The launch was bizarre. Nil wind, trimmers in one notch. The wing would lag back or drift off to one side or another. It almost felt like a downwind launch. I drug and fought the wing for several hundred feet before I was able to get it overhead and the eventual launch, was at a very fast speed. Next time in light air ….try letting trim out a notch instead.
Smooth air above 500 ft …. Nasty below.
There are no pictures because I wasn’t of a mind to document a perfect wing slashed to ribbons.
It was hot all day and 89 degrees when I got to the field at 6:45. I took my time setting up to let the air mellow. At 7:15 I had set up with my new A Assists and blew the first launch. The keeper I had used to attach the ratchet to the Assist wasn’t strong enough and it blew out. I reattached them with heavy zip ties and tried again. This time I wish I had someone with a video camera. The wing hung back and so I reached up and gave the assists a little help. I must have got a better push with the right arm because the wing shot up but was only flying on the right side. I looked to the left and the whole left side was hanging down like a limp dick but the air was still and I had lots of room so I backed off the throttle and coaxed the wing back up with a few pulls on the brake. It was the longest roll out and take off since the time in Meadow Lake with the 23 hp Briggs.
The air was OK until I got to 500 feet where there was a layer of rowdy air. I powered through that and found good air at 1000 feet AGL. I went South and West until I found my self at Boulder Reservoir I was at 6000 feet MSL and there wasn’t a puff on the lake so I descended to about 200 feet AGL and cruised the shoreline. When I got over the Marina area it started to get bumpy so I climbed out and started back.
About half way home I encountered a headwind and was flying at 10 to 15 mph. The air temp dropped several degrees and I was feeling “puffs which is not normal. I was able to pick up speed by crabbing but it still took a long time to get back to Vance Brand. The wind had shifted from Northerly to Easterly and I was about 1 and a half miles west of the field when I encountered some really nasty air. I was starting to get some minor tip collapses and being bounced up and down 50 to 100 feet at a time. Earlier I’d flown through some patches of big lift and sink but that was at 6500 ft. It was a whole different story at 300 feet and it stayed that way all the way back to the field.
The landing was very steep and after touch down I pulled a couple of yards of the right brake to disable the wing.
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| dumb chute story |
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| low and slow |
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| photo by Mike Bennett |
Next time…. Power up Once the wing is up and the trike is rolling… back off and taxi until it is stable, then add power and launch! Watch the wing! It’s elementary stuff but I seem to be having a hard time of it lately. It is easy to blame the machine… it winds up too slow … or it’s so much heavier. None of these things are flaws…it is just the nature of the rig. Know how it performs and fly accordingly.
The answer is focus.
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| good launch Photo by Mike Bennett |
I’ve been home from Bubba’s Event for almost a month but for a number of personal reasons I haven’t posted my report. In a nutshell I had two good flights and one spectacular crash with minor equipment damage and no injuries. For a complete report on the Fly-In, see Mike Bennetts Blog. He picked up the ball and has written a very comprehensive post. http://mbppg.com/info/bubba.html
As with most incidents there were several things that contributed to the mishap. Here is the way I remember it. The first two launches with Mike’s 30 meter Eden III were fast. In both cases I took off and touched down again before getting off. In both cases I floated for a couple hundred yards before starting to climb. Once up, the flight and landing was pretty standard. Flight speed was around 32mph and my climb was about 125 feet/min.
On my last launch I touched twice and on the second touch I came down crooked with the trike contacting the ground with the front and right rear wheel. The trike flipped and rolled once landing on the wheels, I was then ejected to the right in the opposite direction of the roll. I immediately turned off the motor but not before it damaged the wing. Here are some of the things I did wrong:
1) I did not fasten the seat belt. This is not a common mistake for me but I have done it twice… both times with witnesses. It was fortunate that I was able to stay with the machine during the roll… One effect of not being belted in was that when I hit a bump and got bounced, I lost contact with the right steering peg. It could have caused the cart to turn so that when I did get lifted the thrust was out of alignment with the wing.
2) Once the wing came up and stabilized I didn’t check it again. After the first touch the wing started an oscillation, which unknown to me, got progressively worse as I accelerated. I lost situational awareness as to what my wing was doing relative to the trike. HUGE MISTAKE !
3) I did not abort or reduce throttle after the first touch. Despite the fact that the launch was obviously going bad I stayed on the throttle when I should have aborted or reduced power and stabilized. The first thing Bubba asked me was … “Did your throttle get stuck. It is very telling that I thought I could salvage the launch right up until the trike started to roll. Looking back I my head wasn’t in it. The weather wasn’t expected to be flyable and going out to the field was a last minute decision. I rushed to get ready and like my last post “Rush and Pay the Piper”, BOY DID I !
4) The front wheel on the Falcon was bent and not appropriate for the terrain and speed required for lift-off. The guys pointed out my bent front wheel when I first arrived. It must have suffered from some of my lurching launches at Simms when the trike is rolling full speed over a bumpy surface. This might have also contributed to the reason I didn’t abort. The Falcon does not handle high speed taxiing as well as the Trike Buggy did … it was a little like trying to foot launch in no wind or down wind … It felt too fast to abort, and if that were the case I shouldn’t have tried to launch..
