The vast majority of paramotor entrants enthuse over the sport's simple elegance, affordability and minimal regulation. Indeed, that is what got me so juiced, too. But there are some surprising dark corners that, while easily avoidable, are not obvious. Through several years of aggressively exploring the craft, I learned about many of them--a few the hard way. I learned even more by talking and spending time with the sport's most prolific and skilled instructors. These were people who knew what was actually happening and had developed ways to improve the situation.

It was obvious that we, as a community, needed to get the word out. After one particularly harrowing experience, I set out to create "The USPPA Safety Video." It started with an outline that eventually became a script, listing the the ways that pilots were actually getting hurt and what could be done to prevent those injuries. That script was passed around to a number of highly regarded instructors who gave valuable input which was incorporated.

It turns out that a huge majority of wing-related accidents shared a common thread: too much brake pull—a reaction aggravated frequently by having or holding too much power. It wasn't the wing's mis-behaving, it was the pilot's overreaction that turned a minor bobble into a major crash. In fact, nearly all PPG accidents where the wing does something unexpected was a result of the pilot pulling too much brake.

Worse than that was where serious injuries were occurring. They came not from flying at all but rather from the propeller. And most of those occurred during start or runup.

There are a host of other maladies that needed attention and were covered—aspects of paramotoring where risk was present but not readily apparent. It was my hope to present the problem and, whenever practical, its solution.

Another major goal was to show why proper instruction is so critical. Seeing all there is to know would hopefully make any pilot heed the admonition to get good, thorough training. It shows why choosing an instructor who uses a standard syllabus is better guaranteed to cover the necessary material. Any instructor not using the USPPA syllabus, or one that covers at LEAST the same material, is denying their student the advantage of collective wisdom.

It Can't Cover Everything

Essential?

UltraFlight Magazine ArticleAs said by a famous man two millennia ago, “It is Finished.”