Etgar
Johnson's flag mountFrom: Ted Bennett Portland OR
Subject: light pole for Greenspeed
List-Id: Recumbent Human-Powered Trikes <trikes.ihpva.org>
Back when my Greenspeed was new, I T-boned a car that pulled out in front of me from a side street. The driver didn't see me because the trike and I are lower than the row of parked cars. I wasn't using the flag supplied with the trike because I didn't like the extra wind resistance and the flapping of the thing. (I can't stand extra noise and rattles.) There were a few interactions along the following lines: "Hey, are you sure you should be riding that thing on the roads? I can't see you." "Oh? Then what are you talking to?"
I decided to fabricate a pole, rigid so there was no flapping and so that I could mount a light on it. To minimize the weight, I chose aluminum tube, bent so that the top couple of feet is vertical, and of a diameter just under the inner diameter of the seat tube. (I had to remove the glued-in plug at the top of the seat tube to do this.) The tube was fixed in position using a bolt through the threaded fitting at the top of the seat tube that is standard on Greenspeeds. M5 I believe. It was necessary to push a piece of wood dowel inside the pole so that the bolt didn't crush the tube.
The top of the tube is about seven feet above the ground, and the top two feet or so is wrapped with a hideously bright green tape and topped with one of those LED flasher thingies. I chose one made by Eclipse because it is only slightly wider than the pole itself and can run in an up-and-down "chase" mode.
This worked well, but only for a short time. Turns out that the AL tube allows enough flex that the resulting waggling was enough to break the mounting of the flasher, and it perished under the wheels of traffic. The replacement is now attached by a custom made mount (aren't drill presses handy things) which looks like it belongs there, and has held up fine.
The only real drawback is that the pole, being semipermanently attached, no longer allows me to store the trike under my porch, and I can't ride under tractor trailers.
Anyone wanting to try my approach should be aware that placing more lights up top results in a surprising amount of leverage on the seat tube, something that Ian Sims may be unenthusiastic about. For example, I tried mounting a strobe light that is powered by a single D cell but it perceptibly torqued the seat sideways in hard turns and on bumpy roads. The obvious fix is to remove the heavy bits (the batteries) to a low point on the trike and run wires to the lights. Better yet would be to arrange a row or several rows of LEDs in a series of small holes drilled into the tube, with the power source and electronics down low. Stay tuned.