AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2014 - 52

This is the first Light Sport I have tested with adjustable seats on rails.
At age 90 it would be easy to say Pascale
is capping his career, ending with a highly
refined namesake of the 1948 design
(although it didn't fly until 1951) that had
been built from borrowed parts and powered by a barely working engine that fell
several horses short of its advertised 65
horsepower. That would be wrong. Pascale,
who still takes an aircraft off the line and
test-flies it, is now at work on an 11-passenger piston-engine airliner.
Italy is home base for sports cars, and
Pascale saw no reason why those who own
them should not receive the same quality
in a personal aircraft. The standard price
of the two-place Astore is $147,000 for a
ready-to-fly aircraft with analog flight
instruments, but with an iPad mini on the
panel and electronic engine instruments.
It has the standard 100-horsepower Rotax
912ULS2. That price includes shipping the
aircraft from Italy to the United States.
THE FULL MONTY. That's not the one that
came to AOPA headquarters in Frederick,
Maryland, from Tecnam's newly finished
showroom in Sebring, Florida. Flown by
Tecnam official Shannon Yeager, the first
Astore in the United States was equipped
with every option by its new undisclosed
owner. Its fly-away cost was $195,000,
and included a Garmin G3X touch-screen
glass cockpit and Garmin radios, a Garmin
intercom with music and telephone
inputs, a Garmin autopilot, a special paint
scheme, and a separate control panel for
the autopilot. The G3X has Garmin's new
angle of attack indicator that alerts using
a graphic display when the aircraft is close
to an aerodynamic stall. Base price for an
Astore with a two-screen G3X system
and 912iS engine is $176,000, while one
equipped with a dual Dynon glass cockpit is $173,500.
The $195,000 price included the
$12,700 upgrade for the fuel-injected, allelectronic Rotax 912iS engine, also 100
horsepower. The system also has two
regulator-rectifiers to provide electrical
power. Regulator Lane A runs the engine
management system while Regulator Lane
B charges the battery and powers aircraft
52 | AOPA PILOT September 2014

appliances, said Dean Vogel of Lockwood
Aviation at Sebring. Should both fail, a
backup battery switch can be thrown, and
the aircraft battery will keep the aircraft
cylinders firing for several minutes up to
an hour, depending on the volume of the
battery and how good you are at turning
off unnecessary electrical equipment. The
computer-controlled engine promises to
keep fuel consumption at the most efficient
level-no pilot input needed. The engine is
capable of powering a Light Sport aircraft
to 120 knots true airspeed, the limit for the
Light Sport category.
Tecnam dealer Yeager reported getting
111 knots true airspeed during the sevenand-a-half-hour flight from Sebring to
AOPA headquarters at Frederick but he
didn't have the ground-adjustable proTAXI TIP
The Astore has a
free-castering nosewheel
controlled by differential
braking.
peller option. That's only about 14 knots
faster than the P48, as the original Astore
was also called (P for Pascale and 48 for the
year of design, 1948). During a cruise speed
test after he arrived, the aircraft achieved a
speed of 113 knots. That seemed a bit slow
for a top-of-the-line light sport aircraft.
Once he returned to Florida, he flew tests
with the optional three-blade, groundadjustable propeller and reported 118 knots
at 5,500 rpm-the highest suggested normal power setting. The maximum limit for
engine speed is 5,800 rpm.
There also is a $24,900 option for the
Rotax 914 turbo engine that includes the
ground-adjustable Sensenich three-blade
propeller. Ground adjustments to the propeller blade angles allow for the highest
possible cruise speed or good climb performance on takeoff. Light Sport aircraft
are not allowed to have propellers that
can be adjusted in flight, which allow
fully certified aircraft to alternate between
maximum climb performance and maximum cruise performance.

There is also a Czech-designed recovery parachute option available for use
during in-flight emergencies. The 17-pound
Magnum 601 rocket-deployed parachute
for the Astore is $6,500 installed.
HARDWARE AND QUIRKS. Light Sport aircraft generally fall into two categories; they
either exude quality or look like the manufacturer emptied the local hardware store
for switches and fittings. The Astore falls
in the first category for engineering, fit,
and finish, raising the airframe design to
the level of sculpture. The throttle should
be in a contemporary art museum.
This is the first Light Sport I have
tested with adjustable seats on rails (many
use a combination of seat cushions and
adjustable rudder pedals) for both pilot
and passenger. Clever design includes a
rubber pad in front of the seat-once it is
pushed to the rear position-to avoid stepping on the leather seats during entry and
exit. Headset jacks are placed under the
armrest, eliminating the need found in
some Light Sport aircraft to demonstrate
the flexibility of a contortionist by plugging
into jacks behind the seat. Electric elevator
trim is transferrable between the pilot and
co-pilot using a switch on the panel, and
both pilot and passenger have swiveling
map lights at the top front of the canopy.
The Astore has an interesting quirk. It
is tied down for the night at the wings and
nose, not the tail, using an engine support
bracket under the cowling to secure the
nose.
When taxiing Yeager advises holding
the control stick full forward to keep the
aircraft from rocking back on its tail after
hitting a bump in the taxiway, unless winds
dictate some other control position. It was a
windy day when the Astore was flown on a
test flight in Frederick and especially during
an air-to-air photoshoot later that day near
historic Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, but
I never experienced the tipping problem.
DROP AND PLOP. There's little point in
noting that the Astore was stable during stalls (although there was a slight
wing drop during a full-power stall),
AOPA Pilot Magazine - September 2014

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