I bought a Windcheetah recumbent trike in November '03 off an advertiser on www.velovision.co.uk who by extraordinary coincidence lived barely 10 miles from my parents house and was looking to sell his Windcheetah at the same time I wanted to buy one.

Prior to buying the Windcheetah I hardly ever cycled anywhere, I generally found bicycles uncomfortable and didn't like cycling in traffic, had no panniers so couldn't carry a load effectively and generally preferred to walk despite living in Cambridge, one of the most cycle-friendly towns in Britain. It was only a chance encounter with a friend of my fathers who had a SWB recumbent  that changed this. Like most of the population I had no idea what a recumbent bike was and was generally rather sceptical, I'm sure I asked all the usual question posed by the uninitiated (how fast, is it dangerous, is it uncomfortable etc) but as an engineer I rapidly saw the sense in the design - why sit on a saddle when you can have a proper seat? The only thing I didn't like the look if was the high pedal position as it seemed to put the feet rather far from the ground on an inherently unstable vehicle. His answer was "well, you need a recumbent trike then... there's a really cool one called a Windcheetah" and it was like a little light coming on in my brain - yes.. that's it: low, three wheels for stability, a comfy seat and some pedals.. this thing could work!

One thing led to another, I realised I needed a better way of getting around Durham where I go to university, an unfortunate cyclist fell over on some wet leaves right in front of me and I realised I just had to have a recumbent trike. After months of research on the internet I narrowed my choice down to two possible options. A Windcheetah or a Catrike Speed - one was ?2k second hand, the other was ?2k new (now ?1.6k) but at this stage I had never ridden a recumbent bike or trike of any description! It was November and I was going home to my parents annual firework party so I arranged to test ride both - Ian Buck the UK Catrike dealer drove all the way from Kent to Cambridge with a demo machine which I think warrants a medal for 'customer service above and beyond the call of duty'.

Initial Impressions:

Firstly it was beautiful, even now I find myself sometimes just looking at it. This one was the puppy's proverbials - all decked out with carbon composite tubes, an aero tailbox, mudguards, funky yellow flag and more expensive bike components than I had seen in my (somewhat cycling deprived) life. It has quirky yet practical cantilevered wheels all round to mending a pun***ure is relatively easy. It was an amazing piece of engineering, Made in England and boy does it show, every detail seemed beautifully thought out, every casting was hand fettled, every composite part hand laid, hand built wheels and hand assembled... you get the picture. In short it was like a Morgan car - an anachronism in the world of robotic assembly lines and CAD workstations. As an engineering student and being very hands on this was a big part of it's appeal was was the fact that this was 'The One', the touchstone to which everyone seemed to compare trike performance.

My initial ride was exciting, this was the first trike I had ever ridden, it felt fast... it was fast! This was a very aerodynamic machine compared to the knobbly tyred MTB I was used to and on the flat Cambridgeshire terrain I could easily pedal to 20mph which was more or less as fast as I had ever travelled under my own power... even down a hill. Speaking of hills, although going up hill seemed unnaturally hard work going down was an amazing rollercoaster ride where I touched 30mph on even a gentle downhill. This was a bit scary because when I pedalled the very sensitive steering sent me veering all over the road to the point that once I hit about 25 I had to stop pedalling, I knew about this from extensive internet research beforehand and by the end of my 40 minute or so ride I had learned to relax enough to keep pedalling although I was still all over the road. At the time I was in the process of learning to drive and compared to the Vauxhall Corsa (vile and loathsome machine) this was clearly a purebred sports machine, this was what I imagined my next favourite vehicle the Lotus Elise would be like to drive. I came back with the signature 'trikers grin' which re-erupted every so often in the intervening months whenever I thought about riding the trike.

I was warned by the the owner to lean into turns when cornering at speed, this quickly becomes second nature although I did take it into a car park and do donuts until I lifted a wheel to see what happens. You have to go surprisingly fast and even then it's easy to control it by either slowing down, leaning or steering out of the turn. High speed turns are a total blast, once you get a feel of how much to lean for a given turn you can take turns at incredible speeds without worrying about falling over as a result of loosing grip.

