ByDanJohnson.com

Oshkosh 2011 is history. By numerous accounts, this was a vast improvement over 2010 when the comments commonly went, “Well, I had some interest (in my airplane) and I hope to sell one or two… maybe.” This year I had easily 30 conversations revealing either outright positive successful results or varyingly robust mood indicators such as, “Looks like aviation has life in it again.” I heard from sellers and customers and rarely had to solicit their opinions. *** A number of aircraft purveyors said they took cash deposits and wrote firm contracts. I estimate about 30 aircraft sales by this method. Companies like Icon, Flight Design, and Terrafugia sold a large number of future delivery positions (more than 50, more than 60, and “several,” respectively). *** Icon neared or crossed the 500-on-order point, partly by “testing elasticity” in the pre-order market by lowering the A5 seaplane deposit to $2,000 from $5,000. *** Flight Design continued their tear from Aero adding dozens more orders for their four-seat C4, reporting more than $16 million in orders. These two and the roadable car maker continue to capture generous media attention and to present their stories impressively. *** Companies reporting sales for near-term delivery include Jabiru USA, Arion, Czech Sport, Evektor, Quicksilver, and Corbi, each logging from 2 to 7 sales. Arion transacted both SLSA and Experimental orders of their gorgeous LS-1. The preceding list is not inclusive as I didn’t hear from a number of companies regarding their results. *** Demo ride pilots also stayed very busy. Phoenix USA did more than 20, all out of lovely little Brennand Airport, 15 miles north of Oshkosh. SeaRey designer Kerry Richter reported 35 seaplane demos at EAA’s Seaplane Base. Pipistrel ran steadily, also at Brennand, except when they helped UltralightNews and me as we performed our first “full length” video, two-person pilot report on the new Evektor Harmony LSA (in two words: sophisticated & sweet). *** On the industry side, LAMA and GAMA (GA Mfrs Assoc.) held the first of a series of LSA leadership meetings. From last year at AirVenture the change in support for LSA at the highest levels of aviation was dramatic. Last year we remained somewhat ugly cousins deserving only an arm’s-length embrace. This year it was more a clap-on-the-back, glad-to-have-you-in-the-club greeting… though, of course, professionally delivered as these are the Big Boys of aviation. LAMA gave its 20th President’s Award to Cessna’s former president Jack Pelton, who reiterated his strong support for the LSA concept and promised to carry pro-industry messages when he meets this week as part of small, select group that advises FAA boss Randy Babbitt. Most of the conversation is likely to involve FAA’s current budget problems but the LSA sector represents good news for the agency. *** Visitors saw several new LSA at the show (Snap, electric Lazair, Harmony LSA, tri-gear Kolb Mk III, Remos NXT, and four seaters from LSA producers: Flight Design C4 and Tecnam P2010). Again, this list is not exhaustive and we’ll have more on these and other unveilings in coming days. *** True-103 ultralights flying with electric motors continued to draw big crowds in the Ultralight Area, which I thought looked stronger than in recent years. We also found and shot video reviews of interesting machines in the Ultralight Area: Kolb’s Mk III tri-gear/taildragger (yes, it goes both ways… at the same time!); the Part 103 welded-aluminum, swing-wing Backyard Flyer; the return of Terry Raber’s $14,000 ready-to-fly Aerolite-103; Earthstar’s all-electric eGull; plus a review of all the Hirth engines and an updated video on the Quad City Challenger. In the weeks ahead, we expect to post more than dozen fresh videos. *** Finally, ByDanJohnson.com enlisted several new sponsors to help us keep bringing you all the news of light aviation, nearly all of it free thanks to these supporters and the support of all our members. This year’s Oshkosh made me very happy to remain in this where-the-action-is industry. Lots more to come… click back soon!

