Appendix C: Flying Tips
Here is a collection of basic flying tips that I’ve discovered over the course of my first year of flying. I hope you find them as useful as I have.

Pre-Flight Checklist: No matter what you fly, every PPG pilot should have a pre-flight checklist. If you stick with this sport, sooner or later you’ll get complacent and forget something before takeoff. I’ll never forget the time that I made a perfect takeoff, and then looked down to see that I was still wearing my tennis shoes. I’d forgotten to put on my paraboots! On another occasion I forgot to fasten my chest strap. I’ve even been told of a case where a PPG pilot forgot to fasten his leg straps, gunned his engine, and ran down the field. His machine took off just fine, however the pilot never left the ground.

Everyone will have his own ideas as to what is needed on a pre-flight checklist. Here’s a copy of mine to get you started:

Boots
Helmet
Gloves
Ear Plugs
Altimeter
ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter)
Hook Knife
Cell Phone
Pepper Spray (for unfriendly animals)
Leg Straps
Vest
Chest Strap
Harness Locking Pins
Risers - attached
Hand Mirror
Footbar - hooked
Reserve straps - removed
Reserve pins - secured
Master Switch - on
Overview
Engine Run Up

The Overview item is performed by my flying buddy, Mike. He simply stands back and looks me over, in general, to see if anything looks out of place.

I added the Engine Run Up item after I started the engine, warmed it up, and then took off without first running up the engine to full power. I didn’t think I could possibly forget to run up the engine before takeoff, but I did. Never trust your memory! If an item is important, then put it on the checklist.

Hook Knife: No PPG pilot should ever go up without a hook knife. If you are forced to make a water landing, you can easily find yourself underwater and entangled in the wing lines. If you find it necessary to use your reserve, you can find yourself getting dragged across the ground by your reserve after landing. In such circumstances the hook knife can save your life.

Any sharp knife will do, as long as you have a way of carrying it safely. However a hook knife is ideally suited for the job. A hook knife is just a little plastic handle with a curved end, with a razor blade embedded in a slot inside the curved end. The slot leading to the blade is too small for your fingers to enter, but a suspension line, or even a piece of nylon webbing, will readily slip inside. And as soon as the line hits the razor blade, it’s cut. With a hook knife, you can instantly sever a two inch wide nylon strap. Highly recommended.

Cost: $10-20.

Tachometer: There are only three instruments that you Really Do Need for flying a PPG. One is the Wind Speed Indicator (see below). Another is the Wind Direction Indicator (see below). The other is the Tachometer. Most PPGs come with tachometers, but if yours doesn’t, it’s very easy to add.

The tachometer gives you a constant readout on the speed of your engine, in revolutions per minute (rpm). Not the speed of your propeller, but the speed of your engine. This information is very important, because anything seriously wrong with your engine will very likely affect its speed. So if you see an unexplained change in your engine speed, that’s a pretty good sign that something’s wrong with your engine, and that you should land immediately. For example, if your engine is running too fast, it can burn up. If it’s running too slow, it may be starved for fuel. Neither condition is desirable when airborne.

The tachometer can also keep you from taking off with a defective engine. If you start up your engine on the ground, and see that it’s not idling at its normal speed, that’s an excellent indication that something is wrong. If you do a full-power runup on the ground, and your engine does not reach its normal rpm setting, that’s also an excellent indication that something is wrong. Obviously you don’t want to take off if your engine is not developing full power.

The tachometer is about the size of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs about as much. You can easily attach it almost anywhere on your harness. Typically there are two wires on the tachometer. One wire grounds to the body of the engine, and the other wire simply wraps around your spark plug wire. The tachometer works by sensing and counting the electrical pulses that run to your spark plug, and translating this into engine rpm.

Cost: About $40.

There are other engine instruments that you can add to your PPG engine. The CHT (Cylinder Head Temperature) gauge will do just that, while the EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature) gauge will tell you the temperature of the gas coming out of your muffler. If your engine starts to overheat, or do other types of shenanigans, these gauges can be helpful in preventing damage, but most PPG pilots fly only with the tachometer.

