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
22 Vol.3 No.9 / September 2014 THE ZIGOLO ULTRALIGHT (Side note: In China, citizens can buy a $600,000 Cir- rus. They just can't legally fly it anywhere beyond a 15-mile or so radius. Crazy, right? But there are hundreds of Chi- nese ultralight clubs and thousands of pilots literally flying under the radar there, because the country's civil aviation body recognizes the United States' FAA Part 103 rule. That might lead to ultralight flying as the first viable step in wak- ing the sleeping GA giant China has promised to become in recent years. And Aeromarine's ARTF Zigolos stand poised to exploit the potential along with Quicksilver, Zenith, and other U.S. and European manufacturers who've been making inroads there. SE AT O' T HE PA N T S F L IGH T T E S T Last year at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2013 I had the plea- sure of flying GreenWing 's single-seat eSpyder, an electri- fied, highly refined Flightstar ultralight with a robust empty weight profile to match (410 pounds). It was a thrill floating around the Ultralight/Light Plane patch in this beautiful, experimental amateur-built electric aircraft. Performance was about what you'd expect with that much weight behind 32 electric horses: fairly benign. But the quiet, buttery feel of the eSpyder's electric propulsion sys- tem was revelatory: no ear-splitting noise, no bone-rattling vibrations, no smelly gas or exhaust/fuel residue flung onto flight surfaces by a two-stroke engine; just smooth, breeze- in-the-face, meditative flight. Yet $39,900 for an E-AB kit that required 150 hours to complete seems, on reflection, to have been a market over- reach, unless you contrast it with even higher-priced S-LSA aircraft. But eSpyder still looks and flies like an ultralight, electric or not. Then came a hammer blow: manufacturer/supplier Yuneec of China quietly back-shelved production of the eSpyder for the U.S. market in favor of its consumer-mar- keted RC multicopter and electric skateboard products. So much for the promise of a practical, fun-flying electric fliv- Photography by James Lawrence The battery pack for the electric-powered Zigolo. This is the gas-powered version of the Zigolo.