Riding the Winds of Adventure
/As a young boy riding his bike past the Hendersonville Airport, Mark Huneycutt dreamed of one day becoming a helicopter pilot. That dream has propelled him to a life of adventure that includes attaining his dream of piloting helicopters in the US Army, becoming renowned as a daring paramotor pilot, and most recently, becoming nationally famous for his on-the-ground reporting of the devastation in western North Carolina as a result of Hurricane Helene.
At age 33, Mark Huneycutt has already experienced several lifetime's worth of adventure.
Mark, Alana, and Bear
Mark is the son of Julie and Don Huneycutt who reside in the Dunroy neighborhood in Flat Rock. He is a graduate of Hendersonville High School who studied at NC State University for four years before joining the Army in 2013. Today, he lives near Fletcher, NC with his wife Alana and their 14-month-old son Barrett (Bear). Although now retired from the Army after serving his country for eight years, Mark is never far from his next adventure.
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Mark’s career in aviation started while still in high school under the tutelage of John Fadok, the Hendersonville Airport Manager. Although his childhood dream had been to fly helicopters, that was not a realistic option for a young boy in Henderson County and Mark opted for flying lessons in small fixed-wing aircraft. Although by his own admission, not a great fan of schoolwork, Mark’s enthusiasm for flying provided the focus and incentive to become a dedicated student of flight. “I was really getting into the book studying for flying.”
Flying is not a low-cost enterprise, but Mark was willing to pay the (literal) price to pursue his passion. “Every bit of my money I was making working at Habitat for Humanity, I was spending on flying.” His skills and experience advanced to the point that at age 19, while still a student in college, Mark earned his pilot’s license and completed his first solo flight. His dream of flying was officially a reality.
Mark’s family photo after his first solo flight
Mark’s earliest flying adventures were very tame in comparison to what was to come. He rented a Cessna 152 at the local airport and would make relatively short flights in the region with friends and family. The experience was great, but even then, Mark knew there were more aviation mountains he wanted to climb.
Mark studied math and engineering at NC State but could never muster the enthusiasm for school that he experienced when he was flying. Before he completed his degree at NC State, Mark made the decision to enlist in the US Army with the intent of finally learning to become a helicopter pilot. Following basic training, an aviator test, and some screening interviews, Mark was accepted into the Army flight school. “I started with smaller helicopters like the Bell TH-67 and worked my way up to the airframe I wanted to fly, the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk.”
Fully trained and certified to pilot the Black Hawk after one year of flight school, Mark was stationed during his enlistment at Fort Bragg, Fort Polk in Louisiana, and Camp Humphreys in South Korea. One of the appeals of flying Black Hawks is the range of missions to which they are assigned. “I flew Medivac most. Taking people to hospitals or rushing to a scene to pick someone up and take them somewhere.” Black Hawk medivac missions typically involved a crew of two pilots, a medic, and a crew chief. Mark also flew VIP missions with visiting generals, including four-star Gen. Robert B. “Abe” Abrams who last served as the commander of United States Forces Korea.
One memorable flight involved flying close enough to the border with North Korea to see the North Korean soldiers firing tracer rounds. “They were probably just practicing, but it was interesting to see that.”
Mark with Alana during a visit to Hendersonville in his Army Black Hawk helicopter
Did the reality of being a helicopter pilot live up to the dreams of that young boy riding his bike past Hendersonville Airport? In a word, yes. “I loved flying 140 knots off the tops of trees, going really fast and trying to get somewhere to help someone. It was cool.”
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Although he realized his dream of becoming an Army pilot flying one of the most famous helicopters in the world, Mark Huneycutt was not done exploring his aviation dreams. It was during his stint in the Army that he first became intrigued by the idea of flying a paramotor. It was an interest that would lead to an entirely new range of adventures.
A paramotor is a motorized paraglider with a propeller, typically powered by a small two-stroke engine, strapped to the back of the pilot. The paraglider is attached to the pilot with carabiners. To take off, the pilot gets a running start, then gives the paramotor some gas via a hand-held throttle to gain lift. Taking off and landing are typically performed in an open field.
One of the more interesting aspects of paramotoring is that it is not regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). This means that paramotor pilots do not need clearance to take off or land. In fact, they do not need to communicate with a flight tower at any point. There are also no formal certification requirements for paramotor pilots.
For Mark, flying paramotors was one way to avoid the military bureaucracy and the limitations imposed on pilots by the FAA. It was, in essence, the freest form of flight possible. Mark taught himself to fly in a peanut field behind his home at the time in Alabama. “I practiced during my off hours. I just bought the stuff on Craigslist.” Mark then adds with a laugh, “I took the wrong route of learning by being self-taught, but it worked out I guess.”
Mark has been flying paramotors for a decade now and he loves the flexibility of choosing when and where to take off, fly, and land. “I can have the paramotor in my house and then walk through the woods and go fly in this field behind my house or put it in a sedan, drive across the country, and pull it out and fly at some random stop.” In terms of a runway, a paramotor doesn’t require much room to take off and land. “Less than a couple hundred feet,” Mark explains. “If you're on a beach in the wind you can actually take off with zero steps.”
