FEATURE
Flying closer to the sun by Brian Bigg
IKARUS C42
H
anging around the airport the other day, as I was, I got to talking with a couple of foreign sounding blokes who had just landed ahead of me in an aircraft I hadn’t seen before. The reason I hadn’t seen it before was because the aircraft is the only one of its kind in Australia, an Ikarus C42. And one of the pilots turned out to be the bloke who designed it. Hans Gygax is a Swiss aircraft designer with 10 popular light sport aircraft designs under his belt. He has been coming out to Australia every year for the past nine years to visit his friend, Dieter, to escape the European winter and fly around our beautiful country. Dieter offered to take me out for a quick circuit in the Ikarus and I was strapped in ready to go before he changed his mind. The Ikarus might be rare in our skies, but it is reasonably common in Europe. There are 1,708 on the register over there and the factory is still turning out 10 new ones a month, even though the design is now almost 16 years old. It’s quite a roomy little aircraft, relaxing to fly, and very popular with European schools because of its forgiving nature. It is powered by an 80hp Rotax and cruises at 85kts.
In the UK, it has been certified to tow gliders. Hans says the factory has no plans to sell the model here, but a school which had this particular aircraft online for a while reported it proved popular with pilots because of its comfort and relatively cheap operating cost.
Probably the most unusual feature I discovered was the throttle between the legs - in the place where the joystick normally lives. It took a little getting used to, but Hans says pilots who try it prefer it to traditional layouts. I found out the hard way that you can’t jiggle it like you can the joystick, to see what it does. Lucky for me the brakes work well. The Ikarus also has a ballistic parachute system installed - it’s a requirement under German law – and Dieter was keen for me not to jiggle its firing trigger, to see what it did. The aircraft accelerated quickly, took off sharply, then flew briskly and cleanly around the circuit, and wasn’t too bumpy even though
the day had a few thermals. Unusual for an aircraft of this size, the Ikarus has electric flaps and trim. On approach, it had a solid feel, crisp control and the landing was clean and solid. All in all, a no-nonsense, clean aircraft which was fun and easy to fly. It’s a credit to Hans. Probably no surprise, considering it was his last design before he retired from the business a few years back. Han’s first design was the Microstar, (which ended up in the US as the Flightstar) and his most popular was the AC4, designed for and licenced to a German company. Hans says when designing, he starts out with a Rotax 912, and goes from there. His early designs began as simple aircraft and each subsequent one became more sophisticated. Each design, he says, ended up being an evolution of his previous ones. Each of his designs also focuses on engineering excellence and the Ikarus is no different.There’s no point giving you an Australian price, because there are no plans to sell them here. You can get a European price off the internet.And the only Ikarus in Australia is busy taking Hans and Dieter from beautiful place to beautiful place, far from the ice and snow of his home in Switzerland. Keep an eye out for it as you travel. It’s really interesting .
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