Pilot Training Resources

With the high cost of aviation fuel and aircraft rental, it was only a matter of time before my aviation interests turned towards powered parachutes and ultralight aircraft. I saw my first powered parachute up close at an aviation event in Marshall, Michigan in late summer of 2005. It was a powered parachute manufactured by a company called Buckeye in Indiana. This particular powered parachute was called the Legal Eagle, because it contained only one seat and met all of the ultralight requirements of Part 103, the set of FAA regulations that govern ultralight flight.

I sat in the Legal Eagle and immediately knew that flying powered parachutes was something that I wanted to try. Even though I had been flying airplanes since I was 15 years old, I still wanted to get closer to low and slow flight, just like the birds, and powered parachutes offered me that opportunity.

If you’ve never seen a powered parachute, they basically fall into two groups. The first group is called the “butt fans”, and is basically a parachute that is mounted to an engine pack that is strapped onto your back. Your legs and feet comprise the landing gear, and take-off is basically you starting the engine, pulling your parachute into the air above you, advancing the throttle to full speed and running into the wind as the chute lifts you off the ground. It take a bit to master, but is basically the least expensive way to get into powered parachutes.

The other category of powered parachutes looks more like a dune buggy. You climb into it and sit down. Once the engine is started, the chute pretty much comes up on its own, at which time you advance full throttle, but instead of running like a maniac trying to get airborne, you simply roll in your dune buggy-like flying contraption as your chute lifts your dune buggy into the air. This is the type of powered parachtue I decided I wanted to learn in, as I didn’t think my 44 year old landing gear could stand any mistakes on my part. I didn’t know what to think because all my previous flight time was in fully enclosed aircraft. I quickly found out that this type of flying was a real blast. Nothing about this type of flying was all that difficult. Obviously learning how to properly land the pwered parachute is what takes most of the time. Luckily, it is fairly straight forward and usually mastered within a few hours at the most.

Powered parachutes are not all that expensive, but depending on the size of the engine, number of seats and other options, they can get pricey. I’ve never seen a fractional ownership program for a powered parachute, but it wouldn’t surpise me to see someone come up with one in the near future.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Ultralights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.