{"id":11121,"date":"2015-04-24T08:54:57","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T13:54:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/?p=11121"},"modified":"2015-04-24T09:12:48","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T14:12:48","slug":"marlon-out-flyin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/2015\/04\/24\/marlon-out-flyin\/","title":{"rendered":"Marlon Out Flyin’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brian\u2019s writings are the best! His photography is fantastic and I look forward to all his Surfin\u2019 Safaris! Brian,\u00a0keep them coming! He said I could post a couple of pictures but I think I got a bit carried away.<\/p>\n

Back In The Day<\/h4>\n

In ’85 my friend Risto and I were sitting in a local watering hole after a night shift when he told me he\u00a0was going to buy a hang glider. Well, I have witnessed some bad attempts at hangliding and I am a bit of a\u00a0motorhead so I said I would get an ultralight.
\nAfter a quick search of the junk ads I found a Weedhopper Ultralight that even came with a trailer, prefect!
\nAn interesting toy, the motor was a single cylinder with no magneto, just a car coil and a battery by the seat\u00a0you connect an alligator clip to for spark. But it always started up and never quit on me.
\nLater that week we headed to the desert to try out our new found toys.<\/p>\n

We failed miserably at hangliding but the Weedhopper actually flew!<\/p>\n

\"Weedhopper\"

This was my Weedhopper back in 1985 probably out on El Mirage Dry lake.<\/p><\/div>\n

I found this old closeup photo of the Chotia Motor. I didn\u2019t remember it having dual ignition. Just in front of the carb you can see a bolt with rubber under it.\u00a0The motor flopped back and forth on two of these bolts until running with a bit of torque to hold to one side.\u00a0Check out the angle of the motor compared to the level main shaft and wings.\u00a0From the color, this is the mahogany prop I carved while waiting for a new one to come by mail.\u00a0I had enough of the old broken one to get measurements and angles to make one. It turned out to work better than the replacement one I bought for it.<\/p>\n

\"MarlonHopperimage001\"<\/a>

Chotia Motor<\/p><\/div>\n

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I spent a lot of time out in the desert riding dirt bikes and there are plenty of dry lakes to play on so taking\u00a0the Weedhopper out to El Mirage or Soggy Dry lake worked out well. One thing about the desert and dry\u00a0lakes, they are usually windy. So learning to fly the Weedhopper with less than 20 horsepower and no\u00a0ailerons was a fun time!\u00a0Since then I have had an Eipper weight shift that quit running whenever it felt like it and lately I have had a\u00a0Quicksilver MXL and now am flying a Kolb Firefly.<\/p>\n

A Quicksilver, too!<\/h4>\n

A couple years ago I\u00a0picked up this Quicksilver from a guy in El Dorado, KS.<\/p>\n

\"Quicksilver\"

My Quicksilver MXL<\/p><\/div>\n

The one warm day we had here in March, I flew once around New Richmond.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Heading into New Richmond in my Kolb.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Black Brook Flowage<\/p><\/div>\n

Then getting really brave I ventured to Amery WI. Here I was flying over “Black Brook Flowage” I like the Dam down there!<\/p>\n

\"\"

Found some Parking<\/p><\/div>\n

After landing at Amery, WI, a man in a black Mercedes came out to greet me. After chatting for a while he watched me leave the area.
\nI flew back to New Richmond Regional. A great first airport to airport trip.<\/p>\n

Keep Flying!<\/p>\n

Marlon West<\/strong> – Hastings, MN<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian\u2019s writings are the best! His photography is fantastic and I look forward to all his Surfin\u2019 Safaris! Brian,\u00a0keep them coming! He said I could post a couple of pictures but I think I got a bit carried away. Back In The Day In ’85 my friend Risto and I were sitting in a local […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6188,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultralight","category-uncategorized","category-11-id","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6188"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11121"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11141,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11121\/revisions\/11141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fitzvideo.com\/skysurfing2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}