Skyote Aeromarine Skyote

The Skyote Aeromarine Skyote, also spelled "Skyotë" and pronounced either "Sky-oh-tee" or "Sky-yoat," is a single-engine, single-seat sport biplane. Designed in the United States in the 1970s, it was sold as plans and kits for homebuilders. The aircraft is a conventional open-cockpit biplane with fixed tailwheel landing gear. Its wings have a slight sweep to improve center-of-gravity balance, lateral stability, and snap-roll performance. The equal-span, staggered wings are braced with struts and wires forming a single bay, and neither wing has dihedral. Ailerons are fitted to all four wings. The fuselage is built from welded steel tubing with wooden stringers and formers, the wing structure is aluminum, and the entire aircraft is fabric-covered.

The design came from O. E. "Pete" Bartoe, a biplane enthusiast who owned a de Havilland Tiger Moth and admired aerobatic types like the Rose Parakeet and Bücker Jungmeister. In the early 1970s, Bartoe ran the Ball-Bartoe Aircraft Corporation in Boulder, Colorado. After telling his two mechanics he wanted an aircraft combining the best traits of the Parakeet and the Jungmann, they challenged him to design it, offering to build it on weekends. Bartoe, an engineer, aimed for outstanding aerobatic qualities (stressed to 9 Gs positive, 6 Gs negative), responsive controls and structural strength like the Jungmann, low-speed handling like the Parakeet, and good fuel economy. He started with a 1930s aircraft design handbook and drew wing structure inspiration from a stripped Naval Aircraft Factory N3N wing found in a Greeley, Colorado scrapyard. Using 1970s computational methods, including computerized stress analysis, he refined the 1930s design. Weight minimization was key to achieving low-speed handling and fuel economy, and computer analysis helped identify weight-saving areas without compromising strength. The resulting design is more complex and difficult to build than most homebuilt aircraft; for instance, the aluminum wing ribs require hydroforming and tempering. Bartoe marketed wing kits alongside plans through Skyote Aeromarine Ltd.

In April 1974, Bartoe and mechanic Brad Davenport built six Skyote frames, including two intended for type certification and one for testing and marketing. Work on the latter began in March 1975, and it first flew on 23 April 1976, registered NX8XX.