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By all accounts it’s been a good show. I talked with several LSA vendors who, despite the pitiful wrangling in Congress over the debt and general lack of a strong economic bounceback, either wrote some sales or were 90% certain they would. ***  U.S. sales leader Flight Design even announced they’d written $11 million worth of business at the show. ***  I talked with John Gilmore, the U.S. sales manager for Tom Peghiny’s U.S. Flight Design operation, who briefed me on the new, four-seat, to-be-certified Flight Design C4 the other day (I’ll post more in the next few days). *** John also updated Dan Johnson today on the company’s excellent numbers at the show: *** “We have taken 40 orders for the new C4 plus another 8 orders for Light-Sport Aircraft here at AirVenture 2011,” said John. *** The C4 debuted in Europe in April and a full-scale mockup seen here was prominent in the display all week. Historical note: Flight Design has topped the LSA sales leader board since the category was created in 2004, an impressive run due in large part to an excellent management style and top customer support and service.I was up at the crack o’ dawn to fly the new Remos NXT, which has some new features such as a new panel profile that gives more viewing room on top and more leg room underneath — very nice and it definitely feels roomier. The avionics upgrade features Garmin Aera 500 GPS, and the Dynon SkyView glass cockpit with electronic flight instruments, embedded transponder, and engine monitoring. Dynon is winning over cockpits left and right with the SkyView, and no wonder: it’s got it all, at a price that’s magnitudes cheaper than equivalent certified glassworks. *** The NXT also refines placement of some control knobs in the cockpit and adds visors and air vents to keep things cool. *** Personally my flight in beautiful, calm dawn air reinforced my impression from my flight report 18 months back that there is no finer LSA of the 30 or so I’ve flown so far in terms of sheer joyful handling. I hadn’t flown one in all that time, yet made two greaser landings with hardly any coaching from my demo host, Ryan Hernandez, who admirably handled the Oshkosh chores for Arkansas dealer Tommy Lee and his Adventure Flight dealership. *** The Remos turns so smoothly, is so light on the controls yet not twitchy or oversensitive at all, and as I said back then, as soon as you lift off, you feel like you’ve been flying the airplane every day. Really quite an achievement in aerodynamics for Remos. *** It’s beautiful interior is a testimony to the fit and finish of the entire plane. In you’re in the market for a comfortable, really fun-flying LSA, certainly put Remos on the list. I know it’s on my top ten (a list that constantly changes as I fly more airplanes…but Remos has stayed there since my first flight. *** One closing note then on to the show, time to line up some last flights and say goodbye to friends and colleagues in the industry. *** It’s not an LSA-centric product, but this cute idea, Mutt Muffs, reminds us that any time we go flying with our sensitive-hearing furry friends means we want to help them enjoy the ride too. ‘Nuff said. *** Scroll down for more pix of the Remos GX NXT upgrade model below. *** I’ll have another pickup blog for Oshkosh probably in two-three days as I’m flying home in the new Evektor Harmony with AB Flight’s Art Tarola *** tomorrow…if we can get all our gear into one airplane!

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It’s late, I got heat stroked a bit in the beautiful but intensely sunny day so I’m going to post some pix of some things I saw at the show with short captions and will hope to get back with more details once my feet stop throbbing and my brain temps cool down a bit. *** A beautiful day in Oshkosh. Everybody was catching up on flying after being in the gloom and doom for two days. *** The electric symposium went off well, I assume, although I missed it, had to try and get in a thrice-postponed flight with Remos… which was postponed yet again. Bummer. That’s happening now at 6 am… about 7 hours from now. Yark! *** I had a nice chat with Calin Gologan, the extremely tall creator of the Elektra One that won the Lindbergh LEAP award today. He told me they have achieved a battery storage density improvement that will allow them to make a 500 mile flight in Germany, they hope, this August. *** A very nice, very brilliant man. *** The Corbi Air Alto 100 was there, with an installed air conditioner! Very nice install, they’ll be selling them to experimental builders and LSA makers too.

