Terrible weather for Powered Parachutes

We are having terrible weather lately for any kind of flying. We have needed the rain for quite a while now so I can't complain to bad. At least my yard might actually look green again for a while. These are shots of some more Brookneal training and the one on the left is our instructor Jeff Jenson watching Kiwi perform his pre-flight.

The machine I fly is tore apart right now or at least the gear box is. We were changing the oil in all our machines not to long ago and found a washer in the bottom, which could not be good. I am pretty much just a pilot and trying to learn more about the mechanical part of the machine. Joe does all the work to the machines and w/out him I would never leave the ground. I believe he enjoys working on the machine as much as flying them. Joe tore the gear box down and found a thrust washer missing but no damage to the gears which was a relief. So with the machine out of commission for flying right now and until all the parts come in to replace it this bad weather is not as hard on me.

More shots of Ky Fly-in

Here are a couple more shots I got while in Ky and I thought they were pretty good. You can see Joe and Frank taking it easy as we were watching the flight competition. I believe if we go next year Frank and I are going to enter and see how well we do against the other pilots. While I was at the Fly-in I ran into a guy that sold and installed brakes for your PPC. He does a great job and is very competitive with his prices, actually cheaper than I have seen any where including magazines and on the web. If you are looking for a brake I highly recommend checking out his web site, Believeaviation.com and his name is Craig Steffen. I had him install a brake on my machine and Chris had one put on his as well. I am very satisfied w/ my new brake, but the best thing is having that extra comfort knowing I can stop anywhere I land now.

Brookneal Training

Here are a couple shots I got the yesterday at Brookneal where we do our training w/ our instructor Jeff Jenson. Yesterday John(kiwi) went up hoping to get his letter to fly but was denied by Jeff yet the other pilot was signed off w/ his letter. He did a great job while he was there, but when you are flying for Jeff it's easy to be a little nervous to perform for him and trust me I know this first hand. I believe if I was the instructor I would have signed both off w/ helpful pointers on what they need to be working on by the time they come back for their check ride or next letter signing, but than again I am not their instructor. I stayed on the ground and took photos and video of Kiwi flying and learned quite a bit from Jeff just listening to him train. I watched both pilots do their T & Gs and dead stick landings and saw very little difference in their flying. Jeff told me he was looking for a more consistant flying, but that seems like something you get w/ experience and that is hard to do w/ out having a letter so you can fly legal. The flip side of that is Jeff having to stick his neck out and put you under his wing saying you are ready to fly on your own therefore signing you off. I would like to get some peoples opinions on training and what they think is the best way and also the safest way for someone to fly these machines.

Kentucky Fly-in 06

Here are some pictures from our trip to the Kentucky Fly-in this past weekend. We had a great time even though the weather did not want to cooperate. Instead of a lot of flying in the sky, their was a lot of time for everyone's stories that involved the sky from the ground. We met a lot of people on our trip and learned a lot of new things. Chris and I flew for about 45 minutes on Saturday Morning and it was quite an experience being in the air w/ approx. 25 other machines. Only problem I had was not being prepared for the trip since the temperature dropped while we were there. I only packed t-shirts and shorts so I had to make a stop by the local Wal-Mart to get some jeans. The Ragwing Flyers were the ones that put the Fly-in on and they did a nice job so we are all hoping to make it again next year and maybe than we will compete in the competitions they had. I have a ton of photos and I plan to go through them and pick out some more for a later post.

Heading to Ky for Buckeye Fly-in

We are heading up to Ky this weekend for the Buckeye Powered Parachute Fly-in. Their will be five of us and none of us really have any idea of what to expect. Only thing we are sure of is we will have fun whether we fly or not. We hope to learn some neat stuff and meet a lot of new friends. I didn't have any new photos of us flying due to windy conditions latley so I decided to put a shot of the boss of the house. This is our house horse, Ginger. She is always at the field w/ us when were flying and tries to slip into the back seat to go up for a flight. Also have some great news to share about the wife and I.We are expecting our first baby in August and we found out it is going to be a boy, so everyone knows what that means, another Buckeye pilot in training...ha