New subscriber! I'd love to do that! I know it's hard to judge distance with gopro cameras, but how far away do you think you were from the windmill that wasn't moving?
@@ZDW4573 That’s way too close. There could have easily been a sudden downdraft that put you 20 feet down without giving you enough time to respond and climb, and then you hit it. After you land or crash, your real problems start. The windmill surely cannot be operated without being inspected because if you damaged the blade structurally, it could break apart, destroy the whole windmill, and create a big political problem for the windmill operator. Getting inspectors out to Hawaii would cost a fortune and you would be on the hook for that cost plus the cost of the electricity that would have been generated but wasn’t. I’m sure that you’ve noticed that electricity in Hawaii is expensive. It could easily be a hundred thousand dollars just for those costs. And that’s assuming that it passes inspection without needing even minor repairs which, obviously, would involve renting and transporting in a giant cherry-picker at a minimum. Now you’re well into the mid-six digits. Can you afford a sudden $300,000 cost? This isn’t the same as all those paramotor videos where someone circles a barn in a field. If you damage a barn in a field, that’s going to be $5000 damage tops. You’re flirting with 100 times that. Can you afford that? Even if these are *your* windmills or you are a millionaire who can afford a sudden half-million dollar cost, having this video online risks normalizing this sort of obviously-hazardous (and thus obviously illegal) flying in other people’s minds. And then there is the regulation problem. If you continue to fly like this and the paramotor community cannot stop you, the government will make paramotoring without a license illegal. (And you will not get a license). Try to imagine how pleased everyone in the paramotor community will be with you if significantly contribute to making their entire identity illegal.
New subscriber! I'd love to do that! I know it's hard to judge distance with gopro cameras, but how far away do you think you were from the windmill that wasn't moving?
It's a cool place to fly! The tip of my wing was probably 10-15 feet from the nearest blade.
@@ZDW4573 That’s way too close. There could have easily been a sudden downdraft that put you 20 feet down without giving you enough time to respond and climb, and then you hit it. After you land or crash, your real problems start. The windmill surely cannot be operated without being inspected because if you damaged the blade structurally, it could break apart, destroy the whole windmill, and create a big political problem for the windmill operator. Getting inspectors out to Hawaii would cost a fortune and you would be on the hook for that cost plus the cost of the electricity that would have been generated but wasn’t. I’m sure that you’ve noticed that electricity in Hawaii is expensive. It could easily be a hundred thousand dollars just for those costs. And that’s assuming that it passes inspection without needing even minor repairs which, obviously, would involve renting and transporting in a giant cherry-picker at a minimum. Now you’re well into the mid-six digits.
Can you afford a sudden $300,000 cost? This isn’t the same as all those paramotor videos where someone circles a barn in a field. If you damage a barn in a field, that’s going to be $5000 damage tops. You’re flirting with 100 times that. Can you afford that?
Even if these are *your* windmills or you are a millionaire who can afford a sudden half-million dollar cost, having this video online risks normalizing this sort of obviously-hazardous (and thus obviously illegal) flying in other people’s minds.
And then there is the regulation problem. If you continue to fly like this and the paramotor community cannot stop you, the government will make paramotoring without a license illegal. (And you will not get a license). Try to imagine how pleased everyone in the paramotor community will be with you if significantly contribute to making their entire identity illegal.