Airdale Wheel-Penetration Skis

As Winter approaches I always get excited about the skis going on. I am strictly a straight ski guy; I am always looking for the best performance I can find. I also know that is not the decision for everyone.


Last year a friend of mine bought a wheel-ski kit from Airdale. These are wheel-penetration skis. I assembled them and got them ready over the summer. This week I completed the installation and I have been surprised at the fit. I just want to let people know that Airdale paid a lot of attention to the details and the parts fit so well it shocked me. It is the quality we all look for, and comes with all the hardware, etc that you will need for the install.


Now we haven't flown them yet, but I am hoping for the best.
As we fly them I will make sure a report gets back to the forum.
My airplane will be sporting a rebuilt pair of Federal skis that I reworked through the summer, so a report of those will be coming soon too.


Airdale Wheel-Skis
Attachment 2905

Here's a teaser shot of the latest design of wheel-ski from Airdale. I hope to have these set up and running in the next week or so.

(Then all I need is some snow... :rolleyes:)

This is inside information because these skis are still at the "prototype" level of production. Brett doesn't have anything on his website, yet, but hopefully we'll get some shots up soon along with pricing information.

I believe the current Airdale ski kit is priced around $1200.

I flew the skis off of my grass runway with some good results.
The most exciting part was no loss of airspeed, or at least not enough to measure. I was surprised by that.

My runway isn't very smooth, but the skis did fine. You don't even know they are there.

I think the midwest is getting all of our snow. We got about 1/4" last night, but I still see mostly grass. I think by Monday we should be ready for playing.

Does anybody no if Airdale Sportplane is still in building Skis? Nobody answers the phone or returns emails.
Thanks John

What is the bottom material made of and how thick is it? My field is pretty rough, I don't want something coming through the skis.

Ski bottoms are uhmw plastic, 1/4" thick. It has been very durable for me.

How long have you been flying with the skis and how do they perform in deep snow?

I've had the skis now since 2011. They have worked well for me, but they are wheel skis and therefore they are more draggy than straight skis. I can not comment on "deep" snow because I've never operated in that.

In my area we fly off frozen lakes. These normally have 6-8" of loose snow on the top is all.