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Thread: Noob questions (please be nice)

  1. #1

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    Shocked 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.
    Last edited by skydve76; 07-21-2014 at 03:01 PM. Reason: spelling

  2. #2
    FlyingRon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by skydve76 View Post
    1) Do any ultralights use a fly by wire system?
    Not that I am aware of. Weight would be a primary factor as most Part 103 vehicles are bumping the boundaries as it is.
    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 ?
    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.
    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?
    $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.
    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?
    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.
    5) Is flying an ultralight with floats over water safer than flying over land (water might soften crashes?)
    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.
    6) Is flying ultralights statistically more dangerous than riding a motorcycle?
    Yes. I'd put it more in line with driving ATV's or dirt bikes than street machines.
    7) If your ultralight does not have ailerons (rudder/elevator only), how do you manage a cross wind on landing?
    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.

  3. #3

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    Excellent job of answering his questions Ron.

  4. #4

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    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.

  5. #5
    FlyingRon's Avatar
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    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.

  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by skydve76 View Post
    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.
    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.
    Last edited by Buzz; 07-21-2014 at 06:26 PM.

  7. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by skydve76 View Post
    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?
    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.
    Last edited by Buzz; 07-21-2014 at 06:47 PM.

  8. #8

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    6) Is flying ultralights statistically more dangerous than riding a motorcycle?
    Yes. I'd put it more in line with driving ATV's or dirt bikes than street machines.
    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.

  9. #9

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    Quote Originally Posted by skydve76 View Post
    7) If your ultralight does not have ailerons (rudder/elevator only), how do you manage a cross wind on landing?
    Same way you do it with your 2 axis RC's.

  10. #10

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    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.
    The opinions and statements of this poster are largely based on facts and portray a possible version of the actual events.

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