Many aviators want to use sport pilot’s no-medical aspect to fly a Cessna or Piper that they can buy inexpensively (or may already own). That makes sense. These affordable aircraft are familiar and proven, even if they are products of the 1950s with mostly analog instruments and powerplants that burn 10 to 15 gallons of 100LL per hour.

Another group, owners of modern LSA, wants a little more weight than allowed by current regulation. Still, others may want to fly at night or in IFR or to use an economical LSA for some form of aerial work.

Then we have what I’ll call the MOSAIC LSA crowd. These are pilots with larger budgets—perhaps they sold a Cirrus or Bonanza and have equity to put toward a new aircraft. These experienced pilots are accustomed to well-equipped aircraft with generous cruise speeds.

Sparker directly addresses the last group. I got to experience this first-in-the-U.S. airplane when TL Sport Aircraft owner Trey Murdaugh brought it from Charleston, South Carolina, to my home airport, Spruce Creek Fly-in, near Daytona Beach, Florida.

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Sparker Arrives in the U.S.

Spruce Creek Fly-In is a place, not an event. It’s the world’s largest private airport, with more than 700 aircraft based at the field. That means lots of pilots, many whom have long flying histories, often with the airlines.

Show up at Spruce Creek (7FL6) on a nice flying day with a sharp new airplane, and you are almost certain to draw a crowd. Sparker did. We almost had to shoo people away so we could get on with our demo flight.

We enjoyed a lovely Florida day in early February as you can see in the images or in the fresh new video below.

Our demo flight took us from Spruce Creek (7FL6) to DeLand (KDED) and back with maneuvering in between. We operated at altitudes of 1,200 to 4,500 feet on a mild day in the low 70s with modest humidity. My focus was on aircraft maneuvering and flight controls, because the deluxe instrumentation is already familiar to pilots and because I would use Murdaugh’s experience at flying from South Carolina for cross country speeds and fuel burns; these provide real-world experience, not a test pilot’s controlled findings.

Sparker Deluxe

An aircraft is not just simply a bunch of performance specifications. Creature comforts are also important in this class of flying machine. Sparker satisfies.

Any producer looking to sell an advanced aircraft such as Sparker better make it deluxe, and TL did. From its 50-inch-wide cockpit (a foot wider than a Cessna 172), Kevlar cockpit cage, and potent engine, to its airframe parachute, Sparker lacks for little. Yet “little” isn’t what TL designers sought.

Large comfortable seats are fixed in position, but rudder pedals adjust electrically. A button in front of each outside-mounted joystick smoothly moves pedals to meet your feet. The joysticks bristle with buttons for trim control, PTT, autopilot off, or frequency toggle.

The seats have tall back support and are electrically heated for colder climates or higher altitude operation. You can load up those seats with some larger pilots.

At its new gross weight (1,652 pounds, according to Murdaugh), Sparker has a useful load that accommodates (get this!) two 230-pound occupants, plus 75 pounds of luggage, plus 34.5 gallons of fuel. Numbers like that cover most requests I’ve heard. “You’d be hard-pressed to max-out Sparker’s useful load,” Trey concluded.

All instruments are within a comfortable reach and TL installed more screens than other LSA, a total of three 10-inch Garmin G3X Touch EFIS units. Various IFR avionics are also available to complement the Garmin suite. Autopilot controls are mounted in the center T-console for easy adjustment.

Here’s perhaps the best innovation on Sparker. This is a retractable gear aircraft and you can’t see the gear (as on most low-wing retracts). Usually, designers offer lights or some other gear position indicator. You have to believe the equipment. On Sparker, you can believe your eyes as designers thoughtfully added a nearly-invisible, belly-mounted tail camera that faces forward. This provides unmistakable confirmation of gear position presented to the pilot on one of those big screens. Perfect!

If that’s still not enough, TL designers made some slick panel pull-out trays that can hold a smartphone or iPad mini to use with a navigation app. Oh, yeah, the tray also has a cup holder.

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Sparker By the Numbers

Sparker descends from a line of impressive aircraft—Sting, Sirius, and Stream—and it shows. Using skills acquired over 34 years in business, TL’s newest model is loaded with special features you won’t find on most LSA or mLSA candidates.

It’s built mostly of carbon fiber with Kevlar reinforcements around the occupants. The main spar is also carbon fiber. Capable of an 11 G ultimate load, Sparker felt absolutely solid and rigid in the air, even when banked aggressively back and forth.

Essentially a side-by-side version of TL’s tandem Stream, Sparker uses the wings and tail of the earlier model, which was released in 2015 as Rotax was debuting their 141-horsepower 915iS engine. Our demo Sparker had this potent engine and Murdaugh provides climb rate, cruise speed, and other numbers in the video below.

