Some big news developing recently regarding the European Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) certification of the first three light sport aircraft in its new category designed to legitimize ASTM-certified LSA.

The new category is called EASA CS-LSA. We’ve talked about it before, see below, but this is a significant step forward and here are some of the highlights.

The three planes are names we’re all familiar with: the Flight Design CTLS-ELA, Czech Sport Aircraft PS-28 Cruiser (which is known here as the Sportruiser and was, for a year, the Piper Sport), and Evektor’s SportStar RTC (stands for Restricted Type Certificate). The Cruiser was the first to be awarded the cert, with the CTLS-ELA coming right after. Both were heralded at the recent Aero convention in Europe, while the SportStar was announced a few days ago.
As in the U.S., aircraft certified in the European LSA category must have a max of two seats and 1,320 lbs. all-up weight.
The newly adopted EASA category accepts the ASTM standard but adds a few wrinkles, (translation: higher certification costs for makers) including requirements for greater scrutiny over design, production and requirement of a type certificate, (technically EASA calls these DOA, POA and TC). Simply put, they make for a Part 23-style addition beyond the ASTM spec, which boils down to higher prices for manufacturers, which will be passed on to buyers of course.
Still, as I’ve noted in previous blogs, it does mean American producers, should they wish to jump through the additional EASA hoops, will now be able to sell SLSA in Europe, something that was not allowed before.
Another benefit to both manufacturers and customers: under the EASA CS-LSA category, the RTC (Restricted Type Certificate) will allow broader use of light sport aircraft, including charter and other commercial enterprises, along with flight training of course. For companies, dealers and flight schools seeking ways to maximize the earning potential of LSA purchases, that’s a real step up.
In a side note, recently Cessna put a halt to European sales, saying the European LSA rules are too costly. Cessna has several hundred Skycatchers still slated for delivery worldwide, and the Wichita aviation giant has been climbing the registered aircraft charts the last year as it has dramatically ramped up production and shipping of the aircraft it announced many years ago but which was delayed for some time by design problems that required reworking and testing.
Cessna says it may get back to selling in Europe if it can crunch the financial/regulatory constellation favorably. The Skycatcher got a big bump in price several months back. It’s now listed at $149,000.
Reprising in brief my post of about a year ago:a
EASA’s CS-LSA stands for Certification Specifiction for Light-Sport Aircraft.
American makers have been at a disadvantage in that they couldn’t sell in Europe. By now having an accepted EASA equivalent to the ASTM-certified LSA-category, if (and it’s a big if for smaller manufacturers) they can strap on the additional costs of qualifying for the European market, they’ll be more competitive, since two out of three LSA on the U.S. market come from overseas, which has made it tougher for Yankee birds to find a home with a zip code.

Working against everybody, makers and dealers alike here at home, has been the high Dollar/Euro exchange rate. It’s dropped in recent weeks to $1.25 per €1: it was $1.41 last year.
And as I wrote last year here, perhaps the biggest impact of EASA CS-LSA on American companies would be the effective discount to European buyers of American LSA…although that’s been knocked in the head too by EASA’s protracted process of adopting the standard.
Thedifference could be decisive in making a sale, to whit: a $141,000 American LSA would have cost €100,000 in Europe a year ago. At the current exchange rate, that same European buyer is now looking at €112,136: an increase of more than €12,000 for, among other factors, EASA to be able to say it didn’t just follow lock step and adopt the perfectly workable and proven ASTM standard. Institutions, governments et al don’t like to be thought of as copy cats, apparently.
Thus the potential competitive advantage for American manufacturers has been notably reduced.
And meanwhile, back at the U.S. ranch, European-made LSA might very well also drop in price, once distributor inventories are depleted and new orders come in, which would only increase competition on the home front.
What a headache to be in the aviation business, eh?

But the takeaway good news has to be that the worldwide market and regulatory framework is maturing and finding a consensus of sorts. Governments and financiers will always have fun yanking us back and forth, but at least there’s a bit more opportunity for airplanes to be sold everywhere, and that’s good for everybody in the industry, one would hope.

