Sports Longer Ailerons, Other Performance Upgrades

This week, Sonex Aircraft, LLC told Aero-News of its latest purpose-built kit aircraft: the Sonex "Sport Acro."

Much like the Sonex Sport Trainer, the Sport Acro is a hybrid of features and option selections for the existing Sonex design, making it suitable for enhanced aerobatic performance, and offering an affordable entry-level aircraft for Primary and Sportsman class aerobatic competition.

The primary feature of the Sonex Sport Acro consists of new, increased-span ailerons. These larger ailerons are expected to increase roll rates to a competition-worthy level.

Aside from enlarged ailerons, the Sport Acro is a standard gear Sonex with a single center stick, which is the basic Sonex Complete Airframe Kit configuration. The Sport Acro has a five-point seatbelt harness configured to allow the pilot to sit in the middle of the aircraft for positioning directly on the roll axis, with the added benefit of making the Sport Acro an exceptionally capacious single place aircraft.

Upholstery, instrumentation and installed optional equipment have been kept to a minimum in order to keep the aircraft as light as possible.

Sonex Aircraft, LLC expects the Sport Acro to achieve aerobatic competition-class performance on just 80 hp, and the prototype Sport Acro has an AeroConversions AeroVee 2.0 80 hp engine under the cowl. Using an AeroVee engine and requiring a minimum of optional equipment, a pilot can build an aircraft for entry-level aerobatic competition for just $25,000 complete.

Sonex Aircraft sport full aerobatic category G-loading of +6 and -3 G's at 950 lbs max aerobatic gross weight (1050 lbs for the Xenos Motorglider). Sporting an above-average load factor margin, Sonex tells ANN its aircraft represent some of the most structurally-sound aircraft available in the kit aircraft market today.

FMI: www.sonexaircraft.com