I am a long time fixed wing ultralight (since 1980) & GA pilot (since 1986) and I took a demo flight / intro lesson with Larry Mednick a few years back in his Revo Trike. I have had much interest in learning to fly trikes for quite a long time and had watched many instructional videos & read much material on the subject. Also, I’d spent a lot of time “in my brain” thinking about & visualizing the differences and convincing myself I could make the transition very easily. Wrong! I’m 100% convinced that I’d have killed myself on that first flight had Larry not been in the back seat! We did a lot of the stuff shown in this video, and it is NOT intuitive for a fixed wing guy, at all. Go some training!! Thanks Larry for a FUN and enlightening flight!
I can see why a fixed wing pilot, trained to push the stick forward on impending stall, would in this case push the bar away from himself, thus making the situation worse. Very informative, thank you.
@@drlong08 Yet pulling back in a panic rarely has consequences worse than a bent landing gear. it is the spiral and the pilot not pulling back that kills. Trikes, unlike fixed wings cannot dive very well at all. they can pretty much only hit the ground hard from stalling (very uncommon in trikes compared to fixed wing) or the the spiral (which is nearly every fatal accident).
Hey I used to fly fixed wings but I have a trike, but never flown it. help me if I'm wrong, please. So...that situation of nose up in a turn is kinda similar to the fixed wing. Losing speed in a hight AOA, and getting stalling in a low speed and high wing banked. ( I'm I correct?) So....in order to recover from that situation, should I put the nose down for speed and level the wings for lift, like any other acft?
That is not what’s happening here. The trike is flying at a relatively constant airspeed in coordinated flight. No nose up stall, no slow speed in what we are talking about. If it stalls it does so at high speed (an accelerated stall) after the spiral develops when the nose is down. If you want a better explanation watch this, ua-cam.com/video/fbXz26wu370/v-deo.html
This is basically what I refer to as the "Walmart shopping cart phenomenon". If you have been inside a Walmart and witnessed how people lack any driving skill whatsoever you gotta wonder how the hell they even made it to the store in the first place. Its a scary world lol. SMH!!!
Thanks Larry, Educational content I have ever seen. Here in Japan there is no mandatory training to exit spiral dive with a weightshift aircraft. It's very informative👍
As a former microlight/ultralight instructor on both 3 axis and weightshift, it was obvious when converting people from one to another that correct training, supervision and practise is essential. To a 3 axis guy, weightshift control isn't natural, no matter how prepared you are. For example, there are ways to describe roll inputs - to roll left, pull left wing down. It's helpful to also compare steering a car by holding the bottom of the steering wheel. Pitch control is the killer because 3 axis instinct is harder to overcome, until you get the idea that you're actually flying the wing, not using elevator.
I used to fly both sail planes and hang gliders and both seem perfectly natural while fly with the horiso. The problem came for me after looking at the así and doing hang glider instinctive recovery. But no sooner was I pushing or pulling the wrong way looking up at the horizon instantly put me right. I soon learnt t not to pay to much attention to así in sail planes.
I see it differently. The problem is simply that the controls COULD be set up so they function in the same direction as FW, but it's rigged opposite... You could have rudder pedals for roll, and a normal stick that swings the trike aft when you pull back. Problem solved.
@@myotherusername9224 Hmmm, interesting concept. I must ask, have you flown a weightshift trike? The 'simple' system in use means that you just shift your weight, left/right/fore and aft, to control the aircraft - in the same way a hang glider is flown. The trike is suspended by a hang point from the wing, allowing the trike to swing when moving the A frame bar. I fail to see how a system of rudder pedals and stick could be rigged up. There is effectively no yaw control due to the absence of a tailplane and rudder, so quite what rudder pedals would do is unclear. Likewise, how on earth could a control column be rigged to operate the weightshift mechanism? Baffling...
Extremely simple. The stick is for pitch only and it's rigged exactly liked the stick on a Bensen gyro. ( I'm talking about the bottom stick style with linkage and bell cranks to the rotor head, not the overhead style stick). Stick back, rotor head ( or kite ) tilts back. Fixed Wing pilots have it drummed into their head: in a stall, rudder against the direction of spin with FEET, not with the STICK. so, rudder pedals linked with Teleflex cables or push/ pull rods to a spot about one foot to the left and right of the hang point. This is all trivial copying of standard control linkage geometries and hardware. Push right rudder pedal, trike CG swings to the Right. Relax back pressure on the stick. Same exact result aerodynamically as high hand to hip, but it uses the same muscle memory and intuitive response all FW pilots know. Zero learning curve for fw pilots transitioning to WS, and vice versa.
@@myotherusername9224 Wow, fascinating - wonder why nobody has actually built one like this, lol. I ask again, have you actually flown a weightshift ultralight? The additional structures required at the hangpoint would be substantial. Current weightshift/hang glider wings utilise a feature called 'billow shift' whereby the floating cross tube allows unequal sail tension on one side in a turn, slackening off the inside wing and helping the wing to bank. Perhaps you are advocating that the cross tube be fixed to the wing keel as part of the changes at the hang point. Remember, as a tailless aircraft there is no yaw control, so I'm not sure what effect rudder pedals would have in rotating the trike c of g. Perhaps you should offer your engineering expertise to the leading designers of weightshift ultralights, you never know, they may take up your ideas and revolutionise trike flying. I look forward to seeing one flying...
As a super experienced HG pilot, the first time I flew a trike, was by myself with no instruction (1990ish) from our local city airport. What got me, was the unexpected trike cage swing forward (Kosmos-Fuji-Robin 440); Rather than just let it happen, I pitch inputted into the control bar, which took the small wing bank and amplified it into a unexpected 30+ degree right turn which aimed me at the hangars. I pulled back in to allow the ability to crank in some left bank, even though I was low, which got the wings level and then pitched back up into a climb. Takeoffs after that, I was prepared, and when the cage swung forward, I just let the wing maintain its current pitch attitude and there was no problem. I am actually convinced that trikes are one of the safest aircraft now. Later flying a Seair (look up seair ultralight), I found it cool to fly down close to the water in ground effect and drag only the rudder in the water (hung down about a foot) because the trike frame was normally at a pitch up attitude. BTW, I have hundreds of hours in trikes, and thousands of hours in HG's, not to mention PG, FW and RW.
