Video: Powered Hang Gliding - The Perfect Way To Fly Cheap?

 
 My mind is being twisted really hard this morning... I found the video above and of course enjoyed it immensely with its great overhead view of flying a hang glider at higher altitudes over the broken clouds of Greece. But it clearly must have been powered, so I looked a little deeper and learned of the power pack that some of these guys use that's mounted just behind your feet. You can see how all this works in the other video below from youtuber kmaro1973 - it's an unusual arrangement to be sure, but it seems to work very well.

 What I find most interesting about all this is that there seems to be several advantages of this style of flying machine over other lightweight and relatively inexpensive concepts like traditional ultralights and paramotors. These powered hang gliders have very low drag due to very minimal structure (not requiring much in the way of draggy support cables) and a sleek dual surface wing along with no normal undercarriage and no pilot sitting in an upright position making all kinds of drag. The horsepower required can be very low (15hp) which helps keep the cost down both initially and for fuel. Compared to the paramotor you have less drag with the prone pilot position and from not having a massive collection of suspension lines being drug thru the air. Best of all, the powered hang glider gives you a real flying-like-a-bird flight experience!

 For someone like me who lives in the flatlands and has a very minimal budget for flying (but a desire for an awesome flying experience) the powered hang glider appears to be a fascinating answer. It folds down to transport on top of your car, stores in a small space and looks amazingly fun to fly. It would even encourage a guy to lose a few pounds and stay in shape for the foot launching! My eyes are just opening to this form of flying, so I'll do more research on the state of the art and report back later... but for now I hope you enjoy these great videos.

Screenshot from the video below showing the propeller behind the prone pilot's feet

Video: 'Woopy Jump' Inflatable (Sorta Arup) Flying Ski Wing!

 
 (best viewed with speakers off!)

 The slick little glider in this video is called a Woopy-Jump. A while back I saw a video for the enlarged and motorized version of this inflatable flying wing concept called the Woopy-Fly, and while I found it interesting, it just didn't quite trip my trigger. But now I learn of this ultra compact glider version (which is where the idea started to begin with) and I gotta say it's actually one of the coolest flying machines I've ever seen. And it's not just about how the thing flies, it's also in the looks... it reminds me a lot in basic planform of the 1930's era Arup, an almost forgotten aircraft designed by a podiatrist in South Bend Indiana, just up the road from where I live. I've included a few pix at the end of the post of the Arup, and I'll have a dedicated post on it in the future.

 
Video screenshot showing the very small Woopy-Jump glider wing area

 
 Back to the Woopy-Jump. It's been around for a few years now having been designed by Swiss inventor Laurent de Kalbermatten and is named for what people tend to say (woopie!) when they fly it - and the Jump comes from it being more for short flights or 'jumps'. The wing is fabric with very little internal structure. It is then inflated to give a very nice airfoil shape. That shape is maintained by two small battery powered blowers and it's claimed that it can sustain a small hole without deflating. It appears from the info on the website that the wing only weighs 22 pounds! That's part of the reason the wing area can be so small; about 110 square feet with about a 17 foot span.

 When you also consider that this is a very low drag design with no wires or struts, and the fact that it's really meant to be flying with a fairly high rate of sink (meaning almost always down the slope of a ski hill), then you get even more of an idea as to how it can fly with such a small wing. Two other aspects of the design make a lot of sense to me. The small wing keeps the wing loading high which has to help when flying when the air is turbulent. I don't think flying down a ski hill where the air can be a bit dicey in a very low wing loading glider would be a very good idea at all! And the other interesting concept is the fact that the landing gear is a pair of skis. That means instead of running (and easily falling), the skilled skier can leave the ground at 25 to 30 mph with relative ease.

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The Electric, Amphibious Lazair... Pilot Report By Elliot Seguin

Elliot Seguin flying Dale Kramer's amazing electric and amphibious Lazair ultralight

(11 pix)

Elliot Seguin works at Scaled Composites, has experience racing at Reno with his Wasabi Air Racing Cassutt, and he loves to fly... this extensive pilot report is posted here on Airpigz with his permisssion. The electric Lazair is a recent update to the design by Dale Kramer, the original designer of this very popular late 70's ultralight aircraft.

For more details on the electric Lazair project, check out this 
extensive forum thread by Dale Kramer (KiloOne) at RCgroups.com

PILOT REPORT:

 We had an amazing opportunity recently to fly arguably the most operational electric airplane out there. Dale Kramer is a master builder of all kinds of interesting projects. His shop was extensive and impressive.  He designed the Lazair in the 70’s during the boom in the ultra-light industry.  Over the next several years the factory he set up sold 1200 of the airplane to enthusiasts from all over the world. Dale became interested in other types of flying (heavy lift airships, competition soaring) and separated himself from the Lazair.