Wind Speed Indicator: If you’re experienced in judging wind speed, then you don’t need a wind speed indicator. However if you’re like me, your ability to judge wind speed pretty much ended with “There’s not enough wind to fly my kite!” In such a case, the wind speed indicator is a fabulously useful instrument. You simply hold the indicator up to the wind for a few seconds, and it tells you how fast the wind is blowing. This will tell you if the wind is blowing fast enough for a reverse launch, or slow enough that you need to do a forward launch. It will also tell you if the wind is blowing too fast to launch, period. Even more important, if you take several wind speed readings over a period of several minutes, you’ll know how much the wind is gusting. Too much gusting is an excellent indicator that conditions are too turbulent for safe flying.

The wind speed indicator is basically just a little propeller on a plastic handle, with some electronic circuitry and a battery inside the handle. You hold it up to the wind, the wind spins the propeller, and the electronics measure the rpm of the propeller and translate it into wind speed. The speed is then displayed on a little digital readout. The whole assembly is smaller than a pack of cigarettes, and weighs next to nothing. You can put it on a string and hang it around your neck.

If you’re like me, you’ll be amazed at just how lousy a judge of wind speed you really are. But after a few months of actually measuring the wind, you’ll get yourself calibrated and start to become a pretty good judge of wind speed.

There are several good brands of wind speed indicators. I bought the “Skywatch” brand.

Cost: $70. And worth every penny.

The only thing I didn’t like about my Skywatch wind speed indicator is that it refused to work when the air temperature fell below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The bearings on the little propeller contracted in the cold, and eventually stopped the propeller. So if you’re flying in cold weather you might want to see if the company has solved this particular problem.

Wind Direction Indicator: This is even more important than the wind speed indicator. You must take off directly into the wind, or you won’t get airborne. And no matter how fast or slow the wind may be blowing, you always want to land into the wind. If you land in any other direction, you will very likely fall down and may injure yourself or your equipment.

You can spend good money buying a fancy wind sock like they use at the airport, but a hunk of brightly colored ribbon, tied to a stick and stuck in the ground, works almost as well. Ribbon is very cheap, and sticks are readily available. Fluorescent Orange ribbon is the easiest to see.

My personal preference is to use an empty plastic bleach jug. Jugs of bleach can often be found in the laundry room. Pour the bleach down the sink and rinse out the jug. Just don’t tell your wife. When she can’t find the bleach, blame it on those damned kids that she insisted on having.

Pour some gravel or lead shot into the empty bleach jug to make it bottom-heavy. Then go to the hardware store and buy a dowel rod exactly one and one-eighth inches in diameter, and three or four feet long. Stick the dowel rod into the mouth of the jug (it will be a perfect fit) and tie a three or four foot length of brightly colored ribbon to the other end of the dowel rod. The gravel or lead shot will keep the whole thing from tipping over in a high wind. You now have a superb wind direction indicator. When you’re done flying, pull the dowel rod out of the bleach jug and put the cap back on. This will prevent the gravel or lead shot from spilling out. Now the whole thing will store easily in your trunk. I suggest drilling a hole in the plastic cap, and tying it to the jug handle with a short length of string. Then you can’t lose the cap.

I am forever indebted to Tyson Russell, of Seattle, Washington, for suggesting the use of the plastic bleach jug. If you want to tell Tyson’s wife what happened to her bleach jug, it’s okay. I don’t need him anymore.

Altimeter: You can safely fly a PPG without an altimeter, but it’s a lot more fun if you have one. Not only will know just how high you are, but you’ll also know if you’re climbing or descending, which is not always easy to tell by eye alone.

As an ex-skydiver, I had a really excellent skydiving altimeter that I tried to use for powered paragliding, but it didn’t work very well. The problem was that the dial on my skydiving altimeter went from zero to twelve thousand feet. But powered paragliding is frequently done at altitudes of less than one thousand feet, and that barely caused the needle on my skydiving altimeter to move. I realized that I would need a much more sensitive digital altimeter that was fairly accurate (say to the nearest five or ten feet).

