Light Sport Hangar Flyin'

Sebring EXPO: 2.5 Perfect Days

2012-01-21T19:39:00.000-08:00

I am ready to commit homicide on the wireless in this place I'm sending - or attempting to send - from. More later, as I start for the third time in three days to get a single blogpost to upload after hours of working on it! Computers! A pox on all of them.

I'm posting this now without pictures. If the *&$% thing will stay connected long enough to update the post with pics, I will...assuming it will even publish this!
Okay, on to the good stuff.
Sebring is alive and well and gliding along better than ever. More than I can say for the wireless where I've tried to post since Thursday night, so today (Sat), you get two point five posts for the price of one.
First bit of news: Opening day Thursday was the best attended in the show’s eight year history (not five years as I doofishly reported the other day). Aiding and abetting: beautiful, absolutely beautiful weather. No hurricanes, no clouds of leaflets from Republican Presidential hopefuls, just a lavishly enjoyable (for us snowbirds at least) 70 degrees, with a steady 10 knot wind a good part of the day, followed by a crisp, clear night. Thank the Maker.

Your humble and now very frustrated blogster took full advantage of opening day by spending almost half of it shooting and flying the new BRM Bristell S-LSA (yes, it’s ASTMified). A very, very sweet ship. Think second generation Piper Sport nee SportCruiser, since the low-wing monoplane bears a design familiarity of clean, attractive lines and is, if not a sibling, certainly a cousin to that seminal Czech design.
Bristell designer Milan Bristela is here at the show with John Calla to give the airplane some street cred. Milan co-designed the original SportCruiser and is full designer of this new airplane. Clearly he’s incorporated many things we’ve all learned along the way, including about the roomiest low-wing cockpit, at 51", I’ve had the pleasure to fly.
That’s just frosting on the cake, though: if the SportCruiser/Piper Sport is a light, playful airplane that lands itself, rolls around the sky with enjoyable and docile characteristics, the Bristell really feels like a GA airplane. All three axes are beautifully harmonized, the stick feel and responsiveness are both muted and lively. I mean it’s neither twitchy like a spring colt nor sluggish like a one-track dray horse, but both smooth and firm in control handling, and wonderfully quick to jump to your commands.
Many thoughtful features like a painted sun screen built into the canopy top, 600 lb. useful load, lovely aerodynamics, 1000+ fpm climb, sturdy, sturdy tricycle gear, outsized GA-robust landing gear with Goodyear tires, very lively nosewheel steering (a little too twitchy, but as my endlessly energetic demo host, former C-130 Special Ops driver John Rathwell was quick to tell me, a simple tweak is in the works for that), and all in all, quite an airplane.

European LAMA board member Jan Fridrich catches our low photo pass at Sebring. Thanks Jan! Nobody ever shoots the photographer!

I’ll properly flesh out my positive impressions when I write the pilot report. For now let’s say this creation of Mr. Bristela is a solid, mature, sophisticated design with many fine details, it’s very comfortable, most certainly enjoyable to fly, and beautifully finished inside and out.
Alright, that’s way too much for an airplane blog post so let’s move on:

FK12 Comet folds its wings.

I spent a very interesting hour with Roger Crow, a 35-year Air National Guard fighter pilot and law enforcement aviator who briefed me on how his Echo Flight Resources company out of Tulsa has transmogrified a Flight Design CTLE into an aerial surveillance platform, complete with a highly sophisticated aerial video ball turret camera that’s controlled by a John Law techie in the right seat in pursuit of people doing bad things. I’m hoping to do a story on it for the magazine: a fascinating look into how useful LSA are at dramatically cutting costs without compromising performance one bit over similarly equipped Cessna 172s and 182s, and helicopters, which cost a whole lot more to operate than a CTLS. He’s winning over converts with law enforcement orgs across the country, because he’s one of a small club and speaks the lingo.

Randy Lervold showing how it's done.

At the annual LAMA dinner Thursday night, it’s prez Dan Johnson and his lovely wife Randee along with a host of sponsors and volunteers and new Sebring fearless leader Jana Filip put on an excellent feed, a raffle of prizes, and a presentation by EAA’s new President, Rod Hightower, followed by an excellent video short from EAA’s superb video department.

Day for night

Friday, although no official numbers were in as I dragged myself off to dinner and to rescue my newly arrived roommate, P&P publisher Mike McMann, from being GPS-lost in the crocodile-infested badlands east of Sebring, looked to be another record day. Lots of folks walking around, kicking tires, taking demo rides throughout yet another gorgeous day.
Highlights for Friday included catching up with Charles Stites of Able Flight, that wonderful organization that underwrites, with four types of scholarships, the flying dreams of disabled people. Seven more dedicated and determined people, including a deaf woman and a multiple combat amputee successfully negotiated Sport Pilot training to defy the odds.

Roger Crow's CTLE

As I told Charles after the update, I always feel better after talking with him.
Another guy who always lifts my spirits is Boris Popov, founder of BRS parachutes. Boris and I go back more decades than either of us care to acknowledge, when I first began extolling the virtues of the ballistic ‘chute concept he successfully brought to market.
How good would you feel to wake up every morning and know something you created had incontestably saved hundreds of lives over the years. Yeah. Way cool.

Sebring Expo showgrounds above the CarbonCub SS

By the way, forgot to mention feel-good band Ravi performed for the exhibitor’s reception Wednesday night and also at the LAMA dinner. The band’s namesake Ravi tours the world performing original songs, conducting clinics and lecturing on crucial issues facing the music and aviation industries – two groups you don’t often see conflated. A talented and engaging young pilot/musician, you can find out more at www.theRaviator.com.

And th-th-that’s all folks.

The twin brothers Hansen and the twin brothers Hansen (one father’s sons are also twins) of Hansen Air Group demonstrated changing the cockpits on the sexy FK12 Comet from a single canopy to two-holer and also folding the wings, all in about five minutes. Hansens the younger performed the operation as the elder sibs “supervised”.

I’ll be flying the Comet tomorrow for a future report. What a very cool bipe indeed.
Finally, because it’s bed time for yours truly, Randy Lervold of Cubcrafters and his superb pilot Clay (didn’t get his last name) helped me get an air2air session with their wildly popular Carbon Cub SS. The light couldn’t have been better, and ditto goes for the formation skills of both pilots. Every formation shoot ought to go this well.
Here’s a sample, judge for yourself.
Tomorrow, looking forward to shooting my old friend the Flight Design CTLS, thanks to another old friend Tom Peghiny. The CT sports a new dual-panel SkyView deck. Managing Director of the successful European company, Matthias Betch, is in town for the show.

CubCrafters Delivers #200

2012-01-16T12:09:00.000-08:00

Savvy companies find a way through even the worst of economic times.
Case in point: CubCrafters has just delivered its 200th LSA.
The Yakima, Washington-based LSA maker thus secures bragging rights, at least for now, for being the top US-made producer of ASTM-certified Light Sport Aircraft, eclipsing its Cub clone rival American Legend out of Texas, which has led the pack for some time.

Photo courtesy CubCrafters

Coming just a couple days before Sebring's US Sport Aviation Expo kickoff on Thursday, the news should be welcome to industry watchers and potential buyers eager for a cheerier outlook.
The company offers two Cubalikes: the Sport Cub S2 (100hp) and the Carbon Cub SS (180hp, and what a climbout monster it is!)
The company started up in 1980 and recently added 15,000 square feet of space to its manufacturing facility.
And yes, they are a-hirin'.
Keep up the good work, you guys!

SEBRING EXPO Kicks Off Next Week!

2012-01-13T11:28:00.000-08:00

The show I look forward to the most every winter is the Sebring U.S. Sport Aviation Expo, the premier gathering of Light Sport industry vendors in America.
This is the fifth go round for the expo; each year it offers more pure fun for LSA pilots present and future.
This year sports a noticeably upscale look, with new management (show founder Robert Woods remains very active in the show) and a stronger promotional flavor.
Major sponsors this year include our own Plane&Pilot!
The four-day gathering, which kicks off next Thursday, Jan. 19, promises to be the biggest show yet.
Lots of return and new LSA exhibitors, display booths with the latest hot gear, and symposiums, including the new Bristell low wing monoplane and Pipistrel Sinus 50-foot span motorglider, both of which I hope to fly for future reports.

The new Bristell will be at Expo next week. Photo courtesy BristellUSA

Avionics leader Dynon will hold full on classes to teach the many ins and outs of its powerhouse SkyView EFIS display... for free!

Dynon's SkyView

EAA's new head honcho Rod Hightower will speak at the annual LAMA dinner Thursday night.

EAA's Rod Hightower to speak

There's a ton more things to talk about, check it out right here for all the details.
If you've got a hankering for early Spring- style LSA tire-kickin' and demo flying, program Sebring into your GPS and get on down thar!

New Tecnam Float Plane; Impossible Turn 2

2012-01-04T15:58:00.000-08:00

A couple fun things before I lose the day entirely.

Floats always add sex appeal to land planes, don't they? photo courtesy Tecnam

Just got word from Tecnam today, via our publisher Mike McMann, that the Italian aircraft producer has adapted one of my favorite LSA, the P92 Echo and Eaglet (trainer version), for water operations.
Dubbed the P92 Sea-Sky Hydroplane, this waterbird should prove to be yet another fun entry into the SLSA sweepstakes.
My impression of the Eaglet remains: a lively, forgiving, fun-to-fly all metal trainer that I expect will appeal even more with web feet, for those of aquatic inclinations.
Some details:
The Hydroplane is the 6th generation model of the successful P92.
Takeoff run is spec'd at under 200 meters, along with "an impressive climb rate" from its 100 hp Rotax engine. And I wonder how the Eaglet's landing performance, for example (26 kts., full flaps, no power) will translate to the water and extra weight.
The Hydro will be produced at Tecnam’s new composites production facility, home to both the Tecnam P2008 and Tecnam P2010 four-seat GA up-and-comer, in Capua, Italy.
There's nothing much online about it yet; I'm hoping it will make it to Sebring mid-month, or Sun 'n Fun in April.

Jim Lee finishing the NASA speed run. photo courtesy NASA.

Gliders and the Impossible Turn
Also just heard from friend and soaring pilot/instructor/longwing trendsetter Jim Lee, last heard from when he flew the only conventionally-powered aircraft in the NASA Green Flight Challenge last fall that won Pipistrel's Taurus Electro G4 a cool $1.35 million prize.
Jim acquitted himself admirably with the Phoenix motorglider at that event.
He dropped me an e-note to add his glider-centric take on my Impossible Turn post here of a couple days ago.
Take it away James:

"For one, in any aircraft, don't follow the centerline of the runway (after) take off unless required by parallel runways or tower ops. Veer downwind of the runway on climb out, then if the engine quits, you only have to make a 180, not a 270.

Pretty Phoenix. photo courtesy Jim Lee

Glider pilots are required to practice, and perform on the checkride, a turn back to the runway from 200'. It is easy in a glider. I can do 100', and I have seen 50' done in a real emergency when the towplane flew into a hangar. 500' is easy in a small Cessna with practice. [Even] 400' is easy, and 300' is doable in an LSA with practice."
Jim heads up PhoenixUSA out of Melbourne, Florida. I've flown and reported on the Phoenix and it is one wonderful all-around dreamship.

Demystifying The Killer Turn

2011-12-30T12:38:00.000-08:00

Everyone gets the big scare speech early on in their flight training: "If you lose power on takeoff," say our trusty CFIs, with the requisite sobering tone of voice, "DO NOT try to return to the airport if you are below X feet above ground...always find an emergency landing area somewhere ahead."
Everyone has their favorite altitude number for "X", which is a factor of many variables, including aircraft engine off glide ratio and density altitude. Usually it's a comfortably conservative number, say 1000 feet minimum AGL.

There's a good reason for that cautionary buffer zone of course: many pilots - and passengers - have died trying to make the killer turn back to the airport from too low an altitude.
In an attempt to demystify the infamous "Impossible turn", AOPA online managing editor Alyssa J. Miller goes about the worthy business of investigating firsthand just how high one should be above launch airport altitude to feel safe about turning back for that oasis of engine-out safety: the runway.

It's all based on aviation journalist Barry Schiff's Impossible Turn Maneuver Checklist, also replicated in the article. Miller's goal is to "find out how much altitude you need to turn around safely—not to try to turn the aircraft around in a pre-set amount of altitude."
It's an important distinction, that difference between knowing the absolute minimum altitude you'll need vs. having a mindset of "must turn in 500 feet" to wrestle with.
And she does a service thereby for all of us by accumulating some real world numbers.
Taking wing, she climbed to a safe altitude with CFI Sandy Geer, then recorded several repetitions of:
<> simulated engine failure on takeoff
<> stabilizing to best glide speed
<> turning 270 degrees (a turn left or right dictates you will need more than just 180 degrees to line back up with the runway)
<> flaring, as if performing a landing
<> then recording the total altitude lost from pulling the power.
Miller's best altitude loss number was 300 feet in a Cessna 172! The average altitude lost for the entire group of simulations was between 300 and 500 feet. I'm itching to try this in an LSA...especially a motorglider.
After discussing their efforts, they each settle on a minimum above ground comfort altitude: CFI Reed's is 1000 feet AGL, while Miller says she might consider 750 feet her personal minimum.
Both note that in a true emergency situation any number of distractions will lead to greater altitude loss, or as we say Webside: YRMV (Your Results May Vary).
It's a thought-provoking read, with a helpful accompanying video.
At Sebring next month, I'm going to add this maneuver to my pilot report flight list, which should also give me some interesting comparison figures between different models of LSA, since all flights will take place from the same airport.
Meanwhile, you can check out the article here.

FAA Amends Sport Pilot Examiner Medical Rule

2011-12-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

Getting into the New Year garage cleanup spirit, the FAA has amended its Part 61 flight training rule, finalized in 2009, with some needed clarifications and corrections.

photo courtesy Aviation Advertiser

The stated purpose is to "revise the training, qualification, certification, and operating requirements for pilots, flight instructors, ground instructors, and pilot schools."
The primary change as it relates to our corner of the aviation universe: Flight examiners giving the checkride for the Sport Pilot ticket do not need a medical certificate as long as they have a U.S. driver's license: i.e. the same self-certification of competence to fly requirement that governs the Sport Pilot license qualification.

LSA Bits

2011-12-23T10:13:00.000-08:00

photo courtesy Remos Aircraft

In 36 hours or so, Chief Pilot S. Claus will be on final for a few billion chimneys worldwide. Here's what's popping up in one of my last looks at LSA news webwide for 2011. Meanwhile, my best wishes for a Merry Flying Christmas and new flight horizons for all in 2012!

Cubcrafters flexes its market success muscle with a new manufacturing facility and the hiring - yes, hiring - of new personnel to build its popular LSA Piper Cub clones.

photo courtesy CubCrafters

A newly leased 15,000-square-foot building near the Yakima, Washington airport boosts existing capacity by almost 40% and is already in operation. Congrats to CubCrafters and we wish you continued success.
Included are a new welding shop and CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machine shop.

The new space will make room in the main plant for an R&D facility and an updated, more centralized parts department.

Owner Jim Richmond says, "Our planes are selling well, and if we get even a little help from the economy, we will need to increase our production rate."

Check out those job openings here.

SportAirUSA, that broadbased purveyor of several LSA models and instrument panel goodies, adds to its avionics offerings with the Adventure Pilot iFly GPS, a 7-inch touch-screen moving map based on FAA sectional charts (I own and myself - very cool unit).

The company also reports the iFly will be standard equipment on the Snap! singleseater and an installable option for its Sting, Sirius, Savage Cub, and SeaRey LSA. Starting price is $549. The iFly comes loaded with the U.S. sectionals, IFR low en route charts, geo-referenced approach plates, airport diagrams, and more.

JUSTNET, the Justice Technology Information Network and an arm of the Office of Justice, posts a summary of the aircraft considered so far here, and more detailed looks at each aircraft evaluated here.

photo courtesy Rans Aircraft

The page is part of the Aviation Technology Program, which looks at a broad range of low-cost aviation technologies as alternatives to conventional GA aircraft in law enforcement aviation units - typically helicopters and FAA certified aircraft.

Some familiar SLSA models evaluated: Rans Coyote, Tecnam Eaglet, Sky Arrow. Powered parachutes and autogyros are also considered.

The overview cites the high cost of acquiring and maintaining these aircraft (new Cessna 172: $300,000) and serves up the economic viability of various types of LSA as a dramatic alternative to for maintaining the long arm of the law skyward.

In particular, the report calls out Light Sport Aircraft as well as small unmanned aircraft systems (“sUAS” - how institutions love acronyms!) and moored balloons...moored balloons?

Remos Aircraft keeps growing its dealer/service center network. Latest addition is Light Sport West of Sacramento, California. A Remos GX was added to the GA training fleet based at Sacramento Executive Airport (KSAC).

Light Sport West joins a growing number of FBOs nationwide who are realizing LSA offer appeal, economy and fun flying to flight students.

Knocking Around The InfoVerse

2011-12-05T13:07:00.001-08:00

Today's Word

photo courtesy Pipistrel

News travels fast these days: Just ask Herman Cain. New tech net scraper Gizmag just ran a blurb on the Pipistrel Alpha I highlighted here a couple weeks back. The focus of the highlight is on the low cost, which as they note is under 60K Euro.
Now consider this: if the Euro continues to go through its troubles and drops further against the dollar, imagine a quality SLSA, like the Alpha promises to be (it's based on a years-proven design - the Vinus/Sinus - with hundreds now delivered), priced at, say, $70K. For all of us who've decried the high costs of LSA, might this be the price point/airplane that would help break the LSA sales logjam?