The post Three LSA now EASA-legal appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Catching up from the road after 3 weeks (1 day to go) in Hamburg, Germany on family business and a laptop double-meltdown (don’t ask).
The Sling is a South African LSA that made a splash in 2009 with a ’round-the-world flight just received its official S-LSA Airworthiness certificate, making it #125 on the official list.
It’s made by The Airplane Factory in Johannesburg, and more than 60 have been delivered worldwide. Developed in 2006, and with more than 100 orders total to date, the company is hoping the Sling will compete successfully in the crowded U.S. market.
The staff is made up of 75 full timers — no garage band airplane company here — and produces five ready-to-fly Slings per month, and even more in kit form.
For the U.S. market, the Sling will also be offered in kit form, either as an E-LSA or Experimental Amateur-Built.
The Airplane Factory of Torrance, CA will wrangle the U.S. distribution, marketing and support for the Sling and plans to stimulate community-based aviation enthusiasm and participation with “innovative” flight training (not sure what that means yet) and a flying club, which is a business model increasingly used across the country and done right, brings a real win-win philosophy to LSA flying.
This first Sling, the newly registered N511NG, is based at Torrance Airport (KTOA) and will fly to Oshkosh this summer and be on display in Booth #305. Stop by and check out this latest all-metal, stylish sliding-canopy addition to the ever-expanding LSA universe. It’s a fun company with a seasoned product and deserves a close look.

The post Sling Shot at the U.S. Market appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

In a nutshell, the primary offense of several companies isn’t that they’re sending out faulty or improperly built aircraft, rather their lack of documentation required under the self-certification part of the standard. In other words, get your paperwork done, dudes, or we will likely begin seeing some Big Brother moves from FAA…and none of us (including FAA) wants that. A bureaucracy, like nature, abhors a vacuum and will rush to fill it.

U.S. LAMA head and Light Sport industry Carnac the Great (for you older Johnny Carson Show fans) Dan Johnson was interviewed by Bloomberg news. The story summarizes what Dan says was over an hour’s worth of interview to make sure the reporter got the story right. Beyond a few media AlarmThink insertions, it was a fairly decent and accurate overview of, says Dan, what he told the writer. That’s always a welcome sign that journalism has not completely gone over to the infotainment dark side.

You can read the piece here.

Dan also has his own take on the FAA announcement, with some relevant links for you, here.

The bottom line? A mini-tempest in the LSA teapot: as Dan concludes, “I believe the better companies have little cause for concern, butall producers and their importers…should review their paperwork and records carefully.”

And to close with what I mean by “AlarmThink”, here are some semi-amusing excerpts from the Bloomberg piece:

The headline:Sport-Plane Makers Warned By FAA To Stop Evading Rules. In fact, the industry has been “warned” about this, repeatedly, for some time now. This latest release from FAA is just an official announcement that it’s patience isn’t unlimited, that the industry needs to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s in its documentation procedures, and that it invites public comment for 90 days, as Dan notes in his blog post.

The use of the term “crackdown” . Well, no, it’s really not. More like a “Industry folks, probably not so smart to assume we aren’t paying attention.”

The phrase: “violating safety standards and could be shut down“.

If it went to extremes, yes, companies could be hammered. Public safety is after all FAA’s mandate and they’d be right to shut someone down for sloppiness in any part of their manufacturing process, including repeated failure to keep track of important verifications that proper work has been done. After all, having a rogue LSA industry doesn’t help anybody. Still, this is a bit of uberdrama.

And finally this, placed at the bottom of the article when I would think it belongs right up at the beginning: “Most of the violations uncovered by the FAA involved a failure to keep paperwork…”

BTW, bunches of online aviation news organ ran with this today.

The post FAA Tells LSA Industry: “Get That Paperwork Done!” appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Ben Sclair, who publishes General Aviation News, wrote a nicely thought out piece on the nuances of the high cost of flying, with a focus on LSA in particular. He laments the black/white thinking that permeates such discussions and makes a decent case for that time-worn truism, if you really want to do something, you’ll quit grousing and find a way to do it.

