Ultralight or Part 103 trikes
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Ultralight or Part 103 trikes
group is for discussion of part 103 trikes or flying part 103 trikes
Engine out and a belly landing in a Dragonfly
Not exactly sure what happened here - looks like he forgot the gear! Perfect spot to land
Comments
I think I just saw my future flash before my eyes. They say there are only two types of pilots. i'm one of those types.
Apparently the timing chain came off? causing the engine out.
Comments over at youtube about the gear. He is also a type 1 pilot.
wrdturkey
17 hours ago
There are some fields that I would be tempted to land gear up in. A nice golf course wouldn't be one of them though. :-) It causes only minor cosmetic damage to the bottom gelcoat on a Dragonfly and would reduce the rollout length and lessen the likelihood of flipping the trike over.
Thanks for sharing video Ken. This is Damien (Oz) flying with the Combat 12T. From what I have heard he is a very good pilot. At 500 AGL he is quite fortunate to have been within easy reach of the golf course and other than forgetting to lower landing gear he did very good job putting her down safely. Also from what I have read, Charlie is right. part of the design of the DF is that it can be landed safely on most surfaces without the landing gear down. It may well be that on a smooth golf course surface like that there might only be light scratches or scuffing on the fairing.
Yes, it was good landing. From 500ft he must to solve a lot of variables for a good landing. He forgot the landing gear? It can happen to everyone in same situation. Its a "problem" which I consulted my friends about on a trike with retractable wheels...
well it looked pretty well executed to me . that dragonfly i think is my all around favorite of trikes . if i thought i could swing one id sell my redback and my soaring trike.just my kind of flying . they look pretty friendly down under i know a couple of golf courses they would have come out yelling hey get that dam thing outta here.hey charlie that old bold thing dont apply to you you fly a dragonfly
It was me in the video :)
Yes, I should have put the wheels down, but by the time I realised it was too late. It takes about 20 seconds for the wheels to deploy and didn't want to land with them partly deployed. Will make sure that is the first thing I do next time.
As it happens, it was probably a good thing. I stopped fairly quickly on landing...with the wheels down I may have kept rolling into the water hazard.
Luckily the Dragonfly is designed to land with wheels up. No damage to trike, only the engine and my ego.
Engine lost the timing chain, still investigating the cause.
I have done a few out-landings in paddocks (some by choice) and practice engine off landings at our airfield, but this was my most challenging so far.
Here is photo of engine damage:-
Cheers,
Damian
Damo, I REALLY appreciate the kind of integrity it takes to discuss learning opportunities personally experienced so that the rest of us are potentially spared.
I was telling some friends today about an incident that took me a year to admit. Realized in talking with Ken that I probably nearly succumbed to a known (by experts, not me until now) that of gradually rising terrain resetting what your mind thinks is straight and level flight. Subconsciously you being to put the aircraft in a subtle climbing attitude-- which reduces your climb reserve by that much-- combined with density altitude and a large passenger-- I nearly crashed. Anyway, I wanted to thank you so much for the video and discussion.
Hi Damian, Thanks for that update. Really glad there was no damage to you or trike/wing. Damage to engine and ego can and will be repaired. I have a couple questions for you. It sounds like your DF has the electric retractable landing gear. I did not realize it took a full 20 sec. I thought there was also a manual retracting gear. If so do you think that retracting and redeployment would be quicker?
When you and I previously corresponded by email I was excited to hear you now had the DF, but I thought you had the Discus wing. From video (struts & winglets) clearly you are flying the Combat 12T. How do you like that wing? What kind of climb rates do you typically see with your wing loading and the Bailey? Initial portion of video soon after take off seemed to be a rather slow climb rate but I really could not tell. Also I'm curious about your typical sink rate. From time you indicated engine quit on video until time you were down did not seem long and most of that time you did not appear to really stuff the bar. So was thinking your sink rate might be a bit higher than I thought. Having said that, what is your approx weight? In your view is there a practical maximum pilot weight for the Bailey/Combat 12T combination above which one would not achieve reasonable/safe climb rates?
