I was actually aiming for the field just before the one I eventually went into. The thing I learned from this situation (apart to not f&*k with my engine) is that there might be a ton of outs (LZs) where you can land but most of them suck for for a bunch of reasons.. if you look in the video most of those fields have small trees which would have ripped my wing, all the big open work yards have security dogs and chain fences around them, then there's private property where the owner might call the police or some bs. In short i got lucky on that spot I landed because just about everywhere else sure I could have landed fine but it would have been a bunch of headaches from there.

@@Para_Ninja Around here, the powerlines zig-zag everywhere. They dont bury much in the mountains.

That wasn't a message to emergency services, we use private messaging mobile apps between just our private group. First off when the engine died because it has no clutch and was so abrupt (the spark cap came off) it gave quite a violent shudder.. this at first made me think the prop had somehow hit the lines (deadly) or something serious had happened more than just the engine dying. In the video you can actually see the shudder was bad enough to even shake the actual gopro on my head even with its stabilization mode. If that isn't a serious situation then I don't know what is. Keep in mind there is no way for me to look directly behind me at the engine, it could have been on fire for all I knew. When I determined the lines were fine above me and I didn't need to pull my reserve I then just had to focus on a landing spot which in that industrial area was actually quite limited. Problems were big fences which would have locked me in, guard dogs within those industrial fences, power lines, crops which would have upset a farmer and actually the soil between the crops is very loamy. None of these are the end of the world but on my new small 19m wing my decent rate was alot faster than I am used to. Overall I made that field fine and all was good, as I said in the description a bit of a nothingburger but it felt a bit hairy there for a moment and gave me new respect for a future engine outs.

Just clickbait.

Ah mate thank you, When it first happens its a shock because its something new but then you realize its actually no big deal at all.. however saying that you simultaneously realize that this could have been a much bigger deal than I had previously thought if it happened at low altitude. So now it happened ive got a new tension for low flying around trees and over powerlines. I try to show all the worst stuff that can go wrong in my videos as some sort of learning thing. The reality is 99% is happy uneventful flying.

@@Para_Ninja Amen to that. If you were at 500 ft you don't have enough time to pick a landing zone it picks you and you have to get turned into the wind. At what altitude do you think "this is kind of hard to recover from". Do you have a sense of low-flying that's general or do you have a sense of low-flying that's terrain based?

@@markmcgoveran6811 Thats a really good question. One thing which hit me ive never heard anyone talk about before is while yes there were tons of outs there were very few good outs. For example you could probably land on top of a warehouse roof but then from there you would have a big headache getting down and you can imagine the drama of having to call the police to call the owner have a bunch of fire brigade guys etc etc. In this video case I instantly look down and yes theres tons of outs however this is what goes through my head. 1) The fields mostly have trees and there goes a big rip in my wing plus a angry farmer with a ton of footprints over his nicely plowed field. 2) There are lots of storage yards with big open spaces to land easily in HOWEVER most of them have locked gates with high fences plus worse most have a security dog roaming the yards on the weekends. 3) You need to land upwind and that eliminates a bunch of the sideways outs. 4) Landing on private property you don't want an owner freaking out thinking its a serious emergency like a plane crash and unnecessarily calling cops. When you go through all of the above in your mind and look at the landing options what initially looked like tons of options in fact turned into very few good options and I was lucky i landed in the field I did. To answer your question I would say its terrain based, if i had an engine out at the worst moment as I am going over a power line I could see if I wasnt high enough to glide over that would be a real problem. If I had it at 2 ft off the ground on a big flat field I could just brake to a landing.