Excellent digital altimeters are available for unpowered paragliding. These typically strap around your leg, and almost always include a built-in variometer so you know exactly how fast you’re going up or down. But these altimeters are fairly expensive (around $400). I was lucky enough to discover a smaller, less-expensive altimeter called the Cateye. I had to import mine from South Africa, but I believe they are now available in the United States from various shops that sell bicycle equipment. The Cateye is the size of a large wristwatch, and weighs very little. You can strap it around your wrist or around your leg. It doesn’t have much of a variometer, but you really don’t need a variometer for powered paragliding. The Cateye only costs about $100. Highly recommended.

There are various “altimeter watches” available, but I’ve found that these don’t work very well for powered paragliding. They’re fine for hiking or skiing, but they don’t update the altitude reading fast enough for any kind of sky sport. One model only updates the altitude reading every thirty seconds! You can gain or lose a lot of altitude in only thirty seconds. The nice thing about the Cateye altimeter is that it was designed for sky sports, and it updates the altitude reading almost constantly.

Global Positioning System (GPS): You can safely fly a PPG without a GPS indicator, but it’s a lot more fun if you have one. The GPS will always tell you exactly where you are, and will always show you exactly which way to fly to get home. Believe it or not, it is possible to get lost while flying a PPG. Of course you can always land and ask directions. (Unless you’re a man, in which case forget it!)

Another nice feature of the GPS is that it will always tell you your ground speed. Not your air speed (which is constant), but your ground speed (which is constantly changing). It doesn’t take much of a head wind to bring a PPG to a halt in the sky. So if you know that your PPG has an airspeed of twenty miles per hour, and you glance at your GPS and see that you’re flying downwind at thirty-five miles per hour, you’ll know that you’re going to be bucking a fifteen mile per hour headwind on the leg home, and that your ground speed will only be about five miles per hour. Information like this can help you judge how far to fly downwind or upwind, so that you can be certain you have enough fuel to make it home. A very nice instrument to have.

Most GPS units come with some sort of plastic carrying pouch. Cut a hole in the pouch so you can see the GPS display screen, and tie the whole thing to your leg strap or chest strap. Then you can simply glance down, in flight, and read the display.

Cost: The sky is the limit. All of the really useful features can be had in a unit costing less than one hundred dollars. Moving map displays are nice if you have the extra bucks to spend, but they aren’t really necessary. Do you really care to know the name of the lake, river, or town below you?

Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT): If you can afford it, this is a very, very nice instrument to have when you fly. It can save your life. The ELT is simply an electronic beeper that puts out a steady signal on the Emergency Channel of 121.5, which is monitored by lots of people. If you crash, and survive, and you have your ELT, all you have to do is stay conscious long enough to extend the antenna and flick the activation switch. For the next twenty hours or so, your ELT will be screaming its head off on the Emergency Channel. Anyone who hears it, such as a passing plane or satellite, will know that you’re in trouble and will alert the authorities to send help. Best of all, the authorities can use the ELT’s signal to help determine your location, even if you’re hanging in a tall tree in the middle of a vast forest. Or if you were smart enough to tell someone that you were going flying, that person can notify the authorities that you’re overdue, and the rescuers can! start listening for your signal. Highly recommended.

The ELT is a metal box about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and about eight times as heavy. Mine has a carrying loop that I attach to my harness so that I can always reach it, even if I’m hanging in a tree with a broken arm.

Cost: $300-$500. Available at pilot supply stores and from various catalogs. Expensive? Yes, but what is your life worth? If you have an ELT, the rescuers can find you, no matter how well-concealed you are. Otherwise you are just a very small speck in a very large world.

