To start off your new workweek, here are fresh light aviation news bits from last week.
February 26, 2024

Ready or not, new flying machines are headed our way. Correction, they are already here and a wave of similar entries could follow (see earlier reports).
January 9, 2024

At Midwest LSA Expo on Day Three, I interviewed two leading sellers in the LSA or Sport Pilot kit space, one imported model and one U.S.
September 12, 2023

When AirVenture Oshkosh ends, you can almost hear a national sigh as if to denote the flying season is over.
August 29, 2023

Darkest before dawn? I hear growing concern about FAA’s new Mosaic regulation and what it will or won’t do. 
February 16, 2023

When I was a kid, I was a New York Yankees baseball fan.
December 4, 2022

A mid-week demonstration featured Europe’s Volocopter and America’s Opener BlackFly. The two (three actually, a pair of BlackFlys flew) demonstrated their eVTOL flying capability.
July 30, 2021

While I continue to worry about the cash crunch faced by two of my favorite shows, I am still driven to provide content as if those shows had occurred this year and not been postponed to 2021.
April 11, 2020

Price matters. While pilots enjoy a huge range in aircraft types, capabilities, descriptions, and price points, the fact remains that some aircraft will always be too expensive for some buyers.
July 15, 2019

DeLand Showcase 2018 is over, which signals the airshow season is over for this calendar year.
November 4, 2018

Dogs in the Cockpit? A few years ago, various stories began to pop in mainstream media discussing the car industry’s newest focus …no, not only on how many cup holders they could install in your new ride — but instead on accommodations for pets, mainly dogs.
May 19, 2018

Scott Severen is an old friend and a longtime veteran of the light aircraft business.
March 25, 2018

For many years the brand name Jabiru — both airframes and engines — has been associated with Pete Krotje and his family and other team members, doing business as Jabiru North America.
December 11, 2017

Here’s a flight review of the latest version of the J-230, the D model.
February 11, 2017

Why do we go to all the little airshows?
February 10, 2017

The lines are separating a bit. Once we had a flock of LSA priced closer to one another than today.
October 16, 2016

Jabiru Aircraft has long done well with their line of affordable, speedy, and U.S.-assembled aircraft.
August 19, 2016

At the Midwest LSA Expo in 2014, we spoke with Jabiru USA owner Pete Krotje about some significant changes made to one of the popular powerplants in the light aircraft space.
August 19, 2016

When people visit the Midwest LSA Expo, a popular LSA-oriented show in early September, those visitors will likely run into an expert airplane broker, Eric Evans.
August 19, 2016

You already know very well Rotax, Jabiru, Continental, and Lycoming plus a couple others including UL Power and Viking.
August 19, 2016

If you like Zenith Aircraft’s CH-750 STOL — widely regarded as a “Sky Jeep” – you’ve been able to buy and build for some years, but you had to purchase a kit after a related company, AMD, ceased operations.
August 19, 2016

Sensenich (pronounced Sensen-ICK) is one of the best-known prop manufacturers in the world, long supplying Lycoming and Continental aircraft engines, but also airboat makers.
August 19, 2016

In Shelbyville, Tennessee, two LSA companies are located side-by-side. The two are Jabiru USA and Arion.
August 19, 2016

Lots of folks saw a vaguely familiar airplane at the Midwest LSA Expo 2010… but, like myself, we looked and looked again and couldn’t quite place the airplane.
August 19, 2016

At the Midwest LSA Expo 2010, we started something new using multiple aircraft and offering their differences and similarities.
August 19, 2016

One the most proven airframe designs in all of Light-Sport Aviation is the T-211 series from Dallas, Texas-based IndUS Avation.
August 19, 2016

Our first “performance tandem” joins a fleet of seven other tandems in the LSA space, but this One is meant to get up and be gone… in a hurry.
August 19, 2016

The Jabiru J170 is the “little brother” to the larger J230 and J250 series also from Jabiru USA.
August 19, 2016

Made in the USA, the IndUS Thorpedo is a storied American design (hint: the 1950s version was the predecessor to the Piper Cherokee).
August 19, 2016

