Anyone know about the Millenium Master ??

[Arclite01]

It's a microlight - or an SEP ??

How much do they cost ??

Are they still making them ??

Anyone flown one ??

they look spectacular, check out:

http://www.millennium-aircraft.com/images/brochure_en.pdf

Arc

[Fly-by-Wife]

Yes, it looks nice - but

Max weight 450 kg
Empty weight 285 kg

=> useful load is only 165 kg.

Not much room for fuel with 2 up. 2 x 80 kg (and that's only 12.5 UK stone) leaves 5Kg of fuel. And that's not including any additional equipment, parachutes, flight bags (forget luggage) etc. etc.

Pretty useless as a trainer or for "pilot screening", then*.

FBW

*Unless you treat it like most C150 / 152s are and ignore W&B.

[Arclite01]

Hence my questions - it looks like it should be a world beater but those MTOW versus EW figures just don't work for me..................... or are they wrong somewhere ??

Surely you would not go to the cost & expense of designing and building it for it to have such a pathetic payload/performance/range combo 2 up ??

Arc

[gasax]

You need to understand that this aircraft is a 'European' microlight. The rigid enforcement of rules is not a common occurance.....

Section S does not exist outside the UK and this understanding of these issues is common across much of Europe.

It will be interesting to see what EU wide EASA rules will mean.....

[Saab Dastard]

Interesting related PPRuNe thread here (http://www.pprune.org/private-flying/88268-jar-vla-versus-microlight.html).

I'm sure there are more.

SD

[Deeday]

I've still got a test flight report from the main Italian aviation magazine (April 09) and the conclusion was that it was still pretty much a fledging project.
The author was unimpressed by its marginal longitudinal stability. With two moderately-bulky people up, he suspected that the CG might have been already at or beyond its rear limit (they didn't have W&B charts yet, on the prototype). Lateral stability was no better: with that weird (and very sexy-looking) combination of negligible wing dihedral and marked negative tailplane dihedral, the result is that "there isn't the slightest hint of roll induced by yaw" and it's "impossible to stabilise a sideslip", with obvious repercussions on crosswind operations.
One of the best-looking light aircraft around, that's for sure, and with performance to match, but I hope its development didn't stop a year ago.

[Arclite01]

Thanks Deeday and Saab.

Useful stuff - I think it looks very much like and F1 car with wings !!. If they can get those issues (various) sorted I think they would have a good chance of market share - if the price was right.................

Arc