@@Para_Ninja I'm not really a gangster but I do play one in a small town and in fact I'm flying in heavy like a gangster. I'm still ground handling right now and I'm at a special school with a great big giant landing field that I can hit that's a thousand meters squared. This thing where you are breaking to a landing this is a transition from flying to stopping and I don't want to do it. In mathematics there's a thing called a transient. It's something that happens quickly like a switch opening and since I'm only smart enough to keep track of the roll ass axis while I am landing, I need to go as quickly as possible from a level Wing right at ground level 2 ft and then slammed the brakes on as hard as I can so I go instantly to a state where both brakes are full on. There are plenty of mathematical limits to these things and one of them is the limit of your control authority. The company said it would fly best if I put my hands up in the turbulence but they recommended active flying. I'm just going to sit there and cry probably the first hundred hours with my hands up and take my lumps when anything happens because I'm so fat I'm at the very top of the weight range If I gain another 10 lb I'd be too fat to buy insurance even if I take all the classes. Jockey Sanderson had a special hot shot spiral dive lock-in rig with 40 lb of ballast. In his skilled hand it was a sight to see. If you were below a minimum velocity and you Begin a spiral dive with that turning effect and the Bank angle combining low speed tight turn eating all the lift you may fall a great distance gaining speed to have enough control authority to pull out. When any aircraft Bank the gain weight quickly from geometry and math and the lift to drag ratio has to give. I saw a power paraglider guy who was the 100 lb overweight rating and had crashed hard and fatally. He had plenty of other deficiencies but I seem to be the only mathematician out here that can see what he did. Overloaded airplanes will fly straight and fall when you turn.

Cheers mate, one day I want to fly back in QLD. Ive heard I need to get a license of sorts though? I was in touch with a guy down in Surfers who flys along the beach there.

@@Para_Ninja Yes you do need a licence, we did a lot of flying around northern NSW Byron beaches and light house...absolutely magic days....."yer I know...yesterday's warriors:):)"

Yep I think it happens to everyone on a long enough time scale.. Im glad it happened to me and was a big nothing however at the same time I can see how it could be a much bigger deal if it happened lower or in an area without any outs and it also got me thinking while I was going down that sure there are quite a few outs but not many good outs. Like I was scanning fenced in properties but then ive gotta somehow throw my rig over a barb wire fence or maybe deal with someone's pet dog etc.

Thats cool, Ive heard alot of good things about the peace and purity of paragliding. Ive actually bought a couple of paragliding harness and plan to give it a go sometime as I have some decent spots to fly near me. :) The prop hitting the lines isnt a big concern as they are pretty well shielded however I was just saying to a new guy the other day be very careful about letting go of your brakes and them somehow getting through the cage and getting hooked on the prop.. thats pretty much certain death right there as in a millisecond it will wrap the brake around the prop and pull a hard uncontrollable turn straight into the ground. Luckily its very rare and usually only happens when someones done some weird customization idea like really long brake lines or removing parts of their cage.

@@Para_Ninja God bless you for answering my questions.I Bought epsilon 9. It's a 30 and it's rated for my weight and that's all I can't take an extra gallon of water with me without being over and I'm dieting to get under the weight range as far as possible. I have noticed some contrast between the philosophies of the paraglider and the philosophies of the power parA glider. On launch the paraglider says to run under the wing. The lines are loose and the wind can flatten out and jump until it's level above you and you can ground handle it and hold it in that position above your head. The power paraglider guy said to squat low and anchor the parachute to pivot up around the two harness points. The power paraglider guy is keeping the lines tight and getting ready to turn and get on the fuel. His perfect day is zero wind speed. Most of the people I spoke to told me I had to fly in a 10 mi an hour wind in order to get Lift coming up a ridge. I was ground-handling in a 9 mi an hour wind and I had the wall built and I pulled it up when the wind was rising instead of when the wind was dropping it got to 45° and yank me through the air and I landed on my face. My first flight was 15 feet. I'm tending to steer away from motors unless I had a trike to sit on.

