Ultralight down in Santa Barbara

FAA registration database says:

Manufacturer Name: AIRBORNE WINDSPORTS PTY LTD
Model: EDGE XT-912-L
Certificate Issue Date: 09/15/2016

Most likely a pilot not experienced enough in the trike, possibly the first flight in it.

Nothing in AIN yet, but ironically enough another Airborne trike crash-landed in Alaska on a glacier on November 25.

UPDATE: AIN is out for N188M. Nothing interesting: "AIRCRAFT CRASHED INTO A RESIDENTIAL AREA PARKING LOT, THE 1 PERSON ON BOARD WAS FATALLY INJURED, GOLETA, CA"
 
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Los carenos and Hollister is the west corner of the airport. literally. if he was off 5 min prior, his ground speed was almost zero.


It's all industrial right there.
 
This is weird. Airborne trikes are very rugged and so is the Rotax 912. Also, they don't need much runway and climb like crazy. Trikes are also easy to fly. By the time he reached the end of the runway, he should have been at pattern altitude already.


Weather was fine:

METAR KSBA 061953Z 24005KT 10SM SCT025 16/11 A2998 RMK AO2 SLP153 T01560106=
METAR KSBA 061853Z 23005KT 10SM SCT025 16/11 A3001 RMK AO2 SLP162 T01610111=
METAR KSBA 061753Z 25006KT 10SM SCT030 16/11 A3002 RMK AO2 SLP166 T01560111 10156 20067 53010=
 
FAA registration database says:

Manufacturer Name: AIRBORNE WINDSPORTS PTY LTD
Model: EDGE XT-912-L
Certificate Issue Date: 09/15/2016

Most likely a pilot not experienced enough in the trike, possibly the first flight in it.

Nothing in AIN yet, but ironically enough another Airborne trike crash-landed in Alaska on a glacier on November 25.

I guess you need a sport pilot rating to fly this thing, right? I suppose he may have been dumb enough not to get transition training. Anyhow, the funny thing is, when I Googled "EDGE XT-912-L" all I got was pretty much two pages of crash reports and a very brief Wiki entry. There was also a PDF of operator's manual which eventually led me to the website for Airborne.
 
Trikes are also easy to fly.

Perhaps they are easy, but coming from a 3-axis background I would not know a thing about it. Most importantly, what is going to happen in case of an upset. How do you recover from a stall, for example.

The pilot had a Student certificate, so he probably was endorsed for solo. A this point I suspect a departure stall followed by an improper recovery, given the eyewitness accounts about erratic altitude changes before the crash.
 
Perhaps they are easy, but coming from a 3-axis background I would not know a thing about it. Most importantly, what is going to happen in case of an upset. How do you recover from a stall, for example.

The pilot had a Student certificate, so he probably was endorsed for solo. A this point I suspect a departure stall followed by an improper recovery, given the eyewitness accounts about erratic altitude changes before the crash.

My wife and I owned a similar trike back in Germany and obviously also had a pilot's license for it, I therefore have some experience with them.

Stalling a trike from a straight and level flight is pretty hard, you actually have to push the bar all the way forward for that. To recover from a stall, the bar has to be pulled back, as the trike accelerates, the pilots slowly moves it forward to a neutral position. Pretty easy, there is not even a ball which needs to be centered.

Now, a stall after a take off is a very different story. More precisely, a stall after a power failure during the take off climb. Because trikes climb so well, particularly those with a Rotax 912, they can climb at a very steep angle. If the engine quits during such an excessively steep climb, a whip stall might be the result. This again could possibly cause the trike to tuck and tumble, what would be unrecoverable. I understand that modern wings don't have much of a tendency to tuck / tumble, with the wrong pilot input it can over still be done. Even if it doesn't tuck / tumble, a whip stall is still pretty terrifying. An inexperienced pilot might react improperly and possibly cause the trike to go from one stall to the next, violently swinging back and forth, until he finally hits the ground.

This is what a tumbling trike looks like. Not pretty:
 
If the engine quits during such an excessively steep climb, a whip stall might be the result. (...) Even if it doesn't tuck / tumble, a whip stall is still pretty terrifying.
If it's any consolation, I assure you that a whip stall is no picnic in a conventional airplane either. To begin with, it's very violent, and everything flies around the cabin. You can easily get konked in the head with a tow bar, if you keep one in the baggage compartment :)
 
My wife and I owned a similar trike back in Germany and obviously also had a pilot's license for it, I therefore have some experience with them.

Stalling a trike from a straight and level flight is pretty hard, you actually have to push the bar all the way forward for that. To recover from a stall, the bar has to be pulled back, as the trike accelerates, the pilots slowly moves it forward to a neutral position. Pretty easy, there is not even a ball which needs to be centered.

Now, a stall after a take off is a very different story. More precisely, a stall after a power failure during the take off climb. Because trikes climb so well, particularly those with a Rotax 912, they can climb at a very steep angle. If the engine quits during such an excessively steep climb, a whip stall might be the result. This again could possibly cause the trike to tuck and tumble, what would be unrecoverable. I understand that modern wings don't have much of a tendency to tuck / tumble, with the wrong pilot input it can over still be done. Even if it doesn't tuck / tumble, a whip stall is still pretty terrifying. An inexperienced pilot might react improperly and possibly cause the trike to go from one stall to the next, violently swinging back and forth, until he finally hits the ground.

This is what a tumbling trike looks like. Not pretty:

Holy cow....those things are nutssss
 
Holy cow....those things are nutssss

I think as long as you don't go out and do loops with them, you're probably OK. Same for take offs. You don't have to climb out as steep as possible, just people like to.
 
Holy cow....those things are nutssss

Actually, they are really safe. As with everything, some (very basic) rules have to be followed, though.
I'd buy one in a heartbeat as a second plane, if the open cockpit season would be longer, here in Michigan.
 
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