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A year ago I did a blog piece here as well as a piece in the magazine about the resurrected “Lazarus Machine”, Renegade Light Sport’s super sexy low wing, about-to-be Lycoming IO-233-LSA-powered, all composite S-LSA. *** I found Renegade’s prime mover Christopher “Doc” Bailey at the flashy Lycoming display and before I could say “Lightning round!” he was regaling me, as only Doc can do, with the leaps and bounds the company has made in the last year. *** I’m going to serve up the rapid-fire infostream in his own words, but before I do, here’s the short tell: the Falcon is done with testing, is in production, comes in two configurations, tricycle and taildragger, sells for $125,000 with a bunch of nice features (including 10″ Dynon SkyView, full Garmin stack and dual electronic ignition) and if your mouth isn’t watering yet, I’m stepping to the side and take it away Doc! *** “The first production model Renegade Falcon with the Lycoming IO-233-LSA is owned by our dealer on Long Island, NY – Steve Norman. It’s the airplane you see right here (and in the photos).” *** “The engine is FAA Part 33 certified. The airframe is ASTM certified. We’re done with R&D, we’ve been through a year of testing with the 233. We’ve tested six fuel injection systems, five electronic ignition systems (and settled on the Lightspeed dual ignition system), four different exhaust systems (and settled on the Vetterman exhaust), and three or four panel mounts. We just brought on the Catto 3-blade, nickel-edge composite prop, we also tested Sensenich and others.” ***  “And we’re getting 1500 fpm climb solo, 4.6 gph cruise at 2400 rpm, and we’re just where we said we would be in a year.” *** “We’ve put in 100 hours of test flying so far.” *** “This airplane, Steve Norman’s, has everything you can get, the stuff I mentioned and dual Grand Rapids Synthetic Vision with built-in highway in the sky and autopilot; a ballistic chute, ostrich skin seats…” *** Real ostrich skins? I asked. *** “You bet, I’m the one who paid for them, they were real alright!” *** “So many guys came up and said they’d flown Cubs and other taildraggers all their lives, and when 500 people tell you they want that, you better take notice! So we now have a taildragger version too, with beefy, durable 7071-T6 gear for flight schools and a Matco 42-degree breakaway tailwheel.” ***  “We’ve got five engines coming from Lycoming this month, we’ve sold six airplanes since we’ve been here at the show, we’re in full production here, everything is built in the U.S., we have a new autoclave system set up by former Boeing engineers, and like I said we’ve come a long way in a year.” *** “Before the prop has turned 45 degrees, the ignition system is producing a 120,000 volt spark and the engine starts right up like a car. We call this engine the Rotax Slayer! We’re getting 305 degrees on the CHT, 1000 degrees on the EGT, so it’s burning efficiently and burning cool. We’re placarding max level rpm at 2400 to maintain the 120-knot LSA restriction.” *** “Future enhancements will include room for golf clubs, wing locker baggage, winglets for more stability, things like that.” *** I asked how fast it was now at full power. “You don’t want me to tell you that,” he said with a laugh. “It’s fast. We’ll placard it at 2400 rpm for 120 knots. We had a CFII bring it out here from Kansas City. He was doing 140 knots at 2700 rpm.” *** “People ask me, ‘Why not restrict the engine?’ That’s a huge safety issue for me. If you’re downwind to land and the wind falls out, you may need all the power you can get. Why restrict that? If you go over that 2400 rpm setting, it’s on you legally but I’m not going to take it away. It’s like CubCrafters did with their 180 hp engine, placarding it to a max of five minutes full power.” *** “The first production taildragger Falcon is going to Switzerland, to the guy who started the Swatch company. We’ve got orders for five, with seven airframes done, we can make five a month and all of it is out of our Lees Summit, MO plant.” *** “Weight for the taildragger is 795 lbs. For the tricycle gear it’s 814, with everything installed. It gets off in 200-300 feet easily. Before you get the throttle all the way up, it’s already rotated.” *** “It will throw you back into the seat; with the Catto prop you really feel the thrust. It really takes off. We figure we’re getting 123-125 hp with the fuel injection. With the traditional carbureted version, we were getting 120 knots at 2750 rpm. With the fuel injection, we dropped 300 rpm to get the same speed, at the same altitude and in the same weather. It just feels smoother. We think it’s that 120,000 volt spark. It was burning 5.5 gph with the carburetion: with electronic ignition, it’s 4.6.” *** All that’s left now is for me to fly it for a pirep which I hope to do here at the show and let you know how much of this is real, and how much is “Doc”-ese! *** One last word: the airplane, already a winner in the looks department, has a beautiful engine installation. It’s clean, it’s elegant, it’s beautiful. And, for those “graying” types Doc talks about who still don’t trust the well-proven Rotax, the Lycoming is the deal-maker. It’ll be interesting to see how much support this all-American, $125K looker garners in the market place.

