A wing and a propeller
Posted on Monday, January 7, 2008
Buzzing like mosquitoes, weird machines swing high and low above the Arkansas River, looking for all the world like four parachuting go-carts.
It’s the first fair Sunday in weeks, and the Big Dam Bridge is speckled with wee pedestrians and itty-bitty cyclists. Between the bridge’s glinting railings, they bustle beyond the toes of the parachuting pilots’ shoes. Each figure has its tiny animated shadow and color block of clothes. You remind yourself that every one of them is unique and a person; and yet one after another they stop in their tracks, like cartoons or video-game characters. They stop, lean back, and each one waves a teeny hand. Wheee ! The pilots wave back from their contraptions, a type of light sport aircraft the Federal Aviation Administration terms “powered parachutes.” The figures on the ground hold up minute cameras, maybe even cell phones. “After we’ve been flying I find pictures of myself posted on Flickr all the time,” says Josh Wooding, the state’s lone sport pilot flight instructor certified to teach powered-parachute aviation. On bright weekend afternoons, even in chilly weather, this 35-year-old Little Rock firefighter and his current and former students fly for recreation through the unrestricted airspace between North Little Rock and Pinnacle Mountain. Wooding would also like to be serving the public good, doing search and rescue work. Powered parachutes are ideal for that, he says. But from the ground, what they’re up to looks risky and wild. Who would ever want to and why ? Who would want to is a question for philosophers or scientists or Grandpa who has medals from the war, but dreamers already know why. Powered parachuting lets you fly bare as a bird into the orderly world that birds, cartographers and cockeyed optimists know — a place you only glimpse during the first stages of takeoff on a commercial airliner. Everything’s cute there. Everything’s tidy. North Little Rock is an adorably sensible grid of neatly painted streets and service lines, Matchbox cars and Tonka trucks, delicate brown traceries that are trees. But unlike a passenger trapped inside an airplane, if a powered parachuter spots a cove or a funny-looking stump or a burned-out house that intrigues him, he can veer over to take a closer look. Powered parachutes can zoom at 200 to 900 feet per minute (or faster, depending on air density and the type of parachute they use ) up to 10, 000 feet to peer down through the icy air like Zeus, or they can descend within inches of the ground and buzz along frost-bitten stubble like a thrill-ride scene from a sci-fi movie. Imagine skimming blades of grass in a hayfield at Two Rivers Park with huge bales dodging past, right and left. Clusters of deer off to the side jerk to attention and freeze, staring at you before they bolt and scatter. A powered parachute has a limited range of speed. It can chug at 30 mph into a mildly buffeting headwind. Or the pilot can pirouette so the wind’s at his back to book along at, say, 47 mph above a scale-model world with suddenly understandable topography. “When you have those dreams of flying, this is the closest you’re going to get right here,” Wooding says.
WHAT IS UP ? About 3: 30 p.m. Dec. 30, Wooding wheels his Infinitybrand powered parachute and a passenger out of a hangar at Barrett Aviation and taxies across the North Little Rock Airport to a winter-sere field beside a runway. Already setting up in the field are 54-year-old Steve Twaddle of North Little Rock and his passenger, Democrat-Gazette photographer Ben Krain; 21-year-old Otto resident Lance Copeland; and Brian Campbell, 38, of Sherwood.
Each pilot owns a different powered parachute ranging in price from $ 10, 000 (bought secondhand ) to $ 13, 000. New machines can cost as much as $ 20, 000, and a new federal regulation is about to make buying used ones problematic, but more about that in a minute.
The machines consist of threewheeled carts, a light engine, a propeller and a rectangular or elliptical ram-air parachute. Ram air means the chute is a double sheet divided into pockets that trap air. According to the FAA’s Powered Parachute Flying Handbook, the chute is only called that while it’s on the ground; airborne it becomes “the wing.” “The chute has an upper and lower chamber, and your forward movement pressurizes the inside of it to inflate it to be like a real flying wing,” says Frank Noe, a military and commercial pilot who has flown with Wooding as a passenger. “Then it provides lift like an airplane wing would.” The carts don’t have sides or a floor. Engine, radiator and seats are bolted to an open framework of chromoly tubing. Wooding’s Infinity has a Rotax 582 twostroke 65-horsepower engine — the type that powers Ski Doos and snowmobiles, but with a gearbox for the prop. “It’s labeled for aircraft use so they make it more expensive,” he says.
