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Around the World with the Zenith Top80

Posted on December 20, 2012 in Dean Eldridge   

At the end of the summer season this year I had the most fortunate opportunity of traveling around the world with my paramotoring equipment and a small documentary film crew. The brainchild of the project is Sylvestre Campe, a well respected film maker in his homeland Brazil (although his origins are from Germany/France.) Deciding that he really wanted to use the paramotor for aerial filming, we worked together to formulate an itinerary at extremely short notice and and also to incorporate some training for him too as he had never before piloted anything himself!

With his fast track training completed in Northern Spain, I then had to leave for a short hop over to Quebec for the Fly Games World slalom competition which consequently I gained top spot on the podium, so some great news to head back to Europe with and a well worthwhile trip.. Back in Europe and straight after the magnificent St. Hilaire festival near Grenoble we were on the road through Italy and Slovenia. There were some pretty tricky flying conditions and locations but our TOP80 engined Zenith’s and Paramania wings coped superbly and we managed to get some incredible footage in the Slovenian mountains and lakeside town of Bled as well as the glorious San Gimignano in Tuscany.

From there we had to leave my trusty van and continue with airline transportation, firstly taking us to Cappadocia in Turkey. It was a relief to get the first commercial flight out of the way as I was concerned that if our paramotors were confiscated or not allowed on the flight the whole project could be scuppered, thankfully meticulous preparation paid off. Cappadocia proved to be such an amazing place, rich in culture and history with the most amazing geological features I had ever flown over so far. To top it off there were also hundreds of tourist hot-air balloons up every morning, adding beautiful colour to the landscape and enabling us to use them to play 3D slalom!Sylvestre had now upgraded from his ‘school’ spec GoFly and was enjoying flying his new REVO2 with it’s greater turn of speed and increased dynamicism, harmonising fabulously with his Zenith.

Next up was Dubai and Abu Dhabi where we hooked up with old pal Ali Al Hammadi for some raucous escapades out into the desert, chasing wild camels and expensive racing horses. The video of the horses in the sand dunes from above is amazing and the horses didn’t flinch once, in fact they seemed to be enjoying the whole affaire and were quite inquisitive of the motors. Eating roasted goat with the local bedouins was another highlight.

From there it was a long haul all the way down under to Perth Australia only to be greeted with blustery conditions forecast for the duration of our 10 day itinerary. Fortunately our good friend, host and Australian Parajet importer Steve Galvin drove us 2500 kilometres up the coast to where conditions were much more favourable and where we achieved some intense and varied shots of places we didn’t even know existed and whose beauty rivals that of those iconic landmarks elsewhere in the country. Flying with several thousand swarming fruit bats is something that will never be forgotten. Thanks so much Steve, you were equally amazing!!

Instead of staying in the Southern Hemisphere and cruising back to Sylvestres homeland (Brazil) we first flew up to the grand old US of A and captured some epic landscape footage of the surreally vast canyons, monoliths and mountains that make up the states of Utah and Arizona. To top it off there was a beautiful new rapid Paramania GTX22 waiting for me there too, so it felt appropriate before we left, to get some shots of it and the Parajet Zenith in action at the well known Bonneville Salt Flats where so many speed records have been achieved over the years, albeit land based ones. Maybe foot-dragging the roof of the speeding rental van counts..?

The final destination was way up in the north of Brazil near the famous Amazon river. Sylvestre’s connections had put us in contact with a rancher that was curious about the ability to use the paramotors to help the cowboys round up the cattle and so we also saw it as an incredible opportunity to capture some amazing footage. The cowboys were really interested in the motors and were dead keen for me to stay on and teach them how to fly! It was also great to finish the project using the paramotors for a practical purpose other than as a magnificent filming platform too.

The Parajet Zenith’s with the TOP80 engine option were the perfect traveling paramotor being incredibly light and easy to assemble, break down and pack into suitcases! Additionally when I returned to Europe and needed more power for testing wings, I simply replaced the motor with the Polini 200 in about 30 minutes and was ready to go again!

‘Aerials’ will be shown on a Brazilian cable TV channel as a 12 part weekly series starting from the end January 2013 and will be available to view on the internet thereafter.

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