The Panthera is FAST, Efficient, and BEAUTIFUL - Flight Demo

about eight years ago i remember seeing this airplane first starting to appear in the flying magazines it looked fast innovative efficient and beautiful and it turns out that the real one is all that and so much more it's as if they took everything we know about modern aerodynamics and packaged it into a civilian airplane but it seemed like it would be years till it was ready then the prototype first flew in slovenia and after that they gave it a bigger engine among other upgrades in pursuit of perfection [Music] well i have some breaking news it's finally here and it's ready for the public it's called the pipistrel [Music] panthera [Music] the plane you're looking at right now is the first panthera in the united states it actually arrived in a shipping container about two weeks before i film this video it still has that italian leather new airplane smell but i know why you're here you want to know its specs so let's talk about them it has a 260 horsepower lycoming io 540 which can pull the plane up to 200 knots and it's not just fast it's incredibly efficient you can slow down to 184 knots and burn 10 to 12 gallons per hour which is about the same as a cessna 172 it's also a true four-person airplane with a useful load of 1100 pounds you can fill the gas tanks and all the seats and i sat in the back seat and i had plenty of leg and headroom and just for reference i'm six foot one it has a pilot co-pilot and passenger door which makes it very easy to get in and out of [Music] it's built with modern materials like carbon fiber kevlar titanium and inconel its titanium trailing link landing gear keep it light and give it those buttery smooth landings the center stick makes it a fun high-performance airplane to fly and with modern garmin avionics you have more than enough information to keep you safe it's also a hundred thousand dollars less than a similar equipped series and yes it has a parachute and it'll exit a spin [Music] i could keep talking about the panthera but you want to see it fly so let's go have some high-speed fun [Music] would you like to taxi uh sure yeah i'll give it a shot all right your airplane all right and when i taxi i you usually hold the door open like this just to get a little a little bit of air inside and then we'll switch over to the unico or ctaf rather inverness panthera attacking from right rudder aviation to runway one niner via alpha internet yeah and so one thing people comment on is the design is is very different it's non-standard right so looking out you know we don't have an a-pillar like you have in a cessna instead we have a center pillar and some people are commenting well it's a different design choice but actually your visibility is uh i think pretty excellent yeah i like like the having the pillar in the middle kind of puts you in your own little uh focused pod here yeah you know i i like it it's kind of i call i like the terminology of focus pod there yeah and of course it's a carbon fiber airframe uh they do use fiberglass in areas that need regular inspection because car fiberglass is easier to inspect than carbon fiber yeah and throughout the passenger spaces there's a lot of use of kevlar as well because kevlar well known for being used uh in the bulletproof vessen industry uh it can uh protect the occupants from shards of fiberglass or carbon fiber so that's yeah that's used in a lot of places as well throttle we're going to do 2000 oil pressures in the green 1400 looking for 2 000 okay we hit two thousand exactly we're gonna cycle our prop three times we're gonna check our involves inverse manifold pressure rpm there we go we're gonna check oil pressure dip and increase flaps are to 15 excellent engine parameters are good flight controls let's go ahead and do thumbs up ailerons up down up down apply the box and you can actually see your elevator moving back there yeah that's nice any questions no questions ready for takeoff ready inverness panthera departing runway one-niner inverness okay staying on center line smoothly applying full throttle until we're getting there rpms 2700 we have minimum finally a plane with some power and we have 70 we are rotating gears up gears coming up gears in transition using transition i'll bring the flaps up gears up okay oh man what a beauty oh yeah i've been flying you know cessnas and it's been so long since i've been in a plane with some horsepower you really feel the the g's on your back on takeoff and the engine is so smooth too got this little scud layer get above it and it feels like a like you're sitting in a sports car like a porsche or an italian supercar yeah or kind of like a rocket ship yeah man it's beautiful you want to go ahead and take the controls all right mic controls your controls i'm just going to do some engine parameters here that's one thing that the bet the controls are extremely well balanced you have push rod tubes for the ailerons push rod tube for the elevator the rudder is cable but you feel the precision i was gonna ask that if there are push rods uh and i love the center stick you know that's not very common in a four-seater like this it's like a pilot's plane you know for someone who really loves airplanes for for the just the love of aviation oh yeah and it frees up the panel space you know that's true cirrus has a side stick and that's i've flown a lot of seriousness it's still a little different to me you know yeah yeah and and another thing about the center stick is you can use both hands if you want if you have to you know yeah that's definitely true and i do that all the time actually yeah oh the ailerons feel nice too yeah isn't it like really precision yeah it'll lock into place yeah and you've flown the alpha which is the same precision you know with just the aerodynamics and the handling and this this you could feel is a bigger airplane for sure it's a bigger heavier airplane yeah would you want in an ifr traveling of course but it's still got that precise very specific feel to it yeah it's incredibly precise um we'll go we'll go up to altitude and show you some speed okay and the fuel economy that we can get we can probably go up to um like eleven five something like that nine five okay five so how does it feel to have the first one in the u.s oh it's a dream man yeah i'm like someone's gonna pinch me soon and i'm gonna wake up from this dream of having this incredible airplane i mean we're blessed to be in aviation period you know right overall across the world there's very very few aviators percentage-wise right and it's a dream to fly you know brand new top of the line the world's best personal aircraft you know i don't think