Samolot Savage Shock Cub

After 13 long months of preparation, planning difficulties, calculations and tests, and after much fascinating work, the unveiling of Zlin Aviation’s new airplane has finally arrived. First, a name, a name that would be a testimony but would at the same time maybe even “shock” the aficionados of this type of aircraft, The word “Cub”, first of all, aims to express the typical DNA of our production, which is a fundamental aspect to us and to our Clients. In fact, having the “Savage Cub” (the best-selling of our airplanes since its presentation), and its technical and stylistic natural offspring – the “Savage Cub-S”, presented 4 years ago already currently in production, we could do none other than to aim to emphasize this proven winning formula , while innovating it with originality and new technical features. The word “Shock”, on the other hand, was added with strong conviction, and it aims to underline some important facts relating to the entire project – to pleasantly “shock”, with features unattainable in other planes, during one of the most important operative phases of an airplane, the final approach and touchdown, through “Shock Absorbers” specifically designed and terribly efficient.

After having constructed, sold and delivered around the world over the last 18 years hundreds of Savage aircraft, each one with its own specific personality, esthetic and performance range, it would seem unlikely that Zlin Aviation could manage to offer a new chapter to this varied and fascinating family of aircraft. To reinvent oneself continually, to innovate, to fascinate and to formulate new, exciting performance features has always been important to our small but fierce and determined “skunk works” team. Anyone who has met us in person can certainly attest to, among other things, the presence of one great denominator and catalyst of “stream of consciousness”….: a passion for true “Bushflying”. To continually study, to use the acquired knowledge from nearly 20 years of experience since the first flight test, to listen to our precious clientele, to re-imagine continually, ever avoiding the presumption to have reached the top (“Imagination is more important than knowledge”, said Albert Einstein), focusing our attention on all that Bushflying (understood as a way of being and living flight) offers and at the same time requires, enables us to proudly present today that which without a shadow of doubt is our maximum technical expression to date.

What Bushflying is and what it represents, true, serious Bushflying, which permits thousands of pilots in Alaska to live, to work and to fly, professionally or recreationally, with maximum safety in unlimited nature which is rare in beauty but dangerous as well, is easily enough stated. It is in the first place, in our “Vision”, an art. Our manufacturing company is situated in Europe, in an area which has much less of a tradition of this type of flight. But imagine a flight in a remote area, rich in fjords like Norway, or among the enchanting Swiss Alps or Italian Dolomites, or even over the endless and rugged Russian tundra, and you will understand how this art cannot be limited exclusively to any specific place. To be able to land “anywhere”, by choice or for necessity (for example due to a technical problem), in ridiculously small spaces, with maximum safety, at very low speeds, with a landing system that enables you to overcome almost any obstacle, in a manner which is almost unknown among LSA’s and Ultra-lights currently present on the market, cannot be underestimated or reduced to a number of technical aspects. We are speaking of flying and operating on any territory with an effectiveness never before seen, in contact with nature, for any reason, whenever desired, and practically without limits, leaving the pilot free to follow and express even his most primordial instinct, with the greatest safety possible and with great versatility. We believe that a performance similar to the Shock Cub can be found only in a helicopter. So for us, for our Vision, this style of flying is also “Art”. Flying art, but art nonetheless. The maximum velocity is not any longer the priority therefore, that the “minimum” velocity can become. In Alaska in fact, you will never find pilots of the Piper Super Cub (the aircraft that alone represents at least 90% of the two-seater planes in use in bushflying) who are interested in the maximum velocity, but you will always only find pilots interested in the minimum velocity and in the take-off and landing distances. And it is from those magic numbers, from this hidden pleasure that only slow flight offers and from these technical necessities, that actual competitions in short take-off and landing have emerged (over all “Valdez” in Alaska), which are avidly followed. The specialized press tries its best to describe the take-off and landing distances of the performances and maneuvers in these competitions with words like “ridiculous”. We at Zlin Aviation believe we belong to this category of pilots and airplanes, for which and for whom the maximum velocity figure is simply a number, whereas the minimum and approach velocities become a true “added value”. But art isn’t enough. Poetry is not enough. The philosophy which surrounds this type of flight isn’t enough. Bushflying is a serious thing, very technical and if you’ve ever talked to someone who does it for a living, you will have realized what’s truly necessary and what isn’t, in order to have and to give the utmost, in absolute safety. The framework first of all. Try asking yourself why more than 90% of the two-seater aircrafts in Alaska are made exclusively with tubes and fabric, “taildragger” configuration and tandem seats, the typical type of decades-old construction. When someone asks why Zlin Aviation still produces this kind of aircraft in 2016 (when the greatest number of aircraft produced in today’s market aim at maximum velocity, Carbonfiber, and ever further streamlined and exasperated shapes), he should just try to imagine having to land in extreme situations with airplanes that are not taildraggers, without the fundamental Bush tires and are constructed in aluminum, or worse, composites, incapable therefore to absorb even light impacts (certainly not much heavier ones) from obstacles on the ground, and so are practically irreparable by the pilot in case of damages to the outer covering, not at all a remote possibility, when flying “in the middle of nowhere”. Imagine then that all this happens during a landing 500-600 kilometers from the nearest city where you are alone with your airplane, isolated from the rest of the world and you’ll understand why 90% of the pilots in Alaska, Africa and other remote regions operating two-seater aircraft in the bush, use only and exclusively this type of arrangement. These pilots know what is truly necessary and they don’t want to hear about other formulas, for a simple reason: the magic formula already exists and it has shown itself to be the winning one for decades. And every error or experiment in other directions could be very risky. So, certainly this type of flying has its poetic and artistic undertones, but the technical and structural aspects must never be neglected, if we truly want to practice this wonderful type of flight. Our long experience in this sector and the continuous evolution in materials, in aerodynamics and in the formulas and techniques of super slow approach flying, have enabled us then, to construct that which represents for us the maximum expression of the concepts of bushflying, applied to the LSA and ultra-light market, in an attempt also to offer to pilots in other nations that which represents the height of the technology reached in this sector today.