One of the 1000+ SportPlane Profiles Destined For The Next SportPlane Resource Guide

E-I-C Note: The eSPRG and ANN staff have been working furiously, behind the scenes on a new All-Digital, Next-Generation, SportPlane Resource Guide.

In addition to nearly 100 'How-To' chapters, dozens of appendices, THOUSANDS of videos and images, and other fonts of SportPlane knowledge, we estimate that some 1000 or so SportPlanes and Sport Aircraft will eventually be profiled. Herewith; a sample profile of one of the many, many, MANY aircraft coming up for the next eSPRG... while also noting that the published eSPRG profiles will also include even more info, pictures, data and (where possible) detailed and carefully critical Report Cards detailing the capabilities and suitability of the manufacturer and the aircraft in question. We have a massive job ahead of us... and the first few hundred pages, of the 2000 or so that we expect to publish online, will hit the AeroVerse in just a few weeks... Don't miss them! YOUR suggestions and comments about this, and other concepts and formats, planned for the eSPRG are not only welcomed, but STRONGLY encouraged... after all, we're doing this for YOU... the current and future SportPlane reader, owner, builder, and pilot.

The FFP Avenger: Founded in 1984 and specializing in scaled-down reproductions of classic aircraft, Dorchester, Ontario’s Fisher Flying Products graces the homebuilt market with affordable aircraft kits from which builders running a gamut from the greenest novice to the saltiest veteran can fabricate flying-machines as slick-looking and agile as they are aerodynamically stable and easy to operate.

One of over a dozen models currently offered by Fisher Flying Products, the Avenger most closely approximates the low-wing, monocoque, conventional empennage architecture characteristic of classic light aircraft. Fisher’s literature asserts—and rightly so—that the Avenger was designed to be contemporaneously attractive and inexpensive.

In both its Ultralight and Experimental iterations, the Avenger’s fuselage measures 16’3”. The airplane’s asymmetrically-cambered, Hershey-Bar wings span 27’ and easily support its maximum gross weight of six-hundred-pounds. Aviators predisposed to fits of yanking and banking will take comfort in knowing the Avenger is designed to withstand G-loads of +4 and -2.5.

The Ultralight Avenger can be engined with Rotax’s now out-of-production, 26-Hp 277 powerplant or Hirth’s two-stroke, single-cylinder, 22-Hp F-33 mill. The Experimental model derives its get-up-and-go from either Rotax’s two-stroke, inline-two-cylinder, 41-Hp 447 engine, or its larger sibling, the two-stroke, inline-two-cylinder, 50-Hp Rotax 503.

Fisher offers a third variant, the Avenger V, which features higher empty and maximum weights, and is powered by a 65-Hp, air-cooled, Volkswagen engine.

The Ultralight and Experimental Avengers cruise at 52-knots and share a Vne speed of 82-knots. Both versions stall—albeit in an undisclosed configuration—between 22 and 24-knots. The Experimental Avenger’s 900-fpm climb rate soundly trumps the Ultralight’s 400-fpm—as do the relative brevities of its take-off and landing rolls.

The Avenger kit contains all the materials needed to complete the airframe, excepting the engine, engine mounts, cockpit instruments, pilot restraints, and paint. Individual parts are precisely cut to the correct sizes and numbered to correspond with numerals printed on the (included) aircraft blueprints. All wood components are cut dimensionally and all plywood is cut to shape. Metal parts are ready for installation.

The Avenger’s all-wood construction incorporates a Warner Truss frame, the 1/8” birch-ply skins of which give rise to the lightest, strongest fuselage currently available. Kits feature a pre-molded fiber-glass cowling and a molded windshield with a full-canopy for cold weather flying.

By dint of a company ethos that emphasizes quality and value, Fisher Flying Products continues to distinguish itself as a steward of the ultralight/light-plane industry’s original goal of democratizing personal aviation by keeping aircraft ownership within the purview of working people.

FMI: www.fisherflying.com, www.sportplane.com