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Old 1st February 2008 | 20:50
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Genghis the Engineer
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I think there's a few still flying, and I've certainly flown a couple of Snowbirds, but not recently.

Nice cockpit environment and quite reasonable performance. There are a few peculiarities - the original aircraft showed propeller rather than engine RPM which takes a bit of getting used to (although I think that most owners changed it for a standard RPM gauge) and I seem to remember an odd LED ASI that pretty much everybody replaced also, and the aircraft has no ailerons - it uses upper surface spoilers on each side this requires almost no rudder. As a result the aircraft was designed with a grossly underpowered rudder so has almost no crosswind capability. The other thing was the Rotax 532 engine which wasn't overly reliable - but if it dies I'm pretty certain that there's a mod to do a straight change to a 582.

There was a chap in South Wales trying to get Snowbird building up and running again a few years ago as a kitplane but he sadly died before he sold any kits and although she tried very hard his widow couldn't persuade anybody to take it on.

A nice aeroplane for its day, but I'm not sure I'd buy one now - primarily because if anything bent I'd have to reverse engineer and make my own spares, which would be a nuisance.

G
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