i've ever been in a plane that was brand brand new like this one you guys got it delivered like a couple weeks ago yeah and we just flew it uh for the first time i had a five-hour fly-off yeah and i just flew that for the first time last week i flew that over two days and so that's one of the things still as we're looking through in social media people are saying uh you know that's not really real and i'm like well it's here come see it yeah right rudder aviation we're in inverness florida and we are the exclusive dealer for the panthera in uh north south and central america okay all right so probably what everyone wants to know is how would this plane compare to other airplanes out there you know most notably the series so this is powered by the lycoming i o 540 it is normally aspirated injected it's a reliable engine that is a proven workhorse has been around for years and years and um in comparison with the cirrus sr22 line with io 550 uh this is a much smaller displacement engine and burns significantly less fuel and yet the airframe is designed around efficiency so we're here at 11.5 so you want to go ahead and level off we're going to bring this prop back in a way is comparable to a mooney which is you're looking for that speed but you're looking for efficiency yeah and getting that speed so it's not just a brute force kind of exercise right yeah so uh we're up here at uh kind of a economy cruise kind of a setting which for me personally i would use in real life getting from point a to point b as a cross-country monster um so we're doing uh indicate or true air speed as calculated by the garmin g3x we're doing 183 knots and we're burning 10.7 10.8 gallons per hour wow 182 knots um and so that is incredibly efficient yeah um incredibly efficient and that's really the whole design ethos for this aircraft is how do we get somewhere fast very cost effectively and here's a huge aspect for the panthera is the uh holistic recovery parachute you know of course cirrus popularized the concept of a whole airframe parachute system as a backup uh for safety reasons but you know what they're kind of ashamed to say is that they had to certify it with it it cannot be optional equipment and that's because in the spin testing it's extremely difficult to recover a series from the spin it is possible but but very very difficult right now the great news is that panthera can enter and exit a spin normally there's no uh difficulty in exiting a spin if you were to enter one inadvertently great useful load 1100 pound useful load that's amazing and so it really is quite a practical family or business travel machine right now these are priced uh for the experimental exhibition version which can be delivered uh you know 9 to 12 months they're pricing around 600 to 650 000 depending on options and the exchange rate at the time and compare that to a series with similar performance specs you're looking at 800 to 1.2 million in that rise yeah and you mentioned that they are coming out with a certified version in 2022 which is right around the corner and so you can just see like we're what 185 now 185 and that's true yeah and then we're already in williston so we've basically passed three or four different towns yeah we're just hanging out here talking and you see how comfort it is it's your own personal airliner i love it newest airplane i've ever flown in yeah you're the third person besides me for the third person to fly in the united states and i'm i'm honored and you could just see yeah there we go yeah you got a pretty good roll rate right it feels really nice there you go you have to control the guy yeah so it's pretty it's really well balanced what are these uh model instruments excellent questions so obviously you can see we have a very well equipped cockpit um the main displays are the garmin g3x touch which i have flown for years and years which are these two large ones these two large ones um they are wonderful i mean you have your uh your pfd stuff over here and your gauges over here you know you have a garmin produced map you have your vfr sectional chart you can also switch it over to ifr okay so this is the gtn 750 okay uh xi and the gtx 650 xi and so these are navcom units uh and then we have the garmin autopilot of course and then of course to finish it all off as a total backup instrument we have the mid-continent instrument sam and this unit its primary function is to be the most reliable uh transport category the type of type of software testing and reliability traffic red helicopter returning oh man this is a actually a beautiful day we got here yeah the clouds are nice for a perspective you know oh yeah yeah it makes it yeah beautiful gives you some texture to the sky for sure inverness traffic panther is 10 miles to the northeast inbound full stop one-niner in vernon okay so we're gonna get set up for landing so i'm gonna go make sure full rich i'm gonna pull the throttle back a little bit okay now i'm gonna do 15 degrees of flaps inverness panther is on a two-mile final one-niner full stop inverness make sure full ridge prop full forward gear handles down we have three green out out boost pump is on we are ready say again is that that's right there i'm probably sick republic italy come check it out i will nice man is he a first one in the u.s you're like wait all right we're coming on in beautiful all that trailing trailing link landing gear that is nice gorgeous gorgeous plane thank you we think so too [Music] thank you to andy and the team at right rudder aviation for showing me what the panthera is all about if you'd like more information on how to buy a panthera or any pipistrelle airplane you can find their information in the video notes right rudder aviation is the exclusive dealer for the panthera in north central and south america they can also provide all of your flight training needs if you haven't yet like subscribe and visit the florida flying merch store until then blue skies and i'll see you on the next flight [Music] you

Channel: FloridaFlying

Views: 728,013

Keywords: Fast, new, airplane, plane, pipistrel, panthera, experimental, cirrus, speed, cruise, landing, takeoff, cockpit, atc, best, modern, beautiful, flight, florida, flying, piston, propeller, beechcraft, steveo1kineveo, mojogrip, fastest, cheap, affordable, composite, aircraft, review, amazing, rightrudderaviation, brand, icon, latest, to, build, homebuilt, certified, helicopter, turbine, turboprop, jet, patey, trent, palmer, aviation101, airline, airbus, Boeing, simulator, Microsoft, 2020, carbon, fiber, future, advanced, cessna, kitfox

Id: FRP_bCkE9K8

Length: 16min 29sec (989 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 05 2020