1994 and our A&P buys a used trike, he's not a pilot but he is an aircraft mechanic at an airport and thinks he can fly this thing, so we all come out to the grass runway to watch him do his first and last flight, when at lift off speed he pushes forward way to hard and goes straight up about 50-60' stalls and crashes and hes unhurt but the trike was destroyed, we all got a good laugh out of it......
Accidentally stalling a trike is extremely rare. Every aircraft category has a “bugaboo”. Airplanes can accidentally stall. Trikes can accidentally spiral.
great info, interesting points - main lesson though - TRAINING - PROPER TRAINING!! Not from a 'mate' - a qualified flight instructor! It's not a nice to have, or recommended - it's essential!!
I'm in agreement, so my trike sits and doesn't get flown. Turns out all 4 trike trainers in the world are busy. It's not so easy to find a trainer and training takes time so the trainer needs to be nearby or I need to be retired so I can go somewhere for a few months to train. It really is frustrating. I'm thinking about just selling but who wants to buy a trike they can't get trained to fly?
@@Les__Mack what a shame! There are plenty of flights schools in the UK - and there's several UK flight instructors who have set up in France and Spain who offer training courses - with much more reliable weather some UK pilots go there to spend 2 weeks flying and get more done than they could in 4 months back in the UK!
The funny thing is training will cost less than the medical bills. I've got fixed wing hours under my belt, but I know enough about flex wings to not try it with out at least some trainibg.
This is a very good video for anyone looking into weight shifting flying. I have been a fixed wing pilot for 50 years flying LSA’s a few hours to the B777 and bunch of corporate jets in the middle. What I learned I would never ever think about get under that wing with out an instructor. This is a Totally different way to fly. 😀🛫
That's only because the controls are set up wrong. Transition from FW would be a non issue with normal rudder pedals for roll and nose wheel ( push right, go right) and a stick (back stick, go slower, push stick, go faster). This change would eliminate the problem. This video is about stall/ spin, and FW pilots fly the wing, too. Fuzzy thinking is at the root of this problem. A wing is a wing. Would any sane FW pilot buy, or even get in, a plane with reversed controls? No. But they try to fly WS , and it's the exact same situation. This situation, comes from blind acceptance of failure to think through the basic premise of the controls design. That's it. There's nothing special about flying a trike except massive unacknowledged mistake in the design of the controls.
@@myotherusername9224 Stop trying to change an aircraft to fix your notion of what it SHOULD be. There are many types of aircraft which have very different control mechanisms. Paragliders, Powered Paragliders, Hangliders, Powered Hangliders, Parachutes, Powered Parachutes, Sailplanes, Fixed wing propeller, Fixed wing Jet, Rotating wing, Gyro rotating wing, etc. Get over it and learn the skills required for the appropriate aircraft!
As a non-flyer but also a keen aviation nerd who'd love to leave the ground solo some day, I'd always looked at things like trikes and other microlight designs with something of a wary eye. It's quite remarkable to see how stable and recoverable they can be when correctly flown by a knowledgable and practised operator, even when deliberately or accidentally put into a very extreme attitude which seems to be asking for a big oof. I'm suddenly a lot keener to investigate the process of learning to get airborne in something like this. Great video, thanks for the upload. New subscriber here, cheers!
I started in airplanes and the. Discovered trikes. My words after my first trike flight were “I am done with airplanes” 20+ years later and over 10,000 hours in trikes, and my statement was true.
I started on a cessna 150, and later took up handgliding (soaring/no engine). The thing about smaller aircraft that many people don't understand at first is that they are *not* practical vehicles. If you can't fly over the weather, then you will be unpredictably grounded, you can't have an inflexible schedule and go fly somewhere on vacation. So it's really about recreation, and smaller aircraft like trikes, paragliders, ultralights, etc maximize that recreational aspect. Maybe it's a small pontoon craft you can fly from lake to lake. Or a powered paraglider that lets you fly down low with reasonable safety. Hangglider trikes are certainly the motorcycles of the sky, with some getting absolutely ridiculous climb rates. But for the sake of plugging my own interest, the down side of powered flying is that you really have to make your own fun. Coming up with a mission, the "100$ hamburger" or fly-in or something, or simply the fun of pursuing additional qualifications and skills. Soaring on the otherhand is a sport. The fun is sort of built in, and necessarily comes with a local flying community. Competitions you can attend, and so on. You get to learn a whole landscape of the air that you otherwise likely wouldn't consider. The look of clouds, what birds are doing, watching for visible vorticies on lakes and crops, debris in the air. You aren't given anything for free, you need to learn how the air works, where it's going up so that you can stay up with it. And birds do the same, they don't want to flap after all. Once I flew just feet from a pelican for 40 minutes, it joined my thermal at around 7k ft, flew right up to me under my right wing, then literally followed me from thermal to thermal for awhile. That kind of sustained interest and proximity is extremely rare, and I don't expect to ever experience it again, but thermalling with birds is common, they aren't scared of you and don't tend to leave when you join them.
The other benefits of at least part 103 aircraft, I'm not sure if this is true for light sport, is that maintenance can legally be done yourself. It's all just much less expensive, you can have a brand new powered paragliding setup for ~9k ish? A beginners soaring setup for I don't know, 5k? My first hangglider cost 4k new. Airworthy used gear can be far less. So nobody can use money as an excuse to not get their wings.
@@LarrySMednick Hey, thanks for the feedback/info Larry, cheers from SYD 👍 And thanks to the other commenters for their input too, hope y'all are having a great day/evening.
I started flying when I was 14 and aerodynamics seems incredibly intuitive. it really does amaze me that people fly without fully understanding basic flight characteristics
Check lists should be used with every type of aircraft. just to make sure you don't take off before you are ready to take off, like having the controls locked out.
Who needs fancy shmancy "positive stability"? Ground level is the most stable point possible and therefore ultralight trikes are optimally built to rapidly seek the most stable configuration.
Trikes have tremendous positive pitch and yaw stability and neutral roll stability. They are spirally stable as well. Hence the video… 1 hour Unscripted Flex-wing Aerodynamics Session with Larry Mednick ua-cam.com/video/fbXz26wu370/v-deo.html
Hopefully going for my first flight in a Trike in a few days, this has been a great presentation. This will be an interesting experience getting the grey matter around this with only 20 solo hours in gliders.
I’m interested in the aerodynamics at play here with power vs spin. Could you explain how power (or the adjustment of power) affects the spin and what you would need to do to recover ? Also is there an official training/rating for Powered Hang-gliders like PPG, PG, and HG ratings ?
