Posted on Monday 13 February 2012

Parajet are currently supporting two intrepid pilots as they take to the Australian skies in an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for longest continuous flight by paramotor.

After more than two years in the planning 48-year-old adventurer Mark Jennings-Bates and fellow Canadian Glenn Derouin have embarked on the first leg of this epic expedition, covering almost 1000kms towards a new world record, but with a long way still to go.

鈥淒ue to various regulatory issues, we started in a bit of a rush and therefore missed a couple of weeks of training and tuning.鈥� Explains Jennings-Bates. 鈥淭he first week has been interesting. Tough weather conditions with zero wind in the mornings for launch, headwinds within an hour of flying and strong thermals by 10am. With early evening flights we are struggling with strong thermals, but ending up with a nice calm flight to our destination.鈥�

The Flight4Life Expedition aims to raise 4 million dollars for charities to help in areas such as Africa and Central America, especially addressing issues surrounding clean drinking water, through the Rally4Life umbrella, the charity founded by Mark and his wife Jackie. Over the years, Parajet have been involved with and supported a number of charitable expeditions and we are proud that we can lend our support to these types of fundraising initiatives.

The expedition team are using the Parajet Volution 2 Macro paramotor and early indications are that the motors have been performing well in the tough conditions.

鈥淭he biggest concern for us was to watch out for over-heating the engines by running a lean mixture.鈥� Continues Mark. 鈥淲ith close consultation with Parajet and some cautious tuning, we have ended up by seriously increasing the range of the motors by an extra two hours. This is a big deal for us on a few fronts. Of course, environmentally it means we are burning a limited resource more efficiently, the costs of fuel over the intended length of the journey are significantly reduced and we can cover more ground per tank of gas meaning there are less logistics and more time in the air.鈥�

The pair have allotted three months in which to complete this audacious 9,000 kilometre journey and enter into the record books. Please visit the expedition website at http://www.theflight4life.com and pledge your support, it is an awesome cause!