Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.
Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/378679
EAA Experimenter 21 veterans, including yours truly, sense a resurgent, untapped appetite for simple, affordable flight. Remember, the ultra- light industry sold 30,000 aircraft beginning in the 1980s. No one back in the day expected ultralights to save general aviation (GA). We just expected they would return the word "fun" to flying. Many of us look back on those days as the most enjoyable flying we ever did. Chip hopes the Zigolo MG 12 is perfectly timed to hit big in the budget flying market. As he quips on his website, "Everything you need and not much else." But "not much else," we can argue, is just what many existing and would-be aeronauts want. After a decade of dismay watching the LSA "great winged hope" climb ever higher into the pricing stratosphere, Zigolo and others com- ing on board (Brian Carpenter's EMG -6 glider for one) pres- ent new opportunities to enjoy flying again without taking out a second mortgage on the house. Of course, Zigolo is essentially a powered hang glider. You're not going to go very far. But you will likely smile the whole time. That's what ultralight flying has always prom- ised…and delivered. A SINGL E DEREGUL AT ED SE AT The Zigolo serves up recreational flight in a single-seat, deregulated European microlight—a 10-year-proven glider design that's priced way below what many ultralights cur- rently cost. Yes, the Zigolo MG is a tube-and-fabric, bare- bones affair, but it will get you in the air under power to soar around with performance akin to a modern hang glider… and without requiring you to tow up or drive up a mountain, set up a glider, punch off, and when the lift fails, be faced with having to do the drill all over again. Zigolo also trailers nicely, so you can store it in your garage and pull it on long road trips to favorite flying haunts. And whether you choose gas or electric power, you'll le- gally fit within the upper empty weight limit of the FAR Part 103 specification as it's written today. Jim Lawrence taxies out in the electric-powered Zigolo. The electric motor on the Zigolo.