I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a pilot. Would it be possible to design a seat that makes it very uncomfortable/awkward if you try to lean to the side? The natural tendency to lean away from the ground sounds difficult to overcome, especially during an upset/startle moment for a pilot, and having some physical barriers to discourage it might be handy.
Staying centered in your seat is one of many learned skills for flying a trike effective and safely. Another big one is banking the wing when taxiing (driving on ground) which can have non fatal, but bad consequences such as forgetting to use your feet to steer or getting flipped over on the ground in high wind. Another one is turning the nose wheel when applying the gas pedal. Big surprise when you land with the nose wheel turned. These natural tendencies simply need to be learned and practiced. Having said all of that, my students often joke about putting Velcro on their shirt and the seat back. 😂
PPGs have their own demons such as collapsed canopies and wind limitations. Every aircraft from fixed wings to gyros have their possible dangers when they are not piloted correctly.
If the ultralight ever feels like it is trying to take over and fly without your help, do the simple thing and "lower the nose!" It will make your flight more enjoyable and you will not have to put up with those guys that drive an ambulance.
I wouldn't like powered hang gliders. Having to unlearn the standard airplane *push forward to point down and pull back to point up* and then reverse that would suck. It would almost be like twisting a steering wheel *left* to go *right* in a car and vis-versa.
Many people fly both like I do. It’s not a big deal. The pivot point is above your head. No different than holding the bottom of your steering wheel when driving a car. Going back and forth is no big deal.
Never flown one. Or anything but tons and tons of rc airplanes and helis. Also ridden just about every land machine made. And all these point made here, it just seems like common sense. Not sure therr are any other ways to counter act something thats out of controll. Its to counter it. Not add to it. Great video.
Great video. I can see right away that if I went out in a trike without a checkout, as soon as something surprised me so I had to respond instinctively, I would probably move the control bar in the wrong direction without thinking, as in, pull to pitch up. They seem to be a lot like the very early Benson gyros that were controlled by tiller bar coming down from the rotor head, which was switched to a stick from below probably for the same reason. The spiral tendency seems not that different from an airplane's, just WAY faster.
Agreed! We would ask them if they were still here… but actually, testing pilots out and putting them into the spiral only about half of them know how to get out the other half push forward and or add Throttle for the most part. They just never entered a spiral before and before getting the training, they were a ticking time bomb flying a trike.
So pitch and yaw control input are the inverse of what you'd expect in a plane with a stick? I could see how that would throw off people with stick time.
Flew unpowered hang gliders in the '80s and '90s. Simply don't understand how any certified pilot would think they can just fly a weight shift flex wing without instructions. In my days when flying, I did hear stories of pilots with PPL pulling in stead of pushing to flair, especially if the situation got a little difficult.
I get emails and calls every week with people thinking that way. Hope this video can bring some light to the skill required and consequences of not having that skill.
Idk i’m a fixed wing guy and tried to hang gliding a couple times without any incident. Albeit it was off of dunes but it was easy and natural. If you think about what you’re doing, instead of reacting out of privacy, it actually comes natural.
I agree with you and the trikes in this video did have parachutes. But now can you explain how a parachute works from 100’? This is real life, not a cartoon. You need to deploy a parachute at 500’, even a rocket deployed chute like the trikes have. Pulling a chute because you don’t know how to control your aircraft is a pathetic reason to use one. But in all actuality, you bring up a very valid point. These Trikes a lot of times are well above 500 feet when they lose control and do have every opportunity to pull the little red handle which will deploy parachute. It is crazy, but true, when a pilot is fighting to gain control, it seems to be the last thing they think of is the parachute that’s right there.
The point of the video is you don’t have to die flying, and getting proper training (along with good decision making) can keep you fairly safe. I believe all of the Best things in life carry some level of risk. I weep for those that go through life without some of these experiences. But to each his own.
So as we watch some of these "spirals" and in the recovery you pull the opposite hand of the spiral direction while sitting squarely and pulling back towards the hip but I'm curious if in doing this if ever the wing becomes so stressed that it rips or tears when you attempt to pull it back into level flight? I'm not a pilot so this stuff is a common sense for me but I do wonder about the strength of the wings as you attempt to pull it back into level flight? Anyhoo, curious is all. peace
These wings are rated to 6Gs ultimate and 4 Gs useful. The maneuvers you are watching are in the 2 G range. Pulling back makes the nose go down. The nose goes up because the wings are leveled and pulling back reduces this nose up effect so we don’t over stress the wing. Attempting to raise the nose (pushing out) is what kills pilots in a spiral.
Thanks Larry, as someone who watches in wonder & knowing if I ever were to fly, this might be the way, this kinda thing was first on my mind. I guess it was on your mind before you started as well & I ty for sharing that... peace
Eighty-year-old fixed-wing pilot who will never take up the sport found your video educational and fascinating. If I have a dream and the pilot in command dies I'll know what to do.
Here in Australia they made it mandatory to get training for Part 103, although the sports associations tend to handling the licensing etc. I personally think as a fixed wing pilot I could understand some of the concepts quicker but don't get how anyone would go out without training.
I can see how the temptation and lack of understanding will catch people out. I value my life too much not to take training that's for sure. Hopefully going up tomorrow for a first flight and looking forward to it.
Really logical and all ways good to RE enforce these things. No tail to stablise the shif from eather side? I plan on taking lots of lessons when I buy the thing, I might go with a Aerolite, 103, electric if possible. I will watch your shows today. I am retired and have the time to study up on all this. Thank you.
Guys but supposed be easy . Hey you wanna be stupid called play stupid games win stupid prizes!!! Hey go cave diving with no experience too go skydiving with no instructor see how far you go in life! Ive lived my life looking 5 steps ahead at anything i do . Hmm jump this jump hmm outcomes i crash im alone i have no phone how do i get home! Today's age they jump off cliff n then worry oh maybe i should of thought this through
The fact that it enters a left or a right spiral may be from torque. But torque does not cause the spiral. Kind of like if you have a low tire on the passenger side of your car and let go of the steering wheel on the highway it will probably drift into the right lane. The car is not veering off into the right lane because of the tire as much as nobody is driving the car. Meaning if all four tires were properly inflated the car still won’t stay in its lane all by itself regardless.