Cell Phone: I always keep my cell phone attached to my harness, typically right next to my ELT (see above). If you run out of gas, or have engine failure and have to land out in the middle of nowhere, you can probably call for help on your cell phone. Even though your ELT will ultimately bring the rescuers, it might take awhile. With a cell phone you can call for help immediately (assuming you have coverage). If you’re seriously injured, having a cell phone just might save your life.

Cost: I paid $800 for my first cell phone. Now they’re giving them away for free. Warning! Don’t use your cell phone while in the air unless it’s a genuine emergency. Don’t use it to call up your wife or girlfriend to tell her that you’re flying over her house. The FCC doesn’t like that at all. I know one guy who got fined $10,000 for using his cell phone while flying.

Radio: If you want to talk to someone on the ground while you’re in the air, then you need a radio. You can fly low, and shout to someone on the ground, and be heard, but I guarantee that you will never hear the answer. Personally I’ve never flown with a radio while flying a PPG. The good radios cost money, they add weight and complexity, and I fly to get away from the rest of humanity; not to stay in touch with it.

Instead of using a radio, I worked out a simple system of hand signals to communicate with my flying buddy, Mike, on the ground. We have signals for Land Immediately, Don’t Land, Wind Direction, Wind Speed, etc. If something interesting happens on my flight, I’d rather talk about it over a cup of coffee after the flight. Still, radios can be nice. Especially if you can afford one. And there’s no question that they increase your safety.

Of course, carrying a radio while being trained is a completely different story, and is highly advisable.

Cost: Many good handheld radios are available from dealers like Aircraft Spruce or Sporty’s Pilot Shop. Expect to spend a couple of hundred dollars for a good one. You can buy cheaper radios intended for everyday consumer use. Quality and reliability varies.

Pilot Balloon: Many a pilot has taken off in perfectly calm conditions, only to discover that it’s very bumpy and turbulent one hundred feet above the ground. How to avoid this? Send up a Pilot Balloon! A Pilot Balloon is simply a kid’s balloon, filled with helium, with about ten feet of colored ribbon tied to the balloon to make it highly visible. You can follow the balloon’s ascension with binoculars. After a couple of minutes you’ll know exactly what the wind is doing. If it’s bumpy, you’ll see the balloon suddenly jerk in a different direction. If the balloon is constantly jerking back and forth, then it’s very bumpy, and probably best not to fly. If the winds aloft are blowing in a different direction, you’ll see the balloon gradually change direction. If the balloon suddenly changes direction, you may be seeing a wind shear, and you definitely don’t want to fly into that! I never fly without first sending up a pilot balloon. If it looks questionable, I so! metimes send up a second balloon.

To launch Pilot Balloons, you need helium. Go to the K-Mart, or Wal-Mart, and go to the party supply section. For about twenty dollars you’ll get a tank of helium about twice the size of a bowling ball, a package of colorful latex balloons, and some colored ribbon. You’ll get enough helium to inflate several dozen balloons. When the tank is empty, you simply throw it away.

Always use latex balloons for your pilot balloon. They are biodegradable. Mylar balloons last forever, and clutter up the countryside. Also the mylar balloons cost more, and since you’re never going to get the balloon back, why pay more?

Of course if you want to be Environmentally Pure, you can always walk up and down the countryside, after each flight, asking everyone you meet, “Have you seen my balloon?”

A tethered pilot balloon also makes an excellent wind direction indicator. Fill one of your pilot balloons with helium and tie about twenty feet of brightly colored ribbon to it. Then tie the other end of the ribbon to something on the ground (like your car bumper). It makes a superb wind direction indicator, and you can easily see it when you’re getting ready to land.

If the weather is too bad to fly, you can always pass the time by sucking up a lung full of helium and talking like Donald Duck. It scares the hell out of the cat. Warning! Never suck helium directly out of a pressurized tank. You may overpressure your lungs and damage them. Suck it out of a balloon, instead.

Safety Helmet:
Never fly without a safety helmet!
Never fly without a safety helmet!
Never fly without a safety helmet!
A broken arm or leg will heal. A broken brain will not. My safety helmet has saved me from serious head injury on at least three separate occasions.