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Today was not a typical Oshkosh day, and certainly nothing like yesterday, which was downright idyllic with its sunny skies, refreshing mid-70s temps and puffy clouds to complete the chromatic joys of a perfect green summer day in Great Lakes country. *** In short, it rained until late afternoon, but by sundown the skies mostly cleared with the promise of hotter, more humid days ahead. Today was the perfect kind of day to walk around, dodge the liquid sunshine, meet and greet old friends and make new ones, and see what’s shaking in the main display hangars and booths strewn all over Airventure. *** I’d wanted to check out the Gleim X-Plane VFR Flight Simulator I’ve heard so much about. I had the benefit of a stirring presentation by Aaron Wiseman, who energetically took me through all the main features of the system which has caught on at a number of flight schools already. *** It’s cool! A really effective approach to flight simulation that can also save flight schools and their students real money. *** Being able to realistically drill and anchor in-flight control feel, situational awareness and cockpit procedure skills before students actually get in that infamous “worst classroom in the world”, while also shortening expensive flight training hours,without breaking the bank, should appeal to flight schools wanting higher student completion rates…and what school doesn’t want that? One of several advantages of the sim is how instructors can take a student through a full flight lesson on the ground, help students through rough patches, pause the routine and explain new concepts or problem areas, then take the student out for a practical lesson in the airplane when ready. *** There’s a lot to say about Dr. Irv Gleim’s latest brainchild, and for that I urge you to go check out the info online here. *** Be sure and watch the video at the bottom of the page for a quick intro. *** For now, I’ve only got room (and late-night energy) to point out some key points. *** [] The three-screen system, complete with Dell XPS computer, three screens, stick, throttle and rudder pedals (flight school version) is dramatically cheaper (around $5000) than similar simulators which cost tens of thousands of dollars. *** [] Students can install a less-expensive version on their own home computer (many of us have two screen systems now, so only a third screen would be required). The private user version is still in development and should market in the next few months. *** [] It was developed for use in Remos Pilot Centers and has become very effective through continual feedback refinement with Gleim’s programmers. The system I worked with was set up for a Remos GX and it was suitably smooth, light on the controls (I was constantly over controlling until I relaxed a bit) and very realistic. *** The three screens give an excellent panorama view, and the background can be located right at the airport where students are being trained, and conform to the type of aircraft they’re training in, for even more realistic — and transferable to the cockpit — skills. *** Lou Mancuso of Mid Island Air Service of Long Island, who’s had a lot of success training people in LSA for several years now, raves about this system. *** Thanks again to Aaron Wiseman for his thorough briefing. I’ll be writing more on this in my Oshkosh top new products article for the magazine.

