Country of origin:

Australia

Description:

Single-seat light sport monoplane

Power Plant:

One 18 kw (24 hp) JPX [430 cc] three-cylinder air-cooled radial engine

Specifications:

History:

Gordon Bedson was born on 23 September 1918 in the Channel Islands and commenced employment with the Miles Aircraft Company in 1936. Later he worked for the Airscrew Company at Weybridge in Surrey making propellers for Tiger Moths. Later again he worked with Robert Kronfield developing a link trainer concept. By 1938 he was working with the Bristol Aircraft Company. He spent World War II in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm and rose to the rank of Commander. He flew as a flight engineer in Handley Page Halifax bombers operating as passenger aircraft with British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).

In 1950 Gordon Bedson joined Vickers Aircraft Company working on the Vickers Valiant project. He later joined the company Mackson designing racing cars, including the Kieft in 1951 driven by Stirling Moss. In 1951 he designed a Formula-I car known as the Coventry Godiva. He designed other cars before becoming employed by Lightburn Australia in 1959, designing the Zeta car, and a sports car for Saab. He then became a restaurateur on the Gold Coast. After selling the restaurant he moved to Armidale, NSW where he built an Evans VP-1 ultralight.

Back in 1948 Mr Bedson designed an ultralight aircraft but it was never built. He eventually resurrected the design as the Resurgam and the prototype was built in 1979 to meet new ANO 95.10 regulations. Resurgam Aviation of Bundarra, NSW was set up to market the design and it became available in this region in the early 1980s.

The Resurgam was a strut-braced high-wing monoplane with a pusher engine and a fully enclosed cockpit. The builder had the option of building the machine from scratch or by purchasing pre-moulded fibreglass components, and parts such as the spar, ribs and undercarriage. Over the years the design was supported by the Company and the Resurgam Owners and Builders Association. It was supplied in component and kit form to amateur builders.

By mid 1984 more than 50 examples had been supplied, fitted with a variety of engines, including units from the German Koenig Motorenbau factory, driving a three-blade adjustable-pitch propeller through a reduction gear, this engine giving 80 kw (176 lb) of thrust for a total weight of 19 kg (41 lb).

The prototype Resurgam Mk 1 made its first flight from a small airstrip in the New England Tablelands of New South Wales at an altitude of 1,067 m (3,500 ft) in 1980 powered by a Skylark engine which, at that altitude, produced 13.4 kw (18 hp) at 5,000 rpm driving a 99 cm (39 in) diameter propeller. Found to be underpowered, the Company moved to the Koenig engine which produced 22.3 kw (30 hp) at 4,500 rpm and weighed 15.5 kg (34 lb). During the development program sets of working plans for homebuilders were sold for the Mk I, which was distinguishable by its triple tube diagonally-braced rear fuselage structure and welded steel tube bungee rubber sprung undercarriage.

In due course the Company changed the rear fuselage to incorporate a single 100 mm (3.9 in) rear fuselage tube which replaced the previous complex braced structure. This assisted construction, and to assist constructors a set of moulds was made from the wooden prototype of the Mk 2. The Mk 2 model was built extensively around the world, with plans supplied to Austria, Japan, Pakistan, the United States, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Over 100 sets of plans had been sold in Australia by late 1984.

The Resurgam won a number of awards, including the Sport Aircraft Association Best Micro-light in 1981, and the MAFA Best Airframe in 1982. Examples were entered in the London – Paris Air Race for Micro-lights in the speed section.

A range of engines became available, including units from Koenig in West Berlin, and JPX from Vibraye in France. Two Koenig models were available, a three-cylinder engine of 430 cc and a four-cylinder unit of 570 cc, both being radial engines with electric starting and multiple CDI ignition. The JPX unit was a 425 cc two-cylinder unit which produced 94 kg (141 lb) thrust driving a 99 cm (39 in) propeller via direct drive. Consideration was also given to installing a Hewland Engineering two-cylinder dual-ignition liquid-cooled unit which produced 37 kw (50 hp) at 5,500 rpm and weighed 39 kg (85 lb).

A two-seat training variant of the Resurgam was developed, being known as the Magra, this name being an Aboriginal word for a device used for the carriage of young people. This model was fitted with a 37 kw (50 hp) liquid-cooled engine and had a wing area of 13.47 m² (145 sq ft), a wingspan of 11.27 m (37 ft) and an empty weight of 172 kg (380 lb). It was completed and first shown to the public at Easter 1984 at Mangalore, VIC. This aircraft was designed for ultralight training but, during testing, the central wooden cross member supporting the wing struts gave way, the wing collapsed and the aircraft crashed, Mr Gordon Bedson being killed.

The Company also designed a high-performance aircraft known as the Seriatum, this said to represent a single-seat fighter from World War II. It is not known if an example of this aircraft was completed.

An engine built by Hewland Gearboxes was considered for the Magra, a development of the Resurgam aircraft. This was a three-cylinder, two-stroke unit, providing 67 kw (90 hp). It was built for Sir Jack Brabham for motor racing but was provided to Gordon Benson who built the Magra aircraft to take the engine, constructing the aircraft in his home workshop out of timber.

There were variants of the Resurgam design, one being the Rouseabout designed and developed in Queensland by Donald and Peter Adams of Seabird Ultralight Aircraft of Port Vernon, QLD. This was basically a Resurgam Mk 2 but fibreglass and Kevlar were used in its manufacture. Another was the Resurgam Zeitgeist, the latter being built in prototype form by Resurgam but being developed by Messrs Adams.

After Mr Bedson’s death the Company moved to Tamborine North, QLD. The Rouseabout was designed as an efficient low-cost ANO 95-10 light aircraft which was structured around a 10 cm (4 in) diameter aluminium tube structure wing with spruce cap strips epoxied on the top and bottom. The wing used an NASAG(W)2 aerofoil and had a low drag, having the four-cylinder Koenig engine, a 132 cm (52 in) diameter propeller with adjustable pitch, and a speed range of 35 kmh (22 mph) to 140 km/h (87 mph).

Examples of the Resurgam appearing on the RAAus register have included: 10-1009, 10-1064, 10-0193, 10-0951, 10-0503, 10-1042, 10-0859, 10-0562, 10-0607, 10-0589, 10-0743, 10-0681, and 10-1296. Airframe numbers for these aircraft have not been identified.

An example was partially built by Mr Hector Roe in 1979 but was not finished. It later went to his nephew, Peter Roe, and was stored on the New South Wales central coast for some years until being donated to the Power House Museum in Sydney, NSW.

At least two Resurgams were built in New Zealand, one becoming ZK-FNZ (c/n MAANZ/383), which was registered in May 1987 but withdrawn from use in October 2001. It was re-registered as ZK-JOO in 2005 and became based at Leeston. A second machine was registered on 11 November 1985 as ZK-YAL but was wrecked in a crash at the Raetihi Airport on 5 February 1989.