Larry Mednick
Forum Replies Created
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Good question, if you lift off and point the nose up and lose the engine, it’s going to probably be different than if you lift off, sit in ground effect at full power until the bar is back to neutral, and then control your climb angle shallow for the first 300 feet. However what is even more critical than that is how quickly, the pilot snaps the control bar in at the first sign of loss of power. If you wait until the prop stops or even a full second, it could be the difference between having enough energy to flare at the bottom or not. When I say quick that is 2 fold. Reaction time and speed in which the bar is snapped back. Also once the nose lowers to a nose down attitude, you don’t want to hold the bar in, you really need to return it back to around neutral bar and as I say, attempt to “ride the glide” meaning holding the bar in can make the trike fall towards the ground and not accelerate on the preferred glide path.
Lastly many pilots will want to round out at the last moment with a tighter radius, but counter intuitively a softer larger round out is usually better with a limited energy approach. In the case that the energy is too low to make a power off landing, usually the nose wheel is not going to hit first first if the trike has a normal amount of swing through designed into it, and the only reason the trike may stall is if the pilot does literally nothing after power loss. In either case it’s the main gear that will take most of the impact. That doesn’t mean the forks won’t fail if the main gear holds up. After the mains hit then the nose wheel will probably impact and either hold up or collapse. If it collapses, the trike is going over…. Also worth noting is if you hit the ground with the bar full out at the same moment you impact the ground it will make a huge difference in the trikes survivability. Bar full out is your best bet to save the forks and stay upright in a hard impact landing .
The short story is knowing what to do and doing it without delay are what’s required to land with an engine out at low altitude during climb out.
I personally had an engine out on climb out last week though more like 250 feet (garbage in bowls after students trike sat) the student was one of mine that soloed several months ago and has been flying plenty. His words were he didn’t even know the engine lost power when I snatched the controls out of his hands and said “my plane” it was a non event and a very short lesson, but a great lesson as it turned out.
Anyway I have had a few of those over the decades and all great landings so far. So it can be done.
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Especially with ethanol in it.
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Guess what guys? We are adding a world map to this site to allow everyone to pin there location as either a pilot or instructor. This will be a HUGE help and from what I have seen so far on the group, a main interest is people want to find each other or find an instructor nearby.
In the meanwhile, flight schools please feel free, as others have already done, and list your free, flight school ad with photo(s) in our Classified section.
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A little birdie told me there is at least 1 mainstream manufacturer working on an electric power system for light sport aircraft. They know the battery tech is not there YET. but will be in market position as soon as the battery density triples. They can literally already do all their testing and everything regardless of how short the test flights are. I don’t think it will take 10 years, but I think 3 or more years and we can build and buy electric aircraft equivalent to combustion motors (power/weight/endurance)
I have over 50 radio airplanes and helicopters and ALL of them are electric and I wouldn’t even consider “gas” since my flight times are more than enough for RC. No clean up, instant throttle response and much higher reliability. I really do love electric for those reasons alone.
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It is possible to convert a cable braced wing to strut braced, but not easy and possibly not Safe. The things you have to think about is structurally the keel needs to be stronger once is looses its bracing off the king post. Then the leading edges will need sprogs installed which puts a “NEW” torsional load on the leading edges, so they will probably need to be beefed up as well.
The pitch stability in most cable braced wings is most likely using reflex from the reflex bridal/luff lines and with those gone, the current airfoil (shape of all the battens) may be divergent especially removing all of the drag from the top of the wing and possibly increasing drag below the wing. Furthermore, if you use airfoiled struts, they can cause yaw instability which in turn creates roll instability.
So in a nutshell the wing may fail structurally and or possibly be yaw, roll and pitch unstable all from converting a perfectly good cable braced wing to strutted.
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I flew an electric trike 12 years ago…
https://youtu.be/aNZqpMB093shttps://youtu.be/aNZqpMB093s
Time flys and technology is getting there.I had an 8 minute flight time on that little trike… But even today no one is flying over 1 hour under power, not even the ANT or Pipestrel. But they both soar and can mix soaring and powered flight to stay up for hours making them perfect for electric propulsion today.
I think you are looking at around the $12-$18,000 system to get 40 hp to fly for one hour. One of the guys that goes to Oshkosh every year with his E-gull buys crashed E bike motorcycles and uses the battery charger speed control and motor system from the used motorcycle. Take a look on eBay and see how much you might be able to find a wrecked electric motorcycle for. But if you want a 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours powered flight, you are going to need to wait until battery density reaches around 300% of what it is today. With Elon Musk at the helm, that could happen sooner than later and I personally am waiting and look forward to the day that even REVO’s are Electric.
