Saying it changed my life wouldn’t be an overstatement. The ability to store it inside my sedan, travel anywhere, take off with my own feet, fly anywhere for around 4 hours, and land basically anywhere… is just magical.
It's hard enough to design things in the real world when you've got the tech in hand. There's no way to think that people got it right decades earlier with even larger disadvantages.
The reality is we don't have jetpacks because jetpacks suuuuuuuuuck. Paramotoring turns out to make a lot more sense. It may not be the picture in your head, but it can be real.
Also, we don't have flying cars because flying cars suuuuuuuuuck. We don't have heavy-duty voice interfaced computers because they suuuuuuuuuck. We even have the tech now for those, and they suuuuuuuuuck as the only interface. (They can work if you're dedicated and have no alternatives, as people program with pure voice interfaces, but they only use them because they're the best alternative they have.) Computer interfaces don't look like LCARS Star Trek interfaces because those interfaces suuuuuuuuuck. And so on.
Firstly, I wouldn't be so sure about what future tech might bring. Perhaps if "flying cars" get closer to something consumers could use in a neighborhood, it will be profitable to look into and maybe something can be done about it.
Secondly, for many of the young men living near me, noise is more of a perk than an issue. You could probably sell them on the idea that the whole town gets to hear that they're rich enough to afford a flying car.
"All of them."
I love flying car demo videos with dubbed-in music rather than live audio....
Basically, a jet pack what you get if you take a minimal safe flying vehicle based on jet propulsion, then you strip away a huge number of components. The result is intrinsically unsafe.
Paramotoring isn't the safest thing either, but at least it's humanly feasible.
The problem is that we are orders of magnitude off in terms of power density, and it seems unlikely that we'll bridge that without some sort of major revolution in physics. So sci-fi it remains.
Many people who believe in science actually believe in science fiction.
and we don't have infrastructure in place, because we have other solutions that work already, and the cost to change them would be too big and even if we wanted to we'd have to find a way to slowly phase them in over many decades.
you're basically that guy from 20 years ago who yelled "fossil fuel is good because solar panels suuuuuuuuuuck " :p
I didn't know they were a thing before watching this. Amazing.
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article256764...
When flying even a modest GA aircraft VFR, there isn't much time to react if you've been looking down at foreflight/instruments for 30 seconds while heading straight towards a paramotor which has no ADS-B out. This says even more for IFR craft that move much faster.
Honestly, even if someone just scraped together GPS and a transmitter with a color changing LED (eg: red=fault, green=transmitting) and then worked with the FAA to set aside a squawk code for these devices, they would improve safety for everyone in the sky while also creating a product that would likely become a standard for several decades, if not more.
I googled it and the first thing that came up was a YouTube video about the 5 most dangerous things about paramotoring. :)
Anyway, I find paramotors quite offensive because they make an awful lot of noise and smoke and the pilot's position is quite unnatural compared to normal paragliding because the motor pushes him or her forward. Maybe when we'll have electric paramotors under 10 kilos things will change for the better.
1. https://www.dhv.de/en/testing/dhv-classification-of-paraglid...
The fact that we know what mistakes they made is a red herring. You'd have to be a fool to think you're going to be the first paragliding pilot in history to never make a potentially fatal mistake. One of them, a friend and a very good pilot, simply pulled his brake half an inch too far. It was a perfectly calm evening.
There were two warring factions at my local mountain. One organized around the idea that paragliding can be made safe. My camp maintained that 'safe' and 'paragliding' should never be in the same sentence without an 'isn't' between them. Hikers always opened conversation with "Is it safe?" The other camp would say "Oh yes, quite, and would you like a ride for $200?" Our camp would try not to laugh. I'd usually reply with, "Does it look safe?" We said it was all about risks and percentages, with the understanding that the risk of dying or being crippled with a slow glider in perfect conditions is always > 0.
I'm not saying it isn't worth it. It's totally worth it, though it's easier for me to say since I got out unharmed. Rather, I developed a discomfort that prevented me from enjoying it. Not fear - but a kind of disillusionment. Because even though my instructor said "It's not safe." over and over, and even though I repeated it to others, secretly I believed it was and it took 8 years for observed events to wear that belief down. A big part of me hopes I return, maybe after my parents are gone or I'm their age or something. There is really nothing like it in the world and I doubt anything I ever do will ever energize my soul the way free flying did.
Is paramotoring safer (i.e., longer life expectancy) than paragliding?
