On a brisk fall morning at the Custer State Park airport,
John Hillard sprinted across an open field with a propeller strapped to his
back. The 80 pounds of thrust generated by the electric motor pushed him
forward as the paraglider wing lifted over his head. In seconds he was aloft.
The inaugural flight lasted only a few minutes. But it was a milestone after
years of work to pioneer a commercial electric paramotor.
Phillip and John Hillard grew up with a love of flying
inspired by their father, a Navy helicopter pilot. Phillip finished his degree
in mechanical engineering in 2018, and his younger brother John is in his senior
year at Mines. The brothers took up paramotoring as a hobby; their training as
engineers helped them identify improvements needed to the standard gas motors
used in the sport. “We spent almost as much time tuning our two-stroke gas
engines as we did flying. We wanted to break that down and make the sport
easier to do and take it into the realm of the standard consumer,” says
Phillip.
Their fix: Go electric. Electric motors are quieter, simpler
to operate and more compact and light weight.
But pioneering a new electric paramotor system didn’t prove easy. The brothers had to overcome hurdles such as
insuring battery safety, building in redundant fail-safes, designing proper instrumentation
and keeping it all in a lightweight, compact system. “The cool thing about
being...