Thanks again for sharing the video. I have a lot of respect for pilots that decide to share such videos. Don't worry about your ego. As UL trike pilots we all have bruises to our egos from time to time. Crap can happen to any of us and when it does it is usually at the most unexpected and inopportune time. take care. ULtrikepilot
i thought that was you damien good to see you on. you know i had similar e/o at elk river..things happen pretty quickly from 400 agl . then there is that well not to bad shock of silence.well yah you didnt put the gear down but lets look at it from another perspective.i saw a momentarily attemp at restart wich you abandoned pretty quick,right thing to do , you then did the next best thing , fly the machine . assess an lz.didnt see you lose emotional controll . rite thing . kept a pretty flat glide .rite thing. you could of put the gear down and wasted valualble time and not had such a good choice of lz.rite thing. you had some buildings and people under you . you landed free of them right thing.what if you took the time to gear down and landed in the rough trike flips big story in paper because then its trike crashes at golf course.landing was well executed and gentle.gear up gear down both would of worked. i say bravo and great job .plus i never knew you could land a dragonfly with gear up a real testement to its design. just like that dragonfly more and more wish there was some used ones on the usa market .
Damo - thanks for the video, we all learn from these. Sadly I don't have video from my first engine out. Lost the fuel pump on climb out, but was at 1000 ft so I had a little time. I should have been climbing box patterns over the airport as we had some trouble the day before, but I thought that we had fixed and I got over confident. Ended up too far from the airport to make it back, but was able to find a nice dirt road to land on so it turned out OK. Changed me as a pilot for sure.
"Designed for belly landings!" Sounds like a pretty cool design, I like those dragonflies more and more - great work finding that LZ - best place for an engine out ever. Just curious - did the engine keep turning after losing the chain, and is that an interference engine? Usually timing chains are bomb proof, and timing belts are scary, now I'm not so sure.
Ken's E/O was in Monument Valley-- a potentially rough place. We all saw it and watched with our hearts in our throat as we knew he couldn't make it back to the airport ... found a good dirt road though. Always fly like the engine is going to quit-- because no matter what you fly, it will someday.
Yeah, there's no used Dragonfly's on the market-- I know, I've looked-- bastards love them too much to give them up !! ;) Come on you guys, let the rest of us have a turn ;)
XC Triker, This bastard would be happy to sell you my used Dragonfly. However, I would need to get $104K for it so I could replace it with my second choice Revo trike. Please let me know soon. ;-)
Just a quick note on my impression of DF availability in US market. WBK was (still is??) the primary importer of Flylight stuff including the DF. I don't know for sure but I suspect that no more than maybe 4 or 5 have been sold in US market. They are very nice trikes BUT they are expensive. US/British pound rates have not been very favorable recently. Plus I think there is some thing like a 20% VAT applied, plus shipping is not a trivial cost either. WBK setup Steve Wendt (BlueSky in Va) as a DF dealer and I think he still has one for sale (see http://www.blueskyhg.com/products.aspx?Prod=2&Manu=13) I think this is first one he has had for over a year now and still looking for a buyer. WBK just sold his own personal DF (apparently never flown) to a HG pilot up in NY. Hope to catch up with him perhaps later this year. As far as I know there are no DF dealers on the west coast yet. Maybe Charlie has more information. Yes it would be nice to have a bigger market for the DF in the US. Heck I would really enjoy having one my self.
ULtrikepilot, Gosh, I didn't realize DFs were so rare here in the USA. In times when trikes are selling for more than 100K, the price of a DF isn't all that high anymore. One can be had for about the same as the sales tax on a Revo.