Very cool. Flying a Robinson R44 with some experience can be settled into a non-accelerated flight situation and the machine can be controlled by leaning. i used to do that with passangers. "Ok, everone lean left" and the copter would go left. But to me it looks like the glider is rigged backward to what an aircraft yoke would produce. Probably why the airplane pilots get in trouble. They expect to increase the angle of attack by pulling back and decrease it by pushing forward which is opposite to the trike in this vid.
Leaning in a trike cannot affect the wing because the carriage is a pendulum And will just rotate on the keel. Reversals are not the reason pilots spiral into the ground. Spirals are responsible for well over 80% of all fatalities. The mind set or trying to raise the nose is the problem. Or raising the wing is the secondary problem. Neither will work in most cases. Hence the point of this video.
Great pilot Larry, beautiful video, which shows extremely important situations for trike pilots who have been flying for a long time and do not know their machines. Great tips that will save many lives, congratulations on the great initiative 👋👋👋👋👋👋
@@LarrySMednick Thank you, holy crap, this things cost way more than I thought, I wonder how much the engine and the blades alone cost, most be like 70% of total, cuz the rest shouldn't be expensive right?
Thanks Mike, good to hear from you. We have slid into #1 in the US quite some time ago and staying really busy at it. The REVO isn’t even our best seller anymore. We have “new stuff”! 😎
Airspeed in a spiral is very very high. And good airspeed on climbout does nothing to minimize entering a spiral. Only in level flight is airspeed useful for steep banked turns not to develop into a spiral.
The point of the video is not the story behind each accident (although that would make a good video) but the loss of control. First pilot lived, second accident was a double fatality. :-(
I saw this happen in a hang glider at launch. The glider really tried. But the nose was pushed out putting the kite in a hard right wing stall. Luckily the pilots neck wasn't broken.
Powered parachutes have their own problems and dangers just like every other type of aircraft. If you think powered parachutes are safer and more capable, you need to do more research. If you want to fly an aircraft that can’t kill you, it’s called a flight simulator. Otherwise you better get all of the training to fly whatever category aircraft you intend on flying and understand every flight has potential risk. Only good decision making, good skill and equipment can minimize that risk.
I've messed around ridge soaring flying prone in my hang glider and tried to fly one handed. The problem is that if you push the control bar one way your legs and feet go the other way so you still go straight - LOL.
@@LarrySMednick ah, that explains a lot. I fly HG and PHG. The one handed flying made no sense. You can fly a PHG one handed in very still air, but the roll response is incredibly slow as you're essentially using thrust vectoring.
Great training video
Larry!
Nice to see you Juan!
Fly safe mate, cheers from SYD
I have no idea how this ended up in my recommendations since I don't fly these things... but I can fully appreciate the quality work here!
lol right, i just dabble in rotary aircraft but here i am admiring this training video.
I am a long time fixed wing ultralight (since 1980) & GA pilot (since 1986) and I took a demo flight / intro lesson with Larry Mednick a few years back in his Revo Trike. I have had much interest in learning to fly trikes for quite a long time and had watched many instructional videos & read much material on the subject. Also, I’d spent a lot of time “in my brain” thinking about & visualizing the differences and convincing myself I could make the transition very easily. Wrong! I’m 100% convinced that I’d have killed myself on that first flight had Larry not been in the back seat! We did a lot of the stuff shown in this video, and it is NOT intuitive for a fixed wing guy, at all. Go some training!!
Thanks Larry for a FUN and enlightening flight!
I can see why a fixed wing pilot, trained to push the stick forward on impending stall, would in this case push the bar away from himself, thus making the situation worse. Very informative, thank you.
And in a panic someone pulling back to gain altitude would just plant the thing in the ground. Well said!
@@drlong08 Yet pulling back in a panic rarely has consequences worse than a bent landing gear. it is the spiral and the pilot not pulling back that kills. Trikes, unlike fixed wings cannot dive very well at all. they can pretty much only hit the ground hard from stalling (very uncommon in trikes compared to fixed wing) or the the spiral (which is nearly every fatal accident).
Hey I used to fly fixed wings but I have a trike, but never flown it. help me if I'm wrong, please.
So...that situation of nose up in a turn is kinda similar to the fixed wing. Losing speed in a hight AOA, and getting stalling in a low speed and high wing banked. ( I'm I correct?)
So....in order to recover from that situation, should I put the nose down for speed and level the wings for lift, like any other acft?
That is not what’s happening here. The trike is flying at a relatively constant airspeed in coordinated flight. No nose up stall, no slow speed in what we are talking about. If it stalls it does so at high speed (an accelerated stall) after the spiral develops when the nose is down. If you want a better explanation watch this, ua-cam.com/video/fbXz26wu370/v-deo.html
@@LarrySMednick Thank You!
This is basically what I refer to as the "Walmart shopping cart phenomenon". If you have been inside a Walmart and witnessed how people lack any driving skill whatsoever you gotta wonder how the hell they even made it to the store in the first place. Its a scary world lol. SMH!!!
Thanks Larry, Educational content I have ever seen. Here in Japan there is no mandatory training to exit spiral dive with a weightshift aircraft. It's very informative👍
As a former microlight/ultralight instructor on both 3 axis and weightshift, it was obvious when converting people from one to another that correct training, supervision and practise is essential. To a 3 axis guy, weightshift control isn't natural, no matter how prepared you are. For example, there are ways to describe roll inputs - to roll left, pull left wing down. It's helpful to also compare steering a car by holding the bottom of the steering wheel. Pitch control is the killer because 3 axis instinct is harder to overcome, until you get the idea that you're actually flying the wing, not using elevator.
I used to fly both sail planes and hang gliders and both seem perfectly natural while fly with the horiso. The problem came for me after looking at the así and doing hang glider instinctive recovery. But no sooner was I pushing or pulling the wrong way looking up at the horizon instantly put me right. I soon learnt t not to pay to much attention to así in sail planes.
I see it differently.
The problem is simply that the controls COULD be set up so they function in the same direction as FW, but it's rigged opposite...
You could have rudder pedals for roll, and a normal stick that swings the trike aft when you pull back.
Problem solved.
