Light-Sport Prototype Unleashed in the East

To a greater extent than Honda, Kawasaki, and Suzuki, Yamaha is the genteel sophisticate of Japan’s Big Four motorcycle manufacturers.

At its heart, Yamaha is a maker of musical instruments—pianos, guitars, etc. The company’s emblem, unbeknownst to even most hardened motorcycle aficionados, comprises three tuning-forks crossed at a central axis. It’s a good emblem, a fitting one, an emblem that speaks to the adroit genius of an outfit whose engineers and craftsmen crank out one-hundred-thousand-dollar pianos and two-hundred-horsepower motorcycle engines with equal facility and aplomb.

In 1985, Yamaha brought its revolutionary Genesis engine to market. Slung low in the box-section perimeter frame of the marque’s famed FZ-750 sport-motorcycle, the Genesis was an all-aluminum, liquid-cooled, transverse-mounted, four-cylinder wonder featuring a devilishly clever, five-valve-per-cylinder induction system (three-intake and two-exhaust), the lighter valves and softer springs of which engendered higher revs, and higher, more linear power than conventional two or four-valve schemes.

Comes now the 21st Century, and Yamaha has hiked up its Hakama and waded into the aero engine market with its CP2, a 700-cubic-centimeter two-cylinder, vertically configured, liquid-cooled mill with a power-output of about seventy-horsepower. The CP2 is modest by Yamaha motorcycle standards, representing—more or less—one of the company’s mid-displacement sport-bike engines cut cleanly in half. Ordinarily, such an assessment ought be construed an indictment; but not within the context of modern motorcycle engines, which—pound-for-pound—are significantly more powerful, efficient, and reliable than their automotive counterparts.

Notwithstanding its cunning and grunt, Yamaha’s CP2 doesn’t stand to gain much altitude without an airframe to bear it aloft. Enter ShinMaywa, a Japanese industrial conglomerate descended from the Kawanishi Aircraft Company, and maker of the renowned US-1A and US-2 amphibious seaplanes. In cooperation with Yamaha, ShinMaywa has set out to adapt its aircraft engineering technologies and expertise to designing and manufacturing light aircraft.

On 21 September 2022, at Fujikawa Gliding Field in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, ShinMaywa conducted an early-stage flight-test of a prototype, Yamaha-powered small aircraft. Dubbed the XU-L (Experimental Utility aircraft Large type), the high-wing; single-engine; fixed tricycle undercarriage airplane is outwardly conventional, and evokes images of a RANS hybrid.

In a Yamaha promotional video, the two-place, dual-stick aircraft—registration JX0170—is shown taxiing and departing uneventfully under the control of a single test-pilot. The flight reportedly proceeded smoothly, and the aircraft returned to ground without incident. In a post-flight press-release, Yamaha asserted its intention to further pursue the joint venture with ShinMaywa, stating: “Following the success of this early-stage test flight, both companies plan to continue this joint research endeavor.”

FMI: usa.yamaha.com