About me

My name is Clyde Oyler. I am a high school U.S. History teacher in the State of Louisiana public education system. I live in the city of Franklinton and work in Greensburg, Louisiana.

Any thing related to aviation I am very interested in. I have started an aviation program where I teach and I will be introducing our students to the wonders of the aviation community and career paths offered within the aerospace industry.

In February of 2018, I was fortunate enough to acquire an original Pulsar I aircraft in kit form. The Pulsar I and Pulsar XP were the original kits produced by Aero-Designs out of San Antonio , Texas. These two kits were designed by Mr Mark Brown. Mr. Brown gained popularity by first designing the Starlight which was featured on the cover of Kit Planes magazine back in 1990.

The Starlight was the winner of a build competition hosted by the Experimental Aircraft Association and was the predecessor to the Pulsar line of aircraft.

The company was eventually sold to Sky Star Aircraft which was then sold to another company that is no longer in business.

The Starlight was a single place, all composite aircraft powered with a Rotax 533 engine. Next, Mr. Brown sought to design a two place, all composite, cross country capable aircraft kit that was easy to for the first time builder with economy being of utmost importance. Thus the Pulsar I was born. The design was basically the Starlight but was widened to accommodate two people and strength was added to the composite frame to allow for the extra weight.

The Pulsar I was designed to employ the Rotax 582 engine. Eventually, Mr. Brown caved in to the demand of some pilots that simply refused to fly behind a two stroke engine and Pulsar XP development began. The major differences between the Pulsar I and Pulsar XP was a heavier fiberglass cloth was used in the XP's molds and the fuel tank was moved to the wings in order to compensate for the heavier Rotax 912 engine that the Pulsar XP was designed for.

Over the years many things were changed such as the spars. All of the earlier kits contain a spruce spar with uni-directional spar caps that were later changed to a fully composite spar. Depending on the kit number one has, the Pulsar I and Pulsar XP can have many of the same components with the major difference being the heavier fiberglass used in the XP molds.

Currently, there is a large community of Pulsar builders, owners, and pilots that support each other religiously on the Matronics web forum. I belive that over 500 Pulsar kit variations were sold and as with any kit that has ever been sold, and many were never finished with some having never been started.

In my case, the gentleman I acquired my kit (Kit #270) from completed less than ten percent of the build.