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In the early 1980s, Pioneer International Aircraft Inc., a subsidiary company of Pioneer Parachute Company
in the USA, developed the Flightstar and the Dualstar ultralights.
Engineering manager on the Pioneer Ultralight program was Tom Peghiny. The Pioneer Flightstar
was a simple and light single-place ultralight aircraft, and one of the
first "advanced" ultralights available to the industry. In 1983, the Pioneer Flightstar
was one of the visitors of Oshkosh. Pioneer produced more than 700 of the early model Flightstar
ultralights. Production of the Flightstar kits and airframes ended in 1984 when the company chose
to exit aircraft production and sold the rights to an Argentine company. For the Pioneer planes
produced in Argentina the Flightstar was renamed in AviaStar. The Argentine owners tried to enter
the general aviation aircraft market with the AviaStar. The little airplane got heavy and loaded
with equipment and became to heavy and complicated for the basic type of Ultralight it was. In 1991, Tom Peghiny
and partner Mark Lamontagne formed Flightstar, Inc., Ellington, USA and brought the Flightstar
back to the U.S. The first thing he and partner Lamontagne did was to start lightening the
now-revived Flightstar. As a result the cruise speed of the early Pioneer Flightstar was
increased from 80 km/h to 85 km/h for the revised Flightstar Classic. In 1995, Flightstar Inc. formed
a partnership with Lockwood Aircraft in Sebring, Florida to produce the Flightstar line of products.
Since then, more than 600 aircraft kits have been produced and sold by Flightstar dealers worldwide.
The updated version of the Flightstar single-seater, the Flightstar Classic, was in 1998 renamed Flightstar I. |