A recession cure? Florina man builds, markets his own kit plane!

Here’s a stellar example of extreme innovation and a start-up spirit in the face of a punishing economic crisis: a local man in Florina, northern Greece, has built his own kit airplane!

The rear-propeller driven “Archon SF1” is the product of …thousands of work-hours and 3,000 modifications from the initial design.

According to the radioflorina.blogspot.gr, the one-seater plane, which resembles a “baby version” of the F-15, weighs only 200 kilos and features a 46-hp engine built on a fuselage made from aerodynamic-quality aluminium.

Available as a kit version, the plane’s designer and builder, Giorgos Iliopoulos, is neither an aerospace engineer nor a scientist of any specialty. Instead, he is a police office who happens to be the president of the local air club.

According to Iliopoulos, he received interest from foreign companies interested in selling his kit plane, which he said is “economically priced”.

Despite his inventor’s persistence and noteworthy entrepreneurship, one thing that Iliopoulos wouldn’t easily overcome was the scourge of … Greece’s bureaucracy.

radioflorina.blogspot.gr reports that the inventor faced “huge problems” with Greek red-tape in trying to acquire a license to test fly the plane. Like a latter-day Aenid, he left his ancestral land chased (by … state workers) and headed for Italy, where he received such a license. That’s why in the plane registration number the first letter is “I”, as in “Ι-Α281”.