A motorbike for the sky

In 1980, at the very start of the French microlight boom, Jacques Humbert designed an open-cockpit, tandem two-seater he called La Moto du Ciel, the sky motorbike. Where most early microlights ran on noisy two-stroke engines, his became, in the company’s words, the first microlight with a reliable four-stroke engine, built on a Volkswagen base. After four years of flying it, he founded Humbert Aviation in 1984 at Ramonchamp, in the Vosges. A version with a bubble canopy followed in 1989, as the first Rotax 912 engines appeared.

The grouse that went to war

The firm’s second design, the Tetras (French for grouse), is an enclosed two-seat high-wing aircraft with a steel-tube fuselage and fabric-covered wings. The company dates the first prototype to 1991 and sales to 1993; it was shown publicly at the RSA rally at Moulins in 1992. In 1999 the French flight test centre, the CEV at Istres, put it through military trials. France later donated Tetras to Burkina Faso and Guinea, and the type has flown with the air forces of Cameroon, Madagascar, Mali and Niger, where it has also sprayed insecticide.

Family firm, family runway

Humbert has remained a family business. Jean-Jacques Humbert joined as test pilot in 1995 and Marie-Hélène Humbert took over administration in 2005. In 1997 the company laid out its own 400-metre grass runway beside a 700 square metre workshop, and in 2000 production space grew to 1,300 square metres. About 150 Tetras were on the French microlight register in October 2010, and according to the French microlight federation about 550 Moto du Ciel and Tetras had been built in all.

מפעלים

• Ramonchamp works and airfield · Ramonchamp, Vosges — 400 m runway and 700 square metre hangar from 1997; 1,300 square metres from 2000

אֲנָשִׁים

• Jacques Humbert · founder and designer — Designed the Moto du Ciel in 1980 and the Tetras
• Jean-Jacques Humbert · test pilot — Joined 1995

שיאים וראשונות

• First microlight fitted with a reliable four-stroke engine, according to the company