www.PSFmagazine.com | November/December 2021 | 21 20 | November/December 2021 | Powered Sport Flying Weight Shift Control Trikes by Mike Hudetz After hosting 20 Trikefests, I have one thing to say: ”If you want to have a Thunderstorm, host a Fly-in.” We’ve been having one of the only get-togethers for us trike pilots just outside Chicagoland since 2000. It’s usually just before the big Oshkosh show (hence the alternate title PreOsh Trikefest) and we’ve seen temps over 100, below 60 and every kind of weather in-between. But try not to let that get in the way of the fling or the fun. If you’ve ever attended one of these two-day events, you know why our slogan is “Just Wing It.” Based on weather, who shows up, and the mood of the day, we’ll either sit around completely bored, or do anything that we can think of that hasn’t been tried in a trike. Sometimes you have to pinch yourself; it’s hard to believe you can actually have this much fun without killing yourself. Fortunately, we’ve had no deaths or injuries over the years, just a few bent trikes. Like most fly-ins, we usually have food, music, drinks and competition. We do the spot landing, bomb drop, and an event created for the Triker crowd only (since other lsa aircraft could not compete with the times). It’s officially called T.O.L.R.A.C. (Take-Off-Landing-Race-AgainstClock). The competitor starts the competition on the ground in a 100x100-foot marked out square area. When the stopwatch starts, he guns it and takes off and returns to the same square three times (two touch-and-goes and one full-stop landing). The stopwatch stops when he comes to a complete stop. The record for this three circles event is currently held by none other than Larry Mednick at one minute and 21 seconds, flying a Revo trike. It’s a fun event to watch with the occasional front fork breaking off on a hard landing. That usually gets a lot of laughs. Hanging Out at the Bar-Fly We’ll often have some presentations, such as how not to wreck your trike, demonstrations like dropping skydivers and/or blow-up dolls from trikes, Ed Haas and Bob the Bender flying their eclectic rc collection; and we’ve also had raffles with the first prize winner pulling the handle and ground-launching a brS rocket and parachute. This past summer, the event was held at Rochelle Airport (80 miles west of Chicago), which is also the home of csc, the second busiest drop zone in the Midwest. The first day of the fest, one of the skydivers offered a $500 reward if we could find his lost main parachute, which Support Our Advertisers Left: Larry Mednick going for the TOLRAC time record Below: The raffle winner ground launching a BRS
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