Vineyard Airfield

Vineyard Airfield (In Thai--สนามบินไร่องุ่น) is a gathering place for paramotor and flying sport enthusiasts in Bangsaen area. The place is in Chonburi, a provice located in the east of Thailand. Boasted to be one of the most attracting tourism area, Bangsaen is a home of famous beaches, golf courses, mountain bike tracks and of course many paramotor airfields. Flying in Bangsaen is ideal including mild beachy wind and lots of emergency landing spots. Not to mentioned a number of prime spots to see around the area.

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.

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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.

(Ref: http://www.ueet.nasa.gov/StudentSite/historyofflight.html)

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.

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!