Recognized For Engineering And Personal Aircraft Design

The Pipistrel Aircraft Team received two prestigious awards at AirVenture, which wrapped up on Sunday.

The company was the recipient of the 'Dr. August Raspet Memorial Award', which has been presented annually by the EAA since 1960 to "a person who has made outstanding advancements in the field of light aircraft design." According to the EAA website, "The first recipient of the award was John Thorp, Lockheed engineer and designer. Since then the list of people honoured reads like a Who's Who of aircraft design”, including names such as Curtiss Pitts, Burt Rutan, Alan and Dale Klapmeier and Gordon Pratt. Every year the memorial is awarded for "outstanding contributions to the advancement of the design of light aircraft and the experimental aircraft association."

On behalf of the Pipistrel Team the award was received by Mr Michael Coates, Pipistrel’s USA distributor.

Pipistrel's R&D engineer, Tine Tomažic, received a prestigious Personal Aircraft Design Academy (PADA) trophy, which evolved from the Laminar Flow True Believers Society that meets at Oshkosh every summer. The meeting of PADA now includes an award ceremony for outstanding designers of personal aircraft who achieve state of the art progress in aircraft performance and efficiency. This year's trophy was awarded to Tomažic, who is Pipistrel’s development engineer and the leader of the Taurus G4 development team. That aircraft that won the 2011 NASA Green Flight Challenge – world’s first electric four seat aircraft.

Pipistrel introduced their new 'baby'; the two-seat aircraft Alpha Trainer, designed especially for training new pilots. At the expo the Alpha Trainer received the LSA certificate, which allows Pipistrel to sell the Alpha in the USA and all other countries that accept the LSA legislation. The Alpha Trainer was publicly demonstrated in the air for the first time at Oshkosh in front of the massive American crowds. The Alpha received a lot of attention during the show. Pipistrel received over ten fixed orders with advanced payments for the aircraft. You can look for a report on the Alpha trainer on Aero-TV in the near future.

(Pictured Top: Michael Coates with Raspet Award. Bottom Tine Tomažic with PADA trophy)

FMI: www.pipistrel.si, http://cafefoundation.org/v2/main_PADA.php