I was initially apprehensive of how drivers would react, it rapidly became apparent that the reaction was one of extreme courtesy that I had never experience on a bike. Drivers almost always give you far more space on the road, most do full overtaking manoeuvres with indicators and everything. If anything this was as much of a joy as moving under my own power in a vehicle that was both immense fun and comfortable.

The rear view mirror was another revelation to me. I had never had one on a bike and I now feel totally naked without one - they give you far more confidence and enable you to make better decisions because you can always see at a glance what is behind you. I would go as far as to say that they are probably the most important improvement in safety for any HPV be it bike, trike, upright or recumbent - more so than a helmet, or a bell and that they should probably be a legal requirement. The best one I know of is the Busch and Muller Cycle Star which is slightly convex to give an excellent view of the road.

One problem I quickly identified was that it was slightly too long - I am 6'2" with an outseam/X-seam of about 43" but this was a custom 'long +10mm' version with the seat quite far back in it's 3" adjustment range which meant I had to slide rather far forward in the seat. The length of the boom on the Windcheetah is fixed during manufacture and can only be altered by heating the glue, disassembling the BB casting, shortening the boom and putting it all back together again. With the seat as far forward as it would go everything seemed fine. It was also relatively heavy, the tailbox alone adds 2kg to the weight of the trike and once it had mudguards it weighed around 19kg. It's chain management system was rather noisy and would later prove to be a pain in the neck.

The seat was a very comfortable cushioned bucket which in the wintry test conditions kept me nice and warm, the mudguards kept all the road muck off me. The ride was surprisingly smooth with the cushions taking up much of the road buzz and the proper seat spreading it over your whole back rather than just your bum. This particular one had no seat suspension elastomers, they had been removed to lower the seat height to improve cornering.

The two drum brakes stopped the bike well, but were definitely not as good as two Hope 'Mini' disc brakes fitted to the Catrike Speed I later tested. Trikes generally can stop and turn amazingly quickly as they have two braked front wheels and there's no possibility of going over the handlebars, I would estimate that generally the safe stopping distance might be half that of an upright bicycle.

After much thought I eventually chose the Windcheetah over the Catrike Speed for the following reasons: The higher eyeline on the Windcheetah seemed safer, the ride was smoother, it had mudguards, the brakes didn't squeal and I felt that it would hold it's value better being second hand. I fully realised that it was the less practical option but I loved it anyway, I am sure my father also somewhat influenced the decision as he loved the Windcheetah and loathed the Catrike . I later 'sold' it (to my father!) and bought a Catrike Speed which is actually the better product in many respects but 'hindsight is always 20/20' and I don't regret buying the WC at all.

Long Term Experience :

I put about 1.2k miles on the Windcheetah over a period of about six months. It is an absolutely marvellous recreational machine, it is always fun to ride and once you have ironed out it's mechanical foibles it should work reliably for a long time.

Continental GP tyres as fitted by AVD are miles better than Vredstein S-licks which is what it was shod with when I got it. They roll considerably better and actually smooth out the bumps a lot better at the same pressure. I was relatively lucky and never actually got a puncture on any long rides although I did get a little spate of punctures due to some broken glass when riding around Cambridge.

The handling is truly marvellous and after a few hundred miles the steering stop feeling 'twitchy' and simply becomes totally effortless, it's hard to describe but you only have to think about making the turn and it seems to happen automatically, even if I consciously thought about not moving my hands I still seemed to follow the bends in the road. The steering geometry is not fully optimised and retains a certain amount of 'bump steer' which contributes to the lively feel and good feedback from the road but which requires a certain amount of concentration, there is very little tyre scrub in turns and it is noticeably better than the Catrike in this respect which sacrifices a little rolling resistance in sharp turns to design simplicity and small turning circle (not much though: it's only noticeable if you run the two side by side on smooth, grippy tarmac). The handling of the WC and the Catrike are very similar - they both have very direct handling although the Catrike self centres a little more and generally feels more stable and safer at high (30+mph) speeds, although by the same token it is not as thrilling. They are certainly much more similar to each other than to to other 'sport' trikes on the market. I had a go on a Trice Micro which is one of their sportiest models and the steering feels totally dead and un-engaging by comparison, it may be that some users prefer this and the blokes from ICE ventured that it was good if you've been cycling for 8hrs straight and are totally knackered, personally I like trikes to be more exciting. The same is likely to hold true of all trikes that use the Greenspeed style indirect steering system.

