Since the weather was going to be as perfect as it could be this time of year I decided to sneak in an early morning flight before work today.  I had originally wanted to work on taxiing my trike.  This is where I would just drive along the ground with the parachute canopy (wing) inflated and practice steering it.  However, the winds, such as they were, were not aligned with the runway and I would be taking off crossways.  I made a deal with myself to quickly kill the engine and start again if the wing got out of control and set up again.  As it was the wing came up perfectly.  I throttled up and when the wing came up, I throttled back a bit letting it stabilize and steering to stay under it.  The wing looked nice and stable so I slowly squeezed the throttle and felt myself lifted into the air.

There was none of pendulum-like rocking I experienced on my last flight.  Just a nice stable ascent.  I climbed up to about 500 feet and levelled off.  I must have had my anti-torque strap adjusted correctly because I also didn’t experience any right turning tendency like usual.  I was able to stow both brake toggles and fly with my hands in my lap.  The brake toggles are what you steer with; pull the left one to go left, pull the right one to go right, pull them both to slow down before you land.

Sadly I did have work to do so I headed back to the field and landed.  Total time: 30 minutes exactly.  It was a practically perfect and peaceful morning at New Jerusalem Airport.  Something I very much needed after the recent news I received.  So how far can you get in a PPG going 25 mph?  Here is a map showing my ground track: