People in the know speak of the Stephens Akro in hushed and slightly fearful tones. It looms on the aerobatic horizon like the stranger come to town to teach the Pitts boys a thing or two about aerobatics. Is it a Pitts killer and is Leo Loudenslager the man to pull the trigger?

Let's make it clear right now that I'm not the guy to answer that question. My name isn't Soucy, Herendeen, Hillard or Poberezny. Around the airport, I'm known as "Fumbles," and after an exciting week when I flew the Stephens Akro and the 180-hp symmetrical Pitts, back to. back, I've decided that I wouldn't want to be in the ring with any of the big guys in either airplane.

America has finally popped out on top of the international aerobatic pyramid for two reasons: because of our pilots and because Curtis Pitts builds airplanes for us instead of them. If we didn't have the Pitts, we probably wouldn't have the Nestorov Trophy either. Our team is a happy combination of superpilots flying superairplanes. But nothing stands still in competition, and since it's hard to build better men, improvement will come in the form of better machines. And if Clayton Stephens has anything to do with it, one of the machines will be his Stephens Akro.

According to the legends filtering out of the San Fernando basin, the Akro exists because the late Margaret Ritchie wanted to beat Mary Gaffaney. Actually, Mrs. Ritchie wanted to beat everybody, but her clipped-wing, 150-hp Taylorcraft just couldn't cut the mustard. Even with its big engine and symmetrical airfoil, it rolled too slowly and had to pull around too much fabric and tubing. Clayton Stephens, an aeronautical engineer trying to add spice to his aerospace career, came to her aid with his slide rule and drafting machine.

Since Stephens wasn't, and isn't, an aerobatic pilot, he had to do the entire project with numbers and formulas. He had no prejudices or preconceived ideas. He looked at the maneuvers, studied the airplanes, and designed an airplane that broke the

At that point in time, American aerobatic tradition dictated using two wings as the basis for any aerobatic design. The Akro, however, is a monoplane.

Basically, the resulting design resembled an underdeveloped Formula One racer. As a matter of fact, part of the fuselage layout is supposed to have been inspired by Art Scholl's old Miss San Bernardino. In racing, the midwing layout was conventional, but in aerobatics, it was downright radical. If throwing away one wing didn't make the machine unique in the world of aerobatics, his airfoil did-it wasn't symmetrical! The modern development of superaerobatic airplanes requires that more and more attention be paid to outside manoeuvres. This means the wing should lift equally both ways, but the Stephens' doesn't. The airfoil is an old favourite, the 23012. I hate people who banter airfoil numbers around, but this time it's important. The 23000 series airfoils don't lift the same upside down as right side up, so Stephens climbed out on a limb when it came to outside, or negative G, manoeuvres.

The construction is absolutely conventional and straightforward. The wing is plywood covered-with a 24-foot, 7-ply railroad tie running wing-tip to wingtip. The fuselage is miles of chrome moly and fabric. At first glance, the construction looks deceptively simple, but it's not. Laminating the spar requires that the builder construct a clamping table, 24 feet long and perfectly true. It's not difficult, but it's certainly not as simple as whittling out Pitts ribs and spars and letting the flying wires handle the problem of strength. Since it's a cantilever wing, you'd better be right the first time you build it, because there's no way to rig out any basement booboos once you're finished. Any twist in the wing is going to make the airplane fly like a cork-screw.

Although there are at least six Stephens flying, Leo Loudenslager's is by far the most interesting and most advanced. Leo is, by his own admission, a total airplane freak. "I guess you'd have to say somebody is crazy to spend five years building and rebuilding an airplane," he grins. "I could have been much farther along if I'd built a proven machine, like the Pitts, but the second I saw the Akro, I knew this was it for me."

Since he first started building his airplane, Leo has functioned as Clayton Stephen's eyes and hands. He has tested and modified the airplane, advising Stephens how the changes affected his manoeuvres, so plans could be changed accordingly.

The things trailing back from the wingtips are unnamed, but will probably be known eventually as LLLs (Loudenslager Line Layers). He can squint out at those weird looking little mobiles and tell when he's exactly vertical or at 45 degrees. Contests are won and lost on angles, so it probably won't be long before everything from Citabrias to Pitts start sprouting these things.

