Massey Field Fly-In, June 2015

We got together for an impromptu camp-in / fly-in and had a great time!  Massey Field is always a great time!
It's located just down the road in Maryland and has an old DC3 and P51 on site.  Beautiful flying area and tons of fun.  Great folks here and not only are they great pilots, but great chefs too.

Delish Food!

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Airborne Over Van Sant

Had a nice get together at Van Sant tonight, May 9, 2015. We had 7-8 wings in the air and a nice sized audience on the ground. Plus, we brought our spouses and coolers and had a fun time afterwards too. 

Really looking forward to the next outing with this gang.  Great People!

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By Dawns Early Light

First time back PPG flying since I injured my arm. All went amazingly smooth and I enjoyed an hour long silky smooth flight Sunday Morning. John came out and flew with me and we met Emiel from New York who was kiting and soon to be flying with us.

If ya'll have ever thought about PPG flying, you should try it.  It's amazingly fun and safe!

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Pine Tree Drone War - Drone Lost

Still learning to fly my Drone. Less crashes and I'm getting better with spot videos. I'll be using this when paragliding next month.  The camera views that this thing puts out is awesome!  I'm trying to get smooth with the transition from horizontal flight to vertical flight whilst adjusting the camera angle to stay on the same subject.  So far, I either crash into the subject (me), go flying past the subject and nearly hitting the house, or rocketing to a climb and missing everything - including the shot!  

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OtisDrone - First Flight

After 4 months of my DJI Phantom 2 Drone sitting in the closet, I finally decided to take it ouit for a test spin.  I'll be using it for my paragliding videos in the Spring so I figured I should learn how to fly it.

Ernest almost got a hold of it but just missed biting the skids.  Thank goodness he missed because there are 4 carbon fiber blades spinning ridiculously fast. I have a lot to learn flying these drones but it's really cool and provides great camera footage.

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Cloud Hopping On The Delaware

Had an amazing flight this morning.  Lots of low level fog over the Delaware River but absolutely clear as a bell above it.  The ride was really smooth too so after a short solo flight, I went back and joined up with John and we flew out over the river and then back over the Pennsylvania countryside.  Even though I thought of Sweet Home Alabama, I was still riding above PA.  I hope you enjoy this flights video.

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Van Sant Point Fog

Got in only 15 minutes this morning due to the fog rolling up the ridge lines and ascending onto Van Sant Airfield.  Still, it was a great 15 minutes and Milan met me there and took some great videos for me (Thank You Sir).  Milan will be starting PPG training very soon and is looking forward to get airborne.  Hope you enjoy the videos and we'll see you soon!

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Van Sant to the Delaware - Scud Runnin'

Met two more PPGers this morning up at Van Sant airfield in Northern Bucks County.  This is a great field to fly at and the folks there are wonderful.  Also, got to meet two cool dudes, John & Milan.  John has been flying about a year and Milan is just about ready to get started with lessons.  Milan took some picks and shared them with us after the flight.

Hope you enjoy the video!

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Kolb Return - And I Hit A Tree

Went flying at Kolb Field this morning with two of my flying buddies, Rob & Jim.  Beautiful morning! Hit a tree!   Thanks Marcus and Scott for the use of your field.  It's a great place to fly!  If ya'll haven't yet made it to Kolb, please do - it's a great field with nice and easy places to fly out to the West.  You can pretty much fly all the way to Lancaster and stay over fields the whole time!      This was a local area today.  Enjoy!

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Get Me On The Ground!

Drove down to Maryland this morning at 4:00 a.m. to get some air-time with Jesse and Marty.  Arrived at 6:00 and started setting up.  During the preflight I noticed that one of my motor mounts had split, so Jesse pulled his toolbox out of the truck and we swapped all of them out in a matter of minutes.

Now it was time to fly.

