Search Results for : MG 21

In case you don’t know about Able Flight, here’s a link to the organization’s website, and another to its donation page. This wonderful endeavor helps paralyzed and otherwise physically challenged people, both civilian and war-wounded, to achieve their dreams of flight by taking them through a complete Sport Pilot training course or even LSA Repairman classes.
Able Flight uses specially-outfitted Sky Arrows, CTs, and other LSA to make it possible. Charles Stites is the big hearted, hard working guy who keeps it all moving along, and every dollar… every single dollar is well spent and deeply appreciated.
I’ve donated to Able Flight in the past and if you can send them even $5 to help this great program along, please consider it today, since it’s Giving Tuesday, which I suppose is the good sibling version of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

U.S. Pipistrel Sinus motorglider owner/dealer Rand Vollmer recently flew 1,170 statue miles nonstop at mostly economy cruise settings from Oshkosh to Florida on one 24.5-gallon fill up in his Sinus, 49-foot span motorglider.
Color me green with envy and drooling from sheer lust for flight.
For the trip, Rand’s average speed was 102 knots. Fuel economy: 50 mpg! He said he had a bit of a tailwind for part of the journey, and just squeaked in under the fall of the twilight curtain.
This and other tales I’ve heard about the super-slippery Pipistrel aircraft speak volumes about how you don’t need a lot of engine muscle to have spectacular flights. (Sinus is powered by the 80-horsepower Rotax 912 engine that can use 87-octane “regular” auto fuel. —DJ)
Pipistrel’s all-composite airframes are pushing the envelope of aerodynamics for the LSA industry. I know they’ve got some secret tricks up their sleeves, can’t wait to pass those along once I get the go-ahead.

There’s been a hue and cry from the seaplane community over New Mexico’s proposed ban of all seaplane operations in the entire state! • Especially given next year’s rush of LSA seaplanes, this is doubly troubling. —DJ
The rationale for the ban, as put forward by the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, would seem to be the danger to boaters from seaplanes landing on water, and the introduction of non-native, invasive species of flora and fauna into waterways in the state.
The Recreational Aviation Foundation and other organizations got the word out to seaplane pilots to send in their comments on the proposal. That comment period ended October 30th, and we’ll eagerly await the final ruling.
EAA and publications have decried the proposal by noting the literally tens of thousands of non-winged watercraft that all potentially introduce invasive species into the water every day in every state in the union.

News from Russian sport aircraft producers is rare. Though the old USSR had a vast military aircraft complex that hasn’t translated to recreation aircraft the way it did in the formerly Soviet Czech Republic, where many of our LSA originate. However, that doesn’t mean efforts are absent. We’ve seen some uptake of LSA (like Pipistrel) into Russia but here I’ll portray an unusual Russian development. It may not find a U.S. market but I find it intriguing.
The designer, Anatoly Geralevich Szukov, calls his work the result of “garage aviation,” a surprisingly American term (think: Apple computer coming from Steve Jobs’ garage) for a very different project… from Russia. Instead of meaning a source of innovation, however, Szukov uses the garage term because his development allows people to store their aircraft in a normal garage. Szukov’s U.S.-based contact didn’t provide an English name for Szukov’s company (though if you read Russian you might deduce it).

AOPA during its annual Summit convention that ended October 13th announced during the event a program that makes a lot of sense: a national network of flying clubs with the aim to grow general aviation at all levels.
We’ve been talking about alternatives to the modern steep cost of private flying for some time now, and have advocated owner partnerships and flying clubs as clear alternative solutions to keeping costs under control, bringing more people into flight training and pleasure flying, and for that matter keeping airplanes from getting “stiff” sitting sometimes for weeks or even months, unflown, in hangars – because surveys and studies show most recreational pilots fly an average of just 50-100 hours a year, and in seasonal regions that can mean mostly in the good weather months.
I’ve written of a veteran pilot I know who flies for an airline as an instructor/examiner – he’s the guy in other words who makes sure the other airline pilots who fly you and me are in top form.