BRM Aero Bristell RG

The Bristell RG is the retractable-gear member of BRM AERO's UL/LSA family, and until 2026 it was an airplane Americans could mostly only read about. The FAA's pre-MOSAIC light-sport rules prohibited retractable landing gear on a special-light-sport aircraft outright, so an RG in the United States had to be built and flown as experimental. MOSAIC removed that prohibition, and BRM AERO now lists two RG M variants — the 912iS and the 916iS — as "MOSAIC eligible · LSA" in its own specification table.

That is the whole reason this page exists separately from brm-aero-bristell. It is not a trim level of the Classic. The factory's marketing calls the Classic, RG and TDO "the same proven all-metal aircraft with three different characters", and on the two numbers that decide hangar cost and handling it is not: the RG carries a 9.13 m (29 ft 11 in) wingspan on a 6.45 m (21 ft 2 in) fuselage against the Classic's 8.204 m and 6.04 m. That is three feet more span and sixteen inches more length — a different wing, not a gear swap.

The gear costs payload, and on an airplane this small that is the first thing a buyer should look at. Useful load falls to 472 lb from the fixed-gear Classic's 595 lb. Fill the 31.7-gallon tank with MOGAS — 190 lb — and 282 lb is left for two people and everything they are carrying. Two 170 lb adults do not fit in an RG with full fuel. They fit with about 20 gallons, which is still three hours and change at this engine's fuel flow, but it is a real planning constraint rather than a footnote.

What the buyer gets for that is speed, and with the right engine a lot of it. The 916 iS variants are quoted at 155 KTAS maximum speed and 1,950 fpm — climb figures that belong to a different class of airplane, from 160 horsepower pulling 1,323 lb. The factory's own line is that the RG "reaches up to 155 KTAS (287 km/h) … serious touring performance in the UL/LSA category", and on the VH and climb numbers it publishes, that is fair.

BRM AERO lists five RG configurations. The frontmatter above describes the RG M 912iS — the entry-level variant a US buyer can register as light-sport. All figures in this table are the factory's own, from the UL/LSA specification table retrieved 2026-10-11.

MTOW is 600 kg / 1,323 lb and fuel capacity 120 L / 31.7 gal on every one of them, as are the 9.13 m span, 6.45 m length and 130 cm (51.2 in) cabin width.

The RG dates from 2012. BRM AERO's own company timeline says "The retractable-gear Bristell RG arrives" in 2012, a year after the Classic's 2011 debut, and Plane & Pilot's March 2015 flight report independently agrees: "a retract version appeared in 2012" — with "about 15" retracts sold worldwide by then. Two caveats on what that year means. It is the year the airframe entered the line, not a stated first-delivery date. And it dates the airframe, not every engine above: the same timeline puts the fuel-injected Rotax 912 iS in the range only from 2015, so an RG built in 2012-2014 is a carbureted 912 ULS airplane, and the MOSAIC-eligible M variants are far newer than the airframe — an RG could not be US light-sport at all before MOSAIC (see Overview). (Wikipedia says a retractable-gear Bristell was shown at AERO Friedrichshafen in 2011; that is consistent with a display airplane ahead of the 2012 introduction and is noted rather than followed.)

Two things to read carefully here.

The "M" is the part that matters to an American buyer. BRM AERO's own certification FAQ says that in the USA "the light-sport (LSA) class is covered by the Classic and the M-line models." The three non-M variants are European ultralights. A plain RG 916iS imported to the US is an experimental airplane with the operating limitations that carries, not a light-sport one.

The 916 iS is the only engine that buys the speed. The 912-powered RGs are quoted at the same 125 KTAS VH and 1,400 fpm as each other, which is slower in VH than the fixed-gear Classic 915iS (148 KTAS) despite the retractable gear. Gear retraction does not overcome a 41-horsepower deficit. If the reason for buying an RG is cruise speed, the choice is the 916 iS and the budget follows from that.

Note also that the 915 iS is not offered in the RG — it appears in the Classic and TDO tables but not this one. The 915 iS is the one Rotax in the range with a 1,200-hour TBO against 2,000 for the others, so its absence here is good news for an RG owner's reserve account rather than a gap.

Read this section before trusting any speed or distance for this airplane, because most of them are not on this page.

BRM AERO publishes, for the RG, exactly two performance figures per variant: maximum speed (VH) and rate of climb. The UL/LSA specification table has no cruise row and no range row, where the B23 page on the same website carries both. There is no published stall speed, no V-speed set, no service ceiling and no runway distance for this airframe from the factory, the US importer, or any press pilot report found on 2026-10-11.