I took off first and immediately wished I hadn't left the ground.  To me, it was like flying in a tornado and wasn't comfortable at all.  In all fairness though, it wasn't beyond conditions I'd flown in before, but it had been a while and I had forgotten how bumpy, lifty, and sinky conditions could be and still safely flown in.  I flew for only about 5 minutes before I decided that I wanted to land again and watch them fly.

After Jesse got back, we headed off to his shop him and Marty did a complete tune up on Shaniqua - my Fresh Breeze Monster Paramotor.  So, instead of getting a long smooth flight in, I got a thorough tune-up and I cleaned her up.  Just wait till next weekend!

Here's a short vid:

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Germansville Heatwave

Had a great time up in Germansville this weekend flying with Rob, Jesse, and Matt.  The temps were a little high. Ok, a lot high with "feel-like" temps reaching 100 with 90% humidity.  I flew a couple of times and my take-off run was long each time.  The Density Altitude was no doubt pretty high and it kept me running for a bit.    We all went down to the "school house" for dinner last night and man it was delicious; each having a pounder cheesesteak and fries.  Oh, an perhaps a beer or two.  

We are testing out some new tow-behind camera's so you can expect a new view in the new future from my video's.  Hope you enjoy this one and as always - Be Particular!

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Balloon Hunting

 Morgantown in the morning.  6:00 am to be exact.  I arrived in Morgantown this morning about 5:40 and got all my gear ready and airborne just before the 6:00 alarm went off on my iPhone.   I had a really nice flight with the ride mostly smooth when below 150 feet.  Right before the flight ended (about 45 minutes), it started getting a little bumpy so the coffee that was waiting on me at Duncan Donuts wasn't gonna be waiting long.  I hope you enjoy the video and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pennppg 

Thanks!

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Germansville By Air

Good Morning!  Rob, John (on his PPC), and I took an early morning flight from Flying M Aerodrome this morning to see the sites over Germansville and New Tripoli.  The weather was cooler and less humid that it has been and made for a real fun flight.  I really like this sound track in the background, hope I can find more of the same type.    Hope you enjoy the vid, as always.   Be Particular!

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Flight Seeing This Sunday

What an amazing Weekend!  We started on Friday with a farewell to Beer Week - even though it still had a few days to go.  We knew we'd be busy with other fun stuff and wouldn't be able to get back out so we sent Beer Week off with a bang over yonder at Capones with Beth & Joy & Matt & Will & Kyle and myself.  On Saturday morning Beth and I got up to start working out in the yards and spreading the five yards of mulch that we'd ordered.

 Matt and Joy had offered to let us borrow their wheel barrows but we'd have to come get them in the truck.  I happily accepted their offer and headed over.  Unbeknownst to Beth and I, they had a plan to come and help and Matt and Will jumped in the truck and we headed back over with extra hands and tools.  Joy followed shortly after with the pup and lunch!  This was going to be a work party for sure!  When we arrived back home, Beth and Kyle had already started weedin' & seedin' and the party had begun.  By 5:00 pm, we were all shattered and called it mission complete; all mulch spread.

We had a big bbq afterwards and perhaps re-celebrated the end of Beer Week with a few more good 'uns and some dead chickens, porkchops, corn, sweet taters, Sangria, and a whole lot more.  Plus, all the pups got a bath since they'd been playing all day and had mud from head to toe!  I'd say a pretty successful day!

