ST
ST. PAUL,
MINN. — Since last month’s column, I’ve been to the USHGA board
of directors meeting
in Salt Lake City, Utah. As usual, the large group of directors spent many
hours — all unpaid, volunteer work and they pay most of their expenses to do so! If you want
more details, ask your regional director or read articles elsewhere in this
magazine. ••• However, my focus at these meetings is as chair
of the Publications Committee. Often, this committee’s work is obscure
but this time, the committee recommended and the full board blessed an idea
that will affect everyone in Yooshga, including both hang gliding and paragliding pilots.
The committee recommended and the board approved a plan to combine our two
magazines into one.
• Now, before I go off and make someone angry, let me stress that you
will see articles in both magazines surrounding this change AND members will be given a chance to
provide their thoughts.
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Polaris Slip
Here’s Polar Star’s entry in the minitrike sweepstakes.
You probably know Polaris even if you aren’t aware of the company name. Odds are good you’ve seen a picture of the Polaris inflatable flying boat. This is a trike with a small boat built around a steel trike frame. It looks unusual and remains unique.
Polaris claims to have shipped over 600 of these flying inflatable boats, once known as the Air Dinghy. The company reports these are flying around the world, owned by tourist resorts, Navy and police departments, Greenpeace ships, yacht owners, research marine institutions, and private pilots.
The company originated in Italy but opened an American office after founder, Doi Malingri, retired in Florida. Along with several Americans including Dave Melillo and Vince Kaufman, Malingri has established a U.S distribution center called Polar Star Group, a division of Polaris Motor.
Established in 1982, Polaris is experienced in aircraft manufacturing.
Dockweiler Reunion
Dockweiler Beach renews hang gliding memories.
Most KITPLANES readers probably don’t think of hang glider pilots as old folks. Indeed, it remains a younger man’s flying sport due to the athletic nature of the launch and landing. (At least that’s true if you don’t count the 30-40% of all launches that are done via aerotowing behind a specially built ultralight.)
Nonetheless, this event at a famed California beach site was dubbed the Geezer Fly-In by many who celebrated in good humor at the landmark where so many first got their feet off the ground under a hang glider. Many of those present qualify as fifty somethings.
“Nearly 400 pilots attended,” says Michael Riggs, himself a figurehead in the early days of hang gliding. Riggs started Seagull Aircraft, which became highly successful selling thousands of his distinctive hang gliders with the smoothly curved leading edges.
He also described the event this way: “There wasn’t a dry eye all day.” Of the hundreds who gathered, many had not seen each another in the last 20 years.
Hang Gliding Records
What’s in a name? A Texas-based event, last summer’s World Record Encampment, predicted accurately its own success; two top hang glider pilots set world records for distance flying and broke another record that stood for nearly a decade.
On July 19, Dave Sharp flew his A.I.R. ATOS rigid wing hang glider for an astounding 311 miles (501 kilometers), narrowly beating the long-held record of 308 miles set by another leading competitor, Larry Tudor.
Tudor first broke the magical 300-mile barrier by flying 303 miles in July, 1990. He repeated this achievement, flying 308 miles several years later, but nearly a decade passed with no other pilots exceeding 300 miles. That unique status was shattered thanks to participants at the World Record Encampment 2000.
Sharp flew more than 9 hours to earn his world record. The one that people will remember is the 311-mile flight of straight distance, but along the way he also set a record for a flight to a declared goal of 203 miles.
Air Sports Expo 2001
Sport aviators host their own traveling event.
Boat and RV shows are in full swing during the winter months when use of these toys is low. It proves to be a popular time for sportsmen to look at gear for the upcoming season. Flying should be no different.
Yet most of the major aviation trade events are held in conjunction with airshows. Needing good weather, these gatherings are clustered throughout the late spring, summer and early fall. If successful, they get established in one location that requires everyone to travel to them.
