The Silent Club is a single seater sailplane of Italian manufacture. It is of the FAI type DU Class glider. It is sold by Alisport ready-to-fly or kit-built as pure glider or self-launching glider. The self-launching version is fitted with a single-blade propeller belt-driven by a two-stroke engine or optionally by an electric motor. The electric version was the first production electric-powered commercially available aircraft and appeared in 1997. It is driven by a 13 kW DC electric motor running on 40 kg of batteries that provide 1.4 kWh of energy. The highly modified version, the Alisport Silent Club-J is a self-launching aerobatic jet motor glider shown on the U.S. airshow circuit and all over the world by Bob Carlton. It is powered by twin AMT-USA AT-450 jet engines (200 N (45 Lbf) of thrust each) originally developed for radio-controlled aircraft.

Design and development

Specifications