Winter fun at Madcity Paragliding...

This week at Madcity Paragliding:
Matt, Dimitry and I celebrated MLK day by playing on the southern half of Lake Monona. Our max altitude was limited to 1450’ AGL by the upper tier of the Madison Airport’s airspace but that left plenty of room to explore. Several bigger passenger jets flew just a few hundred feet overhead while we were dragging our feet through the snow covering the lake, so cool! Curt dropped in to take a few photos too.
More night kiting with Stuart in the field outside of Epic. He’s doing great and is ready for a trip to the sledding hill. If his schedule cooperates he will be flying down the hill this week!
I traveled north to help Nick diagnose a motor issue he was having. We had access his dad’s awesome shop. Not only was it well lit and heated but it housed a nice collection of vintage snowmobiles and motorcycles. He even had an old Kawasaki 500 triple like I did in high school, nice! The paramotor was presenting itself like a fuel starvation problem so we checked all the usual items, carb rebuild, fuel filter change, change the fuel for some fresh fuel, ensure the lines we clear, adjust the metering lever...everything we could think of and everything that Hadly suggested on his Southwest Airsports website. We found a few minor things but nothing major so I took it home to work on it some more. A few minor adjustments of a couple small things followed by a long test flight (my favorite part) and it’s working flawlessly again. I plan to deliver it back to Nick Thursday and we will again take it on a long test flight to ensure everything is perfect, somebody has to do it, luckily it’s me. ;)
Sunday was going to be a day of ice climbing at the Winona, MN Ice Park with Matt but the weather changed and it was going to be a perfect day for towing in Sauk City. So I took all the ice climbing gear out of the Jeep and loaded up the winch and all the towing equipment. The ceiling was just 1200’ above the road meaning every tow put the guys at cloud base. Ken got the last four tows he needed to complete his P2 training. Congratulations Ken! He also operated the winch for one of Dimitry’s flights as he continues to train for his tow operators certificate. Charles worked on his wing skills. Curt hammed out 10 flights! He accidentally put the edge of his wing in the creek on his first landing filling it with Duckweed, oops. It stunk like crazy for a little while but soon dried and the plants fell off. Josh was there with his paramotor making an hour plus flight around the area too.
Preparations for the Ecuador paragliding trip continue. The itinerary is established with appropriate leeway for weather changes. Lenin has something like 6 locations planned already. This is going to be a blast! There is still room to join us on this epic adventure. Round trip air can be had for less then $400 and lodging should be inexpensive too. Get ahold of Mariyan or myself if you are interested in coming along.
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