On Sunday Beth and I got up at 7:00 to head over to Brian's Harley Davidson in Langhorne Pennsylvania to queue up for the Bucks County Covered Bridge Poker Run. We were thinking there would be about 100 bikers there but boy were we surprised to learned that there were 540!!!!!  We registered, received our riding pins  and poker sheets, lined up with about 80 other riders and headed out for our first stop (pictured to the left) at Van Sant Airport in Northern Bucks County.  Here we went to the check-in table and each picked a card.  The facilitators marked our poker sheets with the card that we'd picked and the object was to get the best hand by picking a card at each of five stops.  Neither Beth nor I ended up with anything more than a pairs of Kings but the 7.5 hours (yes, 7.5 hours) of riding through the Pennsylvania Countryside was incredible.  The Vulcan 1600 (motorcycle) that we have is so comfortable that we never ached from the long day. We headed back home around 3:30 pm and as soon as I walked in the door, I got a call from one of my Paragliding buddies, Matt-Matt asking if we were coming out to fly on this gorgeous day.  I was a tuckered from being out in the sun, but any opportunity to fly can't be quickly ignored.  Beth wanted to do some stuff around the house, so I loaded up the truck and headed out to Morgantown, one hours drive towards the west.  As quickly as I arrived, I unpacked my gear, said some quick hello's, and launched.  Hopefully the video attached below will do the flight some justice.  It was simply amazing.  I hope you enjoy it and look forward to posting the next one too.  

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Combat Maneuvers

Today Matt and I did some war games maneuvering throughout the Morgantown (Pa) valley area.  We (unbeknownst to Matt) decided that he'd be the aggressor and I, the defender of freedom and hot air balloon flying.  I started following him around and decided later, again unbeknownst to him, that I'd followed him around long enough to run him out of the area and returned to our LZ to prepare for grub time. 

The air was a bit trashy but it still made for a fun day of flying.  There were three balloons initially when we took off, but I've no idea where the third one ended up going. I guess Matt Matt shot it down.  I hope you enjoy the video and come back or more later.

Be Particular!

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This morning Rob and I braved the cold twenty-six degree weather and went flying around Germansville and New Tripoli.  The air was a bit active but the ride was definitely worth the additional pucker factor.  We both decided later that we had brought the wrong gloves and paid the price by having our flights shortened due to the numbness and loss of dexterity in our hands and fingers.  Still, a successful flight is worth a lot and I didn't mind the conditions too much after all.  

Rob had a real smooth landing and almost zero forward speed, while I had to take a couple of steps on landing.  Now, if I can just get him to do a transition course to paragliding (nonpowered), we'd be able to fly all hours of the day.  :)

Short video attached of today's trip through the air!  Be Particular.

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A Bird's View

I wanted to make sure I got a chance to fly today because tomorrow morning I'm having knee surgery to repair to tears in the Meniscus of my left knee.  I've been dealing with it for a year now and finally decided that I needed to get it fixed. It's been getting a bit more difficult to climb stairs, exercise, launch, and so forth. Today's flight was back in Morgantown and perhaps nothing new, but it was a very smooth and enjoyable flight.  I flew into a few more coves than normal and stayed relatively lower to the ground; definitely wanted some good video in case the recovery time is longer than the 3-4 weeks that I'm expecting it to be.  

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Inflight Belt Mishap

 Took off this afternoon planning to fly over to the house but never made it! I had launched from Kolb Field in North Phoenixville and not long after crossing past the town my drive belt decided to end the flight and broke. This caused me to have to shut down the motor to avoid internal damage. As I do when I fly my Cherokee, I constantly look for alternate landing sites should the need arise and it did today. Below me, and only 1 mile from my house I could see the Longford Crossing Bark Park. Because there were high tension power lines between me and the dog park, I decided to take the safer route and land in the field adjacent to the factory across the street. Below is the video of that flight.

I do hope you enjoy it! Ya'll be particular!

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Fox Two Fox Two

Morgantown Air Force once again defended the Amish Countryside by eliminating the "bad guys".  The previous week (5/12/12) I had taken a short flight and thought I had seen some airborne activity.  I couldn't stay up long because, believe it or not, as I was preparing for launch, I broke my front tooth whilst biting the sleeve of my glove to pull it on my hand.  I got airborne and the pain started to arrive so I kept that flight short.
This week however, (5/19/12), I'm good to go and went hunting.  The fun starts 3 or 4 minutes into the video.

As always, hope you enjoy it and be particular!

Shane

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Morgantown Flyability

A look at current conditions for Morgantown.

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