Noob questions (please be nice)

Stupid questions from a ignorant noob. I fly radio control aircraft including jet powered so my view on ultralights is skewed for sure. I want to get into UL but am in no hurry at all.

1) Do any ultralights use a fly by wire system?
2) Has anyone ever rigged an ultralight with servos so it could be tested via radio control for the the first flight to prove airworthyness with less risk to life? Is the first flight of an UL the most dangerous ?
3) Is it realistic for a new guy to buy an UL for less than 5K and be able to get up flying with help from a club? Or are these more prone to problems making it harder for a new person to be sucessful?
4) I have access to a rural full scale paved airports, which are mostly used for farmers spraying crops. Some use CTAF some do not. I can get permissions to use them from the owners/managers, but will the FAA have a problem if they found out I used it for UL?
5) Is flying an ultralight with floats over water safer than flying over land (water might soften crashes?)
6) Is flying ultralights statistically more dangerous than riding a motorcycle?
7) If your ultralight does not have ailerons (rudder/elevator only), how do you manage a cross wind on landing?


Yup, noob questions! Thanks for anyone who answer them.

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Originally Posted by skydve76

1) Do any ultralights use a fly by wire system?

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Not that I am aware of. Weight would be a primary factor as most Part 103 vehicles are bumping the boundaries as it is.

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2) Has anyone ever rigged an ultralight with servos soit could be tested via radio control for the the first flight to prove airworthyness with less risk to life? Is the first flight of an UL the most dangerous ?

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This I guess is possible, but frankly I've never heard of it being done. Most ultralights use existing designs that are proven. The biggest risks other than improper construction would be pilot skill. I don't know of any stats on Ultralight, but in the related Amateur Built Experimental aircraft, there is a very high "infant" mortality rate. Again pilot skill and construction problems are more likely issues than bad design.

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3) Is it realistic for a new guy to buy an UL for less than 5K and be able to get up flying with help from a club? Or are these more prone to problems making it harder for a new person to be sucessful?

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$5000 is going to be pushing it for a new vehicle. You can certainly get used for less. Clubs are few and far between though you may find someone local with an LSA that is similar in flying characteristics who might be able to help you. The two-seat ultralight training exemption is GONE.

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4) I have access to a rural full scale paved airports, which are mostly used for farmers spraying crops. Some use CTAF some do not. I can get permissions to use them from the owners/managers, but will the FAA have a problem if they found out I used it for UL?

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If they don't have an issued CTAF, then 122.9 is appropriate. I'm not sure why a CTAF is an issue with the rest of your question. The FAA has no problem with non-towered airports. Towered airports, you obviously need ATC permission.

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5) Is flying an ultralight with floats over water safer than flying over land (water might soften crashes?)

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Nope. Water is hard as far as this is concerned. Water landings are a different skill from landing on land. Floats are typically draggy and even though 103 gives a weight allowance for them, the aircraft probably performs worse than the same plane in land configuration.

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6) Is flying ultralights statistically more dangerous than riding a motorcycle?

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Yes. I'd put it more in line with driving ATV's or dirt bikes than street machines.

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7) If your ultralight does not have ailerons (rudder/elevator only), how do you manage a cross wind on landing?

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You've got a few options....land in to the wind (nice thing about ultraights is that they don't take much runway, so a reasonable size field can be used in any direction), or land with some side drift (i.e. in a crab). Between the fact you're frequently on grass and the wheels on such planes are designed for it, makes this allowable.

Excellent job of answering his questions Ron.

Thank you for the answers! I guess when I think about cross winds I am thinking of the paved runway. The sides of which are death (tall grass, rocks) It sounds like grass is the best way to go.
For $5K I meant a used one. I have seen them that cheap.

Do you have a link about this 2 seat exemption being taken away? I'd like to read up on it, how it developed an how the FAA justified it.

The justification is that it nearly every vehicle that was claiming the exemption was abusing it. The FAA put up with a lot of abuse (weight, speed, fuel cap) on the single seat ones, but they're a little more sensitive when you might stick a passenger aboard. They felt they had a good transition by allowing those all to be converted into LSAs. This works OK for many ultralight training operations, some of the powered parachutes won't fit into the LSA definition of a powered parachute.

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Originally Posted by skydve76

Do you have a link about this 2 seat exemption being taken away? I'd like to read up on it, how it developed an how the FAA justified it.