Mark Flying his Paramotor
Undoubtedly, any earth-bound mortal who has witnessed a paramotor fly overhead – which looks very much like a person sitting in a lawn chair with a propellor strapped to their back and hanging under a very flimsy-looking parachute – has asked themselves, “Is that really safe?” Mark assures friends and family and concerned writers of small newsletters, that it is. “It's as safe as you make it. You can fly them really straight and level with nice slow turns. It's a 25-mile-per-hour aircraft. So it's going very slow.” He smiles and adds, “It's pretty safe.”
Mark typically flies at an altitude of somewhere around 500 feet. The legal limit for an aircraft not under air traffic control is 18,000 feet. Which Mark has actually done on at least one occasion. “Oh my gosh, it's cold up there.”
What’s it like to fly a paramotor? “It feels like you're just sightseeing. Honestly, you're just sitting in a lawn chair in the sky and there's nothing in front of you or to your left or right. I like to throw on some music and enjoy the view.” It is also good for Mark’s soul. “Sometimes if you're in a not-so-great mood, it can make my day a little better.”
Depending on the weather, Mark tries to get out a couple of times a week. “If the weather's good I might do it a lot more. Lately, I haven't been flying because there's been so much helicopter traffic around because of the hurricane. I don’t want to get in the way.”
Paramotor is also unique in that Mark is often flying low enough and slow enough to communicate with people on the ground. “If someone waves at me and I'm a couple hundred feet up, I might actually come down there a little closer to say hello.”
Mark’s Paramotor Adventures
If you’ve read this far, you will understand that Mark Huneycutt is not easily satisfied by the status quo. The same was true with his paramotor adventures. Flying at 25 mph over Henderson County is relaxing, but his personality quickly sought out other adventures – and many of these adventures are documented on his very popular YouTube channel and Facebook page.
Among his most notable paramotor flights, is the longest paramotor flight in the USA - 7 hours 53 minutes on just 4.6 gallons of fuel. (Video link here) Mark also completed a thirty-mile flight across the Atlantic Ocean from the Frying Pan Tower platform off the coast of NC to the beach at Oak Island. (Video link here)
Mark’s most recent big adventure involved flying 1400 miles from the USA/Mexico border in California to the Canadian border in Idaho in nine days with two other paramotor pilots. This flight was such a significant endeavor that it warranted its own website. Link Here
“We all had to carry our own gear. All of the stuff we needed for camping. It was beautiful. Utah especially is cool. It's kind of a hidden gem of the US.” For good measure, Mark has also flown across North Carolina and South Carolina. Links here and here.
Mark’s videos are provided by a Go-Pro camera on his helmet and the camera on his phone. “I’ve always been behind the camera,” says Mark. “I’ve got videos I made when I was 10 years old, and I’ve been making YouTube videos since 2011.”
National Recognition/ YouTube Celebrity
Through the years, Mark’s paramotor adventures garnered him over 80,000 followers on YouTube and legions of fans who followed his every flying adventure. The arrival of Hurricane Helene in NC, however, would provide another adventure opportunity for Mark and result in his following doubling to 167,000 followers in a single month.
It was a tornado that struck the Raleigh area of North Carolina in April 2011 that first launched his career as a YouTube Partner. Mark took his camera and his adventuresome spirit after the storm and went to explore. When he posted the resulting video to YouTube, it went viral, and his career as a YouTuber took off. Now, 167,000 followers later, Mark Huneycutt is something of a YouTube celebrity.
Mark would go on to post similar videos about the damage caused to eastern North Carolina by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Hurricane Florence in 2018, and Hurricane Laura which destroyed towns in Louisiana. “It’s kind of my nature,” Mark explains. “If I'm ever near somewhere that a natural disaster has happened, it's pretty much inevitable I'm going to go out and explore it.” Mark is quick to add that he has the equipment and the experience to do his videos safely and that his videos answer a lot of questions people have. “People want to see what happened.”
Screenshot from Mark’s Chimney Rock Video
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, it was only natural for Mark to head into impacted areas to see and record the damage for himself. He was also motivated by the proliferation of false stories about the nature of emergency response to the storm. His subsequent video, “I walked to Chimney Rock for Answers,” has been viewed over 4.3 million times and was an important – and powerful - refutation of the false narratives that had been spreading about government overreach. “I thought, this is ridiculous. People are getting angry about rumors, and I decided to go see for myself.”
What Mark found and shared with millions of viewers helped debunk the wild rumors and restore some measure of calm and confidence in the slow and arduous task of starting to recover and rebuild in the hardest-hit parts of North Carolina. “Of course, you can never shut up all the conspiracy theorists, but at least you shed some light on what is really happening out there.”
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What’s next for a man with an appetite for adventure? How about flying a paramotor across the United States from coast to coast? “There's only one person that's flown across the United States so far on a paramotor, and he took a southern route so it was shorter. I want to fly through the middle of the country so I can fly over the Rockies and stuff.”
Of course, he does. After speaking to Mark Huneycutt for just a few minutes, it is hard to be surprised by anything he says he wants to attempt. So, the next time you look up in the sky and see a young man sitting in a lawn chair under a parachute, be sure to wave. It might just be Mark Huneycutt enroute to his next great adventure.
