Lift off!!

First off, the upper photo is Greg Stevenson's plane, the lower one is just off the web, it's a Weedhopper

No pictures of Steve's plane that we flew in tonight.......

The weather being excellent tonight, we started our flight about 5:45. After getting settled in and starting the engine, I taxied the plane out to runway 10 (runway starts at 100° and runs almost west-with west end at 280°). After checking for any other aircraft, I headed the plane out onto the runway and got it lined up straight with the center stripe. At this point Steve took over and had me feel the throttle handle and control stick as he operated them. We climbed to about 800' AGL (above ground level) and there he had me level off by throttling back a bit and changing the nose attitude a bit. We flew west a while and occasionally Steve would have me do a 90° turn and follow a gravel road below. When turning to fly crosswind, there was enough of a west wind that the plane was traveling south while the nose was pointed south-west. Pretty cool. We did pretty easy, low angle turns which in an ultralight are easily done with rudder control alone. It was hard to understand by reading, but in the plane it made sense that altitude was governed by power (and some pitch increase) while airspeed was primarily controlled by pitch attitude. This became abundantly clear as we descended to a grass strip owned by a friend of Steve's. With the engine at almost idle, you could make the airspeed go up or down, but more importantly steady at 35mph airspeed, just with a little elevator change. That's the control surface on the tail that raises and lowers to raise or lower the back end of the plane. As we approached the grass strip Steve again took control of the stick and brought us in for a touchdown, brief taxi and then full power to pick up speed, back on the stick and we were climbing again. Steve told me to level off after a while, turn back to the east and head toward the water tower just south of the airport. The ground passed much more quickly while going downwind!!! Airspeed remained the same, however. We made a slight detour around a soccer field (FAA regs not to fly over any gathering of people with an ultralight). Our path now was essentially the downwind leg of our approach, and I backed off the throttle and eased the nose down a bit. Another 90° turn and we were into the base leg of out approach. The airspeed indicator helped me adjust elevator control so that we did not loose too much airspeed (don't want to stall that wing!!). Now Steve said to make the final 90° turn and line up with the runway.... I think I did that O.K. and now we were getting quite close to the ground. Steve took control of the stick and eased us onto the runway. Awesome!!!
I applied the brake, turned a u-ey on the runway and taxied back to the hangar. This short trip certainly confirmed my suspicion that I would rather fly a fixed wing plane than the powered parachutes. The chutes are O.K., but I don't think they could have flown in the winds we were in tonight. Plus you could actually go somewhere in this little plane. It's way cool.............
This is Carlo signing off... over and out!