Lazair series | |
---|---|
Ultraflight Lazair Series II | |
Role | ultralight personal, trainer aircraft and police observation aircraft |
National origin | Canada |
Manufacturer | Ultraflight Aircraft Sales |
Designer | Dale Kramer |
First flight | 1978 |
Introduction | 1979 |
Primary users | private owners Monterey Park Police Department |
Produced | 1979 -1984 |
Number built | more than 2000 |
Unit cost |
USD$4600 (1983)
|
Variants | Blue Yonder EZ Fun Flyer |
The Ultraflight Lazair is a family of Canadian designed and built twin-engine ultralight aircraft that were sold in kit form between 1979 and 1984.
With a total production of over 2000 aircraft delivered the Lazair series is the most produced Canadian-designed aircraft.
The designer of the Lazair, Dale Kramer, was an aeronautical engineering student at the University of Toronto when he attended the Oshkosh EAA convention in 1977. He was very impressed with the potential of the ultralight aircraft designs that he saw there and returned with a Superfloater glider kit. Convinced that improvements to the design were possible, Kramer started with a blank sheet of paper and designed a completely new aircraft, even going so far as to design a custom airfoil for it.
The design features a constant taper wing with a progressive and constant washout from root to tip. Combined with an airfoil that is cambered with concave portions on both the top and bottom surfaces, this produced an aircraft with optimized low-speed handling and very gentle stall characteristics. The wing is constructed from an aluminum "D" cell leading edge, foam ribs and an aluminum tubular trailing edge. The aircraft also featured some of the first winglets used on light aircraft.
The very long wing made the Lazair a good glider, giving it a 12:1 glide ratio, and it could be soared in even light thermal conditions.
Kramer named the aircraft “Lazair” as a contraction of “Lazy-Air”, a comment on the slow cruise speed of the aircraft, which was about 40 mph (64 km/h).