re: Any ultralight owners?

There’s a eurocoupe in a shared hangar at my airport. It is incredibly small. I don’t have an ultra lite but there are quite a few there. They do look like fun.

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I do ortho trauma surgery.
Those are some of the most tragic cases we see.
People actually fall out of those.
It is hard to fix them. About half die. Most of the rest never walk again.
If I were choosing for you, I would pick a different hobby.

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Back in the 70's they started putting small engines on hang gliders. You would run until there was enough lift and the prop could take over. I well remember these things were trickier to land then you might think. It was very easy to overshoot the landing area. Watched a relative land in a tree line and break his legs.

Paramotor. This dudes channel is a trip.

LINK

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Speculation incoming:

I suspect the deaths/injuries associated with ultra lites are more to do with the lack of training required to operate one vs. the unsafe nature of the aircraft. They look like pretty forgiving aircraft relatively speaking. Any ole baw with a few thousand bucks and an hour of instruction can get his arse in a crack real quick though.

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I'm sure this is true for some of the cases. Guy I knew had it for years, lots of hours logged. They are very susceptible to crosswinds and can be unstable. Understandably so, they are merely hang gliders with a seat and engine.

My grandfather around Christmas 1980. He built two ultralights from kits and this was the first one. It had two snowmobile engines and the TBO was around 30-40 hours.



Grandpa also had a Piper Cub in the 1950s. It was a wreck that he rebuilt. He kept it in the barn and flew it out of the cow pasture. My grandmother also got her license and learned to fly it.