I have learnt a lot from others over the years on various forums...we never stop learning :)
Joe, I have the Combat 12T wing. I really like the way the wing handles...very direct control and no vices. The take-off was quite a slow climb, a bit slower than normal due to some sink. It was a warm day around midday. I guess normal climb rate would still be only 400-500fpm with me (90kg/200lb with helmet and gear) and full tank (about 16L/4Gal). Probably not suitable for very heavy pilots though (over 240lb with all gear). They expect to get 1000+fpm with the new Polini Thor 250 (would love that!). Sink rate is normally quite good, probably around 250fpm but I wasn't flying at best sink. I also did a fairly tight dive on the last turn to lose some height quickly.
I often try some engine-off thermalling but I'm still not very good at staying in a thermal (I don't have any HG experience). But it's great fun trying :)
charlie parker i am not sure but youve had alot of experience in hang gliding havent you? just wondering what kind of performance do you get with that awesome wing of yours.how does it thermal and ridge soar.campared to the solarace or t lite.iam still not sure of the price looks like around 22 lir or lbs or whatever they use. iam not very good at exchanging the rates. could you throw out a rough basic cost in usa .i dont know but i hate to see the cost of triking go into the 100 g range. puts alot of us back to drooling and ive seen to much of that.looked to me that damo hit some sink in his climbout but 400 to 500 fpm is not bad. what do you think you cross country potential is with your configuration.
Charlie, I won't part with my Tanarg- found it is extremely well suited to XC (pun intended), but I will seriously trade you time in it for time in your Dragonfly ! ;) Remind me again where you live?
I had a Mosquito NRG FLPHG it was advertised to get 400FPM climb, but I only saw 200FPM (my weight 175lb, + 2 Gallons gas) (scary-- as you could easily hit 200FPM or more sink while low trying to climb out of the airfield- and from the vids you can easily appreciate how wheels instead of Flintstone legs are a huge draw)-- So, the Polini powered Dragonfly potentially getting 1000 FPM with 4 gallons would be awesome!!!!
Speaking of sales taxes being expensive-- a little known Tax issue (at least in some states like mine) is that every year I have to pay 10% of the value (which the state says is the sales price) in "luxury" taxes, because it is registered and hangared here. So, I pay a painful amount somewhere around $400 EVERY year (as I bought my trike used for a little less than $40K)-- and there is no depreciation (it does not go down in price ever as far as I can see). A trike sold for $104,000 would then have to pay $1040 EVERY year- in perpetuity !!!
Maybe not in Nevada-- where K... lives (name obscured to protect him from taxation.) Also, K... hides his trike in his garage / trailer, so it is more difficult for the man (*1) to track.
*1 The Man: aka, Johny Law, Uncle Sam, The Fed, the Fuzz, The System / Matrix, Big Brother. But the NSA knows-- that's for sure.
1. The Man
The few who have successfully defied the Man do many of the same things as everyone else, but they do it whenever and wherever they want. Who are these people you ask? People who chose an alternative lifestyle free of rush hour, cubicles, conference calls, and performance reviews. People who decided that life is too short to compete in the rat race for essentially a life of climbing up the corporate food chain in order to improve on ones lifestyle through title and material possession. Those who have flown the sweet deep back country of Utah and camped where no MAN has gone in eons. Those who have successfully defied the man live their lives in many different ways, some chase a dream that wouldn't be possible to achieve while working a normal job, others risk everything to build something great, and others simply explore some of the amazing places to fly and things life has to offer that one cant see behind a computer screen.
4. the man
Ken, I think we all get a bit too over confident in our machines at times. When things like this happen, it wakes you up. The engine stopped running when the timing chain came off. The valves were open, no compression. The timing chain doesn't appear to be broken, just came off the sprocket. Perhaps there is a chain tensioner or something which broke.
Charlie, I agree a Revo would be nice...a had a back seat ride with Larry when they visited Australia, it was very impressive. But probably not as much fun as a Dragonfly :)
I appologize for this unscheduled intrusion of "The Man" into this excellent discussion of Dragonfly trikes.
