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General Aviation Handbook by Rod Simpson Soft Cover
General Aviation Handbook by Rod Simpson
Soft Cover
320 pages
Copyright 2005
CONTENTS
Introduction 3
Manufacturers A-Z
Adam Aircraft5
Aermacchi 6
Aero7
Aero8
Aero Boero8
Aero Commander 9
Aero Kuhlmann12
Aeromere12
Aeromot12
Aeropract13
Aeroprakt13
Aeropro14
Aeroprogress15
Aerospace Technologies of
Australia 15
Aerospatiale 16
Aerospool22
Aerostar22
Aerostyle 23
Aerotec23
Aerotechnik/Evektor 23
Air Light/ULBI 24
Air Tractor24
AISA26
Alaparma26
Ali Viberti26
Alpla27
Ambrosini 27
American Aviation 27
AMF Microffight29
Anahuac29
Antonov29
Aquila30
Arctic Aircraft30
ARV30
ATEC 31
Auster31
Australian Lightwing 34
AVIA-Lombardi34
Aviakit (PJB)35
Aviamilano36
Aviat-Pitts36
Avro38
Ayres 38
BAE Systems40
Beagle 43
Beech/Raytheon Aircraft 45
Bellanca60
Beriev62
B&F Technik62
BHEL63
Boisavia 64
BOlkow64
Bombardier/Canadair 66
Britten Norman68
Brochet 71
Bticker72
Bulgarian State Aircraft Works . . . 74
CAB74
Callair74
Caproni 76
Cessna Aircraft77
CFA 99
CFM-Metalfax99
Champion100
Chrislea 103
Cirrus 104
Classic Aircraft Corporation 105
Commander Aircraft 105
Commonwealth106
Culver 107
Dallach 108
Dassault109
De Havilland Australia 112
De Havilland Canada113
Diamond Aircraft 114
DINFIA117
Dittmar 117
Dornier 118
Eagle Aircraft 121
Eagle Aircraft Pty 121
Eclipse122
Edgley 122
El Gavilan 123
Emair123
Embraer 124
Emigh Aircraft 125
Enaer125
Erco126
Evangel 127
Walter Extra 127
Fairchild 129
Fairchild-Swearingen 130
Fantasy Air 132
FFT132
Fiat 133
Flaming Air 134
Fleet 134
Flight Design 135
FLS135
Fly Synthesis 136
FMP 136
Fokker137
Fouga 137
Found 138
Fournier 138
Frati 140
Fuji 141
Funk (Akron)141
D D Funk142
Yves Gardan 142
General Avia 142
Gippsland 144
Globe 144
Great Lakes 145
Grob146
Grumman 148
Guerchais Roche 149
Gulfstream149
Hamburger Flugzeugbau152
HB Flugzeugbau 152
Hello 154
Heliopolis 156
HF Dorna156
Hindustan 157
Wolf Hirth 158
Max Holste 158
Dee Howard 159
Humbert Aviation 160
Hungarian Aviation Industry 160
Hurel-Dubois160
IAR161
Ibis Aerospace 163
Ikarus 163
Ilyushin 164
Indraero164
Interavia165
Interplane 165
Israel Aircraft Industries 166
Issoire Aviation 168
C Itoh 169
Jodel 169
Johnson170
Jordan Aerospace Industries 171
Kappa 77171
Krunichev 172
Lake172
Lancair 179
Laverda179
Learjet 179
Leopoldoff178
LET178
Liberty Aerospace 181
LIBIS 181
Lockheed182
Luscombe182
Maule 189
Meyers187
Miles Aircraft 189
Mitsubishi 191
Monocoupe192
Mooney193
Moravan191
Morrisey201
Mudry202
Myasishchev209
National Aerospace Laboratories 209
Neiva 205
Noorduyn 206
Norman Aircraft 207
Oberlerchner201
OMF208
Orlican209
OSKBES-MAI 210
Pacific Aerospace210
Partenavia 212
Pasotti 214
Percival 215
Edgar Percival 216
Petrolini216
Piaggio216
Claude Piel218
Pilatus 220
Piper221
Pipistrelle238
Potez 238
Pottier 238
Praga 238
Procaer239
PZL239
PZL-Mielec240
PZL-Okecie243
PZL-Bielsko and PZL-Swidnik 247
Raj Hamsa 247
Rawdon248
REMOS248
Republic249
Rhein Flugzeugbau 250
Robin251
Rockwell International 257
Rollason259
Ruschmeyer260
Ryan261
SAAB262
SAI264
SAN 265
Sauper-Aviation266
Scheibe 267
Schweizer269
Scintex271
Scottish Aviation 272
Seabird273
SECAN274
SG Aviation 274
Short Brothers275
SIAI-Marchetti 276
SLAT279
Sino Swearingen 280