Each pilot unpacks his parachute from a nylon stuff sack. He spreads the chute on the ground behind the cart, then climbs in, buckles up and waits while a few conventional small planes land or take off on the paved airstrip. It’s a busy day with small planes (like the Cessna 152 Wooding also flies ) coming and going.
He takes a moment to radio the airport control tower so they’ll know this is a recreational outing.
Even before his engine has set the propeller chugging, wind pushes into the chute and it starts to lift. The cart bumps slightly, and then Wooding checks which way the wind’s blowing through a windsock atop a pole on the airfield and aims the cart into the wind. He opens the throttle, and the ground begins to rush below.
Takeoff requires only 100 to 150 feet of fairly level ground. The airborne cart lofts up and down a bit, like a seagull buffeted by a headwind. But its trajectory is fairly straight. It’s suspended on taut lines 20 feet below its bright arc of wing.
The pilot steers the way a parachuter would, by tugging lines attached to the backside of the chute’s ends. But he does that using foot pedals. Look, Ma, no hands.
“It’s like a bird,” Noe says. “The wind is in your face; you’re going very slow. You can fly slow, wave to people, see things more up close instead of being in a cockpit with pressurized air and windows.” Only you aren’t a bird, so you sit upright, strapped to the cart, and it is noisy. You need a headset to buffer the chopping racket of the propeller behind you. And although the wind won’t snatch away your sunglasses the way it can on a motorcycle, Twaddle says goggles are the right idea if you wear contact lenses. 61. 53 and 61. 303, they must obtain a student, sport or private pilot certificate with a powered parachute rating. That entails: Being able to read, speak, write and understand English.
Having a valid U. S. driver’s license or a third-class medical certificate issued under the agency’s regulation. (If you have any restrictions on your driver’s license, those apply in the air, too. ) Ground training and mastery of the FAA Knowledge Exam.
Flight training, including 10 hours of dual flights with a certified flight instructor and two hours of solo flights. A practical test flight with an FAA sport pilot examiner. There are other instructors in the state for people who want to fly other light sport aircraft (like the powered hang-glider known as a trike, which Zen Boulden teaches in Cass ), but Wooding is the only FAA-certified flight instructor for the powered parachute category. “Once you are a sport pilot, you can add other aircraft such as a fixed wing [he’s training to teach in those ], trike, gyrocopter, etc., just by getting the required hours in that particular aircraft,” he says. “It’s $ 985 for the sport pilot license. Much cheaper than a private pilot license. This fee does not include the cost for the written test — around $ 90 — and the fee for the practical test — around $ 350, and this is given by an FAA examiner.” Further restrictions apply in regulated airspace where radio control applies.
NEW RULE Possibly more troublesome to pilots who have been flying factory-made or kit-built powered parachutes for years is the federal agency’s decision to regu-RESTRICTIONS It takes more than pluck and bucks to fly a powered parachute. You also need a pilot’s license from the Federal Aviation Administration. “Two years ago anyone could get one of these things and just start flying it around,” Wooding says, “but now you need the right license. The process isn’t all that onerous, but there are some people that have been using these things on their own property and who don’t ever go to public airfields who are inconvenienced by going through the hoops to get a license.” But if they want to fly legally, they must. Under Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 61. 23, late the machines. After Jan. 31, all light sport aircraft, including powered parachutes with 10-gallon engines, must bear an N number, an alphanumeric registration code. The FAA assigns these codes. “In fact, from here on out, any aircraft you buy will already have the N number on it,” Wooding says.
If an existing light sport aircraft doesn’t have its N number after Jan. 31, it will never be allowed to get one. It’s junk, in other words. “As far as the FAA is concerned, if you fly it without this registration, you are flying illegally,” Wooding says.
So bargain hunters looking to score a deal “want to be careful about buying anything off the Internet,” says pilot Brian Campbell.
“Also I would say that people who have no regard for rules and regulations shouldn’t be flying,” Wooding adds. “These are in place to keep people safe.” Fun is fun, but these flying carts are also of real use in emergencies, he says.
“Because of their slow speed, wide open view, ability to fly low and very cheap operating costs, they are excellent for doing search and rescue work,” he says, adding that in Western states they’re used by police, ranchers and farmers.
“Also, because of their light weight and portability, they can be trailered to an area, and flown from small areas.” He’d like to demonstrate their potential to county sheriffs and other search and rescue professionals. “They can e-mail me at sportpilotinfo@mac. com,” he says. His Web site is www. fire flyaviationx. com.
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