So this page stores no cruise speed, no range, and no takeoff or landing distances. Those fields are blank with a written reason in validator_exempt above. An earlier draft of this page carried takeoff and landing distances of 700 / 1,200 / 450 / 1,300 ft. Those numbers had no source — they were invented — and they have been removed. They are recorded here rather than quietly deleted because a reader who saw the earlier version deserves to know which figures went away and why.

What a buyer needs to take from that: VH is not a cruise speed. 155 KTAS is the fastest the 916 iS RG will go, at full throttle, and nobody flies a cross-country there. A realistic 75% cruise for this airframe is unknown to us; on the B23 — a heavier airplane on a bigger wing — the factory's own 916 iS cruise is 130 KTAS against a 150 KTAS VH, a 13% haircut. Applying the same proportion here would suggest roughly 135 KTAS, and that is arithmetic on another airplane's ratio, not a figure about this one. Ask the dealer for a handbook cruise table and a demonstration before planning trips on it.

The fuel burn is an engine figure, and it is the one number here borrowed across airframes. BRM AERO publishes no fuel consumption on the UL/LSA page. It does publish a per-engine table on the B23 page, as a machine-readable payload feeding that page's operating-cost calculator: the Rotax 912 iS Sport at 17 L/h (4.5 US gal/h), labelled "average consumption, typical flight profile". The same page independently states 16.3 L/h (4.3 gal/h) at 75% power for that engine, which agrees to within 4% and is mild evidence the calculator figure is real.

Fuel flow at a given percentage of rated power is a property of the engine, not of the airframe it is bolted to, which is why it transfers. The direction of any residual error is worth stating: the B23 is 750 kg against this airplane's 600 kg, so at the same percentage power the RG goes faster on the same fuel. 4.5 gph is therefore conservative for this airframe, not optimistic — the error, if any, runs in the buyer's favor on cost per mile. For the 916 iS variants the corresponding factory figure is 26 L/h (6.9 gph).

One cross-check failed and the reader should know. The US importer, Bristell Aircraft USA, advertises its "916RG Turbo" at 176 KTAS cruise, 2,000 fpm, a 43-gallon tank, an 850 lb empty weight and a 27 ft wingspan. Three of those contradict the factory: the tank (31.7 gal), the span (29 ft 11 in) and a cruise speed 21 knots above the factory's maximum speed. The most likely reading is that the importer sells a different configuration — a long-range tank on the shorter Classic-type wing, built as US experimental — in which case both columns are right about different airplanes. That is an inference and neither page says it, so this page follows the factory and records the disagreement. The importer's page also contradicts itself in its B23 block, labelling one airplane "915iS Turbo 141 HP" in the heading and "Rotax 916iS with 160 HP" in the body, which is a reason to prefer the factory table wherever the two differ.

The arithmetic that decides most RG trips, using the factory's weights and the engine-level fuel flow:

Endurance is not range, and this page has no sourced cruise speed to turn one into the other — see Performance Notes. The 916 iS columns would run roughly a third shorter on endurance at 6.9 gph and considerably further per hour.

The honest summary: the RG has plenty of fuel and not much payload. It will almost never be tank-limited and will frequently be weight-limited, which is the opposite of the problem most cross-country airplanes have and changes how the loading conversation goes at the airport.

What it is good at: going somewhere, two people, fast, cheaply per mile. With the 916 iS this is among the quickest things flying under light-sport rules, and a Rotax sipping under 7 gph of MOGAS at those speeds produces a cost per mile that certified retractables cannot approach. For a couple flying 300–500 nm legs with cabin bags rather than suitcases, it is a genuinely compelling airplane.

What it is not for: training. The mission score above is a 2, and that is not a knock on the airplane. Retractable gear on a trainer means gear-up landings by students, an insurance premium that reflects them, and a complex-airplane checkout before a student can solo it. The Classic exists for this and the factory says so plainly — "for cost-effective basic training in the UL/LSA category, the Bristell Classic is the proven trainer." Buy the Classic for the flight line and the RG for the owner.

Backcountry is a 1. Retractable gear, a low wing and no published short-field numbers. The TDO is the airframe in this family for grass and rough strips.

The payload is the limit on everything else. 472 lb of useful load is a two-adults-and-light-bags airplane, and the cross-country score of 8 assumes the pair of them accept a fuel stop rather than a third passenger they were never going to carry anyway.

Parts: fair, and that word is doing work. BRM AERO supports the type through a worldwide dealer network from Kunovice, and the US importer states it holds "over $300,000 of Bristell and Rotax parts in the USA", which is a real stock rather than a drop-ship promise. The rating is fair rather than good because airframe-specific RG parts — gear legs, actuators, doors, the retraction system — come from one factory in the Czech Republic and there is no US parts aftermarket behind them. Rotax parts themselves are a different story and widely available.

