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Campos, Calif. – May 15, 2006 – A Pennsylvania man has set off on an ambitious trip to fly across the continent in a powered parachute. Unfortunately, the trip is off to a rather bumpy start. Baron Tayler was forced to make an emergency landing on the first day of his journey when sudden high winds buffeted the aircraft.
Tayler landed in Campos, California, only three hours after taking off in his powered parachute from the deck of the USS Midway in San Diego on May 10. Tayler’s powered chute received minor damage — a bent left rear axle and steering tube — after winds caught his chute seconds after landing, causing the vehicle to roll on its side.
“Let me tell you, there are few things as scary as seeing the top of a rocky mountain rushing up at you, while you're "flying" 20 miles per hour sideways!” he wrote on his trip’s blog. “Up and down, back and forth, it was not fun.”
But after repairs, the fun is back and Tayler was back in the skies by May 12.
The first pilot to receive the Sport Pilot Certificate with a powered parachute rating from an FAA Designated Examiner, Tayler will travel 3,600 miles through 14 states and stop at least 53 times before landing on the deck of the USS Yorktown in Charleston Harbor, S.C. in eight to 12 weeks.
He hopes his trip will accomplish three goals:
- To raise awareness about the PowerChute Education Foundation, an organization Tayler founded that promotes the use of powered chutes for search-and-rescue operations since the aircraft fly low and slow.
- To raise funds for the foundation’s charitable project, E.L.L.A.S.S. Emergency Low Level Aerial Search & Surveillance supports the efforts of police, fire departments and search and rescue teams when they are looking for missing people and serve as “eyes in the sky” for ground search teams.
- To expose the sport of powerchuting to tens of millions of people through mass media.
A film crew will shadow Tayler along the way.
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