Description

What can I expect on the day?

Get ready for flying upside down on this Bellanca Decathlon aerobatic experience! Take an American Champion Aircraft Industries designed light aircraft capable of aerobatics, add one highly experienced instructor, mix in one enthusiastic aviation fan (that’s you!) and you get a thrilling experience including inverted flight, stall turns and looping the loop, all from this friendly airfield in Staffordshire.

The Bellanca Decathlon has a reputation as a fantastic aerobatic training plane and in our experience, they are fairly rare in the skies over here. However, the aviation grapevine tells us a certain Top Gear TV presenter James May has one, which is quite unusual in itself as he is known as Mr Slow and this little trooper of a planr is certainly no slow-coach! It’s also capable of sustaining aerobatic stresses of +6g and -5g, has the fully inverted oil system so it’s ready to roll (literally) and it’s guaranteed fun in the air. Fully adapted for aerial manoeuvres, this Bellanca Decathlon also has semi-symmetric airfoil, fuel injection rather than carburettor and a 1.5 gallon header fuel tank, all in the name of maximising inverted flight.

So where will your Decathlon aerobatics experience take place? You will be in the heart of the Midlands, flying out of Tatenhill Airfield near Needwood. The guys and girls here started off as an approved maintenance facility back in 1987 and has grown to offer full avionics and the friendly flying school. They have a rather fine fleet of very well looked after light aircraft and this Bellanca Decathlon is a very popular member of the line up in the hangar. We think you’ll love it!

You will sit alongside the instructor in this two seater strut-braced, high-wing plane with joystick controls and, although it may look like a normal light aircraft, once airborne in the Decathlon, you’ll be blown away by the aerial agility of this plane as you zoom across the skies at top speed of 155mph, pulling some serious aerobatic manoeuvres.