A crack team of aeronautical whizbrains in the Institute of Aircraft Design at the University of Stuttgart, Germany has just passed its second important milestone in less than two months: its electric aircraft eGenius just flew more than two hours at more than 100 mph. *** Not by coincidence, that’s exactly the kind of performance that will be required to take $1.3 million top prize in the recently postponed (until September 25) CAFE Green Flight Challenge. *** The GFC will award the prize money to the aircraft that can fly 200 miles at greater than 100 mph on the equivalent of one gallon of gas per occupant. The per occupant proviso is significant…and EGenius carries two people, so it can use enough batteries to store two gallons worth of energy. *** That’s a lot of batteries given the current relative inefficiency of energy storage of batts vs.
Archives for July 2011
Horses of a Different Color
I’ve written about the topic of high-hour pilots and the need for transitioning them into LSA a fair amount now. *** I’ve also heard about it from and talked to a lot of people about it. Avemco Insurance, before they took a hiatus from writing new LSA policies a couple months back, wrote a minimum of 5 hours mandatory transition training into their premium contracts with pilots, stipulating, basically, this: “We don’t care if you be Sully Sullenburger or Wiley Post incarnate. If you want us to insure you in your new LSA, you will get five hours flight training in it.” *** Stumbling around the net the other day, I found this excellent piece written by Ed Downs for In Flight USA, in which he lays out the need, in particular, for veteran pilots to check the uber-confidence at the hangar door and give LSA full respect as unique aircraft with distinct behaviors.
Allegro Keeps on Training… 3,500 Hours Logged!
LSA America now produces the Allegro in Littleton, North Carolina and anticipates their first U.S.-produced LSA approval before Oshkosh 2011. Despite Czech-based Fantasy Air’s ceasing manufacturing several years ago, Allegro did well enough in the first couple years to still retain the #14 rank. *** Exciting as this now-Made-in-the-USA story may be, this article has a different focus. I want to tell you about an older Allegro, one that has logged more than 3,500 hours, nearly all of them doing training. *** With a few other long-serving LSA that I’ve been told about, this addresses the matter about Light-Sports being durably built to perform instructional flying over an extended period. Some pilots believe lightly built LSA cannot handle the duress of students learning to fly. *** Allegro (N50631) appears to disprove the argument that LSA aren’t tough enough. New factory operator Doug Hempstead stated, “The composite fuselage has proven itself in a flight school setting and aluminum wings make [Allegro] affordable to repair.” He continued, “[Our trainer] is an Allegro 2000, the design built from 2000 to 2006.” It was put in service at B Bar D Aviation Flight School with 200 hours.
Evektor Harmony LSA Becomes SLSA #119
Evektor will always be First… that is, the Czech company gained the very first Special Light-Sport Aircraft approval back in April 2005 and no one can ever take that first-in-class title away from them. Now they are also the newest approval, before AirVenture 2011 anyway. Congratulations to Evektor Aerotechnik and their U.S. representatives including Steve Minnich’s Dreams Come True operation in Dayton, Ohio. *** “I got a call right at lunch time that the Evektor Harmony LSA, N905EH, just received her airworthiness certificate,” Steve wrote on July 13th. How is Harmony different than the SportStar series (SE, Plus, Max, Max IFR)? Steve helped out with an informative summary. *** “The wing and tail surfaces are tapered and the wings and horizontal stabilizer have greater span so the wing area is actually the same. Both rudder and ailerons are larger giving a higher crosswind capability and the rudder pedal linkages exit through the floor rather than penetrating the firewall.