Looking back … I was an accident looking for a place to happen. I was rushing to get up and in the wrong frame of mind to be flying. My previous two flights were successful but my head was not in the game and it was dumb luck that prevented serious injury.
Time to take a break from flying.
Here are a series of pictures that Shelia Boulten took … See if you can follow the sequence.
Simms… Good Flight… Tough Launch … I’m going to have to find a place that is smoother or cut some weeds! The reserve got snagged pulling one pin and opening the front half of the container. I spotted it right after launch and closed the velcro but it was not a good thing! Chip and I rethreaded it later that evening and I was happy to see that the chute will not need to be repacked but I will need to spend some time picking the weed and seeds out of the velcro.
I flew for an hour at Red Rocks Amphitheater and was headed back to the field. Even though it was 70 degrees on the ground I was getting chilled from flying in the shadows. And so…I’m hightailing east chasing the sun and there right in front of me was Chip who had just taken off. Well this was fun… we danced in the sky for the first time in a long while. I’m reminded of the time we were West of Chatfield and confronted by a News chopper. I turned tail and ran for cleaner air while Chip charged right at the chopper kind of like young Saint Bernard. Our flying styles haven’t changed, tonight I was content to float above and take pictures while he put on a beautiful show above the lake. Lots of freeflight in that boy… nice smooth diving turns and hard banking spirals.
The sun set… I was cold and Mr. Lutke’s CT Marvel was running on fumes. Time to go home! 
The landing was nice, there was just enough breeze to slow way down and when I touched , I could hardly feel it. Seriously nice… Chip stayed up till the approaching darkness forced him down. Typical free flight guy, he boated around the field for 5 minutes before setting up to land.
You meet the best people 500 feet above the earth!
Climb rate was lousy and I noticed that the RPM’s had dropped to 3400. After several laps I started to get some altitude. The air was good with just the slightest currents. After 10 or 15 minutes I did a fly-by and landed. It was a nice landing, with a low & slow turn just before final and a 3/4 throttle gentle landing. 
Ironically I did it the day after I was patting myself on the back for finding the right system. I don’t know why I choose to do it differently …just because I was flying a different wing? The winds were 7 to 9 and it was a smaller wing. I set the trimmers out and probably damped to soon or too much. I wish I had a video so I could see what happened. The buggy was pulled into a partial turtle and came back up before flipping all the way… but the prop caught two lines CM1 and DM1. I think the wing fell back and then surged and folded…if so… I could have saved it if the buggy were accelerating faster. The whole thing would have been avoided if I layed out the wing in a chevron instead of a tight little wall that was like a a coiled spring ready to release. Duh?
I might have been able to avoid cutting the lines with a 2 stroke but the 4 stroke takes a while to wind down. The outer cage ring was slightly bent below the crossbar..I bent it back part way and there is plenty of clearance for the prop. I will probably have to get it welded and true before mounting the New Power Fins.
The TV crew turned out to be a crew from Indonesia. Three people two cameras and a tiny little girl who was either director or translator. It was hard to tell since she never talked to the camera men and could hardly talk to us. Nice …pleasant but not real fluent. Robert and I just kind of went about our business and at the end I gave her my card and she said that she would send me a link after it was edited.
#314 was 40 minutes of tooling around the field waiting for Robert and crew and #315 was a quickie for the camera. It was getting late when they arrived and the air was too thermal for me. I knew it was getting late during take off…I floated above the ground at 5 feet for 300 feet then I entered the lift and was swooped up like a f-16 launch. I hope it made some good video. Robert did some good stuff, nothing hairy some nice hard turns and low level dives and climbs. The swoop divers really looked good. One fellow pulled a 270 between Robert & I and the film crew while we stood about 15 feet apart.
Tomorrow it’s Meadow Lake
The recent rains have jump started the prairie grasses making it a much slower surface to launch from. It took 3 attempts this morning. the first two because the buggy bogged down after clearing the ramps. I think if I’d kept the A’s in hand I might have saved the second launch but the wing fell back and I just couldn’t get enough speed to get it back overhead.
Then…on the 3rd attempt I didn’t clear the brake lines properly and the right hand line was looped up and over the b risers. It cleared itself quickly but there was a moment when I was considering an abort.
The RPMs have come down 150 to 3550-3600 and it’s decreasing the climb. I’ll back off the pitch a little bit and see if I cannot get it back up to 3750.
The Garmin 176-C is shutting down when shaken so I’ve removed the mount and will do everything with the Foretrex 102 from now on.
This morning the air was very calm until 6200 MSL where I ran into mixing air and some early thermal activity. It seemed to get worse the higher I went so I came back down to 500 AGL and enjoyed making turns over the patch as well as the High School and Prison.
I look forward to trying another wing…this powerplay likes to dance and I’m not so fond of the way the buggy is dancing under it.
Next flight I’m going to move the hangpoint loops 3/8 inch forward to increase the thrust vector and hopefully improve the climb.
All in All after the hassle of launching….It was a good flight. Only 25 more to 300!
Powered Paragliding. A most Personal form of Flight 
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