Gemini Twin

“It’s the people behind the wings that are the important aspect,” says Randy Snead of Gemini Powered Parachutes. His comment came in a reply to my question about why he prefers to work with only two suppliers of canopies for the powered parachutes he produces. His customers may say something similar thing about Randy.

As Randy continues to untangle lines, we can get a closer look at the Gemini Twin airframe. While at first glance, most powered parachute carriages seem pretty similar, each manufacturer designs their particular machine to meet the safety and comfort needs they deem most important for their customers. In the case of the Gemini Twin, Randy has incorporated the newer style roll bars coming up from the front axle to mate with the center frame, and he uses a chromoly steel landing gear as opposed to fibreglass rods to provide more strength to that important component. In addition, the Gemini Twin airframe is longer than most other models, offering more room for pilot and passenger in their separate seats. And, lastly, Randy was able to move the instrument panel closer to the pilot| an accommodation for older eyes!

Randy Snead, the principle owner of Gemini Powered Parachutes, untangles the line to his canopy as he prepares to take the Gemini Twin for a spin around the pattern at EAA AirVenture 2002.

And, he’s off, with parachute fully inflated, he’s ready to add power and get airborne.

The romance of powered parachute flying lies in nearly unlimited visibility from either seat, and the ability to fly low and slow over various terrain. Like any open-air machine, powered parachutes allow their fliers to see and smell all that’s about them.

A New Powered Parachute From a Well-Known Leader
Randy Snead branches out into his own company
Once an important figure in
Buckeye Industries, Randy is
known to many as the man
who worked on the technical
side and performed flight-testing for
Buckeye. When the former company fell
into struggle (see Editor’s Note), Randy
departed to do his own thing. Customers
who followed state, “It’s the people
behind the company” that are important.
I can find no argument with this
approach; we all tend to trust those we
know.
In turn, Randy is assisted by people he
trusts. His wife, Fern, is the business
manager and also operates the parts and
ordering department for the young firm.
Their son, Jeremiah, has experience in
general aviation aircraft, weight-shift
trikes, and powered parachutes, and he’s
built many powered parachutes. In the
EAA way, Gemini Powered Parachutes is
a family affair.
Introducing Gemini
Powered Parachutes
“It’s the American way” say others.
The ease with which folks like Randy can
start off on their own demonstrates
America’s support of entrepreneurialism,
part of what makes this country great.
When times got tough, Randy set off to
make his own way.
Though the field is now crowded with
about 20 powered parachute producers,
Gemini Powered Parachutes views the
future as full of promise. “The industry
just started growing in the last five years,”
Randy says. “Before that, it was hardly
noticed.” Indeed, a decade ago only three
large producers existed: Paraplane, Six
Chuter, and Buckeye Industries.

