WVHGC

Back in 2006 I purchased a trike from a chap in Gordon, cost me $2,500 so you can imagine what condition it was in but the main benefit was that the motor had only done 164 hours and seemed to be in good nick.

The trike itself had been in good nick until the previous owner had an engine out climbing out of a small paddock two up and ended up using a fence as an arrest mechanism, the good thing was that both humans walked away without a scratch, the trike unfortunately suffered many scratch’s, breaks, dents, holes, rents, etc, etc.

Bruce and I picked up the trike up in a trailer by dragging it on to said trailer in three distinct pieces stung together forlornly by wires, cables and not much else. We then dragged it off the trailer into my shed where it posed a very sad site indeed but it was a beginning.

It then took me four years of rebuilding to get the trike back into the air. At times I despaired at the amount of work involved and there were many periods of inactivity whilst money was squirreled away out of the budget for yet more bits from Airborne, if you are ever at the Airborne factory tell Craig from spare parts that Phil from Ballarat says hello.

During this time many people came to hear rumours of this trike and came to refer to it in a variety of ways from the derogatory to the hopeful, on the strength of these references it has become known as The Mythical Trike which I kind of like so that is now its name and it is a thing of wonder.

Over the last eight weeks I have been finalising the rebuild of the trike and the getting of my trike license, both of these endeavours culminated last Saturday the 26^th of June with Rohan having done a test flight and me doing my first solo flight in The Mythical Trike with some more circuits on Sunday morning and evening, thanks to Meeks for playing the nurse maid role.

Rebuilding a trike to this extent is not something that I would do again but it has been an interesting exercise and I can say with complete confidence that I know every nut and bolt of the thing which makes the pre flight somewhat longer then it probably needs to be that is not a bad thing.

Thanks to Rohan for the airworthy test and great flight training, thanks to Dean Bailey for the carby rebuild and tune up and finally thanks to Meeks for regaling me with tales of the fun that he, Ron, Dean, Steve and Rohan were having on their trike trips, certainly kept me working on mine for fear that the bastards would leave on the next one without me, they can’t do that now!

Regards
Phil Campbell