Aerial Ballet
These photo’s were taken during the 2005 Color Country Chute Festival held in Hurricane, Utah, Oct 19th to the 23rd, 2005. There were over 100 pilots & planes present, along with vendors.
On Saturday Oct. 22nd, we were all treated to the Aerial Ballet, put on by 5 exceptional pilots. You will see some pictures of extreme aerobatic maneuvers, including powered parachutes in an inverted flight position with smoke generators on.. These maneuvers are being done by pilots that have practiced them for many hundreds of hours & have the required skills to do them safely. Watching these maneuvers is as exciting as seeing the U.S. Navy Blue Angels or the U.S.A.F. Thunderbirds doing their aerobatic demonstrations.
Monument Valley from the Air
On Sunday, Oct. 23rd, some 30 or more pilots went to Monument Valley, that beautiful country you have seen in many John Wayne westerns. Flying there has been one of my dreams as a powered parachute pilot, and seeing these monuments up close & personal, & from above, & being able to fly around them is an experience that I am unable to put into words. I hope the pictures will do that for me.
American Flyer Movie Shoot
In 2007, Mark Christensen came to me with this absurd flying wheelbarrow. When I saw it, I couldn’t believe it. I asked him if it could fly, & he stated it could. It was an orange construction wheelbarrow that Mark had mounted a structure to for mounting an engine, in this case, a Rotax 447 with a 3 blade prop on it. The parachute wing was made in Anaheim, a Quantum 400, made to look like it had been fashioned from old table cloths. The riser straps to attach the chute to the craft were also made at High Energy Sports in Anaheim, CA. We did some of the flying here in Apple Valley at our local field. Then, we ventured to Tijuana, Mexico. Mark had arranged to do the flying shots there, just over the border in the riverbed. He had a ford Crown Victoria dressed up to look like a Tijuana police car, and they stopped by the location, very surprised to see that. Mark smoothed it over & the filming went on. The movie starred Danny “Machete” Trejo as his father, and Douglas Spain as the youth. The premise was a young lad played by Douglas wanted to come to the USA, and he decided to fly over the border in his homebuilt powered parachute. They ended up landing at the Amusement park at Santa Monica pier, thanks to blue screen & special effects.
During the filming in Tijuana, we were getting as much footage as we could, so it could be edited into the movie. We were flying quite low; I was flying my Powrachute Pegasus with Mark & his Panavision camera on board. Tom Janetzke was flying the wheelbarrow. Tom fit it better than I did. (Thank God for that!) While I could not hear this, we were flying over a foot bridge between the USA & Mexico, with the border patrol keeping a sharp watch on us. The people on the bridge waking on the bridge to the USA didn’t know what was going on, but were cheering for us, yelling Ole’ over & over again. Anyway, you can see the wheelbarrow in these pictures, with myself & Mark in the orange Pegasus. It was a hoot.
How to Clean a Chute
