to start his own design and production company which he did in 1984. The new company, American
Microflight went to work on a design. In Bill's own words, "I wanted to design an airplane that anyone could fly and land safely". At that time in the progression of American aviation, ultralights were still little more than cloth-pipe hang gliders with motorcycle engines. Bill Sadler was planning to break from "tradition" and did so with an all-metal, cantilever designed, twin-boom, fully enclosed, tricycle gear pusher that more resembled a WWII fighter than an ultralight. Not only that but it had folding wings and was trailerable!
The Sadler Vampire was ahead of it's time and blew away everything in it's class....and then some. In fact, Bill won a Grand Championship award for the design. Unfortunately, according to Bill the ultralight community wasn't ready for the Vampire. They still wanted traditional ultralights of cloth and pipe design. Plus, the higher price tag of the Vampire didn't help. The original Vampires were FAR-103 legal planes with 20 HP solo engines in them. Several were sold but not on the level required to let a company thrive. We speculate that there were about 28 US version Vampires made before Mr. Sadler opted to sell the design and rights to an Australian company named Skywise Ultralight. In order to meet the more stringent aviation requirements of Australia the new company modified the original design in many ways. Stronger landing gear, heavier skins, wider/heavier molded cockpits, shorter wings, droop down wing tips, and more power. They named this new modfication the Vampire SV-2. Most SV-2's were housed with Rotax 447 engines. No SV-2's are FAR-103 legal.
Although the Australian company had a much longer and more successful production run they too eventually decided to close shop and sold the design rights to Kirk Sutton of Sydney Australia. There has yet to be any more Vampires produced since that time. Although Kirk had built and tested a proto he named, "Venom" it vanished along with Kirk and neither have yet to re-surface. Now I don't know where on the time line this next bit of history occurred but at some point, I assume before Bill Sadler sold the company, different modifications of the Vampire were built and demonstrated to the US military. This modified Vampire light attack aircraft can still be seen at www.sadlerair.com. I don't know if the US military ordered any. The grapevine says yes but I've never been able to varify this. However, somewhere along the line the Turkish airforce ended up with some. You can see these Turkish Vampires pictured at this site in the gallery and at the Hangar User Group photo section. How many they have is unknown at present but again the grapevine claims there were some 300 ordered at $300,000 US dollars each. Again, I have not been able to varify this.
Currently there are several persons actively working to reproduce the Vampire or a prototype of some kind. Most are taking different approaches. Some working on a 2-place design, some working to stay within the FAR-103 limits, and some very radical from the original design.
We all wait on pins and needles watching for the first operating version of a new Vampire.
If anyone reading this wishes to coop with any of the design efforts taking place just drop me an email and I'll try to put you in touch with the designers and builders.
Tom