Catching Up With Dan The Man

My blogosphere bro Dan Johnson has a piece in this month's Light Aviation eZine that updates LSA manufacturers now - at last - finding some markets overseas.

photo courtesy Dan Johnson

He details foreign sales by Arion (Lightning), Flight Design, Remos and Piper Sport/Sport Cruiser. ASTM and type certificate approvals are being won country by country, and products are beginning to move, over thar.
One cool story: U. S. Sport Aircraft, the U.S. distributor that reps the Sport Cruiser, has sold what Dan believes is the first LSA in Brazil...and the company flew the airplane from Florida all 4,300 miles to deliver it!
Aviation is booming in that country...let's hope more American companies find success in the southern hemisphere while we're waiting for the global economy to work through its identity crisis.

Dynon SkyView Hands-On Training at Sebring

Who among us hasn't sat for the first time in a new LSA and felt brain overload when confronted with an unfamiliar EFIS display?
One of my initial - and most stressful - challenges during my Sport Pilot training was figuring out where to look and how to work those info-jammed screens while also getting to know the airplane.

photo courtesy Dynon Avionics

Helping out with that comes a promising and much needed program, to debut at next month's Sebring Light Sport Expo (that's right, kids, Sebring is just around the corner...more on that below).
Dynon Avionics will offer free courses on how to wrangle the SkyView, its runaway hit EFIS display.
The 3.5-hour classes will be held all four mornings and the first three afternoons at Sebring. Working SkyViews will be set up so people can get some real hands-on tutoring without having to RTFM (Read The Freakin' Manual, which apparently only 1.4% of the U.S. population can abide).
Class size will be limited to the first 15 people who sign up here. The classes will be held at the nearby (like, walking distance from the show) Chateau Elan Hotel and Conference Center.
Kirk Kleinholz, CFII and SkyView expert, will handle the professorial duties. This first set of classes will be free: ongoing classes will have a fee, so get in there, pilots, and sign up!

Sebring Expo Looms!

Yes chilluns, the big winter LSA show is truly stepping it up this year, with a much-ballyhooed new presence and a much bigger feel, judging by the number of promo emails I've gotten for months now.

photo courtesy Sebring Expo

Rather than rehash the 2012 offerings, just go here and check it out for yourself.
Alright, just a couple teasers, I can't resist (and I can't wait to get down there myself!):
<> "Exotic" vacation packages will be auctioned
<> Registered exhibitors include Flight Design, which will bring its CTLE law enforcement special, NASA Green Flight Challenge winner Pipistrel with several models (alas, not the winning electric one-off Taurus Electro G4), and the EAA Piper Cub J3 Sweepstakes contest airplane. Y'all get your tickets now, hear?

Flight Design CTLE photo courtesy Flight Design

<> EAA's new head man Rod Hightower will give a presentation at the annual LAMA dinner.
<> Tons of events, factory and general demo flights and lots more to look forward.
Did I say I can't wait? Now if only winter would truly arrive in the northeast (it's 58 degrees again today!) I'll have even more motivation to jet southward...not that Sebring leaves any need for that...this is simply the biggest all-LSA event in the country.

Oldest Living LSA Pilot?

2011-12-01T11:48:00.000-08:00

Here's a story to give us all some cheer as we slide into final on the Holiday Season.
An article in Martinsburg, West Virginia's The Journal newspaper chronicles the exploits of one T. Guy Reynolds Jr. , a local pilot who just celebrated his birthday by spreading his wings in his Evektor SportStar.
"No big deal", you say? Ah, but this gentleman is one year shy of being a centenarian...that's right, he just turned 99 years old!

J. Guy Reynolds about to do his thing. photo courtesy The Journal

That makes him, says the article penned by John McVey, likely the oldest pilot in the state.
And we have to ask...maybe the nation?
"I wanted to fly on my 99th birthday," he said. "I enjoy it, and my airplane is very nice to fly."
The SportStar model was the first to win ASTM approval back in 2005 as a legal S-LSA and continues in its latest iteration as the Harmony...my flight report is due out in the next issue of the magazine.
Evektor's airplanes appeal to pilots like Mr. Reynolds with long aviation backgrounds, since it's a familiar, mostly-metal airframe with good long range legs and comfortable interior to back it up...these things get more important as we get older! I've logged around 30 hours in the Evektor Max and its successor Harmony so I'm more expert on this subject than many...it's an excellent long-leg airplane for the posterior regions.
The article goes on to report that Mr. Reynolds began flying, in a Ford Tri-Motor, before most of us were even glints in our parent's eyes: in 1929! He founded Martinsburg's Civil Air Patrol squadron and was its first commander in 1943.

Evektor SportStar. photo courtesy www.lightsportaircraft.ca

Taking on challenges late in life seem to be a habit...Reynolds had in fact laid off flying in the mid-50s in order to raise a family and didn't resume until 2004...at age 92.
He made his first parachute jump on the day he turned 93. What a Guy!
"I keep very positive - that's how I've lived so long. I'm still happy and thank God for that every day."
Happy Birthday to you sir!

Cessna Feels The Pinch...and Pinches Back

2011-11-28T10:52:00.001-08:00

In a recent piece on AvWeb, Paul Bertorelli takes a good look at Cessna's decision to bump the price of the Skycatcher by a cool $35K - yes, that's 35 thousand. Okay, it's not every day we see a 31+% price hike in a retail price of anything, especially in this economy.

Yet Cessna's move should come as no surprise to anyone who knows, as Bertorelli points out, that the price of aircraft has grown faster than the rate of inflation for decades. Thirty years or so ago, a new Cessna Skyhawk could be had for around $30,000. Today it's 10 times that number, or more than $300,000, whereas inflation applied to that original $30K number would put the figure just north of $100,000...about three times higher.

The Sky's no limit...in greenbacks.

Meanwhile, the aviation giant has up until now done its best to keep the price close to it's original near-$100,000 level. Most recent raise was from $112,000 to around $114,000.

Originally announced in 2007, more than 1,000 orders were racked up in short order.

Then came more than two years of delays - first deliveries were made last year and 150 or so Skycatchers have been delivered this year.

All along, Cessna tried mightily to hold the line on price increases even in the face of production cost increases: it of course wanted to hold onto that $75 million in orders; wholesale decimation of the Skycatcher order book would have been a heavy hit, even for Big C.

The company pressed on through at least one major tailfeather redesign to keep the program viable, and keep original placeholders on board with a gradually-climbing price that stayed close to the original ticket of just under $110,000.

Now the scrappy Skycatcher has climbed the U.S. delivery numbers to its recent, current position of #2. Only longtime leader board-topper Flight Design has registered more LSA in this country. Hey, isn't that a John Cougar Mellenkamp song?: "S-L-S-A in the U-S-A!".

In this day of bait-and-switch psychology, where the bottom line justifies any financial means, I think customer service props (and recognition for savvy business acumen) go to Cessna. Look at the price of equivalent-quality S-LSA out there: you're looking at a typical sticker-shock number of $125-150K. Big C is only raising its product to market parity, and to help support production costs, after having worked hard at it's "holding the line" image. Also factored in: many of the instrument options are now standard, so the price increase isn't baldly wholesale: some perks are factored in.
Still, those options are re no longer voluntary.
I wonder how deep in the red Cessna went with the delays in production, increased design and retesting costs - the company has proudly, and deservedly, boasted that it took Skycatcher through a program more rigorous than the ASTM standard, including spin testing...that's how the original design flaw was uncovered in the first place.

Bertorelli goes on to reflect on the marketing and psychological effect of the price jump, and whether it will cause a bailout of significant numbers of remaining production number holders. He also has some interesting insights on how Cessna has always been good at maintaining its profit margin, even if it meant raising prices and accepting the lower sales numbers that resulted. That's how companies survive, after all

It's a good read, check it out for an insight into how big aviation business cope these days.

He concludes with a compelling question that deserves more thought and some comment: if Cessna, with it's offshore Chinese production, can't produce a relatively "low cost" S-LSA, does that put the kibosh on the notion entirely?
I have my own thoughts, viewed from a slightly different angle: look at my recent post on the Pipistrel Alpha Trainer that was just introduced around $80,000, and that's not a stripped model either. I read an online forum thread a couple days ago in which several posters flat out decried the $80K price point. "Impossible!" they cried.
Yet here is a lean, mean, well-oiled design/production house in Slovenia that is showing us the way of the future, perhaps. The company just sold 200 of Alphas to India...and the production prototype is being debuted in April.
I believe the company President, Ivo Boscarol, when he says he will produce the airplane at that price: his vision all along has been that if you do things in a very targeted, innovative and efficient manner, you can produce affordable, quality aircraft that will sell, even with the Euro/Dollar exchange rate, in the $80K range in America.
Take another look at what we complain about as a "high cost" light aircraft: adjusted backwards to the before-inflation rate (1975, roughly), we're looking at $8,000!
Before we cry in our $7 microbeers, we should lament the destruction of our currency by the craziness of world economics for the last 70 or so years. That is the real culprit. An ounce of gold still buys approximately the same goods it bought in 1950...1920...1900. It's not that things are more expensive. It's our currency, no longer backed by gold or silver, that's taken the hit.
Why do you think China among other national governments is buying gold like it was on fire sale? Because it is.
Aviation companies like every other enterprise must find ever-more-efficient ways of surviving, let alone thriving, by continuing to discover how to do the impossible, even if they have to grapple with perceived realities, such as this misplaced notion that there are no cheap light aircraft.
Put another way, I'll buy an $8,000, all-composite, well-equipped, good-performing aircraft for $8K any day of the week...even if I have to find a few partners to help me out with the purchase, since my salary also buys 10% of what it did a generation ago. But that's another, and unfolding, story.

Major New Trainer Debuts

2011-11-13T10:15:00.001-08:00

The company I’ve been writing a lot about lately keeps finding more things for me to talk about. When I was in Slovenia last month, Pipistrel's movers and shakers told me on the QT to be ready for a major announcement soon.
And here it is: just officially announced this morning, introducing the Alpha Trainer, a purpose-built version of the company's winning Virus SW (Short Wing) cruiser. Designed for the flight school market, it carries an introductory price that should raise a few eyebrows: $83,000 just about everything, including delivery, shipping to the US, FAA fees etc.
Yep, I'd call that news.
Rand Vollmer of SALSA Aviation, a U.S. Pipistrel dealer, tipped me off this morning about the official release.

A Rotax 80HP engine brings strong climb and 108-knot cruise

Pipistrel makes elegant, fun-flying, functional aircraft and the Alpha (200 were recently ordered by the Indian government) should prove to be no exception.
It’s targeted at LSA Flying Schools wherever ASTM or FAA-LSA regulations hold sway.
In its release, the company states:
“With the economy the way it is most aircraft have been priced (out of) the marketplace for the average person or flight school.”
Key design features include:
<> Economies of purchase, operation, maintenance and repair.
<> Durable, with docile flight and stall characteristics for beginning students.
<> UV-resistant acrylic paint finish for outdoor storage and day-long flight operations in heat well above 100°F (composites are often knocked for not standing up to mid-day heat and sun)
<> Quiet, easy-access, roomy cockpit (43"-plus), good cabin ventilation and heating, approved strobes and lighting.
<> Quick access to reliable spare parts to keep aircraft flying
<> Reasonable cross-country training range, easy refueling, strong hydraulic brakes, adjustable dual flight controls, tricycle gear with steerable nosewheel
<> GRS Ballistic parachute system standard

A big part of Pipistrel's success: sleek, efficient aerodynamics. all images courtesy Pipistrel

Pipistrel has built more than 1000 aircraft since it began with Ivo Boscarol’s trike design 25 years ago. The company has won several European air games events and the prestigious NASA CAFE efficiency challenge three times in a row (including this year's stunning electric Taurus G4 that averaged 400 passenger miles per gallon at 100 mph and took the top prize of $1.35 million).
As I’ve said, this outfit is not fooling around: they are well on their way to becoming a major presence in the light sport aircraft market. They haven’t broken out in the U.S. just yet...the Alpha may have a major impact on that.
The release isn’t even up on the website yet, so here are a few more details of this pending (April 2012 delivery) debut:
Beefed up composite undercarriage supports full fuel and an additional 500 lbs. of payload.

New nose gear strut is 2" inches shorter than the Virus, which lowers the nose and improves taxi viz...prop clearance is not compromised: the Alpha uses a smaller 63” diameter fixed pitch prop.
The 15 gallon fuel tank has a large fill opening to accommodate fast-flow avgas pumps, although ethanol-free auto avgas is still the recommended fuel for Rotax engines.
That fuel capacity still gives Alpha “at least 400 miles range with reserves” at a normal cruise just under 110 knots.
In training mode, even doing multiple pattern flights only burns around 2.5 gph max for five hours endurance. This is no marketing hype: the Virus I flew, on which the Alpha is based, is so aerodynamically clean it gets right up to altitude with a strong 1000'-plus climb rate and a 110-115 knot speed regime...on the same 80hp the Alpha will carry.
The Alpha is propped to give a slower cruise of 108 knots to meet the LSA category without sacrificing that super climb rate.
Alpha’s airframe is built of carbon fiber, kevlar and fiberglass and was brought in 100 lbs. lighter than the SW...impressive.
Interior appointments include heavy-duty seat fabric, no wheel spats to minimize repair issues from student “prangs”, and two-minute wheel swaps for flat tires. Everything about this airplane is geared to the high demand training market.
The modified wing design includes flaperons with 25° of travel (two stops) and no airbrakes (standard on the Sinus and Virus motorgliders). There's inflight elevator trim too.
Even the prop is designed and produced by Pipistrel on the monster 8-axis CNC-machining robot I saw at the factory which precision-carves the wooden pieces. Then they're wrapped in a composite covering, the leading edges get added protection and it's painted.

A luggage rack behind the seats helps out with incidental storage needs like tie downs, water bottles and such. Two large pockets on the sides of the panel allow inflight access.
Basic instrumentation is conventional steam gauges including tach, hobbs meter, oil pressure and temp, CHT, EGT, fuel quantity.
Also included are a GPS Garmin Aera 500 with AirGizmo docking station, ICOM IC A210 radio with intercom, aerial and two headsets (!), Garmin GTX 327 altitude encoding transponder and Kannad 406 AF ELT.
And still more: the 34' 6" wing-span will snug nicely into most T-hangars.
The airframe is painted in white UV-resistant acrylic.

Price for all this training goodness: €61,500, around $83,600 US at today’s exchange rate.
But wait: there’s more! Introductory rate for schools and individuals wanting to commit now with a $15K US deposit can lock in a price of €58,000, around $78,900. Add on shipping, delivery and FAA fees and you’re looking at $83,000 US. That’s a compelling price for a fully-equipped, purpose-built, new trainer.
There’s more to discuss re how well all-composite trainers can stand up to the rigors of life in a flight school. I’ll talk with the Pipistrel folks more about how they address composite repairs, which typically are more challenging than their aluminum counterparts.

Unintentional Holiday part Deux

2011-11-06T06:11:00.000-08:00

(Note to my readers: the first part of this tome is just below)

So here I was in Slovenia, unable to fly and three more days before I could return to my wife in Hamburg, unless I wanted to pay another $200 to change the flight. Modern air travel, what a concept.
Undaunted and determined to enjoy my first visit to this lovely country after two days in bed with a virus (the physical kind, not the airplane), I crawled back into the light and joined up with Rand for a thoroughly enjoyable factory tour, courtesy of Ivo's daughter Taya (she's also a partner in the firm), who speaks very good English indeed and gave us a very informative and enjoyable peek at how the company does it's day-to-day.

Yours Truly scaring the crap out of hisself

And what a factory! High tech geothermal heat, solar power (enough to run the entire factory year round, and sell excess back to the grid) and open, sunny, airy spaces all make for a wonderful working environment.
Then Ivo invited Rand and me to join him and the entire Pipistrel crew for a "team building" weekend trip. We followed the bus jammed full of Pipistrelians east for a couple hours and found ourselves in the middle of one of those ropes course-like facilities meant to scare the bejeezus out of people. It's a fair-weather season facility that lives atop a ski area in eastern Slovenia.
Now remember, I was just out of a sick bed and still pretty wobbly. And when I saw that the first task my teammates and I would have to perform was climbing up a 10 meter wooden pole (that's 33 feet, folks), lumberjack style (albeit safely belayed by ropes carabinered to a body harness), and then stand up on top of said pole, I got a tad wobblier.
The flat top of that pole was about as big around as a medium-sized pancake, maybe 9" in diameter, 10" at the most.
Are you kidding me?
After attaining that precarious perch (and not everybody did), to get max points for the team, we then had to gingerly pussyfoot our feet around on top of the pole until facing in the opposite direction. Then we could take a leap of faith into space, expecting/trusting/hoping like hell we'd be safely arrested and lowered to the ground by our teammates who held the lifeline ropes.
Let me tell you right now: a 33-foot tall pole is an excellent harmonic device for magnifying the timid, overcorrecting uncertainties of your thigh muscle/knee joint mechanisms.
Let me say it another way: the more you shake, the more that damn pole gyrates at the top, like a plate spinner gyrating a plate atop a long stick...and you the plate!
So brother, you haven't lived until you've stood on top of an oscillating pole, willing your legs (unsuccessfully) to stop quavering and unsuccessfully trying to convince your body to believe what your mind knows: that you're safely backed up by the rope harness...and that your teammates are paying attention.

SALSA's Rand Vollmer and the components for his soon to be built Sinus motorglider...

Looking down from almost forty feet (bugged-out eyeball elevation) to see your big boots completely eclipsing that pancake-sized pole top and, in the vast distance beyond those boots, the foreshortened bodies of people's little white heads as they look up at you to shout encouragement (in Slovenian), is one of those "WTF am I doing here?" moments in life that shouldn't be missed.
The purpose of the weekend trip of course was to give people who work so diligently together a chance to share some bonhomie away from the factory, which no one seemed to have any problem with at all. The Pips are a very friendly crew indeed.

