ULTRALIGHT FLYING:
A SPORT FOR THE BIRD
Story and photography
by Eric Anderson

They are the ultralight brigade. They've been called lawnmowers with wings, flying deck chairs, motorized parachutes. Some can take off in 50 – 75 feet and climb to 14,000 feet at a rate of climb of 850 feet per minute. By federal regulation they can't weigh more than 254 pounds (the Wright Kitty Hawk Flyer of 1903 weighed 605 pounds), fly no faster than 63 miles an hour, or carry more than five gallons of fuel.

Operators don't need a pilot's license but they are required to have fun. And that they get. Jay, for example, a certified flight instructor for conventional aircraft, used to fly ultralights at the Blue Yonder in Otay Mesa at weekends. It sure gave him tales for his friends on Mondays. Like the time he glanced over to see a hawk fly past with a field mouse in its mouth. Or the time he looped the loop in an aerobatic ultralight to find on landing he'd forgotten to fasten his seatbelt. And especially the time he took up a statuesque chestnut blonde for a dual flight who suddenly tore off her blouse and bra and flew topless shouting, "I'm doing this for a bet."

So it can be fun. But there's joy as well in ultralight flying, says another pilot, Larry. "You feel like a bird. This is as close to the Wright brothers as you can get. We're closer to Heaven than most." Says Ed, another instructor, "I think we enjoy ultralights because everyone has dreams of flying. We're air junkies. Hang gliding came first. It answered the dreams of many who didn't get a thrill flying in a 747. Ultralights met the needs of the remainder, an older group. Depending on their age for many it was the best thing they'd ever done. They didn't need a mountain to jump off or a driver to come down to collect them.

"In hang gliding, spectators used to say to me, 'That's neat but you won't get me up in one of those things.' But in ultralight flying, people tend to say, 'That's neat and I'd really like to try it.'"

If the sport seems an oddball mixture of sports parachuting and aqua parasailing, then its disciples appear equally motley: carpenters and plumbers, housewives and doctors, lawyers and college professors, retired airline pilots and flying enthusiasts whose health problems grounded them from the stricter skies of general aviation.

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