Flylight Dragonfly & Airborne T-Light - can you live the dream?

[damoski]

Hi all,

 

Having got into aviation primarily with the dream of touring a country and seeing all the sights from aloft, I've become keenly interested in the notion of doing that in a more WWW-friendly manner (Wife, Wallet and Weather). Namely, buying a Flylight Dragonfly or Airborne T-Light, putting it in the back of a station wagon, driving to somewhere I'd like to see, parking, rigging, taking off, and, well, seeing the sights.

 

The thing is - it's a lovely dream (my other being flying and landing on lakes), but is it a realistic one? I'm thinking of things such as - can you just rock up to most small airstrips and ask to assemble and launch from there? Can you really go out into the country, to a paddock, to a beach, to a dry lake bed, find a suitable spot, ask the owner if you can launch from there, and will they say yes? Is transporting the aircraft really feasible in a station wagon, or might the wing make it impractical to drive long distances, or the airframe and engine take up so much space that there's no room for anything else (tent, clothes, etc) for a long weekend?

 

The other thing that attracts me - is the possibility of getting closer to those sights: that with lower stall speed and correspondingly smaller outlanding sites, you could get much closer to wildlife, etc than in a 3-axis aircraft, where you would always maintain a decent altitude to be able to glide to a safe outlanding. Again, is that something that can happen in practice?

 

In other words - does anyone reading this own one of these baby trikes, do you actually live that dream, and how to do you find it?

 

Thanks!

 

D