...which will look like this!

Traveling out of country is great...even when you don't get to fly a single minute. And spending that day with the crew, facing some other fun team challenges together, knocking back more than one glass of blueberry schnapps, sharing meals and tasting wine, feeling the warmth, good cheer and open amiability of all, watching groups at different tables at an ancient Slovenian winery dinner burst into song, made me wish for a spirit of nationality and camaraderie that seems missing on the American scene these days.
Anyway, no, I don't yet have a single Pipistrel flight story to share (other than the Virus I wrote up after Oshkosh which should be out in the mag very soon.)
But I do plan on getting my Private Pilot motorglider rating this winter, and escape the New England snows in the process: Rand and I hope to enlist Jim Lee of Phoenix Air USA, who impressed everyone with the Phoenix motorglider's 47 mpg performance at the GFC on conventional fuel power, to take us through the training down in Florida.

Taurus self-launching motorglider; also comes electric powered!

We'll fly Rand's 50-foot Sinus Touring Motorglider and I for one, shoveling the wet snow from our upstate New York Halloween porch just a few days ago, muttering "disgusting" to myself the entire time, can hardly wait to head south and strap on that sleek, beautiful airplane.
Meanwhile, keep your eyes on Pipistrel. They've got a lot of excitement coming down the taxiway.
En route, I'll be looking at the virtues of getting your private pilot glider rating down the road too, since it automatically removes a lot of the Sport Pilot restrictions (10,000 altitude max for instance) with very little additional effort...and you don't need a medical to fly a glider either...even a motorized glider with retractable gear. Not a lot of pilots are fully aware of that, so we'll be kicking it around once I start my training.
Meanwhile here's Jim Lee's treatise on how to fly a glider without a medical certificate...or even a driver's license! Of course as always, and as Jim notes, we want to be sure we self-certify that we are indeed fit to fly.

Unintentional Holiday

2011-11-05T12:57:00.000-07:00

"I know that we are spending half a life at work and half a life where we sleep," says Ivo Boscarol, founder and the dynamo behind Pipistrel Aircraft, in his strong Slovenian accent.
"So it is important that the lifestyle during work hours is good, so I organize my factory the way that I feel good and my workers feel good. They like to come to work, because actually this is quite serious business. If something is not made well, everybody has trouble: me, my test pilots, my customers. So we don’t put any pressure on the workers."
Ivo is tall, lean, direct and exuberantly intense, a true and tireless larger-than-life kind of guy.

Head honcho Ivo Boscarol and $1.35 million

My congenial traveling pal Rand Vollmer, head of San Antonio Light Sport Aviation (SALSA), a major dealer for Pipistrel in the states, calls Ivo a "rock star". Indeed, after his company's Taurus Electro G4 won the recent CAFE Green Flight Challenge (and a cool $1.35 million) in impressive fashion, Ivo's not only lionized wherever he goes in Slovenia (including being feted by the President of Slovenia), but he's increasingly well-known globally.
"After our victory in Green Flight Challenge, we are invited all over the world to show the airplane. So," he says with a big grin, "we must go."
Such uncomplicated directness is just one part of what makes Ivo both likable and worthy of respect. He's a guy you can talk with, but who knows how to get things done.
Equally magnetizing is his straight-ahead approach to aircraft design. His approach is elemental, like fire: he gets a wild idea for a new aircraft, calls in his design team, and says "Let's build this."
At first, eyes may go wide and mouths drop open at what seems implausible, impractical or downright impossible. But swept along by his relentless vision, enthusiasm and total confidence in their abilities, they find a way.

The breathtaking Panthera 4-seat cruiser will have Lycoming, hybrid or electric power!

A good case in point is the upcoming Panthera four-seat, all composite, Ferrari-like cruiser that is planned for debut at next spring's Aero show in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The truly gorgeous airplane will be built in three power configurations: traditional Lycoming power, hybrid generator/electric power...and pure electric.
Some teaser specs:
Cruise: 202 kts. (Lycoming), 142 kts. (hybrid), 118 kts. (all-electric)
Range at Cruise: 1025 nm/660 nm/ 215 nm.
Expect to read a lot more about this stunning, revolutionary design in the months to come. Meanwhile, here's a pic: don't be embarassed. Go ahead, drool, I did when I saw the components being assembled in the factory.
In the time I spent at Pipistrel's beautiful, ultra-modern, super green factory in the small town of Ajdovšcina, just 90 minutes drive east from Venice, Italy, Ivo Boscarol candidly shared the philosophies and vision that has made the company one of the top European light aircraft makers. I'll have much more in my next column for Plane & Pilot, as well as flight reports on their aircraft (including the Virus which I flew at Oshkosh).
Ivo's first production aircraft 24 years ago was a very successful trike (500 sold) that was flown in the waning light of dusk to avoid problems with the aviation-repressive government of Yugoslovia, of which Slovenia was once a part before the country split up.
See, in the dim light the locals thought the trike looked like a giant bat. Ivo conscripted the notion and named his company Pipistrel, which means bat.

The Taurus Electro G4 and Pipistrel factory

Anyway, excited about visiting the factory where the prize-winning Taurus Electro G4 was created, along with several other LSA aircraft (the Sinus motorglider, Virus, Virus SW and Taurus motorglider are all recently ASTM certified and available in the U.S. as S-LSA), I booked a five-day visit to Slovenia in mid-October.
Reality check: the factory is built in a beautiful valley below a long mountain ridge that rises 3,000 foot directly above the town of Ajdovšcina. That ridge has spun off 7 hour-plus soaring flights and is enough to make any soaring pilot happily weak in the knees.
But when the burja winds blow, the valley below that ridge acts like a perfect venturi. Translation: they've reached hurricane strength velocity (120 mph) and can blow for days and days. Ivo says the burja blows about 100 days a year. Now you know why Pipistrel is building another facility in nearby Italy.
Anyway, you'll never guess what happened during my trip...yes, the burja blew so strong, there was no flying activity the entire five days I was there. I never even saw an airplane outside of a hangar.
What? Me worry? Hell, let's go climb a pole.
(You'll have to check back in tomorrow to see what I mean...this post is getting too long.)

Green Flight Challenge A Teachable Moment

2011-10-10T14:54:00.000-07:00

Posting from Istanbul, Turkey where I'm on vacation with my family, but just couldn't wait another day to talk a bit about what most everybody in aviation's been talking about these last several days: the CAFE Green Flight Challenge (GFC).
History was made when the Pipistrel Taurus Electro G4 twin-fuselage electric-powered aircraft carried four adults, around 1000 lbs. of batteries, one electric motor with a big prop, and a lot of engineering and piloting savvy to victory in the GFC. They earned themselves $1.35 million in the process. Huge and well-deserved congratulations to Pipistrel!

The winnah! Pipistrel's Taurus Electro G4. Photo courtesy Pipistrel

But for my money, the deeper story is not just that they flew off with the biggest aviation dollar prize ever, or even that they accomplished the task of flying 200 miles on one battery charge while also averaging more than 100 mph for the entire flight, or that they did it while "burning" the equivalent of 1 gallon of gas per passenger, or four gallons total...but...that they accomplished all that yet consumed the equivalent of around 1/2 gallon of gas per passenger!
Looked at another way, they took off with full "tanks", and landed with just a bit less than the electricity equivalent of half a tank of gas.
And get this: The eGenius entry had similar economy numbers, though it used a very different design approach - a conventional motorglider planform - albeit with a tail mounted motor to afford a larger, more efficient prop. It flew with two, not four, people onboard.
So here we have two teams with different aerodynamic approaches that both met the challenge, and met it easily.
And as soon as they release numbers on the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Eco Eagle, I'll post them too, as the ERAU team also flew but as a demonstration flight - they were disqualified from competition for a couple technicalities.
But here's the deal, restated from my last post: at least two, and possibly three of the entrants didn't just meet the task that many thought wouldn't be met: they killed it!
Here are the official numbers: e- Genius (which won the second place prize of $120,000 as well as the Lindbergh LEAP award of $10,000 for quietest aircraft) tallied 375.8 passenger miles per gallon.
And the G-4? An astounding 403.5 passenger miles per gallon!
That is nothing less than stunning.
Electric flight is here.

Up to the Challenge: eGenius takes flight. photo courtesy NASA

Yes, battery tech needs to keep advancing, and dramatically, to bring e-flight into the mainstream GA hangar. But the GFC proves that the page has been turned. From here on in, it's a race to market affordable, practical electric airplanes.
As Eric Lindbergh, Lucky Lindy's grandson, said recently, the first company to make a viable electric trainer will usher in the new age. The G4 accomplished its victory on around $7 worth of electricity. Imagine the rental/training cost of an e-trainer being $125...or $130 "wet". Kinda funny.
Dr. Calin Gologan, the Romanian designer of the PC Aero Elektra One, which won the LEAP award this year at Oshkosh, believes battery efficiency (expressed as energy density) will improve by 11% per year. In 9 years, that's double what we have today. Anybody want to bet it won't happen faster than that?
And one more time, kudos and bravissimos to Pipistrel, the eGenius team, the Embry Riddle team which converted a Stemme motorglider, to Jim Lee, who entered the contest with a conventionally powered Phoenix motorglider (I'm looking forward to seeing his numbers too), and all the others who originally entered but couldn't quite make it to the starting line.
They all have their place in history, and all mark the beginning days of a tide that will change aviation forever.
Look for my just-submitted story on electric flight in the upcoming December issue of Plane & Pilot, which hits the stands in Nov.
Meanwhile, check out this video of the event's highlights.

Green Flight Challenge Down to Final Three!

2011-09-28T17:09:00.000-07:00

The CAFE Green Flight Challenge is at last underway - it was originally planned for mid-July - and as of the end of today's flying, just three of the original 13 entrants are still qualified to keep going for the $1.65 million prize money.
The event, centered in Santa Rosa, Calif. (between Los Angeles and San Francisco), is sponsored by Google and is seeking to advance public awareness and the technologies of electric and high-efficiency flight . Electric-driven aircraft have garnered most of the advance press, though most of the electric entrants have either been eliminated or couldn't get their aircraft ready in time.

The eGenius all-electric CAFE Green Flight Challenge competitor. Photo courtesy Eric Raymond

It's a pretty simple task: fly 200 miles averaging 100 mph or greater...with one teeny tiny hitch: fuel or fuel equivalent (electric or electric/hybrid) burn can only be one gallon of fuel. That's right: one (1) gallon. That's 200 mpg, looked at another way. Daunting, to say the least.
Every task day there are different challenges to test the full mettle of each aircraft and pilot, such as a strictly economy run, a maximum decibel test, then the final speed/economy run on the last day.
One entry, the Eco-Eagle, in the works for 2 years from Embry-Riddle Aviation University, was just disqualified because the race rules specify a two-place airplane must fly with two people, not just a pilot and an equivalent copilot weight in the other seat. But Embry-Riddle's rules specify only one ER participant can fly in a competition event. The Eco-Eagle also did not have a fully functioning airframe parachute system, although one was aboard, and that violated another CAFE requirement.
The officials, with full consent of the other competitors, will allow the aircraft to fly in the race as a demonstration aircraft, and although it's not eligible for an award, it will be interesting to see how it fares against the others.
Gotta say, somebody didn't do their homework. Those poor kids at Embry Riddle worked for two years and nobody figured out they wouldn't be legal because of a basic rule: flying with all seats filled? Hard to figure that one, but kudos to the team and the competitors for encouraging the ER team to be part of the event: they've certainly earned it. The aircraft was performing very well in practice runs according to varied reports from the field.
In a bit of a surprise, old friend Jim Lee in the Rotax-powered Phoenix is one of the three remaining competitors! Jim's a master at squeezing every last bit of performance out of whatever he flies (as I've written before, he held the distance hang glider record for years back in the '80s and is an accomplished sailplane pilot). And he really loves nibbling the thermic potentials in his elegant, high tech Phoenix motorglider, for which he's also the U.S. distributor.
Ah, my misspent youth: if only I could afford one...or a Pipistrel Vinus or Sinus...or Eric Raymond's Sunseeker...alright kid, snap out of it.
I don't know yet what happened to the electric version, the PhoEnix, other than it couldn't be made ready for race date in time or perhaps wasn't performing up to expectations.
Many people are reporting that it's the electric version that's flying, but Jim's comments in the video below would seem to put the kibosh on that. Too bad PhoEnix is out, it was a promising entry...but also kind of cool that a gas-powered motorglider is even in the finals. Good hunting Jimbo!

Having the stock 100 hp Rotax-powered Phoenix in the final running should be a great PR boost too for what is already the sweetheart motorglider of the LSA genre. Motorgliders are gaining more attention from pilots who want more than point A to point B flying on their plates.
One of the other two remaining entrants is the Pipistrel Taurus G4 (this link goes to Pipistrel's Michael Coates's gallery of GFC photos, worthy of a look). The G4 is in essence a purpose-built joining of two Taurus G2 electric motorglider fuselages onto a larger wing with an electric powered motor-only pod at wing center - a wild jump of ingenuity because being able to carry four passengers, two in each pod, (which CAFE rules require them to do) does qualify the aircraft to carry the equivalent of four gallons of gasoline in electric power storage capacity - one gallon per person is the rule, for 200 miles at 100 mph. The G4 may turn out to be a winning strategy, if the economy is there.

eGenius, designed by Univ. of Stuttgart engineeers. photo courtesy Airbus

The final entrant is e-Genius, built by University of Stuttgart aeronautical engineers and students and a formidable entry in its own right.
Today's event required all entrants to meet the noise level ceiling of 78 dBA during full-power takeoff, as measured from 250 feet away. All three (four counting the non prize- qualified Eco-Eagle) met the challenge.

REMOS GXeLite: Super Diet?

2011-09-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

Sign of the times: cut costs wherever possible. And kudos to those LSA makers who can cut weight too!
Remos Aircraft has a lower-priced, dramatically lighter version of its flagship GX that bears closer scrutiny.
It’s called GXeLite, and lists at $133,924.

All photos courtesy Remos Aircraft

The model is targeted at pilots, clubs and flights schools that don’t feel the need for all the latest high-tech glass and embellishments. Typically, “loaded” models like the GX and new GXNXT models price out at well over the wallet-flattening $150K mark.
The eLite is dramatically lighter in empty weight too: just 638 lbs. (My recent flight report on the NXT listed that model’s empty weight at 718, or 90 lbs. heavier!). That would allow full tanks as well as some truly hefty passengers too, since the useful load is 682 lbs.!
The main steps taken to lighten the load on the eLite include reinstating the composite landing gear, using carbon fiber instead of metal wing struts, new carbon fiber seats and a new instrument panel, which is lighter as well as lower.
All of this adds up to good news for people interested in Remos. I’ve found the GX in general to be among the easiest, most enjoyable all-around airplanes I’ve ever flown. It has a wonderfully harmonious control balance, light, solid control feel, well-behaved takeoff and landing characteristics, and is simply a joy to fly.

This Remos panel chart also shows a FlymapL moving map.

The eLite also offers a ballistic parachute safety system as an option rather than standard equipment, along with that lower-profile panel which enhances forward visibility.
The panel still mounts a good rack of gadgets, starting off with Dynon's workhorse D-180 EFIS/EMS panel and Becker’s Com AR6201 transceiver and BXP6401 transponder. Power comes from the proven 80 hp Rotax 912.
Even though the lower-cost electrical system eliminates interior lighting needed for night flight (something day VFR-restricted Sport Pilots don't deal with anyway), the eLite still has anti-collision, position and landing lights.
An interior storage area has been removed and there is now only one coat of paint, to help with the load-lightening engineering.
But think about that Remos diet plan: they took an already-light weight LSA airplane and managed to trim more than 11% more!
Owners can still opt for all the Remos options the more robust models have, but I’d like to compare this lighter version to the heavier GX to see if there’s an appreciable difference in crosswinds and turbulence.

Three If By Sea

2011-09-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

Some bright minds at LISA Airplanes, a French company, had a great idea to take the hydrofoil concept and apply it to an LSA seaplane. I’d often wondered why hydrofoils haven’t been done before, it’s such a great concept.

AKOYA artist's rendering...but the airplane is flying. Photos courtesy LISA

Anyway, the airplane is the AKOYA. The technology for the entire package is patented and called Multi-Access, not the most sizzling name but what the hey, look at how cool those little moustache water wings look sticking out from the hull!
Now get this: the company claims AKOYA operates as easily from land as from water...or snow! First, to those water wings sticking out: they’re called Seafoils, a trademarked name, which adds a little more marketing sizzle to this steak.
They’re connected to a retractable gear that can be rigged with wheels or skis, I guess, and also to motor-driven, pivoting wings! There's also a chute onboard. Very neat.

LISA Airplanes _ AKOYA premiere from LISA Airplanes on Vimeo.
The airplane is spec’d out at 18.5 gallons yet can fly 680 miles at 110 knots! No restrictions to local pond hopping for this seabird.
Gérald Ducoin, a test pilot who flew the plane, praises the revolutionary Seafoils which “offer both fast lift-off and stability. They also considerably simplify landing manevers and taking off from water.”

Spacey interior...maybe AKOYA and ICON's A5 can go on a date.

With a 100 hp Rotax, the company claims a 650 foot take/landing distance.
The company is clearnly not worried about it’s high price: €300,000! That's Euros, cousins, not greenbacks.
I hasten to add that LISA will throw in pilot training for all three modes of landing, “personalization” of the airplane, and three years of maintenance and full-time customer assistance.
The more this LSA phenomenon grows, the more interesting it gets.

