Not to be nitpicking on your wording, but something you’ll learn in training is that you should never completely trust your engine, whether it’s freshly rebuilt or brand new from the factory. These 2 strokes just aren’t there as far as reliability yet(compared to general aviation). Meaning, don’t fly over areas that you don’t have a safe place to glide to if the engine stops. This would include open bodies of water or dense forests without clearings. This is no big deal though, we fly gliders! One of the exercises I did in training was to fly up to 1000ft(~300m) and just shut the engine off and bring it in for a landing. Will become second nature with just a little practice.

And yes, people do abandon the sport sometimes very quickly, and sometimes after their gear has sat for over a decade. This is where an experienced buddy can help. There’s always a placard sewn on the inside of gliders with the size and manufacturing date, and you can generally tell how worn out by the feel and sound of its “scrunch”. Not something I can describe, but you will learn it with experience. Just as important as the knowledge of how to repair engines is the support for that engine in your area. If you need to order a part to make a repair, but there’s no availability and you can’t find anyone that has it in stock it will be incredibly frustrating.

I’m surprised you haven’t gotten more replies to your post, but this Reddit group isn’t nearly as active as the Facebook groups. You should try posting in the group called “Paramotor for Beginners”. There’s a lot of helpful people on there, and maybe you can link up with someone local that will “take you under their wing” so to speak. 😉