s Wood and the Life Sciences Research Centre were just small green blobs and grey dots.

A Cessna 152 from Conington was playing around at my level. You’re a light aircraft, I thought, but not as light as me. He saw me in good time and banked off.

Ramsey from 3,400ft
Above Ramsey, my radio crackled to life and Geoff Soden came on asking for my position. He was on the field with a flask of coffee. This is what friends are for. And one thing in life is certain: if it’s flyable at ParamotorsUK, Geoff will be there. I took a final picture across the old airbase which once bristled with nuclear warheads until it was sold off to a private

company – but which may yet become southern England’s fourth major airport if government planners have their way. Switching off the engine I glided across the runways and was soon above our field. By the height of Snowdon. All that way below I could see Geoff setting up next to his car.

3,300ft over Alconbury

It had taken me 45 minutes to fly 35 miles, touching groundspeeds of 52mph on a DHV1 wing. The glide down from FL35 took another 10 minutes. Gradually I circled into the more familiar perspective of roads and fields with the triangle formed by the convergence of the A1 and A14 closing in on me. Finally the field swallowed me up and I was on the ground drinking hot coffee.

Retrieve? No sir. I caught the train home. It took three hours. And thanks Geoff for that lift to Huntingdon station. What did I say about exercise? Maybe one day I’ll walk. But the main thing here is the freedom to fly. Go do it while you can.


Kevin Taylor
ktaylor@cambridge.org

MOTOR: Fresh Breeze (Electric start)
WING: ITV Proxima 28