Skis...wheels...water...what's not to like?

AKOYA is in flight test mode in France and announces it expects to get LSA certification by mid-2012.

Electric Whirlybird Flies!

2011-09-06T10:20:00.000-07:00

Anyone still in doubt that we're in the midst of the birth of electric flight need look no further than this story, just posted today on the online tech zine Gizmag.

Historic hovering flight lasted 2 minutes 10 seconds. All photos courtesy Gizmag

Pascal Chretien, an enterprising electrical/aerospace engineer and chopper pilot, made the world's first fully electric helicopter flight in the prototype he designed and built almost entirely by himself...in just 12 months! Hang glider and ultralight trike pilots will delight in hearing a weight shift control system is involved.
For me, the big story here is once again we see that innovation lives, not just in megabuck corporate and government R&D departments but in the garages of individual megabrains as well...as it always has and we can expect always will.

Weight shift control!

Chretien, in making his 2 minute, 10 second test eggbeater flight, threw whipped eggs in Sikorsky's face since that aviation giant's well-funded electric project, in development for some time now, has yet to fly.
Gizmag quotes Chretien as he acknowledged the risks of his flight: "In case of crash I stand good chances to end up in kebab form."

Detail: power controller and battery pack (upper left)

Pascal, from case of your success, we pops cork of champagne pour vous!
The article goes on to rightly point out that the electric chopper concept faces a huge hurdle when compared to winged electric aircraft because the latter doesn't need to constantly run at higher power drain settings like helicopters do.
Practical electric helicopters will only come to pass when battery technologies advance to a much higher power-to-weight storage capacity (i.e., higher energy density) than we have now, precisely because choppers do require high power for hovering, takeoff and for descent, unlike airplanes.
Winged birds use max power for takeoff or high speed cruising, but can lope along at significantly reduced level flight power, enabling longer duration flights. That's why we've seen so many motorglider-style electrics; once airborne, their highly efficient wings make possible extended flight times without much power burn.
Still, that takes nothing away from Pascal Chretien's achievement, (funded by the French car racing company Solution F), which is nothing short of magnificent. His super-light, super-simple chopper serves notice that electric flight as a whole is gaining global momentum across a broad range of projects.
And once again we get a lesson in an ancient truth: the soul of invention is alive and well and knows no boundaries.

FAA Rulemaking: Sport Pilot Training To Count For Higher Ratings?

2011-08-29T15:18:00.000-07:00

The FAA just published a petition for rulemaking from EAA, AOPA, NAFI, and GAMA that calls for sport pilot instruction hours to count toward Private Pilot and higher ratings.
The petition calls for a change in the current regs that disqualify flight training hours for counting toward higher ratings, if those hours were taught by a CFI-S, which is a flight instructor who only has the Sport Pilot rating.
The petition addresses FAR Part 61 and seeks to simplify and harmonize all flight training areas, and beyond that, actually makes sense when you think about it. After all, why should sport pilots have to repeat their initial flight training because they learned the basics in an LSA from an LSA-only-rated instructor?
FAA personnel upon reflection (and prodding from the above named orgs) seems to have realized the unintentional discrimination against Sport Pilot CFIs, and by extension, Sport Pilot students, among other considerations, was making a statement about Sport Pilot training (or CFI-Ss) being somehow inferior to traditional CFIs and their training methods, which is probably pretty silly when you think about it.
Every CFI I’ve talked to affirms that a Sport Pilot student learns all the requisite flight skills in an LSA to provide a solid foundation for advanced ratings. And since LSA are lighter in weight and therefore more susceptible to crosswinds and other nuances, you can make a good case that LSA must be flown with rather more sensitivity and skill on any given day than more traditional aircraft. Just ask all the high time pilots who've pranged an LSA because they refused to get sufficient transition training.
So even though GA aircraft can be more complex, the basic skills learned in flight require the same attention to fundamentals. The argument is, there’s generically no fundamental flight skill significantly unique to any GA SEL training airplane that would somehow be skipped or incompletely taught by a CFI-S but not a CFI, if that CFI-S is properly trained of course.
It’s not a law change yet, but a first step in the typically lengthy govt. process that will give anybody interested a chance to weigh in on the subject. Which means you can comment here.
Once everybody has posted their yays and nays, we can expect this minor kerfluffle to go away entirely and we can get on to fretting about other minor kerfluffles and the occasional big kerfluffle.

Power To/From the People!

2011-08-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

Stephan Boutenko has a big vision...and he’s taking it to E-street.
Anyone familiar with Bend, Oregon’s Lance Niebauer, the successful Los Angeles graphic artist who decided to design an airplane and spawned the highly successful Lancair series of homebuilts, which evolved into the production Cessna Columbia composite four-seater, should check out another Oregonian with a big dream: Stephan Boutenko.

He’s boldly going directly to the internet for public contributions to fund his electric S-LSA. The company name is Alternair, and the airplane is simply called the Amp - perhaps an unintentional play on the word imp, because it is a cute little thing...but with big dreams in its electric heart.
A professional pilot and Embry Riddle grad with an Professional Aeronautical design degree, Boutenko hopes to progress the current electric-powered aircraft technology beyond demonstration-style or exotic motorglider models.
The Amp, still in the design stages, will perform comparably to the current crop of gasoline-powered LSA...at as little as 80% lower direct operating costs. And maintenance costs, he says, should be almost negligible compared to the fuel-powered airplanes of today.
The low-wing trike will run on a 50 kW (68 hp) electric motor powered by carbon nanotube lithium polymer batteries. Expected endurance is anticipated at two hours, pretty much at the leading edge now for similar ventures such as Calin Gologan’s one seat, one-wheel production taildragger, the Elektra One, a soon-to-be-produced electric which flew at Oshkosh before thousands of delighted showgoers.

3-view...click for larger version

Cruise will be at 90 knots with a 30-minute VFR reserve. The wings will each carry battery packs, as well as another behind the seats.
The designer/entrepreneur even plans to use an “aerolastic” prop that flattens in pitch for climb and relaxes to take a bigger bite during cruise, just like a constant speed prop...but without all the requisite hardware.
Sophisticated power management electric systems and the latest glass panel avionics will echo typical LSA specs and performance: 1320 lbs. Gross weight, 440 lb. payload, 600 fpm climb, 43 knot clean stall, 39 knot stall with flaps.
Oh, and the span will be 37 feet, to add some motorglider-like efficiency but still keep it close to the typical LSA planform of 30-35 foot span.
The plan is to get $250K of investment capital to build the prototype Amp and take it globally to all the major airshows. All donations starting at $25 are welcome...here’s your chance to get in, literally, on the ground floor and help an American company build a competitive electric-powered airplane.

Farewell to Oshkosh 2011

2011-07-31T07:37:00.000-07:00

By all accounts it's been a good show. I talked with several LSA vendors who, despite the pitiful wrangling in Congress over the debt and general lack of a strong economic bounceback, either wrote some sales or were 90% certain they would.
U.S. sales leader Flight Design even announced they'd written $11 million worth of business at the show.

I talked with John Gilmore, the U.S. sales manager for Tom Peghiny's U.S. Flight Design operation, who briefed me on the new, four-seat, to-be-certified Flight Design C4 the other day (I'll post more in the next few days).
John also updated Dan Johnson today on the company's excellent numbers at the show:
"We have taken 40 orders for the new C4 plus another 8 orders for Light-Sport Aircraft here at AirVenture 2011," said John.
The C4 debuted in Europe in April and a full-scale mockup seen here was prominent in the display all week. Historical note: Flight Design has topped the LSA sales leader board since the category was created in 2004, an impressive run due in large part to an excellent management style and top customer support and service.

Remos GX NXT upgrade model

I was up at the crack o' dawn to fly the new Remos NXT, which has some new features such as a new panel profile that gives more viewing room on top and more leg room underneath - very nice and it definitely feels roomier. The avionics upgrade features Garmin Aera 500 GPS, and the Dynon SkyView glass cockpit with electronic flight instruments, embedded transponder, and engine monitoring. Dynon is winning over cockpits left and right with the SkyView, and no wonder: it's got it all, at a price that's magnitudes cheaper than equivalent certified glassworks.
The NXT also refines placement of some control knobs in the cockpit and adds visors and air vents to keep things cool.
Personally my flight in beautiful, calm dawn air reinforced my impression from my flight report 18 months back that there is no finer LSA of the 30 or so I've flown so far in terms of sheer joyful handling. I hadn't flown one in all that time, yet made two greaser landings with hardly any coaching from my demo host, Ryan Hernandez, who admirably handled the Oshkosh chores for Arkansas dealer Tommy Lee and his Adventure Flight dealership.
The Remos turns so smoothly, is so light on the controls yet not twitchy or oversensitive at all, and as I said back then, as soon as you lift off, you feel like you've been flying the airplane every day. Really quite an achievement in aerodynamics for Remos.
It's beautiful interior is a testimony to the fit and finish of the entire plane. In you're in the market for a comfortable, really fun-flying LSA, certainly put Remos on the list. I know it's on my top ten (a list that constantly changes as I fly more airplanes...but Remos has stayed there since my first flight.
One closing note then on to the show, time to line up some last flights and say goodbye to friends and colleagues in the industry.
It's not an LSA-centric product, but this cute idea, Mutt Muffs, reminds us that any time we go flying with our sensitive-hearing furry friends means we want to help them enjoy the ride too. 'Nuff said.
Scroll down for more pix of the Remos GX NXT upgrade model below.
I'll have another pickup blog for Oshkosh probably in two-three days as I'm flying home in the new Evektor Harmony with AB Flight's Art Tarola
tomorrow...if we can get all our gear into one airplane!


Leading Edge intake for new cabin vents

Two SkyViews and an Aera 500...oh boy.

Top-notch interior features rearranged knobs, smoother workflow

Room With A View...what a wonderful age we live in.

OshPourri

2011-07-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

It's late, I got heat stroked a bit in the beautiful but intensely sunny day so I'm going to post some pix of some things I saw at the show with short captions and will hope to get back with more details once my feet stop throbbing and my brain temps cool down a bit.
A beautiful day in Oshkosh. Everybody was catching up on flying after being in the gloom and doom for two days.
The electric symposium went off well, I assume, although I missed it, had to try and get in a thrice-postponed flight with Remos...which was postponed yet again, bummer. That's happening now at 6 am...about 7 hours from now. Yark!


Calin Gologan, the freshly bestowed LEAP Award, and Elektra One. Exciting times ahead.

I had a nice chat with Calin Gologan, the extremely tall creator of the Elektra One that won the Lindbergh LEAP award today. He told me they have achieved a battery storage density improvement that will allow them to make a 500 mile flight in Germany, they hope, this August.

A very nice, very brilliant man.

Remos GX getting some help from the line dude. Lots and lots of traffic today.

LSA Mall seemed to be buzzing all day long...

The Corbi Air Alto 100 was there, with an installed air conditioner! Very nice install, they'll be selling them to experimental builders and LSA makers too.

Nice air plenum in the Alto 100 sends cooling air over the canopy. An integrated heating element defrost too...I bet Ron Corbi will sell a lot of these.

Hansen Air Group's gorgeous FK12 Comet acro S-LSA is here too...so much foot traffic has come, it's worn out the grass next to the plane!

busy busy busy

Randy Schlitter's newly reworked S7 with cool

New balanced ailerons for the S7

Legend Aircraft's new Super Legend. Lovely!

The "Doc's" Prescription: Take Two of These Babies!

2011-07-28T22:07:00.000-07:00

A year ago I did a blog piece here as well as a piece in the magazine about the resurrected “Lazarus Machine”, Renegade Light Sport’s super sexy low wing, about-to-be Lycoming IO-233-LSA-powered, all composite S-LSA.

I found Renegade’s prime mover Christopher “Doc” Bailey at the flashy Lycoming display and before I could say “Lightning round!” he was regaling me, as only Doc can do, with the leaps and bounds the company has made in the last year.
I’m going to serve up the rapid-fire infostream in his own words, but before I do, here’s the short tell: the Falcon is done with testing, is in production, comes in two configurations, tricycle and taildragger, sells for $125,000 with a bunch of nice features (including 10" Dynon SkyView, full Garmin stack and dual electronic ignition) and if your mouth isn’t watering yet, I’m stepping to the side and take it away Doc!
“The first production model Renegade Falcon with the Lycoming IO-233-LSA is owned by our dealer on Long Island, NY - Steve Norman. It’s the airplane you see right here (and in the photos).”

“The engine is FAA Part 33 certified. The airframe is ASTM certified. We’re done with R&D, we’ve been through a year of testing with the 233. We’ve tested six fuel injection systems, five electronic ignition systems (and settled on the Lightspeed dual ignition system), four different exhaust systems (and settled on the Vetterman exhaust), and three or four panel mounts. We just brought on the Catto 3-blade, nickel-edge composite prop, we also tested Sensenich and others.”

“And we’re getting 1500 fpm climb solo, 4.6 gph cruise at 2400 rpm, and we’re just where we said we would be in a year.”
“We’ve put in 100 hours of test flying so far.”
“This airplane, Steve Norman’s, has everything you can get, the stuff I mentioned and dual Grand Rapids Synthetic Vision with built-in highway in the sky and autopilot; a ballistic chute, ostrich skin seats...”
Real ostrich skins? I asked.
“You bet, I’m the one who paid for them, they were real alright!”
“So many guys came up and said they’d flown Cubs and other taildraggers all their lives, and when 500 people tell you they want that, you better take notice! So we now have a taildragger version too, with beefy, durable 7071-T6 gear for flight schools and a Matco 42-degree breakaway tailwheel.”

“We’ve got five engines coming from Lycoming this month, we’ve sold six airplanes since we’ve been here at the show, we’re in full production here, everything is built in the U.S., we have a new autoclave system set up by former Boeing engineers, and like I said we’ve come a long way in a year.”
“Before the prop has turned 45 degrees, the ignition system is producing a 120,000 volt spark and the engine starts right up like a car. We call this engine the Rotax Slayer! We’re getting 305 degrees on the CHT, 1000 degrees on the EGT, so it’s burning efficiently and burning cool. We’re placarding max level rpm at 2400 to maintain the 120-knot LSA restriction.”
“Future enhancements will include room for golf clubs, wing locker baggage, winglets for more stability, things like that.”
I asked how fast it was now at full power. “You don’t want me to tell you that,” he said with a laugh. “It’s fast. We’ll placard it at 2400 rpm for 120 knots. We had a CFII bring it out here from Kansas City. He was doing 140 knots at 2700 rpm.”
“People ask me, ‘Why not restrict the engine?’ That’s a huge safety issue for me. If you’re downwind to land and the wind falls out, you may need all the power you can get. Why restrict that? If you go over that 2400 rpm setting, it’s on you legally but I’m not going to take it away. It’s like CubCrafters did with their 180 hp engine, placarding it to a max of five minutes full power.”
“The first production taildragger Falcon is going to Switzerland, to the guy who started the Swatch company. We’ve got orders for five, with seven airframes done, we can make five a month and all of it is out of our Lees Summit, MO plant.”

“Weight for the taildragger is 795 lbs. For the tricycle gear it’s 814, with everything installed. It gets off in 200-300 feet easily. Before you get the throttle all the way up, it’s already rotated.”
“It will throw you back into the seat; with the Catto prop you really feel the thrust. It really takes off. We figure we’re getting 123-125 hp with the fuel injection. With the traditional carbureted version, we were getting 120 knots at 2750 rpm. With the fuel injection, we dropped 300 rpm to get the same speed, at the same altitude and in the same weather. It just feels smoother. We think it’s that 120,000 volt spark. It was burning 5.5 gph with the carburetion: with electronic ignition, it’s 4.6.”
All that’s left now is for me to fly it for a pirep which I hope to do here at the show and let you know how much of this is real, and how much is “Doc”-ese!
One last word: the airplane, already a winner in the looks department, has a beautiful engine installation. It’s clean, it’s elegant, it’s beautiful. And, for those “graying” types Doc talks about who still don’t trust the well-proven Rotax, the Lycoming is the deal-maker. It'll be interesting to see how much support this all-American, $125K looker garners in the market place.

SplashKash 2011

2011-07-27T21:55:00.000-07:00

Gleim's Aaron Wiseman takes a showgoer through a sample flight lesson

Today was not a typical Oshkosh day, and certainly nothing like yesterday, which was downright idyllic with its sunny skies, refreshing mid-70s temps and puffy clouds to complete the chromatic joys of a perfect green summer day in Great Lakes country.
In short, it rained until late afternoon, but by sundown the skies mostly cleared with the promise of hotter, more humid days ahead.

Aaron Wiseman pointing out flight-realistic EFIS readings

Today was the perfect kind of day to walk around, dodge the liquid sunshine, meet and greet old friends and make new ones, and see what's shaking in the main display hangars and booths strewn all over Airventure.
I'd wanted to check out the Gleim X-Plane VFR Flight Simulator I've heard so much about. I had the benefit of a stirring presentation by Aaron Wiseman, who energetically took me through all the main features of the system which has caught on at a number of flight schools already.
It's cool! A really effective approach to flight simulation that can also save flight schools and their students real money.
Being able to realistically drill and anchor in-flight control feel, situational awareness and cockpit procedure skills before students actually get in that infamous "worst classroom in the world", while also shortening expensive flight training hours,without breaking the bank, should appeal to flight schools wanting higher student completion rates...and what school doesn't want that?

