December 2012 – January 2013

International Paramotor Magazine

34

ExtrEmE FrontiErsFlying Australia's Morning GloryIn South Africa with Charley BoormanAbove the Whale Sharks in Baja California

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CONTENTS PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 3

DEC 2012 - Jan 2013 Contents34 COVER

Whale Shark, Baja California. Photo: Jeff HamannTHIS PAGE

Fieldwork. Photo: Adi Geisegger

LAUNCH - Editorial 4 - Spark 12 - IGNITION - News 16 - What’s On 22 - Naked Pilot 24 - Jeff Goin 26 - Dean Eldridge’s Toolbox 28 REVIEWS - Powerplay Scorpio 54 - Ruroc Helmet System - 58 LOGBOOK - 62

FeAtURes

06 Gallery: Autumn MistsSunny days and crisp, cold nights. The best of this season’s photos

30 Need for SpeedFrom go-slow to full-throttle, Sascha Burkhardt explains speed

36 Morning GloryA genuine world first. Flying spectacular wave bars in Queensland, Australia

42 Whale SharksJeff Hamann heads down to Mexico and comes back with a fishy tale

46 Charley Says‘It was only my second flight.’ Charley Boorman, TV adventurer, takes up flying

50 The Spirit of the RaidTim Odlin on why we should all be planning our next adventure

LAUNCH

4 PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 LAUNCH

Some adventures need you to stand back to truly appreciate them. So it is with the Morning Glory flights,

which we feature this issue. This famous but rare cloud formation has been flown by hang gliders, sailplanes and microlights over the last 30 years, but never by paraglider or paramotor pilots. That changed on 20 September, when Chris Atkinson, Matt Fox and Phil Russman took off and soared one of these magnificent wave clouds in northern Australia. They spent a week flying them and earned the respect of time-served Morning Glory glider pilots in Burketown. They have ours too – well done guys, a remarkable achievement.

I often get comments like, “That’s too extreme for me,” but adventure doesn’t have to happen in far off places or push the limits. You can find it much closer to home. In this issue Tim Odlin travels to the ‘wilds’ of France to take part in one such adventure, the annual Paramoteur Atlantic Raid. Flying through the French countryside the trip brought Tim new friends, new flying experiences, chance meetings and journeys into the unknown, a true adventure in

anyone’s book.The stories and photographs that arrive

at Paramotor Magazine always enthral us. We wanted to give these adventures more space to be told, so this issue we’ve cleaned up the look of the magazine so the articles get to shine, hopefully that bit brighter. We’re dedicated to bringing you a perfect mix each issue, and that means focusing on our core of great photography and good writing. So, welcome to the new look Paramotor Magazine. This is your magazine, and the magazine of the paramotoring community at large. We are only as good as the pilots who contribute, so if you have a story to tell or know a pilot that does, tell us – we would love to hear about it. If you have an opinion, good or bad, then let us know. This magazine has always been produced by pilots for pilots and we value everybody’s input.

We’ve had a great time putting it together – thanks to everyone for their contribution.

See you in the air!

Marcus KingEditor

Editor & Designer: Marcus KingAssistant editor: Ed EwingSubeditor: Charlie KingColumnists: Dean Eldridge, Edward Lichtner, Karen Skinner and Jeff GoinAdvertising: Verity SowdenSubscriptions: Verity Sowden & Celine RodriguezAccounts: Carol HarrisonTea-making: Hugh Miller

Cross Country International Ltd5 St George’s PlaceBrighton BN1 4GA, UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1273 256 090Fax: +44 (0) 1273 784 976Editorial: editor@paramotormag.comNews: news@paramotormag.comAdvertising: advertising@paramotormag.comCustomer Service: office@paramotormag.com

CONTRIBUTORSParamotor Magazine relies on contributions from pilots around the world. Please send us your news, story ideas and photographs to editor@paramotormag.com. We’d love to see them. Payment and credit is given where due.

SUPPORTING USParamotor Magazine is a reader-supported international publication and is available through subscription and shops. We publish six issues a year, in print and digital. Thanks for helping us make this happen. Visit www.paramotormag.com for details.

ONLINESearch ‘paramotormag’ to find us online

THE LAWParamotor Magazine (USPS No: 024-657) is published bi-monthly by Cross Country International and distributed in the USA by by SPP, 17B S Middlesex Ave, Monroe NJ 08831. Periodicals postage paid at New Brunswick, NJ. POSTMASTER: send address changes to Paramotor Magazine, 17B S Middlesex Ave, Monroe NJ 08831. Global copyright laws apply. The opinions in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Cross Country International.

