ORIGINAL: Sport_Pilot
Though Sig lists the Cobra, and Kougar as sport planes, they are in fact pattern planes. The larger Kougar and King Cobra are fairly common in the lower pattern classes, at least in some regions. Yes I know you don't have to use a pattern plane in regular pattern clases. But a trainer is not competitive and these airplanes are. Maybe not the best but better than most novices can fly.
I think the Sig Komet was marketed as a pattern plane, though it was no better when it was produced.
------------
It was marketing hype to call any model with a low mounted wing a pattern ship back in the Seventies, but that did not make it true.
I won my first pattern contest while flying a Bridi Trainer Sixty. Does that make it a pattern ship too? <G>
This is just a matter of semantics, but it used to tick me off when folks would invest their money in a mislabled sport plane and then suffer great disappointment when they discovered that their "pattern ship" wasn't capable of performing an advanced class pattern (point rolls, knife-edge flight) because of design problems that no true pattern ship possessed. Some folks expect manufacturers to be honest and they take their marketing hype literally.
The Kougar is one of the most miserable flying models that I have ever encountered and is about as far from a real pattern ship as one can get. I think the Butterfly II could kick its tail in a pattern contest on a calm day.
