What an ultralight airplane should look like!

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More photos of the Belite Burgundy Ultralight Aircraft, which even as I write this is being loaded on the truck to head to Sun N Fun!:

(more photos can be found here)

Belite Aircraft UltraCub climbs out.  Looks like nostalgic Cub.  :-)

Belite ultralight airplane:  UltraCub passes overhead.

Head on profile of Belite ultralight airplane.

Over the fence in an UltraCub from Belite!

Almost directly overhead in the burgundy Belite.

Taxiing for takeoff.

Belite one pointer landing, PPG in distance.

Short final in a Belite ultracub.  Sweet!

Wild Mustang Horses in Kansas Flint Hills

Please note: James' blog has moved to a Wordpress site. To access it, please visit http://jameswiebe.wordpress.com/. All posts have been transferred to the new site, and all new posts will only be accessible via Wordpress. Thank you for your interest!


Quickly stated:

The shop gang installed the removable fairing on the back of the UltraCub, which made it look like a baby cub.  I was eager to fly it.

I flew the UltraCub from home base out to the Flint Hills (which are east of Wichita), where I took high res pictures of Wild Mustang horses, then returned home.  It was a 90 minute flight; and I used 2.5 gallons gasoline.  I returned with 90+ minutes fuel reserve at home base (slightly more than half tank remaining).  Fuel consumption:  1.67 gallons per hour.  Estimated fuel economy:  about 34 mpg.

Gentle Readers, the horse pictures are eye-popping, and you have to go to our belite flickr account to see them all.

Here's the link to the Wild Mustang horse photos on Flickr.  I have a couple of selected photos from the flight below.  The remainder of the wild horse photos (and there awesome photos of the horses) are on flickr.

Flint Hills, photo taken from Belite UltraCub ultralight airplane.

Wild Mustang Horses, photo taken from Belite ultralight airplane

Also note that that the four stroke UltraCub is now flying with the removable tail fairing attached:

Belite UltraCub ultralight airplane with four stroke engine

Walking the UltraCub 4 stroke ultralight airplane back to the hangar.

I used to do this flight in my Flight Design CTLS; it is absolutely a gift from God to be able to do it in the Belite.  I'm back to cruising around.  I'm planning cross countries to Oshkosh and Idaho.

Total time in the Burgundy UltraCub to date:  5.4 hours.

Here's the map of this adventure:

Wild Mustang Flight to the flint hills and back.

Flight speeds outbound to the flint hills averaged 65mph; return flight averaged 45mph.  Average groundspeed:  about 55mph.  You can see the variance on the position spacing above.  Cruise RPM varied from 2500 to 2700 rpm.