If you seek affordable aircraft (like most readers), then you already know Sonex Aircraft. If you have somehow missed this iconic brand, you are in for a treat. Great planes, nice people, and more enthusiasm than an airshow crowd watching an aerobatic performance.
The only light aircraft producer based right at the home field of EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, Sonex parlays their co-location with the big event to good advantage.
Sonex will again hold its Open House and Homecoming Fly-In the day before EAA AirVenture Oshkosh on Sunday, July 23rd, at their factory headquarters on the east side of Wittman Regional Airport. “Our 2017 event marks the 14th annual gathering for customer-built aircraft at the Sonex facility,” noted the company in a pre-show announcement. “The event runs from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM and concludes with a mass taxi ‘arrival’ of customer and factory aircraft across Wittman field to AirVenture grounds (photo).”
This year’s Homecoming Fly-In will feature the first customer-built SubSonex Personal Jet in-attendance, as builder John Corneal will be bringing his SubSonex to AirVenture from Petersburg, Pennsylvania.
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Workhorse Dragonfly Rancher Takes on Heavier Duties — Aerial Work LSA?
You may not know this Dragonfly airplane but I do. Very well. Since before it was called Dragonfly, I followed the development of this unusual aircraft by Bobby Bailey. You probably don’t know him either but he’s one of the most inventive light aircraft designers. A man of very few words, he prefers to create than to talk about it.
Dragonfly is an important icon in the hang gliding community. This aircraft was purpose-built to tow hang gliders aloft. At a place near Sun ‘n Fun called Wallaby Ranch, this happens nearly every day of the year. Proprietor Malcolm Jones founded “the Ranch” in 1992. He has a fleet of Dragonflys that he uses to tow up experts, students learning to fly, or almost anyone wanting to get an introduction to hang gliding.
Dragonfly has been fantastically productive, towing so many thousands of flights that I doubt they could be accurately counted.
Summertime is Float Flying Time; Legend Cub Has the Gear
When summer rolls around and the sweat rolls off, it’s a perfect time to think about float flying. In the Light-Sport Aircraft or light kit-built airplane space, you are lucky to have a broad number of choices. This includes seaplanes (with boat hulls), floatplanes (land planes equipped with floats) or either of those on aircraft such as weight-shift trikes.
Legend Cub is a modernized version of the old Piper Cub. Sulphur Springs, Texas-based Legend was an early entrant to the LSA world. They’ve done well enough under the leadership of Darin Hart to occupy the #5 spot on our all-time-fleet ranking of Special LSA; they are one of only five LSA producers with more than 200 aircraft registered with FAA.
American Legend flew a float-equipped Legend Cub way back on March 11, 2005 even before the first Special LSA were accepted by FAA.
Legend’s floatplane offering boasts advantages. “It weighs less than comparable aircraft, cost less, and came with the added advantage of doors and windows on both sides of the cockpit,” observed the company.
The Aero Adventure Continues — Aventura Light Seaplane Kit
Let’s make an important point right up front. Seaplanes cost more than land planes. A fully-built, ASTM-compliant LSA seaplane starts at $150,000 and can go way up from that point. With a boat hull and retractable gear, of course, these water birds cost more to manufacture.
Must seaplanes be so costly? Fortunately, no! Aero Adventure manufactures a surprisingly affordable light seaplane kit.
With the Suzuki-based AeroMomentum engine, you can get an Aventura in the air for less than $50,000 …yep, nose to tail, tip to tip, including a basic panel and powerplant for $49,000. Elect the super-popular Rotax 912 and the cost rises a bit to $55,000, at which level Aventura remains one of the major bargains in light aviation. Learn more about the AeroMomentum engine in this video.
AeroMomentum has a few choices for you, Alex indicated, including their 100 horsepower AM 13 model or the 117 horsepower AM 15.
SeaMax Light-Sport Aircraft Seaplane Returns to American Market—Pilot Report
SeaMax from Brazil has been somewhat absent in recent years. I will spare you the detail but the company used a lot of energy to repel an undesired takeover. In recent months that was resolved and the company is now ready to move forward smartly.
SeaMax was an early LSA to meet the consensus standards as required by FAA. The first was the Mermaid in February 2006. Second was the Colyaer Freedom on January 2007. On Christmas Day 2007, SeaMax became the third.
However, of those three only SeaMax has remained in regular production for the last ten years. More recently, SeaMax was followed by SeaRey, Super Petrel, and A5 as ASTM-compliant LSA seaplanes. See our SLSA List for all aircraft shown in sortable columns.
At Sun ‘n Fun 2017, I did a video interview with designer Miguel Rosario that you can watch below.
Sleek, Sexy Electric Light-Sport Seaplane
AirMax SeaMax — Icon A5 — Vickers Wave — MVP — Lisa Akoya… you only need look at the best promoted brands to see that arguably the most innovative ideas in light aircraft are coming from the LSA seaplane sector. Each of these is a great example of visionary engineering.
Others LSA or light kit seaplane developments — Searey, Mermaid, ATOL Avion, Aero Adventure, among others — are somewhat more conventional but that’s reassuring to some potential buyers. All these names have one enormous advantage. They have practical field experience. Of the five in the first paragraph, only SeaMax has a longer period of use by owners in regular operation.
Now consider Equator Aircraft P2 Xcursion, an electric hybrid seaplane with several compelling ideas. I wrote about this in an article two years ago; now we have an update.
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.
USA Steadily Gained Light-Sport Aircraft Manufacturer Share
April 2017 logged 12 years of Light-Sport Aircraft. The FAA regulation creating the category was introduced in 2004 but it was at Sun ‘n Fun 2005 that the agency presented Evektor SportStar and the Flight Design CT the first and second Special Airworthiness certificates.
My friend and LAMA associate, Jan Fridrich, gave a presentation at Aero 2017 showing many graphs that examine this new airplane sector and how it has developed over the last decade. This article looks at a portion of his analysis.
In those dozen years, the market has developed interestingly.
In the first vigorous years of growth — filling pent-up demand for a two-seat aircraft pilots could fly without a medical — European light aircraft producers dominated the market (chart). Jan’s home country, the Czech Republic, was one of the most prolific, in the early days leading all other countries. Czech designs remain a key player but the field has shifted.
Vickers Aircraft — Wave LSA seaplane
Among all Light-Sport Aircraft, some of the most intriguing new design qualities are emerging from LSA seaplanes. Icon’s A5 has gained a ton of attention but here’s a new entry from Vickers Aircraft of New Zealand. This aircraft is -not- yet flying (as of late 2016) but is such an innovative engineering exercise that we wanted to interview designer Paul Vickers when he was in the USA arranging aspects of Wave’s debut in America. Stay tuned; we’re sure to have more!
Vickers’ Wave Is Gearing Up Quickly for 2017
Pilots not closely following Light-Sport aviation can be excused for thinking only one LSA seaplane is available. Established LSA companies like Progressive Aerodyne and their Searey or Scoda’s Super Petrel or Airmax’s SeaMax or any number of aircraft to which floats have been fitted may be somewhat baffled by the outsized attention Icon Aircraft’s long-delayed A5 receives from aviation and non-aviation media. On the other hand, most leaders of these companies do admit that Icon’s media juggernaut also brings attention to LSA seaplanes in general.
With that in mind, are you ready for one that might out-WOW the A5? You cannot ride a Wave today, but 2017 may be the breakout year for this impressively-configured LSA seaplane entry from the other down-under country of New Zealand.
Indeed, principal, Paul Vickers — the namesake of Vickers Aircraft — wrote at the end of 2016, “Great strides have been made in the past months here at Vickers.
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