Might I say this in penance:
The Dragonfly with Combat wing has reasonable XC capability.
I can get 3 hours at 38 knots (114 Nm or 131 miles)
Can't really carry much gear though.
Hey Damo, wasn't sure if your performance clarification RE XC was in reply to my statement above. I think the Dragonfly is an awesome XC machine and would love to have one- in fact, I approached my friend WBK about that ... If I went XC in one though, I would hope to do it mostly engine off and that is something the big cruisers (which have better/faster range) cannot do and totally miss out on the fun of. Alltrikes have their sweetness and purpose. Big is not better. The record distance for a HG no-engine is over 450 miles-- a Dragonfly, with engine assisted soaring, could do better than that and therefore potentially longer range than the big cruisers.
Were the world to be suddenly covered with hot lava, it might be better to be in a Dragonfly, and stay up for 14 hours (all daylight) and go ?? 600 + ?? miles ;) That's REAL XC potential !!-- Hard earned, and worth being proud of as opposed to what I've been currently doing, long XCs in a cruiser, which is really just turning the key and putting the pedal to the metal.
Damo, we all continue to learn as we fly. Personally I always try to adopt a "what can or did I learn" attitude every time I go flying. I think the "I know every thing" and "I have learned every thing there is to know" attitudes are what can lull a pilot into over confidence and complacency which are not good.
400-500fpm climb rate at your wing loading is actually better than I thought. That is actually quite impressive for the Combat 12T and the little 22hp Bailey. Also the 250fpm sink rate is very good for a 12.8M wing and your loading. I would have thought it to be higher.
In my prior trike (NW ATF) I had a number of great soaring flights but I never claimed to great at consistently coring thermals. Often got dumped out too quickly. I think it is one of those things where constant practice will eventually yield better results. I have not attempted to do any engine off soaring in my current NW Maverick because my sink rate in my 13M Pacer is quite a bit higher than what I was accustomed to with the 17M Stratus.
I have always thought that Aeros made great wings. First got turned on to them by my HG instructors that flew both the Discus and Combat. I was very excited when Flylight was first showing and testing the Combat 12T. However, I soon became disappointed in which size Combat they choose to reinforce and strut for light trike use. You see, there are many different sized Combat HG wings (see specs) and my understanding is that they chose the smallest one 12.8M to adapt for trike use. My preference would have been that they use the largest one (14.9M) to reinforce and strut for light trikes. Had they done that I would have been ready to order one for my ATF. I was not really interested in flying the ATF at the higher wing loading of the 12.8M wing. Can you imagine the performance and sink rate of a Combat 14.9T? Higher lift, good sink rate, lower engine rpms for S&L crusing, etc etc. I guess I wanted to have my cake and eat it too. So please don't take these comments personally Damien. I just questioned the decision making at Aeros (or Flylight if they were influencial with Aeros) on why the smallest Combat. WBK told me he felt the exact same way and was hoping Aeros would release the T version of the 14.9 wing. Having said that, it certainly sounds like you are getting quite good performance from the 12T especially at 200lbs with gear.
I think that the timing chain being in tack and only coming off the sprocket is good news. Honestly I know nothing about the Bailey but it must have some sort of chain tensioner. Maybe that was part of the cause.
OK, all the discussion of taxes. I can't believe the taxes on a Revo are as high as total cost of a DF. Well I must be spoiled. DE has no sales tax on most goods and I will admit right here that I paid no tax on my NW ATF (bought from original owner with only 5hrs on engine). Also when I bought my Maverick directly from NW brand new some how they claimed sale would have no tax if they sent to the NW dealer in Va. So you see I have not had to pay any tax on any trike or HG stuff.
Gee, XC annual taxes of $400 in perpetuity in CA does not sound like fun! Wow, that certainly adds to the cost of flying. I wonder how many states have that kind of tax arrangement.