I realize that for some readers I may be swimming upstream when I write about drones (or UAVs or RPVs, or whatever). First, many of you simply don’t care; your passion is for manned flight and I completely understand. Second, some of you see real danger to your manned flying due to a growing drone population. Those who guess the future think more than a million units will be sold this holiday season. Third, we have the matter of privacy. Probably like you, I don’t like the idea of some government agency or even a snoopy neighbor being able to peer into my yard against my preference.
This article presents a somewhat different, somewhat nuanced view of drone development and the reasons are financial, which may not be how you’ve seen this issue. Consider that FAA is — compared to most aviation businesses — an absolutely enormous organization. It has an annual budget of more than $15 billion and around 50,000 employees.
Archives for November 2015
Flying Sling 4 … Airman’s Medical Update
As I’ve indicated many times in the last couple years, this website seeks to deliver news and video about Light-Sport Aircraft, light kit aircraft, ultralights, and light GA aircraft. The latter refers to four seat (and larger) aircraft created by the same companies that make LSA or kits. Specifically, I do not plan much on Cessna, Piper, Cirrus, Diamond, and other legacy brands as every magazine already examines these every month. Instead, I plan to cover emerging models from companies that established their brand in the LSA space: Tecnam, Flight Design, Pipistrel, Evektor, Van’s and The Airplane Factory. These six manufacturers are presently in the four seat game either with ready-to-fly aircraft or four seat kits. More are expected to follow.
At Copperstate 2015, I finally got a chance to fly the Sling 4 from The Airplane Factory, which I had been anticipating since enjoying the Sling LSA.
Aerolite 120 Launches in Britain and Ireland
Aerolite 103 from U-Fly-It has been on a tear for the last couple years, producing at capacity and stretching to produce even more for 2016. Some of those very attractively priced aircraft — way under $20,000 ready-to-fly! … take that, sluggish economy! — are headed off on the longest trip of their lives. The DeLand, Florida company has been shipping units to Europe where their German-based European distributor operates.
So much for too-costly airplanes. Aerolite 103 (and a few other well-priced examples from light aircraft producers) proves an airplane doesn’t have to be costly to deliver a good time. The German Aerolite 120 is somewhat costlier to account for shipping, German certification expense, etc.
“British pilots have embraced Aerolite 120,” said German distributor Vierwerk Aviation. “Aerolite’s proper design, very good quality, and meticulous workmanship in every detail have been praised and recognized by everyone.” Aerolite 120 is the European-approved version of America’s Aerolite 103.
Two LSA Manufacturers Score Overseas
American readers of ByDanJohnson.com may be surprised to hear that more than a third of all visitors are from outside the United States. In a related fact, America has more pilots than any other country (very roughly half of the world aviator population) but more light aircraft are sold in other country by a ratio of around 10:1. These figures are fuzzy for a number of reasons but the point is that for LSA, the world is their market.
That statement is further proven by two recent successes.
Evektor reported it successfully passed the audit of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) for production at the company’s Kunovice, Czech Republic plant. “CAAC’s audit team inspected the production facilities of Evektor-Aerotechnik focused on quality assurance, engineering and manufacturing, and quality inspections of fixed wing light sport aircraft,” said Evektor.
This Czech company — the first to obtain FAA acceptance back in 2005 — was able to prove compliance with CAAC requirements for Light-Sport Aircraft, meaning Evektor is fully authorized by the CAAC for deliveries of SportStar SL aircraft to the Chinese market.
DeLand Airport to Host Air Race March 12
Our title was the headline for a news article in the my hometown Daytona Beach News-Journal newspaper recently. That’s rather unusual. Anytime Light-Sport Aircraft make the local headlines — and not due to an accident, that has to be a good thing.
Let me set the stage … Daytona Beach is a major race venue with the Daytona 500 commonly ranked as one of the top auto races in the world. It draws huge numbers of people. Estimates say 250,000 people attend the ‘500 inside the track with a vast number tailgating outside. For comparison, seating at even the biggest football games is less than half that count. Whatever the actual numbers, a great many people come to Daytona to enjoy auto racing.