@@markmcgoveran6811 Interesting, thanks, I am looking forward to giving it a go, a PPG friend has said he wants to try it with me too. I understand about the losing weight thing, its all part of the sport. I remember when I started I was sitting thinking about removing some safety items just to make it a bit lighter and easier to launch and my wife walked passed and said "You know you could just lose 10lbs off your stomach and leave the safety stuff on it" hahaha and so I did. And lol your story about landing on your face, its all part of the sport. We have a new guy last week and I was saying to him he needs to go an d lay down face first on the dirt with the wing everywhere and be totally ok with it because thats para life for alot of the time hahaha. All these beautiful youtube videos of young guys effortlessly swooshing through the air and gracefully landing leave out the parts where they failed 3 launches, stepped in a pothole and broke something expensive and had to go home lol. Since I have no ego with this I try to include as much reality of bad stuff that happens in my videos as possible and even then i skip out alot of my failed launches just to cut down on time but they are all there. I figure that my videos can be used to help other new guys try to avoid the same mistakes.

@@Para_Ninja the only place I don't want to land is inside the 10 mi no fly zone around the nuclear plant. I am not a paraglider pilot and I'm never going to be a paraglider pilot I'm going to be a cloud seeder. I have a friend I've known for many years and I'm going to fly off the hills at his farm is best I can and try to catch ridges around there as best I can and try to get up in the air as far as I can and always throw out a box of corn starch, to make it rain. I'm going to have a megaphone or something to shout through and a bunch of flashing lights. No matter where I go I'm either going to fly back to where I left the hill or I'm going to fly to my house. By the time it gets dark if I'm not found the fire departments everywhere will call all their members and ask them to step outside and look for me hanging around. If I can get up in the air high enough to fly away from my friend's Farm I can land anywhere I want because this is America and I'm having an aviation emergency. No matter what or where I go I will tell everybody the same landing story I put my hands up and I beg God to save me because I was so scared I forgot how to fly and I had soiled my pants. The Lord steered me into that nice soft haystack right there and I'm sorry for the damages the insurance company that built this glider might pay you something but I'm going to give you $20 right now. That's the story I'm always going to tell and that's the thing I'm always going to do whenever I land somewhere that I'm not supposed to I'm going to offer them some money for the damages and excuse myself.

He was coming in to land at a soccer field with no windsock but the guy already on the ground had waved him in accidentally downwind so he was coming in way to fast so he tried to pull out at the last second and didn't quite make it or did depending how you look at it. Pretty lucky he didn't get hurt.

he shoulda just landed it and ran like hell. He almost became ONE with the ground.

Yep it came down to being my own fault. First i recently added a bit of conductive grease to the tip of the plug itself which inadvertently made the inside of the rubber boot not grip as tightly on the plug itself. The day before the flight I noticed the spark plug rubber cap wasn't gripping so tightly so having spent yrs messing around with dirt bikes (and this cap from the outside looks identical) Inside dirt bike caps are little metal prongs which grab the end of the spark plug and occasionally get spread apart so you crimp them from time to time with pliers. I tried doing the same thing to the base of the rubber boot of the paramotor assuming they were probably the same mechanism internally. They are not! and whats worse was that when I crimped the rubber I inadvertently put a big crack in the rubber boot on one side which I didn't notice. The vibration of paramotor engines is insane and so after 10 mins of flying the cracked rubber had widened to the point the whole thing was thrown off. The conductive grease residue didn't help either. In short the whole thing was a good learning experience. Ive learned how the plugs and caps work. I learned that on a non clutched motor when they die suddenly like that there is a violent shake through the whole frame which scared the hell out of me at the time.. even shook the gopro in the vdieo. I also learned respect for engine outs. I was lucky there were a couple of options but not as many as you would think due to barb wire fences, gates, trees etc.

Basically the rubber spark plug cap came off because I accidentally broke it just before the flight and also added some conductive grease to the tip making it a bit slippery.

Im on a paramotor. I didn't declare a mayday over general aviation radio. I had enough altitude that it was fine however I got some respect for an engine out down low and how that could be a really problem.

You can relax, I had no radio. We use private mobile group apps to communicate. You can see yourself the violent shudder when it happened enough to even shake my helmet with stabilization coupled with a dead engine and no way to check what actually happened back there I think anyone would feel in danger.