June 28, 2003

5 a.m. found me up and eager for an early morning flight. Not a cloud in the sky. Winds at about 5 mph, and the temp about 55 degrees. Perfect! I loaded up my flying machine and spent the next hour enjoying the early morning drive to Logan Airpark by Bennett, CO.

I had been preparing for my BFI practical, and wasn’t sure if my old Quantum 500 would have enough lift to get my examiner and my big buttocks off the ground. Last week I had tried carrying an extra 80 lbs of weight and barely made it off the ground. This morning I brought along 150 lbs. I started out with 120 lbs of extra weight. The temps were cooler and I had a 4-mph head wind, which made all the difference. I had no trouble taking off. So I landed, loaded up the entire 150 extra lbs, and once again was able to take off. The climb rate was certainly slower, but after about 5 minutes I had attained 500 feet agl. I decided to pretend I had May in the back seat (I’m sure she would like everyone to know that she weighs far less than 150 lbs!) and I headed out for a scenic flight. We flew at altitudes between 150’ and 600’ cruising over the forested stream bed and green fields. We found a small group of antelope and watched them in their graceful flight. I suppose if I had my intercom system on board, I would have practiced chatting with my “passenger” as well. Hopefully no one would have been watching.

I landed by the 4Runner, put the weights away, drug my machine backwards enough for a short take off run, straightened out the chute and lines and took off again 150 lbs lighter. Makes quite a difference in that little 350-lb flying machine.

It was a beautiful morning, the fields were a patchwork of different shades of green, and the air was pretty smooth, so I decided to try and break my personal altitude record of 1500’ above ground level (agl). I took off and started climbing with just under full throttle. I made slow circles in order to watch for other aircraft. In about 10 minutes I was 2,500’ agl. Quite the view from up there. The air was very smooth, and it was a very clear day. It was not as scary as I thought it would be, as the world appeared surrealistic, more like looking out of the window of a passenger airliner except for the totally unrestricted view.

I had no close encounters with other types of high flying aircraft, other than spotting a couple of Cessna type planes about a quarter mile away and below me. I noticed the atmosphere looked different. It was thinner up there and I could actually see a demarcation below me where the thicker atmosphere was. I was about 8,000’ above sea level.

I cut the throttle down to just above idle and started my leisurely decent. I thought, “This must be what a skydiver, or a parachutist feels like, and this must be his view.” It was a wonderful experience gracefully drifting down, down, down like a leaf. My descent was a little quicker than my climb. I was reminded of free diving in the Caribbean, remembering how I had to plug my nose and mouth and blow hard to equalize pressure in my ears to keep them from hurting. I had to do the same today, as I descended a couple of thousand feet down to the floor of this ocean of air. I was reminded of how, when it comes to the sky, we live at the bottom of the ocean; just a bunch of bottom feeders.

Dropping to within a couple hundred feet of the ground, I started flying again. I thought the day’s excitement was mostly over, but I was wrong. I decided to practice my low flying skills, just a few feet off the ground. Since I started flying last year we have been in a drought, so the issue of tall grass never arose, as there was no tall grass to be found. But this year, with all our rain and snow, is different.

I learned a great, but expensive, lesson. I dropped a little too low and kissed the ground. This is not uncommon, and no big deal, as a small gust of wind from the rear can cause this to happen. But this time the tall, tough, wheat grass sucked me right in and trapped me. I hit the ground fairly hard. I remained at full throttle with the chute up, hoping to lift from the ground again, but the tall wheat had me in it’s clutches. I plowed through the wheat field for a bit at full throttle, trying to ground steer along with steering the chute to keep it above me so I wouldn’t roll, all in the hopes of taking off again. My prop was spraying ground up wheat everywhere and quickly my clothes were filled with the pasty, itchy stuff.

The good news was that when I got home, I had enough ground wheat plastered all over my flying machine, clothes, helmet, face shield and leather jacket that I was able to scrape it all off and bake up a nice loaf of bread. The bad news is that my prop is pretty well destroyed and I am grounded until I can come up with a new $450 prop. Buggers!

Anyway, I soon cut the engine, packed up the chute (a tough job in the tall wheat) and proceeded to get a great work out by pushing my flying machine through the wheat field, across the road, onto one of the Logan Airpark runways and back to the 4Runner.

So the good news of the day is that it looks like I don’t have to buy a bigger newer chute with more lift since I was able to carry 150 lbs at 6,000’ ground elevation. That means I should be able to carry my 175-lb flight instructor during my BFI training in Grand Junction, at a ground elevation of 4,000 feet. The other good news is that I learned to never fly too close to any kind of field with tall grass, or mud, or anything else that can grab me and slam me to the ground with no escape. The bad news is that I am now faced with an expensive job, and am grounded until I bite that bullet.

PostScript: Since that time, I have purchased and currently fly with a Skybolt 430 chute which has far more lift than my old Quantum 500. I spoke with Bill Gargano, who originally built my Quantum chute. He said I probably experience little lift at my elevation, as the chute was made for speed and less than normal lift, operating at sea level.