When We Triumphantly Return To The Skies

Well, as that overly-hyped title says today marks my return to flight status. As I wrote in this post I had to make repairs due to what happened when my PPC fell off the trailer. This morning was perfect flying weather. I headed out to New Jerusalem just as the sun was coming up. I started setting up shortly before 7am and left the ground at 7:18am.

This is NOT the runway I took off from! It’s over to the left. This is the old parallel runway that is leased by local farmers.

I climbed to about 200 feet and just started cruising around the field making sure everything still works. It all did. So are started wandering a little farther afield. That’s really not too far considering my airspeed is only 27-30 mph. But the Pink Panther just kept purring like a little pink kitten.

As you can see, the California Central Valley dust harvest is in full swing!

So it wasn’t a very long flight today, maybe about 30 minutes or so. I have to find a solution for the seat. It only comes up just to my lower back and my back starts to ache after about 20 minutes or so. It’s sure building up my core muscles!

Front and back seat of my powered parachute

As you can see from the above photo, the back seat passenger has full back support, the pilot has to rely on the back seat passenger for back support – they ARE the back support! Without anyone in the back seat I have no back support. I’m going to try to rig up some pillows to lean against for more comfortable, longer flights. Still, it’s great to be back in the sky!