Butterfly Banty

The Butterfly Banty, also called the Kimbrel Banty for its designer, is an American homebuilt ultralight aircraft that was designed by Mike Kimbrel and produced by Butterfly Aero of Oakville, Washington, introduced in 1984. The aircraft was supplied in the form of plans for amateur construction.

Design and development
The Banty was designed to comply with the US FAR 103 Ultralight Vehicles rules, including the category's maximum empty weight of 254 lb. The aircraft has a standard empty weight of 237 lb. It features a strut-braced parasol wing, a single-seat open cockpit with a windshield, fixed conventional landing gear and a single engine in tractor configuration.

The aircraft is made from wood with its flying surfaces covered doped aircraft fabric. Its 32.00 ft span wing utilizes flaps and has a wing area of 128.00 sqft. The wings are supported by "V" struts with jury struts and can be folded for ground transport or storage. The cabin width is 22 in. The acceptable power range is 28 to 36 hp and the standard engine used is the 28 hp Rotax 277 single cylinder, two-stroke powerplant. With this engine the standard day take-off roll is 220 ft and landing roll is 200 ft

The Banty has a typical empty weight of 237 lb and a gross weight of 500 lb, giving a useful load of 263 lb. With full fuel of 5 u.s.gal the payload for pilot and baggage is 233 lb.

The plans included detailed parts drawings, a materials list and construction instructions intended to assist inexperienced builders. The designer estimates the construction time from the supplied plans as 500 hours.

Operational history
By 1998, the company reported that 1820 sets of plans had been sold and 30 aircraft were flying.