Talking Powered Paragliding with Bob 'Bubba' Peters

Bob 'Bubba' Peters was a helicopter pilot in the army. He flew hang gliders here in Colorado and quit after losing two friends to the sport. He also lost one in paragliding. So, because he had a family and needed to be more 'responsible', he stayed on the ultralight sidelines for a few years. He started powered paragliding in 2001 when he saw it on the front of a catalog of gifts for people who have everything. He knew instantly he wanted to do it.

Bubba says, Powered paragliding looks like an extreme sport. It can be dangerous, but it's not all that extreme when you compare it to other forms of personal aviation and ultralight flight. You don't have to run off cliffs or mountains and if anything goes wrong, your parachute is already deployed. Flying so slow and low opens up plenty of sightseeing opportunities.

Saqqara Aleister: I see you´ve been doing this since 2001. How did you get into PPGing? What are your memories of your first flight?

Bob "Bubba" Peters: I was a helicopter pilot in the army. I flew hang gliders here in Colorado and quit after losing two friends to the sport. I also lost one in paragliding. So, because I had a family and needed to be more "responsible", I stayed on the ultralight sidelines for a few years. I started powered paragliding in 2001 when I saw it pictured on the front of a catalog of gifts for people who have everything. I knew instantly I wanted to do it.

My solo flight after a day of instruction went well. I probably had less jitters than someone new to personal flight, though I remember having a very dry mouth. I soloed on the shores of Elephant Butte Lake in New Mexico. My instructor, Michelle Daniele of American Flyer in Albuquerque, normally has students land after about 10 minutes, but I was having so much fun, she let me go for over and hour. I had my first "engine out" on that flight! I ended up landing on my butt in the sand. That´s one of the great things about powered paragliding. When the motor quits your parachute is already deployed and comes down seven times slower than a skydiver´s parachute.

SA: How far and how high can one go in a PPG? What´s the longest and/or highest flight you´ve ever made?

BP: My longest flight, distance wise, has been about 40 miles. My highest flight was to the top of Black Mountain on the Ute Trail in the back country of Colorado near my ranch, Lost Stirrup. The mountain is 12,500 feet high. I was probably at 13,000 feet when I flew over it. The legal limit is 18,000 feet. I don´t know if anyone had flown that high yet.

SA: How long has this sport been around…how did it get started?

BP: The sport has been around in Europe for over 20 years and is much bigger over there. South America is the same. It´s been in Canada and the United States for a little over 15 years and is just now beginning to grow. Unlike most other countries, no license is required in the USA. I´m not sure who gets the credit for strapping a motor and propeller to his back to take to the air in 1988. He had to have been a very interesting dude.

SA: Do you regard PPGing more as a sport…..recreational and a great way to see things from the air, or could it be a method of travel? Can you carry much, say, if you wanted to go and camp in a remote location that´s hard to reach on foot or by car, and drop in on your site to stay for a while?

BP: PPG can be considered all of those things. It´s a sport because there are lots of fly-ins (conventions) across the country and around the world every year. It´s definitely recreational, because it´s so darn much fun, and yes, it can be used to fly into a remote site if you can carry enough fuel to fly back. Attaching your motor to a trike lets you carry gear or another passenger. Keep in mind though, that a PPG only travels at about 25 miles per hour. That means that if you have to travel in a head wind, you´re not going to go anywhere very fast and it will take more fuel. Mainly, PPG is just a great way to get into the air and feel the joy of flight. When you do, your whole perspective on life and your surroundings changes forever.

SA: I see on the PPPPC website that you´ve logged in more than 1,000 flights. That´s a lot of airtime! What are some of your favorite places you´ve been…..what was memorable about them?

BP: That´s hard to say. Every flight is different. Every site is different. But, Monument Valley, Utah has to be one of my favorites. It´s like no other place on Earth. The monuments are really big and approaching them from the air and gliding along the sides of them and around them, just a few feet away is truly inspirational.

SA: Anywhere you won´t go again? Any particularly bad or scary or funny experiences you can share with us?

BP: The only reason I wouldn´t go back and fly someplace is because I´ve already done it and there are too many other places to explore.

I´ve never had a really scary experience in PPG. As I´ve mentioned, having your motor quit is actually pretty uneventful. I guess the most amusing thing I´ve done is taking off without hooking my leg straps. When you start your run, the motor slides up your back and tries to take off without you. When it happens, you just kill the engine and stop. Pretty embarrassing.

SA: You´ve appeared on three episodes of Digging for the Truth with Josh Bernstein, and it looks like you have a great rapport with him. How did you meet Josh….was it through DFT? Did you and Eric Dufor give him all his training? Likewise, how did you get involved in working with JWM Productions on the set of DFT?

BP: Jason Williams of JWM Productions contacted me when he saw one of my web pages on geoglyphs. He was intrigued by my use of powered paragliding as a tool to get a better lay of the land over ancient ruins and asked me to meet up with Josh and his crew when they did the Anasazi episode for the History Channel's "Digging for the Truth" series.

Josh and I hit it off right away and before long he had me arrange for him to learn, too. I am a flight instructor, but because Josh's schedule was so tight, I called in my good friend Eric Dufour to help me train. Eric is the top instructor in the US and Canada. With his help, we had Josh trained and soloed in just five hours; a record! Josh was very motivated, strong, and he knew how to listen and follow instructions. I believe his own experience in teaching survival skills made him the perfect student. That, and being teamed up with the best possible instructor, Eric, made the training a big success.

Later, I shared the screen and the air with Josh in more episodes of the show. He's promised to invite me to do the same in his new show for the Discovery Channel. I can hardly wait!

SA: What were your impressions of the process of filming a TV show like DFT? Were there endless takes and do-over´s? How much of the footage actually made it into the show?

