Airborne Australia

A light-sport contender?
As the FAA’s proposed SportPlanes™/light-sport aircraft (LSA) rule moves steadily closer to becoming a law of the land, intense focus has been concentrated on candidate aircraft from overseas.
Though many pilots excited by the new rule are paying attention to fixed-wing designs, these are hardly the only aircraft that will qualify under the proposed regulation. In fact, consensus standards being devised by the industry to certify LSA have separate committees writing recommendations for powered parachutes and trikes (weight-shift). (Committees for gyroplanes, gliders, airships and balloons are also possible, but are not presently active.)
This month, “Light Stuff” looks at AirBorne Australia. Though its home is an immense distance from our shores and despite many other trike entries from the U.S. and overseas, AirBorne has built a solid following among Americans. However, AirBorne is one of those companies that does more than initially meets the eye.
Going Both Ways
Besides the Australian company, I can think of only two other manufacturers that currently build both ultralights and hang gliders.
One is England’s Pegasus Aviation, which makes the Quantum trike series as well as its own Scandal hang gliders. The versatile British firm additionally created a hang glider power unit called the Booster.
The second cross-builder is North Wing Design in the U.S. The company sells hang gliders and provides a valuable service by fabricating replacement parts for discontinued hang glider brands. North Wing also builds a complete line of trikes. North Wing is largely a U.S. supplier, while both Pegasus and AirBorne have customers scattered all over the planet.
You might say AirBorne is bi-wingual. The Aussie company remains a competitive leader in new hang glider design and parlays those skills into excellent trike wings that it matches to its stoutly built trikes, which are “built to work in the Australian Outback.”
Long Gliders
While most producers of trikes have little—or dated—experience with hang gliders, AirBorne has remained active in both developments. As hang gliding matured, the number of builders narrowed significantly, with the survivors developing into world-recognized brands.
A member of this elite club, AirBorne continues development and has evolved its top-of-the-line Climax into the C2, a modern double-surface hang glider boasting flat glide performance and a sink rate well under 200 fpm. Climax and C2 are members of the new breed of topless gliders that replaced the kingpost and upper rigging with internal carbon-fiber cross spars that bear the negative loads. The result is a machine with much lower drag, making long cross-country flights at higher speeds more attainable.
AirBorne builds a full line of gliders. Aside from the Climax and C2, other models trend to those that can be flown successfully by pilots of lesser skills. These intermediate, beginner or training models include the Fun Sting2 and the Shark.
To those interested in powered ultralights, the significance of AirBorne’s hang glider production assures an intimate knowledge of wing design that can be applied to the company’s trike wings. Many trike chassis manufacturers buy wings from other builders, but companies like AirBorne have more design flexibility as they engineer the entire aircraft.
Tough Trikes
Perhaps of keenest interest to KITPLANES® readers are the ultralight trikes built by AirBorne. Each spring, company representatives make the 18-hour flight from down under to American and European airshows. The expensive effort requires careful planning due to the distance, yet AirBorne has become a fixture at shows like Sun ’n Fun and Oshkosh. The company’s  persistence over the last decade has been rewarded with a number of U.S. dealers.
The best known to Americans are the Edge X series of deluxe trikes. AirBorne first offered these highly finished aircraft to compete with other imported—and equally refined—European trikes. Edge X trikes are distinguished by their smooth nose fairings and body skirting, and they are generally loaded with numerous features (brakes, dual controls, thickly upholstered seats, and larger engines) that help them compare favorably to the high-end offerings from other top producers.
In 2001, AirBorne brought the new Redback trike to America in a bid to offer an entry-level ultralight. AirBorne gave Redback an open frame and simple instrument pod producing a sticker price below $14,000, complete.
Most of AirBorne’s wings, such as the Streak and Wizard, are interchangeable between the trike carriages. Because the wing is the primary source of a trike’s performance, either Edge X or Redback can have similar flight characteristics if fitted with the same wing.
AirBorne’s Streak wing was completely redesigned in 2000 to improve its handling characteristics. Such enhancements reveal the depth of art in sailmaking (the wing) and airframe design. AirBorne won’t Pulge how it made this quantum leap of handling, but my experience in flying older and newer versions clearly identified changes that brought lighter controls without robbing the Streak of its speedier ways. That’s why some call it “black magic.”
Proper Purchase
You may be seeking a fiberglass light-sport aircraft able to carry two in an enclosed cabin at speeds up to 130 mph. If so, you’ll be seeing plenty of aircraft that may catch your interest.
However, for those who prefer open-air ultralights, trikes remain an excellent choice. They’re highly refined and already pass airworthiness certification. They’ve withstood rigorous field testing and offer benefits like full breakdown that cut hangar expenses.
As the industry devises its consensus certification standards, AirBorne (and Pegasus, among others) will find qualification relatively easy. They’ve already met and built to a rigorous program, in AirBorne’s case operated by CASA, Australia’s equivalent of the FAA. Such certification demonstrates that AirBorne can not only build a beautiful aircraft, but that the company has the engineering and documentation to pass expected LSA standards.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact AirBorne Australia, P.O. Box 7042, Redhead NSW 2290, Australia; call (from the U.S.) 011-61-2-4944-9199; fax (from the U.S.) 011-61-2-4494-9395; e-mail fly@airborne.com.au; web www.airborne.com.au.