The Vulcanair Is The Not So ‘New’ Kid In Town

Across the field there was, indeed, plenty of flying going on, aircraft strutting around the pattern in the daily flybys at the Sport Aviation Expo: a yellow gyroplane zooming down and rising back up and coming around to do it again (and again); a white and red tube and rag big tire machine on short final threatening to go into a full hover; and a little composite nose gear LSA demonstrating to the onlookers the opposite---that is, just how fast it really is, the LSA regs be damned. Regardless of what's in the air, the backing soundtrack at Sebring is the same, auto racing, the late-model sports cars rounding the track with their Doppler growls and whines, Porsches, Jaguars and the occasional Italian job, a Ferrari, maybe a Lambo, as they ricochet their laps around the world-famous Sebring International Raceway.

As much fun as driving the track is, and it is, the view from a sports car pales in comparison to that from a plane, and I was the lucky one here because I was going flying. I would, in fact, be flying in a brand-new airplane, one that's not really new at all but was new to me and is probably new to you, as well. That plane, the Ameravia Vulcanair V1.0 (words my spell-checker rejects one and all as if to underscore how unusual the plane is), is made in Italy and imported to the U.S., where distributor Ameravia outfits them and sells them. It hopes to sell a lot of them. I hoped to find out just how good a plane it was.

As we pulled up in the shuttle bus, the V1.0 (I wonder what owners will actually call it instead of the clunky designation) caught my eye, looking shiny and pretty on the temporary ramp on this far side of KSEB, a parking area created just for the airshow overflow, which, I guess, included us today.

Admittedly, the setting seemed inauspicious, and it was, but at the same time the V.1.0's pedigree is just that, "inauspicious." There are around 300 of the planes out in the field, many of them in Europe. That said, I learned long ago not to judge an airplane by its history. There are some really good airplanes that for one of a handful of really important reasons never made it big, and this might just be one of them.

Speaking of which, when I said the V1.0 wasn't really a new airplane, I meant it's really not new, as in, it's been around in one form or another for 50 years. And neither is the company new---well, not really.

If you've been around aviation as long as I have, and if you pored over aviation magazines beginning in the '60s, as I did as an aviation-smitten kid, you might recognize this plane, which has gone by many names over the past half-century (60 years, if you want to trace its roots a bit). The company that originated the V1.0 is Partenavia, an Italian aircraft manufacturer that got its start after WWII when brothers Luigi and Giovanni Pascale started building airplanes---their first effort was the Astore, which is the much prettier Italian word for "Goshawk." The brothers, who much later founded Tecnam Aircraft, a successful maker of LSA models and more, early on in their aviation careers built a four-seat trainer/light-use high-wing model. That plane, which with its high wing and nose wheel design resembles the Cessna 172, has been known as the Oscar or Charlie primarily. Over this time, it's also had numerous engine interior and systems upgrades, which probably isn't surprising. And like many aircraft manufacturers, Partenavia went through a number of ownership changes and reversals of fortune. In the mid '90s, the company went out of business, and its assets were purchased a few years later by a former supplier, Vulcanair, which today makes the V1.0, the airplane we were going flying in shortly.

The plane is impressive, though it's not impressive in the ways you might think. It's not classically beautiful, at least not in my opinion, but beautiful in a different kind of way. There's something solid and respectable about its lines. And it's not modern looking, either. Its lines, like those of so many of Pascale's airplanes, are squared off as if the plane is standing at attention at the "line up and wait" command. The effect is whatever the opposite of the Cessna Cardinal is. It's like Cessna designers had taken the 172 and instead of going with sleek, windswept lines, they went in the other direction to create a plane that was blue collar and ready to work. That's the style of the V1.0.

And it's not just the outside, either. The interior details are very businesslike, like the military-grade fuel selector switch located on the floor just aft of the sheet metal control pod, which, again, looks like it might be more at home in a warbird than a light four-seater. That all said, the weights and loads on the V1.0 are all very much in keeping with comparable four-seaters. It's just that the way it arrives there is with a very different sense of style and without the use of much plastic, which is something that speaks highly for the design, in my book.