Just abut any kind of helmet will do, provided it has a rigid shell and some thick padding (like styrofoam) that will absorb and spread the impact. I have a regular motorcycle helmet that I use when the weather is cold, and a vented bicycle helmet for when the weather is hot. Some pilots think that bicycle helmets or motorcycle helmets don’t afford enough protection, and that only a full facial helmet is appropriate. They’re probably right, but a full facial helmet can make you sweat like a pig on a hot day. It can be dangerous to launch with your eyes full of sweat. Caveat Emptor.

Boots: Whenever you fly, always wear a good pair of study, high-topped boots. Paraboots, or Paragliding boots, are particularly nice as they are specifically made for the foot-launching pilot, and provide maximum ankle support. However hiking boots, or sturdy work boots, are cheaper and will usually get the job done. They just don’t look nearly as sexy.

Don’t fly in tennis shoes or low-cut boots. Your feet are your landing gear. Normally they are the first and last things to touch the ground. If all goes well, your landings will be feather-soft, and you could probably make them barefoot. But if you flare a little too high, or land a little too fast, especially while you’re still learning to fly, good boots can make the difference between no injury, and a broken or sprained ankle.

Ear Plugs: Never fly without some sort of ear protection. PPG engines are incredibly noisy, and prolonged exposure to the noise can damage your hearing. I use the foam ear plugs that many aircraft pilots use. Just roll them between your thumb and finger to make them real small, then stick them in your ears. The foam expands, filling your ear and conforming exactly to the shape of your ear canal. It’s a perfect custom fit. You’ll be amazed how much noise the ear plugs eliminate. After landing, just pull them out and reuse them. Throw them away when they start looking really gross.

Cost: A couple of bucks.

Don’t forget to wear your ear plugs whenever you start your engine, even if you’re not flying. Noise is noise.

Ratio-Right: All PPG engines require a mixture of oil and gasoline in the fuel tank. Depending on the engine, the mixture ratio can be anything from 25:1, 50:1, or even 100:1. How do you know how much oil to add to the gasoline to get the right mixture? Well, you can figure out how many fluid ounces of gasoline you have, and then measure out the proper number of ounces of oil. Or you can use a Ratio-Right.

A Ratio-Right is basically a measuring cup for measuring out the proper amount of oil to mix with your gasoline. Basically it’s just a plastic measuring cup, but instead of being marked in ounces, it’s marked in gallons of gas, and oil ratios. The Ratio-Right cup typically has several sets of markings on the side, depending on what ratio you want (25:1, 40:1, 50:1, etc.). Whatever fuel/oil ratio your engine requires, chances are the Ratio-Right is already calibrated for it. Within each ratio, the cup is marked in gallons of gasoline. Simply determine the number of gallons of gasoline you have, and then fill the cup with oil until you reach that gasoline mark. Dump the oil in your gasoline and shake it up to thoroughly mix it. Viola! A perfectly mixed batch of gasoline and oil, at exactly the right ratio.

The Ratio-Right cup takes all the guesswork and effort out of determining how much oil to add to your gasoline. A marvelous little tool. Highly recommended.

Cost: Under $10 at most motorcycle shops.

Tip: Here’s an even easier way to mix your fuel. You can usually buy your oil in eight ounce, or sixteen ounce plastic bottles. Multiply the ounces of oil by the ratio you need, then divide the result by 128 to determine the gallons of gas required. Take your empty gas can to the filling station, pump exactly the gallonage you just calculated, then open up a bottle of oil and dump the whole thing into the gas tank. Result? A perfectly mixed batch of fuel, and you didn’t even have to get out your Ratio-Right to measure the oil. What could be simpler?

