Tres Amigos Above Ground Level

One of the great benefits of learning to fly Powered Paragliders is meeting the great people that are also into this sport as well.  Great Folks for sure!  Over the last two weekends, we've been overflying the countryside near Germansville and New Tripoli.  Jeff and Rob and I flew formation and had a ball doing so.  The ride was incredibly smooth and over the last couple of weekends, I've personally logged over 3 hours of airtime in this area.  Have a look at the video footage and hopefully you'll enjoy the show and the landscape.  Peace!

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Spring Wing 2014

We had a ball down in Virginia over the long Memorial Day Weekend.  What a blast!  I took about 5 hours of video and slowly (but surely) getting to it.  I hope to get the remaining edited up in the very near future.  Each year the event is getting larger and I/We do hope ya'll decide to come down.  Even if you're not flyers, there is always  a party going on and a dead chicken on the grill somewhere.  Hope to see you soon!

Take a look at the video, hope you enjoy!  This was the first time I was using a GoPro chest harness and didn't realize that my knees would be showing up in the video.  So, we'll call this one a first person view of the airport.  If you sit on your keyboard it'll look like your legs are in the vid.  lol

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Super Snow Bowl Sunday

Yesterday, Rob and I faced the Winter Chill and went PPG flying over Germansville and New Tripoli.  A lot of the snow had melted but a fresh 8 inch coating was layed down this morning - and still falling by the way.
We enjoyed a thirty minute flight with temps between 15*F - 30*F depending on how high we were flying.  I supposed the lower temps were wind chill inclusive.

Have a look at the video and hope you enjoy.  We're planning on having a Spring Fly-In / Camp-In somewhere near here and of course our annual trip down to Campbell Field in the Spring as well.  

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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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Blue Mountain Flying

Flying the slopes off Blue Mountain!  I had been hearing how generous the folks were at Blue Mountain Ski Resort, but hadn't had the chance yet to get up there and have a go myself.  That all changed this morning.  What a great time we had!  We were allowed to ride the ski lifts up to the top of the mountain and Blue Mountain staff kept the skiers clear as we launched right from the ski slopes.  The view was amazing and we were able to mingle with the skiers and tell them about how cool our sport is and hear more about theirs.  I do ski, however it's comparative to my slam dunking ability, or concert piano talents.  Ok, Ok, I can't ski.

The LZ is located within 200 yards of the ski slope so we were able to ride up, fly down, walk over, ride up, fly down, walk over... several times during the day.  What a blast we had.  Here, have a look!

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