Pipistrel Spider
The Pipistrel Spider is a Slovenian ultralight trike, designed and produced by Pipistrel of Ajdovščina. The aircraft is supplied as a kit for amateur construction or as a complete ready-to-fly-aircraft.
The Spider was sold in Europe by Flight Team UG & Company AG of Ippesheim, Germany and was sometimes called the Flight Team Spider.
By October 2018 it was listed as a "legacy" product and production had ended.Design and development
The aircraft was designed to comply with the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale microlight category, including the category's maximum gross weight of. The aircraft has a maximum gross weight of. It features a cable-braced hang glider-style high-wing, weight-shift controls, a two-seats-in-tandem open cockpit with an optional cockpit fairing, tricycle landing gear with wheel pants and a single engine in pusher configuration.
The aircraft is made from composites and steel tubing, with its double surface wing covered in Dacron sailcloth. A number of different wings can be fitted to the basic carriage, but typical is a span wing is supported by a single tube-type kingpost and uses an "A" frame weight-shift control bar. The powerplant is a twin cylinder, air-cooled, two-stroke, dual-ignition Rotax 503 or the twin cylinder, liquid-cooled, two-stroke, dual-ignition Rotax 582 engine. The aircraft has an empty weight of and a gross weight of, giving a useful load of. With full fuel of the payload is.
The standard day, sea level, no wind, take off and landing roll with a engine is.
The manufacturer estimates the construction time from the supplied kit as 150 hours.Operational history
By 1998 the company reported that 250 kits had been sold were flying.