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Maybe some more information is needed.

The 2-seat exemption was a 2-seat TRAINING exemption. Ultralights are, by definition, single seat.

The 2-seat exemption was an attempt to provide ultralight training and reduce the level of "self training" that was going on and getting people hurt.

So the FAA empowered several organizations to provide exemptions to their instructors that would allow them to operate 2-seat ultralights for training only. EAA was one, US Ultralight Association was another and there were a couple more.

The problem is that the requirements for becoming an "instructor" were pretty rudimentary. So someone wanting to have a 2-seat ultralight could do so by becoming an "instructor". I don't know how much the FAA was really concerned about this "abuse" of the instructor exemption. How much they saw it as some big danger to the pubic. [I had never heard of anyone with a 2-seat ultralight getting "ramp checked" by someone from the FAA.] Nor did they care much about the "fat ultralights". Most FAA offices had more important things to be concerned with.

However, when Sport Pilot came in, the FAA thought apparently was to roll everything under LSA. [They didn't care much about ultralights one way or another.]

The problem is that all the existing 2-seat ultralights got rolled under the "Experimental" LSA category, which made them un-usable for training after a moratorium period. So anyone that was providing ultralight training were out of luck. They could become Sport Pilot instructors but could not instruct in their 2-seat ultralights now.

Where they could use something they could buy used for maybe $12K, now costs them more than $45K. The Sport Pilot rule made the economics for ultralight instructing impossible. Even for the largest UL dealers. So it's disappeared.

What people are generally left with is getting training in an LSA and then transitioning down to an ultralight. However, with the max weight of an LSA being about 1400lbs and an ultralight's weight begin capped at 1/5th that, transitioning down to an ultralight from an LSA is not easy. There is a pretty big difference in how the two handle.

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Originally Posted by skydve76

3) Is it realistic for a new guy to buy an UL for less than 5K and be able to get up flying with help from a club? Or are these more prone to problems making it harder for a new person to be sucessful?
7) If your ultralight does not have ailerons (rudder/elevator only), how do you manage a cross wind on landing?

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The Quicksilver MX is the most abundant entry level ultralight ever built. They are rudder/elevator only and have enough dihedral to be pretty docile. Based on how many were built, thousands of entry level ultralight flyers got started with an MX.

I've bought two in the last several years for $2,000-$2,500 in decent flying shape. The engine can be rebuilt to zero time for $500 by several Rotax repair places in the US.

You can find them on Barnstormers.com They were built about '81-'83 but it was a very well thought out simple design and they are many lurking around. There is also an active owner's site for anyone with a Quicksilver on yahoo at quicksilveraircraftowners.com. They are very easy to repair if you happen to have a bad landing. All-in-all, a great entry level UL to get you started. And there is a ready market for them when you want to move up. I sold one in a couple days on Barnstormers last month.

re: floats. Have 400+ hours in Quicksilvers [MX and 2-place] on floats. Floats are a blast but you'll want to start on wheels. Water adds variables to your flying you'll not want to deal with starting out. No brakes on water and taxing around piers, boats on your runway, etc. Example: you want calm wind conditions when you are learning to fly an ultralight. However, the hardest takeoff to make on floats is in calm wind conditions. Calm conditions are to floats what cross winds are to wheels. An advanced take off technique.

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6) Is flying ultralights statistically more dangerous than riding a motorcycle?

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Yes. I'd put it more in line with driving ATV's or dirt bikes than street machines.

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As a long, long time motorcyclist/dirt bike/ATV rider, I'd be interested in the data used to arrive at that conclusion. While dirt bikers have a lot of crashes, in most cases the rider gets up, dusts himself off and goes on his way. Fatalities are rare. ATV's are a different animal. A road bike crash is likely going to involve a trip to the hospital. Absent crash and fatality data on ultralight vehicles, just from the dynamics, I'd expect a crash to compare more with a road bike crash.

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Originally Posted by skydve76

7) If your ultralight does not have ailerons (rudder/elevator only), how do you manage a cross wind on landing?

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Same way you do it with your 2 axis RC's.

Hmmm, I'd put it about where dirt bikes go and leave off comparisons to road bikes.