Please don't get the idea, though, that I didn't like the V1.0...I came away, in fact, very much a fan of the plane, and my flight was one of the most enjoyable ones I've had in ages, though I have to admit it surprised me a few times...in good ways, that is.

My companion for the flight would be Ameravia's Ramon Pineda, a 15,000-hour helicopter and fixed-wing pilot from Venezuela with great flying stories to tell. He was a great flying buddy. As we waited for the fuel truck, we walked around the V.1.0 and remarked upon the design. There's nothing very surprising, really. It's a classic metal craft from stem to stern. Like Mooneys, the V1.0 makes use of a welded steel cage up front and built-up wings and tail. It's strong, with the added crashworthiness of a cage up front.

Ameravia's Argument

So the Vulcanair V1.0 is a four-seat, fixed-gear, 180-hp Lycoming-powered high-wing plane. Of course, that sounds a lot like the most popular airplane of all time, the Cessna 172, which is still in production and doing quite well thanks to it still being a terrific airplane and one that nicely fills the needs of flight schools around the world looking for a primary trainer to teach flying to the many pilots who are part of the big uptick in training we're seeing today. So with this need being so directly addressed by Cessna with its Skyhawk and, for that matter, by Piper with its equally highly regarded four-seat, 180-hp low-wing Archer, the question is, why the V.1.0?

As it turns out, Ameravia has a great answer for that, and it starts, but doesn't end, with cost.

Flying The V1.0.

The interior of the V.1.0 (we know not what the presumed V.1.1 has to offer or when) is a study in contrasts.

If you've been reading my flight reports for long, you know that I'm a fan of great door design, and the V.1.0's doors are among the best I've ever used. They are light, they are incredibly precisely made and they close with a barely audible click. All of those doors you've slammed and wedged and shimmied into place should look at these doors with awe. Respect.

As I said, the construction is mostly sheet metal, so the interior aesthetics won't remind you of any model of Tesla, but Vulcanair has done a nice job of upgrading the seats, which are comfy and supportive, and of incorporating new avionics into the panel. One downside of the V.1.0 is its lack of an integrated avionics package. It does have the Garmin G500 all-in-one PFD/MFD, which works in concert with a Garmin GTN 650 navigator---in time, the larger, more capable GTN 750 might wind up as the standard navigator, though. There's a second nav/comm and a separate audio panel as well. The excellent all-in-one Midcontinent standby instrument is installed at top center, so either the right seater or left seater can easily switch their scan over to it in a pinch. And while a G1000 NXi panel is great, the G500 covers a lot of the same territory and does it surprisingly well, too. And the plan for coming aircraft is to update them the G500 NXi instrument, like every other NXi version of a Garmin product will be faster, brighter, smoother and more intutive to use. 

The engine instruments are displayed on the bright and colorful JPI 930 digital engine instrument display, of which, again, I'm a fan, with its easy-to-read and interpret fields for manifold pressure and rpm, engine temps, oil temp and pressure, EGT, cylinder head temperatures, and fuel quantity and fuel flow, as well.

The seats in the flight test plane were covered with seat covers to prevent them from getting marked up before a customer brings it home, but the leather interior underneath, as you can see in the accompanying photographs, is beautiful. The seat belts are automotive style, so you can fasten the shoulder and lap belt with a single click. 

There are so many good things about the V1.0, and one of the best is the visibility for the front seaters. While the windows alongside the pilot and right-seat position are somewhat high, they have an ingenious cut out toward the front that allows for great downward visibility forward of the wing strut while also accommodating a generous, Piper-style holler hole, one on each side. The rear seaters have a generous bench seat with smaller windows to their sides, though the rear window is huge and somehow transforms the feeling of the cabin into a really spacious place.

But best of all---well, at least if you regularly carry more than a single passenger---is the third, rear door, on the co-pilot's side of the plane. It's a big, fully functional door that makes one wonder, why doesn't every high-wing plane have one of these?

