He also said he was pushing the upper end of the weight limit for that wing.  He knowingly pushed every limit possible and missed one tiny detail.

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That looked very, very painful. I bet he doesn;t go up on one of those things again.

This is very true,  I hope not, but I imagine he'll feel that crash every day.

Ahh, yeah. If he had a knot somewhere in the lines, especially the C or Ds, that end up pulling a bit of brake. Brake with trims out is a big no-no. Tip steering is required.

When I launch, I usually don't have my speed bar connected. I do it in flight, and I look up and visually check all of my lines, particularly the outboard lines closer to the wingtips. There was one time I had a tangle on one wingtip, but it wasn't too bad, so I held throttle, got a couple hundred feet of altitude and tried to get it undone. Some yanking on the brake and tip steering was helping, but what resolved it was pulling 'big ears' (pulling the leading edge lines going to both wingtips to force a partial collapse) and letting it pop back out got it fixed.

If I had not been able to get it worked out, I would have circled back to the LZ and landed.

They own a Paramotor school, so it will be interesting to see.

He was still within the rated weight of that wing. He mentions that.

Some people intentionally fly above the highest weight rating. The wing will be faster and spicier, but won't necessarily be dangerous. Depends on the wing.

Yup, FPV drones scratch the itch pretty well.

Reading this post before you watch the video will turn this unfortunate event into absolute LOL comedy.

Great detail about the cause IF you watch it.

He had a "tension knot" in his lines.  A tension knot is when a line is twisted and fouling into other lines.

Unfortunately, this happened in one of his rear most lines, the ones that are in charge of shaping the back of the wing.  When he went full trimmers out, the wing was flying in full reflex mode.  Then he added speedbar, which changes the agle of attack of the wing, ie.  it makes the front of the wing dip down more.  

The tension knot had the effect of braking the back of the wing, pulling it down.  So, instead of flying in full reflex with full speedbar, one side of his wing trailing edge was deformed, making the front of the wing roll forward and collapse.  

Unfortunately, he was only 80 ft. high when this happened, WAY TOO LOW to be flying full trimmers out an full speedbar on a new wing.  He admits this mistake in his video.  If he were higher, he would have either had time to have the wing start flying again, or he could have thrown his reserve.  

It basically was a freak accident and he is extremely lucky.  He broke his pelvis, a few vertebrae in has back and some in his neck and also has a compound fracture of his arm.  He has a long road to recovery, but he is a fighter.  He was injured in while serving in Afghanistan while serving in the Army, and took up Paramotoring after he healed up.

What are your thoughts on the shape of the earth?

Whatever doesn’t kill me, only prolongs the inevitable.

He granted us the ability to create wings and we ran (or flew) with it.
It's a wonderful thing, but sometimes we get in over our heads.

Sounds like a dumb fuck preflight and flight.

Let's see all 4 camera angles

It's always "due to the weather".

Good input.

How do you feel about the wheel?

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that’s not what your husband told me.

AP is where I went first.  In pure TX fashion, it was nothing but a field and a windsock.  I kind of knew I should have called first.

after years of skydiving, I'm used to sitting in a lawn chair, waiting for the wind to die down.

I don’t know much about this sport but it seems as if these wings fold at the mere mention of a slight breeze.

I wondered about that, too.

To paraphrase the Book of Proverbs, apparently self-absorption comes before a fall.

Hope he fully heals and feels better soon!

Been flying PPG for about 8 years. He’s a fucking idiot flying a new glider, with speedbar and trims out at 75 to 100 feet.

I chuckled at the 17:37 mark when the man asked him if this is the first time it's happened too him! He must be a cat with 9 lives if he said no.

Thank you for that explanation.  

I've seen the term here "freak accident' a few times,  That's not what this was.

It's really hard to tell from the footage but it doesn't look like his vertical speed is what you'd expect from pure gravity. I think if he'd have gone straight down he'd be a lot worse?

Anybody see where the tension knot was?

Always enjoy threads when actual experts chime in and help explaining things in layman's terms.

Learned a lot more than I expected.

I was seriously considering buying a paraglider . Maybe I will anyway

You can't preflight every tangle in your lines. You'd sit there with your wing laid out on the ground arranging the lines for 3 hours every damn time, and that shit would get old. Most little twists and tangles get pulled out when you inflate the wing on launch. If you can't, you have to decide to abort the launch or commit and deal with it once you're off the ground. Often they are easy to deal with and a little yank yank on the lines can straighten them out.

Preflight likely wouldn't have caught the issue. To think so is a bit ignorant of what it is that is flying.

However, if he can SEE the tangle in the video, he should have been able to see it once he was off the ground. Like I mentioned before, I habitually look up and make sure my lines are fine and that the wing is properly inflated. If there are any tangles or cravats (line wrapped around part of the wing), often they can be dealt with after inflation while "taxiing". And like I mentioned, I had one that didn't prevent me from launching, but I had to deal with once in the air.

If Anthony had looked up and checked his lines, he might have seen the tangle and either been able to work it out, or land and resolve it on the ground. Likely some complacency prevented that, and he hurt himself badly. We all get complacent at many of the things we do. This video is a lesson not to.





Paramotors have a very narrow window of weather that is safe to fly in. Even smaller for desired to fly in.





LOL yep. That's where I trained in 2017, and usually fly from. Though I'm building a house in Georgetown, I'll probably hit LZ's up that way more often.





Most are capable of lifting hundreds of pounds and hold their shape quite strongly. Often it takes a lot to get a wing to deform or deflate. You're usually going to be doing some very extreme shit. SixGunner explained what happened to Anthony's wing in the video. That was not a "usual" situation. Trims out in "full reflex" (the shape of the wing) is usually very stable and resistant to collapse, but also more difficult to re-inflate if there is a collapse.

Most of us won't be doing extreme shit that will ever put us at risk. I've never had a deflation that I didn't intentionally cause. Often flying a paramotor is only as dangerous as you make it.




It was definitely not. It was a situation that the pilot didn't observe and didn't correct, which caused his wing to go into an unstable configuration and collapse. It was foreseeable.

Like jerking off vs fucking

"I've crashed my flying machine"  

I bet that hurt... a lot.

My experience is skydiving and flying.  Just because I do not know that a preflight would not catch that problem is irrelevant.  If it was detectable once airborne and he did not check it then it was still a dumb fuck move on his part to not verify the proper status of his system before he went balls to the wall near the ground.

48 miles an hour baby OHH SHIT.

Yup, the canopy was still providing significant drag.  Fortunately.

If he wasn't worried about his 15 fucking cameras and phone, maybe he would have paid better attention to more important things, like preflight inspection and flying the fucking thing.

There's a guy that flies one of these here where I live. I see him flying over the Mississippi river. Quite foolish in my opinion.

Dude in the video sounded like a big ruminant cumming

My first thought upon reading thread title. Be safe bro.

Well, drowning is the biggest killer of paramotor pilots... but there are ways to mitigate that.

I'd put flying a paramotor at lower danger than riding a motorcycle. Riding a motorcycle on public roads is quite foolish in my opinion, yet so many do it and don't die.

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🤢 Family friend ate it in FL several years back in a paraglider. I guess he died doing what he loved.😵‍💫

This.  And he's an instructor.