10

found

Powered Paragliding Entries

Powered Paragliding Parts Arrive!

Monday, June 27th, 2016

Ever since boxes from BlackHawk Paramotor began arriving a week ago, we've been spending our evenings putting together our pair of crazy flying machines (at our neighbor's place). We're still waiting on a few more parts, but soon enough, we'll be u...

Learning to Fly: Day Five at BlackHawk Paramotors

Friday, June 3rd, 2016

I think it says a lot about our personalities that I marked my morning flights on my hand with a pen, while Tyler emailed them to himself so he could make a database of them that will eventually show markers on a google map. Either way, we got a to...

Learning to Fly: Day Four at Blackhawk Paramotors (Tyler)

Thursday, June 2nd, 2016

After my engine failure yesterday, both of the student 125cc paramotors were out of commission. I assumed they'd fix them before morning, but when we arrived for class around 6AM, neither had been repaired. While this made for a pretty frustrating ...

Learning to Fly: Day Four at Blackhawk Paramotors (Tara)

Thursday, June 2nd, 2016

This morning, I resolved to have a better day than yesterday. I began by sleeping an hour later (until 5:30AM instead of 4:30AM), getting a huge, delicious coffee (I rarely drink coffee), and talking through pre-flying-school jitters with Tyler on ...

Learning to Fly: Day Three at Blackhawk Paramotors (Tyler)

Wednesday, June 1st, 2016

It gets ridiculously hot on the field here at BlackHawk Ranch. I haven't worked this hard in the heat since Tara and I laid the rebar for the foundation of our workshop. Several times today I thanked my lucky stars I'm not a farmhand, roofing contr...

Learning to Fly: Day Three at BlackHawk Paramotors (Tara)

Wednesday, June 1st, 2016

Today was rough. It began with not nearly enough sleep (4 hours to be exact), and being so sore and battered from the previous two days of training that it felt like I'd been run over. The only good part about the morning was getting towed a few mo...

Learning to Fly: Day Two at BlackHawk Paramotors

Tuesday, May 31st, 2016

Yesterday, kiting was a complete mystery. Bringing up the wing was pretty straightforward—hold the A-lines (the ones nearest to the leading edge of the wing) and lift up. There wasn't much wind so we had to run really fast/hard to keep it aloft. On...

Learning to Fly: Day One at BlackHawk Paramotors

Monday, May 30th, 2016

I woke up to pee at about five o'clock this morning and when I returned to bed, I couldn't fall asleep. All kinds of nervous thoughts rattled around noisily in my brain: What if it turned out that I was afraid of flying? What if my fear of falling ...

Learning to Fly: Arriving in California

Sunday, May 29th, 2016

This past week has been insane, what with getting ready to come to California, preparing the workshop and the house for the plasterers that will be coming immediately after we return from California, packing, hosting Tyler's dad for a night, welcom...

Learning to Fly

Saturday, May 21st, 2016

A few months ago we realized that we needed a break from building our homestead. After years of single-mindedly pouring nearly all of our time, energy and finances into the project, it took a bit for that decision to really sink in. When it dawned ...