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If you looking for someone to build you an award winning ultralight or
light sport aircraft then look no further.
Bryan Melborn has built a number of aircraft for display at Sun N Fun
and Airventure, and he has won an award for just about all of them.
This year in partnership with Steve Boetto of Florida he AGAIN
won
Grand Champion this year for building a 2008 Firefly on Floats.
Not only did they build a award winner but they built an award
winning part 103 legal ultralight that was equipped with floats and a
Rotax 447 engine.
They did this by eliminating the nose cone, windshield and rear
fuselage covering on a standardard Firefly kit. This knocks about 10 lbs
off the FireFly's weight.
The plane started out at Bryan's shop in Kentucky as a standard Kolb
Firefly kit. Bryan does all of the Kolb Aircraft builders assist, and
quick builds. Steve wanted an open cockpit plane so the nose was
redesigned. Bryan gave it the look of an old Kolb Ultra Star. He
then painted the craft the green show colour and then turned to plane
over to Steve Boetto for float installation and the finishing touches.
Steve wanted a "wide open airplane, going back to the original
ultralight roots, with that full open out in the air, bare bones
fuselage look and feel."
Steve accomplished with several different features (and some 300
hours of detail work) like his fuel tank, which is a cut down aluminum
dune buggy tank. He also installed some fancy components from England
including a gascalator, an aviation grade primer and a fuel selector
valve.
Steve has hidden all of the wiring and charging system, in small
fuselage compartments. Instrumentation consists of an EIS engine monitor
system, and airspeed indicator and compass.
The plane like all of Kolb ultralight designs has the foldable wings
for easy of storage, but Steve now has a hangar and has constructed a
trailer hooked to an all terrain vehicle which he uses to launch and
load the plane in and out of the water.
Bryan report the plane gets off the water in literally seconds and
once airborne can be flown hands off, when either he or Steve is flying
it, even with a 30 lbs pilot weight difference.
The FireFly has a left hand throttle, and flap control. The 2
position flaps are 10, 20 degrees. Climb rate on floats with the
447 Rotax engine is 750 feet per minute, 55 mph cruise.
Their award winning design which is owned by Steve, comes in at 10
lbs below the legal ultralight limit for a plane equipped with floats
and a BRS parachute system.
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