In the years following retirement, with the exception of visits to the Space Centre at nearby Huntsville, Alabama, and a glorious couple of days at Guntersville, during the occasion of the huge World War One international fly-in event, I studiously avoided having anything to do with planes and flying.   The memory of my vertigo attacks on the boat in the mid-90s held me to it !    Until the summer of 2005, that is . . !

That summer, while visiting several of our kids in Illinois while on a camping trip, there happened to be a visit of both a B.17 and a B.24 bomber to the local municipal airfield.   Naturally, it being my 78th birthday on that specific day, I drove over to view them as a personal treat.   While at the airfield I happened to see a sign indicating that they had a training school there for Powered Parachute Ultralights.   Being curious, as always, and having been forever terrified of "jumping", I just had to check this out.   Result . . . I found myself scheduled for an early morning test flight the next day, weather permitting, at a modest deficit to my pocket book.

Dawn arrived . . . calm and clear . . . I helped the instructor lay out the chute on the grass, keeping the tangles out of the rigging. I climbed aboard the rear seat . . . he fired up the 72HP Rotax motor, and after a couple of minutes warm up, opened up the throttle.   With brakes on, the airfoil 'chute caught the slipstream and ballooned into shape above and behind us . . . a quick check to the rear to ensure proper inflation, and we were trundling across the grass.   A very short take-off run and we were climbing steadily at a couple of hundred feet per minute.   I soon found that the relatively crude controls were quite effective . . . all altitude variations were made by throttle, as the device only flew at one speed of around 28-30 knots.   Open the throttle . . . Climb !    Close the throttle . . . Glide down !    To change direction, push with left and right feet on twin bars extending from the central main frame and attached to rigging lines on either side of the chute.   Sheer simplicity !  For just over an hour, we cruised over the neighbouring flat cornfields of central Illinois . . . at times a mere 50 - 100 feet up and then at around 1-2000 feet . . . so very smooth and gentle . . . an old mans' dream !    After some trial runs I got to make the final landing myself back at the airport.   Going back again the next day I had a further hour of dual, but this time in the Instructors' personal 'Challenger' conventional Ultralight plane.

As we left to return to Tennessee the next day, that was it . . . but the seeds had been sown.   I knew of a couple of places back in my home territory where Ultralights, of all three types . . . Powered Parachutes, Conventional and Trikes . . . were being flown, so started to do a little practical research. By the end of summer the following year, 1986, I had managed flights in both 2- and 3-axis Conventional, plus Trikes and Powered Parachutes.   That following Fall and and Winter I argued with myself over continuing, to the point of maybe putting together a fresh Conventional from a kit, and possibly levelling a smooth take-off/landing area on my ridge-top property.

Somewhere in that time span, sanity returned . . . at 80 years old I was acting like a stupid kid !    So I gently returned to Earth . . . but I still wonder !    Below are some typical machines that I tried during this brief escape from reality.