Mechanics: specialist. Two separate reasons compound here. A Rotax 912 iS is a FADEC-managed, liquid-cooled, geared engine that rewards a Rotax-trained mechanic and punishes a guess; and the retraction system is a BRM AERO design that a typical light-sport maintenance shop will not have seen. Identify the shop before buying, not after. For a light-sport aircraft a repairman certificate with maintenance rating covers much routine work, but neither that course nor an A&P curriculum teaches this particular gear system.

The 2,000-hour TBO is a genuine advantage and it is conditional. Rotax publishes TBO in both hours and calendar years, and a privately-owned airplane flying 60 hours a year will reach the calendar limit with most of its hours unused. The per-hour reserve in the cost model assumes the engine runs to its hour limit; at low utilisation the real reserve is higher. The engine_overhaul_cost_usd of $14,500 comes from reference/engine-overhaul-pricing.md and is per engine.

MOGAS is the operating-cost story. Rotax specifies automotive fuel for this engine in its own service instruction — no STC, no field approval, the engine maker specifies the fuel the way it specifies the oil — and E10 is approved. At typical pump spreads that is a meaningful saving per hour over 100LL, and it also spares the engine the lead-fouling maintenance penalty. Confirm the airplane's own operating limitations permit it, since Rotax assigns vapor-lock compliance to the airframe manufacturer.

There is no used RG market in the United States to quote, and that is a fact about the regulations rather than about the airplane. Retractable gear was barred from special-light-sport aircraft until MOSAIC, so almost no RGs were imported, and those that were came in as experimental. price_min_usd, price_max_usd and price_typical_usd are therefore blank with a reason, and the finder will show this model without pricing rather than scoring it on an invented one.

What is sourced is a new price: Bristell Aircraft USA advertises its 916RG Turbo "starting at $385,000" as of 2026-10-11. Three caveats attach to it.

It is a starting price for a configuration the importer describes differently from the factory (see Performance Notes), options on these airplanes run deep, and the importer's own FAQ page carries the question "Will the $30,000 tariff apply to my order" — which suggests a US buyer of a Czech-built airframe should establish the duty position in writing before signing anything. The answer to that FAQ was not captured and the figure is the question's framing rather than a confirmed amount, so it is not in any price field here. It is worth asking about.

Expect the early resale market, when one forms, to be thin and dealer-mediated. A type with few US examples and one importer prices on relationships rather than comparables.

No airworthiness directives are known against this type, and that statement carries an asterisk worth understanding: a US light-sport aircraft is not certificated under Part 23, so the FAA does not issue ADs against it the way it does for a Cessna. The equivalent mechanism is the manufacturer's own safety directives and service bulletins, which an S-LSA owner is required to comply with to keep the airplane airworthy — a stricter arrangement than it sounds, because the factory can mandate work without any FAA process.

BRM AERO publishes bulletins and a safety-reporting channel on its own support site. Ask for the complete bulletin compliance record for the specific serial number at prebuy, and check it against the factory's current list rather than the seller's word. On a type with few US examples there is no owner community large enough to have surfaced the pattern faults yet, which means the first owners are the ones finding them.

Rotax 912 iS specifics a prebuy should cover: FADEC software level and fault history pulled from the engine management unit, the rubber-replacement interval on the gearbox and coolant hoses (calendar-driven, missed by low-time owners), and gearbox friction-torque check history.

For the retraction system, there is no published service history to summarise. Treat a gear swing under load, a check of the emergency extension procedure, and the actuator's own time-in-service as non-negotiable prebuy items.

Budget more than the airframe value suggests, and get a quote before you get attached to the airplane. The $7,500 hull figure in the frontmatter is an extrapolation from the general light-sport band in reference/insurance-costs.md, pushed well up it. No Bristell RG binder is on file, and three things each push the premium up independently:

Retractable gear in light sport is new, and underwriters have no loss history for it. They have decades of gear-up data from certified retractables and no way yet to know whether MOSAIC light-sport pilots will do better or worse. New risk with no actuarial base gets priced cautiously.

The pilot population is the question, not the airplane. A sport-pilot certificate does not require complex-airplane experience, and MOSAIC now lets a pilot with modest total time fly a 155-knot retractable. Expect underwriters to ask for a complex checkout, dual minimums and possibly retract time before issuing, and to charge for their absence.

Hull value is high relative to the category. A $385,000 airplane insured at light-sport rates of 1.5–2.5% lands between $5,800 and $9,600 before any retractable or new-type loading.

Get quotes from an agency that writes light sport specifically. The spread between carriers on an unusual type is wider than any negotiation on a common one.