The first part of my checkout was aimed at getting me in the cockpit. I didn't want to walk on the wing, so I had to stand tiptoe on the step and stretch my other leg into the cockpit. Once I was inside, Leo explained things and mentioned that the cockpit was tailored for him, so I might find things not exactly where I wanted them. I saw what he meant when I tried the brakes. Because of a previous modification that lengthened the rudder pedals, the brakes were right up against the bottom of the tank. I was wearing a, pair of square-toed boots and I really had trouble with the pedals.

I must've scared the pants off Leo when I taxied to the far end of the runway and then disappeared for 10 minutes. On the way down the taxi-way, that big 200-hp Lycoming dragged me along at 20 mph, even at idle. I'd try for the brakes, but the tailwheel was so sensitive that giant stabs at the brakes caused me to weave all over the place. Figuring fear was the better part of valour, I pulled the mixture and coasted to the end of the taxiway. I yanked my boots off, sat them on the wing and waited. Pretty soon Leo came around the bend; he was much calmer than I would have been in the same situation. With a couple flips of the prop, I was on my way again in my stocking feet.

Visibility during run-up and while checking for traffic is fantastic. It was as though I were sitting on a bar stool on top of the wing. The cockpit isn't large enough to do a lot of romping around in, but it is far from tight, and I didn't even notice the main spar passing over my legs. A guy with longer legs or more girth might find the spar hitting him just below the knees, though.

Leo had said not to worry about torque on takeoff, so I rammed the power in fairly rapidly. He was right. It tore down the white stripe with very little help from me. My feet didn't even get into the act, and I had barely gotten the tail off the ground when those long wings reached out and hoisted me up off the runway. The acceleration was fast, lightning fast, compared to most lightplanes, but it didn't have the heart-stopping surge of a Pitts. That could be because I was up and away in the Stephens at something like 65 to 70 mph, while a Pitts usually stays on the runway longer than that.

And was I ever going up! At 100 to 110 mph indicated, the runway and surrounding hills dropped away so fast it was almost frightening. On later takeoffs, I tried to hold 90 mph and time the climbs. They came out around 2,700 to 2,800 fpm, for at least a 30- to 40-degree angle. People on the ground said they could easily see the tops of the wings as I climbed---it climbs even faster than a Pitts.

Except for the climbout, so far I felt as if I were strapped into a wildly hopped-up Citabria. It had been extremely stable and had an unusually familiar feeling. There was no strange-airplane syndrome, where everything is unfamiliar and hard to get used to. I felt as though I'd had 1,000 hours in it from the beginning.

In cruise, it hops along at around 140 mph indicated (150 mph true) and handles like I'd hoped it would. There isn't anything among normal airplanes that favourably compares with it in straight-and-level flight, except possibly a Swift. The control pressures are light, lighter than a Pitts when fully deflected, but the stick travel is much greater. A little aileron calls for a little stick, and a lot of aileron demands a lot of stick. It feels as if the stick and the control surfaces are directly connected, without linkage, because the slightest movement of the stick provokes an instantaneous reaction. Since the wing is nothing more than an airfoiled slab with little or no dihedral, the airplane has no particular reason to stay in level flight, so it gimbals effortlessly about its centre of gravity.

My total time in level flight consisted of two tight clearing turns in either direction, before I tucked the stick to one side and watched the horizon curl across the top of the canopy in a sensuous roll. From that point on, I must have looked like an aerial otter; I'd flop through a frantic series of manoeuvres, stop for a second, look quickly around for traffic, then start writhing around the sky again.

In normal aerobatics, the Stephens Akro is a damned boring airplane. Loops, rolls and the mundane normal manoeuvres happen with the precision of a push-button machine. Pull, and you loop. Stick to one side, and you roll. Simple as that. Leo has a grease pencil X on the windshield that you can fly like a gun sight, and to keep that exactly where you want it demands only a little more technique. It makes sport aerobatics almost too easy.

You're probably begging me now to say, "Yes, it's better than a Pitts," or "No, the Pitts is still king." But I'm not going to say either, and I'm not copping out. The Stephens and the Pitts each has its own character and manoeuvres at which it excels. In the Pitts, for instance, it takes some work to figure out how to hammerhead properly, but once you get the hang of it, it pivots as it you've driven a nail through the rudder post. The Stephens won't pivot that way. It's an easier airplane for the new pilot (me) to control because the control ratios are longer, requiring more input per manoeuvre, which makes it less twitchy looking. They are two different airplanes, so they are bound to fly differently.