RANS S 4 Coyote of New Zealand

I am lining up to do a series of posts on RANS S 6s of New Zealand ( and there have been a lot of them), but to do so I need to provide the background to the roots of the S 6 Coyote II.  These roots are in the single seat RANS S 4 Coyote of which we have had only one registered in New Zealand.

The S 4 Coyote was in turn a development of the S 2 which was designed in 1982 by Randy Schittler (the owner of RANS Aircraft, now RANS Designs Inc).  He was dissatisfied with the existing microlight designs of the time and thought he could do better.  The S 4 has a 4130 steel tube cockpit cage with the rear fuselage, tail surfaces and wings built from aluminium tube.  It was usually powered by a 40 HP Rotax 447 or a 50 HP Rotax 503 2-stroke engine, and with the 503 it cruised at around 70 mph and stalled at 27 mph.

The S 4 had an empty weight of around 325 pounds (147 Kg) and a MAUW of 587 pound (266 Kg).  It was 17 feet long (5.18 metres) and had a wingspan of 29 feet 6 inches (8.99 metres) with a wing area of 127 square feet.

Our only RANS S 4 is ZK-JPZ (c/n 802312) which was built by Warren Bezzant of Timaru and was first registered on 7/4/04 (actually after our first S 6).  It was sold to DT Davies of Fairlie on 1/3/07 and then to AC Reid of Fairlie on 2/6/13.  It is currently for sale on Trade Me from where I obtained the photo.