You’re probably wondering about this raspy old voice appearing on the ByDanJohnson site. Who are you and what have you done with Dan? Part of that you already know.
Dan sold this site to what was then the Flying Media Group, owned by Craig Fuller, an LSA owner himself. Since adding a bunch of marine titles from Bonnier, the overarching company is now known as Firecrown, but the aviation side is still a big part of the portfolio, including FLYING, Plane & Pilot and KITPLANES (among many others). ByDanJohnson, when it becomes Affordable Aviation, will fit like the perfect puzzle piece into the group
Speaking of KITPLANES, that’s where I come from. In fact, Dan and I have history—the good kind—as he wrote about the then-nascent LSA category for KP back when all this got started. We felt it was important to get smart about the segment since it would intersect with Experimental aircraft.
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Your Own P-51? (Only Modern?) — Remarkable SW-51 Increases Production
Every pilot loves a P-51 Mustang, right? The World War II fighter with gutsy lines and a thundering engine turning a giant prop consistently ranks as one of the most desirable airplanes of all time.
Don’t even think about affording a real P-51 unless you win the lottery. Warbirds may be the biggest attraction at AirVenture Oshkosh year after year but only a few pilots have sufficiently deep pockets to own and fly one of these historic machines.
SW-51 is breathtakingly priced as well, many readers may think. Nonetheless, SW-51 is an awesome-looking flying machine that some will figure out how to afford.
Even more rare than a Ferrari, SW-51 is a very-limited-production design. The company forecasts a dozen aircraft per year. At that rate and given SW-51’s exquisite detail, I’ll bet they can sell out year after year.
Mount Your Mustang
You can watch a video below from Sun ‘n Fun 2022 that provides additional and fairly recent detail.
Top 50: Just Aircraft Escapade > Highlander > SuperSTOL and More…
Here we go again… in a great way, I hope. Returning to our Top 50 Video series, we come to Just Aircraft and their jaw-dropping SuperSTOL. At airshows in recent years, lots of pilots spoke with excitement about STOL competitions. Just’s SuperSTOL was often part of the conversation.
Videos highlighted in our Top 50 series are the most popular 50 selections from a library of about 1,000 videos appearing on Dave Loveman’s Light Sport and Ultralight Flyer YouTube channel. They represent the “Best of Dave & Dan” videos as determined by your views.
Just Aircraft has a long history of building close to 1,000 aircraft, the company said in early 2024. A large share of these, around 800, were SuperSTOL kits. The lines are a bit indistinct because SuperSTOL is at heart a Highlander kit hopped up on steroids (or the airplane equivalent). These days, Highlander remains a good seller for Walhalla, South Carolina-based Just Aircraft, said main man Gary Schmitt on a recent phone call.
Rotax Aircraft Engines Fly-In World Tour 2024 — Dates Announced for Global Series
For some years, Rotax Aircraft Engines has invited their worldwide flock to Wels, Austria. This charming town north of Salzburg is near the home of Rotax’s headquarters in Gunskirken.
On three separate visits to Rotax I was able to attend one of their Fly-in events plus a special visit just for aviation journalists.
Beautiful and inviting as Wels is, this is not an easy visit for folks from the company’s far-flung customer base in nearly every country on Earth. So, in addition to inviting the world to their headquarters event, Rotax is going abroad.
Get ready for Rotax’s World Tour 2024!
The Biggest goes Bigger
BRP-Rotax is the Austrian subsidiary of BRP Inc, “a leader in the development and production of propulsion systems for the recreational and powersports markets,” according to the company.
Founded in 1920, BRP-Rotax builds innovative Rotax four-stroke and two-stroke high-performance engines used in products such as Ski-Doo and Lynx snowmobiles, Sea-Doo personal watercraft, Can-Am onroad and offroad vehicles, as well as for karts and sport planes.
First One in the USA — Flying TL’s Luxurious, Mosaic-Ready Sparker Aircraft
Some pilots can hardly wait for Mosaic. It takes all kinds, of course.
Many aviators want to use Sport Pilot’s no-medical aspect to fly a Cessna or Piper that they can buy inexpensively (or already own). That makes sense. These affordable aircraft are familiar and proven, even if they are products of the 1950s with mostly analog instruments and powerplants that burn 10 to 15 gallons per hour of 100LL.
Another group, owners of modern LSA, wants a little more weight than allowed by current regulation. Still others may want to fly at night or in IFR or to use an economical LSA for some form of aerial work.
Then we have what I’ll call the Mosaic LSA crowd. These are pilots with larger budgets — perhaps they sold a Cirrus or Bonanza and have equity to put toward a new aircraft. These experienced pilots are accustomed to well-equipped aircraft with generous cruise speeds.
