The Ravin 500 is a South African

amateur-built aircraft Homebuilt aircraft, also known as amateur-built aircraft or kit planes, are constructed by persons for whom this is not a professional activity. These aircraft may be constructed from "scratch", from plans, or from assembly kits.Armstrong, Kenn ...

, designed and produced by Ravin Aircraft of

Pretoria Pretoria () is South Africa's administrative capital, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government, and as the host to all foreign embassies to South Africa. Pretoria straddles the Apies River and extends eastward into the foot ...

. The aircraft first flew on 15 September 2002 and is supplied as a kit for amateur construction or as a complete ready-to-fly aircraft.Vandermeullen, Richard: ''2012 Kit Aircraft Buyer's Guide'', Kitplanes, Volume 28, Number 12, December 2011, page 69. Belvoir Publications. ISSN 0891-1851

Design and development

The Ravin 500 is based on the design of the

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It ha ...

Piper PA-24 Comanche The Piper PA-24 Comanche is an American four-seat or six-seat, low-wing, all-metal, light aircraft of semimonocoque construction with tricycle retractable landing gear. Piper Aircraft designed and developed the Comanche, which first flew on Ma ...

, but rendered in composite materials and scaled down some 6–7%. The Ravin 500 features a cantilever

low-wing A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing confi ...

, a four-seat enclosed cabin, accessed by doors, retractable

tricycle landing gear Tricycle gear is a type of aircraft undercarriage, or ''landing gear'', arranged in a tricycle fashion. The tricycle arrangement has a single nose wheel in the front, and two or more main wheels slightly aft of the center of gravity. Tricycle g ...

and a single engine in

tractor configuration In aviation, the term tractor configuration refers to an aircraft constructed in the standard configuration with its engine mounted with the propeller in front of it so that the aircraft is "pulled" through the air. Oppositely, the pusher co ...

. The cabin is wide. The aircraft's span wing has an area of and mounts flaps as well as

winglets Wingtip devices are intended to improve the efficiency of fixed-wing aircraft by reducing drag. Although there are several types of wing tip devices which function in different manners, their intended effect is always to reduce an aircraft' ...

. The aircraft's recommended engine is the

Lycoming IO-540 The Lycoming O-540 is a family of air-cooled six-cylinder, horizontally opposed fixed-wing aircraft and helicopter engines of displacement, manufactured by Lycoming Engines. The engine is a six-cylinder version of the four-cylinder Lycoming O- ...

four-stroke powerplant. Construction time from the supplied kit is estimated as 1400 hours.

Operational history

The company reported that by December 2013 that a total of 22 aircraft or kits had been supplied and that 17 of these have been completed and flown.

Specifications (Ravin 500)

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://www.ravininternational.com Homebuilt aircraft Single-engined tractor aircraft