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And now for something completely different. Well, OK, not COMPLETELY
different since PPG was involved, but much different than my normal flying
event.
On
the weekend before my venture to Oshkosh, I attended Mike Hudetz's
Trikefest at Cushing Field in Newark, IL. It has to be among the largest
gatherings of weight-shift craft in the country. He does a casual
competition and basically hosts a party. What's cool is that this is
within easy helicopter range of my house so, the day before, I flew down
there to practice some weight-shift flying. I've got a half-share of a
Cosmos Samba nanolight soaring trike that, unfortunately, I only fly a
few times a year. The crazy paramotor keeps me busy. But I wanted to try
my hand at competition. Cosmos
So I went out and started flying lines, mostly up high at first. I
chose straight lines mostly, but also curved lines and 90 degree lines
to practice precise rollouts -- flying various degrees of bank. Then I
went down low, to within a few inches of the road, so as to regain a
feel for precise pitch control. It's a hang glider so you push forward
to go up and right to go left. Making matters worse is my throttle which
is backwards. Nuts. Thus the desire to practice until reaction was
second nature.
Then back to the field for spot landing practice. My first attempts
were miserable and nowhere near competitive but mostly because I
experienced control reversal on just the flare. I'd come down with some
spare energy, much like a paraglider, but instead of a tiny pull on the
bar to touch the spot, I'd give it a tiny push. Ooops. Floaty, floaty.
By the fouth one I was getting within a few feet.
Weight shift trikes are so completely different than all the other
stuff I fly that I've got to get reacclimated. Everything is backwards,
including throttle, pitch and bank. What else is there?!?
Saturday Flying and Competition (sort of)
It was flyable basically all day because of cloud cover so I just
went back and forth between flying the Samba and paramotoring. What fun.
While I still favor the paramotor I have to say that the weight shift
flying is cool, too. They had a very casual competition but we only got
to run a few tasks, largely from lack of interest. The one we did do was
a bomb drop. With water balloons.
The trike guys all had passengers which made things much easier since
the passenger could carry the water. I didn't have that option on my
miniplane so I carried the water balloons in my emptied camera bag, then
used a technique I learned from Eric Dufour where I would put the ballon
in my feet. Then as I flew by, just let go. Of course these were water
balloons so I had to be careful about breaking them and they were harder
to hang on. They have the same rules as we do with no altitude
minimum. But I discovered a drawback to my slow speed and low altitude:
the balloons wouldn't brake. So I'd have to fly higher to make sure they
gained enough speed while dropping. I actually nailed the target a
couple times on both the Samba and the Paramotor but the balloons didn't
break. My bad. You drop low for accuracy but take your chances that it
may not break. As with all competition, being good is more than just
flying. It was a good time and I highly recommend anyone intereseted
in hang glider trikes to check out the event or training there at
Cushing, Mike Hudetz will set you up nicely.
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This pilot has an interesting story. But for now,
he's about to enjoy some airtime..
Before flying these craft, make sure to get real good
instruction. We're lucky to have the operation in Cushing that we do.
Whereas poor instruction in paramotor usually means pilots struggle to
get aloft, poor instruction in these things is more likely to be fatal.
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