Aeroprakt A 22 Foxbats of New Zealand (1)

The Aeroprakt Foxbat first appeared in 1996.  It was designed by Yuri Yakovlev, the founder and chief designer of Aeroprakt Ltd of Kiev in the Ukraine and it is supplied as a completely built up aircraft or as a kit that is claimed to take around 500 hours to assemble. I believe all of our Foxbats have been built up aircraft.  It has an all metal solid riveted aluminium monocoque fuselage with the wings and control surfaces being fabric covered with aluminium leading edges.  A feature of the fuselage is the extensive glazing which when coupled to the convex glazed doors gives excellent visibility.

The Foxbat has a length of 6.30 metres ( 20 feet 8 inches) and a wingspan of 10.10 metres (33 feet 2 inches) with a wing area of 147.5 square feet (which is quite a big wing).  Empty weight is around 260 Kg (573 pounds) and MAUW is 450 Kg (992 pounds) for the A 22 and 600 Kg (1 ,322 pounds) for the later A 22LS version.  Engines can be either the 80 HP Rotax 912 or the 100 HP 912ULS.and with the 100 HP engine cruise speed is around 90 knots, and the stall speed is around 30 knots.

We have had 3 Foxbat A 22's and 10 Foxbat A 22LS's in New Zealand to date:

Our first A 22 Foxbat was ZK-VAW (c/n 073) which was first registered to Sven Karmann of Whangarei on 28/4/04.  VAW stands for Vision Aero Whangarei.  It first flew at Whangarei on 26/6/04 in the hands of Willi Morton.  Willi Morton took over ownership of it on 29/10/06, and on 28/9/09 ownership transferred to A 22 Aerovision NZ Ltd of Moerewa (also Willi Morton).  It is photo'd above during the Northern Microlight Club's 2014 Poker Run, on 29/3/14.

It hasn't changed much over the years as shown in this 31/3/17 photo of Wlli Morton arriving at the 2017 RAANZ flyin at Rangiora.

Next to be registered was Gary Conroy's ZK-PGC (c/n 079), also an A 22 model, which was registered to him at Hastings on 10/8/04. It is photo'd above at Hastings Bridge Pa on 28/3/09.

On 21/6/11 it was sold JST Aero Holdings Ltd of Huntly and on 28/7/11 it was re-registered as ZK-MYD2.  It has since migrated South to Rangiora still under the ownership of JST Aero Holdings, and it is photo'd above at the RAANZ flyin there on 1/4/17.

Our third A 22 Foxbat was ZK-JTA (c/n 123) which was registered to the Finer/Hardwick-Smith Syndicate of Hawera on 29/11/05.  It is photo'd above at Stratford on 13/7/08.

And after quite a gap, our next Foxbat was registered as ZK-WES (c/n 100) on 1/11/11 to Wes Ruijne of Manakau.  (Wes has more recently imported a couple of Aeroandina aircraft that we will cover in a future post).  ZK-WES was first registered as an A 22 model but has now been re-designated as an A 22LS model.  On 24/2/14 ownership transferred to International Investments Ltd of Manakau.

On 14/5/14 International Investments Ltd re-registered the aircraft as ZK-JOM2 and finally it was sold to Jeremy Philip of Rangiora on 9/4/17.  It is photo'd above at its new base on 22/4/17.