Vicki's North Wing ATF Soaring Trike

Vicki soloed a Cessna 152 in the late '80s and after a few solo flights declared that taking FAA exams and check rides was not "her thing." I could fly the certified aircraft on my private pilot license. She would fly enough to make certain she could land if something happened to me but that was it for her. Flying spam cans was more fuss than fun for Vicki.

In 1993 we had the incredibly good fortune to meet Jim and Nancy Murphy, owners of the Aussie motor sailor "Nordlys", pronounced Nor-loose: northern lights, in Danish. The Murphy's were on a round the world cruise when we met them in Puerto Escondido (Hidden Harbor), Baja California. Nordlys had an alternator problem and I was able to jerry rig it well enough for them to get it to a place where they could order the replacement parts. One thing led to another and Jim Murphy asked Vicki if we would be interested in helping him get Nordlys to Hawaii. Vicki jumped in her dingy and raced back to Diver Down where she started feeding me rum and cokes. Now I should never have more than one but on this occasion, when she handed me the third rum and coke, she told me about Jim's offer. I was frankly convinced that Diver Down was not up to long offshore sailing and had about decided to take her back home and go back to work. But a rum soaked vision of  brass rings going by told me we might have an opportunity to fulfill the sailing dreams without having to buy a new boat. I told Vicki she better grab the brass ring. Vicki jumped back in the dingy and raced off to give the Murphy's our answer and I took a couple of Alka-Seltzer's and went to bed. We met the Murphy's the next day and struck a deal that if we were all still speaking to one another when we got to Hawaii, they had to take us all the way to Oz.

We all made it to Oz and many years later are all still speaking to one another, all except Buzzard Bruce, but you will have to read my book, Diver Down: A Sailing Saga to learn more about Bruce. This page is about Vicki's trike and how she came to learn to fly trikes. After we got to Australia, we bought a Nissan pop top camper and wandered up and down the east coast of Australia for five months. On the way south after diving the Great Barrier Reef, we saw a small sign on a fence post north of Brisbane that read, "Micro Flights." The next morning we investigated and found the first weight shift trike either of us had ever seen or heard about. Vicki took a demo flight and when she came back down she said they had seen a circular rainbow around a cloud and the shadow of the trike was in the middle of the rainbow. "You can sell the boat," she exclaimed, "But you have to buy me one of these!"

It took a few more years but we have since had 4 different trikes, I became an instructor for a few years and Vicki now has her own. For her 60ty birthday, I bought her a North Wing ATF soaring trike, complete with red, white and blue wing with stars. If you are not familiar with the ATF, the mnemonic actually means, "Air Time Fix." The entire aircraft empty weight is 186 pounds of which the wing is 85 pounds. The wing rolls up into a package that fits inside a 12" diameter sewer tube and the airframe and engine fold up into a package that we old folks can lift up into the back of our pickup truck with relative ease. Once airborne, the design allows the engine to be shut off and one can soar on thermals and updrafts just like a hang glider. It is, quite frankly, the most fun trike I have ever flown, despite the fact that it cruises at 30 mph and 40 is about the fastest I have ever been able to get it to go.