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Brighton to Newhaven

I decided to try another takeoff site today since it was blowing SW about 6mph. The site is about 650 ft above sea level and about 1.5 miles from the coast. There was a paramotor pilot already rigged when I arrived and a policeman was talking to him. I went over to see if there was a problem, thinking that he was being booked for some violation but the police were just asking questions like any other bystander would. They had no problem with us flying there at all.

When I rigged up I found that when I tried to start the Wasp, the battery was dead. Great. Luckily my fellow power pilot, Keith, who was rigging his Doodlebug brought his battery over and we linked it up to start it. We had some problems with my engine being flooded but after we took the plug out and emptied the fuel out we got it up and running.

We took off and headed out over the coast. It was very hazy and the visibility was not good, about 2 miles maximum I would say. We climbed to 2,400 ft and flew west for about 3.5 miles down past the piers to Hove. This was into wind and our progress was pretty slow. I overcame this by applying full power and pulling the bar right in so that I was flying level but covering some decent ground. I managed to leave Keith behind by doing this. He was flying an Avian Amour with the bug which is slower than my K4.

We turned at Hove seafront and headed down wind towards Newhaven about 9 miles to the east. We covered this ground pretty quickly with a tail wind, even though it wasn't that strong. It was stronger up here than at ground level and I'm guessing that it was about 10-12mph.

I was up for going further but Keith was signalling to turn back so I followed him and climbed above him to take some photos. We landed back at the same field that we took off from with the wind having picked up slightly and turned further round to the west.

 

A view of the Wasp in flight, photo by Keith O'Sullivan from the D'bug.

The flight was about 22 miles in total and half of this was into wind. I used about 3 litres of fuel which is quite a lot I think but considering that I was using about 80% power for about 50% of the flight then it's not surprising. If we had just turned down wind then we would have used far less.

Footnote: I've taken the battery off to charge it and discovered that Keith had knocked off the cable to the starter motor after he had started the engine. The cable had been caught between the engine and the drive belt for the entire flight and had been worn through. (see photo on the left). I'm surprised that it didn't catch fire with the friction. I reconnected it and it's still working but it's not ideal so I'll have to replace that. You really have to be careful with these little things that can lead to much bigger problems.

A nice flight apart from that.

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