Here's my thought on that:

1) Velocity - assuming one is performing an unscheduled landing (engine out) or muffs a landing (ground loop), the stall speed of an ultralight is going to be around the speeds of the average dirt bike dumping (let's forget racing and think about normal dirt bike trail sort of stuff), if not even less.

2) Momentum - this is the real bone crusher, and dirt bikes and ultralights don't have much; it's the pilot/rider that are the cause of it. Street bikes are much heavier and have their own way of traveling with the rider that can cause problems. I've dumped both street and dirt bikes and never had the latter wind up in front of me.

3) Surface. Most ultralights operate on grass and dirt, which is a helluvalot more forgiving than pavement. 20 MPH on dirt leaves scrapes and cuts on the skin. 20 MPH on pavement removes skin.

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Originally Posted by martymayes

As a long, long time motorcyclist/dirt bike/ATV rider, I'd be interested in the data used to arrive at that conclusion. While dirt bikers have a lot of crashes, in most cases the rider gets up, dusts himself off and goes on his way. Fatalities are rare. ATV's are a different animal. A road bike crash is likely going to involve a trip to the hospital. Absent crash and fatality data on ultralight vehicles, just from the dynamics, I'd expect a crash to compare more with a road bike crash.

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Having been around ultralights for almost 40 years now, I think the crash and fatality data is closer to dirt bikes than road bikes.

Yes, like with dirt bikes, their are fatalities flying ultralights. But even so, the vast majority of the "accidents" I'm aware of in ultralights hurt the pilot's pride and the machine more than actually hurt the pilot. And the vast majority of the accidents never make it to the papers.

There is not a lot of mass and a whole lot of "crumple zone" in an ultralight structure. A vertical crash and the quick stop that entails is going to cause a lot of injury or possible a fatality. That's true.

However, most ultralight "accidents" are not of that variety. They are horizontal decelerations because of blown takeoff, blown landing, off field landing, etc. Bending aluminum absorbs a lot of the force in most of the "accidents".

The other thing ultralights have is that there isn't enough mass or speed in an ultralight for the deceleration to be very violent. [I heard some stats years ago on the difference in running off the end of the runway in a Cessna 150 right at rotation vs the average ultralight. The mass of a Cessna 150 decelerating generally will badly damage it and hurt the pilot badly. The mass of the ultralight decelerating generally only bends it a bit and the pilot isn't injured.]

If one gets some training and flies with a proper level of care and caution, I don't believe flying an ultralight is more dangerous than riding a motorcycle.

If one either doesn't get any training or is an adrenaline junkie that constantly pushes the envelope of their skill level, then I think an ultralight will be more dangerous than a motorcycle because of the unforgiving nature of flying in general. You can probably push the envelope too far repeatedly on a motorcycle and get away with it. Not so much with an aircraft [ultralight or other].

My thoughts.

For the most part I agree with your assessment that flying an ultralight doesn't have to be "dangerous." So much risk is directly under the control of the operator. Training and caution go a long way. The question I would be asking is "How can I make flying an ultralight as safe as possible?" vs. "Is flying an ultralight safe?" The latter suggest safety is out of the operator's control.

Regarding crashing, hard to say one activity is statistically similar, or more, or less safe than another without data. I commented I'd like to see that data. Otherwise, we are just throwing around personal opinions that may or may not be anywhere close to accurate.

1. I don't know of any ultralights using a fly by wire system, it might be good for a special crash test of some kind.


2. This question is about the initial flying of a prototype, I assume. Remote control testing of scale models of new planes has been done, but not by any ultralights I know of. It might make some tests safer, but it would be a big effort with little gain for any near conventional machine. Some really radical designs might benefit by detecting some unexpected danger by remote control.


3. Motorized ultralights and Sport Light planes are generally harder to fly than regular airplanes, in my opinon. Some conventional airplane time might be a big help.


4. (I think you are asking about using the aircraft radio, not about using the airport.) I use a Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (CTAF) on every flight of my ultralight, and since it is required at my airport and advised on the chart, I assume that is okay with the authorities. I made up a call sign based on my airplane's name, but people called back asking,"hey, is that you in the biplane?", so now my radio call sign is "slow biplane". If your question was actually about the airport, I don't see any special problem.


5. I would love to hear more about floats! I know nothing. Do they land upwind or downwind? Is the water state the important thing, or the wind direction?