SIPA280
Skyfox 281
Slepcev282
Slingsby283
SME284
SNCAC (Aerocentre) 284
SNCAN (Nord)285
Sportavia 287
Starck288
Stark289
Stemme289
Stinson290
Sukhoi291
Taylorcraft 292
Technoavia294
Technofiug295
Tecnam 295
Ted Smith 296
Thorp298
Tipsy 298
TL Ultralight299
Transavia 300
Uetz301
Urban Air301
UTVA302
Vajic303
Valentin303
Volaircraft 304
Wassmer304
Weatherly306
Windecker307
Wing308
Yakovlev309
Yugoslav Government Factories 312
Zenair 313
Zivco Aeronautics 314
Zlin Aviation 314
US Aircraft Delivery Table 315
Index317
INTRODUCTION
The General Aviation Handbook is intended to provide a quick reference to all manufacturers who have built fixed-wing powered aircraft in production quantities since 1945. At the outset, it is necessary to explain clearly what is meant by 'General Aviation' but it is not a simple task. The title 'General Aviation' is a catch-all term to embrace everything that cannot be categorised under commercial air carrier (airline) or military operations. As a result, the variety of aircraft types is enormous and General Aviation embraces many roles including personal private flying, business travel, non-scheduled air taxi operations, flying training, carriage of freight, banner towing, bush operations, air racing, exhibition flying, experimental testing and agricultural and firefighting activities. In practice, the range of tasks is fulfilled by a huge worldwide fleet. Just in the United States, there are 356,000 registered aircraft of which at least 90% fall into the General Aviation category. Cessna, alone has built 167,000 aircraft since World War Two.
In The General Aviation Handbook, there are a number of aspects of civil aviation which are not covered, and these are detailed later, but it is important that one particular sector must be mentioned, namely, amateur-built aircraft (either from kits or plans) which are not included unless they are also available in factory-complete flyable form. Unfortunately, to have included this particular slice of aviation would have doubled the size of the book! In the decade since the last edition of this book was published (as Airlife's General Aviation), there have been profound changes for the manufacturers of General Aviation aircraft. For most of the sixty years since the end of World War Two the General Aviation industry was dominated by the American 'Big Three' Beech, Cessna and Piper. Until the early 1980s, these three companies produced a comprehensive offering of private aircraft ranging from entry-level trainers such as the Cessna 150/152 and Piper Cherokee to turbine business aircraft in the Beech King Air and Cessna Citation class. Other manufacturers such as Gulfstream, Maule, Mooney, Rockwell and SOCATA occupied niche positions but the output of the three market leaders was overwhelming with over 15,000 aircraft (87% of total sales) being delivered by them in the peak year of 1978. Particularly among the smaller manufacturers, there have been numerous name changes and aircraft designs have altered hands regularly. We hope that The General Aviation Handbook will highlight these changes and, by way of the index, readers will be able to uncover the detailed background history to almost any light aircraft built since World War Two.
