Showing its Metal
Light Sport Aircraft were intended to be exactly that: light. With customer demands for swish avionics, leather seats and more powerful engines raining down on manufacturers, it shouldn’t be any surprise that basic empty weights of many LSAs are now pushing over the 400 kg mark, eating into useful loads that were already on the limit of practical.
Czech company DirectFly has taken it on themselves to restore the LSA to what it was always supposed to be: a simple, practical aeroplane that is easy and fun to fly, but can still carry a decent load without having to leave fuel behind.
And it’s made of metal.
The DirectFly Alto 912TG first caught my eye at Avalon this year. It was probably the sparkling red colour that did it, but it took only a couple of minutes’ inspection for me to start seeing that this machine’s beauty was a lot more than skin deep; it had allure in functionality as well. Low-wing, tricycle undercart, easy to get into and out of, decent baggage compartment accessible from the seats, stick controls, vernier throttle, Rotax 912 up front.
It certainly looked the goods and attracted plenty of admirers at Avalon to support the early evaluation.
Needing to know more, I ventured down to what is becoming the LSA centre of Victoria: Tyabb. There I met up with AeroEdge’s Ido Segev, a well known character in the LSA and aerobatic communities in Australia. Segev selected the Alto as an ideal aeroplane to suit the basic needs of local LSA customers, and introduced the species to this country.
DirectFly has had the Alto on the market for several years, but being a simple, unpretentious aeroplane, it struggled to cement itself in the lucrative US market, where customers are concerned more
