Stalled Wing in Australia

[SkyKroozer]

Hello All, this is my first posting to any forum anywhere. I would like to recount an incident i experienced with my Powerchute back in Australia in the early 90's. I own a UK made Powerchute Kestrel (2 seater) with a Harley 350e chute. The steering lines on this machine have a hard stop ring placed on the line to prevent stalling the wing thru your direct inputs so this gave me a sort of false sense of security that the wing could not be stalled. This particular day i was using a paddock on my sisters farm in Victoria south east Australia which was bordered on 2 sides by rows of trees up to about 50' high and about 300' apart. My takeoff direction was to be into wind parallel to the trees and downhill as indicated by the windsock at ground level. The takeoff was normal and was at full throttle when i realised that i was pointing at the sky at a greater angle that i should have been, i looked up at the chute and saw it wasn;t above me but directly behind me, it was nearly like i was dragging the chute skyward (outflying the chute). I instictively backed off the power and i immediately dropped back under the chute as well as dropping towards the ground faster than i knew i should so gently applied full power and recovered and continued with my flight while trying to analyse what happened. My conclusion was that the trees were masking the wind to some extent and when I cleared the tree line the effects of the actual wind at that level temporarily created greater drag but the rotax 503 out powered the chute, backing off the power temp helped unstall the wing. Anyway a great lesson learned and hopefully may help others too. Currently I am living in Cambodia and have not done too much flying here but plan to in the next few months as i rearrange my priorities. I have other stories but will leave them to another time.
Sky Kroozer aka David V Cowled