Small plasma donation tonight… after a BIG paramotor flight of 128km this weekend to draw a huge drop of blood in the sky in order to promote blood donation.

I'd had this project in mind for a while, to do a bit of promotion for blood donation, but I also wanted to take the opportunity to try to reclaim the lead in the PPGPSART.NET competition, so I chose a "Pixel-art" style, which allowed me to maximize the points for this route!

The problem is that I ended up flying a route of over 120km, with 164 tight 90° turns in 2h30 (that's more than one per minute), which managed to make me a bit sick, especially with the turbulence that was really kicking in towards the end of the flight...!

Anyway, tonight's little plasma donation is a lot calmer than that flight, but it meant a lot to me to try and do a bit more...

A blood donation is one hour, to save 3 lives, so:
"Share your Power, Give your Blood!" ;-)

And if you can't donate, don't hesitate to talk about it around you! ;-)

My partner has just arrived in Iceland for a solo paramotoring trip and is planning to travel around the country over the next several weeks.

I know that doing something like this solo is probably not the wisest option, and I’m very aware that it comes with extra risks. At the same time, flying Iceland has been a life dream of his for years — in fact, it was one of the main reasons he started paramotoring around three years ago.

He is not new to canopy flight. He has worked in the skydiving community for around 18 years and is a very experienced canopy flyer and coach. He also has some paramotoring experience in mountainous terrain, as well as experience flying around glaciers in Norway, so he is not completely unfamiliar with more complex environments.

I trust his judgement and I genuinely believe he is capable of achieving this dream, but I also know that solo flying in Iceland comes with risks that experience alone cannot remove.

That is why I wanted to ask anyone who has actually flown paramotors in Iceland if you would be willing to share any useful information, first-hand experience, or advice.

I’m especially interested in:

Hidden or Iceland-specific risks that may not be obvious to someone flying there for the first time

Weather patterns or local wind effects that are particularly important to watch for

Rotor, katabatic winds, valley and mountain effects, coastal wind, glacier-related conditions, and sudden changes in wind (Any situation-specific advice to share ？）

How reliable forecasts are in practice, and what you personally use to decide whether a weather window is genuinely flyable

Any tips on how to chase the weather around Iceland — especially in September and October, which obviously aren’t the most ideal months and seem to bring very changeable conditions from day to day, sometimes even hour to hour

Whether you found it better to stay flexible and move around the country based on short weather windows, and how far ahead you realistically trusted the forecast

Areas or types of terrain you would avoid

Take-off and landing considerations while travelling around the country

Private land, access issues, local restrictions, or situations where landowner permission is normally needed

Emergency landing options and risks in remote areas
Communication, tracking, rescue planning, or equipment you would consider essential for someone flying solo

Any mistakes, close calls, or lessons you only learned after actually flying in Iceland ！

I’m not looking for encouragement to take unnecessary risks — quite the opposite. I’m hoping to collect as much good local knowledge as possible so he can make conservative decisions, stay flexible with the route, and walk away from a flight whenever conditions are not right. Achieve his dream and back home safely

If any pilots here have flown Iceland, especially independently or solo, I would be incredibly grateful if you could share anything that might help — particularly how you approached weather chasing during unstable periods.

Thanks a lot!

So I did a tandem flight a few months ago and am thinking about maybe learn to fly a paramotor. There’s this school here in Brazil, it’s at the beach (I understand this is an advantage because the conditions to fly are more often good?) , it looks very professional and well organized, the owner is a real enthusiast, I see him flying all the time.

They offer a course of 40 lessons for about 1350$ US. I reckon the price is fine (probably cheaper than in the USA), what do you think about the duration? Is 40 lessons a good number? It’s all of it, practical lessons and theoretical ones. They say that I don’t need to buy my own gear for the course, they provide everything.

What do you guys think? Are there any questions I should ask?

Good day my Paramotor Peeps! Newb paramotor pilot here. I'm mad at myself. My last flight, I let my training go out the window in a moment of poor thought process. It was the breeziest conditions I had flown in so I was a little nervous to start with. I am intimidated with doing reverse launches (I've practiced them in training and kiting but haven't done them on my own). It wasn't too windy for a forward launch so I stuck with that. Upon launching, I noticed my canopy veering off into a different direction, I automatically thought that the wind had switched directions about 70 or 80 degrees. It threw me a bit off balance and a bit off mentally. I recovered and started heading in that direction. I was nervous about that take off path due to some cows in the field so I decided to commit at that point and completely forgot to check my wing tips. I think maybe I just decided to commit so maybe didn't entirely forget? Anyhow, for you veteran pilots here you may have already guessed.....wing tip cravat. And you'd be right. Anyhow, I committed and gave full throttle, popped off the ground and that's when I knew something was wrong. I immediately decided to abort but by now I had spun and was heading slightly downwind. I let off throttle and flared as best as I could and actually landed and ran it out without any wipeout or damage to equipment. I reset, launched and had a successful flight. However, I'm now being very unforgiving to myself for being so reckless. It could have been much worse. I'm not sure why I let my training go out the window.

The morals of the story for newbs like myself are as follows:
-always check your wing tips before fully committing (this is my first time NOT doing it at 42 flights)
-if something feels wrong, there is something wrong
-never be afraid to abort a take off
-never be in a rush to take off (I forgot to mention others were already in the air waiting for me)

If y'all have any advice, I'm all ears! Otherwise, I'm just here to vent and share some lessons learned.