Ben makes some worthy points, give it a lookhere.

The post Another Voice on Affordable Flying appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Of course, I’m excusing my post on the FAA-certified J3 here because it is also legal to fly as a Sport Pilot, along with many other venerable Golden Age flivvers. I fly one now and then at my local strip at Great Barrington airport in western Mass. Yes, I’m totally biased…Cub Love is not quite like any other aviation love. For many of us, it’s like going to Lourdes to commune with the Virgin Mary…or Yankee Stadium to commune with The Babe.

All aircraft have their special places in our hearts. But was there ever anything quite like the wonderful Cub? If you haven’t had the pleasure, take some dual just to see what our forebears learned to fly in. You’ll not only gain appreciation for how much better your stick-and-rudder skills could be, but it will, I’ll wager, also infuse your soul with a real bit of love for flying, true grassroots Americana style. There just isn’t anything quite like the sensation of lifting off behind a Continental four-banger of varying horsepower (the one I rent is a Continental with 65 ponies) and struggling at a leisurely pace for altitude.

Wikipedia has a tasty lead-off to its abstract that I want to share with you: it cuts through the flowery verbosity to capture in unadorned prose the essence of what the Cub has meant to generations of pilots:

ThePiper J-3 Cubis a small, simple, light aircraft that was built between 1937 and 1947 byPiper Aircraft. With tandem (fore and aft) seating, it was intended for flight training but became one of the most popular and best-known light aircraft of all time. The Cub’s simplicity, affordability and popularity invokes comparisons to theFord Model Tautomobile.

The aircraft’s standardchrome yellowpaint has come to be known as “Cub Yellow” or “Lock Haven Yellow”

As my pics, shot a couple winters ago, no doubt betray, there’s nothing in aviation that unlocks a loving glow in my innards more than the sight of that immortal Cub Yellow on a golden-hours afternoon. There is no other color quite like Cub Yellow.

EAA has put out a call to all J3 Cub owners to fly in to the big airshow later this month. There will be a big fly in to Wittman Field and prominent events including a zillion of them parked at the Antique section on the show grounds.

And if you see someone putting their chin up against that wonderful Cub Yellow and making a wish, like we did as kids with buttercup flowers, please say hello: that’ll be me, unabashedly indulging my own version of Cub Love.

The post The Year of Cub Love appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

I’ve talked before about the many-pronged attack Doc and crew have been making to test and distribute the new 233 powerplant. A lot of folks who have always flown “conventional” aircraft engines and haven’t been won over by Rotax’s 2000 TBO and excellent safety record have been following Doc’s development work closely.

As you can see, the Renegade Falcon, which also mounts the Lyc 233, is a real dazzler of an SLSA. It’s in production, a few have been delivered with more on the books, and recently Doc’s been outfitting the FK12 Cometbiplane with the AE (aerobatic) version of the 233 powerplant(see my story on the nifty bipe with Rotax power in this issue of Plane & Pilot) .

Without further intro, here’s the ever-voluble Doc Bailey’s enthusiastic update on all the irons Renegade has in the fire:

“We are in the final stages of getting our Comet up and running with the new Lycoming AE IO 233 engine. We have been tasked by the Hansen brothers to install the engines in their Comet as well. We will be installing all the Lycoming Comets in the US.
“We also are the new distributor for the Comet in the central and western United States.
“We are pulling out all the stops on ours. It has 8” Synthetic vision display, a smoker, Sensenich ground adjustable props (we have the first two for Lycoming ever made for production), fuel injection electronic ignition system, Vetterman cross tube exhaust system…the works…
“We also hope to represent the SeaMax, and will put the Lycoming engine in that baby too. We plan to give ICON A5 fans a run for their money with this Lycoming-powered SLSA Amphibian that we think will take off in less than 400 feet on water. Plus we can give our clients a delivery date.