Keeping Aircraft Affordable, Blue Collar Aviation Has a Flying Machine for Everyman
Tabor Coates calls his business Blue Collar Aviation. Honestly, as someone who scours the globe for affordable aircraft, any business with this name was certain to grab my attention.
This isn’t simply adroit marketing. Tabor’s Maynard, Massachusetts operation is deep into affordable aviation. How affordable? Tabor’s most-expensive offering is the SkyRanger Nynja (featured in this 2023 article and this flight report). With every item needed in the kit to include engine, instruments and coverings that need no paint, this tried-and-true light aircraft sells for $65,000 and that even includes freight from across the Atlantic.*
How deep into affordable goes Tabor? He offers two versions of SkyRanger — Swift III and Nynja — with a complete kit for the former starting at $49,985. If that’s still high for your budget Tabor offers FlyLight’s line of superlight (nanolight?) weight-shift trikes. The simplest of these flying machines are ready-to-fly for around $15,000.
True Story about TrueLite — Update on this Much-Anticipated Part 103 Ultralight Entry
Article UPDATED 1/29/24 — See at bottom —DJ
You may have experienced this but I just got sticker shock. A young pilot told me he is facing a $1,000 fee for his Private Pilot check ride. What?! I got my license so long ago I forgot how much I paid but, obviously… “A dollar doesn’t buy what it used to!”
A few sources confirmed $1,000 is a common fee. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying a check ride isn’t worth that much; it’s merely a bigger number than expected, although my young pilot friend still has to come up with that amount of dough. Whew!
When friends and family complain about grocery store prices or the cost of air travel, I shrug and say, “Tell me something that has not gone up by 50 or 100% in the last three years.” No one loves the situation but those are economic facts.
Made for Mosaic? Scissortail Aerosport Imports G750 wth 2+2 Seating
Are you ready for Mosaic? Let’s be crystal clear. You have almost no time left to comment on FAA’s proposed rule. Mere days remain before the comment window closes. (Comment links at bottom)
However, we won’t see Mosaic LSA for many months yet. …Or, is that wrong? In this article, we look at G750, a 2+2 seat Mosaic LSA candidate.
Mosaic as a completed regulation is still 16 months away, according to FAA’s oft-repeated statements about how long they need after comments have closed. The agency has a lot of work remaining on this proposed regulation.
After a group of maintenance organizations asked for more time, FAA extended the comment period to January 22, 2024. That means you have less than one week left as this article is posted. After that, FAA begins huddling internally to review all comments and make other changes (and hopefully fix a number of weak areas; see other reporting on Mosaic).
LSA Pilot Review of a Multicopter: Lift Aircraft’s Part 103-Eligible Hexa
Ready or not, new flying machines are headed our way. Correction, they are already here and a wave of similar entries could follow (see earlier reports). The earliest market-ready arrivals qualify under FAR Part 103.
I believe this website needs to report these aircraft, so with pleasure, I announce the following to be perhaps the first multicopter pilot report from “one of us.” Scott Severen is a longtime LSA pilot, the importer of Jabiru aircraft, and the newly-elected President of LAMA, the Light Aircraft Manufacturers Association. Scott offers his impressions as one of the very first non-company pilots to fly one of these aircraft.
Some call them multicopters (me). Some prefer eVTOL. C’mon, have you said a mouthful like “eVTOL” to any non-pilot? …or even to most pilots? They look at you blankly, “Huh?” Marketers of these aircraft have yet to settle on a catchy word to identify them.
Top 50 Video Review: Lisa Akoya, an Innovative, Sleek LSA Seaplane
“Lisa Akoya: You’ve Never Seen Anything Like It,” trumpeted the lead image. Ten-year-on translation: “You’ve never seen it.”
Inspired design, cutting edge ideas, elegant sleekness, and unique features set the French LSA seaplane apart and may inspire successive designs but Lisa’s Akoya never made it to market.
No wonder,” exclaimed some! More than a decade back, they approached a retail price of $400,000. After ten years of dollar inflation, that number would be way past $500,000 today.
Remarkable as it may be to those of us with normal incomes, buyers for high-end products seem often to emerge. Cirrus and their steady sales of million-dollar-plus four seaters is proof of that. To appeal to such well-heeled pilots, a company better deliver a beautiful, functional, well-supported aircraft. Doing that expertly at a premium level gets expensive.
Here’s Looking at Lisa
Lisa Akoya dates to the very beginning of Light-Sport Aircraft. In 2004, two aviation enthusiasts, Erick Herzberger and Luc Bernole, established Lisa Airplanes in the heart of the French Alps.
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