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After my own Labors of Hercules, I arrived at the EAA Oshkosh Airventure seasonal highpoint event Tuesday mid day. Since it was a beautiful day by anybody’s standards, I decided not to brave the hordes at the show and headed out, once I got settled in my digs for the week, to a lovely little airport named Brennand about 10 minutes northwest of EAA’s Wittman Field show grounds. *** I was in luck with more than just weather: the San Antonio Light Sport Aircraft (SALSA) gang from Texas was there demo-flying its all-composite Pipistrel Virus SW 80/100, tricycle-gear (there’s also a taildragger version), composite touring motorglider. *** The Pipistrel line includes several designs I have admired from afar but not had the opportunity to share air with. *** All that changed when Salsa’s prime mover and shaker Rand Vollmer introduced me to a big, friendly Texican fella named Dave White. *** Dave is Salsa’s Sales Director, chief glider/motorglider instructor and demo pilot out at Brennand Airport, which, by the way, is one of those lovely, quiet airport communities I think we should all get to live on either in this life or the next one. Green grass and trees, lovely homes, quiet, no hassle backyard flying: can’t ask for much more than that. Anyway, Dave said, “Hey, I just had a demo cancel, want to go up?” *** Do Pope wear tall, funny looking hat? *** Ten minutes later I was taxiing the light-handling, 40-foot span Virus — which as everyone hastens to mention is a terrible name for a wonderful airplane. It comes from Slovenia, where virus is pronounced “vee-roos”, which sounds a whole lot better than the way we say it). *** The wonderful-airplane part is fully realized after just a few minutes. I haven’t flown anything but a Cub for the last 3 months so I’m stomping that poor airplanes rudder rather mercilessly, but the airplane doesn’t seem to mind at all. And in just a takeoff, a couple turns and listening to Dave obligingly talk me through everything — and letting me really get to know the airplane by letting me do everything, a wonderful teaching style — I’ve learned one important thing: The Virus SW is a real sleeper of an S-LSA. Check out this video: *** I’ll have a pilot report on it in the magazine soon. *** The Cliff Notes version: *** Virus handles more like a plane with a 30-foot span, has a 45-45 roll rate around two seconds, has light, balanced control feel, turns quickly and with virtually no adverse yaw — I pulled turns left and right without any rudder at all and it obliged with nary a complaint. *** The airplane, which is built for lightness and thus has a 660 lb. useful load — though it’s max weight is more than a hundred pounds below the LSA ceiling weight of 1320 lbs.!, hangs on in soaring turns to the lightest little bug fart of a thermal, which became evident in calm, 6:30 p.m. air where I, the newcomer, was able to make a few turns in just a bit of a bubble and approach zero sink for a few seconds. *** Glide ratio by the way is 24:1 and sink rate is around 250 fpm. That’s plenty good enough to shut down and let the earth/sun/sky engine keep you up for hours. And the robust top-o’-wing, hand-lever pop up air brakes give great glide-slope control for landing. Dave demonstrated a most impressive dead-stick landing using only the brakes for putting her down on the narrow paved strip at Brennand. *** Handling is light and nimble, cruise is ridiculously efficient — we saw 112 knots at 80% power and remember, the engine is an 80hp, not 100hp, Rotax. The Euro version which isn’t restricted to top speed approaches 150 knots max level cruise! Yes, a very, very clean airframe, and you feel that when you fly it. It’s a joy, very forgiving too (especially with that big span). *** Salsa has a variety of motorgliding training and buying options. And you won’t find many places better to earn your soaring chops than the big-thermal country of Texas, where numerous soaring records have been set for decades. *** Give these guys a closer look, they’re fully dedicated and devoted to demonstrating the benefits that learning to fly powered soaring aircraft bestow, not only on new and experienced pilots, but on the future of GA itself. *** Their brief thesis, which I’ll explore with Rand in the article more fully, is that pilots can get their glider rating much cheaper than any other ratings, learn a great deal about flying, and have much more fun at it than merely crunching through the syllabi and getting handed a certificate. *** Motorgliding, they believe, creates pilots who experience and learn to understand the vital nuances of flight in a way that will stick with them throughout their flying lives. *** Pipistrel has showed up in a big way this year with a choice display in front of Hangar B near Airshow Central or whatever they’re calling it now. *** Prominent is its Taurus Electro G4, the 3,000lb.+, four-seat, all-electric motorglider that’s competing at September’s CAFE Green Flight Challenge. The two-fuselage aircraft is drawing a lot of attention, and once all the requrements to compete legally (as Experimental Exhibition aircraft since there is yet to be an FAA standard for electric-powered aircraft) are met it should have a good shot at winning the $1.3 million prize. *** Jim Lee of PhoEnix, the electric version built for the race that’s in test and development now, tells me there are so many hurdles for so many of the entrants, it may be postponed again. It was originally scheduled for earlier this month but nobody was ready. *** Off to the show…in the rain!

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