Belite ultralight aircraft,
Belite experimental amateur built lightsport aircraft, Light Sport Aircraft Pilot News
newsmagazine.
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Light Sport Aircraft Pilot is a directory of aircraft that generally fit
into what are described as ultralight aircraft, advanced ultralight
aircraft,
light sport aircraft, experimental light sport aircraft, experimental
aircraft, amateur built aircraft, ELSA or homebuilt
aircraft in the United States and Canada. These include
weight shift aircraft, more commonly known as trikes,
powered parachutes, and powered para-gliders.
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Belite part 103 ultralight, experimental
amateur built lightsport aircraft.
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One of the problems pilots
have is explaining to the "better half" why it is we need to
own an aeroplane. Even the most understanding "partner" will
sometimes question the wisdom of aircraft ownership!
So you can image the weight that must be on James Wiebe's
shoulders, every time I have seen him at an airshow he is
flying and displaying another plane.
This year at Airventure 2010
he had no less than three aircraft, two of which he was
flying!
Well to be honest he only had two planes a taildragger and a
tri-cycle gear, but he had the taildragger displayed on Muk
Tuk floats for the first couple of days and then pulled the
floats off, replaced the landing gear and went flying on
wheels. |
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I asked Jim about this and he
explained it this way. "We just have one aeroplane, that is
the Belite 254, but like ice cream it varies into a whole
bunch of different flavours. We have a trike and a tail
dragger. If you get the more powerful tail dragger you get
the SuperLite, if you get the more powerful trike you end up
with the SuperTrike. Then you can put them all on floats so
you have, well you have great little float planes!
Having followed Jim since he
purchased the tooling for the Belite (formerly the Kitfox
Lite), I had to ask how business has been, since he has
spent a considerable amount of money, time and effort
building and promoting single place ultralights and
experimental amateur built aircraft, when just about every
other manufacturer has abandoned them!
Jim reports that last year
business "was pathetic, it was a terrible year"
but as the first of the year came around, and the Belite was
recognized as Grand Champion Ultralight at Sun N Fun the
phones began to ring, "and we are now selling airplanes!" One
of the reasons for this has been the constant customer feed
back that Jim has received at airshows, on the phone, and
over the web. This feed back has resulted in the total
redesign of the trike unit. Now the tail dragger fuselage can be
converted to a trike! Or if a customer buys the tricycle
gear option he or she can convert it back to a tail dragger.
The factory offers legal
part 103 ultralights ready to fly, as well as quick build
kits that can be put together in as little as 300 hours.
According to Jim the only difference between a legal part
103 ultralight and the float plane version of the same plane
is that the factory limits the engine power available to 38
HP versus 50 HP for the float plane!
For more information
contact:
Belite Aircraft
Wichita, KS
316-253-6746
www.beliteaircraft.com
info@beliteaircraft.com
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Belite Part 103 legal tricycle gear
ultralight aircraft |
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Light Sport Aircraft Pilot News Web Magazine.
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