FAA’s Light-Sport Aircraft category involves quite the intriguing mixture of aircraft. Fixed wing aircraft of many descriptions, weight shift, powered parachute, gyroplanes, motorgliders, seaplanes, of course, and, lighter-than-air. Every niche has been well explored …except for that last one.
Now comes FlyDoo from France, an LSA-category-fitting hot-air balloon. Designer Leandro Corradini thought he could deliver something that didn’t exist in the market so he set up shop to supply envelope, basket, burner, and more in a practical, lightweight, compact, and easy-to-transport and -store package.
FlyDoo breaks down compactly enough that you could easily store it in your house or apartment. He even shows pictures of transporting it to a flying field by adding a wheel and tow bar kit to the gondola making the aircraft into a small trailer that can be towed by a bicycle.
Leandro observes that established balloon manufacturers are accustomed to working in the FAA or CAA certified aircraft environment, often building large balloons used commercially to give rides.
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Gyroplanes Are Big Overseas — First Market Share Info for the USA
Updated September 26, 2018 — This article has been updated to include more producers. See at bottom. —DJ
Over many years, you have found LSA market share information on this website. Many have found this of interest …from businesses learning more about their market; to customers doing careful investigation before paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a new aircraft; to government fulfilling its task of regulating industry; to insurance companies assessing risk of providing their product; and many other actors in the blockbuster movie that is light, recreational aviation.
I will have more to say about the broader LSA market share reports below but now I want to present the best information I have seen for Light-Sport Aircraft Gyroplanes.
…uh, except for one problem. No such aircraft category exists, SLSA gyroplanes, that is.
FAA has denied fully-built Special LSA status to rotary winged aircraft such as gyroplanes.
Weird? Or, Wonderful? More Companies Move Toward eVTOL …Will Sport Pilots?
What on Earth is going on in Airplane DesignerLand? Are we headed for a bifurcation, a parting of the ways among those engineering the next generation of aircraft? Perhaps. Will this affect you? How do you feel about non-fixed-wing aircraft?
I am searching for a term to generically describe these emerging flying machines; “drones” doesn’t quite do the job. More of these seemingly-weird-looking machines seem to pop up every day.
Prior experience suggests that most will never make it to market. Ones that do succeed in the eVTOL or electric-powered aircraft market may not even exist today. For that matter, it is far from certain that this will ever turn into a market, though given the huge amounts of money pouring into research projects, it seems nearly inevitable (to me) that some will survive and perhaps have a major impact on flying, both for transportation and for sport or recreation.
Along this vein, before and at Sun ‘n Fun 2018, I spoke to officials from BRS parachutes.
Battle of the Giants — Boeing and Airbus Developing Small Aircraft (Even Single Seaters)
While I doubt airliner behemoths Boeing or Airbus are aiming to create aircraft you might buy, their work along with other developers, may nonetheless lead to something new in the future for recreational aircraft pilots and buyers.
According to a report in Wired magazine, “On the morning of January 31, eight buzzing rotors lifted a black bubble of an aircraft off the ground for the first time … Vahana Alpha One spent 53 seconds aloft, under its own power and autonomous control. It reached a height of 16 feet. The flight may not sound like much, but the team from Airbus … and aerospace experts say such flights of experimental aircraft mark the start of a fundamental change in the way we get around.”
Writer Jack Stewart goes on to state, “Alpha One … is a full-scale demonstrator of a single-person, vertical take-off and landing aircraft. The idea … is to remake the way we fly.
DeLand is Approaching… Video Deluge Brings Attention to Exhibitors You Will See
My video partner must be working around the clock as he prepared a blizzard of videos for release starting November 1st.
As you see in the list below, 20 videos will soon be available. I hope you’ll enjoy them.
Besides giving you info on various aircraft to see at the event, we hope to encourage you to attend DeLand #2. Videos are great and in them we try to ask the questions you would ask and to show you things you’d look for if you attended. Good as videos are, nothing substitutes for you being present to ask and look yourself. I hope you can.
Videoman Dave and I will be on-site all three days of the event. We will likely be a blur in motion dashing from one fetching aircraft vendor to another to gather more article material and video interviews. We also hope to record more Video Pilot Reports, as we did last year.
Pipistrel’s Alpha Light Aircraft “Plugs In” at New Charge Station; Fuel by Electrons
Article Updated: 9/18/17 (see below)
Electric airplanes continue to catch the headlines… but don’t impact the market much (yet). That may be changing.
