Twice The Lift, Half The Drag?

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A motorcycle-racer-turned-computer-engineer-turned-airplane-designer claims to have designed a wing with “twice the lift and half the drag of anything in the world.” The wing is just one of the improvements Bill Montagne has made to the basic Super Cub design to create the Mountain Goat, which (hauling a 1,330 pound useful load off the ground in 300 feet) he touts as the ultimate bush plane. Montagne has tweaked engine performance and added safety features to the plane, which he says is now unmatched in performance. He claims a 10-knot reduction in stall speed over the Super Cub and a top end of almost 150 knots on 180 hp, in an interview with the Associated Press. Montagne said he came up with the design because he didn’t like the anachronistic construction of the Super Cubs he saw. “If you say I’m going to think completely out of the box, you can come up with something new — and that’s what I did,” he said. It may be revolutionary, but the Mountain Goat shares some common problems with other aircraft. Funding to get certification and production off the ground is hard to find. Montagne, who has sat with the design for years, estimates he’s spent $4 million of his own money developing the aircraft and needs another $6 million to get it into production. … Santa?

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