Not many question Buckeye’s leadership role among producers of powered parachutes. They move a lot of flying hardware. Now to expand even further, Buckeye has offered the Brat, new in a couple interesting ways.
Buckeye’s little Brat is a single place aircraft. It can be fitted with one of the company’s canopy wings but that’s no longer all. Swap a couple tubes around and in a few minutes you can fix the trike carriage to a La Mouette Topless wing. This wing is one the top wings carrying hang glider pilots to record flights and contest championships. (Tested earlier with a Cosmos trike, I found the Topless wing offered superb trike handling.)
To keep the rig simple and provide for such switchability, the Brat employs hand toggles for canopy wing steering. Their standard powered parachutes use foot pedals to do this same controlling.
Flown for its first public introduction at Oshkosh 1997, the Brat appeared to be a particularly slow flyer with light touch handling – I never saw the pilot working hard to control the Brat. In fact, the Brat appears to have three distinct personalities: powered parachute, trike, and slightly oversized foot-launched powered paraglider (but with Buckeye’s famously strong landing carriage).
The switch between wings will require some additional pilot training but makes the machine extremely versatile. You can fly in thermals with the Topless wing; fly in light evening winds with a powered parachute canopy, or fly the Topless merely as a hang glider. Now, that’s a lot of use from one aircraft.
Leave a Reply