This amazing little company has only beenoperating for a little under three years, and hasalready attracted the attention of world classaerobatic pilots such as Bill Hempel, JasonNoll, Garrett Morrison, Benoit Direck and manyothers. PA now exports to North America, theUK, Europe, South Africa the Middle East aswell as Singapore, Malaysia & New Zealand toname a just a few. These factors alone makenot only the planes, but also the company pro-ducing them worthy of serious investigation.It’s always nice to see “one of our own” makeit on the world scene but this is perhaps thefirst time an Australian based company hasmade such a impact on the very competitive“supply chain” of high quality ARF’s, especiallyin such a short time.

So, what do they make, and what makesthem so special? As the name suggests,Precision Aerobatics primarily design and buildaircraft that are for..... well..... precision aero-batics. Actually, chief designer and co-founder,Shaun Vanunu, has a passion for freestyle andit shows, as most of the designs, while beinghighly capable of IMAC, are primarily designedaround 3D parameters. At the big end, is the42% Extra 330L competition class plane, rightdown to the tiny indoor electric “Butterfly” withsomething to suit everybody in-between. Arather obsessive amount of attention is paid toweight (or rather a lack of) with every gramneeding to justify itself, and some very cleverengineering used to ensure a sound structure.This is an absolute necessity when it comes tobig gassers that have to contend with some-times severe vibration, high G forces andimpact forces to consider.

During the course of writing this review, Ihad the pleasure of numerous chinwags withboth Shaun and his other half, Adad. WhileShaun busies himself with designing, develop-ing and overseeing production of new aircraft,Adad controls the promoting, shipping andcustomer enquiries both here in Australia andabroad. They work their own hours (althoughbeing a gentlemanly start often goes late intothe night) with nothing but their passion for thehobby to drive them. The fun they are havingwhilst doing what they do is unmistakable andwhatever success they are having commerciallyis without a doubt of secondary importance.

I’ve already mentioned the obsession withweight and the design aspects, but really themost important key ingredient is encapsulatedin the company slogan, “quality counts”. A

remarkable amount of emphasis is placed onthis facet of production. It is not only thedesign stages, material selection and produc-tion runs that are quality controlled but evenright down each individual plane. Obviouslythere are aspects of the production process thatneed not be discussed and as there is a degreeof sensitivity around such things I have decid-ed to include a transcript of part of the inter-view that was held in preparation for thisreview.

The success of PA’s models on the worldscene speaks a lot for the place this country hasin the in the industry, and the level of expecta-tion that we have developed. The model air-craft industry in Australia has gone forward inleaps and bounds in the last five years or soand the introduction of fresh new suppliers tothe market can only prove to be of benefit tous as consumers. “Now honey, where’s thatcredit card?”

Author: What is the distinguishing factorthat makes your planes so popular inthis very competitive market?

PA: “It would have to be our attention toquality. We strive to meet some very highstandards that we have set for ourselvesin all facets, from the selection of materi-als to jigs we use, to the hardware weuse. We don’t follow the policy of usingwhat ever we can get for the best price.We set our standard for each model, andthen pay whatever is needed to reach thatstandard. Even the hardware is carefullysourced from the best supplier for eachitem, and if we are not satisfied with oth-ers, we will produce it ourselves. We spe-cialize in carbon fiber and make our owncarbon tubes, rods, carbon plates, carbonlanding gear, carbon wheel pants, carbonspinners, carbon gearbox, carbon servoarms and control horns. The raw materi-als for his are sourced in Japan as theyhave the best. Other raw materials suchas the ply, balsa, etc. are carefully select-ed piece by piece from some of the bestsuppliers in the world”.

Author: During the design stage of eachmodel, what things are considered?

PA: “Several things, obviously the aerody-namic aspects are crucial. During myyears as a full size pilot in I learned a lotabout the different characteristics of aero-dynamics and I work this into my designs.The approach of designing a model as areduced size aircraft rather than a toymakes a big difference. When it comes todesigning the construction, it’s importantthat each piece compliments the next, tomake a stiff, strong component, then thatcomponent compliments the next and soforth. Things don’t need to be built likebrick houses to be strong, if each itemdepends on, and complements the nextyou can achieve strong overall structure forvery little weight. This philosophy goesthrough into the selection of materials

designed into the model. Rather than just using ‘balsa’ as an overallmaterial, we use hard balsa where that’s best, light balsa elsewhere,lite ply, birch ply, carbon fiber, Kevlar etc; what ever material servesthat piece best. It often takes many hours to design just one piece.Other important factors are construction techniques, which have takenmany years to develop, and are unique to our designs. These allow usto ensure not just structural integrity but also assure a straight frameduring the building of each model”.

Author: How is the quality of your products ensured?

PA: “The biggest key to that is we have our own factory rather thanfarming out the building as many do. This allows us to scrutinize eachproduction run as we see fit. Another rather unique approach that weimplement is that in each production run, we build and assemble eachindividual plane instead of individual components. Even with oursmaller planes such as the Katana Mini and Bad Boy, each plane istest assembled prior to covering, matched, then numbered. The Giantscale ones are scrutinized at all stages of construction and recordskept of incidence reading, dihedral etc. In fact there are eight differ-ent stages at which they undergo a complete quality review, with thelast one being conducted by me personally, where I check the com-plete plane as an assembled unit”.

Author: Tell us about your factory; where is it and what sort ofequipment do you have?

PA: “Of course it is in China, as nearly all of them are, but we actu-ally located ours in the far north. We learned from the problems mostothers suffer from due to the high humidity in the south that affectsthe balsa, the covering and other raw materials. The far north ofchina is a dry cool climate which is much better for the stability of theairframes. This was one of the benefits of setting up our own factory,from the ground up. We could choose where to put it and what toput in it. Of course our inventory of plant is growing constantly butwe currently have state of the art CNC machines, laser cutters, hightemp machines for carbon fiber molding and CNC foam cutter.”

Author: What drives you in this business?

PA: “I just love planes. Always have.”

www.precisionaerobatics.com