@@myotherusername9224 Hmmm, interesting concept. I must ask, have you flown a weightshift trike? The 'simple' system in use means that you just shift your weight, left/right/fore and aft, to control the aircraft - in the same way a hang glider is flown. The trike is suspended by a hang point from the wing, allowing the trike to swing when moving the A frame bar. I fail to see how a system of rudder pedals and stick could be rigged up. There is effectively no yaw control due to the absence of a tailplane and rudder, so quite what rudder pedals would do is unclear. Likewise, how on earth could a control column be rigged to operate the weightshift mechanism? Baffling...
Extremely simple.
The stick is for pitch only and it's rigged exactly liked the stick on a Bensen gyro. ( I'm talking about the bottom stick style with linkage and bell cranks to the rotor head, not the overhead style stick). Stick back, rotor head ( or kite ) tilts back.
Fixed Wing pilots have it drummed into their head: in a stall, rudder against the direction of spin with FEET, not with the STICK.
so, rudder pedals linked with Teleflex cables or push/ pull rods to a spot about one foot to the left and right of the hang point. This is all trivial copying of standard control linkage geometries and hardware.
Push right rudder pedal, trike CG swings to the Right. Relax back pressure on the stick.
Same exact result aerodynamically as high hand to hip, but it uses the same muscle memory and intuitive response all FW pilots know.
Zero learning curve for fw pilots transitioning to WS, and vice versa.
@@myotherusername9224 Wow, fascinating - wonder why nobody has actually built one like this, lol.
I ask again, have you actually flown a weightshift ultralight?
The additional structures required at the hangpoint would be substantial. Current weightshift/hang glider wings utilise a feature called 'billow shift' whereby the floating cross tube allows unequal sail tension on one side in a turn, slackening off the inside wing and helping the wing to bank. Perhaps you are advocating that the cross tube be fixed to the wing keel as part of the changes at the hang point. Remember, as a tailless aircraft there is no yaw control, so I'm not sure what effect rudder pedals would have in rotating the trike c of g.
Perhaps you should offer your engineering expertise to the leading designers of weightshift ultralights, you never know, they may take up your ideas and revolutionise trike flying. I look forward to seeing one flying...
I will unlikely I will ever come close to flying one of these but I *will* "never forget: High hand to the hip" ...it has a nice flow to it.
4:25 - I can't get over how terrifying it is that these aircraft just naurally enter a corkscrew dive when there are no control inputs.
Yeah, imagine taking your hands off the controls of a helicopter and see what happens.
Took off with the control frame lashed to the frame???
As a super experienced HG pilot, the first time I flew a trike, was by myself with no instruction (1990ish) from our local city airport. What got me, was the unexpected trike cage swing forward (Kosmos-Fuji-Robin 440); Rather than just let it happen, I pitch inputted into the control bar, which took the small wing bank and amplified it into a unexpected 30+ degree right turn which aimed me at the hangars. I pulled back in to allow the ability to crank in some left bank, even though I was low, which got the wings level and then pitched back up into a climb. Takeoffs after that, I was prepared, and when the cage swung forward, I just let the wing maintain its current pitch attitude and there was no problem.
I am actually convinced that trikes are one of the safest aircraft now. Later flying a Seair (look up seair ultralight), I found it cool to fly down close to the water in ground effect and drag only the rudder in the water (hung down about a foot) because the trike frame was normally at a pitch up attitude. BTW, I have hundreds of hours in trikes, and thousands of hours in HG's, not to mention PG, FW and RW.
Glad you made it on your 1st flight. Luckily we have trainer 2 seat aircraft readily available these days.
1994 and our A&P buys a used trike, he's not a pilot but he is an aircraft mechanic at an airport and thinks he can fly this thing, so we all come out to the grass runway to watch him do his first and last flight, when at lift off speed he pushes forward way to hard and goes straight up about 50-60' stalls and crashes and hes unhurt but the trike was destroyed, we all got a good laugh out of it......
A lot of commercial pilots are used to warnings about stalls and such. None of that will be had on a trike.
Accidentally stalling a trike is extremely rare. Every aircraft category has a “bugaboo”. Airplanes can accidentally stall. Trikes can accidentally spiral.
Very informative. I don't fly or anything but this is what you call good content.
I fly an old luscombe and pitts s2 but I wouldn’t just hop in something with no knowledge of how it operates. Very stupid
great info, interesting points - main lesson though - TRAINING - PROPER TRAINING!! Not from a 'mate' - a qualified flight instructor! It's not a nice to have, or recommended - it's essential!!
I'm in agreement, so my trike sits and doesn't get flown. Turns out all 4 trike trainers in the world are busy. It's not so easy to find a trainer and training takes time so the trainer needs to be nearby or I need to be retired so I can go somewhere for a few months to train. It really is frustrating. I'm thinking about just selling but who wants to buy a trike they can't get trained to fly?
@@Les__Mack what a shame! There are plenty of flights schools in the UK - and there's several UK flight instructors who have set up in France and Spain who offer training courses - with much more reliable weather some UK pilots go there to spend 2 weeks flying and get more done than they could in 4 months back in the UK!
The funny thing is training will cost less than the medical bills.
I've got fixed wing hours under my belt, but I know enough about flex wings to not try it with out at least some trainibg.
This is a very good video for anyone looking into weight shifting flying. I have been a fixed wing pilot for 50 years flying LSA’s a few hours to the B777 and bunch of corporate jets in the middle. What I learned I would never ever think about get under that wing with out an instructor. This is a Totally different way to fly. 😀🛫
That's only because the controls are set up wrong. Transition from FW would be a non issue with normal rudder pedals for roll and nose wheel ( push right, go right) and a stick (back stick, go slower, push stick, go faster).
This change would eliminate the problem.
This video is about stall/ spin, and FW pilots fly the wing, too.
Fuzzy thinking is at the root of this problem. A wing is a wing.
Would any sane FW pilot buy, or even get in, a plane with reversed controls?
No. But they try to fly WS , and it's the exact same situation.
This situation, comes from blind acceptance of failure to think through the basic premise of the controls design. That's it. There's nothing special about flying a trike except massive unacknowledged mistake in the design of the controls.
@@myotherusername9224 Stop trying to change an aircraft to fix your notion of what it SHOULD be. There are many types of aircraft which have very different control mechanisms. Paragliders, Powered Paragliders, Hangliders, Powered Hangliders, Parachutes, Powered Parachutes, Sailplanes, Fixed wing propeller, Fixed wing Jet, Rotating wing, Gyro rotating wing, etc. Get over it and learn the skills required for the appropriate aircraft!
