Many years ago my friend Jon gave me a SkySurfer as a present. This is a small, brushed motor paramotor with a 1.2M span foil. The foil is interesting as it has foam ribs internally and a palstic spar to help keep it inflated. It makes for a mostly uneventful take-off. It flies great, even in my hands, but is just a little… dull. Ok, let’s see what I can do to replace the motor with something that’s a little more powerful.

Another exploding propeller guard. OK, I take the hint. No more plastic washing-up bowls, time for some metal. No, it’s not my desk with the flowery laptop cover, it’s the part of the office SWMBO uses. Mine is the far end away from the light coming in the window. This model is now named Frankenplane.

A typical gorgeous day in the Algarve and an entertaining time with my Slowie. Flies great but a lot faster rolling/pitching than I reaslised it would be. It turns out the name Slowstick refers to the stick movements you need to make due the the impressively-large control surfaces. It can loop-the-loop in it’s own length. Really fun. Went through a few propellers :)

Hmm, the previous paramotor didn’t go to well. There was insufficient clearance between the propellor (driven by the 1.4kW / 2HP brushless motor which I’m sure had nothing to do with it) and the washing-up bowel. One hefty whack of the throttle and the plastic propeller-guard (washing-up bowl) was converted into many small pieces. A quick trip to the nearest Chinese shop for a bigger bowl and were back in business.

Yeah OK. I admit it. My hand/eye coordination isn’t what it used to me and sometimes I’m just too slow to recover from an ‘event’, leaving me to reach for some more glue. Brainwave - I’ll build a paramotor since everyone knows they fly pretty slow. Even I should be able to handle that. Here’s me playing with a rough design made out of some plastic sqaure tube from AKI (a local DIY store) and a cut-out washing up bowl.