Parasailing Anyone?

By Ned Costa, CAPO

MICHIGAN (2003) - Flying Casper Hueys and being shot at all the time just was not enough for Casper Pilot Walt Henderson.  So as you can see, he has now taken up the exciting sport of Parasailing.

Left photo, Walt is standing next to the rig they use for tandem flying.  If he was flying alone, then he would basically be sitting in one of the seats like the one in front of the tandem rig.  However, there is no metal frame surrounding the pilot.

According to Walt, The sport is powered parachuting (parasailing) and basically you strap a small motor and propeller on your back which gives enough forward "push" to cause lift to develop on the parachute so you go up.  To come down you can spill lift from the chute or cut back on the throttle, or both.  The thing you have to keep in mind is that you are not flying your seat but the wing 25 feet above your head, and it is kinda like flying a Hiller only slower to respond (if that's possible).  The owner/instructor showed me how to control the little beast and then I pretty much flew it for the next hour.  The normal time is about 20 minutes but we got to talking about flying and he showed me a couple of advanced maneuvers and I showed him a high overhead (death spiral) and then he said we needed to move away from the landing field area so we could do some "really advanced" stuff, like picking corn tassels and skimming a field as low as possible without touching the ground.  It was great!

Walt was a Casper Pilot in 1968 and served at LZ English, Bong Son.  He is also a CAPO past President.

Walt Henderson: wahendx1@verizon.net

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