I don’t fly trikes I fly paramotors but find this video very interesting. Would like to fly a trike someday
For sure.
As a non-flyer but also a keen aviation nerd who'd love to leave the ground solo some day, I'd always looked at things like trikes and other microlight designs with something of a wary eye. It's quite remarkable to see how stable and recoverable they can be when correctly flown by a knowledgable and practised operator, even when deliberately or accidentally put into a very extreme attitude which seems to be asking for a big oof. I'm suddenly a lot keener to investigate the process of learning to get airborne in something like this.
Great video, thanks for the upload. New subscriber here, cheers!
I started in airplanes and the. Discovered trikes. My words after my first trike flight were “I am done with airplanes” 20+ years later and over 10,000 hours in trikes, and my statement was true.
I started on a cessna 150, and later took up handgliding (soaring/no engine). The thing about smaller aircraft that many people don't understand at first is that they are *not* practical vehicles. If you can't fly over the weather, then you will be unpredictably grounded, you can't have an inflexible schedule and go fly somewhere on vacation. So it's really about recreation, and smaller aircraft like trikes, paragliders, ultralights, etc maximize that recreational aspect. Maybe it's a small pontoon craft you can fly from lake to lake. Or a powered paraglider that lets you fly down low with reasonable safety. Hangglider trikes are certainly the motorcycles of the sky, with some getting absolutely ridiculous climb rates. But for the sake of plugging my own interest, the down side of powered flying is that you really have to make your own fun. Coming up with a mission, the "100$ hamburger" or fly-in or something, or simply the fun of pursuing additional qualifications and skills. Soaring on the otherhand is a sport. The fun is sort of built in, and necessarily comes with a local flying community. Competitions you can attend, and so on. You get to learn a whole landscape of the air that you otherwise likely wouldn't consider. The look of clouds, what birds are doing, watching for visible vorticies on lakes and crops, debris in the air. You aren't given anything for free, you need to learn how the air works, where it's going up so that you can stay up with it. And birds do the same, they don't want to flap after all. Once I flew just feet from a pelican for 40 minutes, it joined my thermal at around 7k ft, flew right up to me under my right wing, then literally followed me from thermal to thermal for awhile. That kind of sustained interest and proximity is extremely rare, and I don't expect to ever experience it again, but thermalling with birds is common, they aren't scared of you and don't tend to leave when you join them.
The other benefits of at least part 103 aircraft, I'm not sure if this is true for light sport, is that maintenance can legally be done yourself. It's all just much less expensive, you can have a brand new powered paragliding setup for ~9k ish? A beginners soaring setup for I don't know, 5k? My first hangglider cost 4k new. Airworthy used gear can be far less. So nobody can use money as an excuse to not get their wings.
Yes you can take a weekend course and do your own annuals on an ELSA 2 seat trike.
@@LarrySMednick Hey, thanks for the feedback/info Larry, cheers from SYD 👍
And thanks to the other commenters for their input too, hope y'all are having a great day/evening.
Zephyrhills!! You're probably the guy I saw all the time when I was working there
😮😮😮....Anytime you take to the air, "Darwin Awards " is always watching...😮😮
I started flying when I was 14 and aerodynamics seems incredibly intuitive. it really does amaze me that people fly without fully understanding basic flight characteristics
i wanna give these a go one day. I’ll stick to my metal wings for now but this looks fun😂
-I’ll be with an instructor of course i’m not an idiot
You know the Book of Pilot in the Bible:
Thou shalt maintain thine airspeed, lest the Earth come up and smite the mightily.
I can say
as a gamer that specialises in flying, I have done this a handful of times
.
Just with a game, I'm alive 😂
Check lists should be used with every type of aircraft. just to make sure you don't take off before you are ready to take off, like having the controls locked out.
how stupid and cavalier can someone be to fly without training?? good grief no wonder men have shorter lives!
Gosh, what a cute little toy! I probably dont ANY training to fly it!!
wow very interesting. Sad to lose people to something as simple as poor training. Great video.
One day I’ll spend time and money to fly more. I have two hours in my book atm 😢😭
Who needs fancy shmancy "positive stability"? Ground level is the most stable point possible and therefore ultralight trikes are optimally built to rapidly seek the most stable configuration.
Trikes have tremendous positive pitch and yaw stability and neutral roll stability. They are spirally stable as well. Hence the video…
1 hour Unscripted Flex-wing Aerodynamics Session with Larry Mednick
ua-cam.com/video/fbXz26wu370/v-deo.html
Hopefully going for my first flight in a Trike in a few days, this has been a great presentation. This will be an interesting experience getting the grey matter around this with only 20 solo hours in gliders.
I’m interested in the aerodynamics at play here with power vs spin. Could you explain how power (or the adjustment of power) affects the spin and what you would need to do to recover ? Also is there an official training/rating for Powered Hang-gliders like PPG, PG, and HG ratings ?
We fly 2 seaters with an FAA sport pilot license here is the aerodynamics: ua-cam.com/video/fbXz26wu370/v-deo.htmlsi=WuYZ_ET9x3Was8yf
I'll preface this by saying that I'm not a pilot.
Would it be possible to design a seat that makes it very uncomfortable/awkward if you try to lean to the side? The natural tendency to lean away from the ground sounds difficult to overcome, especially during an upset/startle moment for a pilot, and having some physical barriers to discourage it might be handy.
Staying centered in your seat is one of many learned skills for flying a trike effective and safely. Another big one is banking the wing when taxiing (driving on ground) which can have non fatal, but bad consequences such as forgetting to use your feet to steer or getting flipped over on the ground in high wind. Another one is turning the nose wheel when applying the gas pedal. Big surprise when you land with the nose wheel turned. These natural tendencies simply need to be learned and practiced.
Having said all of that, my students often joke about putting Velcro on their shirt and the seat back. 😂
Yikes! I'm going to stick to powered paragliding. Hands off natural level flight.
PPGs have their own demons such as collapsed canopies and wind limitations. Every aircraft from fixed wings to gyros have their possible dangers when they are not piloted correctly.
great info Always wondered about trike controls.
Thanks for posting, Larry. Videos like this can save lives, maybe my own!!
I don't fly these things but this is a great concise video
If the ultralight ever feels like it is trying to take over and fly without your help, do the simple thing and "lower the nose!" It will make your flight more enjoyable and you will not have to put up with those guys that drive an ambulance.
Almost always good advice.