“People like to fly low and slow,”
continues Randy, and I agree. While it is
true that many pilots will gravitate
toward the 130-mph little airplanes of
the proposed light-sport aircraft category,
others aren’t moved by speed or fully
enclosed cabins.
“Over the years, I’ve trained a dozen
or more airline pilots to fly powered
parachutes,” explains Randy. These pilots
are qualified to fly anything they want
(usually with incomes to allow most
purchases as well), and yet these 500-
mph aviators were drawn to the low-andslow
powered parachute arena.
Randy sees room for plenty of growth.
The mid-90s boom of powered
parachutes attracted plenty of other
producers. Some have created high
overhead to support their products, but
Gemini plans to survive any shakeout by
keeping its overhead low and by offering
good products at low prices with
reasonable delivery times.
“We have middle of the road pricing,”
says Randy, adding that his basic but
well-equipped model sells for $13,000,
and the electric start E-box version is
$13,600. A recently instituted Rotax price
increase bumped the numbers a few
hundred dollars. “As a small producer, we
had to pass that cost along to customers,”
Randy states.
Refining the Breed
When he departed Buckeye for his
own venture, Randy was experienced in
building powered parachutes, and he had
plenty of his own ideas to improve the
vehicles he had represented. “I took a little of everybody else’s best,” he
summarizes, “and then I added my own
ideas.”
He made the rear suspension beefier,
replacing the typical fiberglass landing
gear legs with chromoly ones. He also
used heavier wall steel tubing on the two
main front-to-rear rails under the seats.
Gemini Powered Parachutes worked to
assure more creature comforts by using
separate, supportive velour-covered seats.
Separate seats for each occupant seem
superior to the previously conventional
powered parachute seats that placed the
back of the pilot against his or her rearseat
occupant. Other companies have
also embraced this development, and
most pilots and passengers will probably
prefer separate seats. Shoulder belts at
each seat should secure the occupants
well.
“Older eyes need a little help,” Randy
correctly identifies, “so we moved the
instrument panel a bit closer to the
pilot.” Like other powered parachute
manufacturers, Gemini prefers the
electronic instrument packages that offer
lots of information, but some users feel
these are harder to read at a glance than
old-fashioned needle gauges. Randy also
moved all the controls closer, saying that
he “wants students to be able to reach
everything while securely belted in.”
The instrument panel and controls
can be located closer to the pilot thanks
to the addition of upper fuselage bars,
those large diameter tubes that run in
front of and above the occupants.
Powrachute, a competing manufacturer,
first popularized these bars, and now
these bars are popping up on powered
parachutes everywhere. Often referred to
as “rollover bars,” the tubes certainly
offer a measure of protection on landings
and while flying near ground obstacles,
although the industry tries not to draw
attention to such problems for liability
reasons.
In my experience of flying with this
tubing framework, I could easily see its
protective value, although it does
somewhat block visibility and erode that
hugely open feel of flying a powered
parachute.
A single strobe light comes standard to
help make you obvious to other aircraft,
while options include electric starting,
dual controls, dual strobes, a four-blade
Ivo prop, a choice of parachute parafoil
brands, a choice of airframe colors, and
factory assembly. Gemini Powered
Parachutes can also set you up with a
trailer to haul it all.
Operating a Gemini
Gemini’s “joystick throttle” comes
from the Buckeye design, which I flew a
few years ago. Because I now have
experience with other control systems in
newer powered parachutes, I asked Randy
about his continuing use of the joystick
throttle.
In my experience, thinking of the
throttle as a joystick proved distracting.
When I first flew a Buckeye Dream
Machine with this throttle arrangement, I
had an experience that I now find
humorous—I inappropriately used the
throttle and started to pull the joystick
back to stop a launch I felt wasn’t right.
In so doing, I added power and things
got worse before they got better.
(Nothing came of the misapplication of
power, and a few minutes later I was
soloing the Dream Machine without
problems.) The error was clearly mine,
but it showed how the joystick throttle
can introduce wrong responses from
pilots used to “pull-for-less-power”
throttles.
Randy has trained a number of pilots
with conventional throttle experience.
He says that he tells them to “forget the
word throttle.” He never terms the
joystick as a power control, instead
directing his transition students to think
of it as a “pitch control” or “stick.” In so
doing, he says his conventional pilot
students have never had control reversal
problems. A Piper Cherokee pilot himself,
Randy is also able to make the transition
by using his “not a throttle” mantra.
By making the “stick” function like it
does, Randy has helped it do double
duty. The same lever also steers the
chassis while on the ground. With the
stick linked to the nose wheel by
conventional pushrods, the Gemini
features push-right, go-right steering. This
is an improvement over the older
Buckeye model that had two levers: one
for power (or “pitch control”) and one for
steering. With the old steering lever, you
pushed forward to go right and pull aft to
go left. I found that counterintuitive, and
it was these two unorthodox controls
that were the source of my distraction in
that early takeoff.
Ready for Certification
While the proposed light-sport aircraft
(LSA) category with its FAA-mandated
consensus standards may be scaring a few
powered parachute manufacturers, it’s
not causing Gemini any concern. That’s
because Randy was involved with
Buckeye Industries’ attempt to qualify its
rig for Primary aircraft certification.
“If FAA had the money, [Buckeye]
could have had a certified aircraft five or
six years ago. All the work was done,”
recalls Randy. He feels a confluence of
events conspired to suffocate the effort.
ValuJet had just crashed into the south
Florida swamps, and FAA focused its
