You’ll have to excuse Greg Peters if he sometimes feels like a combination of Orville Wright and a pterodactyl. Because that’s exactly who, or what, he feels like when he’s soaring over the Illinois countryside in his ultralight plane.
“Ultralights are the ultimate fun flight,” said Peters of Arlington Heights. “After flying in an ultralight, you look at the world in a different way. You feel like an aviation pioneer, like one of the Wright brothers. And you know what a bird feels like. When you’re riding in a plane, it’s the plane that flies through the air. In an ultralight, you are flying through the air, without any restrictions on your visibility. It’s not like riding in a 747 to Hawaii, believe me.”
Ultralights, which weigh about 315 pounds, are an unusual contraption of aluminum and steel rods, wires, cables, an engine, one or two seats and nylon-covered wings spanning 30 to 35 feet. These offbeat planes have drawn Peters and a handful of dedicated ultralighters to Albertus Airport outside Freeport, far away from the congested skies of the Chicago area. The FAA has a definitive and lengthy list of places where ultralights cannot fly, so a corn-surrounded airport like Albertus is perfect. Chicago-area ultralighters also fly out of an airport in Sandwich, an ultralight facility in New Lenox and several airports in southern Wisconsin.
Peters and his partner, Larry Kincannon of Dakota, Ill., co-owners of Ultra Fun Inc., give lessons and provide leisure flights out of Freeport for northwest suburbanites and other fun seekers from the Chicago area.
And what a flight it is. The normal flying speed of ultralights is 35 to 40 mph, and they can reach legal speeds of 63 mph. Any faster and ultralights would have to comply with complex Federal Aviation Administration regulations.
The flying range is about 50 miles, and they reach altitudes exceeding 10,000 feet. Instruments typically include a compass and gauges for altitude, RPMs, air speed and cylinder head temperature.
It’s a sport that is catching on. The U.S. Ultralight Association in Mt. Airy, Md. is the country’s fastest-growing aviation group, with 8,000 members. USUA instructors trained more than 4,500 students last year.
The Albertus Airport is almost desolate, the kind of place where Chuck Yeager might have gone to try to break the sound barrier. An engineless Air Force T-38 makes for a nice decoration on the tarmac.
On a recent warm Saturday afternoon, Jeff Bryant of Glenview and his brother Gary of Chicago made the trip west for their first ultralight flights as passengers. “We’ve both tried skydiving, and this time we want to try flying rather than falling,” Jeff said.
After his inaugural 10-minute flight, Gary had a smile plastered on his face and gave a double thumbs up as he wheeled back onto the landing area. “That was most excellent,” he said. “You feel the wind playing with you a little bit, but it’s a real thrill. It was beautiful.”
Gary flew with Kincannon, a truck owner/operator and an ultralight pilot for 12 years. “Ultralights are the most fun you can have and still be legal,” Kincannon said. “Airplanes are fine if you have somewhere to go. Well, I don’t. I just like to have fun.”
Kincannon joined the U.S. Army in 1957 to be a paratrooper, but he broke his hand before jump school. “So after I got out of the Army I joined a skydiving club,” he said. “Instead of being paid to jump, I had to pay to jump. I’ve always loved flying, but nothing compares to ultralights. You can even use them in the winter. Attach some skis, put on a snowmobile suit and go have fun.”
Karl Mogdans of Woodstock has been flying an ultralight out of Freeport for more than a year. He co-owns his plane with his neighbor Ziggy Lechnor.
“I took my first ride last year, and I was overwhelmed,” said Mogdans, who works for Black Dot Printing in Crystal Lake. “I went back the next day, and I kept enjoying it more and more. I’ve flown in small planes, and comparing them to ultralights is like comparing an old Buick to a new Corvette.
“You can turn quicker in an ultralight, you can feel the breeze, you can experience the scenery. Ultralights are so relaxing, so forgiving. They’re sheer pleasure, flying the way flying was meant to be. And if you receive proper training, ultralights are very safe, as long as you fly in good weather.”
Peters, a pharmaceutical process engineer for Lab Safety Inc. in Chicago, learned to fly helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft while in the Army at Ft. Hood, Texas, from 1968 to 1971. He has been interested in sport aviation ever since, and one Saturday in 1992 he came to Freeport seeking to buy a gyrocopter, a specialized form of helicopter. That was his first exposure to ultralights, and before the day was over, Peters had written a check for $2,000 and bought his first ultralight.
A new ultralight costs $8,000 to $10,000, while a used ultralight can be bought for as little as $1,500.
Peters has had a handful of unusual experiences in his ultralight. For instance, early last year he helped search for a developmentally disabled man who had run away from home and was lost in a cornfield near the airport.
But that rescue mission was nothing compared with his stint as a “terrorist” in 1994.
The Illinois National Guard’s 444th Chemical Company was looking for help in simulating a chemical attack. So Peters and Kincannon became volunteers of the state militia for 48 hours and pulled a surprise attack on the 444th while they were training at the Army Ammunition Depot in Savanna, Ill.
“We mounted M-60 machine guns on our ultralights and filled them with blanks,” Peters said. “Then we filled jugs with anti-freeze, dove at them from 500 feet and strafed them with chemical weapons. It was a great learning experience for the unit, and it was a lot of fun for Larry and me. They designated us the 101st Assault Ultralight Group.”
Peters and Kincannon said ultralights were born in California in the 1960s by hang gliders who got tired of hauling their gliders to the top of a hill all the time, so they put lawnmower engines on them. There were a variety of safety concerns in ultralighting’s early days, but a new generation of equipment and improved training programs provide for greatly increased safety.
Kincannon and Peters’ ultralights are equipped with emergency parachutes to ensure a soft landing in case of trouble, and in more than 15 combined years of flying, neither Kincannon nor Peters has had to pull his chute. In addition, many ultralights undergo a voluntary annual inspection by an FAA mechanic.
But despite the various safety measures, a spot of gallows humor is a regular part of ultralighting. For instance, before a passenger climbs into his ultralight, Kincannon likes to say: “Be sure to belt yourself in tightly, so they can find the body when we crash.”
Because ultralight pilots are not licensed by the FAA, there is no mandatory reporting of accidents, so safety statistics aren’t available.
Along with flying for pleasure, both Peters and Kincannon are USUA-certified instructors and offer training sessions for $60 per hour. It takes about 10 hours of ultralight flying–six hours with an instructor and four hours solo–to get a USUA ultralight pilot’s license and Peters lets students use his plane for the solo flights as part of the package cost.
Peters and Kincannon also take people for rides, and one popular pastime is a “his and hers” flight, where they each take a spouse for a spin at the same time. John and Denise Kulick of Buffalo Grove recently celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary with a his and hers.
Peters said he’s typical of most ultralight pilots. “Guys like me get to be 40 years old or so, and they want to fly something that doesn’t take a lot of instruction and doesn’t cost a fortune,” he said. “That’s exactly what you’ll get with an ultralight, not to mention some of the most fun you’ll have in your life.”
For more information on ultralight flying, call Greg Peters at 708-818-0343.