Lift, Weight, Drag, Thrust, Flightpath, Relative Wind
You'll need to know how all of these factors effect your flight.
Very interesting vid & to me, "extremely informative" Thanks for your time & wk putting this up! i.e.,life saving tips & info!"👍🏾...
Where in Florida? I live in Ft. Myers since January 2014. (5/25/2023).
Zephyrhills
I wouldn't like powered hang gliders. Having to unlearn the standard airplane *push forward to point down and pull back to point up* and then reverse that would suck. It would almost be like twisting a steering wheel *left* to go *right* in a car and vis-versa.
Many people fly both like I do. It’s not a big deal. The pivot point is above your head. No different than holding the bottom of your steering wheel when driving a car. Going back and forth is no big deal.
Never flown one. Or anything but tons and tons of rc airplanes and helis. Also ridden just about every land machine made. And all these point made here, it just seems like common sense. Not sure therr are any other ways to counter act something thats out of controll. Its to counter it. Not add to it.
Great video.
Great video. I can see right away that if I went out in a trike without a checkout, as soon as something surprised me so I had to respond instinctively, I would probably move the control bar in the wrong direction without thinking, as in, pull to pitch up. They seem to be a lot like the very early Benson gyros that were controlled by tiller bar coming down from the rotor head, which was switched to a stick from below probably for the same reason. The spiral tendency seems not that different from an airplane's, just WAY faster.
Exactly.
This video probably will save some lives. “High wing to the hip” I will discuss that with every flex wing pilot I meet now.
It's not fecking difficult. It is quite a natural process really. Why do so many people find it awkward
Agreed! We would ask them if they were still here… but actually, testing pilots out and putting them into the spiral only about half of them know how to get out the other half push forward and or add Throttle for the most part. They just never entered a spiral before and before getting the training, they were a ticking time bomb flying a trike.
That example crash at the beginning over the concrete wall doesn’t look survivable, what was outcome of that ?
Double fatality…
How do you guys can fly at 55-60mph, open cockpit in a T-Shirt?
It’s pretty awesome!
A trike is a 3 wheeled bike.
THIS is an ultralight aircraft.....
Actually a trike is a 3 wheeled motorcycle. Actually a trike is this. They actually are all called trikes. Can you believe that?
So pitch and yaw control input are the inverse of what you'd expect in a plane with a stick? I could see how that would throw off people with stick time.
Yes, but that is still not the problem referenced in this video.
Flew unpowered hang gliders in the '80s and '90s. Simply don't understand how any certified pilot would think they can just fly a weight shift flex wing without instructions. In my days when flying, I did hear stories of pilots with PPL pulling in stead of pushing to flair, especially if the situation got a little difficult.
I get emails and calls every week with people thinking that way. Hope this video can bring some light to the skill required and consequences of not having that skill.
It's pretty simple if the pilot has never heard those four words together. Stupid hurts but lack of or misinformation kills.
Because regular stick and rudder pilots are not familiar with weight shift aircraft. May not even know the term.
It's called overly confident arrogance.......
Idk i’m a fixed wing guy and tried to hang gliding a couple times without any incident. Albeit it was off of dunes but it was easy and natural. If you think about what you’re doing, instead of reacting out of privacy, it actually comes natural.
I don't fly, but this is great tutelage from a voice of experience..entertaining too. Subbed.
He said he was just going to wing it…Instead he did a wing over.
Training is everything!!!
This is so idiotic. Everybody should be required to have parachutes on every aircraft we do have them you know
I agree with you and the trikes in this video did have parachutes. But now can you explain how a parachute works from 100’? This is real life, not a cartoon. You need to deploy a parachute at 500’, even a rocket deployed chute like the trikes have. Pulling a chute because you don’t know how to control your aircraft is a pathetic reason to use one.
But in all actuality, you bring up a very valid point. These Trikes a lot of times are well above 500 feet when they lose control and do have every opportunity to pull the little red handle which will deploy parachute. It is crazy, but true, when a pilot is fighting to gain control, it seems to be the last thing they think of is the parachute that’s right there.
Yup. Another thing I will never be doing because I don't want to die a gruesome death.
The point of the video is you don’t have to die flying, and getting proper training (along with good decision making) can keep you fairly safe. I believe all of the Best things in life carry some level of risk. I weep for those that go through life without some of these experiences. But to each his own.
Very educational. Great vid, thank you. 👍
So as we watch some of these "spirals" and in the recovery you pull the opposite hand of the spiral direction while sitting squarely
and pulling back towards the hip but I'm curious if in doing this if ever the wing becomes so stressed that it rips or tears when you
attempt to pull it back into level flight? I'm not a pilot so this stuff is a common sense for me but I do wonder about the strength
of the wings as you attempt to pull it back into level flight? Anyhoo, curious is all. peace
These wings are rated to 6Gs ultimate and 4 Gs useful. The maneuvers you are watching are in the 2 G range. Pulling back makes the nose go down. The nose goes up because the wings are leveled and pulling back reduces this nose up effect so we don’t over stress the wing. Attempting to raise the nose (pushing out) is what kills pilots in a spiral.
Thanks Larry, as someone who watches in wonder & knowing if I ever were to fly, this might be the way, this kinda
thing was first on my mind. I guess it was on your mind before you started as well & I ty for sharing that... peace
Where are you located? I would like to come take some instructions from you. Nice video.!
We are just outside of Tampa Florida. evolutiontrikes.com
Eighty-year-old fixed-wing pilot who will never take up the sport found your video educational and fascinating. If I have a dream and the pilot in command dies I'll know what to do.
Here in Australia they made it mandatory to get training for Part 103, although the sports associations tend to handling the licensing etc. I personally think as a fixed wing pilot I could understand some of the concepts quicker but don't get how anyone would go out without training.
I can see how the temptation and lack of understanding will catch people out. I value my life too much not to take training that's for sure. Hopefully going up tomorrow for a first flight and looking forward to it.
I’ll give it a go. Lessons? Are you kidding, needs lesson? OMG.
Really logical and all ways good to RE enforce these things. No tail to stablise the shif from eather side? I plan on taking lots of lessons when I buy the thing, I might go with a Aerolite, 103, electric if possible. I will watch your shows today. I am retired and have the time to study up on all this. Thank you.
Pilot doing the maneuver on purpose for UA-cam dollars.
