LEARN ABOUT THE Factory
At the SkyReach factory, we do both fabrication and assembly.
Fabrication departments are responsible for manufacturing individual parts of the BushCat from raw materials before being handed off to the quality control team. The QC team take careful and critical consideration of the manufactured parts, materials used and conformance to parts drawings – operating to very minimal tolerances. Once the parts are passed by the QC team, they are handed over to our Stores.
SEWING DEPARTENT
The BushCat fuselage, wings, and control surfaces are all covered in an extremely durable, lightweight and tough material called Trilam. These covers require cutting to templates before being double stitched together with the use of industrial sewing machines. Once completed, and following the approval of our QC team, the covers are then placed into Stores awaiting the order from our assembly team.
STORES
A Production Manager overseas the parts orders placed by our Stores department to make sure we have a ready supply of parts for both assembly of new aircraft and just as importantly, a large supply of spare parts should they be needed by a client to keep their aircraft airworthy and flying! Although parts coming into our Stores are checked for quality at every step of the manufacturing process, before being placed on the shelves, yet another dual quality control check is done on all outbound orders.
COMPOSITES
While all the strength of the BushCat design comes from triangulated aluminium tubing, there is substantial use of composite parts in the finished product. Cowling, wing tips, doors, fairings etc are handmade in our Composite shop to a very high standard. Of course these parts are also subject to a critical QC program before parts are accepted into Stores.
SUB ASSEMBLY & FINAL ASSEMBLY
Our Sub-Assembly team are, as the name suggests, responsible for putting the smaller assemblies together before they are handed over to final assembly who then bring all the smaller assemblies together to form the BushCat. These teams are made up of some of the most experienced employees in the company with the team leaders having been involved in the company since its inception. Regardless of their experience in building the BushCat, SkyReach policy dictates that after each step in the build process, a QC check will be made to ensure conformance to our stringent quality practices.
ABOUT US
SkyReach is a proudly South African company based at Springs airfield, just east of Johannesburg. Formerly Rainbow Aircraft, the company has its origins in the weight-shift trike market however a need for a cost effective & rugged, 3-axis bush aircraft was identified in the late 90’s resulting in the first flights of the newly designed aircraft taking place in 2001.
THE PRESENT DAY SKYREACH COMPANY
The company operates out of various workshops and an admin office with a combined floor space of 1800 square meters and with 45 full time employees. The BushCat is built entirely at these premises with all composite work, sewing and machining done in-house. SkyReach and its distributors are committed to our product and clients by offering worldwide support of the BushCat. We are extremely proud of the product and how we back it. The constant growth of market share in our active regions is an indicator that we are doing it right!