Video of the Day - PPG Aircraft - A new way to fly!?!

Thanks to Yli for sending us this video. I had to repost it because of a small error in the embed code, but was blown away at how cool this new combination looks!

Ebay Trike for Sale... Bargain of the Year?

Not sure what's up but there is a pretty snazzy A/C Buggy 582 for sale on Ebay with NO RESERVE. Looks like a possible "out of time" situation with the N-number? The ASC Registration is A10CSP and the machine is in Seminole, Alabama. Anyone know the full story? Check it out HERE

Video of the Day #2 - Magpie Attack!

This one intrigued me so much I had to post it tonight. Two Magpie birds attack a hang glider in flight!

Video of the Day - Going down with the ship?

Video of the Day - And you thought Trikes used very little runway...

Find more videos like this on Trikepilot - Social Edition

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Trikepilot Social is Featured at Snap.com!

We were recently featured at Snap.com for our use of their product on our site. A nice post of a letter I sent to them. Check it out HERE

 

The "ultimate" Black Friday (shopping day) Purchase

Once again, hats off to my good friend Mick Balaban for an amazing find. Check out this ONE OF A KIND purchase for that "special someone" on Black Friday! Anyone got $80,000 you can lend me? LINK

New Widget to use on your Member Page

This one is called "Box" and can be found at www.box.net. It is a free upload and storage and sharing tool. It will allow you a quick, neat, and free way to upload and share "stuff" with anyone, create an RSS feed of that stuff, fax it for free, edit it, manipulate it, and generally do "anything" with it. The best part is that the "stuff" is all accessible through any place you put the widget. Thus, you can create a widget that you place in your trikepilot social page to share any types of files with anyone. This would be perfect to use for misc. things like checklists, pages from a manufacturer's manual, FAA documents, or whatever. Check out my sample BOX widget here:

Ahhhhh.... that "New Trike" smell... !!!

Juan Amestoy is the proud father of a brand spanking new Quik GT450, and he posted some awesome shots from the delivery room at the hospital in Thailand where the baby was born. I think he had twins because there is an identical Quik 912 right next to his GT450.... same father? Drunken night on the town?.. Either way, you can tell by the ear to ear grin that Juan is "seriously" pleased with his new machine. Check it out:




Kinda takes me back to March of 2006 when I adopted the first Quik baby to be brought over to America from England. I hired a Nanny friend named Paul Bass from Aerialadventures.net to help me with the birth. See my home movies here:

Aviatec Carbone

An interesting machine from France. Anyone flown one yet?

Equipment

• Ignition key with 2 magneto check
• Instruments switches
• Strobe light
• Battery charging light
• 12v plug
• Three on main wheels
• Digital Instrument Panel ALPHAMFD von Bräuniger
  
• Electric Fuel gauge and Visual gauge
• Compass
• Rescue Parachute
• Emergency engine stop
• Integrated fuel Tank 55 litre
• Travel Bags (Option)

Technical Specification

• Weight
• Max. Take Off weight 450 kg
• Empty weight 224 kg with Instruments - without Rescue
  system
• Max. Useful Load 226/213 kg.

• Performances (at max. Take Off
  Weight 450 kg)
• Max. Speed 135 km
• Vs0 61 km
• Min. Speed 65 km
• VNE 150 km
• Cruising Speed 80 – 120 km/h

More information, visit their website HERE

Some Seriously Cool Helmet Ideas!

From Icaro 2000, a hang-gliding specialty manufacturer are these full and partial shield helmets that might be "just the ticket" for those of us looking for an unusual and comfortable alternative to traditional Trike Buckets. Browse the site and get some ideas HERE

Video of the Day - Tustumena Glacier Trike Flight

Website of the Day - FlyingVideo!

Came across this little gem today. FlyingVideo, a UK based site that hosts a variety of flying videos, mostly trikes and microlights in the UK. They don't yet have a ton of videos, but what they have are pretty cool, and mostly by British pilots flying Quiks and GT450's, which is always nice ;)

Only downside is that they don't allow embedding of the videos, just links to their home page, which is a bit "old fashioned" in 2007, especially since many of their videos are "swiped" off other sites, including my pal Paul Bass' AerialAdventures.net ... what's the reason "not" to allow the videos to be viewed elsewhere as long as they have watermarks to the site?