PRINT AND PAPERParamotor Magazine is printed on paper sourced from sustainable forests managed to strict environmental, social and economic standards (ISO14001). We use ISO compliant vegetable-based soya inks which are better for the environment and make the paper easier to recycle. Printed by Williams Press, UK.

Straight-lining it in France. Photo: Francis Cormon

BASE CroSS Country 141 5

6 PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 GALLERY

GALLERY PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 7

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness... The poets had it right, especially that John Keats bloke that we were all meant to

read at school: Autumn is one of the best seasons, and not only because it brings out the creative side of 19th century wordsmiths. The trees are ablaze with colour, the heat of the summer is gone which means the air is calmer and less thermic, and the days still have some length to them. Crisp mornings and clear evenings are on the cards if you’re lucky, allowing a few memorable flights before the first winter gales sweep in. These are some of the best photos from our northern hemisphere season just passed.

AUTUMNMISTS

tBIG SKY TERRITORYAbove the clouds in Douglasville, Georgia, USA. Photo: Sam Nash

30 PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 SPEED

SPEED PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 31

Paramotor wings are some of the slowest aircraft around. This is not just a disadvantage. Hardly any other aircraft

allows a pilot to drag their feet through the grass during flight. Despite this, the higher end of their speed range is an important topic for us. In flight it makes a big difference whether the pilot is travelling with a groundspeed of 60km/h or 49km/h. Add a headwind and the flight can soon become a battle, not a joy.

ReFLexReflex wings were developed for exactly this reason – pilots were to be given a safer way to fly faster than with traditional paragliding wings. With increased speed, ie a lower angle of attack, traditional paraglider profiles have a tendency to be more unstable, adding to a further lowering of the angle of attack. This can lead to a frontal collapse. ‘Self stabilising’ reflexed trailing edge profiles have a tendency to stay loaded when the angle of attack decreases. So when hitting a gust head on, such a profile will balance itself and the wing will remain loaded. This really does prevent collapses and allows designers to permit a smaller minimal angle of attack at trim. It is impressive that such reflex wings can plough through the air

completely stable at 60km/h.The flip side: such profiles reduce performance

and are more difficult to launch. Therefore all manufacturers of reflex wings now set the trim system so that the wings will launch easily when the trimmers are set to the ‘launch position’ and the full advantages of the reflex profile only comes into play when the trimmers are off.

But speeds over 60 km/h have another disadvantage: if the wing does have a collapse during strong turbulence, and this can never be entirely discounted, then the kinetic energy is markedly higher – it increases at the rate of the square of the velocity. And it cannot be discounted that the collapsed part of the wing firmly folds itself under the rest of the wing and requires much more time to recover. Some reflex wing manufacturers claim this never happens to their wings. And in fact over the many years of their existence and despite intensive use in bumpy conditions, reflex wings have not generally added to the accident statistics.

However, many manufacturers, including Ozone, recommend reducing speed and having the trimmers on in really rough conditions. And more and more wings are coming onto the market which despite having some reflex characteristics and are

NeedThe

SPeedFOR

Speed, we all want it. Sascha Burkhardt investigates how important it is, how designers make your wing go faster, and how to use it.

SPEED THRILLSHands up and booting it on the beach. Photo: Sascha Burkhardt

36 PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 MORNING GLORY

MORNING GLORY PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 37

Morning gloryIn September in what was a spectacular world first Chris Atkinson, Matt Fox and Phil Russman flew the Morning Glory by powered paraglider. By Ed Ewing

FLYING FOR GLORYMatt , Chris and Phil (L-R in the photo)

ride the wave. Photos: Phil Russman / Litetouchfilms.com

42 PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 WHALE SHARKS

WHALE SHARKS PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 43

Flying With SharkSJeff Hamann went down to Baja California, Mexico, and came back with a really good fisherman’s tale: flying with whale sharks...

46 PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 PROFILE

“ I don’t know how you can fake it,” says Charley Boorman enthusiastically. “It’s just you, with the paraglider on your back.” He is

responding to a question about whether what we see on his shows is the real thing. TV adventurers are notorious for over egging the pudding, adding danger where there is none and dramatising the already dramatic.

