Now, my flight hours count nearly 200 hours. Not too bad for 1.5 year into the sport. I try to fly as often as possible and as many new places as possible.
Friday 14 May 2010
Monday 2 March 2009
Flying at Pasak Jolasit Dam
Last weekend, we at the Vineyard Flying Club was scheduled to visit Pi Suntorn's hometown (Pi--is a Thai title for calling older friends, brothers or sisters) in Lopburi. There, we would have an opportunity to fly over miles of rice and sun flower pads. Not only that, one of the main attractions for this trip is Pasak Jolasit Dam, the longest earth-filled dam in Thailand.
After a flight in the evening of Sat. 28 February, we in a group of 15 (9 pilots plus their family) met at the PTT petrol station by the Eastern highway. In order to commit a flight in the following morning, we thought that it would be less exhausted to travel at night and get some sleeps before the flight in the morning. All of us traveled in three pick-up trucks and a sedan. It would be quite odd to other cars to spot three trucks and a car with fans on their back. I did get asked at the toll station as to why I need to fit a fan to my car. 'Does it help save your fuel?', asked the officer curiously. Quite reasonable question during the petrol crisis like this.
Thanks to my pocket pc phone with embedded GPS, we finally arrived at Pi Suntorn's place just an hour past midnight. The wind was a little bit high with some rain tendency. Many of us expressed their worries about flying possibility in the morning. We, however, decided to have some sleeps and hope for a clear weather in the morning. Pi Suntorn had prepared enough picnic beds and linens for all of us, so I didn't have to use the tent I put into my car boot earlier.
We were waken up by a noise of brief rainfall. Walking to the supposed-to-be-our-airfield, the wind was still too high (~7-9 km/h) with some turbulance. However, after half an hour of broken heart waiting, the condition developed a better tendency. Pi Tho was the first to take-off on his trike with red Adventure Expert wing. He reported over a radio that the weather was fine. We all then followed.
During my preparation to take-off, I found another problem on the airfield itself. We adopted a sun flower pad behind Pi Suntorn's house as our temporary airfield. Therefore, it left some traces of just harvested sun flowers such as plenty of trunks and dried leaves. Many of them got stucked in my lines. It forced me to change the take-off spot several time until I finally found the clean one. In fact, I chose the spot where Pi Wigrom layed his expensive Dudek Synthesis wing, with a confidence that he would have cleared the spot and got rid of all obstrcles. I was right! How neat he was.
I took off a little after Chit, when other people already set their bearing to the dam. In the air, I was stunned by the senery before my eyes. The land was large and flat, which was different to the beach-and-hill area in Bangsaen where I was familiar with. Following Chit for a while, he made me surprised by turning back to the direction of our origin. I was shocked as we had just been in the air for less than 15 minutes. I radioed him, but he didn't answer. At once, I saw other pilots turning back as well. I reluctantly but obediently turned back. Very disappointed that I hadn't reached or even seen the dam yet. Considering that the pilots ahead might have been experincing turbulance or bad weather condition, I thus had to turn back. Anyway, after a few minutes of heart broken flying back, I saw Pi Tho, Pi Ja and Pi Nan flying ahead to the dam. I radioed them and found out that the condition was still good. So I decided to follow them.
We flew for about 5 km to the dam and tried to circle it. I was having such a very good time. The condition was mild. Everything was just perfect. As a matter of fact, I had been to the dam before, but by car and on ground, not by air like this time. So I was so excited. At the dam tourist centre, we saw a very big white Buddha statue (see more pictures in my web album, url is given at the end of this article) by the dam core. We flew around for a moment and decided to set off for a mountain in the opposite direction. I checked my fuel and was relieved that I had enough to remain in the air for more than an hour. I was hoping to fly to the mountain top if the weather permitted. So I open my throttle about 70-80% to induce a climb. There were about 10 km to go and I thought I should be able to reach about 1500 feet by the time with my small wing and little horse power engine. There remained only Pi Tho, Pi Ja and myself at the moment as Pi Nan had decided to pull back. On the way, we had to pass by a small town called Wang Muang, but we didn't give it much attention as the mountain was waiting for us.
