Oscar Colombini & Guglielmo Leggeri

Before I get into the details of the construction of the airplane, let me provide you with a short biography of myself. My name is Guglielmo Leggeri. I am a pharmacist in the town of Cremona, Italy—also known for the Stradivari violins. While I was taking classes to get my pilots license, I became friends with Oscar Colombini who was in the same class as I was. We received our pilots license in 1983. I, at the ripe age of 18 and Oscar at the ripe age of 23. Oscar makes a living as an electronic technician in Brescia, Italy. After we recieved our pilots licenses, we raced airplanes together in ‘rally’ style races and in 1988 we won the Giro Aereo d'Italia race and in 1992 we placed third in the same race.

Around 1985, I read an article in the Italian flying magazine Volare that talked about the first Falco constructed by Sequoia Aircraft Corporation. After reading that article, I started dreaming about building one for myself. Around 1992 I talked to Oscar about building the Falco that I saw in the Volare magazine and he instantly became interested with the idea. Almost right away, we decided to order all 23 kits to build the Falco! All of the kits arrived at the beginning of 1993 and we started building the airplane right away.

The long journey to build the airplane took about 14 years—my marriage and a few kids slowed the building process down a bit. At the beginning, we thought that it would have taken us a little less time to build it. The airplane weighs 618 kg and has a 200 hp Lycoming IO-360A1B6 engine which forced us to make a long series of modifications.

However, after these 14 splendid years, on September 16, 2006, with Oscar Colombini at the controls and Guglielmo Leggeri as the co-pilot, we celebrated with the first flight of I-DRIM! Everything went well during the flight, and the airplane seems to be perfectly balanced. Take off was less than 150 meters. With 22” map and 2450 rpm, it indicates 170 kts with fuel consumption of 29.1 litres/hour. It performs fantastically!

We would like to thank Stelio Frati and Sequoia Aircraft Corporation for giving us the opportunity to live this wonderful adventure!

Guglielmo Leggeri

Oscar Colombini and Guglielmo Leggeri

Oscar Colombini is an electronic technician in Brescia, Italy.

Guglielmo Leggeri a pharmacist in Cremona, Italy. Email: farmacialeggeri@tin.it

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The Story of Falco I-DRIM     To C.A.P. Toscana