There I was… in the middle of South Africa, unable to get down and getting blown further and further away from, well … nowhere! Jaco Wolmarans’ short hop on a paramotor without reserve, water or sunscreen becomes a long, blistering day in the desert sun. Published in Cross Country magazine in 2004
I once saw a cartoon strip of Garfield’s canine friend Odie climbing a tree. The caption read: “It’s amazing what you can do if you don’t know you can’t.” This certainly applies to flying paramotors in the desert in midsummer. Especially if your paramotor training consists of the sum total of three flights: two, admittedly with an instructor, but he basically only pointed out how to start and launch.
Knowing I had access to a paramotor, a farmer friend of mine from near the town of Calvinia in the Great Karoo had asked me to take some aerial photographs of his property. Piece of cake, I thought. Just go early in the morning before the thermals get going. So there I was, with a borrowed paramotor and an ageing comp wing in the Great Karoo, which just happens to be inland, hot, dry, desolate and, at a launch altitude I had never flown at before.
Launching a paramotor at altitude is notoriously difficult as the motor runs very lean and produces less power. So you have to run like hell due to the extra weight and thin air. But these were mere technicalities for an able-bodied, all-knowing pilot like myself.
Out there, there’s hardly any traffic. Towns are on average about 120km apart, and the terrain is completely flat as far as the eye can see. So, I set up in the middle of the main tar road, with one of the farm workers helping. The wind was light and coming straight down the road. Perfect. All we needed to do was start the paramotor. It wouldn’t.
After an hour’s search, I found that a grub screw holding the earth lead for the electrical system had come undone. My Allen key didn’t fit, so I sent Dion back to the farm. He brought more tools, we tightened the screw, and eventually managed to start the motor. It ran, but rather roughly in the rarified air.
As soon as I was ready, the wind shifted through 90 degrees. Typical! We stopped the motor, picked up the wing and laid it out again on a dirt road leading into the farm, once again into wind. By now, it was two hours after my intended take-off time, the sun was beating down in its full 40-degree fury, and I was sweating like a pig. So, off came the flight suit.
After three attempts, I finally managed to drag my very sluggish wing off the dirt in the nil wind conditions. I ran like hell and gave it full gas. The engine roared, the prop spun madly, my legs pedalled crazily, but the ground still failed to recede. I realised I was running a risk of seizing the engine by staying on full throttle so long in the thin air but I needed to launch. It was simply too hot to have to try again.
Suddenly, I got torn off the ground by a powerful thermal. Great! At this point I should have seen the warning lights come on. A thermal, at 9:30 in the morning, strong enough to lift me with full kit, straight off the ground’ But stress makes you colour blind, so all I saw was green, and go, go, go!
I put the wing into a tight turn and eased off the throttle. I was climbing fast but with the wingtips repeatedly deflating. High enough to get my pictures, I suddenly realised that I was miles from the farm. Hell! Brakes up – no penetration! I dropped the trimmers a bit and WHACK! Instant collapse.
OK, probably wise not to let go of the toggles when the wing was thrashing around like that on the edge of the thermal. Back in control, off I went, creeping forward ever so slowly. By now I was over the farm’s huge dam.
I still had hardly any forward speed and was in a sink cycle pushing me straight into the water, even at full throttle. With no signs of any lift ahead, and no power I thought, “Damn! I’m going to get wet, in the middle of the bloody desert!”
Just for the hell of it I snapped a couple of shots of the faraway farmhouse, then yanked the glider round, gassed the motor hard, and went screaming downwind.
Back over dry land, I flew straight into a thermal, and decided to grab some height and run for the next target, another farmhouse some 5km away. I climbed quickly, averaging 4m/s up to 500metres AGL, then set course for the farmhouse in the distance.
At this height, the wind was remarkably strong and pushed me sideways at quite a rate. I let the trims off again and was instantly rewarded with another deflation. When I got to within a kilometre of the farmhouse, I got some more faraway pictures, but I also noticed through my camera’s viewfinder that the farmyard was receding fast. Pointing straight into wind, I was going backwards at around 10km/h. “Mmm,” I thought, “landing is going to be fun.”