Example: My DK Whisper called for a 25:1 ratio of gas to oil. An eight ounce bottle of oil, multiplied by 25, would require 200 ounces of gas to get the right ratio. 200 divided by 128 (the number of ounces in a gallon) gave 1.56 gallons of gas needed to get the proper mixture when mixed with eight ounces of oil. I went to the filling station, pumped 1.56 gallons of gasoline into the gas can (easy to do with the meter on the pump), dumped in an 8 ounce bottle of oil, and had 1.6 gallons of perfectly mixed fuel to pour into my Whisper’s fuel tank. By coincidence, this just happened to be the amount of fuel needed to fill the Whisper’s fuel tank. You may not be quite this lucky, but you can see how easy it is.

If I had a bigger fuel tank, I would simply pump 3.12 gallons of gasoline, then dump in a 16 ounce bottle of oil. A perfect 25:1 ratio. No muss, no fuss.

If you have any leftover mixed fuel after flying, dump it into your car’s gas tank. Don’t store mixed fuel. It deteriorates too quickly, and you risk having it gum up your carburetor and causing engine trouble in flight. It’s not worth the risk. Always mix up a fresh batch of fuel just before flying.

It’s also a good idea to mix your fuel in a separate tank, and then dump it into your PPG’s fuel tank. That way if you make a mistake while mixing, you can easily dump the whole thing out and start over. Not so easy to do if the mistake is already in the PPG’s fuel tank.

Training Harness: The secret to successful launches of a PPG is ground handling. You must be able to control your wing at all times while on the ground. It’s not a difficult skill to acquire, but it does require practice. And if you don’t fly regularly, your ground handling skills can start to get rusty.

So practice your ground handling on a regular basis. Go out to a park or playing field, spread your wing, clip it to your harness, and practice pulling it up into the air. Great way to keep in practice. Also a great way to meet chicks.

But there’s just one little problem. Your harness is attached to your motor. You certainly don’t want to practice ground handling for any length of time with your heavy motor on your back. You can detach your motor from your harness, of course, but that’s probably a lot of bother.

So what’s the answer? Buy a training harness. Schools that teach unpowered paragliding will usually be happy to sell you a used training harness for very little money. Or you can buy a brand new training harness for about $150. Personally I use my old skydiving harness, and just clip the wing risers to the reserve attachment rings on my chest.

With a training harness you can easily stay proficient in your ground handing skills without ever touching your motor or flying harness.

Mushroom Bag: When the flying is done, it’s time to fold up the wing and pack it away. And your wing probably came with a backpacking-type bag to pack it in. No doubt your instructor showed you how to lay out your wing on the ground, carefully fold it up in sections, squeeze the air out of the cells, and finally stuff the folded wing into a tiny little packing bag. And after about the tenth time of packing your wing, you looked at that tiny little packing bag and said, “There’s gotta be a better way!”

Well, there is! If you’re wondering why the packing bag included with your wing is so small, there’s a couple of reasons. First, your wing was probably designed for unpowered paragliding. The poor bastards who fly without engines frequently have to hike up hills and mountains to find suitable launch sites. So they want compact bags that are easy to carry up the mountain. Second, have you ever seen a van or station wagon loaded with half a dozen unpowered paragliding enthusiasts? They need a shoehorn to get everybody, and all the wings, into the van. Unless the wings are packed up into bundles that are as small as possible, they’d never get everything inside.

But those of us who have been selected by God to be powered paragliding pilots don’t have any of these problem. Space in the vehicle is not nearly so critical. This means we can use mushroom bags to pack our wings.

What is a mushroom bag? Basically it’s just a flat piece of circular plastic with a drawstring around the edge. You lay the bag out flat on the ground, pick up the wing, and dump it onto the plastic. Then you steadily cinch up the drawstring as you tuck the wing inside the drawstring. In just a minute or two, the drawstring has been pulled up snug, and the whole wing is completely enclosed inside a plastic bag that looks exactly like the top of a giant mushroom about three feet in diameter. The bag has a carrying handle in the middle, and even has a couple of shoulder straps if you want to carry it like a pack. Best of all, there’s no folding or packing of the wing. You just pick the wing up, set it down on the bag, then snug up the drawstring. It takes about two minutes to pack up a wing, and it’s the very best way to transport and store your wing. Because the wing is not tightly folded, you don’t have to worry about putting any permanent creases in the fabric.

