Badland Part 103 Pilots and Builders Forum

Ohio's Source for Light Sport Aviation!

Are you ready to fly? Heavenbound Aviation is here to help you! It is our mission to bring the wonders of flying within your reach. Heavenbound Aviation is a Quicksilver and Aerolite 103 dealer. We offer new aircraft kits, assembly, and flight training. Flight training can be for a Sport Pilot rating, or simply for ultralights as well as transition training, tailwheel ratings, and flight reviews. All of our aircraft are either Light Sport Aircraft, requiring only a Sport Pilot license to fly, or a Part 103 Ultralight, requiring no license at all to fly! We want you to feel comfortable with us so please browse our site which offers a wealth of information and contact Andy if you have any questions at all. (Heavenbound Aviation is owned and operated by Andy Humphrey since 2006) Please contact us to schedule a introductory flight! If you need repair service we currently are not taking in any new work, but we highly recommend STOL Creek Aviation.

https://heavenboundaviation.com/

It appears Heavenbound is no longer a Hirth dealer. I am curious as to why?

Good question. It looks like they have given up on the lower end (power) options. I suppose that the sales or lack of them may be in issue. This seems to affect many dealers which makes it more difficult for those of us that use lower power (and lighter weight) engines to find what we need for our ultralights. While Polini has some great options, I've read about and watched a few YouTube videos on their 303 Thor might have some major problems. After doing some emails with questions with Polini, I also have found their politeness with customer service is lacking. I've not worked with Heavenbound so I'm not sure how well they are to work with or why they would drop the Hirth line.

Andy is involved in flight training and the Stewarts System covering. I would say his time is limited as to selling and repairing 2 strokes. The Hirth dealer is just a few miles up the road from him and sells direct to customers so its not a big issue. Matt Dandar is very helpful in working with hirth engines and pretty much all aspects of them. Andy not being a Hirth dealer is probably more of a business decision rather that issues with Hirth.

Good names to have here for those who will contact any of them for engines. Thanks for posting this info. It's sort of crazy but it seems (and maybe it's just me) much of the time it's difficult to find who sells what and if what I'm looking for (ultralight related) even exists! I think it was two or three months with me searching before I ran across Chris's website for Badland Aircraft. I might have ended up with something I would not be really happy with - you know something that was 85% of what I was looking for. I had a friend when growing up that did that with a car. He purchased one that was close to what he wanted, but not really what he wanted. He hated the car for as long as he had it.

I have dealt with Heavenbound Aviation several times and with recpower.com (Hirth engines) also. Matt Dandar who is the US dist. for Hirth is a really good guy unless you get his dander up (pun intended). By trashing Hirth is the easiest way to do it. My experience with Hirth has been a good one, a quick starting, powerful engine and lightweight to boot. On price alone, Hirth is not the cheapest, but figure the long run and it is reasonable. I've been in this experimental game a long long time and built several aircraft.

Good to have you on board the forum then. Advice that has experience behind it is worth a great deal, especially when it involves a hobby such as flight, and of course our lives. Love the pun. If I do decide to head toward the Hirth, I'll have to give him a call and razz him a bit. Then quickly tell him I'm joking - because I really do love the engine As far as the cheapest, I like to think that if I pay a fair amount then I'll be safer than going for the cheapest thing I can find.