Since I built two airplanes it’s kind of hard not to tinker on the Cruise Carbon Trike.  Ever since I had one pin fall out (on the ground) I’ve wanted to secure the pins holding the motor mount to the trike.  Because they are under shear compression I don’t think they’d fall out in flight but I don’t want to take that chance.  So I safety-wired all the pins in place.  The two front pins are covered in a previous blog posting.  The rear pin was a little more problematic to secure via safety wire.  If I attached the safety wire in the same way I did to the front two pins, the wire would rub on the fiberglass body of the trike.  To make sure the wire doesn’t scratch or otherwise damage the body I ran the wire through a plastic wire crimp butt connector and then put heat shrink tubing over that.  I plan to examine the fiber glass closely after the next flight to see if there is any rubbing that could damage the fiberglass.  If so I’m going to cut the safety wire off and try to find a new method to safety the pin in place.

The other thing I’ve done is to add a small tachometer/hour meter to the trike.  It was a simple install that took me 15 minutes total and most of that was figuring out how I wanted to run the wire.  I fished the wire down through the engine’s clamshell and then secured it to the spark plug wire via nylon tie wraps.  I then wrapped the remainder of wire around the throttle cable and then used the supplied adhesive backing to attach it to the throttle.  I only have to turn my hand over and I can see my RPMs.  It will display highest RPM per flight and total hours.

I haven’t gotten to fly it since added the tach.  It will be interesting to see what RPMs I’m hitting.

Well, I tried to get out to the airport before the breezes started up but I didn’t quite make it.  I took off and got up to about 100 feet off the ground before I felt the wind start getting shifty.  It didn’t feel like it was getting any better so I turned back to take a look at my wind sock and it was definitely standing up more than it was when I left the ground.  That was fast.  I circled around and landed.   Meh, it was a short flight but at least it was a flight.

After I got down I practiced kiting until the wind got too much for that.  At least for me.  I really need to practice that more.

Today I woke up early.  The promise of light winds and mild temperatures was just too much.  I loaded up my trike and wanted to get a quick flight in.  I also wanted to try out my new GoPro camera.  I got out to New Jerusalem and weather was perfect!  I unloaded my gear and set everything up.  I got my camera adjusted and got myself strapped in and took to the skies.  But… Something didn’t feel right.  There was no wind but the wing kept pulling to one side.  I steered the trike in that direction and the wing came up overhead just like normal so I went full throttle.  As soon as the trike left the ground it didn’t feel right.  It pulled to the right and set right back down.  I pulled on the brakes a little more and got airborne but then the turn to the right got even more pronounced and the climb rate was too steep and too slow.  I decided to set it down fast before something really bad happened and well… here is the video.

After a sock-soaking walk through the dew covered weeds three times… once to walk my wing out and a trip back to walk my trike back out… I spread the wing out on the ground to sort out the problem.  As I was coming in to land I looked up at the wing and noticed that back side of the wing on the right side looked like it was bunched up a little.  Something I couldn’t see on the ground or when I kited the wing.

I laid out all the lines and followed them back to the wing and then I saw it.  Two of the adjacent brake lines had tangled and formed a well-disguised slip not that was holding tension on the inboard right brake lines.  I untied the knot and freed up the lines.  Sadly I was out of time and was soaking wet anyway so was not able to test fly the wing to verify I got all the kinks worked out.  That will have to wait a couple of days.

I’ve added a few things to my trike.  First, I wasn’t really happy with just clipping my radio on to a strap with just the belt clip on the radio.  It wasn’t that secure.  So I ordered a radio case from 5.11 Tactical.  I have to pull the radio out to change frequencies but I don’t anticipate having to do this very often.  In fact, I usually use the frequency lock function of my Icom radio to make sure I don’t inadvertently change the frequency.  I mounted the case on the left side of the harness.

I also ordered a GoPro Hero4 Silver and a handlebar / tube mount.  I also put a mount on top of my helmet.  I tried mounting the tube mount in various locations but none seemed to work out that well.  The engine would vibrate the heck out of the camera affecting video quality.  I finally settled for mounting on the foot peg of the nose wheel.  We’ll see how this works out.

DCIM100GOPROGOPR0007.

I can either point the camera forward for flying video or point it upwards for shots of myself and the wing.  Next time out I’ll take a couple of flights with the GoPro facing forward, upward, and mounted to my helmet.  Just to see how the three points of view compare.