He also noted that TL anticipates installing mostly the newer 160 horsepower Rotax 916iS engine, which launched with a 2,000-hour TBO. In the video Murdaugh provides some detail about performance expected with the more powerful engine.

One area I discovered may require TL’s focus as MOSAIC approaches. Sparker’s stall was well controlled and mild but it came at 58 knots. FAA proposed a 54 knots clean but many have commented to raise this by a few knots. Regardless, I feel sure TL engineers can compensate.

As we reduced speed to slow flight in preparation for stalls, Murdaugh put flaps down without lowering the gear. Immediately, an unmistakable alarm began to warn a landing pilot that the gear was not extended. You cannot ignore this sound.

My usual Dutch roll coordination exercise went well after only a few reversals to figure out the control applications. Sparker needs approximately equal amounts of stick and rudder. The controls are slightly heavy but the aircraft is very responsive. The dampened handling makes Sparker comfortable as you are less likely to overcontrol. As my experience grew Murdaugh permitted me to bank steeply where I found Sparker eager to do my bidding. Even in very steep banks, Sparker maintained altitude easily.

I performed the landing back at Spruce Creek with Murdaugh relaxed after I had demonstrated I could feel the airplane fairly well. Reducing to 90 knots on downwind to lower the gear, we slowed to 75 knots on final before putting down full flaps (45 degrees) to slow to 70 over the numbers. Touchdown was smooth and easily controlled. Brakes are quite strong and we turned off easily before maneuvering to a parking space.

Sparker is going to please the MOSAIC crowd. At $327,000, this is no Part 103 ultralight or sport pilot kit aircraft. You’ll need a generous budget, but you will get a lot for your money. So far as I could see, TL didn’t miss a trick with Sparker. Check it out in person at Sun ‘n Fun.

The post Affordable Aviation: Sparker Packs in a Lot for the Budget appeared first on Plane & Pilot Magazine.

Here is a glimpse of what you can see if you can attend on Friday and Saturday. For those who cannot come, this will provide some taste of what happens in Mount Vernon, Illinois, in early September. Hopefully, you can make it in 2024.

Every vendor highlighted here brought two, three, or even four aircraft to show. That’s very rare, even at EAA AirVenture or Sun ‘n Fun.

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What this illustrates is that the Midwest LSA Expo (about an hour’s drive east of St. Louis) has become a standard-bearer in the aviation calendar. Indeed, this is Midwest LSA’s 15th event, tying it with the longest-running prior such show, the Sebring Sport Aviation Expo. After catalyzing these LSA-focused shows, Sebring concluded its 15-year run in 2019.

Who’s Here?

AeroTrek returned after a few years’ absence and it came in force. As of opening day, three aircraft had arrived and two more are expected. In addition, the company showed off its new open trailer ,which looks enormously easier to load and secure so long as you’re not trying to drive all the way across the country. For transportation in a local or regional area, this looks like a great choice with significantly lower costs.

Rob Rollison, the longtime importer of this successful brand of modestly-priced LSA, has long maintained a steady rate of business because his supplier in Europe has maintained an prudent approach to business. This has helped the manufacturer remain very stable but it also means delivery times now reach about one year. Rollison indicated most customers are willing to wait. It was good to see him back in Mt. Vernon with his handsome airplanes and new trailer.

Texas Aircraft appeared at Midwest LSA some years back when its Colt LSA was a new entry in the game. Now the company reports it just delivered the first batch of airplanes to a nearby flight school and it is excited about the future of MOSAIC with its new four-seat Stallion model already flying in Brazil.

In some ways, the Texas company, which is directly associated with the Brazilian organization, is ahead of the game because Brazil’s ANAC has already created a very MOSAIC-like regulation with minor differences. Approving that aircraft in its home country should make for a much easier entry to the U.S. market and this Hondo, Texas organization is ready to roll.

Bristell representative Piston Aviation reports running an active flight school operation. I plan to discuss this further with the company to see how its flight school operates with the LSA of today. In the MOSAIC preamble, the FAA said extra weight was needed to make LSA into viable flight school aircraft, but I think it’s missing that these aircraft are already working well in that environment, assuming good flight school management and properly-qualified instructors. (To be forthright, Piston also operates Piper Cherokees.)

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Joe Ord’s company operates at Creve Coeur airport (1H0), Maryland Heights, Missouri, in the St. Louis area. It offers a wide range of flight instruction and lists its prices right on its homepage. You can tell that this company has a sense of style and it had handsome, custom-painted aircraft on display. Again, you see the commitment people make to the Midwest LSA Expo if Piston Aviation will bring aircraft that could be in flight training to display for you at the show.

