| If you looking for someone to build you an award winning ultralight or light sport aircraft then look no further. Bryan Melborn has built a number of aircraft for display at Sun N Fun and Airventure, and he has won an award for just about all of them. This year in partnership with Steve Boetto of Florida he AGAIN won Grand Champion this year for building a 2008 Firefly on Floats. Not only did they build a award winner but they built an award winning part 103 legal ultralight that was equipped with floats and a Rotax 447 engine. They did this by eliminating the nose cone, windshield and rear fuselage covering on a standardard Firefly kit. This knocks about 10 lbs off the FireFly's weight. The plane started out at Bryan's shop in Kentucky as a standard Kolb Firefly kit. Bryan does all of the Kolb Aircraft builders assist, and quick builds. Steve wanted an open cockpit plane so the nose was redesigned. Bryan gave it the look of an old Kolb Ultra Star. He then painted the craft the green show colour and then turned to plane over to Steve Boetto for float installation and the finishing touches. Steve wanted a "wide open airplane, going back to the original ultralight roots, with that full open out in the air, bare bones fuselage look and feel." Steve accomplished with several different features (and some 300 hours of detail work) like his fuel tank, which is a cut down aluminum dune buggy tank. He also installed some fancy components from England including a gascalator, an aviation grade primer and a fuel selector valve. Steve has hidden all of the wiring and charging system, in small fuselage compartments. Instrumentation consists of an EIS engine monitor system, and airspeed indicator and compass. The plane like all of Kolb ultralight designs has the foldable wings for easy of storage, but Steve now has a hangar and has constructed a trailer hooked to an all terrain vehicle which he uses to launch and load the plane in and out of the water. Bryan report the plane gets off the water in literally seconds and once airborne can be flown hands off, when either he or Steve is flying it, even with a 30 lbs pilot weight difference. The FireFly has a left hand throttle, and flap control. The 2 position flaps are 10, 20 degrees. Climb rate on floats with the 447 Rotax engine is 750 feet per minute, 55 mph cruise. Their award winning design which is owned by Steve, comes in at 10 lbs below the legal ultralight limit for a plane equipped with floats and a BRS parachute system. For more information contact: | 
