Thruster Air Services at Wickenby Airfield have produced a Thruster T600N Sprint microlight aircraft for a flying school in Northern Ireland and were due, weather permitting, to deliver it this week.

The company, which was originally founded in Australia to produce microlights for sheep farmers, moved to Wickenby, after a buy-out by local businessmen Steve Turleigh and Gerald Cooper, three years ago and since then has been working for its production licence from the Civil Aviation Authority, which came through earlier this year.

The last aircraft to be commercially built in the county before this Thruster, was the Sopwith Camel, a British World War I single-seat fighter biplane which was built by Clayton Shuttleworth at Lincoln, and was introduced on the Western Front in 1917.

It had a combination of a short-coupled fuselage, heavy, powerful rotary engine and concentrated fire from twin synchronized machine guns and was credited with shooting down 1,294 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied fighter in the First World War.

Almost 6000 were produced nationally and the last of the 500 built locally, rolled off the Lincoln production line on December 2 1919.
Quality manager Malcolm Howland said 70 per cent of flying schools in the UK used a Thruster because of its ruggedness.


"It will run for three and half hours on 12 litres of ordinary unleaded fuel at 75mph. There are 350 of them in the country and some others worldwide."

Phil Hoeft, production supervisor, said the aircraft had a following because of its good reputation.

"It takes about 10 to 12 weeks to build and we hope to produce up to 12 a year. It's hand build so that's the maximum we would like to do."