Thrusters

Extreme sports and safety device

The thruster story:

After doing some paragliding and land boarding i realised that i needed something extra to propel me along, so i went about building a thruster system to add to my kit.

a) Paragliding

  • Version in video: Weight 8Kg all up with batteries, 5 minutes at full power, 25Kg Thrust (only enough thrust and climb for testing – we built this one to test for different modes of operation and fitment locations for paragliding and then for land board, snow board and ski as kite replacement)
  • Next version in engineering: Weight 10 to 12Kg all up with batteries, 15 minutes at full power and 40Kg Thrust. (60Kg burst thrust) (only need 25Kg thrust for level flight, so about 25 minutes burn time in level flight) (anticipated 1 to 2m/s, 200 to 400ft/min climb rate with wing such as Mojo 3 and 80Kg pilot).

b) Land Boarding, Skiing, Snowboarding, etc

Being unable to simulataneously control a power-kite and board, I figured a thruster system woud be more controllable allowing me to focus my efforts on controlling the board.

The thruster system allows the user, not only to get more air in an extreme sport, but also get more forward speed - I've had to get friends to test this as I haven't got the bottle! And most impressive is uphill skiing and pulling up using reverse thrust to slow down !