Mushroom bags are sold by several paragliding equipment distributors. I bought mine from Larry Pindar at Over-The-Hill Paragliding, and have been absolutely delighted with it. The bag is both waterproof and sunproof, so you can quickly pack up your wing and get it out of the weather. Highly recommended.

Cost: About $65.

Riser Bag: No matter how you pack up your wing, you’ll find that when you unpack it, your suspension lines are frequently in a tangled mess. After you’ve untangled the mess for the tenth time, you’ll find yourself saying, “There’s gotta be a better way!”

Well, there is! It’s a very simple solution. Before you pack away the suspension lines, clip the ends of the risers together. A carabiner is ideal for this. With the ends of the risers fastened together, it’s almost impossible for them to twist or tangle. Then take the risers and shove them inside a little bag, and tie the neck of the bag shut around the suspension lines above the risers. A little nylon camping gear bag, with a built-in drawstring, is perfect for the job. Stuff the suspension lines inside your wing transport bag, and finally stuff the riser bag in with the lines. When you’re ready to unpack the wing, pull out the riser bag, followed by the suspension lines, followed by the wing. I guarantee that you will not have a tangle or twist anywhere.

If you were smart enough to buy a mushroom bag from Larry Pindar at Over-The-Hill Paragliding, you’ll find that there’s a built-in riser bag already attached to the mushroom, with a velcro neck closure. Perfect!

Cleaning Out The Wing Cells: No matter how careful you are, your wing is bound to scoop up sand, dirt, and other detritus. This junk will end up rattling around in your wing cells. If you fly at the beach, you’re virtually guaranteed to pick up a load of sand in each cell. You might think that all you have to do is hang the wing upside down, and all of the detritus will fall out. Hah! You have a lot to learn, Grasshopper. Each cell of your wing has a curved nosepiece. This nosepiece will catch everything that falls out of your cells, and automatically return it to the cells as soon as the wing is no longer upside down. It’s a fiendishly clever system. Banks are studying it as a way to protect currency from theft.

So how do you get the crud out? Two ways. Lay the wing face down, tail end facing into the wind, grab the tail, then violently flap the whole wing up and down. This will not only move the crud to the front of the wing, but the violent flapping will cause it to be dislodged from the nosepiece and fall to the ground. Your arms are only long enough to flap a few cells at a time, so you’ll have to repeat the process all the way down the length of the wing. After you’ve flapped about a dozen cells, you’ll vow to never again let any crud get inside the wing cells. Good luck. It’s a worthy goal.

The other way is to hang the wing upside down, so all the crud falls down into the nosepiece, then walk along the nosepiece with a vacuum cleaner and suck out the crud. Or you can lay the wing down on the ground, on its back, then grab the tail and shake all the crud down into the nosepiece. Then with the wing still lying on its back, walk along with your vacuum cleaner and suck out the crud.

Videotape Landings and Takeoffs: This is absolutely the best way, bar none, to identify your landing and takeoff errors. Get a friend with a video camera to videotape your landings and takeoffs, then play them back later to catch your errors. This technique works so well that I’m always amazed to learn that so many instructors don’t use it. As a bonus, you can play the tape at parties, and really impress your non-flying friends. They will have absolutely no idea that they’re actually watching you screw up.

Filter Your Fuel: This is absolutely the most important thing you can do to keep your engine running. Fuel from the gas station can be contaminated with all sorts of crud, water, and sediment. And it takes very little sediment to clog the carburetor jets of your engine and kill it. So buy a good filter funnel and use it to filter every drop of gasoline that goes into your engine. I recommend the “Mr. Funnel” brand of fuel filter. Mr. Funnel will even filter out any water in the gasoline. Amazing! I bought mine from the “SkySports” catalog. Call 1-800-AIR-STUF.

Cost: About $10.

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