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I believe the 440 makes around 40 HP. But for whatever reason does not have the power of a Rotax 447 which is also rated at 40 HP. In any case the Kawi 440 works great on a Jet Wing. Jay Bird sells the 440s with redrives ready for a trike. Very economical choice. Personally I like the new tech single cylinder liquid cooled motors best in that category, but they are over $5000 these days. But you get dual ignition, an actual gear box and silencers on both ends and more.
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I know Polini has now approved/recommends Av gas. For their little 2 strokes. I have heard in the past that avgas will dry out the crank seals with prolonged use. Not sure if that’s true or not…
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Hi Ron, I suspect this will be an amazing thread with valuable information as already stated above. First thing to remember is landing a trike, even though some will say otherwise, is NOT easy to learn. It’s a bit difficult right up until it becomes effortless. In the mean while I have had to put my therapist hat on and calm down my distraught students that are ready to throw in the towel many many times. Above all there are a few things that can make landing with whatever technique you are using much more difficult or impossible.
First is where you are looking. If you are looking down or too close in front of you it will be near impossible to be aware of your descent rate, your altitude and possibly your attitude (which controls direction of flight)
Second is stay relaxed. Stiffening up and or holding your breath will surely not allow you to fluidly control the trike. Like riding a horse you MUST be relaxed with your elbows preferably down allowing the trike to “fly” while the control bar moves freely.
Third keep your head centered. Shifting your head to the right is typical as the trike drifts to the left. Not only does moving your head to the right not do anything useful, but the mind tends to stop doing other things like work the control bar as the pilot contorts their body in an effort to will the trike in the direction of their head. Also as you move towards your right hand on the bar , you lose the ability to pull your right hand towards yourself to lower that wing. So stay centered and if the trike is banked left “fix” the trike and not your body.
If you can do these 3 things then it might take 100+ landings to get consistent . Beyond that, technique is very useful and there are multiple techniques that will work, but without lots of patience an perseverance the finish line may seem unobtainable. So remember when you see all of these solo videos, these guys are warrior’s that trained for many hours and overcame bad habits (listed above) to achieve their dream.
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Hi Brad thanks for joining! That’s a great idea for a next upgrade to the site! However in the meanwhile a discussion topic of the even t with the date could also work. I see Dave Schultz just did one for Oshkosh. Also Mike Hudetz has always used a classified ad to promote his “Wingfest” trike gathering every year. The good thing is however you post about an event it will probably be seen on this site and It will pop back up into the homepage feed anytime someone comments on it or has a question.
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Thanks Ernie, And big congratulations on getting your sport pilot ticket at age 73. Quite the accomplishment!
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Thank you. Yeah, I almost cried the day Trikepilot.com went down. It was a sad day for the trike community. This site had to be mostly custom built even though it appears simple I wanted it to work like the old forum because “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” now I realize why Spencer could not get the new WordPress based site to duplicate the original platform. Lots of custom coding and trouble shooting. I had hoped to had This site launched 2 months ago if that gives any idea of the road blocks we encountered. But all is well that ends well except Barnstormers.com permanently deleted my account and said I am their competition now. Very sad and petty if you ask me…
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McMaster.com Lockwoodaviation.Com aircraftspruce.Com
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Hi Jonathan, at the moment you won’t get email notifications for every comment in the thread. I may not have replied to your comment and just replied to the thread. Thats why its important that everyone check Trike Action at least 3X a day 🙂
Wow, that 47 HP motor would be about perfect in our REV X which is N numbered. I too share your exact feelings on quality/price in aviation. A friend of mines trike did catch fire in the air with an electric system about 10 years ago. Luckily he was low and landed close enough to my Father (I wasn’t there) to extinguish the flames. No injuries, but think about how long it takes to get especially a light trike down from 3000 feet. Spiral away for sure, but still.
<font face=”inherit” style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Kamron at Northwing called me a </font>couple<font face=”inherit” style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”> months ago to tell me that he had sourced a really good electric propulsion system for his ATFs. And that is yours apparently! So cool that we</font><font face=”inherit” style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”> get to talk to the man himself! </font>
<font><font face=”inherit”>I think we should build an electric REV X maybe next year or as soon as we can take on the additional project. I look forward to familiarizing myself better with your set ups. By the time we do a 582 with radiator, fuel tank, ceramic exhaust, springless exhaust, intake and after mufflers and motor cradle I think we are pushing very close to $10,000, so something like a $5,000 option for electric on a $40+K machine seems really in line so </font>long<font face=”inherit”> as the quality is there to back the price. </font></font>
Thank you for being open here with pricing, weight and endurance. Surely most will be disappointed if they haven’t followed electric closely. But this is all a far better than where we were even just a few years ago. Looking forward to the future. Thanks for all the info.
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Hi Jonathan, what is the retail price for your electric package and what is the horsepower of the system?