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The Sky Arrow 1450L kits, powered by a Rotax 912ULS engine, are eligible for an Experimental Certificate of Airworthiness. They are manufactured in the same facility of the certified Sky Arrow 650 airplanes and, as a result, kit parts and components benefit from the same high quality construction methods, traceability, quality control procedures the manufacturer adopts for the certified aircraft production.
The kit offered by Iniziative Industriali Italiane S.p.A. allows the homebuilder to produce a Sky Arrow aircraft that is very similar to the 650 TCNS. As a result, if the homebuilder carefully operates according to the Iniziative technical documents for Kit assembly and testing, the finished aircraft will be substantially identical to a production Sky Arrow with comparable performance, but at a lower cost.
Working with composite materials is complicated and requires costly moulds, jigs and climate controlled areas. Few homebuilders are able to manufacture parts without an external help; for this reason the fuselage of the standard Sky Arrow kit is delivered in a very advanced stage of completion and homebuilders do not need special tools and composite works to finish it; the same concept applies to wings and horizontal tailplane. Besides, the homebuilder can choose between different production stage levels for the engine and the instrument panel; for the standard configuration the Sky Arrow kit takes 300 hours about to be completed into a Sky Arrow aircraft.
Major advantages of composite structures include their extremely high strength to weight ratio, the possibility of moulding them in shapes not obtainable with conventional metal structures, their low maintenance requirements, since composite materials are not affected by weather and the possibility of easily repairing them in the event of damage.