Kauai - Biplane tour
 

Has anyone taken the "Tropical Biplanes" tour of Kauai?
I'm wondering how it compares to the helicpoter tours.
Can you see well sitting in the front seat?
Is there enough room sitting side by side?

It looks like it would be fun and a good experience.

I rode a helicopter because you can get closer than in a plane to the sites (waterfalls) and Napali Coast. We did the Jack Harter because of their saftey record.

My Brother-in-law is a small plane pilot and was a helicopter pilot in the Army for years. I asked him these same questions before we went and we looked at the websites together.

His opinion was - if you are going on the ride to see the BEST views then the helicopter is hands-down a better choice.

The Biplane would be more exhilarating
but the sites will be harder to see.

We chose to take a helicopter ride and LOVED IT.

We did this instead:
http://birdsinparadise.com/

Below you'll find an excerpt from my trip report about this very cool way to see the island...

POWERED HANGLIDER (A "TRIKE")--BIRDS IN PARADISE

www.birdsinparadise.com

Seeking both adventure and to avoid the plague of helicopters on Kauai (and glad we did; staring into the crater one day we saw five helicopters at once), we took a powered hangliding flight with Birds in Paradise. It's so cool, you really do come off foaming at the mouth. We got the first flights at 8am, which Gerry, the pilot, seemed to indicate is usually the best way to go in terms of flight conditions. Take off is from Port Allen on the south shore. You don a heavy flight suit to keep you warm at 5000ft, along with the warm clothes you better be wearing because it's COLD up there. The craft is a hanglider with an engine at back. Gerry sits at front and you're strapped in behind him, outfitted with a helmet with headphones and a microphone.

Take off is awesome, it's like being on a motorcycle but then it lifts off. The views are gorgeous...the views of the reefs, the farmland crisscrossed with vibrant red dirt roads, the ribbons of golden beaches...and the mountains! We flew really close to Makaleha, streaked in waterfalls and got a fantastic view into Waialeale crater, which is just breathtaking in its enormity, and the start of the Wailua River below, an area we had hiked a few days before--very cool to see from up above what you'd hiked below. We flew through clouds and got to see the shadow of the craft on a cloud, encircled in a rainbow! We got going very fast toward the end (ground speed of 114 mph) and the banking and occasional drops are exciting and made my stomach drop like a good roller coaster. My boyfriend got to see a little bit of Na Pali but they had to turn around because it was too windy. So we stayed around Port Allen to the west, flew over the south shore, to the interior toward the crater/Makaleha, and toward the airport on the east coast; we got to see quite a bit of the island. Gerry handles the craft superbly, and I never felt unsafe. The strangest thing was that when we ran out of things to say for the moment he would start playing music: I got some IZ, a cover of the Gilligan's Island theme song, some Stones, and a country tune; pretty odd, and I kept asking him questions so he'd shut it off. It's noisy up there with the engine, but silent compared to The Professor and Mary Ann in your ears.

The pictures are so freaking cool, many of them look like shots of the globe from space. He mounts a very wide angle camera to the wing and uses a cable release. A roll of 24 is $25 and he charged us $30 to split one roll, which he gives you at the end to develop yourself ("Sweetie, watch where I am putting this roll of film so I don't say to you later 'Omigawd, WHERE is the trike film??'"). It's $190/hour each and SO worth it, the feeling is unreal and Gerry's a real character.

***

So, yeah, this is VERY freaking cool. Let me know if you have any questions!

love
roxy

Roxy,
The hang glider sounds like it would be a great experience. However, I exceed the weight limit so would probably fall out of the sky like a rock.

Thanks for the report.

Darrell