Imagine - there you are in a comfortable semi-reclined seat under a bubble canopy. Your right hand holds a stubby sidestick studded with switches and buttons, your left hand a powerful throttle. The hi-tech panel displays a wealth of precise digital information with even more available at the touch of a button. Two numbers catch the eye; true airspeed 208 knots, fuel flow 9.2 gal/h. A dream? No, reality. I have seen the future and it flies; in fact I've flown it. Dave Ronneberg's Berkut (pronounced Bear-koot) may well be the aircraft that drags General Aviation (kicking and screaming) into the 21st century. It has long been a source of considerable irritation to me that (kit planes apart) the design and particularly the performance of GA aircraft has barely advanced at all since the 1950s. Indeed, if you compare the performance of the Vega Gull with, say, the Piper Arrow, you could almost conclude that in performance terms, things have actually gone backwards! This could be the aircraft that reverses this rather sorry trend.

Needless to say, the Berkut includes all the features you might expect to see in a modern car, let alone a modern aeroplane, such as electronic ignition and composite construction. But before we go deeper into the evolutionary design philosophy of the Berkut, kindly let me inform you of some rather interesting statistics. This aeroplane has a useful load within 220lbs of its empty weight and can cruise at 200 knots for 1,100 miles while burning only around 9 gal/h. Interested? I thought you might be... read on--->