Apollo Monsoon AS-IV trike first serial production model out at Sebring Aviation Expo in Florida. Ballistic Recovery System for the whole aircraft is included in the standard price for enhanced safety for extreme emergencies.
A weight bearing floor board meets the easy (low) entry and exit points and the contoured wide cushioned seating takes off any pressure points in the seating position. ASTM compliant and ready to be S-LSAed.
Angled mast with a roomy back seat makes for an excellent training and touring platform. A tall windshield provides very effective protection against the wind. It is possible to fly simply with headsets in the front seat at 80 MPH. Tundra tires on all three wheels provide the spring leaf suspension extra give and absorption. Large wheelpants with fins provide cleanliness to the Tundra tires and act to add directional stability to the flight even at highre airspeeds. All wheel hydraulic aircraft disc brakes with parking lock provide great stopping capability as with all Apollo trikes.
Wing Choices:
You will not find better handling wings whether you are into doing trike cross-country, flights around the patch for sport, mid day flying with convection turbulence and thermals or simply a little bit of everything. It would be very hard to beat the choices of combinations offered by us and to match the delightful handling offered by these wings on our trikes.
Safety:
Utilizing aircraft grade Aluminum alloy tubing, welded steel brackets, gussets and supports, the Monsoon trike is put together with metric class 8.8 hardware that is custom plated. The main landing gear is one piece 7075 T-6 Aluminum solid leaf gear similar to what you'd find on many GA airplanes. The very first flight will show the amazing suspension to the pilot reducing peak loads transferred to other components including the wing on not so nice landings in a training environment.
One of the most important safety aspects of the trike in flight is the wing and all three wings exceed ASTM design standard requirements and two have also passed the DULV German certification. To further keep the fleet safe, a fully documented manual set and bulletins for safety directives and service are part of the on-going airworthiness regimen.
There is a quick drain valve for fuel drainage and pre-flight fuel contamination check under the trike and back seat instructor engine kill switch and remote instructor engine push button start are standard on all Monsoon AS-IV trikes along with Aero-Tuff ASTM compliant seat belts and re-coil shoulder harness. A tall windshield is standard. 5-position adjutsable back steering (removable) comes standard and a cruise hand throttle reachable from the back seat for instructor along with regular trike pilot foot throttle is standard in every machine, however, an instructor may want to lock out the pilot front foot throttle as well as front brake pedals for those very first hours and that's easily possible with the Monsoon. In training environments at towered airports, instructors will welcome this feature with new students. The front foot pedals have 6 positions adjustable in less than a minute for pilots of different heights. There are circuit breakers to isolate eletrical faults. Optionally FAR 23 lighting (position plus anti-collision lights in one) can be installed on wheelpant fins for safety and visibility.
The color EFIS option can do a terrain look ahead and provides terrain warnings. It can also provide detailed 3D wire mesh view of the terrain. Imagine going into Eastern Tennessee and being able to see mountains ahead before you reach them. That's a feature you'd have trouble finding in the trike market. Imagine having a blackbox recorder for selcted portions of your flight that records all your engine and GPS parameters and then can be re-played on a PC showing your track and engine parameters over Google Earth in 3D.
These are powerful tools for training, cross-country touring with comfort that clearly puts AS-IV ahead of the game while the rest of the trike market tries to follow.
Ballistic Recovery System whole aircraft parachute is STANDARD and its installation is kept very clean and thought out into the design of the aircraft from the start. Monsoon was designed with training in mind and as such we decided to supply BRS as standard equipment on the Monsoon. This is the first and only LSA trike with standard BRS offering in the US market.
Engines:
Monsoon is offered with the following ASTM compliant engines:
* Rotax 582 (2-stroke, 2-cylinder 65 HP - not available for night flight) - 300 hour TBO
* Rotax 912UL (4-stroke, 4-cylinder 80 HP) - 1500 hour TBO
* Rotax 912ULS2 (4-stroke, 4-cylinder 100 HP) engines - 1500 hour TBO
Propellers:
There are two props offered with our trikes:
* Aero Prop 3-blade composite props
* Sensenich Composite 2-blade Prop for 912 (only available for the 912UL and 912ULS engines)
Avionics, lighting, electrical wiring harness and choices:
Monsoon AS-IV comes standard with Stratomaster Ultra XL monochrome glass panel that provides everything from engine monitoring to fuel flow calculation to all VFR flight instruments. All engine sensors culminate cleanly at a remote unit called the RDAC (Remote Data Acquisition Computer) that is located closer to the engine and then one data cable runs from the the RDAC to the actual panel screen that carries data in serialized binary format. Ultra XL allows a user to remove items that are not needed on the screen and change position of the items on the screen as well as change some fonts on the screen.