Traveling Airshow
If we are to attract new people into aviation, maybe we need to go to where they are rather than demanding that they come to us.
Attracting the general public is worthy, but such a traveling event can also motivate local pilots. The truth is, popular as airshows are, most pilots don’t get to them. Attending more than one or two airshows a year is time-consuming and expensive.
Foxbat
Manta’s Foxbat is the original rigid-wing trike.
A few months ago here, I revealed what I believe will be a new trend among trike ultralights: the rigid-wing trike. This machine will take the increasingly popular trike concept into the 21st century by using a composite wing of very high aspect ratio. Such a wing brings increased performance and promises dramatically better handling than can be found on the so-called flex-wing trikes that presently do the heavy lifting on trikes.
Only time will tell if my prediction is right. Yet years-perhaps decades before these rigid wings become common, an Oakland, California, company produced a rigid wing trike of its own. Foxbat was the name. That it did not achieve great market success is no condemnation of the trike or its then-unorthodox wing.
In fact, Pterodactyl, which did achieve good sales, used this identical wing as its starting point for the company’s much more popular line of ultralights.
FK-11
Let’s check out the FK-11 ultralight.
How would you like to own a Mercedes-brand ultralight? Today you can’t, and maybe you will never be able to, but you may be able to purchase a slick little ultralight called the FK-11 that is well known to Mercedes. And if you want a Mercedes-powered ultralight today, one is being sold.
This month’s “Light Stuff” again ventures across the Atlantic to look at another fascinating aircraft coming from the European sport aircraft community. The pictures accompanying this column feature the FK-11, a prototype design from Otto Funk, lead designer for the German ultralight manufacturer, B&F Technik Vertriebs.
B&F is what Americans might call a family operation. Son Peter Funk runs the business. Otto is his father, who owns an engineering firm and works with Peter as B&F’s design team. Before starting his own enterprise, Otto was an engineer working for Airbus.
Twin-Prop FK-11
The FK-11 is a single-engine ultralight using two aft-mounted props that extend from the fuselage midsection on upward-angled supports.
Esprit
Meet the Esprit – a twin-engine ultralight motorglider.
Soaring enthusiasts who want to self-launch their aircraft are limited to simple hang gliders on one end and expensive motorgliders on the other. Performance for these machines ranges 15:1 to 50:1. To get one you’ll spend $5000 or $200,000. What you could not do is spend $20,000 to get medium performance*… until now.
Debuting his machine at AirVenture 2000 airshow, Dobro Hajek brings a modern soaring aircraft to the ultralight community. I believe he will also find significant interest from two other groups: sailplane and hang glider pilots. Each loves dedicated machines without engines but many will also prefer an aircraft that can launch itself.
Welcome, Esprit
With its distinctive compound-tapered wings and winglets and its dual engines with folding props, the sleek Esprit goes a long way past the Aero Dovron that Hajek (pronounced HAY-yek) once imported. The Straton D-8 was an interesting little motorglider with a high wing and struts but at 17:1, this inexpensive machine didn’t have the go power it needed to attract a solid market in the United States.
Marske Sailplanes
The Marske Monarch continues to offer economical soaring.
Ultralight sailplanes. Are they a new category of aviation, a segment of ultralight aircraft or just little sailplanes? Though ultralights seem to be some of the newer aircraft in general aviation, their true lineage is based on soaring machines.
For example, the first and still most successful ultralights, the Quicksilver series, came from a hang glider design to which a small engine was added back in the 1970s. Trikes, which have continued to grow in worldwide popularity, are based on delta-wing hang gliders to which power and landing gear were added. Therefore, though the term may be relatively new (going back a decade or so), the aircraft has a longer heritage. One shining example of this is Jim Marske’s Monarch.
New Model, Old Design
Marske has been building the Monarch for 20 years and has added his higher performance model, the Pioneer, to his list of designs spanning 40 years.
Phantom X-1
Phantom X-1e
Published in Light Sport and Ultralight Flying