page_title: SOCATA Horizon
section_title: Design and development
hierarchical_section_title: SOCATA Horizon / Design and development
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Sud Aviation. Le 16 Septembre 1963. Vue du roi de Jordanie en visite à Sud Aviation.
context_page_description: The GY-80 Horizon is a French four-seat touring monoplane of the 1960s designed by Yves Gardan and built under licence, first by Sud Aviation, and later by that company's SOCATA subsidiary.
context_section_description: This aircraft was designed by well-known French designer Yves Gardan during the 1950s. In 1960, Sud Aviation acquired from Gardan a licence to build the design. The prototype first flew on 21 July 1960 and the aircraft was initially produced by Sud Aviation at Nantes and Rochefort. Sud Aviation later acquired the bankrupt Morane-Saulnier aircraft company, and in 1966, formed the subsidiary SOCATA to continue production of the Morane-Saulnier Rallye; however, Sud Aviation soon transferred production of its other general aviation aircraft to SOCATA as well. Sud-Aviation and its SOCATA subsidiary manufactured 267 units by the end of 1969, when production was terminated.
  The all-metal design has a low-mounted cantilever wing with four mechanically operated Fowler-type trailing-edge flaps and two Frise-type ailerons. The tricycle landing gear partially retracts, with all wheels retracting rearwards. (A little more than half of each wheel remains exposed in the retracted position). The first prototype used a 150 hp (112 kW) Avco Lycoming O-320 flat air-cooled engine driving a fixed-pitch metal propeller, with production aircraft using this engine or a 160 hp (120 kW) version of the O-320, and had an option to use a constant speed propeller. By 1966, a 180 hp (130 kW) Lycoming O-360 engine was available, and the 150 hp option was removed by 1967.
  Most Horizons were bought by French pilot owners, but examples were exported to several countries including Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom and numbers remain in service in 2014.
  An improved variant was developed originally as the Super Horizon 200 and later went into production as the ST 10 Diplomate.
caption: Presentation of the Horizon to king Hussein of Jordan in 1963
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:03:15 16:22:55", "Image WhitePoint": "[0, 0]", "Image PrimaryChromaticities": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "Image YCbCrCoefficients": "[0, 0, 0]", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "0", "Image ReferenceBlackWhite": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "Image ExifOffset": "312", "EXIF ExposureTime": "0", "EXIF FNumber": "0", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Unidentified", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "[0, 0]", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "0", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "0", "EXIF ApertureValue": "0", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "0", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "0", "EXIF SubjectDistance": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Unidentified", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "0", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1782", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1762", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "0", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "0", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "0", "EXIF ExposureIndex": "0", "EXIF SensingMethod": "0", "EXIF FileSource": "0", "EXIF SceneType": "0"}