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Airplane Overload — Imagine a gymnasium, the full court kind where basketball is played. Imagine ten of them placed side by side. Big space, huh? Now imagine all of them filled to capacity with aircraft and airplane gear of every imaginable sort. Presto! You’ve got Aero Friedrichshafen. No wonder we go year after year (I think this was my tenth Aero and, for certain, I’m going again). In this wrap up post, I’ll provide a few more views of this truly excellent event. Good as my reporting hopefully is, however, true-blue aviation enthusiasts owe it to themselves to make the trip to the southern edge of Germany for this outstanding (nearly) all-indoor aviation extravaganza. I can find so many good reasons to like Aero, I’m sure you’d be pleased if you attend.
Final Facts and Videos — Aero Show Director Roland Bosch somehow made time in what must be an awesomely tight schedule to let us tape a video with him and his U.S.

Next month, in April 2013, the Light-Sport Aircraft industry celebrates an anniversary. It will be the eighth year since the first Special LSA approval was granted by an FAA Designated Airworthiness Representative in 2005. Evektor‘s Sportstar was first, followed hours later by the Flight Design CT and then an amazing outpouring of innovation now stretching to 131 SLSA models approved. That’s better than four brand new aircraft every quarter for 32 straight quarters; worldwide aviation’s never seen anything like it. Most of the early brand names in the industry were new, at least to Americans. Yet along the way, some famous aviation names joined the party.
We’ve seen entries from Piper, Cirrus, Cessna, Lycoming, Sensenich, and Wipaire Floats plus the major member organizations embraced Light-Sport in their own way. One multibillion dollar company to serve the sport and recreation community has been Garmin.

It’s enough to be proud of flying a “real” airplane for 50 years without accident, incident, or citation for 50 years. But imagine if half of those years were flown in those crazy “death wish” machines: ultralights! Of course, those of us who’ve flown hang gliders, ultralights and other true bird experience aircraft know just how safe they are. Anything you fly requires skill but also flying it within its strengths and limitations – that’s the only fail-safe secret to safe flying.
Nobody knows that truth better than George Karamitis. He’s just received the FAA’s Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award, for half a century of impeccable flying in both GA airplanes and the all-time best selling ultralight, the Quicksilver. George started out like a lot of us did, gawking through the fence as a kid at his home airport, Oshkosh’s Wittman Field. The veteran aviation icon and airport namesake himself, Steve Wittman, gave wee Georgie a ride one day, which sure beat hanging out in the family bathroom at home, as he liked to do, sitting on the toilet seat lid and pretending to fly with a plunger for a joystick!

Once upon a time, in the early days of Light-Sport Aircraft, way back in 2006 and 2007, new LSA models were being introduced at the torrid pace of two, three, even four per month. Aviation had no prior design outpouring to compare. The rate of development had to slow — such a pace is not sustainable — and it did. Yet the young industry continued on to the astonishing sum of 131 models and it ain’t over yet. Meanwhile, though, a new tsunami is building within the LSA sector. I’ve written about a wave a new seaplanes and as summer 2013 approaches, a tour of the many choices may help guide interest of seaplane enthusiasts.
Current Seaplanes (distinguished from float-equipped land planes *) include FAA-accepted SLSA models: Mermaid, SeaMax, SeaRey, and Freedom. At present all are being offered and have some measure of U.S.