See You On The Beach! - by Paul Haxby

Over the last 4 years, many of my powered cross-country flying adventures have been exciting solo flights, but I decided it was time to contact a few local paramotor pilots to so they could be involved in an epic day out. The flight I planned would start inland, cross parts of the East Riding of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, include a sight seeing tour of the River Humber, Humber Bridge, and finish at the beach on the coast, just a short walk from a suitable watering hole.

I had planned this flight some time ago and was keen to complete it before moving on to the next adventure. I contacted eight pilots who were all enthusiastic about flying with me, but time restrictions finally narrowed our squadron down to three. Robert Swift lived up to his name and appeared at my door with all his flying kit soon after I contacted him. We loaded all our flying gear into my car and set off for Beverley to meet the final member of our team, Pete Moore.

I was pleased by the speed at which we were all able to get together, fuel up our motors and set up in the field ready for take off. I was also confident that we would all get airborne together with out any hitch. I had trained them to use the lightweight RAD Paramotors and knew we would be quickly into the air, without the need for me to spend half the day helping others to launch. This would be important as our landing strip would be on the beach, and reaching goal before the incoming sea covered it meant we would need to keep to a fairly tight schedule.

Pre flight checks and plan confirmation out of the way I confidently called over to Rob and Pete “See you on the beach”, and within a few minutes we were circling in the air together, as planned, building up height over the large open fields on the south side of Beverley.

Our goal was twenty-six miles away, but we would need to cover at least thirty-eight miles to avoid flying over towns and villages, and some of the wider sections of the Humber River.
Both Rob and Pete were flying Swing Arcus, I used my faithful old FreeX Mission while RAD Paramotors provided us all with propulsion. I had no doubt that the reliability of the motors would ‘get us home’, the reliability of the British weather though was another thing all together, and as usual the only thing that could spoil our master plan.

Now at 1500ft everything was going well as we flew south, enjoying the views as the landscape whisked serenely below us. We were heading south with a light tailwind, giving us a good ground speed of about 35mph and in the distance the two towers of the Humber Bridge were now an obvious waypoint to head for. Their huge size on the horizon dominated the flat landscape before us, and looked surreal and dreamlike through the light haze.

Navigation with large bridges and rivers as visual waypoints is easy, but in addition to a map I always fly with a GPS because the ability to confirm ground speed is essential. By checking position and progress at regular points and knowing everything is ‘on course’ leaves the rest of the time free to enjoy the flight, which is my main reason for flying.

Paper and string
When we reached the north bank of the huge river the sky was becoming quite overcast, but with the ground still warm and providing plenty of big smooth thermals we quickly gained plenty of height to make sure that if any of us suffered an engine failure we could safely glide across the four mile expanse of water.
Half way across the river we dropped to 2500ft above the fast flowing water to relax and admire the amazing steel, wire and concrete structure of the Humber Bridge.
It is an engineering masterpiece made from 480.000 tonnes of concrete, 27,500 tonnes of steel and 11,000 tonnes of steel wire. But from our high vantage point, this main artery to the flow of over 100,000 vehicles each week, a link between two main counties, looked like it was constructed from paper and string.

After crossing the river the smoother coastal air allowed us to fly in a tight formation as we headed inland towards Immingham docks. The refinery there was producing an abundant supply of oily smelling thermals that left us holding our noses as we broke formation before heading off to the coast and our next waypoint of Grimsby docks.

Smoke moving across the distant horizon was an indicator of a strengthening onshore wind. Staying in the higher light wind section of the air, I encouraged the others to use speed bar, so we could push on and reach our landing area more quickly. We continued along the coast with the beach beneath us, safe in the knowledge that there were plenty of easy landing sites over the next few miles.

As we neared the end of our journey the cloud started to break, and we were rewarded with a view of huge ships powering their way against the tide towards the open waters of the North Sea leaving trails of churning water behind them.

The beach front of Cleethorpes town was now just a glide away, but we continued to use the power to reach the south beach section, which offered a very large landing area. Part of the beach below us was decorated with multi coloured power kites darting about in the breeze, so we moved on to a clearer spot. We hovered at 600ft to check the area then reduced throttle and finally cut the engines before a nice soft sandy touchdown.

We all landed successfully and moved off the beach watched by a growing number of spectators in a nearby car park who all wanted to ask questions about this ‘amazing type of aircraft’.

Spurred on by our successful day we hiked with all our kit (thank goodness for lightweight paramotors!) along the coast road where we enjoyed fish and chips and a drink on the seafront while talking excitedly about our adventure. The final icing on the cake was the retrieve supplied by Dean Prince, a fellow paramotor pilot. I’m sure we’ll get the opportunity to return the favour one day soon.
This was one of those memorable flying days we will talk about for years to come, and was made possible by using a paramotor. It was all the more rewarding to share it with others. I look forward to many more adventures and days like this one.

Paul Haxby

Flight Time : Not Known
Distance : Not Known
MOTOR: RAD
WING: Free X Mission