Light Aviation after the Product Liability Crisis General Aviation has, inevitably, been American-led with the main market and the main manufacturers located there. The 1980s brought the Product Liability crisis led by predatory American tort lawyers and this led to Beech, Cessna and Piper abandoning manufacture of low profit margin single-engined light aircraft. They did return to this market in August 1994 when the Statute of Repose legislation put limits on legal product liability claims, but the choice of models never returned to pre-1980 levels. In any case, business aviation was booming and Cessna, particularly, concentrated on expanding its business jet range, which, today, embraces eight different models. Other business aircraft manufacturers emerged and the terrorist attack of 11th September 2001 encouraged more and more corporate users to turn to the security and flexibility of business aircraft. This trend was further encouraged with the emergence of fractional ownership schemes that allowed owners to purchase shares in a business aircraft. The attractions of turbine power spread in the wake of the Millennium celebra--tions with the launch of numerous projects for very light jets such as the Eclipse 500, Adam A700 and Citation Mustang. These aircraft will provide a much-needed replacement for ageing cabin-class piston twins such as the Navajo, Queen Air and Cessna 421 at prices which are affordable for small companies and individuals. Confidence in the reliability of turbine engines grew during the late 1990s and single-engined turboprops such as the Pilatus PC-12, SOCATA TBM700 and Cessna Caravan have become well established.
These trends found the single-engined private aircraft market becoming neglected. The sophisticated dealer/distributor marketing networks, which had been established in the 1960s and 1970s by Beech, Cessna and Piper and had driven huge sales volume, were dismantled during the Product Liability years and this infrastructure has never been fully restored. With the existing light aircraft fleet becoming increasingly elderly and fewer aircraft dealers to encourage demand, conventional light aviation remained in the doldrums during the 1990s. However, this opened up an enormous opportunity for a new route into low-cost private flying.
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
Major changes have, of course, taken place in the former Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. The Aviation Design Bureaux (OKBs) and Aircraft Production Plants of the Soviet Union produced a large range of light aircraft designs following World War Two and, in many cases, these types (particularly the Yak-18, Yak-12 and An-2) were manufactured in huge numbers and production responsibility allocated to Poland and Czechoslovakia. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of these designs have taken on a new life under independent Russian companies that have risen from the ashes of the previous State organisations. New companies have been established on the western model with design and production in the same entity and numerous new aircraft projects have been proposed although the most successful have generally been in the ultralight and heavy ultralight categories. Unless carried out by a principal manufacturer, these projects are outside the scope of this book and have not been included.
The historical division between aircraft design and aircraft production has persisted insofar as designs such as the Yak-18T have been manufactured by several different organisations. Accurate calculation of the number of aircraft built by the emergent Russian general aviation industry is often impossible due to the incompleteness of official information. Serial number allocations in the Soviet bloc followed a fairly strict system and Yakovlev, Sukhoi and other Russian manufacturers' models have been built in batches. This means that it is necessary to know the number of aircraft in each batch in order to make sense of their manufacturing output. The c/n structure varies from factory to factory and is sometimes so complex as to be indecipherable. Frequently, serial numbers consist of the year of construction, a two or three digit batch number and a two-digit individual aircraft number within the batch. Most batches have been fairly small (ie, between five and fifteen aircraft). In the post-Soviet era, new manufacturers have tended to use simple numbering systems but the traditional structures do persist in the existing factories.
The Ultralight Revolution
In 1995, ultralights (known as microlights in the UK and ULMs Ultra-Leger Motorise in France) were regarded as a quaint option for cheap flying but scarcely a viable alternative to the all-metal products from Wichita or Vero Beach. At that time, ultralights were mainly weight-shift trikes (unkindly described by some as 'powered umbrellas') but things were about to change. In many respects, aviation has always been driven by availability of powerplants. For most of the postwar period the piston engine market has been dominated by two companies Lycoming and Continental and their excellent engines have determined light aircraft design. The 1990s saw the growth of Rotax, owned by Bombardier, who developed a range of lightweight aero engines in the 40hp to 100hp category. Furthermore, the liberation of Eastern Europe became a catalyst for newly designed conventional light aircraft that technically fell into the ultralight weight category but had all the normal characteristics of conventional two-seat Cessnas and Pipers. For some years, the definition of ultralights varied from country to country but an explosion in output and usage across Europe brought the airworthiness authorities to the realisation that they could not hope to control ultralights under the same airworthiness and certification regulations that applied to larger production light aircraft.