The stats are skewed in favour of paramotoring, althout the added complexity means more margin for error. The safety plus to paramotoring is that you can fly on a day without any wind, while paragliding requires at least a 2 m/s wind to descend from the top of a hill or moutain and about 5 m/s to soar next to a slope, dune or ridge. Paramotorists also rarely engage in aerobatics which is probably why the stats are skewed. They also almost never need to perform special altitude loss procedures like big ears, tip stall, B-line stall or spiral dive.
Estimating total hours of flight in the US seems like it would be difficult since there's no licensing regime.
I wouldn’t comment on safety comparisons with paramotoring without more statistics.
I haven't found any proper statistics, just fatalities without hours of flight for each activity. Which are really just anecdotes masked as statistics.
For some more inspiration, check out "speed flying" — essentially, paragliding with skies: https://youtu.be/UwWLnaME0CI
However I wouldn't relate it with "speed flying" because speed flying is a truly an extreme sport with extremely high mortality but paragliding is a chill flying unless you choose to make it extreme.
Paragliding is so safe these days, the wings are very stable and spontaneously return to airworthy shape if disrupted. Flying is very chill, to do something at high speed you usually need to build up energy by spiralling or swinging the wing.
Speed flying on the other hand uses much smaller wings and that makes them very dynamic. They fly at much higher speeds and they have high kinetic energy all the time which results in very large movements even at small inputs from the pilot.
Been watching these kids with paramotors on YouTube blaze across fields, drop in on a rural McDonalds.... It looks like fun ... and safe enough?
Actually, if you like adrenalin, I'd suggest looking elsewhere. I did skydiving for many years before discovering paramotoring, and they are completely unrelated activities.
Yes, you can do high speed flying and "slalom" with your paramotor, but 98% of us don't. It's a contemplation sport. Like going on a bike ride or jetski ride with your friends, but in 3 dimensions. It's all about the views, soaking up the scenery, and having a good time in the sunset or in the sunrise. If you live near the beach, you can fly all day; if you live in the countryside, you'll probably fly early in the mornings or in the sunset, due to the lower thermal activity (it gets bumpy otherwise).
If your engine fails ... you have a huge "parachute" that sails 6 meters forward for ever meter down. Actually, every single landing we do, we are either with our engine completely shutdown or idling. I've had 3 malfuctions in these 4 years; as long as you're flying watching your "safety cone", you'll slowly glide to a pleasant landing.
If your main glider fails (they don't, but our main enemies are kites; their lines can cut through our lines like butter), you still have a reserve chute that you can throw as a last resort.
If you fly over water, equip yourself with flotation devices. There are many specific to paramotors that inflate automatically.
What defines the sport is the wing you choose. You'll get trained by an instructor, and he'll guide you to the best wing according to your weight and desires in the sport.
Basically:
- Get professional training; - Get a good equipment and a wing suited to your weight; - Don't fly over water without flotation; - Always watch your "safety cone" in the event of an engine out; - Don't fly spirals near the ground (don't be a showoff); - Beware of your weather forecast and land if winds go over your comfort speed;
You literally become a drone (mine is getting dust and never flies anymore). It's incredible. If you have the chance, get yourself trained, you'll add a whole other dimension to your life.
They're like motorcycles. Do everything right and it's almost safe (someone else can hit you on the road and there are rare meteorological phenomena able to bring a paramotor down, e.g. a microburst), but even small errors can result in severe injury or death.
Risk is everywhere, if you accept the risk involved you may find yourself having a good time.
It is still very bad if you want to use it for something useful and not just entertainment... It is very susceptible to malfunction when it is a bit windy...
lol @ bajillion dollar R&D jetpack with ai controlled thrust vectoring
It definitely seems simpler and safer than jetpack.
Your equipment has 3 main components: your engine (check out Vitorazzi, their "Moster 185" is definitely the most popular engine in the world), your cage (check out Parajet https://parajet.com/ - they have some cages already assembled with the Moster 185) and your wing (I fly Ozone - https://www.flyozone.com/paramotor/).
I live in the DFW metroplex, and you have to drive almost 100 miles out of the city to take-off and then you're pretty limited on where you can fly due to the abundance of small airports nearby.
There are maps available that show what kind of airspace is around you. I forget the specifics as it's a been a few years since I looked into it, but there are different designations for what/who is allowed to fly where and paramotors are very low on the totem pole in terms of priority and access allotments.
If in doubt, learn to fly near the beach. The views are amazing :)