In October last year – 2024 – I was browsing through YouTube videos, looking for some documentation of the disaster wreaked by Hurricane Helene in Augusta and Asheville. I came across a video by Mark Hunicutt entitled “Flying over Chimney Rock – Hurricane Helene Aftermath October 11th” and the thumbnail showed an image of a guy under a paraglider, but he had a motor on his back!

Here’s the video if you want to watch it:
https://youtu.be/xb34EyMLZwM?si=OPTcGbn1BWxNWpdE
I watched it, and I was intrigued by his “flying machine.”

I learned that the machine is called a paramotor, and I began to dig around and try to find out all I could about this machine.

As a USAF pilot, I have quite literally thousands of hours flying high and fast, and as a civilian commercial pilot for many years, I flew at lower altitudes and slower speeds, but by far my favorite kind of flying is very low and very slow.

And after tons of research and watching hundreds of videos, I decided that even more than 30 years after my latest flight as a pilot, this paramotor flying was something I thought I might really like to do.

So I began researching where could I learn to do this, and what was required.

Here’s what I found.

First, flying paramotors is truly the safest form of flying.  If you don’t do something stupid, the only thing that can go wrong is your engine quits, and you’re already in a paraglider, which is basically a modified parachute with good steering and about an 8 or9-to-1 glide ratio. This means if you are a thousand feet off the ground (which is low for most any other aircraft), you will have more than a MILE to pick out a place where you can land.

Second, it is the least expensive way to get into the sky. This doesn’t meat it’s cheap. It’s not. But it is very comparable to any other motor sport you can get involved in, such things as jet skis, motorcycles, speedboats, fishing boats, and that sort of thing.  To get into paramotoring, you should expect to spend between $10,00 and $20,000, depending on how lavish you want to get. With regular airplanes, you can expect significant maintenance and storage costs, and high operating expenses. A paramotor can fit in your garage with room for your car, and will consume about a gallon of gas per hour of flying.

Finally, it is the freest kind of flying you can do. Paramotors are considered ultralight aircraft, regulated under the Federal Aviation Regulations part 103, which is about one page long.  It has certain restrictions, such as

• Daylight flying only
• Can only carry one person
• Cannot carry more than 5 gallons of gas
• Stay out of clouds
• Maintain visual contact with the ground
• Cannot fly over congested areas or open air assembies of people
• Cannot be capable of more than 55 knots in level flight
• Must carry a strobe if flying during twilight (30 minutes before sunrise or after sunset)

However, there are so many things you CAN do in a paramotor that you cannot do in most other types of aircraft.

For example, there is NO minimum altitude. This means you can fly one inch off the ground if you want to take that chance. The only altitude restriction is you must stay out of controlled airspace. In the USA, everything over 18,000 feet is Class A controlled airspace, so that makes it your ceiling here. But the air is so thin up there, you will risk passing out from lack of oxygen if you go that high without supplemental oxygen.

So I did some research and found a paramotoring instructor less than two hours away from where I live, and in the rest of this series of posts, I’ll let you know the progress of my training.

Stay tuned.