BP: The crews I´ve worked with really had it together. They knew exactly what they wanted to accomplish and I saw very little "do-overs" or repetitive takes. Josh was always prepared and very relaxed. I never got the impression that he was "working" but rather, just being his naturally inquisitive self and really trying to uncover and impart the knowledge that he and the creators of the show were discovering. He smiles and laughs a lot. He´s a very easy person to be around.

As far as how much of the PPG footage gets into the show, very little. Just whatever helps make the point and supports the evidence being examined. You could make another entire, exciting show just out of the PPG footage!

SA: Have you done any other TV or media consulting work?

BP: No, I haven´t.

SA: You say that you like PPGing over ancient archaeological sites the best. Have you discovered anything previously unknown, or exceptionally unusual by seeing them from the air?

BP: Your question brings to mind a very amusing story. Last winter a Canadian friend and PPG instructor, Wayne Mitchler, discovered a very interesting set of nine comma shaped geoglyphs in the Sonora Desert just a few miles from the Mexican border West of Yuma, Arizona. They were really baffling because they looked nothing like the ones that had been previously discovered. You could follow a line from each commas tail to its head where another comma´s tail began, all nine flowing in a serpentine pattern. It was all very exciting and I could hardly wait to land and see them up close. As we approached the first geoglyph in the series, we discovered a hole in the center of the head with a piece of plastic pipe buried in it level with the ground. I suddenly dawned on us that we were looking at the first hole of the back nine of a mini golf course that some Snow Bird, RV campers had created in exactly the same way the ancients had done to create their ceremonial figures thousands of year ago. We all had a pretty good laugh.

SA: Seeing the Southwestern geoglyphs is certainly a real treat….can´t be any better way to see them than from the air. What do you think about efforts to preserve them? Is enough being done to properly preserve these important pieces of history? It´s rather ironic that their biggest threat has been man, after surviving so many years of weather?

BP: I´m happy to report that the most important geoglyphs have been fenced and are being protected. More are scheduled for protection. Also, you might notice that both the geologists and myself do not publish the exact locations of unprotected geoglyphs.

SA: In the Anasazi episode of DFT, Josh and you flew over ancient cliff dwellings, and the Chaco Canyon area. It seems that "all roads lead to Chaco" as far as its cultural importance to the surrounding ancient Native American cultures, and the site´s purpose is still a mystery to archaeologists. Josh noted that Chaco was a magical, mysterious place…..what were your impressions of this site?

BP: Josh is right. You can feel the history in those places. It´s a quiet yet powerful feeling, like a ghostly impression of many lives over very many years and a melancholy feeling of lost knowledge there. And yet, that lost knowledge always feels like its just under the dust and sand and close.

SA: The Outer Banks (DFT Roanoke episode) is notoriously windy. Did you find it difficult to fly around there? How did you like exploring that area and all the inlets and marshes? After seeing it from the air, how do you think it would have been to live there during the time the Roanoke colonists did?

BP: Josh and I flew there on an overcast day, just after the fog had lifted. So, there was actually no wind to speak of. What amazed me most was how dense the vegetation and forest is there. I had a hard time imagining how someone could explore even a mile or two from their base without getting lost. There were no high land marks. Trails would be quickly overtaken and lost to the vegetation growth if not used regularly. Just creating the trails would be backbreaking work. Clearing land for gardens and farming would be a very long, hard, exhausting job. It must have been grueling. I have a much greater respect and admiration for what our forefathers must have gone through.

SA: What is the Lost Stirrup Lodge Annual Fly-In? Tell us about that.

Tell us about your restored Willys Jeeps!

BP: Ah, Lost Stirrup Lodge. It´s glorious there four months out of the year. It´s behind Pikes Peak on the Ute Trail half way to the Collegiate Mountain Range. Far away from utilities or traffic. The whole place runs on solar power. My wife and I built the lodge over a four year period, working four days a week. We built it as a place to share with our friends. We can sleep eighteen guests. The view from the deck overlooking the creek and pond is spectacular. The sunsets can bring tears of admiration to your eyes. I have two restored Willys Jeeps, a 1946 and a 1951. They are named Rosy and Kermit. They are there to enjoy the back roads of Waugh Mountain, Black Mountain and the White River National Forest.

We do a PPG fly-in and poker run every July 4th weekend for three days. We usually have over forty pilots and their families attend. They bring RV´s and tents. During the poker run, guests have to find the Buffalo Jump, the Dream Quest, Crystal View, the Indian Caves and many other sites to gather wooden tokens. Each token is traded for a card and the winning hands are awarded prizes. We have great fun doing Karaoke in the Grizzly Bar and sharing meals outdoors.

SA: What are some of your future plans around PPGing? Where are some places you´d like to go, and what kind of plans do you have to expand the sport, your career in it, etc?

BP: I don´t think of the sport as a career. I´ve never thought of it, or needed it, to be a means to make money. I´ll probably always fly PPG. When I get too old for foot launching, I´ll put wheels under me and keep flying.

I´d love to fly the Nazca Lines in Peru. It´s closed off to ultralight flight now, but I hope someday to get permission to follow the path of the Hummingbird at just a few feet off the ground for the full distance of it´s trace. There are too many other places I´d like to fly to list here. Anywhere different is fair game.

I feel blessed to have been involved in the beginning of PPG´s popularity. Those days will never come again, but the future holds lots of new improvements in both equipment and technique. It will be very interesting to see electric and fuel cell motors on future powered paragliders.

SA: If you could have any Super Power, What would it be and why?

BP: I'd like have an indestructible body that lives on any kind of light and be able to fly at faster than the speed of light, at infinite speeds. Because I could travel back and forth through time and be able to explore the

farthest reaches of the universe.