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In keeping aware of the competition out
there, here is a pilot report on the Aerostar Festival S-LSA. At a new
price of $65k, it won’t be competing with Coupes directly. But you
may encounter it as it shows up in Sport Pilot flight schools.
Andy Mueller is a Sport Flight Instructor
at a small grass airport near
For pictures of the plane, visit:
http://www.lightsportflying.com/festival/festival.html
I have no connection to either business or
to the aircraft manufacturer. I’m just irrepressibly curious.
http://edburkhead.com
ed -at-
edburkhead???.com (change
-at- to @ and remove "???")
From: On Behalf Of Andy Mueller
Sent: Sunday, October 09, 2005
11:14 PM
To:
Subject: PIREP: Aerostar Festival
Howdy all -
Saturday I flew down to
(It's pure coincidence that I got
to have lunch with Rick and Debbie at the semi-famous Lambert's Cafe -
home of "throwed rolls". If you've never been, I highly
recommend a trip. Lambert's runs a shuttle back and forth
from the airport for pilots who fly in to
I thought I'd write up a quick PIREP for
folks that might be interested.
(Disclaimer: Rick did buy me lunch
at Lambert's - but that's all that I have beholden to the
man. I have no financial interest in his company
and am otherwise just an impartial observer.)
Right from the start, as soon as you begin
the walk around, you can tell that the Festival came out of a different
philosophy than did many of the other S-LSA's out there.
First, it's BIG. At least for
an LSA. That makes for a very nice, roomy cabin and an
absolutely cavernous cargo area. You could haul freight in the
space behind the seats, it's so big. But we'll get to the interior in a
minute.
Second, it's built like one might
expect a plane from a former Soviet Bloc nation to be built. It's beefy
and substantial in nearly every respect - a marked departure from many of the
other Light Sport designs I have flown that seem, well, a bit plastic - even
when they are made of metal. I suppose it's not too surprising,
since Aerostar (a Romanian company) builds the Yak-52 military trainer as
well. This plane is s-o-l-i-d.
The airplane looks very nice sitting
on the ramp - a little similar to a Grumman or vaguely a bit like an
old Navion that's been shrunk in the dryer.
When you get up close, nitpickers may
have some words about the paint job and the finish work,
however. The paint scheme was quite attractive in the
white and light blue, but on close inspection, the paint job is
amateurish. Bazillions of cherry rivets made the wing
surface of the test aircraft look a bit like a cheese grater.
Strong? Heck yeah. Pretty? Not really. Rick
mentioned that future aircraft would be coming off the line with flush riveted
wings and better paint jobs. I think that will make a much better
impression on buyers. Personally, I really didn't mind the
"cosmetic flaws" so much, because from the word GO, it's apparent
that this is a plane made to work for a living in the harsh flight training
world. "Pretty" isn't what I care about.
The plane was designed to take a lickin' and keep on tickin' - not to be
somebody's eye-candy hanger queen. If I had to go to battle
and fly close-air-support in a Light Sport aircraft, I'd take the
Festival. If the Sting or the Breezer are the slick fighter planes
of the Light Sport world, then the Festival is the workhorse A-10 with the
titanium armor around the pilot.
Climbing in, the strong design was
apparent again. There is a fully reinforced wing-walk on the root, and
sturdy grab handles placed right where you would want them. In
contrast to most light sport airplanes in which you have to be careful of
what you grab and where you put your weight, it was difficult to find a
spot in the Festival that you could bend if you tried to! For entry,
you just climb onto the wing root and step into the cabin and have a
seat. Zero contortionism. That's also a welcome difference from
most LSA's where there is a practiced "technique" one uses to get in
and out.
Once seated, at 44 inches wide, the
cabin is nicely roomy and the fully adjustable seats (forward, aft, and
seatback rake) are quite comfortable. The seatbelt and harness are
Hooker, and easy to use and adjust. The controls all fall easily to
hand, and the test aircraft was equipped with dual throttles, so both pilots
can fly right-hand stick, left-hand throttle if they wish. Overall,
on the cabin layout, I give it very high marks. The panel is
all "made in
The cargo area behind the seat is
large enough to carry a small water buffalo - I mean it's BIG. Rick
said that he's had prospects say, "Hey... I could put the kids back
there!". Well, even though they would fit just
fine, all that structural integrity has a price - and in this case, that
price is weight. The aircraft has an empty weight of about 855, and
the max Light Sport gross of 1320. That leaves just 465 pounds
of useful load. If you fill the 20 gallon tanks, that
leaves you with a remaining payload of only about 365
lbs. Better leave the kids, not to mention
the water buffaloes, at home. One can, with relative
ease, fill only one of the wing tanks, saving an additional 60 pounds of
weight at the expense of 10 gallons of go-juice.
The canopy can be left open for all
operations on the ground, but must be latched for flight. Here
again, the beefiness shows up, as the canopy latches in three places -
passenger side, pilot side, and overhead at the windscreen. All
that is quickly and easily accomplished with a single latching lever that opens
and closes all three latches simultaneously.
The aircraft starts in typical Rotax 912
fashion - that is to say without difficulty and with just a twist of the
key. As we taxied, I really liked the direct nose wheel
steering. Nice direct response, but not easily over
controlled. This plane will make a first time student
look good at taxiing. The rudder pedals are a metal bar
affair, with separate toe brakes above. I like the separation of the
pedals into distinct brake versus rudder. I've had students in
another S-LSA, one equipped with toe brakes and rudders in a single pedal
assembly, who find it all too easy to accidentally apply the brakes
at a bad moment.
