Flying the Fk9 ELA

At the same day I flew gliders at Nummela, I also got a chance to fly my Fk9 ELA ultralight for the first time this year. The Fk9 is an ultralight plane that my father bought together with his friend for the purpose of leisure trips and recreational flying. The plane was flown to Finland in the spring 2010 and from there on it's been flown for about 300 hours. I think I've flown a little over half of those hours.

The OH-U619. Quite a nice and sleek side profile!

The Fk9 ELA is a German-designed two seat ultralight fitting into the new European light aircraft category. It has been in production since 1989 with over 400 sold individuals. The aircraft is of conventional layout featuring a hight wing with struts, side-by-side seating, flaps and fixed undercarriage. The ELA version is made almost entirely of composite material and features winglets. My plane has a Rotax 912 ULS (100hp) engine installed, which gives it enough power for float operations (which we originally considered trying out but the idea has now been put on hold) and more than enough power for land operations.

A very comfortable "working environment". Notice the slight bank angle caused by the pilot taking pictures and not concentrating on flying!

This individual has a number of additional features installed particularily in the cockpit. The avionics feature a nice Dynon EFIS dislay and a large Garmin GPS with lots of easy-to-use flight planning features. It really makes cross-country flying easy although I always have paper charts on board too. On top of the EFIS, there's a traditional altimeter and airspeed indicator in case of an electrical problem.

On the right there's an electronic multi-function engine display, showing the RPM, CHT and fuel flow, for example. It now shows a typical cruise situation with about 4200 RPM, cylinder head temperature of 73 degrees and fuel flow of about 11 litres per hour. You could also cruise continuously with a higher RPM and thus greater speed but then fuel consumption increases to about 15 litres per hour and I don't like the high-pitched sound the engine makes. When flying ultralights, there shouldn't be any hurry in the first place :)

On the top center, there's a multi-informaton display showing for example the flap positions and fuel quantity (although I always use the mechanical fuel gauges). What's especially handy is that this display also includes electronic checklists, which are easy and natural to use. The checklist dissappears only if you've clicked all the items once, so it's hard to miss anything, and with a double click it automatically moves on to the next checklist. Very nice!

Dusk at Nummela

The Fk9 ELA is an absolute joy to fly. It's handling characteristics are very forgiving and the plane is very stable yet still easy to manoeuvre. It has a cruise speed of about 105 knots so it's a bit faster than a Cessna 152. Rate of climb is about 1000ft/min and stall speed is 35 knots. Stalling is almost "dangerous", since it is so uneventful and calm that you barely notice the whole thing! So it's a good idea to watch the ASI especially when landing.

A few challenges with the Fk9 is that it's quite slick and really doesn't like to slow down so quite a large power reduction is required on downwind to achieve Vfe. The airplane has three flaps settings and with full flaps it finally really slows down and you easily feel the additional drag in the cockpit when selecting full flaps. With full flaps the Fk9 can be very slow and it almost feels like you could land the plane with zero ground speed.

Overall, this has to be one of the best ultralights out there and I've noticed this plane has gained lots of positive attention everywhere it goes!

Here's some specifications (stolen from wikipedia):


General characteristics

• Capacity: 2

  

  A view from the front, nice three-blade propeller.

• Length: 5.85 
• Wingspan: 9.85 m
• Height: 2.15 m
• Wing area: 11.60 m²
• Empty weight: 278 kg
• Max takeoff weight: 544 kg or national ultralight limit (472,5kg in Finland)
• Powerplant: 1 × Rotax 912 ULS 4-cylinder horizontally opposed (100 hp)
• Propellers: 3-bladed Junkers with ground-adjustable pitch

Performance

• Cruise speed: 196 km/h; 106 knots at 75% power
• Stall speed: 64 km/h; 35 knots
• Never exceed speed: 230 km/h; 124 knots
• Range: 1,000 km; 540 nmi
• g limits: +6.01/-3.0
• Rate of climb: 5.0 m/s (980 ft/min)

The "Six One Niner" parked near Nummela's runway 04

This time I didn't fly much mainly due to the lack of fuel on board. I didn't have the time to get more and refuel the plane since my main focus was getting the glider flights done. So I made some short hops around Nummela airfield waiting for a my turn to hop in to the glider. I practised some stalls and made a few landings with different configurations.

I can't wait to start cross-country flying with this later on and enjoy my last summer of recreational ultralight flying before gaining my CPL and moving on to single-engine piston airplanes. I already have a lot of passengers who've asked for a chance to get a ride in this one. I think I'll be once again flying to Mariehamn often, since that's my favourite route here in Southern Finland. There's even a restaurant with a chance to order a 1kg steak, and we've already made a pact with a friend.. :)