efforts on common carrier problems. The
Buckeye Primary aircraft effort was put
on the far back burner and never came to
the forefront again.
Too bad, perhaps. Randy had taken
Barry Valentine, then acting FAA
administrator, aloft at the Sun ’n Fun Fly-
In in 1996, and Valentine was highly
supportive of the certificated Buckeye,
says Randy. In those days, industry
comment on rules came from the “Big
Three” of powered parachute producers—
Paraplane, Six Chuter, and Buckeye—and
it was fairly easy to get agreement
between the three builders. Now, with 20
companies having input, Randy feels the
process of finding consensus has become
much more challenging.
In the mid-90s, Randy worked with
Ben Morrow to prepare pilots for flying a
Primary aircraft powered parachute. The
effort produced a document available
from FAA’s Kansas City office called the
Practical Test Standards for powered
parachute pilots. This effort may be used
in the new process of devising rules for
sport pilots. With FAA’s newest
regulation on the near horizon, Randy is
serving on an ASTM (American Society
for Testing and Materials) committee
that’s creating the consensus standards
for powered parachutes.
“The proposed light-sport aircraft
category could open up a lot of doors,”
Randy says. “Some entities can’t use our
aircraft today,” referring to
municipalities, police departments,
forestry services, and private corporations
that might find a use for powered
parachutes, because they are nervous
about the perceived lack of licensing,
insurance, and regulations. Under the
proposed sport pilot/light-sport aircraft
rules, some of these barriers could fall.
Randy will use his expertise to assure
the strength and quality of materials used
in light-sport aircraft category powered
parachutes. He says, “Our goal is for these
machines to last a long time. We don’t
want them to wear out in four to five
years,” noting that Cessna and Piper
build aircraft that last a very long time.
Randy went on to state his view of the
role of the powered parachute committee
of the ASTM effort. “LSA powered
parachutes won’t stall, will do 50- to 60-
degree banks without falling out of the
sky, and will land without parts flying
off.” The goals sound simple, but
involving a group of 20 manufacturers in
the process isn’t easy.
Gemini in the Skies
I felt one of the most important
questions I could ask Randy was how he
advises new pilots to choose the right
wing or parachute. In my experience
flying several other powered parachute
brands, I found the manufacturers were
not focused on wings. To me, the
competition appeared to be all about the
carriages. It turns out my view was
something of an oversimplification.
“Every two years, there’s a completely
new wing,” claims Randy. It may not be
the same as Moore’s law of computer
chips (regularly doubling processor
power), yet a new wing every couple
years certainly reveals growth in the
powered parachute community.
After I asked more questions about the
shapes and sizes of canopies, Randy
detailed the history of powered parachute
wings in the last five to six years. He says
the shapes have evolved from rectangular
to elliptical, though the rectangular
parachutes are still the most common
(and are the right choice for most
newcomers). Sizes have also changed
from 450 square feet to 550 or more. One company is offering a 610-square-foot
chute, according to Randy.
However, even the original
rectangular canopy is evolving. Randy
referred to the new Skybolt canopy from
High Energy Sports that he says can do a
360-degree turn in three seconds!
Indeed, performance has crept into
the equation. While most powered
parachutes fly at about the same speed—
from 26 to 34 mph—some have begun to
push the envelope. Elliptical canopies
include the granddaddy of the segment,
the Chiron wing from an Israeli
company. These higher aspect wings
offer a somewhat increased speed range
and snappier control line response.
When I was under the Chiron wing, it
was able to speed up in shallow dives and
reacted quickly to reversing turn inputs.
Randy says you usually select a wing
that is sized to the load you’ll put on it. If
you and your flying friend are of modest
build, a 500-square-foot wing might be
the best. This is the size Randy prefers for
the machines he flies. But I asked about
big guys with experience who want to go
faster. For them, Gemini will recommend
an elliptically shaped wing, not a smallersized
one (that is, one with less square
feet of area).
Gemini prefers to work with two wing
suppliers, Apco of Israel and High Energy
Sports of California. The U.S. company—
which I knew of long before they started
building powered parachute canopies—is
partnered with Bill Gargano, a parachute
design expert respected in the general
parachute community. Randy says, “I’ve
known Bill for many years, and I think
his work for powered parachutes is the
best available.”
Gemini would like to log sales of 200
units a year but predicts about half that
for the near term. Most ultralight
airframe makers would consider that a
terrific delivery performance. My regular
inquiries of Rotax distributors confirm
that powered parachute producers
remain the biggest buyers of that
company’s two-stroke engines, that
overwhelmingly being the 582.
Gemini predicts growth from new
interest overseas. “Israel is developing a
powered parachute community, and we
expect to make sales in France, Germany,
and Spain,” Randy adds. He senses that
interest in powered paragliders—the footlaunched,
backpack sister to powered
parachutes—may spur interest in U.S.-
style powered parachutes. “Europeans
also like wheels and creature comforts,”
Randy says.
Currently, France has a couple
domestic machines (one, the Sylphe, was
displayed at Sun ’n Fun 2002), otherwise
the Americans largely have the
international market to themselves, at
least for a time. Gemini hopes to get its
share.
To keep American and foreign buyers
coming, Randy’s mantra for Gemini is to
keep the prices modest, the aircraft
reliable, the service good, and the
delivery quick.
That sounds like a good way to please
customers to me.
Editor’s Note: Buckeye Industries, the
enterprise that once employed Randy
Snead, is now involved in a Chapter 11
bankruptcy filing. Buckeye Aviation is the
newly formed company that displayed
Buckeye powered parachutes at EAA
AirVenture Oshkosh 2002.