Not long with a tail wind that drove me to 50 km/h, we reached the mountain. It was an almost bald stone mountain that rises to about 1800 feet. Luckily, I was at high enough altitude by the time, so I decided to explored the summit. Pi Tho and Pi Ja told me later that they were trying to do so, but changed their minds due to the wind blowing down from the top preventing them from climbing.
To my surprice, the summit was not that empty like I understood. It was quite colourful with plenty of trees and beautiful grass. It was so wonderful that I couldn't help think of landing on the top. It was a carzy and suicidal idea, I knew, as there was no other means to climb and perform a rescue, if someone got stuck on the top as the mountain is truely steep.
Being satisfied with myself and after having circled the summit for several rounds, I heard via the radio that Pi Tho and Pi Ja were ready to head back for landing. We were about 10 km from the origin. I checked the fuel again and started decending. We landed at about 9.30 under a mild wind condition and that marked the end of one of the most perfect flight.
Pi Sunthorn's family was so kind to feed us with lots of tasty local foods. We had time to relax quite a bit before setting off for home. I went to swim in a little pond by the house. The water in the pond came from the natural spring water source. We headed back home at around 12.00 and made a stop at Ongkarak Ultralight airfield to have a look around. We reached Vineyard Airfield at around 17.00, and you may guess, another flight was to be done there.
** More pics can be seen at http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/UggPfcuvwE3aFP1py0rzjw?feat=directlink
** More information about Pasak Jolasit Dam can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasak_Jolasit_Dam
Friday 27 February 2009
Vineyard Airfield
The airfield is the base of a paramotor club with approximately 50 members. Most of them have their residences within 20 km from the airfield that allows them to meet and fly almost everyday. In general, the flight time during weekday is about 17.00-19.00. During weekends, the morning flight can be expected and they like to meet around 6.00 onwards.
If you are interested in joining our pleasure, feel free to stop by. Get direction from google map as follow, or email me at nayot@ieee.org for assistance.
Friday 20 February 2009
Since when did people dream of flying?
Otto Lilienthal, a German engineer was recorded as one of the flight pioneer in the history of mankind. His glider managed to fly a distance for more than 2500 times, before an accidental crash killed him. His dream might not come true during his life time, but motivated people to continue on his pathway. Many people have tried and failed. Finally, Orville and Wilbur Wright have shown their success in designing a heavier-than-air aircraft that could really fly in 1903.In asia, the dream of flight has been around since the beginning of history. There were stories about humans with supernatural gifts who could fly. The interesting point about those stories is that the people would always fly by their own gift, magic for example, machine. Neither aerodynamics nor flying machines were thought of.
Thursday 12 February 2009
The first words for my paramotoring world.
I would have never believed that one day I will fly like a bird. I really mean 'bird', where you have a full freedom to go 'almost' every where by your own wing, not like being transported by a huge airplane. In my childhood, Doraemon's Take-copter (bamboo-copter) stunned my flying instinct enormously. Today, my dream has come true, when a set of paragliding wing and motor allows me to fly almost the same way as what Nobita could do. A real freedom.Once decided to blog my flying experiences, there are quite a number of things worth thinking about. The first thing that came into my mind is what language I will use. Thai seems to be the most reasonable choice as most of my pilot friends are Thai and most events I would like to cover take place in Thailand. There are also many paramotorist groups with large number of members in Thailand who could be my intended audience.
Although, there are at least two major websites that host webboards specifically dedicated to Paramotor Sport (www.thaiparamotor.com and www.weekendhobby.com), where pilot folks around the country share their experiences, discussions and even photos. The large contributions to the webboard community show the dramatic increase in pilot number in Thailand and hence the sport popularity. One told me that we have at least 1,500 paramotor pilot active today and the number is still increased. Much less is known to the outside world about paramotor activity in Thailand. I believe that Thailand is one the best flying spot in the world, considering its mild and warm weather and all-year-round flyable duration. I thus decided to use English to attract more international audience and promote the activity to people outside Thailand.
My mission (and ambition), of course, is probably too dramatic. I have just entered the sport for less than half a year with only 80 logged flights. Anyway I consider that this is an interesting point of my blog as my flying experience will grow with my posts.
Hope you enjoy and follow it!
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