In this Newsletter

- IFR SportStar now available
- new paint schemes
- Wide Bay Airshow
- Flying Training at Gympie
- Australian Flying SportStar review

IFR SportStar now available

In another first for the SportStar, Evektor Australia is very pleased to announce the release of the IFR SportStar. The aircraft is IFR certified under the Light Sport Aircraft regulations and includes a certified 100hp Rotax 912S engine and Warpdrive propeller. Owners have the choice of the 'traditional' analogue gauges or more modern flat-screen avionics (see picture), based on Garmin certified equipment. The IFR SportStar is certified for flight in non-icing conditions - as such it makes an excellent instrument trainer for commercial pilots. Several have already been ordered for USA customers, where it is seen as a highly competent alternative to the more traditional, heavier and much more expensive GA IFR trainers. So you can now order your SportStar in Australia in one of 4 specifications: day VFR for VH- or R-Aus registration; day/night VFR and IFR for VH- registration. As far as we are aware, no other single model of LSA aircraft can offer the same flexibility.

New paint schemes

Evektor has added a couple of new schemes to the paint styles catalogue, designed for ease and speed of repair, thus reducing costs for repairs after minor accidents. Aircraft are standard all-white, decorated with adhesive decals of 2 basic shapes and several different colours. In addition, the canopy top can be painted to give shade from the sun (although the retractable Koger Sunshield remains an option). As you can see - the painted top to the canopy gives the SportStar a quite different and distinctive look.

Limiting the base colour to white enables quicker and easier paint matching and no need for replicating some of the potentially complex patterns - which remain available as options.

Personally, I think the white schemes and painted canopy look excellent and I have ordered one of these designs for our next demonstrator aircraft.

Wide Bay (Bundaberg) Airshow

In previous years I have been based in SE Queensland, so attendance at Bundaberg was no big deal - just 90 minutes or so up the coast from our base in Redcliffe. However, following a move of office and spares to Victoria, displaying an aircraft at the 2009 Wide Bay International Airshow became much more of a logistic challenge. Particularly as the brand new SportStar we were displaying belonged to customer and was due to be delivered immediately after the show. Fingers were firmly crossed for a while, waiting for delivery of the container into Redcliffe and re-assembly in time for the show and subsequent delivery.

Many thanks to Alex at Vintage Aeroplane Services for a fast and effective re-assembly, inspection and sign-off in plenty of time. I test flew the SportStar and everything performed exactly as specified. Until the new owner arrived for a short flight - at which point the VDO tachometer decided to vary its reading from 0 to 5,000 to 2,000 to 3,500 rpm, all in the blink of an eye, and again and again and again. A brief examination revealed a broken resistor wire on the RPM pick up on the engine. Easy to fix! No, as usual on anything which needs fixing quickly, actually getting at the resistor to re-solder was a simple but time consuming task, buried as it is below the carburetors and behind the exhausts. Nevertheless, Alex had it fixed in a couple of hours, confirmed by a further 45 minute test flight.

The trip up to Bundaberg was uneventful - except for the thick haze, mainly dust blown up by a stiff westerly breeze, which was to persist over the next couple of days. But the rest of the weather stayed fine and a very pleasant 22 degrees for a Victorian now acclimatised to much cooler temperatures.

The show seemed quieter than the last one - certainly in terms of attendance - although there were plenty of serious customers around. We took a firm order for a Foxbat and several serious enquiries for the IFR SportStar (see above).

Now back in Victoria it seems a long time ago. But thank you Alex for getting the SportStar ready; and again to Brook Papworth for bringing his Foxbat along for display at very short notice following the drop out of another aircraft.

Flying Training at Gympie

Suncoast Cooloola Flying at Gympie have been operating their training SportStar Plus from Gympie for over 3 years now and it has proved a popular aircraft with over 2,500 hours of training and hire. Now a new SportStar Max will be joining the line-up. Owned by Peter Williams, the aircraft will be rented to Suncoast for training under CFI Jennifer Beck - the picture shows Jennifer and Heather, Peter's wife, collecting the SportStar from Redcliffe.

Originally intended as a new Evektor Australia demonstrator, the aircraft is well-specified, with a Dynon D10A digital panel, Garmin SL40 radio and Garmin GTX327 digital transponder. Avionics also include an AirGizmo docked Garmin GPS495 connected through the Dynon to give a navigator's dream.

All the usual SportStar standard specifications are included: Koger retractable sunshield, UV-proof tinted canopy, electric aileron & elevator trim, full dual controls, hot/cool air-blend ventilation, wingtip strobes and nav lights and the optional Whelen LED landing light.

Australian Flying Magazine reviews the SportStar

As mentioned in a previous Newsletter, Australian Flying ran a review of the SportStar in their July/August issue - with the great bonus of a picture on the front cover too.

The magazine is still on sale in newsagents and I can say without a hint of bias that it is a great read! Apart from the SportStar article by John Spiers, the Editor, there articles on buying an aircraft overseas, a flight test of a King Air (for those of you who are better heeled than I am) and a linked series of articles on careers in the airlines and all the regulars covering the vast range of aviation in Australia.