Tophat Fiddle
New Member
Hello, folks. It got to the mid-40s today, bright and sunny, so I took my brand-new, never-ridden Q45 out to the park to give it a try. And I gave it a try--I ended up riding about 3 miles slowly around the nice paved and deserted Scissortail Park here in OKC. I didn't take my cellphone (so as to avoid breaking it if I had tumbled), so no photos or clips, but below is the Garmin report. I'll post a video clip next time.
I don't know if you sell many of these to pilots, but I can tell you that this bike steers almost exactly like the high-performance airplanes I've flown, and even my old Bowers Flybaby, which by no stretch of the imagination is high performance, but which has the same sort of "island of lateral stability" that requires attention and a certain amount of getting used to.
I think newbies on this bike (I certainly am a newbie, but I do know about lateral stability) might think that the bike is not laterally stable, but that's not the case at all. What I found is that just as in high-performance aircraft, the natural tendency is to overcorrect laterally, and if you do that, then you have to correct the correction with an opposite movement, and this leads to an oscillation and eventually an untenable situation. I found very quickly that, just as in the case of the Flybaby, if the front wheel yaws, which it certainly will in response to the power stroke, then you have to make yourself use only about 1/3 the amount of corrective input on the yoke to maintain straight and level. It takes some time to make the adjustment from forceful correction to gentle correction in your response. I was able to make it pretty quickly as soon as I felt that familiar old overcorrect cycle starting and knew what to do to stop it, but I can see how non-pilot newbies might have some initial trouble with this. But it's easily sorted out, it just takes a bit of getting in the right "gear" in your head, heh!
Once I got that in my head, I noticed that there's a very small area, maybe two degrees left and through the center to two degrees right, within which, if you can stay there, the bike requires very little opposite yaw input against the power stroke to stay straight and level. You ride the bike and intuitively learn to keep it there in the zone just as you can learn to do so with the airplane, and then you have full control and you make it look easy.
All the components work great, I noticed that there's absolutely no noise from the deraillier or the brakes, so that's a good sign. I did noticed a bit of creaking from the shock, but I'm still on the original shock and I didn't switch over to the new one that came with the kit, so I'll do that.
Overall, I'm very pleased. There's no doubt that it's way, WAY more comfortable than my old Peugeot, and when I have a wee bit more confidence, I'll crank a little farther up on the gears and try it a little faster, heh!
I don't know if you sell many of these to pilots, but I can tell you that this bike steers almost exactly like the high-performance airplanes I've flown, and even my old Bowers Flybaby, which by no stretch of the imagination is high performance, but which has the same sort of "island of lateral stability" that requires attention and a certain amount of getting used to.
I think newbies on this bike (I certainly am a newbie, but I do know about lateral stability) might think that the bike is not laterally stable, but that's not the case at all. What I found is that just as in high-performance aircraft, the natural tendency is to overcorrect laterally, and if you do that, then you have to correct the correction with an opposite movement, and this leads to an oscillation and eventually an untenable situation. I found very quickly that, just as in the case of the Flybaby, if the front wheel yaws, which it certainly will in response to the power stroke, then you have to make yourself use only about 1/3 the amount of corrective input on the yoke to maintain straight and level. It takes some time to make the adjustment from forceful correction to gentle correction in your response. I was able to make it pretty quickly as soon as I felt that familiar old overcorrect cycle starting and knew what to do to stop it, but I can see how non-pilot newbies might have some initial trouble with this. But it's easily sorted out, it just takes a bit of getting in the right "gear" in your head, heh!
Once I got that in my head, I noticed that there's a very small area, maybe two degrees left and through the center to two degrees right, within which, if you can stay there, the bike requires very little opposite yaw input against the power stroke to stay straight and level. You ride the bike and intuitively learn to keep it there in the zone just as you can learn to do so with the airplane, and then you have full control and you make it look easy.
All the components work great, I noticed that there's absolutely no noise from the deraillier or the brakes, so that's a good sign. I did noticed a bit of creaking from the shock, but I'm still on the original shock and I didn't switch over to the new one that came with the kit, so I'll do that.
Overall, I'm very pleased. There's no doubt that it's way, WAY more comfortable than my old Peugeot, and when I have a wee bit more confidence, I'll crank a little farther up on the gears and try it a little faster, heh!
