I always enjoy when a new airplane company arrives on the market and sets plans in motion to expand and improve their flying machine. Texas Aircraft and their Colt 100 Light-Sport Aircraft is one such company.
Lead by the energetic and ambitious Matheus Grande, Texas Aircraft is moving on several fronts. Here is some update on the Colt builder based in Hondo, Texas.
Garmin IFR Colt
“Wait,” I hear some of you exclaim! “A Light-Sport Aircraft cannot be used for flying with reference only to instruments.” Wrong!
Rather than repeat what I have already written several times, I invite you to explore this article which makes an attempt to explain the situation surrounding IFR or IMC, that is, flight in actual instrument conditions; different from filing to fly in the IFR system for training or other reasons.
Certainly, most readers will see the value in a new, modern, fuel efficient, comfortable, and marvelously-equipped Light-Sport Aircraft versus a 30-50 year-old Cessna 172 or other legacy general aviation aircraft.
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Ready for Sun ‘n Fun 2019 — Airplanes and Engines on Display in LSA Mall
This year celebrates 15 years of Light-Sport Aircraft and its companion pilot certificate, Sport Pilot. This year also celebrates the 12th year of LAMA providing the LSA Mall. What a fascinating ride it has been!
For 2019, LAMA will again host its special location at the big spring celebration of flight that is Sun ‘n Fun. LAMA is able to mount this attraction thanks to longstanding support from Sun ‘n Fun management and many industry players.
The purpose of the LSA Mall is twofold: (1) present aircraft to visitors in a convenient, enjoyable setting, and (2) showcase the light aircraft industry in one location. The LSA Mall is not limited to Special Light-Sport Aircraft but features Sport Pilot-eligible kit aircraft and ultralights plus specialty light aircraft that may be of interest to pilots.
For 2019, the LSA Mall will add a few previously-owned LSA, as this part of the light aircraft market is developing.
Shhhhhh… Could a Whisper Be In Your Future? Are You Sure About That?
UPDATE (5/28/18): Since this article was published, we’ve added our video interview from Aero 2018.
For your holiday reading about flying machines, I want to veer off into the weeds for one article. Don’t worry; lots more conventional reporting will follow.
After the Uber Elevate conference, mainstream media was all over eVTOLs like bees on flowers in spring. Breathless stories abound regarding how we will soon all take autonomously-flown taxis around our big cities, saving time and restoring the planet’s environmental health. Yeah, maybe… we’ll see about all that.
Imagine this…
What if you had guests over for the holiday and one arrives in the bright blue machine pictured nearby. Would you go look at it? More importantly, what if the owner said, “Let’s go for a short flight; you can see your home and neighborhood from above and it will only take a few minutes.”
Indeed, what if he threw you the keys and said, “You can go by yourself if you like.”
“But I don’t know how to fly a helicopter,” you plead, knowing the machine in your driveway is not a helicopter.
Continental Motors Absorbs Titan X-340 Production
Coming up in just over two weeks! — September 8-9-10, 2016 — is the Midwest LSA Expo. I hope your plans include going. Plenty of aircraft are available and taking a demo flight is no easier anywhere. I will look for you on site! More info: Midwest LSA Expo.
Engines have changed a lot over the life of Light-Sport Aircraft. FAA’s new regulation became effective in September 2004. A hard working industry has brought 140 Special LSA models to market …in less than 12 years, one per month for every month (on average) since the rule emerged.
Engines have been similarly prolific.
In the beginning, Rotax‘s 65-horsepower two-stroke 582 was a often selected to power the lighter aircraft of the pre-LSA period. The 9-series engines had gained acceptance much earlier but as LSA got bigger and heavier, their success gave a tremendous push to the popular Austrian engine and it dominates to this day.
Glowfly Update; Clever Name—Clever Project
What’s in a name? I like Glowfly, as a sort of double entendre. It could suggest “Go fly,” or it might refer to glow as in the spark employed to start a turbine engine. Yup, in case you didn’t see our earlier article by Dave Unwin, the newly renamed Glowfly is a jet-powered sailplane that uses electric-powered main wheel propulsion to assist. How’s that for — as my favorite British comedy troupe, Monty Python, used to say — “something completely different?”
Formerly called GloW (which nearly everyone was sure to misspell; certainly your smarty-pants smartphone would never get the capitalization right), Glowfly is moving along smartly. Here’s an update the folks at ProAirport sent along.
“The first public reveal — Project Glow becomes Glowfly,” glowed the ProAirport team.