Fully customizable screen and audio warnings keep students on the straight and narrow

One of several advantages of the sim is how instructors can take a student through a full flight lesson on the ground, help students through rough patches, pause the routine and explain new concepts or problem areas, then take the student out for a practical lesson in the airplane when ready.
There's a lot to say about Dr. Irv Gleim's latest brainchild, and for that I urge you to go check out the info online here.
Be sure and watch the video at the bottom of the page for a quick intro.
For now, I've only got room (and late-night energy) to point out some key points.
[] The three-screen system, complete with Dell XPS computer, three screens, stick, throttle and rudder pedals (flight school version) is dramatically cheaper (around $5000) than similar simulators which cost tens of thousands of dollars.
[] Students can install a less-expensive version on their own home computer (many of us have two screen systems now, so only a third screen would be required). The private user version is still in development and should market in the next few months.
[] It was developed for use in Remos Pilot Centers and has become very effective through continual feedback refinement with Gleim's programmers.

One section of the center screen shows how detailed and true-to-life the simulator is.

The system I worked with was set up for a Remos GX and it was suitably smooth, light on the controls (I was constantly over controlling until I relaxed a bit) and very realistic.
The three screens give an excellent panorama view, and the background can be located right at the airport where students are being trained, and conform to the type of aircraft they're training in, for even more realistic - and transferable to the cockpit - skills.
Lou Mancuso of Mid Island Air Service of Long Island, who's had a lot of success training people in LSA for several years now, raves about this system.
Thanks again to Aaron Wiseman for his thorough briefing. I'll be writing more on this in my Oshkosh top new products article for the magazine.

Oshkosh Airventure 2011

2011-07-27T08:33:00.000-07:00

After my own Labors of Hercules, I arrived at the EAA Oshkosh Airventure seasonal highpoint event Tuesday mid day. Since it was a beautiful day by anybody's standards, I decided not to brave the hordes at the show and headed out, once I got settled in my digs for the week, to a lovely little airport named Brennand about 10 minutes northwest of EAA's Wittman Field show grounds.

I was in luck with more than just weather: the San Antonio Light Sport Aircraft (SALSA) gang from Texas was there demo-flying its all-composite Pipistrel Virus SW 80/100, tricycle-gear (there's also a taildragger version), composite touring motorglider.
The Pipistrel line includes several designs I have admired from afar but not had the opportunity to share air with.

All that changed when Salsa's prime mover and shaker Rand Vollmer introduced me to a big, friendly Texican fella named Dave White.
Dave is Salsa's Sales Director, chief glider/motorglider instructor and demo pilot out at Brennand Airport, which, by the way, is one of those lovely, quiet airport communities I think we should all get to live on either in this life or the next one. Green grass and trees, lovely homes, quiet, no hassle backyard flying: can't ask for much more than that.

San Antonio Light Sport Aircraft's Rand Vollmer

Anyway, Dave said, "Hey, I just had a demo cancel, want to go up?"
Do Pope wear tall, funny looking hat?
Ten minutes later I was taxiing the light-handling, 40-foot span Virus - which as everyone hastens to mention is a terrible name for a wonderful airplane. It comes from Slovenia, where virus is pronounced "vee-roos", which sounds a whole lot better than the way we say it).
The wonderful-airplane part is fully realized after just a few minutes. I haven't flown anything but a Cub for the last 3 months so I'm stomping that poor airplanes rudder rather mercilessly, but the airplane doesn't seem to mind at all. And in just a takeoff, a couple turns and listening to Dave obligingly talk me through everything - and letting me really get to know the airplane by letting me do everything, a wonderful teaching style - I've learned one important thing: The Virus SW is a real sleeper of an S-LSA. Check out this video:

I'll have a pilot report on it in the magazine soon.
The Cliff Notes version:
Virus handles more like a plane with a 30-foot span, has a 45-45 roll rate around two seconds, has light, balanced control feel, turns quickly and with virtually no adverse yaw - I pulled turns left and right without any rudder at all and it obliged with nary a complaint.
The airplane, which is built for lightness and thus has a 660 lb. useful load - though it's max weight is more than a hundred pounds below the LSA ceiling weight of 1320 lbs.!, hangs on in soaring turns to the lightest little bug fart of a thermal, which became evident in calm, 6:30 p.m. air where I, the newcomer, was able to make a few turns in just a bit of a bubble and approach zero sink for a few seconds.
Glide ratio by the way is 24:1 and sink rate is around 250 fpm. That's plenty good enough to shut down and let the earth/sun/sky engine keep you up for hours. And the robust top-o'-wing, hand-lever pop up air brakes give great glide-slope control for landing. Dave demonstrated a most impressive dead-stick landing using only the brakes for putting her down on the narrow paved strip at Brennand.
Handling is light and nimble, cruise is ridiculously efficient - we saw 112 knots at 80% power and remember, the engine is an 80hp, not 100hp, Rotax. The Euro version which isn't restricted to top speed approaches 150 knots max level cruise! Yes, a very, very clean airframe, and you feel that when you fly it. It's a joy, very forgiving too (especially with that big span).

Salsa has a variety of motorgliding training and buying options. And you won't find many places better to earn your soaring chops than the big-thermal country of Texas, where numerous soaring records have been set for decades.
Give these guys a closer look, they're fully dedicated and devoted to demonstrating the benefits that learning to fly powered soaring aircraft bestow, not only on new and experienced pilots, but on the future of GA itself.
Their brief thesis, which I'll explore with Rand in the article more fully, is that pilots can get their glider rating much cheaper than any other ratings, learn a great deal about flying, and have much more fun at it than merely crunching through the syllabi and getting handed a certificate.
Motorgliding, they believe, creates pilots who experience and learn to understand the vital nuances of flight in a way that will stick with them throughout their flying lives.
Pipistrel has showed up in a big way this year with a choice display in front of Hangar B near Airshow Central or whatever they're calling it now.

Prominent is its Taurus Electro G4, the 3,000lb.+, four-seat, all-electric motorglider that's competing at September's CAFE Green Flight Challenge. The two-fuselage aircraft is drawing a lot of attention, and once all the requrements to compete legally (as Experimental Exhibition aircraft since there is yet to be an FAA standard for electric-powered aircraft) are met it should have a good shot at winning the $1.3 million prize.
Jim Lee of PhoEnix, the electric version built for the race that's in test and development now, tells me there are so many hurdles for so many of the entrants, it may be postponed again. It was originally scheduled for earlier this month but nobody was ready.
Off to the show...in the rain!

LSA Registration Numbers: The Gang of Six!

2011-07-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Winged buddy Dan Johnson and his colleague Jan Fridrich, head of LAMA Europe, just posted Jan's exhaustive parsing of the LSA registration data and came up with some shockers.

Dan calls it the LSA Market Share Report. The first thing he notes is apparent stability in the marketplace: overall registration numbers for the first half of 2011 are about the same as last year, he says, so at least the industry didn’t fall off from that tough year. The pace is on track to better 2009's 177 total registrations and 2010's 202.
In 2010, 48 came from Cessna, which, when subtracted from the total, gives you 154 for the whole year for the rest of the fleet.
So, looking again at 2011's first half of 126, subtracting Cessna's numbers from the total of 126 yields just 72.
Double that (144) and we could end up with even fewer registrations than 2010, (not counting Cessna) although at just 10 less it's not an earthshaking falloff unless you want to be a worrywart and consider 2009, which had 177 total...and none from Cessna. But we won't go there.
As has been the trend from the beginning, just a handful - six this time - LSA companies racked up 92% of all new registrations!
Remember, these aren’t sales on the book but previous (or future) sales, since these numbers only reflect aircraft registered from Jan. through June with FAA. For instance, several LSA might come in at one time to a dealer, who might register them all at once before selling any of them. Or vice versa: some already sold may not have been registered. Still, the reg numbers provide a pretty accurate glimpse of what's really going on.
And The Gang of Six?
Cessna: 54, for almost 43% of all registrations, on the strength of Skycatching-up in production
CubCrafters: 20 for 17%
Czech Aircraft Works: 16 for 13%, which includes formerly-badged PiperSports
American Legend: 11 for 9%
Flight Design (still #1): 10 for 7%.
Jabiru: 5 for 4%
That’s 116 aircraft out of the total of 126.
Now if we throw in Aeropro (Aerotrek models) and its 4 registrations, those top 7 companies account for just over 95% of all 2011 registrations! That means of all the other 112 manufacturers, only 6 aircraft made the books.

CubCrafters continues to show strong market share

That, my friends, is a hard number to swallow for all those hardy, perservering companies who are still in the game mostly, as the numbers suggest, on a wing and a lot of prayers.
Dan goes on to point out that eight makers have now sold more than 100 aircraft. In an economy as enduringly painful as a chronic bad tooth, that’s somewhat encouraging.
And even though only 126 aircraft were registered since January 19th...well, 126 aircraft were registered since January 19th! In other words, the industry is not throwing in the towel, though it’s sure getting a drenching.
Another bellweather of sorts: Cessna’s healthy production has for the first time tipped the market scales toward the U.S.: we registered more aircraft than offshore producers in 2011.
Cessna is now 8th (13th six months ago), based on 54 Skycatchers registered. That’s like watching an insider stock chart shoot for the moon!
And with a goodly percentage of those highly-touted initial 1000 orders still on the books, Cessna will only continue to leapfrog the rest at the top of the list for the foreseeable future, at least until purse strings not only among the merely well-off but the uber-rich loosen up, because right now, not many people in any income category are buying much of anything considered a luxury.
Some surprising numbers, as my reader Thomas pointed out in a comment to my previous blog post:
Five major makers, all in the top 20, narrowly missed striking out completely in registrations the first six months!
Four of them - Tecnam, TL Ultralight (Sting), Eastman (Zodiac models) and Evektor (SportStar), failed to register a single ship. Only Remos tallied...one. It registered 32 in 2009! What’s happening here?
Eastman is working on a comeback after several fatal crashes and a subsequent airframe redesign, but the other four produce a variety of excellent quality aircraft and enjoy good reputations. Pricing on any of their models is not by and large out of line with the rest of the market.
Thomas goes into the shadows with this: “It's not that there's no demand: SportCruiser, Cessna, CubCrafters and Flight Design all registered decent numbers of aircraft. Was the owner experience of these other aircraft not so good? Support not there? Wrong features? Parts problems? Airframe failures? Or did the distributor simply bring in too much inventory, register it all at once, and then spend the last 2 years not registering any new ones while steadily selling off the inventory?”
All are reasonable inquiries. I’m particularly drawn to his support and inventory sell-off conjectures. Airframe failures have been at a minimum. Owner experience is difficult to gauge: what one person tells a private buddy may never reach many public ears, rumor mongers though we pilots tend to be.
It’s hard to see a clear picture for four of those five companies not tallying. It’s worth some digging; I’ll have Dr. Watson and my magnifying glass at the ready at Oshkosh, which starts in just three days!

Another Roadable Aircraft Project!

2011-07-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, so no way this is ever going to be a Light Sport aircraft, but this is just too much fun and I had to pass it along.

Famed aircraft designer Burt Rutan has been at it again, this time with his eclectic take on a flying car that began life as an electric-powered flying testbed.

BiPod lifts off (sans props) for initial test flights. All images courtesy Aviation Week & Space Technology

Aviation Week's online blog (also picked up by Wired magazine) shared information released exclusively to it by Rutan's Scaled Composites company known in recent years for many fantastic projects including Spaceship One and White Knight.

Called BiPod, the flying car became a crash program, completed in just four months and already in test flight mode. Rutan himself retired in April of this year.

Model 367 BiPod is characteristically, wonderfully unconventional as have been all of Rutan's many designs.

The two-seat, hybrid-electric "roadable" aircraft (mini-rant: I sure hope that term doesn't replace flying car, which flows off the tongue much more agreeably, don't you think?), originally conceived as a fast, inexpensive electric aircraft, morphed into a flying car. The program was hurried along, says Aviation Week, to allow Rutan to shepherd it through to completion before he hung up his cad cam computer's mouse. He was in the shop cutting, fabricating and sanding many nights long after the rest of the team went home.

First "flight" was last March 30. The unusual-looking carplane has made several short hops at Scaled's Mojave, California airport location.

And the hops were just that: speed, built up from battery-powered driving wheels, was translated into short glides above the runway. Fun stuff!

The fully operational BiPod will carry two 450cc gas engines, one per fuselage, which will drive generators feeding an electric power system. In land mode, the system will drive motors in the driving wheels at the aft location of each fuselage pod. The forward wheels are steerable.

During flight, the power grid will drive four 15kW motor-driven props: one on each nose, two on the horizontal stabilizer.

Good old Burt: you can never count out his sheer design originality.

Lithium batteries fill the nose of both pods. They are inflight-rechargeable and will augment takeoff power from the two engines.

The Scaled Composites crew. Burt Rutan is seen 4th from left

Think of the advantages for driving with disagreeable companions (mothers-in-law?) too. They can ride in the right hand pod, leaving the driver in the left pod, in blissful silence.

Interestingly, only the throttle is common to both...cockpits? Car interiors? Carpits? Your choice: driving is exclusively from the left pod, and flying is done from the right. Hmmm...that means mischief could still be done from the other pod by a cranky passenger.

Span is almost 32 feet. Wings detach for driving. Cruise speed in flight: 200mph with max range of 750 miles at 100 mph.

Driving, BiPod can go at freeway speeds for 820 miles on a tank of gas or 35 miles on batteries alone.

It'll be fascinating to watch what happens with this project. It's a bit challenging to imagine this project ever coming to the market. Taking a road trip with the fam separated into two compartments seems strange...although anyone with surly teenagers (or those poor, traditionally maligned mothers-in-law) will easily see some potential benefits.

Europe Approves ASTM Standard - kinda

2011-07-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

FAA's European doppelganger is EASA ( European Aviation Safety Agency), a governmental body which has wrestled with how to "regulate the new kid" for some time.
And EASA has at last come out with its much-anticipated CS-LSA, or Certification Specification for Light-Sport Aircraft.
American makers have eagerly awaited the announcement so they could at least consider how they might better compete with the many LSA producers overseas that have dominated our domestic market (roughly 2 out of every 3 LSA sold here come from offshore).
Although CS-LSA, as industry insider Dan Johnson reports, is "not exactly what the industry hoped for, it at least represents acceptance of the ASTM certification standards."
The benefit extends to all manufacturers foreign and domestic, since uncertainty over whether LSA aircraft produced for America, under the ASTM certification, would ever be legal to sell in Europe has been a stumbling block for Yankee sellers since the creation of LSA here in 2004.
Light sport aircraft in Europe, known as ultralights and microlights, was already a thriving industry over there, and contributed to their acceptance here even as American makers scrambled to create, refine, upgrade and promote their own Light Sport designs.

Working against everybody for some time has been the market's Perfect Storm trifecta :
1. A high Dollar/Euro exchange rate (currently $1.41 per €1) which imposed high prices for all European-made LSA sold in this country
2. The Economy, duh.
3. The higher-than-anticipated cost of LSA from all makers foreign and domestic.
Perhaps the biggest impact of CS-LSA on American companies will be that they can finally sell their ASTM-certified aircraft overseas. And the high Dollar to Euro exchange rate means American aircraft would be attractively priced to Europeans: they get an effective 30% discount. A U.S. aircraft priced at $90,000 would cost €60,000 over thar.
But knocking that in the head is the nature of the CS-LSA spec itself, which incorporates many expenses not incurred in certifying aircraft to the ASTM spec in America.
CS-LSA provides, as LAMA Europe's head Jan Fridrich points out in Dan's blurb on this topic, "merely another airworthiness code, which a manufacturer can choose in lieu of full EASA Type Certification." That's as in millions-of-dollars full.
Say whuh? He means even under CS-LSA, any manufacturer must still get DOA (Design Organization Approval) and POA (Production Organization Approval) from EASA to produce aircraft for sale under under the new category. Which still means a significant cash outlay above and beyond typical ASTM certification costs that could run into hundreds of thousands of bucks for each model. Why? EASA charges fees for those standards. In our country, FAA's oversight is funded by, yep, you and me, the taxpayers. Although the current debt reduction free-for-all in Congress might change that here too, who knows where that's going?
On top of all that, EASA also charges annual fees to keep those standards current.
So Mr. Dan speculates this all could mean, if CS-LSA isn't revised more favorably down the road, one of two things:
1. Bigger companies could pay the EASA charges and fold the increase into sales prices.
2. Smaller companies could say, "Nein", throw up their hands and bail out of the entire business, finding the cost of competition too great.
Bottom line: higher prices likely, at least for European-produced LSA. Americans who choose not to sell overseas might actually improve their appeal cost-wise here, while their EASA-conforming competition ponies up and suffers the need to produce pricier aircraft, even as those smaller European producers drop out of the game.
One ray of hope in all of this lies in LAMA Europe's ongoing push for a more "self-declarative" adjustment to the CS-LSA specification, which would lower or remove those added DOA and POA costs and help many companies choose to stay in business.
Otherwise it could indeed be DOA for several companies who have hung in there all this time hoping to jump into the European market without incurring typical EASA and FAA full certification costs.
Probably the best part of this news is that ASTM, doing well here in the U.S., now has a good foothold overseas, which expands its potential influence on light aircraft production worldwide.

Horses of a Different Color

2011-07-12T18:36:00.000-07:00

I've written about the topic of high-hour pilots and the need for transitioning them into LSA a fair amount now.
I've also heard about it from and talked to a lot of people about it. Avemco Insurance, before they took a hiatus from writing new LSA policies a couple months back, wrote a minimum of 5 hours mandatory transition training into their premium contracts with pilots, stipulating, basically, this: "We don't care if you be Sully Sullenburger or Wiley Post incarnate. If you want us to insure you in your new LSA, you will get five hours flight training in it."