The throttle, carb heat, and choke are
placed in a lever-style throttle quadrant with a large knurled knob friction
lock on the right side. This is probably just me being picky,
but all the lever handles were yellow and I would have liked to have seen
color-coded handles. I should also mention that I learned in
push-pull knob airplanes, so I've always had an unjustified prejudice against
the lever style throttles.
It was a cool day in the upper fifties
or lower sixties, so with the 100hp Rotax at full
throttle we were off the ground in short order, climbing at about
700fpm at gross weight. The visibility was very good in all
directions except for straight back, and down through each wing.
The Festival doesn't have the fighter-pilot visibility of the Sting or the
Evektor SportStar with their full bubble canopies, but it beats the pants off
of a typical Cessna or Piper. If you flight instruct in
this thing, bring a hat and some sunscreen or you'll be crisp after a full
day at work.
We did a couple steep turns, some slow
flight and a stall series. It was a bumpy day with frequent jolts of
turbulence, and the Festival handled the gusts and bumps like a
trooper. It's very stable and feels far more substantial
than other LSA's that I've flown. It requires a bootful of
right rudder in a full power climb or in slow flight, but coordination in the
rest of the flight regime is simple. The rudder isn't overly powerful,
but it gets the job done without a fuss. Stick forces
are pretty good in pitch, but felt significantly heavy to me
in roll. In the Evektor Sportstar I fly regularly, you
merely have to *think* pitch or roll, and you're doing it. It's
great fun to fly on a nice day, but cross countries are work and beginning
students find it easy to over control. In the
Festival, you have to be pretty darned firm when you want
the plane to turn. The good news is that
students shouldn't have much trouble with over controlling, and the plane
is probably a very good platform for cross countries. The
bad news is that you'll be able to tell Festival pilots by their
Popeye-esque forearms. One thing that really impressed me
about Rick's deal with the factory is that he is *required* in his contract to
solicit feedback from students, pilots and others regarding the airplane, and
provide that feedback to the factory for design
improvement. In my book, that's good customer service and
good business. So if other folks agree with me that the roll forces
are excessive, the engineers back at the factory are likely to
do something about it.
Tooling along in no great hurry at
4900-5000 rpm, we were doing about 95mph. Rick mentions that if you
want to go faster, 5200-5300rpm will get you about 105-110mph. The
next airplanes out of the factory with their flush riveted wings might help
notch that speed up a little bit as well. But as Rick and I
discussed, the market for this airplane is flight schools, not
hotrodders. It's designed and built to be a trainer
and time builder. Folks who buy this airplane aren't really needing
it to go fast - they are needing it to go *solid* - and that it does
extremely well.
Back to the patch we head, and the pattern
is a bit of an adventure. We had a couple aircraft call
in ahead of us on the radio, a Cessna on a right downwind (Sikeston is left
traffic), and another aircraft who says he's on a two-mile
straight-in. We enter the pattern by flying a traditional 45
degree entry to the downwind. I pull the Rotax back to 3,500 rpm,
slow the plane down, get one notch of flaps out, and we're just getting
ready to turn base when I finally see the Cessna that was flying right
traffic. It's been at least a minute since we hear their radio
calls, so we figure the other guy that was on a two-mile straight-in would
be well down to short final by this time - but we sure can't
see him. I've just added the second notch
of flaps and I'm about to turn final when he calls to say that he's
on a 1/2-mile final. I take a quick look around and can't see
him at all. Well, that does it for me - we pour the coal to it
- milk the flaps out, and turn to the right off of our base and head back
to re-enter the downwind. We finally see him on short final,
and the rest of the pattern is uneventful. All the
while, while I'm trying to figure our the situation and I'm busy
looking for other traffic, and the bumps are ongoing, the Festival just
glides along and makes the flying part of the job easy. After
all that, I figure it's probably going to be easy to land too, and I'm not
disappointed. Even a couple last minute gusts on short final
and during round out don't shake it. I put it down relatively well
- not great - but good enough for a first timer on a windy
day. If I can do a decent landing in it with no practice on a
windy day, then on a calm day, you could probably
train the water buffalo in the back seat to land it. Even
if he screws up, the burly spring-style main gear and trailing link
nosewheel sure look like they can take a serious beating to
me.
All in all, I was extremely impressed
with the airplane as a flight school trainer. I think you
could hit it with a sledgehammer and you'd have to check the sledge for
damage. It has a few spots where it could be improved - mostly in
the finish detail department - and I wish it could make better use of that
cavernous cargo space with some more useful load. On top of
all that, it isn't the sexiest nor the fastest of the S-LSA's.
In fact, I told Rick that if I was going to buy myself a
*personal* LSA, I would get a StingSport. Of course I
wouldn't let students beat it up, and I would keep it lovingly stored in a
hanger instead of baking in the midwest summer sun.
But for a flight school - I'd pay more for
a Festival as a trainer than I would a Sting. To use a car
analogy, the Sting is a Ferrari. The Festival is a Volvo.
Which would you feel better about
turning a green student loose in? Which is going to cost less
in parts and maintenance? And which is going to better
handle a few thousand ham-fisted student landings? The Festival
is one of the the most reasonably priced, and is arguably THE
most comfortable, most purpose-built, and most well-thought-out of
the S-LSAs when it comes to training. A flight school with a
fleet of Festivals is going to have a low, low maintenance bill. I
haven't checked on insurance yet, but if the insurance companies realize the
safety aspects of the aircraft and it's overbuilt structure, it's likely to
have the lowest insurance premiums as well. In my opinion, this
airplane is well positioned as a trainer and is a real bargain at it's
price level. Especially with the special that Rick is running on the first
10 airplanes.
Andy
Andrew Mueller
(314) 779-7197
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