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Ultralight aircraft


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Anyone do this? 

 I've been fascinated with these things and remain amazed you can fly them without getting a pilots license.  Still, I imagine it's a little more complicated than 1.buy cheap ultralight, 2. fly it.

How much training does it take so you won't kill yourself?  How hard are they to maintain, etc?  

Thanks

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I met a guy at a crawfish boil in east Texas who had one.  He was drunk.  He told me he bought it from a buddy and was supposed to get lessons in it from his cropduster pilot.  On lesson #1 the cropduster taught him to taxi it and told him to practice taxiing in the pasture and he'd be back in a week to talk about flying.  So redneck boy taxis it a little too fast on his own one day and got airborne.  Power lines and swamp was ahead of him so he pulled back and started climbing.  He said he nearly killed himself 5 or 10 times in the first minute or so then he got the hang of it.  He had no clue how to land though and he mangled it all up but walked away when he tried to set it down.  So he bought another one and kept at it, purely self-taught.  Now he takes off and lands on the road he lives on, Highway 61 outside Anahuac Tx,.  H just has to wait for no cars coming.  About then we stumbled to the keg and he asks me if I want to go for a ride... right then.

Nope.  Nope.  Uh uh.  I'm good man, thanks.  

Maybe tomorrow?

Nah.  Not tomorrow either.

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Used to be a park for these things off of I-10 between Brookshire and Sealy.  Always fun to watch them flying around back in the day.  If the Cessnas were the go-karts of the skies, these things were definitely the lawn mowers.

My wife has a cousin who bought one.  He taxied it around, but never took flight.  Hope he sold it.

Edited by dcbc
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4 hours ago, Not a cat said:

amazed you can fly them without getting a pilots license.

How much training does it take so you won't kill yourself?

Regs are loose due to the fact that the pilot is usually the only one who dies. 

Bernard

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