“We’re also testing a new full FADEC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FADEC) system for the Lycoming engines and just introduced our new mock landing gear panel so students can train for retractable gear in our Falcon 141 trainer. It’s really cool! pull the gear switch down and the three lights comes on as if they were locking the gear down. Should you forget, the audio alarm goes off at 45 knots just before flare speed to remind the pilot he’s about to land with the “gear up”.

“We plan to fly three Comets to Oshkosh this year! Our orange one will be in the Lycoming tent, along with the Falcon (it’s third straight year.)

“Our permanent Comet (aerobatic) demo plane is getting it’s certification Monday or Tuesday.
And we are going to start a SAR Sport Aviation-style race circuit with the Comets and Falcons competing for the Comet cup. This will be like a Red Bull race course only all the aircraft will be set up exactly alike so there is no individual performance advantage, much like an IROC event.

“It will be the skill of the pilot that day that wins, not the superior aircraft. The other great thing is what the clients watch race on Sunday they can buy right from the factory on Monday. Also during the course of the season competitors can never fly the same plane twice. Truly it will be races set up for the best pilots, not the superior machines: two races per day per pilot, best combine times win.
“We are looking for sponsors such as Garmin, Monster, Budweiser etc ! They will in fact own the racing aircraft. We already have Kansas NASCAR Speedway wanting to hold the first event. We think that at this point the aircraft will be weighing only 745 pounds and have an HP rating of 124 hp.
“This truly should be a huge boost for Sport Aviation.”
But wait folks…there’s more!
“Then we have Tim Benham, an F 14 combat pilot, who has been one of our dealers for two years. He is an instructor for Annapolis cadets, was an instructor at

NAS Miramar at the TOP GUN school. He’s getting our dog fighting school up and going. We will attach a laser tag system to the aircraft with small smokers. If the laser light hits, it smokes for a couple of seconds. A heavy hit smokes for about 5 seconds and with a ’kill’ shot the smoker comes on and stays on shut off by the losing pilot. This can be done in the Comet and the Lycoming AE IO 233 Falcon as well.

“Both are 6G (load factor) planes and this is going to be really exciting. We painted our tail dragger like a P40 and it just grew from there…
“We will paint some aircraft like ME-109s, Japanese Zeros and of course our hero the P40. This should come to fruition by December or so. We are testing the laser systems now and outrigging the AE engines in the Falcon and Comets now.”

Thanks for the update Doc…now get back to work!

The post Catching up with Renegade and the Lycoming 233 appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

the success of the self-certification “medical” has no doubt factored into AOPA and EAA’s joint proposal to FAA to expand the concept to include Private Pilots.

To add your comments to the FAA page about such a medical exemption, go here…the end of the comment period is near, so if you have a take on this topic, let it fly.

The post Dump The Flight Medical? appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

A year ago, I wrote about these enterprising and clever folks behind the Flynanoproject. Theymade a (cue: drum roll) big splashat Europe’s 2011 Aero show when they introduced the mockup. Frankly, I confess to a tad of private skepticism: it looked like a long shot to ever fly, let alone actually come to market. That’s why I try to curb my public expressions of criticism: it’s so easy to be proven wrong.

I was concerned that although the boxwing concept — a joined upper/lower wing, tailless design — has been proven, (and even marketed in Europe as the Sunny Boxwing, see video at bottom), the Flynano could easily have been just another blue-sky, briefly-ballyhooed project, like so many that have come down the pike (do the name Moeller Aircar ring a familiar note?)

Yet how cool indeed ‘twould be if this easy-fly skimmer-bug of a recreational aircraft that only operates from the water could actually fly?

Now I must confess I’m wearing egg — or lake water — on my face, because Flynano has indeed flown…under electric power yet…and the developers say they hope to bring it to market as an ultralight-style aircraft by the end of the year. Congrats to all at Flynano!

Here’s the vid:

I won’t hold my breath expecting Flynano to be in production by year’s end — production predictions are almost universally wildly optimistic (except in the case of LSA maker Pipistrel, which seems to revel in the satisfaction of keeping its promises) — but after watching the video on the website linked above, it does at least seem to be airworthy. How airworthy remains to be seen but it could turn out to be a fun ride game changer for the aquatic thrill seekers among us.