The drum brakes on the WC are really very good, they are always silent, they aren't grabby and are easy to modulate, they have the same response every time unlike discs which tend to loose power in the wet and squeal a bit. The pads last practically forever and it's a piece of cake to take the wheels off because there are no brake callipers to remove in the case of discs - the wheels just slide straight off the hub. Or at least they should, one of my axles was slightly rusty and oversize so it took a gear puller to remove it the first time, after which it was fine once the axle had been cleaned up with a bit of emery cloth and greased.

On snow and ice it is immense fun, with slick tyres you can quite easily get the back tyre well outside of the front tyre tracks in the turns; although a treaded tyre at the rear would make you go faster, slicks all round are more fun because it overseers more readily. With the same tyres all round the handling in a grip-skid situation is very even with perhaps a slight bias towards oversteer, power oversteer is easy on ice/snow and perfectly achievable on wet tarmac. You can also alter the handling by moving your body, if you lean out and forwards you promote oversteer, out and back and you promote understeer. When riding in snow let all the tyre pressures down to about 40psi - the extra area of the contact patch actually makes you faster as you are compressing the snow less.

If you live in a hilly area then don't bother with the tailbox - overall the extra 2kg will slow you down more on the climbs more than it's worth on the descents, although it is handy waterproof storage for jumper and sarnies - on flat and rolling terrain it will give you an extra 1mph or perhaps a little more on your cruising speed.

Hills get much easier as you get used to them, hills that used to have me crawling along at 4mph in my granny gear I now get up at 9-10 mph in my middle ring. The improvements were most dramatic in the six months or so as I went from being 19 years old, 'moderately fit', 75kg (I'm 6'2") with a resting heart rate of about 75 bpm to being 20 yrs old, 'very fit' with lots of cycling specific muscle and much lower body fat, 70kg and with a RHR of about 60bpm. And none of this was with any specific attempt at training, I just got a map, looked for new and interesting routes and gradually racked up the lengths of the rides until I was doing about 20 miles a day at a comfortable pace during the summer. In winter I generally don't ride if the weather is horrid unless it's to go shopping or to lectures.

The WC actually has a pretty low bottom bracket and riders with big feet will get the occasional heel strike, not that this actually matters in the slightest and in fact it's quite handy to be able to touch your heel to the ground to stop yourself rolling away at traffic lights without having a hand on the brakes. With a trike on very low rolling resistance tyres you realise that the road is almost never truly horizontal. You must appreciate that it was originally conceived as a training tool for riders attempting speed records such as deciMach in a fully faired machine; this means that it's riding position is not that heavily optimised for unfaired use. The relatively upright seat and low BB make for more frontal area than the Catrike such that even with a tail fairing it is still the slightly less aerodynamic of the two - the Catrike with it's high bottom bracket and more reclined seat keeps more of your body in the wind shadow created by your legs. I have no doubt that a WC with both front and rear fairings would be devastatingly quick on the flat. Both trikes are of course are miles better than an upright in aerodynamic terms.

On the flat cruising at about 17mph for several hours is normal, I have pedalled to about 32mph on the flat but that's an all out sprint effort. Once your speed drops a little toward 14mph you can cruise for many hours with very little perceived effort.

The absence of an adjustable boom is a bit of a pain, changing the position of the seat takes about 40mins once you have stripped it down, fiddled around moving the seat bracket to it's new position, fiddled with the tail faring to get it in the right place again and readjusted the indexing on the rear gears whose cable stop is built into the the seat. Moving the seat towards the front of it's range results in you having a joystick right in your crotch so actually the usable range is less then you might think, probably less than 3". This also means you cannot rapidly adjust the boom to let someone taller or shorter then yourself have a proper ride on it.

[TBC]