I’ve mentioned before, but the option I took was to relocate my batter to under the seat. I’m 154 and it fixed my hang point struggles. Do a search and youll find pictures for the thread I started discussing the mod. I haven’t seen or heard anyone else try it but I see these hang point difficulty threads almost every week.
Yes, thank you, I’ve seen your post about moving the battery. I’m glad someone was willing to give it a try, but it might be a bit beyond how far I’m willing to go.
Are you new to paragliding and kiting too or just new at kiting with a motor? Do you have a paragliding harness that you can kite with? You can actually kite with the paramotor harness by itself. In fact, it’s very similar to an old paragliding harness that I use when teaching people to kite. I’m going to do a hang check with just the harness to see how comfortable it would be to fly with.
@Wadecker, I want to apologize for the way I worded my response about the CG. I was not being very kind or professional and I’m sorry about that.
I have over 30 years of experience paragliding and 5 years flying with a motor (and I fly several times per week). I’ve also built several radio control paramotors and have experimented extensively with connection location, relative to CG and thrust line.
I went back and reworded my response about CG and I invite you to please go back and re-read what I wrote and the details I added!
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Hey. Here is a photo of my e-motor hung using the factory default hang points. The prop is not attached and the reserve is wedged in between some of the harness straps (didn’t get my container with my shipments). I temporarily attached a framing square to the motor mounting plate so I could get a good visual of the thrust angle. The bottom edge of the square is lined up with the motor axis. Then I positioned a horizontal pole and leveled it. The hard part was getting it positioned such that the two reference lines converged at the end of the motor output shaft. Now I need to import this photo into my CAD software and find out what the angle is. You seasoned pilots (I’m not saying “old”!) can probably guess pretty accurately just by looking! I’ll be reviewing this thread in an effort to pickup on useful info.
That’s impressive work, and maybe I’m missing something here, but why not just use a “Bubble Level” app on your phone?
I agree the best tool to use is the level app on your phone which will tell you the angle.
From a picture like this if you have an iPhone there is a straighten photo option which will tell you how far the photo is being rotated and it has a grid to line things up. I rotated your photo 24 degrees to make the square level:
You need to move the collars back as far as possible and test again. When my static hang angle is 15 degrees my angle with level flight is about 10 degrees. Also realize the time where this matters the most is during takeoff and at that time you should be hanging by your leg straps which makes the recline even less.
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Jeez! I had no idea that feature was part of Camera! I measured 26.5 degrees with my CAD program and 24 degrees with my phone, so pretty close but 2.5 degrees (if CAD results are truer) can’t be ignored. But I too am a newbie so maybe that delta isn’t something to get too anxious about?
One more thing, the opinions of whether or not to ‘capture’ the collars in the soft links is divided. Is there a compelling reason to keep the collars ahead of the soft links? Better retention?
Thanks guys for the tip and advice.
You don’t want the soft links moving around on you in either direction. They are supposed to straddle the collars. I don’t see a division here… I see one person who suggested it because he is a light pilot and he found another way to secure them from moving back on their own. The only reason to put the collars in front of the soft links is if you are a light pilot and can’t get the hang angle right any other way. If you do put the collars in front of the soft links you must find a way to prevent the soft links from sliding backwards like the person who posted the picture.
2.5 degrees is insignificant when you aren’t even in the ballpark to begin with. You need to target less than 15 degrees. 24 degrees is too much recline and so is 26.5 degrees. The camera angle alone could throw this off so just measure the angle directly with the level app if you can.
One of the problems with not having the soft link straddling the collar is that the soft link can rotate around the swingarm. This was a problem when doing the hang test, since the harness would be tilted WAY back (without me in the seat), the soft link would rotate around so the hang point would be on the side of the swingarm. Then I’d have to rotate it back around to the top while climbing into the seat. Not ideal.
I’m not sure how much of a problem it is when launching for real, since I’ve only gotten one flight in. I did make sure the soft links were rotated the right way (upward) before pulling the wing up. But it’s just one more thing to have to worry about during the pre-flight runup.
FWIW, I ordered a set of the Iris swingarms. I don’t know when they’ll arrive, and I don’t even know how much they’ll help with my hang angle problems. The OpenPPG guys never responded to my inquiry about the availability of different swingarms for lighter pilots that had been alluded to in a post last year. At the very least, the Iris swingarms should fix the issue with having janky soft links rotating away from the correct position.
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Thanks guys, makes total sense. I moved the collars and tried both soft link positions; straddled and behind. Neither produced any significant differences, and I too experienced the soft link spin to the outside. I did some experimenting and came up with the arrangement pictured below. Basically I created a force vector that pulls the soft link towards the back. The setup is: moved the collars, straddled the soft links around the collars, added links from the soft links to the frame near the arm pivot point. This arrangement took the angle from 24 to 11 degrees. When I stretch my legs out the angle is 7 degrees. There’s an obvious gotcha, in that the links run across the space where my arms are. Not ideal, but it’s an effective solution. The links don’t restrict the movement of the arms. Another negative aspect is that the links are forces that want to buckle the arms at the bends. This is extremely stated and probably wouldn’t be an issue. I’d love everyone’s $0.02.
This is the last email i see from you,
Please email info@openppg.com if you have any questions that is the best form for questions to get answered, as for the bars they are still being worked on, and should have a final version available to buy in October if all goes well.
Ah, okay, I see what happened. The email you guys sent out to new owners on August 4th with the subject “Important tips and updates for your SP140” has the Reply-To: field set to “zach@openppg.com.” When I asked the question about the swingarms, I did it as a reply to that email, so it went only to Zach’s email address instead of info@openppg.com.
Thank you for the update about the swingarms. I’ll keep an eye out for more news about them in the next few months!
I had my wife use the level app parallel to the motor as I sat in the harness. Is there a way to do it alone?
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If you have an iPhone and an iWatch you can trigger the camera from your watch.
I don’t have the watch. But I also don’t use the camera I use the level app.
Well, I was able to achieve 13 degrees but the collars are waaaay back. I assume others had to go to this extreme and that it’s safe to fly this way. I’m a bit concerned about the collars being on the bend and not tightening down the way they were designed to.
I’ve seen a few posts about static vs powered hang angle and I think those are worth considering. This was my attachment on flight #4 after much tinkering using some of the suggestions on this forum (for reference, I’m 150 lb with the 4kWh battery). On the ground the hang angle was about the same as yours. However, at climb power my cage tilted so far forward that my right brake lines were touching the cage – spooky to say the least. Upon review, I suspect that in my effort to move the hang points further back, I actually just moved them lower resulting in a wing attachment point below the thrust line. All this to say, from your picture it looks like your hang points are even lower than mine and a powered hang test might be worth trying. Another thing that I noticed was that the torque steer effect was very strong and I suspect that by not having the hang points near the bend in the bar where the offset is most pronounced, you lose a lot of the torque compensation. Unfortunately, I don’t have an answer to your problem (which I share) quite yet, but these are just some things I’ve been thinking about in my tinkering. Hopefully we figure out something soon; I’d really love to get out of the tinkering phase and on to the flying phase before summer is over!
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