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" (Published in the June 1999 issue) More: The Maverick Flying Car  The first time I tried hang gliding I crashed on takeoff. I had signed up for hang gliding 101 and my instructor told me to heft the wing over my head and run as fast as I could across a field. Seemed simple enough, and back in those days I was able to gallop along at a pretty good clip. Trouble was, I had a trick left shoulder, and it decided to pop out just as my stride hit high gear. A nasty ground loop resulted, followed by a not-too-cheerful refund of the course fee and a red &amp;quot;F&amp;quot; on my permanent record card. Too bad. Hang gliding is the closest I could have come to the essence of pure flight\u2013being one with the wind and an integral part of the flying machine itself.  One step removed from the free-flight hang glider is the powered hang glider, a low-rung member in the growing family of ultralights. Bolt together a frame and attach wheels, engine, fuel tank, seat and wing and you&amp;#039;re ready to soar with the pigeons. Powered hang gliders come in all kinds of configurations with the possible exception of a flying bathtub. One new design, however, comes close\u2013the Seair 2000 flying inflatable boat. A harebrained change of pace for thrill-seeking members of the motorized bar stool crowd? Hardly. Taken in the context and accepting the limitations of an utralight, a flying inflatable boat offers some interesting and viable possibilities. Like most inflatables, the Seair can be used as a conventional tender for your yacht or cruiser. Then, whenever the urge strikes, bolt on the wing to convert the action from tow to go. Seair takes you where no other watercraft has gone before\u2013up to altitudes of 10,000 ft. If you&amp;#039;re into remote lakes and ponds for fishing and the joy of quiet, peaceful solitude, you might be able to claw your way through the wilderness to one in your 4-by. But your land tank can&amp;#039;t survey five lakes in 30 minutes like you can do from the air. Millions of viewers already have witnessed the Seair in a dramatic rescue action sequence filmed for the &amp;quot;Baywatch&amp;quot; TV series. According to Seair pilot Stan Pace, it wasn&amp;#039;t easy. Sea conditions at the time were 7-ft. swells with a 2-ft. chop and an 18-knot crosswind. The boat had never before been subjected to such rough conditions in its 500 hours of testing. &amp;quot;At one point I had my hand on the seatbelt release button and was ready to ditch because I thought we were going over,&amp;quot; recalls Pace. But the boat didn&amp;#039;t go over. A conventional float plane never would have been able to handle that kind of water and wind situation. Getting a firsthand look (and ride) in the Seair seemed a better way to spend a morning than staring blankly at my computer screen and exercising my mouse aimlessly on its pad in an effort to look busy. So I trundled off to Orlando, Fla., leaving behind a damp and frigid New York. I met the Seair folks at the boat launching site of a small public lake. The boat/plane was packed aboard a single-PWC trailer, the wing rolled up in a 19-ft.-long, 12-in.-dia. bag. It didn&amp;#039;t take long to get the craft ready for business. Essentially, you assemble the wing and attach it to the frame that remains fixed inside the boat\u2013about a 20-minute operation. The Seair uses a 33-ft.-span hang glider-style weight-shift wing for climbs and turns. There is no yaw control. A control bar replaces the conventional three-axis control stick/rudder arrangement of a fixed-wing design. Since bar movements produce the opposite effect from a control stick, an experienced fixed-wing pilot has some unlearning to do first. The rigid inflatable hull (fiberglass bottom with polyethylene foam between the hull and deck) is made to Seair&amp;#039;s specs by Patten Inflatables. The stacked 8-in.-dia. main tubes give the flotation of a single 16-in. tube but with reduced surface area (drag) for quicker takeoffs. Twin 5-ft. 10-in.-long tube outriggers are out of the water during normal operation but provide a welcome measure of capsize insurance, especially during crosswind landing and taxiing. The craft is 110 in. long with a beam of 50 in. The craft weighs 450 pounds and it can carry a load of 450 pounds. Clambering into the back seat I clap on a helmet with integral earphones, plug into the intercom and fasten my seatbelt. Pace hits the electric starter to crank the 64-hp two-stroke Rotax 582. The boat vibrates like a giant mixmaster until the engine settles down to a smooth idle. Pace goes through his checklist, taxis out into the lake, turns into the wind and squeezes the trigger throttle. The boat accelerates in a leisurely way but breaks free of the water relatively quickly. Solo, the boat will take off in as little as 50 ft. with a moderate head wind\u2013200 ft. in no wind\u2013and it can climb at 1800 ft. per minute. While it may look bizarre to gawkers on the ground, a flying boat from the air feels perfectly natural. It&amp;#039;s the open-air ultralight kind of flying that requires some adjustment. This thing is totally different from a conventional plane. Pace says &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s the freedom of flying.&amp;quot; It may be too much freedom too soon for some. We putter along at a brisk 45 mph. With power, the control bar position is neutral and steering inputs can be made with one finger. The wing moves around in light gusts and you just ride with it rather than fight it. Pace kills the engine. There&amp;#039;s a loud Pop! then silence. The boat seems to hang in the air and then begins a gentle descent. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s impossible to dive this thing, even with full power and the bar pulled back,&amp;quot; exclaims Pace. The wing is a Northwing model Mustang 19 that gives a 10:1 glide ratio and produces optimum lift and speed. It&amp;#039;s not &amp;quot;floaty&amp;quot; like larger designs and it will cut through turbulence rather than hang there and bounce you around. The stall break is very mild and stall speed is 25 mph. We glide down to an uneventful dead-stick landing. A 10-hour instruction course is required before Seair turns over the keys and wishes you bon voyage. Once down, you can detach the wing and the Seair becomes an airboat with a 50-mph capability. But because of its high center of gravity, you don&amp;#039;t want to make any fancy turns. The Seair 2000 is a two-place trainer and it costs about 26 grand. Single-seat inflatable, innovative land-trike and even amphibious ultralight models are slated to come on stream in the near future with price tags in the $12,000 to $15,000 range. While not faster than a speeding bullet, nor more powerful than a locomotive, and not able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, the unique Seair still qualifies as &amp;quot;Superboat.&amp;quot; For more information, contact Seair Group, 6831 Edgewater Commerce Pkwy., Ste. 1110, Orlando, FL 32810; 888-FLY-SEAIR; http://www.seair.com/. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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