Ultralight or Part 103 trikes
group is for discussion of part 103 trikes or flying part 103 trikes
Featured groups
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
Hi UL, yeah taxes suck. In Calif, I never paid any taxes on my 103 stuff (HG, mosquito, etc) ...
In regards to the sink rate on your current trike, you might try setting your throttle down to just above idle-- what ever gives you the sink rate you envy / want to soar at, and then you have engine assisted soaring at that particular sink rate. It can apply to many types of aircraft to allow you to practice semi-equivalent soaring to a low sink rate machine in them.
I've soared my Tanarg / BioniX15 , for example tightly coring thermals out of the desert to get up and over some mountains on the way out. It was a hot day, the thermals were booming and fat, and the sink was equally as abundant-- I decided might as well make lemonade ;) It worked well-- I did not go to the edge of stall as I would typically in a HG in a thermal, but maintained some speed authority and moderately cautiously brought it around tightly in each thermal-- getting in 4-5 360's in each. We were pretty banked up, but not excessive. It was actually a lot of fun. I also used some ridge lift to get up to 17,200 over Whitney a little quicker.
XC, yes I know what your talking about with power assisted coring. Did some of that in my ATF before I was convince I had enough lift to work with to go ahead and cut off engine. Honestly I am still in the experimenting stages with my Pacer 13 wing. I have been tuning and exploring the full range of adjustments on the Pacer. So not really tried to work any bubbles with it yet. In time I will. One thing I really wish I had is an electric trimmer. Don't know of any that were designed for 103 weights and ones I have seen that were designed for LSA seem a bit expensive and a design overkill for my application. But I do have close to a full 4" of travel that I can move my hang block and performance of wing changes dramatically over that range. For coring I'd trim it on slower end and once out and ready to make tracks I trim her fast. Would be so sweet to do on my wing. Also I'd have dramatically better STOL performance if I could adjust trim inflight. I'll keep looking for some thing or have it custom made.
Hi ULT, I know what you're saying, but electric trim doesn't really change the performance of the wing -- it changes the CG relative to the keel, just as you do when you push in / pull out. It can be helpful so that you don't have to constantly push in/pull out (depending on what you want to do) for the next 30+ minutes and is more useful than the no-trim wings, but as you said, they are an additional complexity-- I saw one jam and be worked on with bigger hammers for a few hours to get it to free up.
The kind of trim that HG have had for years "VG" variable geometry actually does dramatically change the performance of the wing-- altering it's character entirely, this is newly available on some trike wings-- the ones I know of are the BioniX series and the NuviX series.
I was looking at some top HG wings today and they are still miles ahead of trike wings in design (and beauty, in my opinion)-- so we have lots of cool stuff to look forward to ;)
Regarding sales tax on trikes, and maybe most of you know this. Whenever you register a ELSA or SLSA aircraft with the FAA, they always notify the state you live in, that you have purchased that specific aircraft. The feds do not collect sales taxes, but the states sometimes do. The buyer will usually get a form to fill out, and sent in with a check. It will be a DOT agency of the state or Aeronautics agency that will collect sales taxes on aircraft. The benefit for us , is that the state people do not know much about trikes, or the value. If you and the seller can negotiate a cheap price on paper ( Purchase Agreement) for the trike sale, it might work. The important thing here is that both buyer and seller need to know the cheap price, if asked later.
In my state, the sales tax on a $92,000 Revo is $5520.00. After that, of course is the annual registration fee, to use the aircraft, at all the airports in the state. Some states are cheap and some can be high. I have never seen a State Aeronautics person asking for my state registration and The FAA or law enforcement would maybe ask for your (Fed) Aircraft Registration besides pilot license.
Oz Goods & Services Tax (same as VAT) is set by the Commonwealth Gov't at 10% on imported goods greater than $1000 in value. Pushes the same purchase illustrated above (thanks Kevin S) over the $100k mark + shipping. And there's no way around that border tax. Sure some might argue the value of a Revo's less than $1000, but would love to listen to that conversation with Customs officers :-).