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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.

More airplanes made it through the winter weather blanketing much of the midwest and east.
Pipistrel’s much-awaited Alpha Trainer arrived at 8 last night thanks to its much-fatigued pilot Don Sharp who soldiered on through the crud all the way from Indiana.
Highlights? Too many to list, but in the wee hours meself we’ll go the photo/caption route.
Personal fave: Patty Wagstaff’s always-amazing airshow…in the near-dark twilight, followed by the largest demonstration team in aviation, Team AeroDynamix. The 12-aircraft team is made up exclusively of Van’s RV aircraft, including RV-4s and RV-6s, two of the most popular kit planes ever. The complex and highly entertaining show lit up the darkening, overcast skies with great moves and lots of bright lights.
Attendance seemed light today, disappointing especially with all the effort Jana Filip and crew have put in this last year to promote the show and bring in acts like Patty and the RV team.

Sebring is off and running! The day in pix and captions…

Sebring’s final day ended at 2 p.m. with lighter attendance typical of a Sunday and gathering clouds. I spoke with a couple of the principals of the Expo staff that did such a superb job making this no doubt the smoothest running, most feature-packed event that I’ve certainly been too. Kudos to all: it was a beautifully run event, from the many friendly, helpful volunteers to the new food vendors who upped the available comestible quotient (say that three times fast) with tasty food and good selection (Cheese Louise sandwich anyone? I had four! Buzzard Balls were also popular – it was a beef meatball kind of thing if you must know.)
The official end of show release claimed record attendance for the show so I won’t argue, though it did seem lighter than last year but it’s easy to underestimate. More importantly, many vendors were actually pleased with their results with sales or solid leads from the LSA-focused crowd.

The big Saturday came and went, bookended by winds, overcast and raindrops of the intermittent kind. No doubt many potential showgoers were deterred by the non-Florida-like weather.
LSA demo flights were conducted apace, although none of the three days of the show have shown the kind of flight activity of previous years because the weather just hasn’t been cooperative.
All in all, a difficult show to accept: so much great preparation from Jana Filip and crew, many LSA exhibitors battling through winter weather across the country just to arrive late, Patty Wagstaff doing two blockbuster performances, ditto Team AeroDynamix, which drew out a good crowd at dusk despite challenging weather that wasn’t horrible, just uncooperative, and sometimes you want to ask yourself if somebody up there likes to laugh when people plan an aviation meet.
In the hang gliding days, we called it “meet weather”. Call a competition, expect rain.
Final day tomorrow typically draws a smaller attendance at least on a Sunday morning, and a bunch of us are launching at show’s end for 4 days in the Bahamas as part of Mike Z’s annual island fly-out.

Just after I posted in the wee hours last night I got this late email from Greg Lawrence about his work with deaf flight students. Greg added a link to more information, check it out, it’s very interesting.
“Nobody can hear very well in a small aircraft,” writes Greg, “and fewer than ‘nobody’ can process language and learn well while sweating and worrying that they are going to screw up and maybe die. That is why I developed lesson plans for teaching Deaf to fly that require no oral communication in the cockpit. Tai Chi is also taught and learned with minimal talking. There are many similarities in teaching Tai Chi and flying. Tai Chi has been taught a couple thousand years longer than flying. Stop by the Pipistrel display and I will demonstrate. I am an Advanced Ground Instructor and we will be standing on the ground so we will be legal.

This year’s LSA bash in Sebring which starts next Thursday, 17 January and runs through the weekend looks to be far and away the best ever. Jana Filip and crew have been working hard all year to make this a top professional event.
Lots of new things in addition to the usual comfy, cozy gathering that’s LSA-only include a twilight airshow (can you spell Patty Wagstaff?), Seaplane Pilot’s Association Seaplane Base at Lake Jackson, Model Airplane Contest, a fully restored American Airlines DC-3 on display, and…oh yeah…tons of top LSA demos for you to get up close and personal with. Here’s some hot points:
• 80+ inside exhibitors; • 80+ outside exhibitors • 20,000+ attendance expected • keynote speeches by Randy Babbitt (former FAA head) and Patty Wagstaff • lots of new product rollouts including at least a couple LSA I’ve heard about through the grapevine. • …and the 3rd annual Bahamas flyout for four days of island fun, mon.