Stumbling around the net the other day, I found this excellent piece written by Ed Downs for In Flight USA, in which he lays out the need, in particular, for veteran pilots to check the uber-confidence at the hangar door and give LSA full respect as unique aircraft with distinct behaviors.
Definitely worth reading if you're at all of the LSA = "little airplanes" persuasion.

eWow! Blockbuster Electric Flight

2011-07-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

A crack team of aeronautical whizbrains in the Institute of Aircraft Design at the University of Stuttgart, Germany has just passed its second important milestone in less than two months: its electric aircraft eGenius just flew more than two hours at more than 100 mph.
Not by coincidence, that's exactly the kind of performance that will be required to take $1.3 million top prize in the recently postponed (until September 25) CAFE Green Flight Challenge.
The GFC will award the prize money to the aircraft that can fly 200 miles at greater than 100 mph on the equivalent of one gallon of gas per occupant. The per occupant proviso is significant...and EGenius carries two people, so it can use enough batteries to store two gallons worth of energy.
That's a lot of batteries given the current relative inefficiency of energy storage of batts vs. gas, but it appears that hurdle has been overcome, and rather handily, since there was apparently several minutes of charge left after the record-breaking flight.

The eGenius electric motor - 60kW (80.5 hp equivalent)

The eGenius, funded by Airbus, is an electric motorglider, with the requisite high-aspect wing (55 feet). It's powered by a 60 kW (80.5 hp) motor, installed in the tail to drive a larger, more efficient prop. The battery pack can stow 56 kWh of energy.
Flight profile included a climb to 4000 feet and an out-and-back between two nearby towns. Total distance was 211 miles, a world record for electric flight.
This on the heels of its maiden flight in May.
If the other entries (12 at last count) in September's GFC big-money event aren't shaking in their boots yet...they oughta be. It's a stunning development and augurs well for advancing the technology by at least one leap and bound...the point of the contest in the first place.

Let me say it again: Wow!

Of Amphibs and Aircars

2011-07-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

Two of the best-promoted and most interesting LSA projects - and two of the most delayed getting to market - are back in the news.

A5 flight testing continues. * photo courtesy ICON Aircraft

ICON Aircraft, a startup company created to produce the sexy composite A5 amphibian, just snagged $25 million in funding to help complete remaining design issues, tool up for production and begin cranking out airplanes.
The company reports around 500 A5 orders on the books, at $139,000 per. A few months of flight testing remain to be completed, along with a new wing (reportedly for better spin resistance and directional stability), which means the production target date has been pushed back again, this time to the last quarter of 2012.
Reported among the new crop of investors are Eric Schmidt of Google, Satyen Patel, formerly of Nike and Phil Condit, former CEO of Boeing, and some "undisclosed" Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. The initial infusion of greenbacks will be $15 million, with an option for $10 million more.
Meanwhile, on the flying car...er, "roadable aircraft", front, the always press-visible Terrafugia recently got a nod from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration when it granted the company's application for a temporary exemption for its Transition flying car (or driving airplane...oh heck, it's just easier to say flying car).

Concept of revised Transition design. * photo courtesy Terrafugia

The exemption relaxes four federal vehicle safety standards requirements for the Transition, acknowledging that complying with the standards at this point in the ever-more-costly aircar would impose a condition of substantial economic hardship on the company and also grant more time to find safe alternatives to current automotive safety standards.
Nonetheless, these are temporary exemptions. And Terrafugia had asked for a longer time period for two of the four exemptions.
The company cited its 500 potential jobs by 2015 as partial justification for requesting the exemptions, and the agency took that into consideration as well as the overall occupant safety factor. One selling point was Terrafugia's contention that the Transition increases pilot safety, since it can land at any airport in worsening VFR conditions and continue to the destination by road. Boy, those folks know how to articulate every possible benefit out of their concept.
The point here would seem to be that the Transition would reduce potential VFR-into-IMC accidents because pilots wouldn't be tempted to continue flights in bad weather in deterioriating weather. Of course, that's only common sense for non-IFR pilots, a legal requirement as well, but as we all know, pilots get in trouble this way all the time, with occasional disastrous results.
Exemption periods of one or three years included tire and rim selection requirements, glazing materials (windows and windscreen), occupant crash protection (advanced - and heavy - air bags) and electronic stability control systems.

Finding the middle road between air and ground regulations. * photo courtesy Terrafugia

One can appreciate the difficulty of having to comply with not only aircraft but also automobile regulations, each set of which is tough enough to meet for one-medium vehicles.
One teaching point for those inclined to scoff at the need to "bend" the rules: the glazing exemption deals with the potential safety hazard that traditional laminated car safety glass presents to pilots when shattered...it can cobweb something fierce. Imagine you get a bird strike front and center on final approach and can't see forward. You could pull a Lindbergh and look out the side window, but you get the point.
Significant weight penalty from auto glass is another consideration, so the exemption allows for time to develop polycarbonate materials with comparable protection for the occupants, at less weight, while still resisting shattering or crazing.
The many design and regulatory challenges have again postponed flight testing of the 2nd, redesigned Transition prototype (the first, which flew briefly, had a canard), until at least March of 2012.

EAA Electric Contest Postponed

2011-06-23T20:08:00.000-07:00

Surprising word came today while hanging out at the Piper Sentimental Journey in Lock Haven, PA, that EAA has canceled its Electric Flight Challenge until next year's Airventure show to give manufacturers more time to satisfy FAA's Phase 1 requirement.
What's Phase 1, you ask? Read on.

Elektra One single-seater production electric. Photo courtesy PC-Aero

Today’s release, posted here, announced the postponement even though there was “a strong influx of applications...nearly a dozen”, whatever that means - 11? 8.3?
Anyway, a $60,000 Electric Flight Prize was to have been awarded after three flight competitions and an “innovation evaluation” at this year’s Airventure (end of July).
Now for Phase 1: EAA explains it's the requirement for the normal 40-hour “fly off” period typically flown by experimentally-built kits, to verify the aircraft is safely controllable throughout its normal speed range and all expected maneuvers.
Chairman Tom Poberezny was quoted as saying that, in essence, too many of the competitors wouldn’t have enough time to finish flying off their hours before the challenge began.
All in all, pretty disappointing news and a bit of a PR loss for EAA since it was ballyhooing the event on its website.

Waiex Prototype. Photos courtesy Sonex Aircraft

Nonetheless, it’s the right call, and a smarter, safer move for EAA to ensure these aircraft live up to the excitement rather than getting the wrong kind of headlines in front of hundreds of thousands of enthusiasts and media cameras.
In homage to the almost-event and not to be completely squelched, EAA promises many electric birds will be on display throughout Airventure.
That includes showcase flights from certain aircraft. Which makes one wonder how FAA allows showcase flights but not competition flights, but let’s not quibble. Maybe they will only be production electrics. Maybe there’s a Reg A.2b-97i subpart 5/3a in the catacombs somewhere that covers it and what do we care as long as we get to see electrics fly? Last year’s silent, impressive flight of the production-version Taurus Electro was nothing less than thrilling.
Still scheduled is the second annual World Symposium on Electric Aircraft, set for July 29-30. I sat through the whole thing last year. Many brainy speakers and leaders of the movement gave fascinating accounts of this new wave of flight. I’ll definitely be there again this year. Register at the link above to make sure you get in...although the link they have isn't active yet...but keep trying, it'll be hot soon enough.

Gonna Take a Sentimental Journey...with Cubs!

2011-06-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

“Come one, come all!” says the invitation to the great, annual Piper Fly-In that’s coming up next week.
Dubbed SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY 2011, it's the 26th anniversary of this “Family-Oriented” event.

It's held at – where else? – William T. Piper Airport (KLHV) in Lock Haven, PA.
The dates for those of you who are, like myself, Cub afflicted, is June 22 - 25, 2011. You can fly in (an airspace How-To is on the organizer’s website), drive in, camp under a wing for $15/nite if you like (lots of folks do) or stay at one of several hotels, motels or B&Bs in the area. Dozens of Cubs alone, along with other models, make the trek every year.

The Piper Museum and Memorial area also there: that's worth a trip for cub lovers all by itself.
There are events and contests such as seminars, flea markets, bomb drop, spot landing, corn roasts, awards, nightly bands, tours and more.
This year’s theme: “Vagabonds Saved Piper".
Featured planes will be the PA-15 Vagabond and PA-17 Vagabond Trainer.

PA-17 Vagabond Trainer Photo courtesy UK Airshow Review

Tickets are cheap enough at $8, $4 for kids 13 - 17 and under 12 youngsters are free – hard to beat that these days for a classic aircraft lovefest.
Another note: All makes and models of aircraft are welcomed. Since most current pilots have some connection to those early Pipers anyway, no reason not to come if you're in the neighborhood.
I’ll be there catching some air and lots of photos for some stories.
Also hoping for good weather for all flying in...I’m still recovering from the 6 days it took in a Cub-type to get from Iowa to Florida against bad weather for Sun ‘ Fun!

Official Comment on Evektor Deploy

2011-05-31T07:55:00.000-07:00

Enlightening news today from Vit Kotek, Marketing Manager for Evektor, that ties up the loose ends on the recent parachute deployment of an Evektor SportStar.
Vit’s statement, edited only for clarity:
“An accident of the SportStar RTC aircraft occurred during flight tests at Kunovice airport (LKKU) on 18th May, 2011. The test pilot was performing spin testing at aft C.G. The pilot successfully completed the program, after completing 30 spins.
Then he decided to perform a maneuver, which we’re still not fully clear about, which put the airplane into a flight condition the pilot could recover from.
He activated the ballistic parachute system which deployed successfully.
The airplane suspended below the parachute landed on a lake close to the airport and sunk after five minutes. The pilot swam safely to the shore. The airplane was fished out after six hours. The pilot was not injured.
The event proves the proper functioning of the ballistic recovery system and its installation, even though the airplane was partially damaged.
The accident is being investigated by the Czech Air Accidents Investigation. Evektor-Aerotechnik wants to note that the accident happened during flight tests and not during normal airplane operation.
Further, more than 800 successful spins have been completed on the Eurostar and SportStar type since 2001 and tested airplanes always demonstrated very good spin recovery characteristics.
The last successful spin testing of the SportStar type was performed less than a year ago, and all required abnormal control use techniques for spin recovery were tested.
Microlight and Light Sport Airplanes are spin prohibited in normal operation.”
Thanks to our good friend Art Tarola of AB Flight in PA, the Northeast Evektor guy, for that update, and we’re glad the factory confirms the pilot wasn’t hurt.

Evektor SportStar Chute Deploy

2011-05-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

An Evektor SportStar under canopy and descending to the water.

An anonymous source sent me an account (in Czech) and photos of an incident in Czech Republic that reportedly occurred when an Evektor SportStar, flown by an "experienced pilot", was unable to recover from a spin.
It happened on May 18 over a lake near Ostrozska Ves. You can see the pilot climb out of the cockpit once it hit the water, before the aircraft sunk.
These are some of the best photos I've ever seen of an actual deployment, rivaling the YouTube video I ran a ways back of a Rans stunt plane that suffered a wing loss in negative G yet was saved by the airframe 'chute at an extremely low altitude -- a real heart stopper, that one.

The ambulance staff called to the scene treated the pilot for bruises and exposure. He was otherwise uninjured...very good news!

Because Lake Ostrozska is an important source of drinking water for a large surrounding population, there was considerable concern that the 17-plus gallons of gas still onboard might escape from the plane and kick off an "environmental disaster," according to an online Czech news source.
But the coolheaded pilot reportedly shut off the fuel as the aircraft descended under canopy.
Police divers from Brno located the wreckage underwater around 7:30 that night about a quarter mile offshore, then used inflatable bags to gradually raise the aircraft to the surface and bring it closer to shore.
Around midnight firefighters called in a crane to lift the plane and swing it to land.   Accident investigations by Czech Republic's equivalent of the NTSB are under way.
The report goes on to say Evektor staff immediately began to disassemble the machine and transport it to the nearby factory.

Note pilot in water to right of sinking airplane.

Marketing Manager Vit Kotek is quoted as saying, "I will follow the investigation. The plane looks almost undamaged."
He noted this is the first such event for an Evektor. An airframe parachute is standard equipment on the SportStar, which

The SportStar about to be hoisted to shore by crane

has been extensively spin tested according to company sources. I've queried the U.S. distributor for comment on the accident, but he's still digging for info and hasn't reported back yet.

Whatever the problem with the airplane or its pilot turns out to be, here's yet another compelling case for the value of airframe parachutes to save lives after unforseeable or unavoidable peril.

Electric Prototype and Pilot Lost

2011-05-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

Martin Wezel, left and Tian Yu. Behind is the tandem-powered E1000.

As I write an article on the current state of electric flight worldwide, sad word comes that prolific, talented German aeronautical engineer Martin Wezel has died in the crash of the prototype Yuneec International E1000 electric airplane.
Wezel's company, Flugzeugtechnik Wezel, was well respected for its gliders and microlights, which included the Sting and Sirius S-LSAs. His Apis and Viva designs were also being developed by Yuneec for electric power.
The E1000 design may also have been Wezel's.
A new, tandem-motored four-seat design, it was being developed for market by Yuneec but also to compete in the NASA CAFE Green Flight Challenge, the $1.65 million-prize competition I've been writing about here that's coming up in July.
It was also entered in EAA's upcoming Electric Aircraft Competition (Oshkosh 2011 in late July). Not evident at this point is whether another E1000 was built or will be tested.
Details are sketchy for what was just the airplane's second flight. Launching from Yuneec's home airport in southern China, it suffered a catastrophic failure of the tail section at 130 feet altitude just seconds later. The empennage, which was possibly of a V-tail configuration as seen in the photo above and similar to the company's E430 electric two-seat LSA tail, was "caused by ground testing"according to Yuneec's Chairman Tian Yu.
The aircraft reportedly crashed into a lake next to the runway. Wezel died two hours later at a local hospital.
The ballistic parachute system on board may have been deployed. It likely would not have had enough altitude to completely deploy: most ballistic airframe "saves" occur at a minimum of 400 feet.
Mr. Yu eulogized Wezel on the company website:
“I, personally, feel extremely sorry to have lost Martin. He was an extremely competent collaborator and most of all a very dear friend. Martin's passion for flying was a constant inspiration to all. My deepest sympathies and condolences to Petra, Martin's wife, the Wezel family and all who knew and worked with Martin Wezel.”
We echo Mr. Yu's comments in extending our condolences to Martin Wezel's family and friends.

2011-05-19T08:58:00.000-07:00

REMOS Aircraft sends out advance word that its new GX NXT will debut at Oshkosh this year.
The current GX Aviator II model will not be replaced: this new NXT version reflects a new instrument panel and price (base: $129,961, a significant drop from the Aviator II).

REMOS GX NXT: new panel, lower price

Dynon's SkyView, as with an ever-expanding number of other LSA, provides the anchor point for the streamlined new deck, which has been reworked to bring more leg room and better visibility over the nose to the cockpit.
SkyView's ever-upgrading software suite combines

Panel drawing w/optional two
SkyView panel and Garmin 696

EFIS/EMS/ Synthetic Vision/ Transponder in one unit. An optional second SkyView installation is available as well as Garmin 696 and Dynon autopilot.
The GX NXT will offer com or nav/com and a wide range of exterior paint schemes.
The GX is a lovely airplane to fly. I like the folding wing capability of the GX too. You can also fly with the doors completely off the airplane: lots of fun on those balmy spring, summer and fall days to ahead.
REMOS quotes an empty weight of 718 pounds and a useful load of 602 lbs. (470 with full fuel), which they claim is tops in the industry.
The airframe, performance and handling are the same as the Aviator II.
Delivery is quoted at 90 days and they're taking orders now.
The GX is made in Germany.
[] illustration and photos courtesy REMOS Aircraft

LSA in the News

2011-05-12T08:43:00.000-07:00

In this post there's both good news and bad news.

First up: blog reader Pete Zaitcev commented on my blog yesterday that the Front Range Airport (FTG) visit, on May 14, by the LSA Tour #3 will coincide with the Rocky Mountain LSA Expo.
FTG is about 25 miles east of Denver at Watkins, CO. The event is sponsored by the Colorado Pilots Assoc.
Looks like a fun time and a smart call for the Tour to plan a stop there. Thanks Pete!

Cessna is on track to ship 150 Skycatchers this year

More good news: Cessna Aircraft delivered 106 aircraft in the first quarter, up from 80 a year ago, and much of the increase comes from deliveries of the 19 Skycatchers. Cessna's Bob Stangarone has told me the company expects to have delivered 150 by year's end.
The unhappy news concerns two LSA crashes.
A PiperSport crash cost a young CFI his life in Florida. Various news reports citing eyewitnesses indicated a possible in-flight fire, flat spin, loss of a wing in flight and the crash, with subsequent fire and secondary explosion.
The pilot's body was found 3/4 miles from the crash. That and personal effects strewn between the crash site and the pilot's body indicate he either bailed out of the airplane without a parachute, or was ejected during flight -- horrific to contemplate either way. The pilot was reportedly a skydiver.
Since all PiperSports during their brief manufacture under the Piper banner were delivered with airframe parachutes, inflight fire remains a compelling possibility for the crash.

Sad and sobering: condolences to the surviving family of the 24-year-old pilot.

A happier ending to another crash involves a Flight Design CT that struck a telephone guy-wire during an emergency landing on a country road in the South...and lost the entire right wing!

The good news is the pilot survived, as reported by Steven Jones for WSPA-TV (CBS) in northwestern South Carolina, after the plane ended up nosing into a ditch. The plane is owned by Major Dude's Flying Circus of Wilmington, DE.
Jones writes that no one was injured. "After the plane," the web story says, "a Flight Design CT model, took off...the pilot called Augusta Control and reported a 'rough running' engine.
Later, the pilot called and said he was experiencing engine failure and going down.
Two people were on board when the plane made it’s crash landing. A wing snapped off on a guy line of a nearby utility pole."
The CT is an all-composite airplane and, clearly, its cabin offers reassuring crash protection.

