Pictures

No no ...not a bi-plane!

A collection of pictures of which I got permission to use by Ron Ligeti.

Charles Ligeti made many flights in the prototypes. Sadly ... he got killed in his Stratos due to some devise which was later added to the production version (last version made by Charles Ligeti). His son Ron is working now one a remake of Stratos. He found out what the reason of the accident was. In his letters he writes me that the first prototype didn't had the same mistake.

You can clearly see what happens on the ground due to the central landing gear. The airplane leans towards one side! I once read in a article about another airplane that this does not give any problems during take off if you keep the wheel towards the wind at the ground as long as possible. Once you have good control speed, you steer the wings level (using the ailerons) and take off.

The recognizable profile of the Stratos.A arrow in the sky.

Charles Ligeti working on the production model.

Ducted fans can improve the static thrust of a airplane. But ... damage of the rear mounted prop by rocks was a problem at first. Some device was later added to prevent this.

In the Stratos a pilot is lying backwards just like in a modern glider.This makes the frontal area of the airplane smaller.The drag gets lower this way. The performance gets higher.And ... you can relax in the air. I got a mail from the person in this picture (Romeo F. Garcia) about the devise that was installed on the production version. Later it was said to have been the reason for the crash. Romeo Garcia tells me: "It was not designed to produced lift but rather just some sort of an open air deflector to maximize the flow of air to the ducted fan, it was also supposed to keep the stone away from the fan blades when the aircraft is taxing, we were having problem with damage fan blades and as designed it was successful. it added to the thrust from the ducted fan. My only concern at that time is that we had exceeded the rules on making so many improvements on the aircraft that was already so perfectly beautifully designed, but Charles was always full of ideas, he was not satisfied that I one day I told him, "Charles why don't we leave Stratos alone and design a new aircraft?, and he just said , Stratos is not yet finish."