As a hang glider pilot who'd been flying since the mid-seventies, it seemed a natural step in the early eighties to try the new sport of ultralight flight. The difficulty was of course, that while there were one or two commercial ultralights available, not only were they beyond my meagre budget, but to fly them I'd have to learn to fly three-axis aircraft! 

But in the nick of time, somebody came up with the "trike", a powered undercarriage that you could attach to a modified (strengthened, hopefully) hang glider. This seemed like something I could afford to do! 

After paying the folks at Alcan, (the local aluminium place) a call, I put together a simple frame. A set of golf buggy wheels provided the rolling stock, whilst a plastic seat was quietly purloined from the work cafeteria (they were throwing them out, honest!). 

The engine and prop, I obtained from a fellow experimenter who had previously attempted to build his own ultralight with limited success. It was a modified "Pixie" 160cc Victa motor mower engine, with a direct drive propeller. Static testing revealed that the combination could provide a whopping 90 pounds of thrust! 

For a wing, I chose to use an EF-5 rigid wing hang glider. This is a little unusual, as while it uses weight shift for pitch, turns are initiated using rudders on the wing tips. This meant that I would not need to have the undercarriage able to move from side to side, just fore and aft, so a couple of ropes were rigged to restrict lateral movement. 

The whole aircraft, including engine, weighed only 130lb. 

On completion, a friend and I car-topped the assembly to the Moorooduc airfield (now defunct) for taxi tests. These took all of about 1 minute. As I moved off from the apron, a loose end of one of the ropes (remember them?) flicked into the prop. We spent the rest of the morning at the airstrip retrieving bits of fractured wood from the verges. 

So we needed a new prop.

The chap who built the original airscrew lived about 150 miles away at Tocumwal on the Murray. I phoned and arranged for him to build another. I figured it would be a good idea to collect it personally and fit it to the engine there so that we could fine-tune it on the spot, so I arranged to do so. 

Making an outing of it, my mate the "Encourager" also went along. Sandor (the prop-maker) had my new fan ready, and we bolted it on. As a small ultralight manufacturer, he had an airstrip beside the workshop. Well, that may be a bit generous, as it consisted largely of a long drive with wheat growing up to either side of the road. In the mists of time, I've forgotten who was responsible for suggesting that I set up the wing and try a few taxi runs. Nevertheless, that's what I did. In an offhand, but meaningful way, Sandor mentioned that the farmer took a dim view of people damaging the wheat, so I was to keep to the track. 

So, with a couple of pints of two-stroke in the old oil container lashed to the back of the seat, I pottered up and down for a bit, getting a bit more adventurous on each pass, with considerable urging from the encouragers. 

Then, unexpectedly, the wheels parted company with the ground. This wouldn't have been a major problem, except that the moment it happened, like Mulga Bills bicycle, the aircraft, with a mind of its own, turned and was heading straight for the wheat at 1 ft altitude. 

Faced with the prospect of the farmers ire and yet another trashed prop, for some reason I pushed the bar out (note: this pitches up a weight shift aircraft), opened the throttle, and the machine staggered just over the heads of the wheat. What followed was somewhere between 5 minutes and 100 years of sheer terror. 

No matter how much I pushed the poor Victa, I couldn't seem to climb any higher than 40-50 feet. Did I forget to mention that there were 50 ft gum (eucalypt) trees dotted all over the place? Not to mention the power lines! In addition, the trim was such that the aircraft wanted to stall, and it kept entering a "mush" stall which would cost me 10-20 feet. Did I also mention that it was a 30 degree summer day, with willy-willies (dust devils)? Or that none of the ground below me looked much better than the wheat to land on? 

So, dodging trees and power lines, porpoising and being kicked around by thermal air, I nursed the machine in a gigantic circuit, only to find myself waaaay wide of the runway when I straightened out. 

So I had to go around and do it all again. Well, at least I knew where the trees were this time. 

Fortunately, I didn't have to wait for third time lucky. My second lineup was on the money. Figuring that I knew how to fly hang gliders better than power planes, I switched the engine off, and glided in for a greaser. 

When they got to me, sitting quietly trying to remember how to breathe again, my "mates" had the gall to ask me if I wasn't a bit ambitious doing both two circuits and throwing the aircraft around a bit on the first flight! 

As a postscript, I reduced the propeller diameter, changed the trim position and tuned the engine a couple of months later. And the second flight, then, was great! Straight up to "300"ft (that was the legal limit then) and perfect hands-off trim. That's the sort of anti-climax I can live with! 

Mulga Bills Bicycle is a famous poem by Banjo Patterson about a bloke who figured he could ride a bike without lessons.