Paramotoring - the cheaper way of getting airborne

Last November when the Today's Pilot team visited the Sport and Leisure Aviation Show at the NEC in Birmingham, I was amazed to see how fast the activity of paramotoring was growing. I would guess that at least half of the stands at the exhibition were catering for this new genre of aviation and I couldn't help thinking back to the days when I was a dedicated skydiver, and remembering the feeling of freedom I had when riding the canopy down. I also thought it looked like a seriously cool way of getting airborne, so when Skyschool UK asked if I would like to do a paramotor course at its base in Spain, I jumped at the chance!

The earliest paramotors were crude affairs built in the early 1980s but the sport really took off in France around 1987 when paraglider pilots began using engines to power their paragliding wings.

Paramotoring is perhaps the simplest and cheapest way to go flying. You can fly for about three hours on 10 of fuel and you don't need a runway for take-offs or landings. The equipment is also cheap compared to fixed wing or microlight aircraft and at the moment, you don't even need a licence.

There are however, a number of drawbacks to this most basic form of aviation. For example, paramotors have limited range, they're slow and can only be flown in very light winds. These issues become only minor frustrations when you consider that you can climb over your garden fence into the field behind your house (with the farmer's permission of course!) strap on your motor, and take off into the sunset. Or maybe take your equipment to work with you in the boot of your car and go flying out of the company car park at lunchtime. How cool is that?

Skyschool UK is run by Alex Ledger; a 24-year-old adrenaline junkie who is a good friend of TV action adventurer Bear Grylls. Like myself, Alex's first encounter with aviation was through skydiving but it wasn't long before both he and Bear started to learn about paramotors together. Bear's paramotoring exploits have been widely documented and earlier this year he flew over the peak of Mount Everest in Tibet. The whole thing was filmed and the resulting documentary was televised in the UK, which led to a surge in the number of people taking up the sport.

In 2004 Alex took over the running of Skyschool UK from its previous owner and started to run training courses at Enstone airfield in Oxfordshire. The business proved to be successful but its biggest obstacle was the British weather.

Having spent a few years grappling with the UK climate, Alex decided he'd had enough of cancelled lessons and cold fingers, so he packed up and moved the whole operation to Ordis Aerodrome near Figueres in Spain. With its warmer weather and beautiful scenery, Ordis offered the perfect environment for paramotoring, and with flights from London Stansted to nearby Girona airport costing as little as 30, it was still within easy reach of the UK.

The aerodrome lies in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains about 10nm from the coast on the Costa Brava. It has a small wooden clubhouse, on-site accommodation, a beautiful outdoor swimming pool and even a church. It has two small hangars accommodating a variety of light aircraft and two grass runways, each about 400m in length.

On the night I arrived at Girona airport, the Spanish national football team was playing Germany in the final of Euro 2008. As I stood outside the airport casually admiring the passing taxis draped with red and yellow Spanish flags, I bumped into Will Drew who was also heading to Skyschool to write an article for the Sunday Times. Alex collected us from the airport and took us to a local restaurant to meet the school's two full-time instructors, Kester Haynes and Rob Furnival. After sampling some of the local produce and joining in with the celebrations after Spain beat Germany, we got down to talking about paramotoring. Although the sport is currently unregulated, I was surprised when Alex said he wanted to see an official structure introduced, similar to those used by light aircraft and microlights. "At the moment anyone can buy a paramotor and attempt to fly it without any training whatsoever, which can lead to people seriously hurting themselves," he said. At Skyschool, we won't even let you near a motor until you have mastered handling the canopy on the ground. We also teach air law, meteorology, navigation and instruct each student on good airmanship."

It was an admirable stance to take; after all, safety must always be the highest priority when it comes to any form of aviation, but I can't name a single other light aircraft pilot who would welcome the introduction of more rules. In fact, most think we have too many already, but if your sport, like paramotoring, has none, then I guess you would welcome a few rules.

