UPDATE: The Orion Cub has successfully made its maiden test flights, scroll to page 3 to see more.



Meet the Orion Cub, a modernized version of the of the popular Super Cub type design. Fully committed to build an awesome new bush plane and work on the prototype is in full swing. Our goal is to offer affordable homebuilt kits and ready to fly aircraft that are capable of proper bush flying, but also have a decent cruise speed. This all happening in South Africa, but plans are to expand to the USA soon.
Follow our progress on here or on these social media platforms:
Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/orioncub
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/building_orion/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpITz6 ... Q/featured

Looks like a Rans rip off. R&D doesn't stand for research and development, it stands for Rip off and Duplicate.

Single strut with a fabric wing? How are you accomplishing that?

G44 wrote:Looks like a Rans rip off. R&D doesn't stand for research and development, it stands for Rip off and Duplicate.

Is that a S7 at the beginning of the YouTube video OP posted?

Ho hum, and already pushing dealerships?! And selling t-shirts?!

Well... Rather a negative initial response from the community!

I suppose it is already a super-saturated marketplace for 2-seat LSAs in the backcountry scene. Both in Europe and USA there are many choices available, but also with options coming from Australia and Africa too. It will be a hard market to carve your own share from. Best of luck with your business endeavors!

With the medical reforms coming through nowadays, I do wonder when the LSA-bubble will burst and we'll see a more "normal" balance between heavier 2 seat GA aircraft and microlight 2 seaters. Plus all those who really want 2+ seats but cannot for medical reasons, until now.

Wish you well. Only suggestion would be to make sure parts and technical support are world - class. The aircraft is a very small part of the equation.

Is there anything ground breaking about the design? I mean it looks nice enough, just wondering what's different.

Comparison to the S7 is appropriate. Other notable South African designs appear to borrow heavily from existing designs and I've never been sure if that was done under license:
The Savannah (CH701)
Safari (Kitfox)
come to mind

[quote="aftCG"]Is there anything ground breaking about the design? I mean it looks nice enough, just wondering what's different.

Comparison to the S7 it's appropriate. Other notable South African designs appear to borrow heavily from existing designs and I've never been sure if that was done under license:
The Savannah (CH701)
Safari (Kitfox)
come to mind[/quote

I own a South African Lotus 7 clone. It’s basically a copy.

I think there is a legacy from when sanctions were in place of “if you won’t sell it to me I’ll just build one myself”.

Where you draw a line between inspiration and infringement is hard to know. Motorsport, outdoor gear, bicycles, music....

delete

No, thanks.

I appreciate everyone's response and the skepticism is totally understandable. Allow me to kindly clear up some of the points raised. The Orion Cub design does not have anything to do with a Rans S-7 design, the aircraft in the videos are just random flying shots of one of the owners flying in his modified S-6. The wing is designed to be an all metal structure hence the single strut, to compare its very similar to the Bearhawk LSA wing configuration with added slotted flaps. The Orion Cub designer and staff have many years experience building a wide variety of aircraft and has won many EAA awards for excellent build quality, so we will most certainly set the standard very high when it comes to the quality of all the parts produced.
Please note that this aircraft has been designed over past 10 years with many many paper drawings to show, so there is definitely not a single design copied with the Orion Cub. We might have gotten inspiration from the best parts from other aircraft and mostly from the legendary Piper cub and super cub, which as we all know is a popular design with many other manufacturers.

We will surely still learn a lot through our journey and I invite you to follow the process with us. It is certainly still early days, but we have a team working on it full time so hopefully we can deliver soon.

Attached are some estimated specs and performance.

It seems like the Zlin Norden is the true innovator. But I am following the Orion both here and YouTube as I like planes

Neat. If you’re trying to get our money in addition to our feedback, you’ll have to become a paying advertiser like the companies who pay to promote their products here. Forum promotion is a privilege only for those who’ve been genuinely engaged members for 6 months or more. I’m sure you read the pre-registration guidelines that touch on that topic. Please PM for more information.

We are still far from taking anyone's money, at this stage we are just excited about the project and want to share our journey with the world. Maybe we can inspire someone else to start their own project just like others on here have inspired us to do so. I just sent a PM and are happy to play 100% whithin the rules.

Utah-Jay wrote:It seems like the Zlin Norden is the true innovator

You can say that again. Worth checking out that machine, for those who have not seen it before.

With lead times running over 12 months for pretty much ALL of the backcountry airplane kits (Kitfox, RANS, Just Aircraft, and pretty much everybody else), NOW would be a good time to enter the market. Unfortunately, it seems like the Orion Cub has a long path ahead before one could reasonably place an order with expectation of an actual delivery...

(Spoken as one who STILL feels the "sting" from having placed (and lost) a deposit on a BD-5 kitplane that never came to fruition... It took every bit of my savings from two full years of mowing lawns, delivering papers, and doing odd jobs to raise the money for the deposit...)

Got some exhausting but rewarding work done on the cowl. Started the cowl plug with some CNC cut foam then worked it done to the desired shape and coated to create the final plug. next will be to smooth it out perfectly and pull a mold from the plug.

This is going to be fun to "follow"

Lots of composite work have been happening the last few weeks, mostly on the boot cowl cowling and engine cowling design, plug, mold and part making.a much easier job was to install the rudder pedals and brakes. We also received our Edge performance EP912STi engine, things are now getting serious!
Check out our latest video: https://youtu.be/rSiNhIGCssk