 But recently the electric aircraft boom has inspired Dale to dust off his Lazair. The resulting set of experiments resulted in a new chapter for the design and perhaps for general aviation. Dale’s final iteration included hanging two Joby electric motors from the Lazair’s nacelles replacing the two JPX two strokes he had flown behind for years.  When he put this new configuration on floats he had the first electric seaplane, a terribly practical electric airplane, and one heck of a beach toy.

 I called Dale after seeing the airplane at Oshkosh. I was hoping to learn more about the switch to electric and where he thought electrics could go. When he responded with an invitation to visit his home in western NY and “find out for myself” it was just a matter of buying the tickets. In the three days we spent with Dale and Carmen on Keuka Lake the Electric Lazair was flown almost twelve hours total by six different pilots in many different atmospheric and water conditions. We walked away with a much better understanding of this new way to propel aircraft and with big smiles on our faces.

 Could electric power plants change full size aviation the way they did r/c? The shift to electric from glow power in RC aircraft has drastically improved accessibility, ease of maintenance, and in general relieved the boundaries of entry to that sport. Before electrics even the most experienced RC pilot might spend ten minutes getting his glow engine to start on his model, and he would most certainly smell like glow fuel when he was done.  With modern electric models an operator no longer has to spend all that time and energy dealing with the powerplant. I wondered if that would be the case with electric man carrying airplanes.

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Memory Lane: 15HP Weight-Shift Quicksilver - 1980's style! (+ Video)

Me in 1982 and the weight-shift Quicksilver ultralight that was fun, fun, fun to fly!

 The 80's were a really good decade for me and flying. I was just 19 when 1980 came along, and I had been having fun in the 90 hp Clipped Wing Cub we had. Then the Cub was traded for the homebuilt Breezy that we picked up in Tennessee and brought back to Indiana in November of 81. (it's the Breezy I flew to OSH in 82, the rather adventurous subject of podcast #4)

 1981 and 82 also gave me the high smiles-per-gallon opportunity to fly several different ultralights on a regular basis... and the weight-shift Eipper Quicksilver powered by a little single cylinder 15 hp Yamaha go-kart engine was my fave by far. It was underpowered, slow, and didn't give you much of a feeling of being in control in winds over 12 mph, but when the winds were light to calm, it was the most awesome way to fly! Stall speed in my skinny days was about 18 mph and you could slow cruise around the neighborhood at 22 mph and just enjoy the ride. That's me at age 21 in the pic above with the red Dee Cee painter's pants and 1979 Oshkosh t-shirt. I'm hardcore all the way : )

 The weight-shift aspect of the Quicksilver was one of the things I liked best about it. Most people know about the later Quicksilver MX models that had either rudder and elevator control with a fixed pilot's seat, or the added 3-axis benefit of spoilers or ailerons, but the weight-shift versions are where it all began. And these weight-shift ultralights did have a rudder that was connected to the harness you sat in. That way, when you moved left and right, you had both your weight and the rudder working to make the turns.  I think it worked really well overall.

 There's no doubt the weight-shift wasn't for everyone... in fact, 'real airplane' pilots seemed to have the most difficulty with the process. Some of it came from the fact that this was just really different than anything they had been used to. But the other factor that was pretty unusual was that, technically, you pushed forward on the downtubes to go up, and you pulled back on them to go down. This was because you were using the downtubes to move your body fore and aft, and it just happened that the direction you moved the downtube in relation to your body was opposite of how we move a stick in a traditional 3-axis airplane. In actual practice tho, I found it was more of an issue to talk about than one that really created any real problem. All you had to do was think about where you wanted your body to be - move forward to go down and back to go up... keep your mind off what your arms are doing. I think it worked great, and this was some of the best flying I've ever had the chance to do!

 The two videos below aren't of me but they give you a good idea of what it was like to fly these little weight-shift ultralights. The first one shows the 15 hp engine (single cylinder mounted above the wing), and the second is probably a 30 hp 2-cylinder Cuyuna, and it's mounted below the wing. Maybe some day I'll find an old Quicksilver that needs some love and rebuild me an antique ultralight!

 The mid and late 80's also gave me the chance to build up a couple hundred hours flying skydivers in a beautiful 1957 Cessna 182... to get some time in a Polish Wilga (that I flew to OSH in 88)... and I also completed a restoration of a Citabria and got to play with that for a while. Yep, the 80's were really good to me : )