An even larger event in Daytona is Bike Week. According to Wikipedia, “Approximately 500,000 people make their way to the rally area for the 10-day event.” This number is almost equal to all the pilots in the USA.
Rans’ S-6 Evolves; Remains a Great Bargain
With my good friends over at General Aviation News, I recently published an article about Light-Sport Aircraft available for less than $96,000. While that is still a good chunk of change, it is far less than the top-tier LSA that can run $150,000 to more than $200,000. Yet brand-new, fully-built LSA don’t have to be so costly. You can read the article at this link.•
The four aircraft I picked for my article are not the only well-priced choices in the Special LSA world. They happened to be four airplanes I had flown recently but I did mention at the end that buyers have even more choices in SLSA that were good values, some down below $50,000 … although those choices will not be carbon fiber speedsters with full glass panels and autopilots.
Keep this in mind: When the SP/LSA regulation first came out in 2004, plenty of potential buyers expected prices in the $50,000 to 60,000 range.
Open Air Pilots of the World … UNITE!
After many years in aviation and being a regular on the (trade) airshow circuit, I know one thing: it is darn hard to start a new event. So when The World Ultralight Fly-In announced its ambitious run at a Guinness Book world record, I thought it was a very fun idea but probably quite hard to assemble.
That was before key promoter Paul Lindamood began putting out what seemed hourly updates to the group’s Facebook page. The power of social media is unveiled for serious events such as Arab Spring or whimsical photo flash mobs. In our world of recreational aviation, WUFI ’15 proves the new media is also very useful.
Good for Paul and the WUFI gang of open air pilots. My tongue-in-cheek title notwithstanding — I am definitely not a Marx enthusiast — WUFI surely qualifies as the project that put more open-air (and other) ultralights or ultralight-types in the air on one day, all around the world.
Light-Sport Aircraft … Going the Distance
Among the critiques some old school pilots employ when trying to marginalize Light-Sport Aircraft is that these aircraft are not suited to flying long distances. I’ve reported several around the world flights (check this article and here’s another) but that’s hardly all the long flights.
The invitation started out, “Join all of us at Progressive Aerodyne and the City of Tavares on Friday, September 11 for a presentation by Michael Smith about his epic Searey flight from Melbourne, Australia to Central Florida. Michael will give a presentation at the beautiful Tavares Pavilion on the Lake about his incredible journey.” Unfortunately, I can’t attend as I’ll be working the Midwest LSA Expo in Mt. Vernon, Illinois that weekend. However, many readers probably cannot attend either so here’s a bit of Michael’s story.
In the not-too-distant past, documenting a trip like his probably meant appealing to a magazine or publishing a book.
Aircraft of Copperstate 2015 Continued (Part 2)
In this Copperstate Part 2 article we resume the list of aircraft Videoman Dave and I reviewed at the show south of Phoenix, Arizona in Casa Grande. To remind you, this was the 43rd running of this show that invites all sorts of aircraft — and many dozens did fly in each day plus others did fly-over demonstrations.
However, Copperstate generates a particularly strong response from manufacturers and representatives of Light-Sport Aircraft, light kit aircraft, and utralights. That makes it a must-go show for our team at ByDanJohnson.com and Dave’s SportAviationMagazine.com YouTube channel that so many of you seem to enjoy.
Like other shows, many of you approached us at the event and expressed your ongoing interest in the video content we create. We are very pleased about your loyal viewership and will continue to work hard to build our growing video library … already at 400+ videos and moving steadily to 500 and beyond.
VPRs & More at Copperstate 2015 (Part 1)
Updated 11/5/15 with video at end …
We went. We flew (and flew). We shot video … lots of video. Videoman Dave’s dual hand held cameras got a workout as did our six Garmin VIRB cameras. We did more of our popular interviews but we also captured multiple angles on several aircraft as we continue to build our expanding library of VPRs or Video Pilot Reports.
Nearly always hard at work on terra firma, Dave went aloft (photo) to get some air and to capture aerial images. Dave took a seat in the twin-engined AirCam with company designer and boss, Phil Lockwood so you can see Copperstate 2016 from the air.
Honestly, I can hardly imagine how Dave keeps track of those hours and hours of video much less organize them into the productions you enjoy to the tune of 1.5 million minutes a month of viewing.