Worth a quick peek!

Skybright Strobe Installation Detailed Instructions

Find more photos like this on Trikepilot - Social Edition
Check out photos showing complete installation. For written instructions, click on image and see details of each step.

New Features for Site:

Hi Gang. Hope you're having brilliant flying weather this weekend like we are in the Midwest of America. It's about 52F (around 14C I think) with bright blue skies..

I've been thinking about adding some new features to the site to make things more interesting. I would like your feedback regarding the same.

1. A "Review" Section of the more popular trike brands and features. Rather than it coming from me, I'd like the owners of each brand to come forward and talk about what they like/dislike about their machines, or machines they've owned in the past. We have a lot of new buyers and shoppers out there, especially with LSA coming to its conclusion by January.
   For example: Here is a really great picture by Paul Hill of his Tanarg parked on the ground with the wing on. I had NO IDEA that the Tanarg had such a COOL feature where the entire mast and fiberglass covers tilt forward in one piece...Awesome! I'd love to know more from Paul Hill or Bob Thompson or Wayne Bezner Kerr about how they like this feature or others on the Tanarg.
   

   

   
   
2. A "New Gear" Section where all the latest accessories are rated and reviewed... by the members. For example, the video camcorders, the headsets, intercoms, etc. Right now the reviews are all coming from me for the most part, but I would like to get a better degree of input from everyone. By indexing these pages, we can create a great resource for future shopping.
   


3. A "Marketplace" Section. This would be for buying, selling, trading, swapping, etc. Since everyone already has a place on their page to put up pictures, videos, information, etc., about their "stuff", the section would be a simple Index of all entries by the members of things they want to put out for consideration. I think this can be easily done with a little "tag" that I can offer to everyone that they put on any entry to their private page postings which would say "marketplace" and this would then allow the site to find and index these entries and put the links all on one page, with pictures, sort of like Barnstormers does now... but for free.

I'm open to any other new ideas or suggestions as well, so please SEND THEM TO ME so we can put them into action!

Another cool camera / camcorder idea for Trike use!

Thanks to Mick Balaban for bringing this cool little video / still camera system to my attention. It is called the Digital Hero 3 and it provides a 3mp still camera along with a 640x480 resolution video recording capability, all on an SD memory Card. Has a velcro wrist band mount and a waterproof polycarbonate enclosure. Price looks pretty great at only $139.99!!

I will try to get my hands on a unit for testing, but check out their website HERE or HERE
They also have a neat Social Network (kinda like ours!) where users of the product can post videos taken with the system. Lots of sports represented there, but so far no Trike Flying!

New Multi-Camera Solid-State Video System coming for Review!

I just got off the phone with Nick O'Kelly, the inventor of the "ReFlight" recording/camera system. His company will be sending me out a system for review next week and I will share the details with all of you here.

What intrigues me about this system is the price point and the removable flash memory card. The quality of the videos is about "average" for what we all expect from a bullet camera head, rather than HD quality... but, it seems the convenience of the entire package being permanently mounted in the trike with a removable memory would make it VERY easy to record each and every flight.

I will await the delivery of the product to say more, but for now, they have details at their Website and we will be featuring their product in our new marketplace section of Trikepilot Social. This will be a place on the site where vendors can market their products directly to our readers, while allowing direct interaction and feedback on the use, installation, and improvements of the product.

Obviously, we hope that anyone who might purchase the product would share their videos on the site as well ;)

I look forward to sharing more next week!

New Hand Shields ... Prototype Ver. 1 ?

From my pal, Steve Tweedt, an engineer by trade... comes this cool design for hand shields that wills surely get you faster service at the gas pump on the flight line! "Give me 10 gallons and make it snappy!!! GRRRRRRRRR!!"

It's official! Our New Logo is in place...

I combined the two ideas, and voila! I'm happy. It also is now a transparent background .png file so that any of you with custom member pages no longer have that ugly black background bar to ruin your webpages!

Man thanks again to Mick Balaban for sending me the logo to tweak!!

Hope you like ;)
spence