You rarely see advertising for Pipistrel, the Eastern European builder of several very sleek Light-Sport Aircraft. The company feels they generate interesting-enough news that media organizations will cover their accomplishments. As this and other articles prove, perhaps they’re right although most publications depend on advertiser support to allow them to provide coverage.
An example of how Pipistrel seduces the aviation press is with an announcement proclaiming their partnership with ride-sharing giant, Uber …specifically about that tech company’s aerial ambitions. At the recent Uber Elevate Summit in Dallas, Texas, “Uber signed a partnership with Pipistrel aircraft producer for large-scale deployment of electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (VTOLs).” Pipistrel said initial vehicles [will] be used in a flight demonstration by 2020.
“Pipistrel is the only company in the world that builds and sells electric aircraft today … they are a valued partner in making Uber’s VTOL network a reality,” said Mark Moore, Director of Engineering for Aviation.
Big to Small, Just Aircraft Pleases; Now, Check Out their Part 103 Ultralight Aircraft
If you know the Part 103 category of the FAA regulations, you know these are the lightest aircraft in aviation (that is, man-carrying aircraft; drones excepted).* After years of disappearing, Part 103 entries have come back more recently and at AirVenture Oshkosh 2017, we saw another.
This is the Just Aircraft Superlite, except that name was never certain and has (since Oshkosh) been taken off the list as a model name. Until they put a fresh name on it, I will call it Just 103.
Part 103, as most readers may know, requires no pilot certificate (really, none!). They also require no FAA registration or N-numbers. Since 1982, you need no aviation medical to fly one. Plus, they can be built ready-to-fly… or in kit form of any percentage. For 35 years now — the rule went effective in September of 1982 — Part 103 ultralight vehicles have been part of the aviation firmament.
Get Ready to Party with DUC Props Like It’s 2017!
If you live in France or are traveling to the country (soon!), you might want to join the party… the DUC Propellers party, that is. It is happening in a few days.
In December 2016 DUC Propellers moved new facilities (nearby photo) to be closer to the airfield for tests and to have a more spacious infrastructure to expedite development.
To celebrate their new quarters, on Saturday, June 24th, 2017, DUC Propellers announced they will “organize an exceptional party to celebrate the inauguration of our new location on the Villefranche-Tarare Aerodrome (LFHV) in Frontenas, France.” They plan a big event with more than 500 guests expected along with participation of many operators from the airfield.
“Lot of guests will arrive all long the day by plane but the party will officially start at 8 p.m. with the visit of the new facilities, a photoBooth on flying topics, a Beaujolais culinary discovery, a cocktail dinner, a music DJ, and some animations throughout the night,” said DUC representatives.
China Embracing LSA and Light Aircraft with Help from ASA
One of the big hopes of the global aviation community — besides the shared wish for more young people to take up flying — is that Chinese interest in aviation grows.
China has convincingly proven it can build vast numbers of bridges, apartments, railways, and all sorts of major infrastructure. Can their people develop an interest in flying? Why might this be important to Americans?
To date, Chinese investors have bought all or portions of big GA companies, such as Cirrus, Mooney, Continental Motors, Glasair, and more. Yet those acquisitions do not start Chinese youth on their way to enjoy flying as Americans and Europeans do today.
Real growth needs to be grassroots.
Chinese leaders have staffed their airlines and their military, but from my own close-up view, the number of Chinese involved with sport or recreational flying is a very small number, microscopic compared to their immense population.
One organization working to change that is Aero Sports Association, run by the tireless, ever-positive Shudong Li a former Chinese national who today lives and works in the San Francisco area.
Light-Sport Aircraft Market Shares for Fleet and 2016
A dozen years after FAA created aviation’s newest sector, we have a new leader among manufacturers of fully built Light-Sport Aircraft. CubCrafters has been moving upward with several years hitting 50 deliveries. In 2016 the west coast builder finally topped perennial leader Flight Design, which slipped to second place. The CT builder had occupied the #1 position since the beginning of Light-Sport Aircraft. Only four aircraft separate the two brands. Note: this article has been updated twice; see at end. —DJ
In the single-year race, Czech Sport Aircraft won convincingly with almost double the next closest producer. The Czech builder performed well in 2015 but significantly increased last year. Congratulations to both companies.
To explain further, our “whole fleet” market share chart — the one we have published going back to 2006 — keeps track of all Special LSA (SLSA) airplanes in the U.S. fleet. Regretfully, we are unable to properly account for weight shift trikes, powered parachutes, gyroplanes, or motorgliders because the database is too variable.
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