EASA Finally Releases Cert. Spec. for LSA
Try not to yawn. This is important. To see why, read “What does this mean…” below. *** EASA, roughly the equivalent of FAA for the European Union, finally released its CS-LSA, or Certification Specification for Light-Sport Aircraft. While not exactly what the industry hoped for, it at least represents acceptance of the ASTM certification standards. That reduces uncertainty for LSA producers in the European theater. For American producers hoping to sell across the Atlantic, CS-LSA presents an expensive choice. With the dollar low and the euro high, Made-in-the-USA aircraft could enjoy a price advantage if they could sell into Europe. *** If you’re an LSA manufacturer who must read this stuff, here’s the link to EASA’s “decision” and other documents. I plowed through this dense material but I also asked my counterpart in LAMA Europe to give me his view. *** Jan Fridrich is already known to you as the man who laboriously studies FAA’s LSA database to produce the figures I use to create our LSA market share reports.
3% Today. 30% in Years? 100% in Decades?
After a prolonged absence, mogas is returning to airports thanks to steady efforts by a consortium lead by Dean Billing and Kent Misegades. The numbers appear small today, even if they function to help you find cheaper and cleaner mogas as an alternative to 100LL. About 3% of airports presently offer mogas. But these numbers will go only one direction assuming recent fuel trends continue. While all fuel is getting more expensive, mogas remains much less costly than avgas. Since Rotax, Jabiru, and Lycoming accommodate automobile fuel blends now, since 100LL has a questionable future, and since the price of 100LL has always been substantially more than mogas, how cannot we expect mogas at airports to increase? *** The folks at Fly Unleaded have a growing list of airports offering the auto go-juice. The list is maintained by GAFuels co-author Dean Billing. While the number offering 100LL slowly drops, the mogas suppliers continues to grow.
Fixed wing or Flexwing; Take Your Pick
I am only aware of one company* in the USA that offers you a choice of a conventional three-axis fixed wing or a weight-shift control (WSC) flexwing. Why do this? Simple. Not all pilots want the same kind of aircraft and some of us like both kinds of flying.
It happens that the boys from Zephyr Hills airport have two interesting machines and you ought to know about them. “Boys” in this case refers to Abid Farooqui, Larry Mednick, and Phil Mednick; the latter are a son and father combo. Abid and Larry are trike guys while Phil is the fixed wing fellow and they display not only expertise, but as the impressive Revo development shows, they bring genuine creativity to the aircraft. This trio of talent operates several businesses, including a flight school.
One company, Apollo Aircraft, offers the Columbian-designed Ibis Magic as well as the Apollo LSA (formerly Apollo Fox).
Of Amphibs and Aircars
Two of the best-promoted and most interesting LSA projects – and two of the most delayed getting to market – are back in the news. Icon Aircraft, a startup company created to produce the sexy composite A5 amphibian, just snagged $25 million in funding to help complete remaining design issues, tool up for production and begin cranking out airplanes. *** The company reports around 500 A5 orders on the books, at $139,000 per. A few months of flight testing remain to be completed, along with a new wing (reportedly for better spin resistance and directional stability), which means the production target date has been pushed back again, this time to the last quarter of 2012. *** Reported among the new crop of investors are Eric Schmidt of Google, Satyen Patel, formerly of Nike and Phil Condit, former CEO of Boeing, and some “undisclosed” Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. The initial infusion of greenbacks will be $15 million, with an option for $10 million more.
The Range of LSA is Wide as the USA
Plenty of folks think LSA are mainly carbon fiber speedsters with autopilots and huge computer screen instrumentation. No doubt, we have some beauties that are equipped like luxury sport planes. If you’ve got the budget, the Light-Sport industry has the aircraft. Yet not everyone can afford those birds and not everyone wants one. *** FAA pretty much eliminated ultralights when they came out with the SP/LSA rule… well, except for genuine ultralights of the single place variety. The latter still exist, and yes, you can still buy a ready-to-fly ultralight “vehicle” for which you need no N-number, no medical, and no pilot license. Those 254-pound (max empty weight) aircraft prove America remains the land of the free and I, for one, love to fly them. *** On our way north for AirVenture my wife, Randee, and I made a series of stops. In Alabama — just a mile apart — we hit two fixed wing producers of “ultralights” that qualify as official SLSA.