My one casual viewing of the video did raise some questions: the short-coupledboxwing aerodynamics do seem to induce some pretty pitch-sensitive oscillations. Deft piloting may be required here, which would require a training version of Flynano. And the bottom wing so close to the water on a very, very flat and undisturbed water surface seems to relegate the craft to lake or broad-river flying…on light-wind days. Doesn’t look like it would be suited for ocean or even mild-wave operations.

Yet there are placid bodies of water big and small just about everywhere in the world. All, though, are subject to wind waves, which can come up in a hurry. And since the Flynano is not an amphib — it’s meant for water only — it seems likely this will be a vehicle people would use like they use jet skis, for close-to-water zipping around to wow the girls and guys on the beach and so on.

Flynano could turn out to be a budget-challenged pilot’s Icon A5. By the way, big news looms on the horizon about the long-awaited A5, which just recently demonstrated for FAA its impressive stall resistance capabilities. I’m sworn to secrecy but soon as the story pops, I’ll post here.

But it’s an intriguinglittle critter for sure. I’ll hope to be disavowed of my reservations as they progress becauseit looks like it could be a whale (porpoise?) of a lot of fun to fly. Latest projected price is €32.000, or just over $40K.

Meanwhile, here are a couple videos of the Sunny Boxwing, an ultralight that was built in Germany throughout the 90’s. It demonstrates the nimble, fun-flying, (and highly stall-resistant) features of the boxwing concept.

This is the European certified version.

And this is the original, low-rez promo (filmed in the 90s) from the designer that has some pretty flying footage. For an old ultralighter and LSA pilot like m’self, it looks like a lot of fun.

The post Flynano Makes First Flight! appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

There’s lots to like, because anybody who’s been to the Big Show (It’ll be my 32 year this year) knows it’s total overwhelm trying to figure out where to go to see what and figure out when, etc.

There are several main-screen menus:

• Get Herefor pilots flying into the show,with arrival procedures to follow for how to best get to your destination (Seaplane Base, parking at Wittman Field) along with NO TAMs and lots more
• Schedules of daily airshow performers (they can change from day to day), Forums, Workshops, Evening Events and Daily Highlights, as well as a My Schedule for saving your own custom “to do” list
• Facilities which gives detailed maps of the entire grounds as well as exhibit hangar maps with individual booth numbers, which you can use to track down companies you want to visit with the menu tab…
• Exhibitors: This page has a complete list of every exhibitor on the field, alphabetically listed and with each company’s booth number in hypertext. Just touch the number and you’ll go right to the map of the area its in, with its booth highlighted with a red pin! Can’t beat that: Sporty’s provided a valuable service for showgoers, if you’ve got a smartphone, I urge you to download this app, it’s really useful, well thought out, and a snap to navigate…and it’ll save you miles of walking, trust me. I used it last year and it saved me hours of aimless wandering, because Oshkosh is nothing if not all over the map!

The post Terrific Oshkosh Airventure 2012 App from Sporty’s appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Here’s my lead from that article, out in the next issue :

“If you could buy a sunlight-readable, multi-featured, portable moving-map GPS for VFR and IFR flight, with an excellent automobile GPS, that also played your music, audio and video files and connected to the internet via WiFi, would you think $749 was a good price for that unit?
Two years ago I stumbled across a new avionics company: Adventure Pilot. Headed up by two super-bright, hard-working guys — Walter Boyd and Shane Woodson — their first effort was a feature-rich, Everyman’s “supplemental” (not FAA-certified) navigational GPS, the iFly 700. It was a runaway success at $500 (comprehensive annual subscription package: $69. With full IFR: $109).”

Price tag is $750. For those with small-panel LSA, or ultralights with limited mounting turf, this is worth checking out.

You can wait to read the article, or check out the video here. It’s an amazing unit. I bought the 700 unit and loved it. I’ve upgraded to the 720 and really love it. The car GPS alone is great.

The post iFly 720 GPS Raises the GPS bar appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.