Pawnee Aviation was an American
aircraft manufacturer
An aerospace manufacturer is a company or individual involved in the various aspects of designing, building, testing, selling, and maintaining aircraft, aircraft parts, missiles, rockets, or spacecraft. Aerospace is a high technology industry.
...
initially based in
Longmont, Colorado
Longmont is a home rule municipality located in Boulder and Weld counties, Colorado, United States. Its population was 98,885 . Longmont is located northeast of the county seat of Boulder. It is named after Longs Peak, a prominent mountain th ...
and later in
McCook, Nebraska. The company was founded in the mid-1990s by Ron Willocks and specialized in the design and manufacture of
helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which Lift (force), lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning Helicopter rotor, rotors. This allows the helicopter to VTOL, take off and land vertically, to hover (helicopter), hover, and ...
s in the form of kits for
amateur construction.
[Purdy, Don: ''AeroCrafter - Homebuilt Aircraft Sourcebook, Fifth Edition'', page 327. BAI Communications, 15 July 1998. ]
The company's first product was the
Pawnee Warrior, first flown by 1998. It was simple open frame, single seat helicopter that was used as a "a proof of concept platform" for the development of the later, two seat
Pawnee Chief. The Chief was first flown in December 2005 and was the subject of a protracted development process. The company explained the long development time, "we were determined not to put a product on the market before its time. We have seen other kits sold that did not complete their development and testing. Their customers paid for completion of the development and in reality did much of their testing. By delaying our availability project until it was truly completed, we will avoid placing unnecessary a lot of "Airworthiness Directives" and flight restrictions on our aircraft."
The company intended to put the Chief into production in January 2006 at a rate of eight to ten kits per month and increase staff above the five employees already working. On 28 September 2006 a Chief crashed while hovering and burned, with only minor injuries to the pilot and passenger. The
National Transportation Safety Board
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and inci ...
determined the cause to be, "failure of the welded bracket caused the loss of input control authority from the cyclic control to the main rotor." The company seems to have gone out of business in late 2008.
Aircraft
References
External links
Company website archiveson
Archive.org
{{Pawnee Aviation aircraft
Defunct aircraft manufacturers of the United States
Ultralight aircraft
Homebuilt aircraft
Helicopters