6. "Ultralights" includes hang gliding, paragliding, and paramotors, all of which are traditionally high risk sports compared to golf. I don't know of any statistics on motorized ultralights (which includes trikes), but crashes happen. In the last half dozen "damage incidents" near my airport no one was seriously injured, as I recall, but those were mostly sport class airplanes pretending to be ultralights (which outnumber the real Part 103 ultralights).

7. I have no ailerions, just rudder and elevator, and I do cross wind landings by flying and landing at a crab angle. At low speeds I get a slight skid and a hop on my wheels, but I usually don't notice it since I'm busy steering down the runway. In stronger but moderate cross winds my ground speed is slower, so there still is no problem. The real issue is rolling on the ground in a cross wind without getting a wing picked up, and that is done by keeping the nose low.

I have a Pterodactyl ascender for sale, great Ultralight , if your interested.

Pterodactyl ascender looks nice to me . whats is the location , condition description and asking price .

for the new boy [ Newbie, newb, noob, or n00b ] with questions the eaa link +getting started+ is a good place to browse .
https://www.eaa.org/en/eaa/aviation-...ralight-flying

specifically the training guide

https://www.eaa.org/~/media/Files/EA...g_training.pdf

the training guide provides some illumination to +water work+

i have n00b type questions also :

about floats: whats the rule on using public water ways ? local i have a navigable channel and a big TVA impoundment available. Could i just trailer my UL down to the fisherman's launch ramp , put in ,
and fly off?
how about a N numbered LSA , could i just put down on any suitable stretch of water?
there are a number of regulators might be interested, the corp of engineers , they run the impoundments i think , the Coast Guard, they rule on the navigable channels[Coast Guard has ships stationed local] . in tennesee the TWRA has the hammer for boats.
i think it would be a real +gas+ to put a UL in the mix. .
[ i have been searching the regs on this and it is very confusing to me

noob , Pterodactyl be easier for you to call. 208 -660-9396 I'm not much at texting.

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Originally Posted by duster351

noob , Pterodactyl be easier for you to call. 208 -660-9396 I'm not much at texting.

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I'm in Athens, tx. Good shape, two sets of canards, two sets of drag rudders, two engines, two redrives. $1800.00

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Originally Posted by mrbarry

i have n00b type questions also :

about floats: whats the rule on using public water ways ? local i have a navigable channel and a big TVA impoundment available. Could i just trailer my UL down to the fisherman's launch ramp , put in ,
and fly off?
how about a N numbered LSA , could i just put down on any suitable stretch of water?
there are a number of regulators might be interested, the corp of engineers , they run the impoundments i think , the Coast Guard, they rule on the navigable channels[Coast Guard has ships stationed local] . in tennesee the TWRA has the hammer for boats.
i think it would be a real +gas+ to put a UL in the mix. .
[ i have been searching the regs on this and it is very confusing to me

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Have 500 hours in ultralights on floats in the populated area of SE Wisconsin. Probably have landed on 35+ bodies of water in the area.

One of the things I did before operating was I called the local law enforcement agencies around the area and told them I'd be operating on the lake in their area and then gave the my name and phone number and said to call me if there was ever any kind of complaint. That proactive approach showed I didn't want to be a nuisance.

They appreciated the heads up and I never got called. [I was NOT calling to ask permission. They don't have the authority to tell me I can operate. I was only trying to professionally courteous and and make it easy for them to contact me if there was ever a complaint. ]

Have only been stopped once by law enforcement on a lake. They said, "There is a reg against airplanes landing on the lake." I said, "I understand. This is an ultralight, it's not an airplane." They asked me to wait while they called the FAA office. The FAA said, "Yep, he's right. That's not an airplane. Any seaplane reg would not apply to him." So they said, "No problem. Have a nice day."

Most of the seaplane regs have been on the books a long time and have been forgotten by any local law enforcement. No one even knows they are there. [At least in our area.] The seaplane regs locally are not enforced except on that one lake I got stopped on. [And I think that stop was just 2 guys bored on a nice day.]

In the end, it's all about how much noise you make and how long it takes you to take off. Ultralight are up and away so quick they really don't have much impact. If it was a Cessna 172 eating up half the lake on takeoff -- that's a different story. That will draw the ire of some lakeside residents.

The one thing you would need to find out about is any wildlife protected areas. There are stretches of the Mississippi that are protected. Friend got a pretty big fine for landing on the river in one of those areas.

-Buzz