Curious about where one can fly (bc, Canada)

Your best bet is to seek out all initial information from a flight instructor, NOT from reddit.

In short you can fly in like 90% of Canadian airspace once you are qualified. In BC you have Vernon or Chilliwack/Hope/Fraser Valley areas where there are PPG schools and a concentration of pilots. But you can fly a paramotor pretty much anywhere in BC except near the major cities once you are properly licensed and equipped.

The two airspace classifications you can fly a paramotor with little restrictions will be Class G and class E as said before.

Class G is uncontrolled, and once you get licensed, you can pretty much RIP it up anywhere with complete freadom.

Class E is mostly around non busy airports from the ground up within a 3 to 5 mile radius and above 700' for busy airports out to about 10 to 30 miles. As well as highways in the sky which are mostly above 1000 feet or more over the ground.

Class E gives you a lot of freedoms as well and is mostly controlled for the need to ensure that aircraft flying on instruments that are arriving and departing from an airport will have enough visibility and time to see other aircraft that aren't flying on instrument when the weather or visibility is poor.

This comes from the fact that other aircraft that are not flying on instruments (hence not being controlled by ATC), are required to fly far enough away from clouds and poor visibility so as to not cause a conflict with aircraft that are flying on instruments in these conditions.

(Note that many of Canadas Class E airports do not actually have anyone in the tower that talks to the pilots there. They are usually at bigger airports and are talking to the pilots at smaller airports "sight unseen".)

Any other classification of airspace will require a PPG pilot to have advanced knowledge and specific local training on the local airspace and area to fly there if allowed at all. (You dont want to fly near busy airports or major populated areas anyway).

At popular flying sites near busy airspace there is often designated airspace specifically for sky sports like PPG, so your covered in many cases.

As a side note, you can not "legally" fly a paramotor within or around city or town limits in Canada unless using the local airport. So taking off from a local school field or new housing development like you see on YouTube in the usa is a big no no in most cases.

Also you cant take off or land in a National Park! In some cases you can take off or land in designated remote provincial parks with prior permission.

Once your qualified and have the specific communication equipment, you can fly from many smaller Class G and Class E airports with permission from the airport manager. CASE BY CASE BASIS and since paramotoring is not that common in Canada, many airport managers and ATC will have no idea what to make if it at first. Often your polite and patient attitude will open the doors to you flying from their airport.

Lastly, Canada has a messed up system for flying Paramotors legally overall.

Like said earlier you must have at least an ultralight pilots license to fly a paramotor legally. (Paragliders are self regulated and no license is needed, it's when you add the engine that things change). Problem is there are less than a handful of ultralight instructors in Canada who have ever flown a paramotor.

So your two choices if you dont have a pilot's license already are:

  1. Find an official paramotor instructor who is also an ultralight or airplane flight instructor to teach you. (Not many out there.)

  2. Take an ultralight course first (relatively cheap and lots of fun). Then take a paragliding/paramotor course with an experienced paraglider/paramotor pilot who has experience instructing both paragliding and paramotoring but not necessarily an officially rated paramotor instructor. Many of these people are recognized instructors in the self regualated sport of paragliding and are better able to teach you how to fly a paramotor than an ultralight instructor. (As far as practicality goes). As long as they are also experienced at paramotor flying.

So an ultralight instructor is legally able to teach and liceance you even if they haven't ever flown a paramotor themselves, But they would have as much chance as the head cashier at Walmart to teach you how to actually launch the thing and not kill yourself in the process.

Like I said, messed up system in Canada.

If you do have a pilots license already, then simply seek out any experienced paramotor instructor in Canada or the USA and take their course. 2 weeks and your good to go... ISH!

FINALLY (anybody reading this) DO NOT EVER THINK ABOUT TRYING TO TEACH YOURSELF HOW TO PARAMOTOR WITHOUT SEEKING INSTRUCTION FROM SOMEONE WHO IS EXPERIENCED AND QUALIFIED TO INSTRUCT ON A PARAMOTOR!

Paramotors can look easy to fly on YouTube but in reality there are a few quirks about them that will kill you in your first few hours if you are not shown the right way.

Also there is a guy from the USA who dominates YouTube when it comes to paramotoring. His name is Dell and he is very experienced, but much of what comes out of his mouth is a complete lie and he has done a lot of damage to the sport overall. Anything he says that starts with the words "the worlds greatest", just understand that it is completely fraudulent. Otherwise enjoy his adventures online.

Lastly, paramotoring and sport aviation in general is evolving at a rapid pace and that is a good thing. But understand that the governing bodies that regulate the sport measure their progress in decades, not days, not weeks not months or years. So look take an attitude to work with the system and look for ways to improve it in the meantime.

/r/paramotor Thread