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The Travelling Paramotor Pilot

From the cool northern fjordlands of Norway, the next destination on this epic paramotor/filming trip for ‘Aerials2’  was Austria, though we arrived in Vienna to find that Sylvestre’s Parajet Zenith’s had gone missing.

Further investigation showed that it was still in Norway though no one knew why it didn’t make the flight. I was dreading the possibility of having not prepared it properly for transportation internationally on a major airline but thankfully it arrived a day later with all components present. We really had to work our way around the weather in the northern part of the country, dodging showers and wind but managed some great footage of old castles and classic Austrian countryside. Then we headed off for the southern region of Carinthia and met up with the hugely talented, super nice-guy and Parajet Team Pilot Xandi. We had some epic early morning and late afternoon flights with him around his home surroundings and were blessed with incredible conditions, culminating in a gob-smackingly beautiful flight above a cloud blanketed mountain, 5000 feet above where we had taken off.

Next up was Albania and again a paramotor goes missing in transit, this time my Parajet Zenith, only to turn up at our hotel the next day, but not before I had worried myself stupid again that I might have to go back to Austria to retrieve it, causing a delay in filming. As it was it just meant we had to stay a little longer in the capital Tirana which meant we made arrangements for me to fly around the square in the middle of the city!! What a buzz, imagine getting clearance to fly around Trafagar Square… Impossible! Albania was exceptionally good to us including having perfect flying conditions the whole time we were there meaning some outrageous coastal flights as well as some very beatiful inland ones over some very historical sites.

Greece was next up and being a bordering country we drove there in a rented vehicle to the unique monastery influenced town of Meteora and met up with our host, my good friend and professional photographer Harris Christopolos. After some blustery flights around the ancient monasteries perched on top of some very strange rock formations, we had to head east instead of the favoured west, due to very srong forecasted winds there. This enabled us some outrageously dramatic flights around Mt. Olympus though, taking off from the beach and reaching almost the height of this tallest of mountains in Greece, nearly 10,000 feet.

To get some contrast going for the series we then headed for Namibia in the South of Africa! Extreme caution was needed here flying over large game animals and strong conditions but there was so much content and such diversity that we managed to shoot four episodes here. From the eye-popping enormity of Fish River canyon in the south, the epic ‘worlds-largest’ sand dunes a little further up, the dramtic Skeleton Coast with it’s ever changing weather and finally the highest peak, the awesome Brandberg (burning mountain) it was an action packed 12 days there!!

We’re now in South Africa on the final leg and have just 3 days to shoot the 16th and final episode so we will soon be zooming off to the Wild Coast to hopefully get the final, amazing aerial images to seal this series and also this wonderful and fast paced adventure. Apart from a little routine maintenance, our trusty Parajet Zenith TOP80’s have been our perfect flying companions and have safely, reliably and comfortably powered us through 120 hours of flying in the last month in some of the most extreme locations. It still amazes me ever time I unpack them from a suitcase and then a little while later take to the skies, enabling me to see and film the world from that vantage point we all know, love and crave more for. Roll on the Wild Coast!!

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