In the last weekend of November at the Flyer Live show, ProAirport said, “We were overwhelmed by the number of visitors to the ProAirsport stand. It was truly fantastic to meet and talk to all these extremely interested people who had made a beeline for us after hearing and reading all about Project Glow [the project’s earlier name].” They reported that many interested pilots specifically came to see Glowfly live, as the show name suggests.
eAirplanes at Aero 2015 Plus Major Motor News
With Aero mere days away now, excitement is growing for the electric aircraft event-within-the-event. Visitors can tour around the entry foyer hall where the e-flight-expo will be located. This year offers a few highlights, provided to me from my publisher friend Willi Tacke in Germany.
One aircraft not many Europeans and even fewer Americans have seen is the Chinese RX1E made by the Liaoning Ruixiang General Aircraft Manufacturing Company. An electric motorglider, RX1E earned its CAAC Type Design Approval (TDA) earlier this year using ASTM standards (article). Willi reported, “The Chinese team lead by chief developer Professor Dr. Yang Fengtian is now seeking certification in other countries such as Germany or France.
Some companies will not be attending not because their projects have stopped but because they are at critical junctions. Among those missing will be the Volocopter from e-Volo nor any man-carrying aircraft display by Yuneec — which last year showed their eSpyder that had just won German approval.
Post-Oshkosh 2013 Quick Review
At the big show EAA likes to call the Summer Celebration of Flight, we rove the grounds seeking new airplanes, new engines or propulsion systems, new panel gear, updated models and more. In this very fast tour, we’ll zoom around AirVenture for a glance at some airplanes and components that caught our attention. In subsequent posts we’ll delve a bit more deeply into certain ideas we thought were novel. All photos accompanying this article are courtesy of Light Sport and Ultralight Flyer, producer of the 300+ videos you can find on this website.
Rans showed off their new S-20 Raven. Those who thought designer and company boss Randy Schlitter got stuck on S-19 were wrong (it’s never wise to think he’s done designing). His new Raven combines elements of the S-6 and S-7, namely the side-by-side seating of the S-6, with the welded spaceframe and superwide door of the S-7.
Winning the LEAP and Berblinger Prize
Winning the LEAP and Berblinger Prize
Writing for Plane & Pilot magazine,
Jim Lawrence opined,
“As an industry, electric
flight is still in toddler mode. Batteries
provide, pound for pound, a mere fraction
of the energy density of gasoline.
Therein, as the Bard said, lies the rub:
The culprit is weight, simply because one
pound of avgas has roughly 40 times the
energy delivery of a pound of battery. For
electric aircraft (and other vehicles) to
become common, battery efficiency will
need to double, then double again, and
double again.
“To spur recognition and development,
several major awards and
competitions now offer substantial
money prizes. On the last day of this
year’s Aero e-flight-expo in Germany,
the Berblinger Flight Competition
divided |100,000 ($142,604)
among three proven aircraft, each
with a unique application of electric
power: the elegant, single-seat
Lange Antares 20E self-launcher
sailplane (the world’s first certified electric);
Eric Raymond’s record-setting,
solar-powered Sunseeker; and Manfred
Ruhmer’s Elektro-Swift, an ultralight
flying wing with streamlined pod and
folding pusher prop.
Pipistrel’s Twin Taurus… Could They Win Again?
Question: What looks like two motorgliders flying in really tight formation sharing an engine… er, a motor, literally between them? Can this Burt Rutan-looking aircraft (photo) win the big dough? And I mean seriously big money with a purse of $1,650,000! *** Called the Pipistrel Taurus G4, the prize-seeking aircraft rolled out of the Pipistrel factory in Slovenia for the first time recently. After posing briefly for the camera, G4 taxied away quietly under electric power for the start of the flight testing program. *** Pipistrel previously won a big NASA check with their Virus SW but the company has now taken a wholly different approach, based on rules which give seat-mile advantage to four seater models. *** “This aircraft is the first four-place electric aircraft to be flown in the world,” stated Pipistrel. Their Taurus Electro claimed to be the first two-place electric aircraft to be flown in the world four years earlier.
Aero and e-Flight Expo… coming soon
Right after Sun ‘n Fun, the e-flight Expo kicks off for the third time at “Aero” in Friedrichshafen, Germany, April 13-April 16. *** Bunches of new aircraft and propulsion technologies along with the awarding of the Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prize (LEAP) will mark the gathering of 550 exhibitors from 26 countries. *** The e-flight name stands for more than electrical flight innovations: ecological and evolutionary advances in flight regardless of their nature are embraced, although electric is certainly leading the show. *** Erik Lindbergh, grandson of Charles Lindbergh, will present his foundation’s prize for outstanding achievements in the development of electric flight. *** This year should bring several exciting advances in electric flight . I’ll be doing a broad story for Plane & Pilot magazine soon on what’s up and what’s coming. *** Another highlight of the Expo is “History for the Future of Flight”, a tantalizing assemblage of descendants and close relatives of last century’s aviation pioneers: Claude Dornier, Igor Sikorsky, Marcel Dassault and Count Zeppelin.