“What I’ve always done is try to show what it’s really like to do this stuff,” he says. “I’ve done the Dakar Rally by motorbike and we filmed it. I broke my hand and had a pretty rough time to be honest and we filmed everything. When we did Ireland to Sydney by any form of transport – we had cars, trucks, boats, elephants – we had boats sinking in the middle of the ocean, we had 15 metre swell storms, I mean you name it.”

An actor by trade Charley is best known today as a TV adventurer and travel writer with a penchant for engines and motorbikes. He made his name going

round the world with his friend the actor Ewan McGregor in The Long Way Round, a trip which saw them motorbike from London to New York overland via Europe and Asia. It took “a good nine months” he has said.

His latest TV project is called Charley Boorman’s Extreme Frontiers and is for a TV channel in the UK. The next series is due to air in January 2013 and sees him in South Africa, travelling through the country with two BMW 1200 GS motorbikes and a Nissan Pathfinder 4-x-4. He spent much of June and July 2012 filming, stopping along the way to dive with Great White sharks, go diamond mining underwater and, where we come in, paramotor across a game park in KwaZulu Natal, a province in the east of South Africa.

“I’ve been dabbling with the idea of paramotoring for ages,” he says. “A long time ago, in 1991 or 1992, I did a paragliding course when it first became popular. That was down on

the South Downs in England. But I think technology was quite rough then, and

lots of people kept breaking their legs and arms and

I thought, hmm, I don’t fancy

Charley Boorman is a TV adventurer famous for his motorbike adventures. Now he’s turned to paramotoring. By Ed Ewing

Charley SayS

PROFILE PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 47

IN SOUTH AFRICAMotorbikes, Great White sharks,

diving for diamonds and paramotors... what could possible go wrong?

All photos: Charley Boorman collection

50 PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 RAID

tMAIN PHOTOMorning take-off.

Photo: Daniel Auduc

tTIM’s TEAML-R, Jacques, Tim, Daniel, Hubert, Yan-

nick, Ludo and Nico

ttIN FLIGHTFlying over the Vendée.

Photo: Scott Ritchie

RAID PARAMOTOR MAGAZINE 34 51

T heWake up call was at 5am, with the intention of squeezing every ounce out of the day (as

is the custom here) and getting airborne at first light. Whether it was the espresso after the meal, Yannick’s snoring or sheer apprehension and excitement I had not slept a wink.

It was barely light but the airfield glittered with head-torches searching for launch spots. Motors and radios were given final checks and morning voices could be heard planning the day’s voyage. Night edged its way towards day and the exodus began.

My motor was heavy with a full tank for the first time in its life. I was surrounded by scores of seemingly vastly more experienced pilots. I was the last member of my team to launch and there was barely a breath of wind. If ever there was a moment to execute a flawless first time launch then this was it. I centred myself on my wing, picked my point ahead and hit my run – and

ran and ran. That special feeling of leaving Earth that all paramotor pilots crave soon followed and moments later I was skimming over the hangar, ahead of me the magnificent sight of the early morning sky brimming with paramotors – destination Marennes.

And so ‘Le Raid 2012’ was finally underway. This year marked the tenth anniversary of this unique event but it was my baptism.

The RaidThe Raid is a cross country paramotor rally organised by Club Atlantic Paramoteur. Over 50 pilots from five different countries including France, Canada, USA, England and Belgium participated in this year’s event. All ages were here too. From Claude Chenel a sprightly 74-year-old, still foot launching, to Canadian Pilot Luc Trepannier’s 12-year-old daughter riding in the front seat of his trike.

Pilots formed into teams, some old and some new, including The Coyotes, The Pirates and Team Cassoulet. I joined my old friend and the man who taught me how to fly, Ludovic Migneaux, in the ‘Two Seater on Foot’ team, so called because two of our team were flying foot launch tandem PAP machines and, I assume, written in English as a nod to me, the lone Brit of the event.

Ludovic, the charismatic chef (leader) of Atlantic Paramoteur, told me that the Raid has changed significantly, evolving from a hardcore point-to-point race in its early years into much more of a social gathering, with a growing entourage of family and friends accompanying the flyers. As with any pursuit involving man and machine the banter between teams suggested that the spirit of competition was still bubbling away.

The

A first experience of XC flying, a taste of the good life and the chance to travel by paramotor. Tim Odlin on why we should all be going on trips like this

SpiritRaidof The

LetyourPassionFly

Project Bivouac

.comPhoto: Louis Garnier, www.louisgarnier.com