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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

When I was in elementary school (waaaay back in the 80s) I lived way out in BFE where there was a lot of undeveloped land around the school. One weekend, one of the students discovered a crashed ultralight in the fields surrounding the school, and then told his parents about it. There was an company a few miles from the school off of the highway that sold/rented ultralights, so the parents called them about it. Apparently, someone walked away from the crash and just decided not to tell anyone about it. As a reward for reporting the location of the "lost" ultralight, the place offered free flights to the kid and parents. The parents said no thanks. It was always one of those stories that stood out as a kid growing up and I hadn't thought about that in a really long time.

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If I were a kid, I’d be livid to not get free flights. I always wanted to fly - I think the first time I ever got on a plane was in high school and I remember being glued to the window almost the whole time.

Incidentally, I just learned about ultralights not needing a license last week and there are some really affordable ones for like 16K: http://www.uflyit.com/aerolite103main.htm

There are more manufacturers here: https://www.eaa.org/eaa/aviation-interests/ultralights/getti...

It’s also wild to me that some of these kits are build-it-yourself - they assemble the kit, test fly it, take it apart and ship it to you. I’m more than happy to build my own bike, but my own aircraft? That will make me triple check every step and still be super scared to fly it.

If your kid discovered a crashed something and the people that operated the something didn't know it was missing gave your kid free time to fly/ride a thing just like it, would you let your kid go? But of course the kid was upset.

If your kid discovered a crashed rental car and the people that operated the rental car didn't know it was missing gave your kid free time to ride a rental car just like it, would you let your kid go?

Amazing how people today let fear get in the way of enjoying life

If you want to compare an apple to a kumquat, then sure, your analogy makes sense, maybe, if you really try and want it to. Otherwise, I hope the rest of your day is less upsetting.

I think it finds the break in the suggestion, which is that the answer is "it depends"

Which means the decider is something outside of the proposed situation

Depends whether they were the ones responsible for ditching and not reporting. A well-run place that rented to an idiot is one thing, a slapdash place that plays loose with the rules another.

> and the people that operated the something didn't know it was missing

This element is not present in the story as it is described.

They were not aware of where the ultralight was, but they were aware that it was missing. It could have been stolen, or it could have been landed at some other location.

> This element is not present in the story as it is described.

Yes, I didn’t write the full history of the company. However, to fill in some details, the company ultimately closed after numerous incidents from being a company run by Kletus and his brother Kletus and his other brother Kletus (Daryl just doesn’t imply the same that Kletus does). I would say fly by night, it apparently they didn’t fly that well.

Ultralights are one-seat by definition. I'm not sure most elementary school kids could handle actually flying one of those.

Um, I'm pretty sure there are two seat ultralight airplanes - at least here in the Czech Republic. And IIRC that's also the maximum number of people that can fly on an ultralight here.

Yes the categorization in Europe seems to differ a lot. I flew in a Czech ultralight once, it was a Lambada, I forget the manufacturer. Very nice aircraft by the way. Just very very cramped with its 2 abreast seating.

Sorry, I was referring to the same legal definition for CFR Part 103 ultralights as in the link.

So how is flight training handled for those I wonder?

You can still go to flight school first, if you want, and get training in a dissimilar two place light sport aircraft, a Cessna, etc. There are also places that do ground school aimed at ultralights with no in-air training, watch youtube videos, or just go for it.

There are two-place similar aircraft that you can train in. They're just not classified as ultralights.

I would gladly build my own cub and fly it. You could probably repair it mid flight haha!

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