The next morning, both myself and Will were taken over to the hangar to begin the course. Alex got out one of the canopies, or wings as the paramotor fraternity call them, and explained how they are constructed, what each piece of the equipment was called and what its function was. I had been used to flying skydiving canopies, but the ones used in paramotoring are much more complex. Each wing has four sets of lines running from the risers (which attach it to your harness) up to the canopy. The A lines are at the front and D lines at the rear, which naturally leaves the B and C lines in the centre. Also attached to the risers were the brake lines. These double up as steering controls - pull right to go right, and left towell, you get the idea! The brake lines are attached to the trailing edge of the wing. When you pull both lines down simultaneously, it slows the descent of the canopy, so the brakes behave in a similar fashion to the flaps on an aircraft.

We took the wings out on to the runway and Alex briefed us on ground handling and launching. I had always believed that to launch a paramotor you just ran along with the wing behind you and the engine at full power and off you go. Unfortunately, my simplistic view of things was about to shattered in a big way.

Before you can run down the runway and take off, you have to get the wing flying above your headand that's the tricky bit! Alex taught us how to do a reverse launch first, which is where you stand facing the wing to launch it, but then turn 180 degrees before you can start running. You have to stand with the wing facing into wind, with the A lines in your left hand and D lines in your right hand, then you have to launch the thing in much the same way as you would launch a kite. To lift the canopy, you step backwards and at the same time pull sharply on the A lines while releasing the pressure on the D lines. If you get it right, the wing inflates, rises gracefully up and settles above your head.

My first attempts at this bizarre 'kite-flying ritual' were less than successful. The wing would rise up filling me with expectation, only for it to crash to the ground in a crumpled tangled mess after only a few seconds. This wasn't as easy as it looked! We carried on practising this launch method for the rest of the morning and each time the wing came down in a heap, one of the instructors would be there calmly explaining what went wrong and how I could prevent it from happening again. It is at this point I should perhaps mention that all of Skyschool's instructors have the patience of saints. No matter how many times I kept making the same stupid mistakes, they were always calm and reassuring, and never got annoyed.

As the temperature at the airfield soared into the mid-30s it started to get rather 'thermally' which made it even harder to fly the wings. "Not a problem," said Alex. "We'll take the kit down to the beach." The gentle breeze coming off the Mediterranean is constant and not affected by thermals - ideal for practice launches.

We resumed our canopy-crashing antics on a beautiful stretch of coastline near the Catalonian town of Empuria Brava.

The locals seemed to be impressed with my canopy handling and it wasn't long before a small crowd had gathered to watch. I think they may have thought that we were some sort of strange formation kite-flying team, as both myself and Will staggered around on the hot sand trying to balance our wings on the sea breeze. I was starting to get the hang of it, but the intense heat was beginning to take its toll, and that clear blue water was just too much to resist. As I bobbed around in the warm ocean, I couldn't help feeling rather envious of Alex. This beautiful beach is basically his 'office,' and he gets to go flying nearly every day for the same cost as a pint of beer! It's a nice life if you can get it.

The next part of the training was the 'tow-launch.' The idea behind this is that the student can practise flaring and landing the canopy without the distraction of the motor.

I strapped myself into the harness and clipped the wing to it. Kester and Rob then tied a long rope to the front of the harness and started running they were literally flying me like a kite! Landing simply involves keeping the canopy into wind and pulling both brake lines all the way down to flare the wing, just before you touch down.

I actually found landing much easier than taking off, but that could be because landing a paramotor is exactly the same as landing a skydiving parachute.

To give us a break from the training, and an idea of what it felt like to fly one of these things, Alex took each of us up for a ride in his 'tandem' paramotor. Imagine a Tesco's shopping trolley with a giant fan bolted to the back end and you won't be far wrong. It really was the most primitive-looking flying machine I have ever seen, and I'll admit I was a little apprehensive as I strapped into the tiny front s

SkySchool Flight Centre is a British Adventure Sports company and Europe's leading Paramotoring school based in the extreme sports capital of Europe in north east Catalunya, Spain. SkySchool also offers SkyDiving lessons in Spain. Paragliding Lessons- paraglide in switzerland