LSA Tour #3 Does Colorado Tomorrow

2011-05-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

Dave Graham of Legend Aircraft just sent out word that the next LSA Tour launches tomorrow for a 4-day swing up the front range of the Colorado Rockies. See the list of locations below.
"We've adopted the four-day format," says Dave. "The six-day tour is just too tiring."

Reporting on the Tour's recent swing through the Southeast, Dave reports about 250 people came out to the Greenville, SC location. There was a restaurant, good support from the hosting FBO, and "some business was done that day."
Not all the venues were as cooperative as they could have been, he says, but considers this a work in progress and expects advanced planning will help sharpen up the logistics and overall experience down the road.
Here's a link to my blurb on the first Tour, which lists the participating LSA dealers. Each dealer brings a demo airplane which gives potential customers a great opportunity to strap on the aircraft and compare apples to apples -- which can be a challenge at major airshows, with aircraft booths spread all over the place amid the background noise of other aviation attractions.
Good luck folks on your third LSA Tour!

LSA TOUR #3 SCHEDULE

[] Thursday, May 12, 2011
Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport
Fort Collins / Loveland, Colorado - KFNL

[] Friday, May 13, 2011
Centennial Airport
Denver, Colorado - KAPA

[] Saturday, May 14, 2011
Front Range Airport
Denver, Colorado - KFTG

[] Sunday, May 15, 2011
Meadow Lake Airport
Colorado Springs, Colorado - KFLY

Electric Race Update: CAFE-Bound!

2011-05-06T10:48:00.000-07:00

Picking up my electric aircraft coverage again with an email from Phoenix Air USA kingpin Jim Lee with the latest updates on the PhoEnix electric motorglider NASA/CAFE race entry, which just came out of the paint shop and has all its pretty parts put together...and a beautimous bird she is indeed.

Built for slipping through the air: the PhoEnix electric motorglider.

"We put the PhoEnix together," Jim tells me, "my last day in Czech so we could finally see what it looks like. Man am I excited now! I can't believe that I will be the one to fly such an amazing ship."
Color me green with envy.
Jim's deep and broad soaring background should stand him in good stead tweaking every last ounce of performance from the gorgeous, one-off soaring bird.
He's also got a few more details on his Phoenix blog. Here are some highlights:

View from tail: Gear retracts up into normal baggage area.

Conceived for the NASA CAFE Green Flight Challenge..."A race that offers big bucks for the winner ($1.65 million total), but with a bar set so high that it is unlikely that anyone will win it. But if any aircraft can do it, the PhoEnix can!"

Electric motor installation.

Check out that shadow for a sense of the high aspect ratio. Photo: Jim Lee

[] A modified Schempp- Hirth Discus wing installed as a shoulder wing to make room for the
retractible gear.
[] Gear electrically driven. Swings back into the wheel wells (the baggage compartment of the original Phoenix.)

Photo courtesy Jim Lee

[] wings 14.5M (47.5 ft.) span, optimized for the 100mph minimum required speed for the 200 mile race course.
[] race begins July 10 no. of San Francisco.

Next post, I'll have a rundown, with pictures, of one of the PhoEnix's top competitors, the Pipistrel Taurus 4 twin-fuselage electric racer!

And here's Jim beaming at the end of Sun 'n Fun last month after receiving the Outstanding Fixed Wing Light Sport Aircraft Award.
Congrats James, it's a worthy winner for sure!

Flight Design 4-Seater Heading To Market

2011-05-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

Although this isn't an LSA story per se, it comes out of Flight Design, the top-notch, top-selling LSA company in America, so I thought you'd be interested to know the company debuted its C4 4-seater at AERO last month and just came out today with some pricing and delivery numbers along with some specs.
Perhaps the most interesting number to me is the $250,000 "target" price for the American market, along with a €220.000 price for Europe and the rest of the world outside the U.S.
When's the last time we saw a new, state-of-the-art 4-seat airplane at a price close to that?
Also noteworthy is the minimal disparity between the overseas and U.S. prices, reflecting the company's desire to minimize (yea verily, to almost negate!) the currently soaring euro/dollar exchange rate imbalance.

Artist's rendering of the C4. It's not your grandfather's CTLS. Image courtesy Flight Design.

Some interesting details about the all-carbon fiber composite airplane:
[] Engine choice: two engine options to best suit fuel availability and cost in the owner's region: either a traditional aviation engine that can run on auto fuel, or a turbo diesel engine that burns Jet A fuel. Actual engine brands have yet to be finalized.
[] Avionics suppliers are still being firmed up as well.
[] First Delivery: Set for 2013
[] Early Bird Buyers: At AERO, more than 30 C4 orders were taken. Orders and deposits are now accepted online or through Flight Design's worldwide network of dealers.
[] Specifications: (subject to flight test confirmations) include useful load of 1,320 lbs.;
[] maximum take-off weight of 1.200 kilograms (2,640 pounds);
[] max cruise of 160 knots @ 6,000 feet MSL.
[] Range of 1,200 nautical miles with the avgas engine at 65% power or...
[] 1,700 nautical miles with the diesel engine at 55% power;
[] Fuel capacity: 70 gal.
[] Cockpit dimensions: 52" wide, 47" at rear seat, head clearance in rear for a 6' 7" passenger.

C4 mockup at AERO. Photo courtesy Loop Magazine

Matthias Betsch, CEO of Flight Design, says this:
"Our ongoing customer surveying shows us that price tops the demand list from customers and we believe our prices can result in sales volumes of 200 to 500 aircraft per year."
As I've noted here before, if you'd like to put in your $.02 in the design/configuration process, you can still do that as the final design is still in flux: Go here for the survey.
You might even win a Garmin aera 500 GPS for your trouble.
Flight Design plans to certify the C4 to several international standards ensuring compliance with both EASA and FAA regulations.
The German company has already successfully gone through several rigors including LAMA and ISO audits. It also just gained EASA Design Organization Approval that permits it to progress on its own schedule with only oversight monitoring from EASA, which minimizes a lot of cost and time drag on the process.
Best of success to this progressive company which has done so much to help establish the LSA movement in America with its quality aircraft and broad and growing sales and service network.

"Spy Network" Report: Twin Electric Sailplane

2011-04-27T11:18:00.000-07:00

NOTE: Below you'll see a comment asserting that members of the Pipistrel Taurus Electro team visited the PhoEnix project because they were having some difficulties with the Twin Taurus.
I've since heard from Tine Tomazic of Pipistrel's Research and Development team, who wished to correct Jim's false impression and wrote: "
"The visit to PhoenixAir was a private visit to Martin Stepanek who runs PhoenixAir on HIS INVITATION, nothing else."
Duly noted and corrected and I wish Pipistrel all good luck with their exciting twin Taurus project.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled blogcast:

I heard again today from Jim Lee who's still overseas helping prep the PhoEnix electric motorglider for July's big, $1.65 million CAFE Green Flight Challenge (GFC) fuel-efficient flight competition in Santa Rosa, CA.

Jim sent along photos of the electric nosecone with integrated feathering prop/spinner assembly. First test flights of the PhoEnix are planned in a couple weeks.

BTW, the enhanced streamlining afforded by the much smaller e-motor boots the lovely creature's performance from L/D 32:1 to 36:1 -- a 12.5% increase! That's great for soaring and also means less power required to sustain flight, the Big Picture for endurance at this stage of electric aviation.

The GFC PhoEnix entry will be powered by a 44 kW motor and controller developed in house by Phoenix Air.

Lipo (lithium polymer) batteries, popularized by the RC model industry for their light weight and high storage capacity, will hold the electric "gas".

I'd asked Jim earlier how they were going to get the airplane over, joking that perhaps they'd ferry it across. You'll see his wry response below.

Note also his take on the cooperation between Pipistrel's Taurus Electro team, also entered in the Green Flight Challenge, and the PhoEnix team. This brings back fond memories of the dawn of hang gliding, ultralight, then LSA flight, where pilots helped out fellow pilots because the goal was to share the joy and accomplishments with as many people as possible.


PhoEnix's feathering prop, standard on Rotax SLSA too. Photos: Jim Lee

Once flight contests and market competition ramped up, that "one-for-all" spirit dwindled, as it inevitably does.

Yet I'm mindful of the spirit of mutual support and shared enthusiasm that exists today in the LSA industry, where entrepreneur/pilots like Bill Canino of SportAir USA, Tom Peghiny of Flight Design and Dave Graham of Legend Cub, each with a distinctly different flying background, regularly help out their fellow pilots even though they're all in competition for a small pool of sales dollars.

The recent Georgia LSA Tour is a great example, I'll have an update on that soon.

So here's that fraternal spirit again with the PhoEnix team helping out the Pipistrel team. Even if it is too late to steal ideas, they certainly don't have to help one another, especially with all those greenbacks at stake.

Makes you want to rethink this whole competition thing from top to bottom, doesn't it?

Here's Jim's email:

"Mornin James,
I have enclosed a spy drawing of the Pipistrel entrant to the GFC. Two Taurus joined together by a center wing a la Twin Mustang of WWII fame. Pretty interesting, eh? The Pipistel boys visited us a few days ago to look at our design because they are having trouble with theirs. Anyway, from their description we put together this drawing. Everyone realizes that it is too late in the game to copy each other and the prize is too hard to win so cooperation is in order."

PhoenixAir's speculation of what Pipistrel's special Taurus Electro looks like. Photo: Jim Lee

Jim went on to answer a question I had about flying the PhoEnix which, unlike the SLSA version, has retractable main gear to optimize performance. Jim had brushed me up (I'm a lazy FAR reader) on the FAA regs, which allow a person with only a glider rating to fly a self-launching (powered) sailplane without a flight medical. This time, I asked him whether the same allowance held for a retractable-gear glider, and here's his reply:

"There are only 3 logbook endorsements with the glider rating: self-launch, aerotow, and ground launch. Practically every glider is a taildragger for decreased drag (except for a few oddballs). Most gliders have retractable gear. Many are "high-performance". Some have variable pitch or folding or feathering props. There are no endorsements for any of this as there are with airplanes. So a glider rated pilot with a self-launch endorsement can fly a retract motorglider."

PhoEnix after getting it's new coat of paint. Photo: Jim Lee

And finally Jim's tongue-in-cheek response to my question about bringing the PhoEnix to California for the GFC in July:
"We will fly the PhoEnix across the Atlantic east to west. We don't have quite enough battery storage to make the whole flight, so we will have to soar a container ship across. We are looking into sailing schedules out of Bremerhaven now. The GFC will be a piece of cake once we do this! :-)
Regards,
Jim"

Thanks again Jim for giving us an inside look to what I very much believe will be an historic event.

PhoEnix : E as in Electric

2011-04-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

Scoop time!
I've been having so much fun lately writing the electric flight article (now rescheduled to Aug. issue of Plane & Pilot) that it's bringing electrifying news from the universe to my email inbox.
Jim Lee, that hard working, happy-flying distributor for the Phoenix motorglider I was gobsmacked with at Sebring, told me today about the PhoEnix all-electric version of the Rotax-powered motorglider that is selling like hotcakes here and abroad.

Here's some of what he had to say:
"Reporting from the Czech Republic where I am spending 2 weeks assisting in the production of our new electric PhoEnix. The weather has been great ... soaring 5.5 hours in the last two days...I see that your blog has sort of turned into an electric blog lately, so that gave me the idea to report to you first on our electric project...Orders for the Rotax Phoenix are pouring in, so we had better stop flying and start working."
Oh, for that challenge: to fly, or handle orders for your aircraft!

Here are excerpts from the blurb Jim sent:
[] The Phoenix S-LSA glider just won the 2011 Sun 'n Fun Outstanding Fixed Wing LSA award (and congratulations to all, Jim!)
[] The PhoEnix has retractable gear, variable pitch propeller, a modified Discus wing, and a new super streamlined fuselage. (check out the pix!)
[] The prototype PhoEnix debuted at Aero Freidrichshafen in 2010.
[] PhoEnix proto number two is about to begin first test flights!
[] "Phoenix Air believes that the attributes of the PhoEnix will give it the winning edge in the Green Flight Challenge."

Check the Challenge link above, or here's the short tell:
Team aircraft must fly 200 miles in under two hours using the energy equivalent of one gallon of gas per occupant.
So far, 13 teams have entered, including Jim Lee in the PhoEnix. Not all will show.
Location: Sonoma Co. Airport, Santa Rosa, CA, and don't I wish I still lived in Santa Barbara so I could go!
Date: July 11-17, 2011.
The Kicker: Prize money is $1.65 million! Sponsored by NASA, which wisely realizes there are lots of innovations coming directly from grass roots aviation and it wants to cull the best.

PC Aero Elektra One

Some of the competitors:
[] Greg Cole/Windward Performance's Goshawk, a 50-foot span electric two-seater
[] PC Aero's LEAP award winning Elektra One, single seat electric
[] Scott Sanford/Yuneec is listed with the E1000, 4-seat electric, but don't expect to see that as the company's President Tian Yu just announced it at AERO and there's been no word of even a mockup, much less a prototype...although wouldn't it be super cagey for it to show up with four people on board, (which would allow the energy equivalent of 4 gallons of fuel?)
[] Eric Raymond (known for Sunseeker solar-powered sailplanes) with the eGenius two-seat electric sponsored by Airbus.
[] The Taurus Elektro G4, four-seat electric. It's doubtful whether this will show either...but you can see the trend in thinking that four seaters sooner rather than later is an important goal.
Clearly, the minimal battery storage capacity of current technology is not diminishing enthusiasm...not to overlook the go-for-it stimulus of a 1.65 megabuck prize either.
Good luck all! This ought to be a history-making event.

Getting a Charge

2011-04-23T13:09:00.000-07:00

LEAP award winner Elektra One. photo courtesy PC-Aero GmbH

Well, Thomas, you've done it again: gotten me to blather on so long with your as-always thoughtful and knowledgeable comments that I exceeded the comment buffer so have to palaver on here in another post.
Well, that's why they call it a weBlog I guess: it's a place to hang our thoughts out to dry.
So what's below is a response to your comment from yesterday's post, with a couple more pix thrown in to thump the eye candy factor.
I think we can't overlook the market factor here. Just as car manufacturers know where the buyers are, it could be what we're seeing with these projects aiming toward higher/faster/more payload electric are manufacturers figuring that they're since they're going to sell more of the expensive, travel-capable airplanes than sailplanes and motorgliders anyway, why concentrate time and resources on a transient, historically tiny share of the market? Leapfrog to the future, expect the tech to come along as needed.

If I'm right, it's a visionary way to jumpstart an entire new genre, a new epic in fact, of flight.
And since I don't profess to be an expert, I'm just observing it like you are and wondering myself exactly which way and ways it will go.
Your NASA reference is intriguing. I'd like to talk with some electrical bigbrains for enlightenment on the concept as I hadn't heard that.
It could very well be that there's an "economy of weight", like economies of scale in manufacturing, that comes into play beyond a gross weight threshold, given the current technology.

HYNOV aircraft - first to fly 100% on hydrogen. Photo: Gerard Thevenot

Still, Randall Fishman is quite unequivocal about it: he says he's crunched the numbers and has no doubt that the heavier the airplane and the poorer the pure aerodynamic efficiency, the less electric power makes sense, given the capacities we have today.
I'll save myself from being thought a fool by opening my mouth and removing all doubt, by continuing to watch for what actually comes to market and extrapolating possible futures from that, as we've all begun doing to date.
I do believe we will see 4-seaters like Yuneec is currently promising.
When?
Battery advances will surely determine, barring some other superspiffy technology coming in that nobody expects, such as some super solar cell.
Energy storage remains the holy grail from what I hear and read everywhere.
I also believe Yuneec has learned very well how to gin up enthusiasm, but it may well be true, like the flying car people, that they're simply making sure their name stays out there in public view, knowing full well they'd be making an epic mistake by pushing out "vapor wings", i.e. aircraft that aren't really refined and truly ready for the market.

Antares DLR H2 fuel cell power: Photo: DLR-Institut für Technische Thermodynamik, Lange Research Aircraft GmbH

They can't fail to have noticed the Billion Dollar Debacle of VLJ, the Very Light Jet, as envisioned by Eclipse, which went down the drain and took most of the other swimmers with it.
VLJ was trumpeted as the next great thing, the savior of smaller airports, the harbinger of a vast new regional "air taxi" network that would make short- and medium-distance travel more practical by helping many of us, especially businessfolk, avoid the hassles of big airline terminal travel.
Problem was, the idea was not economically practical as conceived, and few VLJ will ever make it to market.
Yuneec has a lot of money and is at the vanguard of an entire new industry that they're helping to create, and surely hope to cash in on with lots of sales.
And clearly they're not rushing anything to market. I wondered if they were having technical problems. But the word I get from Yuneec insiders is they are not going to risk all that potential by rushing anything to market until it is thoroughly wrung out and ready for John Q. (Litigation-Capable) Public to fly safely and enthusiastically.