By now I was well and truly over no-man’s-land. I could see Deon following in his truck at high speed, but there was no road to land on so I glided downwind to where the road crossed my downwind path. Suddenly I hit a huge thermal, and shot straight up with the ears collapsing yet again.
I pushed on, hoping to fly through it – which I eventually did, at 830metres AGL! By now I’d long since lost my retrieve driver, any possible landing spot, and the next farmhouse was a dot in the distance. So I pushed on, hoping to find some sink along the way. Absolutely everything was going up. All I could think was, “Where are all these b****y thermals when you need them free-flying’”
I had an epic sky above me, clouds pointing all the way to an easy 100km, ground winds pushing along at record levels, and no airspace problems. But with no reserve, no GPS, no radio, and no water, there was no chance. I had to land or die of thirst somewhere in the middle of the wasteland that is the Karoo.
After ten minutes, the farmhouse was getting close. I found some sink and started spiraling down with the engine still running, too scared to switch it off in case I needed it to avoid a walk in this heat. I cored the sink right down to 43 metres AGL. I was almost on the ground when BOOM! Another thermal blasted me back to 600 metres before I managed to shake it off.
The farmhouse was now 1.5km behind me, a long way below, and disappearing rapidly. The next one was (again) a mere speck in the distance. So off I went – determined to land at all costs as I simply had to find shade and water.
Flying through sink, I managed to lose some height along the way but ended up stuck at around 400metres AGL, two kilometres upwind of the farmhouse. Then I saw a truck leaving the house and driving in my direction. “Great! They’ve seen me!”, I thought, knowing I would need help on landing.
Desperately cranking it over, I got nice a spiral going, and managed to bring her down to 60 metres AGL before BOOM! Up again! These rocket launches were seriously starting to upset me, but by now I was panicked enough not to care about losing the wing exiting a 6-up thermal.
I flew straight while underneath me the truck drove straight on and disappeared in the opposite direction. I didn’t blame them for not seeing me – after all, who’d expect to see a paraglider advertising Absolut Vodka in the middle of Nowheresville.
Two kilometres downwind of the farmhouse, I finally managed to bring the wing down low enough and set up to land in a deserted flood irrigation paddock. As I came in on final, I triggered a thermal at 10 metres AGL, which caused a massive front tuck.
The glider dived below the horizon, and I set off after it in a huge pendulum, screaming my lungs out in anticipation of the dent I was about to make in the ground. The wing re-inflated in the nick of time, and I swung in underneath, finally connecting the hard earth with a crunch.
I immediately got slammed flat onto my face as the cage hit my ankles from behind. The frame was bent out of shape, but I was OK. Dusty, and a little dazed, I got up, then promptly did a quick back-flip as a jackal scrammed out of his hole underneath my feet and – TWANG! – ran straight into a metal sluice gate.
I packed the glider, lifted my kit onto my still-shaking shoulders and hit the road back to the farm. An hour’s walk later, with my face scorched from the sun and sweat streaming down my back, I arrived at the farm. I dumped everything on the porch and went knocking. No-one home.
I walked round the back and knocked again. No joy. Desperate to let Deon know I was OK, I found an open window, climbed through and found the telephone. The local cops were completely non-plussed. “You did what’ Where’” Exasperated, I said “Please phone my buddy and tell him I’m safe, and that I’m more or less … erm, here.”
Suddenly, I heard the sound of an engine outside, I slammed the phone down, looked outside, and spotted the home owner returning. I raced to the window, which was, fortunately, out of his view on the other side of the house, jumped out, walked nonchalantly round the other side, and invited myself in.
After downing litres of cool drink and making some phone calls to Deon, the friendly farmer loaded my bent machine into the back of his truck and kindly drove me back to my start point.
On route, I find out that the kindly gentleman was the Northern Cape minister of agriculture and tourism. Just doing his bit for the province. Back home, I realised the full consequences of my poor judgement: the entire community had missed their afternoon siesta as every single farmer in the district had been summonsed via citizen’s band radio to go looking for me, errant pilot, lost, somewhere in the veld!
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