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I fly mostly unpowered paragliders (AMA), but I do have a silly little electric paramotor that I've flown with a couple of times. It's also worth distinguishin
by addaon 5y ago
I fly mostly unpowered paragliders (AMA), but I do have a silly little electric paramotor that I've flown with a couple of times.
It's also worth distinguishing paramotoring (using a relatively-high-performance paraglider wing) from powered parachutes (using higher-internal-pressure, lower performance wings).
- pedalpete 5y agoI'm the founder of https://ayvri.com https://ayvri.com - is it safe to say you're a user?
- mongrelion 5y agoHang glider and paraglider pilot here. Surprised to see paramotoring being brought up on HN. Even more surprised to see the founder of ayvri posting in the same thread! And yes, I'm a user, though not OP :p
- pedalpete 5y agoI've been hang-gliding and paragliding only once. But the platform was obviously adopted by the paragliding community. One of those interesting stories where we were working on the tech, not realizing that paragliders would be a user (and knowing nothing about paragliding at the time).
- addaon 5y agoNot actually a user; I've mostly kept tech and flying separate so far. I'll take a look though!
- mongrelion 5y ago> I've mostly kept tech and flying separate so far. Don't you upload your tracks to something like xcontest or similar to analyse your flights?
- addaon 5y agoRarely? When I'm on a trip (Colombia, Macedonia, Valle) I'll do so over beers to chat things over with other pilots; when it's more casual or local flying, I'm doing it for the experience and the joy, not the retrospective analysis.
- filoeleven 5y agoHow long does your silly little electric paramotor fly before it runs out? Is it a one-prop, or a four- or six-prop model?
- addaon 5y agoFour-prop. With two 12-lb batteries (which is the comfort level for my knees -- the whole unit with these batteries is around 42 lbs, so still competitive with even a low power gas unit) I can run for about 8 minutes, which gets me to about 3200 ft, and gives me ~12 minutes to find a thermal. (Worth noting I weigh significantly more than average, and fly with a moderately high wing loading.) I spent some serious time designing a two-prop counter-rotating unit using low-inductance ironless motors and a GaN inverter, but never got around to building it. Maybe next life.
- hawkesnest 5y agoYou’re far more gracious than I. If someone were to call something I’m clearly passionate about “silly” I don’t think I’d respond genially.
- addaon 5y agoTo be fair, he was quoting me exactly -- my original description used that word.
- filoeleven 5y agoYes, I would not have described it as such otherwise. I’d love to have a silly little electric paramotor, because then I’d have a paramotor. I prefer a silly little electric paramotor over a big honking gas-powered paramotor, because I know what I’m willing to maintain. My question was solely about flight time, but reading it without the thread context does make me look like a jerk. No harm, no foul.
- filoeleven 5y agoThe weight you’ve achieved sounds pretty good! But the runtime does not—I’ve never used a paraglider, and although I love the idea of finding and riding thermals, I know that I lack the experience to do so. What I really want is to be on par with gasoline engines in the brute-force dept, but with batteries. We are not there yet, but I hope we will be. Thanks for sharing details! If you are fairly confident in your two-prop design, it might be worth reaching out to one or two paramotor companies to gauge their interest in it. Torque-steer from one big prop is something that all one-prop harness builders are always fighting against, whether electric or not. (I know nothing about building or flying any of these things, or much about business and IP, so disregard at will.). A two-prop engine seems like it’d be much nicer on the eardrums when compared to four. I’ve watched some videos…with the sound turned way down.