Vashon brought two of its Ranger LSAs to Midwest LSA perhaps five years ago, and the company has been back every year since—and it doesn’t come with just a single airplane. I hope you’re starting to get the message that these companies like this show and they don’t come here just to bond with their fellow vendors. They know they will meet people like you. Likewise, people who come to this event tend to be serious and ready to take their aviation interest to the next level.

While Vashon’s prices have risen slightly over the last couple years–along with virtually everything else you buy—they are still affordable to a wide range of pilots, and have particular appeal to some by virtue of the use of a Continental O-200 powerplant. Lots of pilots and mechanics are familiar with that engine and, combined with a new and spacious airframe, the company is finding customers. Clearly, it finds some of them right here in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

TL Sport Aircraft had two of its four models on display at Mt. Vernon. After a couple of U.S. distributors didn’t work as well as expected, Trey Murdaugh’s company is bringing a more business-like approach. At Midwest LSA, he appropriately had on display a TL-3000 Sirius and an S-4 Sting. The latter (in an earlier model) was the #5 aircraft accepted by the FAA as a Special LSA out of 158 now on our SLSA list.

However, Murdaugh is also nicely positioned for MOSAIC with two other aircraft that did not travel to Mt. Vernon. One is the tandem-seating Stream, which I flew with him after Sun ‘n Fun 2022. That was a fine experience in a beautiful-flying aircraft. I look forward later this year to a flight in the company’s side-by-side MOSAIC-ready entry called Sparker that is the highest-performing of their line. Of course, prices follow capability, so the Sirius or Sting may be the more affordable buy, but this company has got choices for you.

Zenith arrived with two of its popular sport pilot-eligible kit aircraft, the Cruzer and Super Duty. Probably most readers are aware that Zenith is the leading kit builder in the light aircraft space (as only one Van’s model can presently qualify as an LSA). This should surprise no one as these aircraft are highly proven, and the manufacturing of Zenith kits has become quite sophisticated under the leadership of Sebastien Heintz.

The Mexico, Missouri-based kit producer also hosts one of the largest events of its kind in the country, in fact, drawing even more people to it than the Midwest LSA Expo. Now in its 32nd year, “Homecoming” is a must-go for any Zenith enthusiast. I’ve never been able to make it because it occurs right after the Midwest LSA event but I hope many of you can and will attend. You can learn a lot at the event plus enjoy the camaraderie of others with similar interests.

Magni Gyro rep Greg Gremminger brought two gyroplanes, as he often has. Gremminger is one of those regulars that has made every Midwest LSA event, along with a handful of others. It helps that he’s based nearby, but this has proven to be a good event where he can give rampside talks about gyros to people who are interested. He’s done this for years, and every time I’ve seen quite a collection of people listening intently as he describes his rotary-winged aircraft and how they fly.

A couple years ago my wife and I each took a flight with Gremminger, and had a marvelous experience. I’m not qualified to fly gyroplanes solo, but I have learned from some experiences and I see the magic that so many enjoy. Gremminger was one of the original people to fight for 10 years asking the FAA to finally allow fully-built gyroplanes. He didn’t get a yes, but when Roy Beisswenger and I started our advocacy work, we took up the case again. Between Gremminger’s efforts and ours, I’m pleased that we will finally have factory-built gyros available for enthusiasts.

All this and more was available on opening day, despite weather challenges to the east, holding up the arrival of some aircraft. BushCat is expecting two aircraft, as is Jabiru. What I believe this list shows is that these companies are all willing to spend the money and take the time to bring multiple aircraft to the Midwest LSA Expo. One of the main reasons the show is popular and successful is the great ease of getting a demo flight in an airplane. Get on the schedule and when it’s your turn, it takes literally a few minutes to get airborne. Marvelous! Plus, entry to the show and parking are FREE.

MOSAIC and More

I will have more on other aircraft that are at the show and other activities that I observe. In addition, the whole place is buzzing with talk of MOSAIC, as you might expect a month and change after the FAA dropped its new proposed regulation on the U.S.

These members of Midwest LSA Expo’s orange shirt brigade worked to keep flight demo operations humming and safe. Thanks to all the orange shirters!

I look forward to the question-and-answer session at the end of my two talks (Friday and Saturday at 11 a.m. Central). I’m pleased to give out what I believe is good information on the new proposed rule, but the most valuable interplay comes from pilots expressing their concerns and opinions. If you’re in the area, please join us. If you can’t make it. I will plan to record it and I’ll get the video up as soon as I can.

Stay tuned for more from the Midwest LSA Expo 2023!

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