Advice for Flight:

 

Failure to manage your airspeed can result in instant and certain death. This cannot be overstated. Adequate motion through the air is REQUIRED at ALL times.

Understand the inertia of your aircraft, a delayed response to an engine failure can result in instant death.

Practice, practice, practice your dead stick landings. DO NOT wait until your first engine failure, to learn to fly your aircraft without power.

Make sure to understand the effects increased wind speeds on your particular aircraft. When in doubt, fly in ZERO wind. Same goes for crosswinds.

Maintain your fuel delivery system in top condition. Fuel system related issues are a MAJOR cause of engine failures.

Never fly in areas or altitudes that will not permit a safe forced landing. 

Any person teaching THEMSELVES to take off and land any aircraft, has a fool for an instructor.

 

>>Training, flight skills, competency, preparation - and a healthy respect for the fact that your butt is at the mercy of the laws of nature and the machine in which you trust your life. Take them all seriously at all times, and you will reap the indescribable rewards singularly found soaring in the clouds...

 

***Here's one specific to 2 stroke ultralight engines. If you find yourself having to adjust your carb slide needle richer, several times in a row, due to it running hot, you have a seal leak and are about to have an engine seizure! ***

 

>>Remember, always, you are only as good as your last landing! Anybody can take off and fly! It's landings that change you from a person, to a pilot!

 

Respect the weather, respect your own flying skills, respect your aircrafts ability and limitations. Keep to the flying rules, since the first flying attempts these rules were set through blood and tears by our flying heroes. By keeping to the rules and listening to our aviator friends flying can and is done sefely all over the world

In all flying remember the 3 things that do you NO GOOD:
1. THE RUNWAY BEHIND YOU!
2. THE ALTITUDE ABOVE YOU!
3. THE FUEL ON THE GROUND!

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I will take a try at the BIG 10 things: (1) Get training. (2) Know how to properly maintain your aircraft. (3) Know and observe all the rules for flying Part 103 (Ultralight) vehicles. (4) Take some kind of adequate ground school - either self taught, video, online or institutional. (5) Fly within your comfort zone. (6) Become a student of weather and sky conditions/visibility minimums. (7) Know and observe airspace restrictions. (8) Know that competency, judgement and preparation are your best friends (9) Gain a thorough understanding of airplane aerodynamics... how and why it flies (aka airspeed). (10) Have FUN!

 

 

Something else for would be ultralight pilots who wonder what it's all about: Ultralight pilots view the world just a bit differently. At some point they all decided that the risk of going aloft (greater I suppose than the risk of not going aloft) in a simple flying machine kept airborne by their own skills ... was worth whatever it took to achieve. They all seem to be kindred spirits with certain other "abnormal" people that came before, names like Wright, Dumont, Davincci. Because at some point all of them apparently adopted the same crazy desire to know what it actually feels like to be a bird. Ultralight pilots understand the private magic of brushing by a cloud, taking in an entire county in a single glance, and not just watching a sunset, but being a part of it. Open air pilots don't brag about being one of the lucky few. While they are proud of the accomplishment, they are often content just to ponder their good fortune silently. One way to spot one is he'll be the guy or gal gazing up into space - especially if they hear the sound of a two stroke motor pop and rumble by (the sound of which they can identify from quite a distance). And when the craft finally appears overhead, they'll be in a trance - most likely recalling the first time they ever saw a pair of those colorful wings surrounding the outline of a person hanging 1,000 foot high in the open air. And how that same sight, probably seen first years ago as a kid, changed their life forever. That's really why we call this site the Magnificent Men & their Flying Machines. Because there's really no better way to describe it - there is something extraordinary about who they are ... and what they do