Search Results for : MG 21

Update 3/22/13 … CHICAGO / Associated Press announced that the FAA put the final list of air traffic control tower closures at 149. The process of shutdown will start early in April. One key point: closures will not force the airports themselves to shut down, but all pilots will use unicom frequencies to communicate their position and intentions to other pilots in the vicinity. “We will work with the airports and the operators to ensure the procedures are in place to maintain the high level of safety at non-towered airports,” FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said in a statement.
In what could be a major impact on smaller regional airports such as Salinas Municipal in California, Lakeland Linder Regional in Florida (home of the Sun ‘n Fun show next month), and Wittman Regional in Wisconsin (home of Oshkosh Airventure), airlines have yet to say whether they will continue offering service to airports that lose tower staff.

My flyin’ pal, industry leader, and co-blogger Dan Johnson suggested recently that I throw some tips your way about how I put together and do air2air photography. Since I’ve done around 600 in my 30 year career, it’s not a topic I have to research, always good news. So for those of you interested in what it takes to pull off such an undertaking, here we go.
First big challenge: finding a decent photo ship. That’s tougher away from your home airport (mine was for many years Santa Paula Airport north of Los Angeles, and Long Beach Airport just south.) My birds of prey have included:
single-seat ultralights, flying with one hand and holding the camera with the other – that was lots of fun although I was constantly anxious about dropping the big old Nikon SLR camera I used back in the early ’80s.homebuilt gyrocopters and choppers (airframe vibration is a big challenge here: faster shutter speeds are important)Piper Saratoga/Cherokee 6, Beech Bonanza.

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.

In a recent article from Flying Magazine, an editor volunteered his opinion that the Light Sport industry is on life support. There are so many good arguments to refute such a sky-is-falling assessment, it kind of makes you wonder why a respected journalist would go out of his way to attract a lot of heat in the first place … but that’s another story.
Dan Johnson makes a ton of solid rebuttal remarks in this article and in a video he did with UltralightFlyer.com — check those out.
Meanwhile, here’s a magnificent retort to the LSA-is-dead silliness: Airtime Aviation out of Tulsa, OK. Owners Tom Gutmann and his son Tom Jr. just delivered their Number 100 Flight Design airplane, a new CTLSi with a fuel injected Rotax 912 iS engine.
At Sebring I saw a bunch of installations of the new engine: it’s really catching on.

Ken Godin, an endlessly enthusiastic, high-energy entrepreneur and 30 year ultralight, LSA and GA pilot, created his own company, Composiclean, a few years back, to market a line of pH-neutral and other cleaning products that are finding their way to air shows, car shows, dealer ramps and at docksides around the world.If you’ve scanned the Aircraft Spruce catalog recently you may have seen Ken’s goods. *** Like many innovations, Compsiclean came about through a vacuum in the market place. Ken was a key player at Tom Peghiny’s Flight Design USA operation until 2008, when he left to become Director of Sales and Service at REMOS Aircraft. *** “Tom asked me if I knew of a neutral cleaning product for his CT line of LSA. He had seen first hand that some composite components can be negatively affected by the alkaline pH of the cleaners typically available..most cleaners are either acidic or alkaline.” Ken’s a networking guy so he went looking for a neutral-pH cleaner.

ByDanJohnson.com is dedicated to light-sport aviation and keeps a laser focus on the aircraft of this sector. Included are new developments, market share, and maintenance of Light-Sport Aircraft to name a few. In the maintenance category, at its most basic level, is keeping your bird clean and shiny. *** I’m sure some other products can also do the job, but one company has made LSA the subject of much study. I wrote about Composiclean earlier but as we prepare for a new season of flying recreational aircraft, this low-tech task deserves another look. A leading reason: you can seriously harm some aircraft finishes by cleaning them with the wrong chemicals. Don’t take my word for it; Composiclean shows customer comments on their website. *** Major distributors have signed on to sell these LSA-friendly cleaning products. Lockwood Aircraft Supply has a whole area for the goods and Aircraft Spruce sells them at airshows (photos).

Back from a busy, weather-challenging (for photography) trip to the Bahamas, I stopped by to visit Dan Johnson and his soul mate Randee at their Spruce Creek air park digs near Daytona Beach, Florida. If you haven’t had the pleasure, visit Spruce Creek sometime to see how cool an air park can be. Hundreds and hundreds of homes, condos, hangars and “planeports,” even on-site business and a restaurant make this a wonderful aviation destination. It’s my fourth visit over the years and always a pleasure … as it is to visit with Dan and Randee.
This time I got to meet Dan’s partner-in-aviation Brian Boucher, a long time, big-jet professional pilot and one of four owners of the new Flight Design CTLSi I flew for Plane & Pilot magazine up in CT at Tom Peghiny’s US HQ just before it left for Spruce Creek. The opportunity came up for Dan to join the partnership and the numbers made sense, so now the Johnsons are part owners of that lovely fuel-injected CTLSi.