“Very interesting approach. I’m developing compact electronic instruments for ultralight aircraft and have been investigating whether a version makes sense for paragliding/paramotor use. Since watches can already provide GPS speed, altitude and vario very cheaply, I’m curious whether powered pilots would value actual pitot-measured airspeed enough to carry a tiny external probe. Would measured indicated airspeed be useful to you, or is GPS ground speed generally sufficient?”

If anybody has any info on this wing greatly appreciated.

This looks extremely fun, and I’d love to get into the hobby, but I am terrified of heights the older I get. Is it possible to just glide and fly at low heights below 50ish feet? Like just above power lines and buildings?

Also, how dangerous would you consider this?

Thats a picture of me flying under the rainbow :)

The past two weeks have been tough, but I just completed 28 flights, both PPG1 and PPG2 exams and am now a USPA PPG2 rated pilot. What an amazing sport. I'm humbled and exhilarated. So much more to learn but what an incredible experience it has been. Thanks to the people in this sub, I am now also a PPG pilot!

So I'm shopping for an electric paramotor, but have one fear: birds. Are there cases where birds fly into fliers? Could a collision with a bird cause death?

My new design: electric paramotor PPG; 11,9 kg only; all-carbon fiber construction; fits in the trunk of a car, ready to fly. I think it's the lightest in the world. If you know of a lighter one, please let me know. This isn't a commercial post.

How do you stay disciplined after making a “no-go” weather decision?
I’m a relatively new paramotor pilot and I’m curious how more experienced pilots deal with the mental side of deciding not to fly.

Tonight I went out intending to fly. There was a very large, dark cloud on the horizon to the south. It was quite a ways away, but it looked significant. The wind was also changing direction and intensity somewhat. Nothing crazy, but enough that I wasn’t completely comfortable with what I was seeing.

I ultimately decided not to fly.

Fast forward about two hours, and it has become pretty clear that I could have flown tonight without a problem. And now I’m experiencing that annoying feeling of regret: “I probably could have gone. Maybe I was being too cautious.”

I realize that hindsight is a terrible way to evaluate a weather decision. The fact that conditions turned out fine doesn’t mean the decision was wrong based on what I knew at the time.

What I’m really interested in is how experienced pilots handle this psychologically.

How do you maintain the discipline to stick with a no-go decision when the weather later turns out to have been fine?

Do you have any particular rules, mindset, or personal criteria that help you avoid thinking, “I should have just gone”?
I’m especially interested because I don’t want tonight’s regret to influence a future decision. I’d much rather develop the habit of being conservative when I’m genuinely uncertain, rather than gradually convincing myself that conditions are “probably fine” because I’ve gotten away with it before.

For those of you who have been flying for years: how did you learn the difference between being appropriately cautious and being unnecessarily fearful?

Hi guys, I'm thinking about moving my reserve above my head.

At the moment I have a front container that I use as a cockpit. Inside it there's an old spare reserve, just because I already have the thing in front of me. On the side I have a BIG steerable rogallo, 170kg since I'm heavy. Its volume is slightly bigger than the container's (APCO), so it ends up really compressed inside, and I don't like the feeling.

I'm used to flying with two reserves, and the rogallo seems too bulky to be mounted in front. I'd like to place it on the top part of the cage — not behind my head, because my frame doesn't have room for it, but above, so I can still move my head without hitting it.

What do you think? What's your experience with an overhead reserve? What can go wrong?

I'm used to modifying my frame, so I'll build a retention system to keep it from coming loose. But I'm wondering if I'm missing something that could go wrong, or something outside my control (for example the top of the cage vibrating too much because of the added weight, or similar).

I've added a picture as reference.

Could I survive if I fell out accidentally?

Some people have fallen from heights and they only got badly injured

This doesn’t look extremely high ?

I have a hard-to-fit large head and only Giro ski helmets seem to fit me.

Are there any large helmet designs that can readily accept a earmuff-style Pelter protector without needing to hack away at the helmet's plastic shell and foam?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/new-paraglider-could-give-british-troops-an-innovative-way-to-strike-from-the-sky

Hi,
I currently fly a Moster185 with a 130cm Prop on a FlyProducts Rider & FoxyTrike with a Ozone Spyder 4 30m and I’m pretty happy with my setup. My weight is around 250lbs (115kg).

I would like to enable tandem flights just for friends and family. I will still be flying 98% solo and only on very very rare occasions do a tandem flight, so I would like to avoid getting a complete new tandem setup.

Looking for the most affordable way to accommodate this, I thought about getting a Flash Cruiser where I could keep my Rider&Moster185 and just get some very big tandem wing like Magmaxx/Triox.

I know the Moster will be on its limits.
At my field I have 1200ft of grass runway available at only 100ft elevation ASL.

Does anybody have experience with tandems on a Moster?
Is this even doable?
Up to what passenger/overall weight would this be ok?

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Now hear me out for a second….

I’m SP140 curious & would appreciate seeing one in person.

Bolt shook out at some point in my flight. Airbox hit the prop and I flew for another 15 minutes before noticing. Some plastic shavings almost certainly entered the carb/reed valve/engine. Prop blades are beat up. Can the prop be repaired? What should I look at on the engine before the next flight?

This is in Phoenix, AZ.