Unlike most 180-hp trainers, the V1.0 has a constant-speed prop attached to its Lycoming IO-360 mill. The constant-speed prop does add some complexity to the training while also giving the student an opportunity to better understand just how piston-powered planes' powertrains work, the concept of a constant-speed prop requiring a greater understanding of what a propeller does and how we use it to our advantage in different phases of flight. The power controls are lever style with colorful anodized handles and, again, they look overbuilt...in a good way. The quadrant also houses the big trim wheel, which is in an easy-to-reach location.

The flaps are big and powerful. With 45 degrees of throw in an already-big-winged, slow-flying plane, there's probably not much reason to use all the flaps unless your intended runway is really short or you're just showing off. The flap switch has no built-in stops. You kind of eyeball it, letting the motor run until the flap position indicator is just about right.

There are a couple of exotic touches in the controls. The yokes are giant, and both front seaters need to be careful not to get knees in the way, and the rudder pedals/brakes are elevated off the floor to an unusually pronounced height. One's technique might need to be modified to take that into account.

I was warned that taxiing the V1.0 would take some planning to get the turns right. I found that not to be the case at all. Its steering is done with differential braking, and after a few seconds, I'd forgotten that I was supposed to remember something about it.

Likewise, on takeoff it's a piece of cake. The rudder is large and comes alive early in the takeoff roll. It was a warm day, and with about half fuel and two aboard, we were neither particularly light nor heavy, and the V1.0 kind of elevated in that way that planes do when they simply must go flying right now. And we were airborne.

The V1.0 has a shortish wing, just 32 feet and change in span, with a wide chord and thick airfoil. The result is an airplane that can slow down nicely, climbs great and has book numbers in cruise that are better than the Skyhawk.

In flight, this little Italian single is an absolute delight. From shortly after liftoff, it just cries out to be flown, and Ramon was just fine with me flying it. We did Dutch rolls, steep turns, slow flight, stalls dirty and clean, and power on and power off. Aerodynamically, it's as honest as the day is long. And it is not a feet-on-the floor kind of airplane, and I love that about it. In order to do coordinated turns, you need to use rudder, and the amount of rudder and the timing of its application change depending on which direction you're turning. It's not a plane that needs a lot of rudder, but it needs some. This, in my opinion, is exactly the thing that new pilots can benefit from, an airplane that requires you to use the rudder, because only then can you train a pilot to use it when it's necessary, like when the chips are down.

Not that the V1.0 is a hard airplane to fly. Far from it. The feel is delightful. Again, like Mooneys, it features pushrod controls for silky smooth hand flying. You need to know how to use a constant-speed prop, which takes a little training, some knowledge of the system and some attention to detail, all traits you want to teach new pilots. And you need to know how to use the rudder. Ditto to that one.

The day up top was even better than it was on the surface. The air was absolutely smooth. The sky was clear, I had a great flying buddy, and the airplane flew great. Sometimes in life things come together.

It was the kind of airplane that I knew I'd be able to land by feel the first time out, and I was right. By then there was a little crosswind, but nothing to worry about. Ramon suggested some numbers---they sounded slow to my brain, which is used to faster planes in general, but logically, from what I'd seen in slow flight, not quite slow enough. Which is how it always seems to work on first flights. The demo pilot always builds in a little extra margin, right? And sure enough, as we came over the fence, we had a little extra speed, so I let it bleed off---I used just 30 degrees of flaps---and flared it nice and nose high, and squeak, squeak.

There's no doubt in my mind that the V1.0 would make student pilots and their instructors happy, perhaps deliriously so. As I mentioned earlier, it might make the flight school owners even happier. The plane lists at $278,000, which is at least $100,000 less than comparable, better-known four-seat trainers. Having grown up in a family that ran flight schools, I know that there's more to a plane's value as a trainer than its purchase price, and Ameravia has its work cut out for it in making a case for this newcomer to be adopted in big numbers by flight schools that are concerned about all facets of operation and their impact on the bottom line, as well as their effectiveness as training platforms.

That said, the V1.0 has a lot going for it: a time-tested design, the most popular engine in the category, terrific flying manners and a dose of personality so big that even after a great day of winging around, it makes one want to go flying one more time. And then again. You get the gist.