The solution to the ultralight dilemma was to set decentralised standards for airworthiness control (which would be less onerous and less expensive for owners) and to establish a maximum gross weight limit and associated technical specifications for this new category. This maximum weight commonly set was 992.2 lb (450kg) although some countries persisted with limits that varied from this and related specifications were also set for the new JAR-VLA aircraft (Very Light Aircraft certificated under the Joint Airworthiness Regulations) with a 1,650 lb (750kg) maximum weight. In the United States, similar moves were afoot which established the new Sport Pilot category. This provides a layer of regulation covering two-seat aircraft that are too heavy to be FAR Part.103 ultralights but have a gross weight under 1,232 lb (558.7kg). Certification, airworthiness validation and regulation of the Sport Pilot/Sport Aircraft category is substantially simpler than that for fully certificated light aircraft and a number of existing production types (such as the Piper J-3 Cub and Taylorcraft BC) will be eligible for this deregulated status. These regulations also extended to simplified pilot qualifications that will undoubtedly encourage the spread of leisure flying.
Not surprisingly, the changes in Europe brought a flood of light aircraft with 450kg gross weights. More significantly, however, many of these, originating in Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Russia, are built from composites. These materials are a combination of glass-fibre, carbon fibre and other plastic materials. Such construction was far from new in aviation. Sailplanes had been built with plastics for several decades and the first successful production glassfibre/plastic light aircraft (the Wassmer Wa.52) first flew in 1966.
This revolution in light aviation has meant that this edition of 'General Aviation' is greatly expanded. Clearly, it has been essential to include all the new 'heavy' ultralights but the line has been drawn at the 450kg weight level and these types are only included if they are available as factory-complete ready-to-fly aircraft. Weight-shift ultralights are excluded, as are various other small aircraft of substantially less than 450kg. We believe that we have included the majority of the significant types but please accept our apologies if any qualifying types have been omitted!
Some Definitions
- The General Aviation Handbook is presented in alphabetical order by manufacturer.
- Manufacturers are included if they have built powered aircraft in production quantities.
- Only manufacturers and aircraft since 1st January 1946 are included - Powered aircraft of less than 992.25 lb (450kg) are not included unless they are mentioned as part of the overall history of the manufacturer
- Where aircraft have been produced by several manufacturers they are normally collected under the entry for the company that originally designed and built the type
- In certain cases aircraft design bureaux have initiated designs but not built them in quantity (for example, Stelio Frati). Individual entries are included for these designers.
- The main piston engine manufacturers have changed ownership and corporate names several times. Continental Motors is now Teledyne Continental and Lycoming has been known as Avco-Lycoming and Textron Lycoming. For the purposes of this volume, they are referred to simply as Continental and Lycoming (sometimes abbreviated to Cont and Lyc).
- Details of gross weights and other relevant measurements are all given in Imperial units. While aircraft designed in Europe and some other countries have been conceived in metric units the vast majority of General Aviation aircraft have been designed in the USA (or, sometimes, Britain) where Imperial is the accepted measure. For guidance, data can be converted as follows: 0.454 kilograms = 1 lb 0.3048 metres = 1 imperial foot 0.7456 kilowatts = 1 horsepower
- So far as possible, the serial number systems are described for all manufacturers, but details of these are sometimes unavailable and where assumptions have been made, this is explained in the text.
- Numbers of aircraft built are given for all aircraft types and these are based on assessments following detailed examination of production lists and information from manufacturers. It should be noted that industry-published figures (for example, annual reports form the General Aviation Manufacturer's Association) are based on sales deliveries and may not be exactly the same as the production totals.
- Since many aircraft in the '450kg ultralight' category may be sold as factory-complete or in kit form, the production data is often based on best estimates or information supplied by the manufacturers
Not included, and outside the scope of the book, are:
- Detailed specifications of aircraft dimensions, weights and performance
- Sailplanes and gliders (even though many modern sailplanes are fitted with low-powered auxiliary engines)
- Balloons and Airships
- Helicopters and other rotary-wing aircraft
- Ultralights (microlights) below 992.25 lb (450kg)
- Amateur-built aircraft, either from kits, plans or original design unless the type is also available as a factory-complete machine.
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