More like pilot having fun. Nothing dangerous about it unless you don’t know how to exit the spiral. ua-cam.com/video/Thng6dDT1Ko/v-deo.html
Hold my beer I got this🎉
If a lone pilot has a medical issue whilst flying is there anything that the machine can do to avoid uncontrolled decent‽
Yes, the pilot can pull the parachute for the whole machine to come down under canopy.
I have never piloted an aircraft. Is it strange that all of this seems kinda logical and intuitive?
It’s not hard, just a lot to learn. Usually about 10-20 hours of training.
High-hand to hip
Got it
Guys but supposed be easy . Hey you wanna be stupid called play stupid games win stupid prizes!!! Hey go cave diving with no experience too go skydiving with no instructor see how far you go in life! Ive lived my life looking 5 steps ahead at anything i do . Hmm jump this jump hmm outcomes i crash im alone i have no phone how do i get home! Today's age they jump off cliff n then worry oh maybe i should of thought this through
Ya I’m similar, I watch my friends do all kinds of risky stupid not thought out crap and they always seem to make it out ok
such easy maneuver to do on recovery but some how many of them managed to fucked it up 🙄
That about sums it up.
Great content 👍
Thanks for sharing
This looks just too hard. I'll stick to motorcycling.
Just about anyone can learn to fly. But you do need to take lessons usually for 10-20 hours. ua-cam.com/users/shortsQ-tLbSVVsLo?feature=share
Good video. Shows these aircraft are are more dangerous than often claimed.
All aircraft can be dangerous. The delta wing is not easier to fly than other types of aircraft. And that is a very common misconception.
What would john Denver do?
Excellent info. Well spoken. First vid watched, u gained a sub, I hope you continue your vids. Hats off to ya.
he is lucky that tree was there because he was about to dart into the ground
that POV video was terrifying
So this is all purely uncompensated torque steer it looks like?
The fact that it enters a left or a right spiral may be from torque. But torque does not cause the spiral. Kind of like if you have a low tire on the passenger side of your car and let go of the steering wheel on the highway it will probably drift into the right lane. The car is not veering off into the right lane because of the tire as much as nobody is driving the car. Meaning if all four tires were properly inflated the car still won’t stay in its lane all by itself regardless.
Very well explaine
Very cool. Flying a Robinson R44 with some experience can be settled into a non-accelerated flight situation and the machine can be controlled by leaning. i used to do that with passangers. "Ok, everone lean left" and the copter would go left. But to me it looks like the glider is rigged backward to what an aircraft yoke would produce. Probably why the airplane pilots get in trouble. They expect to increase the angle of attack by pulling back and decrease it by pushing forward which is opposite to the trike in this vid.
Leaning in a trike cannot affect the wing because the carriage is a pendulum
And will just rotate on the keel.
Reversals are not the reason pilots spiral into the ground. Spirals are responsible for well over 80% of all fatalities. The mind set or trying to raise the nose is the problem. Or raising the wing is the secondary problem. Neither will work in most cases. Hence the point of this video.
Very interesting.
Great pilot Larry, beautiful video, which shows extremely important situations for trike pilots who have been flying for a long time and do not know their machines.
Great tips that will save many lives, congratulations on the great initiative 👋👋👋👋👋👋
I wish I'd one of these, looks so awesome, I wonder how much that yellow one cost, that one really looks awesome and solid
evolutiontrikes.com
@@LarrySMednick Thank you, holy crap, this things cost way more than I thought, I wonder how much the engine and the blades alone cost, most be like 70% of total, cuz the rest shouldn't be expensive right?
Howuch are lessons? And how long do you give lessons?
evolutiontrikes.com/flight-school/
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Ką jūs ten filmuojat žeme su kamera žuvies akis? Todėl kamera rodo žemės išlinki. Išlinkio nėra nei ant žemės nei vandenyne.
Nice videos Larry. It's been a while since we talked in the early days of Revo's, glad to see you still at it!!
Thanks Mike, good to hear from you. We have slid into #1 in the US quite some time ago and staying really busy at it. The REVO isn’t even our best seller anymore. We have “new stuff”! 😎
Gravity works. So does death.
Humans were not meant to fly, but that can be trained to fly.
how about leaning in to the turn, towards the ground? would it also be a bad thing?
Staying square in the seat is best. The carriage and your body should be like one unit and the wings an extension of your arms.
Feel the wing :-)
Hope they survived. Thanks for this well done video.
It's really simple, airspeed, airspeed, airspeed.
Airspeed in a spiral is very very high. And good airspeed on climbout does nothing to minimize entering a spiral. Only in level flight is airspeed useful for steep banked turns not to develop into a spiral.
Why don't you say what happens to the pilot in each case?
Fatal or not?
The point of the video is not the story behind each accident (although that would make a good video) but the loss of control. First pilot lived, second accident was a double fatality. :-(
I saw this happen in a hang glider at launch. The glider really tried. But the nose was pushed out putting the kite in a hard right wing stall. Luckily the pilots neck wasn't broken.
All the more reasons to fly a Powered Parachute 🪂 Plane Vs Trikes.
Powered parachutes have their own problems and dangers just like every other type of aircraft. If you think powered parachutes are safer and more capable, you need to do more research. If you want to fly an aircraft that can’t kill you, it’s called a flight simulator. Otherwise you better get all of the training to fly whatever category aircraft you intend on flying and understand every flight has potential risk. Only good decision making, good skill and equipment can minimize that risk.
Don't rule out paramotors. I've been trained on my paramotor. My weight shift nano-trike sits in the shop gathering dust for lack of training.
Only two seconds and you are dead...😵
Flying is serious business! It’s not very hard, but extremely unforgiving when mistakes are made.
How much is a trike like this. So awesome!!!
evolutiontrikes.com
Now days aviation is safer than ever. BUT ! Lack of knowledge about aerodynamics is a ruthless killer !
Very well said!
This is what I should be doing with my time. Gonna
I've messed around ridge soaring flying prone in my hang glider and tried to fly one handed. The problem is that if you push the control bar one way your legs and feet go the other way so you still go straight - LOL.
Correct. It is only because of our 2 axis hang block that the trike steers very different than a hang glider.
@@LarrySMednick ah, that explains a lot.
I fly HG and PHG. The one handed flying made no sense. You can fly a PHG one handed in very still air, but the roll response is incredibly slow as you're essentially using thrust vectoring.
Sure enjoy Larry’s instruction and expertise