New Zealand manufacturer Vickers Aircraft has missed its self-declared target for the beginning of production testing of the Wave amphibious LSA.
The company was to have started building production airframes in the middle of this year, but according to Vickers CEO Paul Vickers, manufacturing processes are still not up to the standard the company is demanding.
"We are not only designing a product – we are designing the company that makes it possible," Vickers explained in a company communique. "We are creating a machine that can design a machine, a machine that can build a machine, and a machine that can test a machine.
"We are building an ecosystem of innovation, where each layer empowers the next, where each layer is critical to the overall success.
"The time needs to be taken now to ensure problems are solved today and not passed onto the production aircraft which results in ongoing manufacturing issues that drive up costs and cause further delays."
Throughout the 15-year development cycle, Paul Vickers has consistently focused on getting the product exactly as designed and avoided setting milestone targets that the company may miss whilst they continue development.
"This takes an incredibly disciplined and talented team, and that is what Vickers is," he said. "The rigors of manufacturing an aircraft in composites are highly demanding, and one that we take seriously. I have stated before that it will take the time needed to deliver a safe and affordable aircraft.
"Taking an aircraft into production is as hard as it gets in manufacturing with many years of design and R&D coming together rapidly, while ensuring all care is taken to produce repeatability and quality.
"Much of this year has been about this, ensuring quality and repeatability and testing this process via different mechanisms, including structural testing to destruction."
Vickers initially got an MTOW exemption from the LSA standard to enable them to give the Wave an MTOW of 839 kg, but that was raised when it became obvious the MOSAIC/FAR Par 22 rules would remove arbitrary MTOWs and permit a higher stall speed.
"Importantly, no design changes are required for the Wave," Vickers said. "Anticipating these regulatory developments well in advance, we had already increased the MTOW to 907 kg and adjusted the stall speed to 50 knots, which in turn allows for a manoeuvering speed of 106 knots.
"These refinements were deliberately made to take full advantage of the forthcoming standards."
Vickers has established a US division for manufacturing and is in the process of selecting a factory site. It has not set a new target date for production testing.