This looks like a pretty sweet looking ride:
http://www.dougronan.com/1972%20Utva%2066.htm

There's one here at my home airport. I think I heard that the FAA would not issue anything other than Experimental-Exhibition AW cert, which means you can't really do anything useful or fun with it, insure it, etc.

Looks a little bigger than a 185 when you walk past it. As they used to say about the old muscle cars, "it will pass anything on the road... except a gas station".

Yet another neat old airplane that was built back when gas was 20 cents, and is simply not viable for most people today.

There are two here. They are built hellish stout. They eat gas like nothing I have ever seen with out a round engine. They have a useful about like my stinson, somewhat more but not what you would think. They are slow, 120 maybe.

Cool factor is high, operational cost is high, is not the plane that I would buy. Neither of the two here have flown in over 4 years.

Depending on the details of the relatively recent (in terms of flight hours) engine overhaul, it seems like a lot of plane for the money. If the airworthiness restrictions are too limited then it becomes an overpriced lawn ornament. The ability to mount machine guns and missiles, in addition to the fact that it has rudder pedal foot straps, might make the high fuel burn and operational limitations a little more palatable

EZFlap wrote:There's one here at my home airport. I think I heard that the FAA would not issue anything other than Experimental-Exhibition AW cert, which means you can't really do anything useful or fun with it, insure it, etc.

Looks a little bigger than a 185 when you walk past it. As they used to say about the old muscle cars, "it will pass anything on the road... except a gas station".

Yet another neat old airplane that was built back when gas was 20 cents, and is simply not viable for most people today.

That's truck stop/repair Chucks airplane >> me and Carl Gerker did the conformity on that yellow beast. Chuck got it after he wrecked his 185 . Another Chuck West flew with trying to get him signed off >>> UTV has a GO480 in front Glass windows all around and a "back window that opens" to put in stretcher .Bigger than a 185 inside , taller gear, big airplane set up for unimproved strips - glider tow skydiving etc.

Can't beat the sound of a geared Lycoming at full noise and a great engine if looked after, not for throttle bashers. EZ why would it go into the exhibition category? Obviously no type certificate but Yaks and 'changs don't have one either? The NZ CAA rules are very similar to FAA...

The only "Experimental" categories I know of that are relevant here are:

Experimental-Air Racing (severe flight restrictions, allow "to and from" an air race)
Experimental-Amateur Built (the "51% rule", not true here)
Experimental-Exhibition
Experimental-Flight Test (for new or modified airplanes DURING certification, very time limited)
Experimental-Market Survey (before starting certification, also time limited)
Experimental-Restricted (crop dusters, banner tow, etc. usually required flight crew only)

Not being a DER/DAR or federal bureaucrat, I don't know if there are any others within EXP.

It has not been certified to FAR 23, so it's not legally possible to do a "standard" category.... EXCEPT :

IF, and only if, there is a "reciprocity agreement" between the FAA and the civil aviation authority in the home country, then under the JAR regulations there is a POSSIBILITY that it could be given a standard airworthiness certificate. This JAR rule is why your 150 can be normally certified in England... and why the FAA will (eventually) allow a German LBA certified aircraft to have a normal certificate here.

I once owned a British built airplane (Auster Mk.V/J-1), and was going to try and get a standard cert. based on this reciprocity, but chickened out. The FAA guy assured me it was possible, but as the old saying goes... "not until the weight of the paperwork exceeded the weight of the aircraft".

In this case of a UTVA-66, the United States would have had to have a reciprocity agreement with the People's Glorious Democratic Leninistic Stalinistic Communistic Republic of Yugoslavia... in the middle of the Cold War.

Actually, the agreement in force in this case is not with Yugoslavia, but with Canada. If the great white north issued a certificate for it, then by the agreement with them, we have to honor it. Been though that with Atlanta FISDO once before. I have actually read the bilateral agreement, boring for sure. It is amazing how little our FAA knows about it. All I know, is once I found the relevant clause, they where happy and printed that page of the agreement stapled it to the Application for Airworthiness and it was a done deal, along with the Canadian paperwork. They said not my problem anymore and they didn't care any further.

It seems that this and the DO-27 are similar in many aspects, including in being really un-economical:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dornier_Do_27

Experimental Exhibition it is, including the Yaks, with one twist that EZ mentions above. This is an interesting read explaining how reciprocity operations would work using the YAK as an example bypassing the US Experimental Exhibition category but is generally used for commercial operations of the foreign aircraft. Have an attorney from the nation of origin on retainer.

http://copilotco.com/mail-archives/matr ... 07408.html

Dogpilot, I have posted this before reading yours. The ICAO agreement then can obviously can be done through a secondary country other than the nation of origin. Did not know that.

I had a Lycoming GSO 480 on a Seabee, lots of power, overhauls are extremely expensive!

Here's another one listed on Barnstormers. N number is listed as Experimental Exhibition.
http://www.barnstormers.com/ad_detail.php?ID=765905

There are many variations on the theme. I managed to operate a Canadian registered DHC-5E Buffalo under my US 135 in Kenya and Sudan. There was a couple of sidecar agreements going on there, but it worked. One of the pitfalls of using less than mainstream regs and diplomatic agreements is your FISDO may not see it that way or your DAR may balk at pushing the point. So it is all an education process of the parties involved. In my most recent use of the agreement, the portion is where a Canadian Inspector, capable of granting Airworthiness Certification, used engineering and regulations that meet their standards, then they de-facto meet ours. It all hinged on what wording he used on the initial issuance of the certificate.

Of course in this case it is kind of a guess, but this aircraft does have a regular Canadian registration, without any experimental markings I could see. So more information would be in order before making a definitive statement, like reading the file. It seems like one of this aircraft that would be fun for a week, then regret might set in. I save weird battles with feds over stuff that makes money, lots of it, or why bother.