Geico266 said:
If I remember right, Sinus & Virus are precision measurements of sound and/ or electical waves.
Aviation Consumer has a review of the Pipistrel Virus SW in the May 2012 issue. (Need to be a subscriber to see the whole article.) With regard to the names, they say:
"And by the way, the airplane’s name derives not from some obscure Slovenian word that the company didn’t realize had an unintended translation. It’s quite intentional and a bit of an inside joke. When it began to find success with its airplanes, the Pipistrel staff would joke that would-be customers came back enthusiastically impressed after test flights and had thus caught the Pipistrel virus. The name stuck."
With regard to why they seem a bit scarce even though the company appears solid and the airplane has some good performance, the article explains:
"Although it’s gained a higher profile through the NASA challenges, Pipistrel hasn’t enjoyed wide sales success in the U.S. According to Ivo Boscarol, the company’s voluble and energetic founder, this is because Slovenia, where the aircraft are manufactured, lost its bilateral export agreements with the U.S. when the former Yugoslavia dissolved in 1991. Although the European Union countries do have these agreements, Slovenia joined the EU after they were negotiated, leaving the country—and Pipistrel*—in a regulatory no-man’s land. “We will address this by opening a factory in Italy,” Boscarol told us. For now, the airplanes are manufactured in Ajdovscina, Slovenia, about 20 miles northeast of the Italian city of Trieste. The new factory is expected to be operating sometime in 2015. In the meantime, it is possible to buy a Pipistrel through a third-party arrangement handled through Australia. Contact Pipistrel USA at
www.pipistrel-usa.com or 213-984-1237 for the details."
