Your choices in the affordable aircraft range of options are composed of one of three segments that this website tracks closely: Light-Sport Aircraft (SLSA or ELSA), light kit-built aircraft, or Part 103 ultralights.
In the first one, you can spend some real money with a few aircraft breaching the $200,000 barrier. Some handsome, well-equipped, high-performing aircraft are offered in that range, to be sure, but they may not fit your budget. Not all SLSA are not so expensive; some excellent candidates list for $40,000 to $125,000. If a Part 103 aircraft may suit your flying needs, you have a more choices that will get you aloft for a literal fraction of the high-end models.
Alternatively, you can build your own airplane.
If you choose the homebuilder route, your range of choices becomes even larger, in fact, almost infinite in that you can personalize an aircraft any way you wish and keep changing it as you like.
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Is the Future of Flight Autonomous?
As techies know the giant Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has been in the news over the last week and we’ve seen articles about cool stuff at the event. I don’t remember ever seeing anything about manned aircraft in CES coverage before though quadcopters have had a clear presence. At the 2016 event, though, one vehicle got a lot of attention: eHang 184, from China. You can check out their video below.
I found eHang very intriguing but I hesitate to call it an aircraft, at least compared to manned airplanes. It is more like an autonomous air vehicle and I say that because the occupant is not a pilot. As its developers tell the story, you get in, use the screen in front of you to tap where you want to go and eHang flies you to that destination. I’d be more likely to call it an “aircab.”
As currently portrayed and as seen at CES, eHang is something very different.
VIDEO — Video Pilot Report: Evolution Revo
Sometimes I am pretty darn sure I may have the best job in the world, or at least one of the best jobs. Other times, it seems like work, as does any job. However, when it’s good, it can be ecstatically great, no question about it. One time I know this is the case is when I get to go aloft in a truly great flying machine with an excellent instructor or demo pilot to explain their aircraft and show me how to optimize the machine.
Such was the situation when I got to fly the Evolution Trikes Revo with Larry Mednick at the Arizona Copperstate show in October 2015. We hadn’t been to this event for some time and mid-fall in Casa Grande demonstrated why they hold it then.
I grew up in the desert and to this day, I find that landscape beautiful. I love green trees covering granite mountains, or ocean views, but the Arizona desert is simply stunning to my eyes.
Pssst! Want a Deal? How About Merlin PSA?
Are you intrigued by an affordable yet well-performing single-seat Personal Sport Aircraft? In a time when so many claim light aircraft have simply become too expensive, one aircraft is coming to challenge that belief. Some rather grudgingly acknowledge that, yes, you can buy a low-cost aircraft but that it won’t satisfy your desires … that it will have an open cockpit, or is too slow, or uses an engine you don’t know, or that it lacks the right instruments, or it will be a weight shift aircraft or a powered parachute … or something that disqualifies it for them.
Well, even our friends at Flying magazine — thanks to popular writer Pia Bergqvist, who also covered such aircraft as Quicksilver‘s wide-open Sport 2 SE — gave recent prominent coverage to what importer/developer Chip Erwin is doing with his Merlin PSA.
Does the name Chip Erwin ring a bell?
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.
What Will 15 Days and $15,000 Get You?
This website focuses on the affordable end of aviation. However, “affordable” is a relative term. I’ve written about Icon’s A5, which may set the bar highest among Light-Sport Aircraft at around $247,000 for a well-equipped LSA seaplane. (See our Video Pilot Report.) If you had the money would you buy an A5 or a Cessna 172 Skyhawk for around $400,000. You probably have a response but then, the question is rhetorical because most readers likely don’t have a quarter-million to do drop on a LSA, no matter how magnificent it may be.
I’ve also written about the $16,000 (or so) fully-built Aerolite 103. Some think that’s a wonderful deal on a very nice single seat airplane. Yet at least one person wrote on my Dan Johnson Media / Affordable Aviation Facebook page that even Aerolite is too expensive. Fair enough. We all have different budgets.
American Legend Running On All (3?) Cylinders
We see and hear a continuing focus on electric airplanes including here at one of your (I hope) favorite websites. We’ll continue to hear more about electric but the whirring motors are not the only innovation in powerplants. In true, another project with a completely different sound may be more meaningful in the short term and that statement is even more true outside the United States.
As our Sun ‘n Fun 2015 video shows, we have been following Superior Air Parts new Gemini Diesel 100 engine. The latest news in this development is a launch installation on an American Legend Aircraft Company airframe shown at AirVenture Oshkosh 2015 just three months after its debut. The two companies, both from Texas, parlayed their close proximity to one another to get the install done in a short time.
Recently Legend announced they would start making the diesel available to customers.
4 things to See at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2015
The “Big Show” is just days away, so of course, journalists and readers are asking what will be present? The question is worthwhile, but often the most interesting discoveries are not foretold either to maintain secrecy or due to the last minute scramble to make a new project showable. Here are four products attendees may want to investigate. Watch for more previews.
“What a journey so far, wrote Jordan Denitz, spokesman for The Airplane Factory USA! Globetrotters Mike Blyth with Patrick Huang of The Airplane Factory Asia have completed their first three legs on their way around the world in a Sling powered by the Rotax 912iS. Starting in Johannesburg, South Africa, they traveled to Namibia, Ghana, and Cape Verde.
On Monday they were taking a well deserved rest after 37 hours and more than 4,000 nautical miles logged so far. “They are gearing up for the biggest hop yet, crossing the Atlantic,” added Jordan.
David Versus Goliath … ePlane Channel Crossing
When discussing big versus small, you cannot go much further than comparing a Light-Sport Aircraft company to Airbus. This story speaks to LSA builder Pipistrel, the goal of their French dealer, and nearly identical plans of the giant corporation. In a fascinating development, it turns out that an even smaller entity, a single individual in a miniature flying machine, managed to best the jet airliner producer at its own game. Here’s the story as I understand it although I readily admit I am relying solely on second-hand information.
Pipistrel makes the Alpha Electro (formerly known as WattsUp as our video at the end notes). They’ve already seen some success with this aircraft the factory model of which has been powered by a Siemens motor supplied by the huge Germany company.
As everyone who follows reporting of electric propulsion of either airplanes or electric cars surely knows, “range anxiety” is a consumer problem to be overcome and taking flights demanding courage is one way to assuage those concerns.
Forty Years of Rotax Aircraft Engines
Aircraft engine giant, Rotax BRP has reached an anniversary: forty years of making powerplants used around the world by airframe makers of ultralights to Very Light Aircraft. Thus, it was hardly a surprise when Light-Sport Aircraft came along eleven years ago that the Austrian company immediately became the largest supplier of engines … capturing an estimated 80% of the market, even while other ASTM-approved engines are in use from Continental, Jabiru, Lycoming, and HKS. New candidates include Superior’s Gemini Diesel and, of course, the ECi Titan 180-horsepower engine has seen good acceptance. Then we have another batch of engines for kit-built aircraft including Viking (based on Honda), UL-Power, AeroVee (VW), AeroMomentum (Subaru), Corvair, and more.
Despite the many other choices, Rotax has retained a dominant position. I’ve long felt that while it can be challenging to bring a new airframe to market and win some customers, it is even harder to introduce a new engine.
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