Belite ultralight aircraft, Belite experimental amateur built lightsport aircraft, Light Sport Aircraft Pilot News newsmagazine.

 


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.

Light Sport Aircraft Pilot

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Belite part 103 ultralight, experimental amateur built lightsport aircraft.

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.

 
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

 

 

Belite ultralight aircraft, Belite experimental amateur built lightsport aircraft, Light Sport Aircraft Pilot News newsmagazine.
Belite Part 103 legal tricycle gear ultralight aircraft

 
Belite Ultralight Aircraft on Muk Tuk Floats
Belite Ultralight Aircraft on Muk Tuk Floats
Belite Ultralight Aircraft Taildragger
 

Belite Grand Champion Ultralight Aircraft Taildragger

 

 

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Light Sport Aircraft Pilot

Ultralight News.ca  

Ultralight News.com

Lightsportaircraft.ca

 

 

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