Contents
  1. Overview
  2. Flight characteristics
  3. Recommended uses
  4. Plastics & variants
  5. History
  6. Notable throwers
  7. Similar discs

The Innova Aviar is a 2-speed stable putt & approach. With published flight numbers of 2 / 3 / 0 / 1, it is most often described as suited for putting, jump putts.

Overview

The Innova Aviar is widely regarded as the best-selling disc of all time and the flagship putter that helped make Innova the dominant force in disc golf.[1] Designed by Dave Dunipace (Innova's founder, who reportedly names the Aviar his personal favorite disc),[1] the Aviar's stable, straight flight has defined what disc golfers expect from a putter for nearly four decades. Most modern putters from other manufacturers — Discraft Magnet/Roach, Dynamic Discs Judge/Warden, Kastaplast Reko, Gateway Wizard, and Discmania P-series — are explicitly Aviar-inspired in shape.[1]

Flight characteristics

Flight numbers: manufacturer vs. community
SourceSpeedGlide TurnFade
Innova (mfg) 2 3 0 1 Published spec
Discpedia community Loading ratings…

Flight numbers describe the published behavior of the disc when thrown at its design speed. Real-world flight varies with plastic, weight, age, and thrower power. The community-averaged numbers above reflect crowd-sourced observations from real throws — typically slightly more understable than the manufacturer's published values, which is the most consistent pattern across nearly every commercial mold.

The Aviar handles every putt-and-approach role: circle putts, jump putts, short upshots, and touch approaches. The Aviar family is unusually deep — many players carry several Aviar variants in different plastics for different shot shapes (e.g., a stiff KC Pro Aviar Big Bead for putting, a beat-in DX Aviar for turnover approaches, a Star Aviar for headwind upshots).[1] Plastic guide: DX/Classic for grippy putting (beats in quickly), KC Pro for firm long-lived putting feel,[2][4] Star Aviar P&A for throwing-oriented use, Champion for maximum durability.

Best for:

  • Putting
  • Jump putts
  • Short approaches
  • Touch upshots

Plastics & variants

The Aviar is available in the following plastic blends from Innova:[2]

DX, Pro, Star, Champion, KC Pro, JK Pro

Plastic blend significantly affects flight character. Premium plastics like Champion, Z, or C-Line generally fly more overstable when fresh and hold their stability over time. Base plastics like DX, Pro, or Active beat in faster and become more understable workhorses with use.

History

The Aviar was PDGA-approved in the mid-1980s alongside the Aviar XD, when Innova's entire catalog consisted of just three discs (the two Aviars and the Aero — Innova's original 1983 patent-bearing flying disc design).[1] The Aviar's success drove other manufacturers to build their own clones: Discraft tweaked the Phantom into the Phantom+ in response, DGA released the PowerDrive, and a long lineage of Aviar-inspired putters followed.[1] The Aviar family is unusually broad — variants include the original Classic Aviar, Aviar P&A (the starter-pack version in DX), Aviar XD (the original distance variant, now retooled into the XD), Aviar Driver / KC Aviar / Big Bead (the large-bead variety in KC Pro plastic),[2] JK Aviar-X (Juliana Korver's signature), Chains Aviar and Hands Aviar (older microbead runs), Millennium Omega and Omega 4 (microbead variants from Innova's sister brand), Discmania P1 / P1x / P2 (Dave Dunipace's Aviar designs through Discmania), CE Aviar (a small Champion-Edition run), Aviar3 and AviarX3 (faster, flatter, more overstable modern refinements), Yeti Aviar (Jay Reading signature), Whale (a deep, blunt beaded version), and Innova Nova (Paul McBeth's overmolded Aviar).[1] Ken Climo — who won 12 PDGA World Championship titles, including 9 consecutive from 1990 to 1998[3] — helped develop the KC Pro plastic blend named for him, and KC Pro Aviars have shipped in 8x, 9x, 10x, 11x, and 12x editions tied to his title count at each release.[4]

Notable throwers

Ken Climo (KC Pro Aviar), Juliana Korver (JK Pro Aviar)

Similar discs

References & further reading

Sources

Content on this page has been cross-checked against the following sources. Numbered citations in the prose above link to the matching entry here.

  1. "A quick guide to the Innova Aviar" — u/IsaacSam98 on r/discgolf
  2. Innova KC Aviar — official manufacturer page
  3. Ken Climo — Wikipedia
  4. KC Pro Aviar — Ken Climo 12x

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