Jabiru is the one company I know of that produces both the airframe and the engine under one brand.
August 19, 2016

It doesn’t often happen this way. When media reporters get hold of a story that casts a company or person in a bad light, this generates headlines.
June 30, 2016

Given that the Sport Pilot / Light-Sport Aircraft sector is only a dozen years old (announced July 2004 with the first Special LSA approval in April 2005), Jabiru North America seems almost an old timer with 17 years of business in their corporate logbook.
June 1, 2016

We and many other journalists have arrived in EAAworld and are gearing up for another big event.
July 19, 2015

Revised Article UPDATED: 6/5/15 / New total LSA and LSA-like chart (at bottom) — At best statistics can be fluid and hard to state precisely.
June 1, 2015

In the Light-Sport Aircraft industry, many companies are celebrating fairly young birthdays, at least compared to 80-year-old legacy companies in the GA space.
September 18, 2014

What do sugar cane harvesting equipment and light aircraft and engines have to do with one another?
November 12, 2010

I had some fun today talking with Jim Sweeney, guest host of Roy Beisswenger’s Ultraflight Radio Show.
July 13, 2010

I am not aware of any other airplane company on Earth that builds both airframes and powerplants.
June 10, 2010

After a tough winter in most parts of the USA, spring evidently arrived early with 80-degree temperatures as far north as Minnesota… all before Sun ‘n Fun.
April 3, 2010

In the upcoming Learn To Fly issue of dead tree Plane and Pilot, I wrote an overview article covering the Sport Pilot license.
December 25, 2009

Viewed from the LSA Mall, AirVenture 2009 was much more than the summer’s big celebration of flight.
August 5, 2009

The Jabiru airplanes from Shelbyville, Tennessee-based Jabiru USA are funny airplanes.
January 5, 2009

With one month to go (and it’s hard to imagine a big December), we have figures to report for this most extraordinary year.
December 12, 2008

Here come the American engines! Rotax 912s from Austria presently dominate the LSA market with an estimated 70% of installations.
September 6, 2008

I can identify four factors in the economy presently affecting airplane sales: Potential customers (often with plenty of assets or creditworthiness) see the value of their stock portfolio going up and down like a roller coaster; worry over their once-soaring real estate, now down markedly in some areas; witness the continuing rise of the euro-dollar exchange rate, bringing much higher prices for many LSA; and, fret over a climate of political uncertainty during another election cycle.
May 14, 2008

Sun ‘n Fun 2008 is history, but planning is already underway for the 2009 event.
April 20, 2008

SEBRING 2008 UPDATE — Like rapid fire, approvals and preparations for the Sebring Expo are coming quickly.
January 17, 2008

October 2007 brought another top finish for Jabiru USA.
November 7, 2007

In September, as the Cessna Skycatcher’s wave of orders soaked up funds that might have gone to other SLSA, Jabiru logged the most FAA registrations — 6 more J-250s, bringing the company to 44 units delivered and placing the model 9th overall among fixed wing airplanes.
October 14, 2007

Most pilots know AOPA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, has been fighting the user fee battle…and they’ve been doing well resisting the might of the U.S.
October 14, 2007

Within 24 hours of getting home from Sun ‘n Fun, several industry leaders including Evektor America’s Jeff Conrad, Flight Design USA’s Tom Peghiny, Jabiru USA’s Ed Ricks, and BRS parachute’s Gregg Ellsworth packed up and headed off to California.
September 17, 2007

In the auto industry “hybrid” infers the use of multiple technologies (think: Toyota Prius).
September 17, 2007

At Oshkosh I took the chance to speak with several general aviation leaders — CEOs of top general aviation companies and presidents of leading membership organizations.
September 17, 2007

What’s that airplane with the funny sounding name? The question arises when pilots, unfamiliar with the new brands introduced by the light-sport aircraft (LSA) category, try to comprehend the name Jabiru.
October 10, 2006

Pete and Ben Krotje and their team have done it again.
September 28, 2006

And then we had 20…SLSA approvals, that is. Jabiru’s Pete Krotje announced his company had received not one but two FAA airworthiness certificates for J250 and the new J170.
June 10, 2006