> You’ll be in complete control and smiling so big your cheeks hurt. It’s your childhood fantasy come to life.<p>Until the parawing folds from a gust of wind.<p>Happened right in front of me. The person fell with a terrible thump sound I cannot forget. The weight of the engine almost on top of them.<p>They didn’t lose consciousness on the spot and were probably in shock and they were talking with us. The ambulance came pretty quickly. To this day I wonder what happened to them, I hope they survived and recovered.
I learned about and became enthralled by this hobby in 2018. I also know that I will not do the maintenance/upkeep that’s required after every 10 hours of flight for a two-stroke gasoline-powered paramotor. Electric is much simpler.<p>I’m holding onto hope that battery tech improvements make electric paramotors more worthwhile in the next 5-10 years. The last time I looked, a gas engine gets you around 50 minutes of flight, and an electric motor around 30 minutes.<p>There’s an airport somewhat close to me that offers training. Probably not worth getting trained unless I’m up for buying and maintaining my own rig though. Wing + motor + trailer + place to keep them in is pushing $15k at the very least, not counting upkeep and training (or an emergency chute). If I had the dough to throw, it’d be an easy decision. As it stands, I’m just hoping that the tech catches up to my desires before I’m too old to try it out.<p>The premise is wonderful though. Launch from any park or field and freely explore the surrounding area from the sky, without much more than an overgrown child-safety seat with a propeller on the back and a wing that beats the Huffman encoding when stored away. No instrument panel, no yokes or levers; just a throttle and two handfuls of strings and some know-how.
I fly mostly unpowered paragliders (AMA), but I do have a silly little electric paramotor that I've flown with a couple of times.<p>It's also worth distinguishing paramotoring (using a relatively-high-performance paraglider wing) from powered parachutes (using higher-internal-pressure, lower performance wings).
Having been in the aviation community for some time and having seen more than a few accidents with these things, it's worth to mention that they are way more dangerous than they appear. The thing to look out for is "collapsing" the wing, which is likely fatal at the kind of low altitudes normally flown. That "wing" always needs a positive loading. Downdrafts at the perimeter of a thermal, orthographic winds, rotors, fronts, convergence lines, other causes of turbulence and vertical drafts - there is a reason why you often see paramotors in the calm of the evening, when you can cut the air like butter. If you like flying, a more safe hobby would be gliding.