Learning to fly Ultralights

[Norman Langlois]

Lost part of my post

Learning to fly came partly from the unmentionable source Simulation. I spent 10 years with a combat flight simulation squadron. During the time I custom built ruder and flight yoke system. flying in combat simulation with this hardware and being accustomed to the 3 dimensional world necessary to do combat. Is actually no different than the real thing as far as the body's coordination goes its the same. I am well trained physically.

The shock and awe came when I was 100 ft in the air. This ain't no game and they didn't put this dam wind in the simulator .
Still I was quite able to fly the plane . No miracle no luck just unprepared. Just level off power down and land.
Prepared is a state of mind . I had not confirmed the plane would fly . Luck maybe but that has to do with the construction not the flying . After the flight I began to learn to control the lift off speed .I was never afraid of it after that,I kept working to improve the stats for rotation.
last month I reached the time when the plane was to be flown by a test pilot to confirm its character. who also completed my lessons to fly using the single seat methodology all the time. As well all the early lift off and landing were always discussed in detail.

One such event was a take off and landing during gusty wind conditions of 7-8 mph
At the point of flare power set to a rate of decent ( not off). A gust of wind stalled me at 5 ft off the water,resulting in me skipping like a stone up to 7 or 8 ft and splat like a Mallard duck .I got a bit wet . lesson learned power on with such wind conditions fly it back onto the water timing the power off at the contact and flare
Regards Norm