Can a woman find happiness with a PPC?  You bet!

Reprint of a letter from Sol Lovas to Rockin' John , printed in January, 1999 issue of Ultraflight Magazine:

Dear Rockin' John:

I heartily second your comment in your column that you would like to see more women pilots involved in powered parachuting.

From personal experience, I can confirm that this is a wonderful sport for women!

It was my husband's idea to for us to try powered parachuting, but as soon as I left the ground, I fell in love with the sport.  The first time I was ever in the air in a powered parachute was my solo flight, since the dealer we learned from only had a single-seat unit.  I conquered my butterflies, sat down in the airframe and powered up.  As I lifted off, I looked around and down at the receding ground, picked up the radio, and said "I like this!"  And I have been flying ever since.   We were so hooked by our solos that we became dealers in order to introduce others to this great sport.   In 1996, I was certified as the first female Advanced Flight Instructor for powered parachutes in the country.  While I am no longer the only female AFI in the country (hurray!), I am currently one of only 2 AFIs (1 male and me) in Montana.

This is a terrific sport for women.  The machines are relatively lightweight and easy to maneuver out of the hangars and around the field.  Flight itself is, of course, fantastic - the feeling of freedom and the sway of the breezes as you float slowly over the countryside just can't be adequately described to anyone who hasn't tried it.  I have been very well accepted by the male pilots, and we all enjoy hangar flying about our various experiences.

As a female with lesser strength than most male pilots, there are only two areas where I have had any difficulty at all in this sport.  The first was pull-starting those Rotax motors.  It took me a while to learn the proper technique necessary to compensate for my lesser strength.  But the real answer was an electric starter, which I highly recommend for anyone.  The second problem area was loading and unloading the machine from the trailer.  Most trailers sit too high for me to push a machine onto the trailer  by myself.  However, we recently solved this problem by getting a trailer built by the Itty Bitty Trailer Company (also in Montana) which has a torsion-bar suspension so the bed is very close to the ground.  Now I can load and unload our Buckeye 582 Dream Machine by myself.  I am, however, still planning to get a winch installed to make it even easier.  (One pilot we know loads his machine into the back of his pickup with an electric winch!)  With only these two accommodations to my lesser strength, I am able to participate in this sport completely independently.

And my husband Art?  He flies, but not nearly as often as I do.  His love is dealing with the assembly and maintenance of the machines themselves.  We make a good team for our dealership.  We both love the sport and the people we have met through it.  I do the flight demonstrations and all of the instructing, and Art deals with the technical and mechanical ends of the business.  Some customers are surprised when they first learn that I, not Art, will be the pilot for their introductory flight, and will train them and supervise their solo, but Art's simple statement that "she's a better pilot than I am" solves that one quickly.  Competence means much more than gender.

I would love to see more women get involved as pilots in this sport.  Involvement does not require a lot of strength or mechanical ability.  If you can drive a car, you can certainly fly a powered parachute.  In fact, flying the chute is a lot simpler, and way more fun!

If any of your readers - particularly women - have any questions about getting involved in this great sport, please feel free to have them give me a call.

I enjoy your column.  Keep up the good work.

Sincerely yours, 
Ms. Sol Lovas, AFI
Riders in the Sky, Inc.
Billings, Montana