Fascination Ekarus, electric power. Photo by W. Dallach

Remember when the iPhone came out? That was a well-refined product. I remember seeing the first commercials with the finger flick-scrolling from page to program, and thinking, "Yeah, right, just another bogus advertising hype."
Then I saw one some eager owner couldn't wait to share with me and anyone else within earshot.
I bought one as soon as I could and have never regretted it. History changed with that product, just as it will with well-produced electric aircraft.
Two- and four-seat electrics are in our near future, we can hope, along with practical, affordable electric cars.
In the meantime, there's a much broader technology to grow, and we're so clearly very much in the early Wright Years, so my guess is Moore's Law of computer tech proliferation (doubling every 18 months I think it is) will not likely happen just yet.
There's still an entire, and basic, infrastructure to create and develop. There are economies of scale to create first to make them affordable.
So that leads me back to concluding that for those of us who really want to fly behind (or in front of) an electric propulsion unit, we're better off for the next five years flying what I espoused above: light, efficient glider-style aircraft.
We shouldn't expect the moon just yet...but we can sure jump in and join the party, rather than gripe that we're not really saving money or going as far as we can with gas airplanes.
That's not the point in this stage of history, not the point at all.
Would I love to be dead wrong? Would I welcome a two-seat, 2-3 hour electric 100 knot cruiser next month? That didn't cost $150,000, but more like $40-50,000?
You bet I would.
And maybe we'll see it happen.
That's part of the fun: we get to watch it happen, all of us, and be a part of it as it unfolds.

Electric Flight: More Thoughts

2011-04-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a reader commented on my electric flight post, specifically about the LZ FES, a pretty sexy add-on that just won the Lindbergh LEAP prize for best new electric propulsion system. He wondered whether electric flight for now required light weight motorgliders or whether heavier, 15M plus sailplanes/motorgliders would be workable for electric power.
My answer began to get too lengthy to stick in comments so I'm posting it here, and thanks Thomas for your enthusiasm.

I talked over this very subject this week with Randall Fishman, the award-winning electric flight pioneer. His take on where we're at right now is in my Profiles in Vision column, coming in the July issue of P&P.
Randall's whole trip is to get people up in the air with electric power right now, and not for 150,000 clams either. To summarize his own one-man research and development plan, it's all about lightweight motorgliders.
There are two key factors -- light weight and a good low sink rate. The less power you need to get airborne and maintain flight, the better contemporary electric flight technology works.
Randall hopes to debut his latest design, a composite two-seat LSA called ElectraFlyer X, at Oshkosh this year. It's a very cool looking airplane...and a motorglider.
Previously, as I've noted here more than once, he rocked the electric world with the ElectraFlyer Trike, currently available for sale, and the prototype ElectraFlyer C, a single-seat model (more below). He's also in test mode with newly designed motors he's had built for the X and other projects.
There are lots of other electric motorglider projects out there, for this basic reason: the less amount of thrust you need to stay airborne, the more viable electric propulsion is. For now that has to mean less transportation-style flying and more "pure enjoyment" local flying.
Can we live with that? Hell yes...how cool is it that we are able to fly this completely revolutionary technology right now?
My favorite story of Randall's recounts the time he took his electric trike off from Ellenville, NY's little airport, motored over to where the hang glider guys were soaring the popular ridge a couple miles away, turned off the motor and joined the thermaling gaggles.
Typically, and I've done this myself, you work up into ever-stronger lift bands at E-Ville by ramping up the sloping ridge, which can get you good and high but also back half a mile or more from launch.
That particular day, some guys were way high but way back. Randall, because he had the boost of electric power when he needed it, was able to penetrate out in front of the hill and catch some really strong lift that the pure soaring craft couldn't risk trying to reach for fear they'd land out from the LZ, the landing zone.

He flew two hours that day -- and landed with plenty of "juice" to spare.
This is one highly doable scenario for electric powered flight. No, it's not 100 knot A-to-B flying, but we've got plenty of gas-powered aircraft for that already.

The Electric Swift. Photo from Icaro. No, that's not a tail, but a folding prop!

This is something new, but also old: flying again for the pure joy of it...without the many detriments of gas engines.
On a good soaring day, you can take a current-tech electric, whether it's a hang glider trike or a lightweight motorglider or a flying wing like the Swift at left, motor up into the lift, and fly as long as the lift holds out. That's possible right now.
And to repeat my electric-flight mantra: no mess, no smell, dramatically less noise, no vibration, no annuals, no oil, no gas, long-life motors, rechargeable battery packs that cost under a buck to charge, and will last many hundreds of hours, and will get increasingly affordable as more people jump on the electric bandwagon, not just in the air but also for ground vehicles like cars, bikes and cycles.
We're in the beginning stages of a paradigm shift that will outlast all the greed-based attempts to forestall it. It's here, it's growing, and it will be glorious.
Okay, down with the pom poms and back on topic.
There are more pure "muscle" electric aviation projects out there as well, of course. Before those become reality, before the "higher, faster, more payload" visions become reality, battery efficiency will have to improve by a few scales of magnitude.

Electric Swift's cockpit view. Photo courtesy Icaro.

So the answer to your question, Thomas, about electric powered flight right now, remains with lighter weight and more efficient airframes, and that spells motorgliders.
Bigger motorgliders will work but are more exotic and complex to deal with (trailers, special hangars, elaborate feathering/streamlining systems, and higher costs for sure.)
Meanwhile, the electric powered hang glider trikes that Randall and others have developed work, and work very well.
They serve up more than an hour of flight and don't require 130 lb. pilots to do so (Randall weighs 200 lbs. and has consistently had 1 1/2 hour and longer flights.)
Some other notable projects, including the video below, are popping up around the world. Search for "electric trike" to get an idea. Here's a link to get you started learning about various electric projects already for sale or imminent.

Let's take a closer look at Randall's ElectraFlyer C prototype (which he is selling for $49,000, see my earlier post). The C is a single-seat, converted all- aluminum Monnett Moni motorglider he built from a kit. And Randall also gets 1.5 hours and more on a full charge too, along with 70 mph cruise and 90+ mph top speed.

Manfred Ruehmer's electric trike (see video above). Photo courtesy Icaro.

Yuneec is of course fine tuning its many electric projects. Notable are several one- and two-seat motorglider frames, the e-Spyder ultralight, a trike, and a four-seat electric airplane just announced...and all are electric powered.
Some time pretty soon, certainly in the next year or so, we're going to have a lot of electric aircraft on the market, to suit a broad range of budgets.
This will not be solely another rich person's hobby, although it will take time to get the electric industry up and running because important technologies need to be developed and proofed, such as higher-storage batteries and more sophisticated, safe electronic motor controllers.
It is happening. It is happening now. We will be flying electric globally in a rich variety of planforms and applications before very much longer, you can count on it.
This year's Oshkosh, in particular, should bring more exposure and new electric aircraft to a broader audience.
Keep a lookout for my survey of electric flight projects around the world, also coming in the July issue of P&P.

LEAP Awards Electric Aviation Prizes

2011-04-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

Eric Lindbergh, grandson of Charles A. Lindbergh, awarded the LEAP Prize to Pipistrel's Ivo Boscarol at the just-finished AERO General Aviation convention in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
The 3rd annual e-Flight gathering took place there also, and Lindbergh's Best Electric Aircraft award went to Pipistrel's Taurus Electro.

There were some notable challengers in the category and three finalists: the Taurus, the Electric Cri-Cri (power by Electravia), and Eric Raymond's Sunseeker II solar airplane.
Also awarded was the Best Electric Propulsion. The two finalists were the LZ Design FES (Front Engine Sustainer) system and the Rapid 200 Fuel Cell propulsion system from Polytechnic Torino.
The LZ FES was the winner -- check out this video.

The LEAP 2011 Outstanding Achievement Award went to Bertrand Piccard, Andre Borschberg and the Solar Impulse Team for its electric around-the-world project airplane.

A romantic, and apt, spin on the awards is linking today's electric pioneers to Lucky Lindy's amazing transatlantic flight in 1927, which pretty much singlehandedly changed the global perception of aviation from a daredevil hobby or foolhardy mail delivery system to the common transportation, recreational and warfare tool it has become.
It may be years before there is a viable non-motorglider style electric aircraft. Battery density advances are needed, since gasoline still has more than 70 times the energy per pound of the best commercially available batteries today.
But...it's coming, and publicity-rich enterprises like the LEAP award are helping fuel public acceptance of the new technology. Meanwhile, we can all have fun thinking about flying for pure enjoyment...on near-silent propulsion.
And congratulations to all the winners, including Pipistrel for the Taurus Electro, which is the first commercially available electric two-seater aircraft in production. And it sells with a Solar Trailer, which charges the batteries with sun power while the bird is stored.
Kinda cool.

Europe's AERO in Full Swing

2011-04-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

Aero Friedrichshafen, Europe's big annual GA convention, has more than 600 exhibitors showing their wares and innovations right now through tomorrow.
Sub-titled The Global Show for General Aviation, if you want to see what's happening and what's coming down the pike, you'll not find a more intensely focused representation than at Aero.
The show spreads displays from many big names and newcomers alike, up through bizjets, across its 14 big hangar-style display areas.
I like this show, although lamentably I've yet to go, because it never fails to draw cool new stuff, in particular Microlight/LSA developments and electric and solar powered birds. Thousands of visitors flock to the "e-flight Expo" at Aero, in its third year as part of the show.
Two big events will highlight the show this year: the Berblinger Flight Competition and the awarding of three LEAP prizes from Erik Lindbergh (Lucky Lindy's grandson).
The Berblinger event involves 36 teams, most of them from Germany (23), although none from the U.S., and two parts: a technical award (and €100,000 prize) to be awarded today at Aero; and a flight competition later this year in the city of Ulm in which teams fly a specific course while being judged by several environmentally significant parameters including noise level, energy use and overall performance.
The Lindbergh LEAP prize will award the most notable electric advance, best electric design, and best electric systems and technology, similar to its Oshkosh 2010 awards.

And now for Something Completely Different: Flynano, a kind of...well, stay with me here. Look at the pic. Now, do you agree with me that it looks like a personal flying watercycle?
This no-cargo, one-person, fun-flying, joined-biplane ultralight will take off and land in the drink. Wow! What a hoot this thing could be...or a complete boondoggle.
Call it Icon-Light:
[] Empty weight (it's mostly carbon fiber-built) will be under 155 lbs.,
[] gross weight 485 lbs.,
[] wingspan 15.7 ft., nose to tail 12.4 ft., height 5 ft.,
[] cruise 87 mph, landing speed 43 mph, nearly 600 fpm climb rate,
[] 18,000 foot ceiling, and a range of 21 miles.
Power comes from a pylon-mounted 20kW electric motor (24hp and 35hp gas motors also available.
Deliveries projected for summer of this year. Prices range from € 25,000 to €27,000, around $40,000 USD.
I'll be watching to see how this takes off in Europe, where you don't need a license to fly because of its weight.
Could this be the market-killer fun-flying jetski concept that Icon's much-ballyhooed amphib, still in development after three years, has yet to deliver to the market? (Latest delivery projection from Icon: late this year)
If Flynano does what it claims, even though it only carries one pilot, heck, people could buy four for the same price as one Icon and have money left for gas...a lot of gas.
And in the U.S., it would qualify as an ultralight -- no sport pilot license needed as with the Icon, since it's well under Part 103's max 254 lb. ceiling -- except for a couple things old friend Michael Bradford pointed out that I'd, ahem, kinda forgotten about: ultralights have a top legal speed of 55 knots and must stall under 24 knots. Used to know that. So Flynano, and this is of course a good thing, just sayin', would require a Sport Pilot License.
Of course, these are two decidedly different aircraft...but Icon's stated mission -- to create a fun-flying, easily portable flying water craft -- well, that's kinda the same.
Stay tuned on this one. I want to see one of these puppies fly.
Tomorrow, I'll have a report on the Elektra One electric monoplane I blogged about a few weeks ago: it's at Aero also.

Electric Motorglider For Sale

2011-04-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

Catching up on some particulars with Randall Fishman of ElectraFlyer after our chat at Sun n Fun, he told me he's selling his prototype C model for $49,000.
Here's what he had to say about it and other aspects of his electric powered aircraft pioneering efforts:
"We have sold trikes since 2007. Most of our sales are propulsion kits, batteries and chargers for people either building something new or converting to electric."

ElectraFlyer C

"The first two of the new motors are in my shop now and we will be mounting them for testing."
"The C is a one off conversion of a plane I already owned (a Moni kit motorglider). I want to sell it now to help finance the new projects. It is really the first successful electric airplane other than some exotic million dollar science projects such as the solar planes. Hope there is a collector out there."
"The ElectraFlyer X is running now. Have to button up all the details and get the airworthiness cert. Had made arrangements to bring it to Sun 'n Fun but the weather and field conditions prevented this. Lucky for me, probably saved the plane."
"The original ElectraFlyer trike...(is) I believe...the very first successful electric aircraft of any kind that can be bought, stored and flown by a regular guy. Had its first flight of over one hour May of 2007. Shortly after that I had flights of 1.5 hours in calm air and then 2 hour+ flights in Ellenville (renowned NY hang gliding site) with the help of lift."

So now of course, I'm thinking of getting an electric trike conversion for my Wills Wing Sport 2 hang glider, as my bod doesn't tolerate the strain of flying prone very well any more.

LSA Tour #2 Is Underway

2011-04-07T08:51:00.000-07:00

Hard on the heels of their prototype LSA Tour after Sebring last January and the recent Sun 'n Fun 2011 in Lakeland, Florida, the 2011 Georgia LSA Tour gang is at it again.
Three makes of Cubalikes alone will be there, as well as the other LSA you see in the mailer above.
This time they're swinging north from the Sunshine State to bring The Word to several Southern airports.
Here's a great way to avoid the airshow crowds and have some meaningful one-on-one with top industry reps.

Specifics below: be sure and call in case of changes due to weather.

Let There Be Light

2011-04-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

After the disastrous tornadic storm that blew through the area last Thursday, Lakeland was blessed with warm, then hot, picture book Florida weather and good crowds, right up through final day Sunday, as the fabulous Blue Angels, a stunning demo by the Air Force F22 Raptor, Patty Wagstaff's always-incredible acro routine, and the Aeroshell T-6 squadron doing its thing: always great to see those (noisy but iconic) big old WWII trainers do such graceful, precision loops and rolls in formation through the sky, leaving billows of white smoke to mark their path.


The One, The Only, The Blue: 100 Years of Naval Aviation

Garmin's new touchscreen GPS

I was a bit under the weather last night so no blog...knew I shouldn't have eaten that chicken...but back at it today to fly with Bill Cox as he previewed Garmin's exciting new GTN touch screen technology.
Then pounding the sneaker rubber to finish up the rounds of the five exhibit hangars and survey new products and gadgets. I even bought myself some oil-filled insoles to calm my throbbing tootsies...one ends up walking miles and miles at these airshows, unless you can pop $60/day or more to rent a small personal electric cart.
And riding around in those little carts invites derogatory digs from friends, so maybe it's better just to suffer. Manly honor and all that.
Caught up with Randall Fishman to divine the latest on his ElectraFlyer X two-seat LSA, which didn't make it to the show (and a good thing since the tent it would have been in was destroyed by the wind storm).
We swapped old hang gliding and ultralight stories - like me, he flew several Seagull gliders back in the day - and I met his very first customer, an 87 year old pilot, still current, who bought his first prototype electric trike...which Randall told me now gets up to 1.5 hours of endurance with a 70 lb. battery pack. I had made a slip in an article I wrote a couple years ago saying the trike had "limited" endurance so let me correct that mistake now, and sorry Randall.

Randall Fishman's ElectraFlyer C

I'll be working on an electric aviation article after Aero finishes in Europe next week. Exciting developments in the electric aviation field to be sure, so stay tuned.
I also met lots of good people who introduced me to their aviation products. Photos and links of a few below for you to explore.
I'll have more details in the Sun 'n Fun roundup article I'm doing for the mag.

Kannad's XS4 Personal Locator Beacon

Dave Gustafson models the new Lightspeed Zulu headset

All told, it felt like a three-day show. My late arrival in the Dakota Cub Super 18 due to weather, the storm, 69 (at last count) damaged airplanes and the cancelled show day made for lots of running around playing catchup.
Some disappointing sales results for several LSA companies, not to mention folks like Lockwood Aviation which lost four display aircraft and Aviat's extensive Huskie losses, put a bit of a damper on the hopes of vendors. I'll survey more companies soon for the overall picture.
Now, assuming the weather doesn't have different ideas, it's about time we had some decent spring and summer flying.
On to Oshkosh.
And Sun 'n Fun 2011 be done: Long Live Sun 'n Fun!

Trail Of Tears

2011-04-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

I was just leaving So. Lakeland AirPark (X49) today, bemoaning the lack of activity down there -- LSA dealers used to bring their aircraft down there for demos but not many people seem to do that the last couple years, and I don't know why.
That's a shame because it's a long grass strip with a wonderful country ambience...a great place to try out an LSA without the hussle and bustle of the airshow a few miles north.
Departing the field, I came across the Dakota Cub folks. They were finishing the unhappy task of bringing the wreckage (fuselage on one trailer, wings on another) to a hangar at X49 until they could get a determination from the insurance people as to whether to rebuild it or write it off as salvage.

Back at the airshow later, I talked with Amy Gersch and Speedy Richardson, my companions on the interminably long (weather-delayed) trip out to the show all last week. They were both understandably blue about the loss of the airplane Speedy had flown down, and the damage to Amy's favorite "Little Airplane" as she affectionately, and constantly, calls it.
She talks to it like it was her personal teddy bear...and Speedy reportedly had a few tears himself when the 180 he flew was trashed.

But nothing holds these folks down for long. As we watched the opening of the airshow, they both spoke of the Cub enclave at New Holstein, where I hope to meet up with them during Oshkosh this year.

Komet Acrobatic SLSA Biplane Wows Crowds

2011-04-01T21:42:00.000-07:00

Jon Hansen and twin brother Ron, and sons Mike and Mitch and probably some other Hansens I missed, all of Hansen Air Group (must be why they call it a "Group") were besieged by excited showgoers eager to learn more about the new FK12 Komet.

It's made by the same German company that has produced so many fine microlight and LSA aircraft, including the FK 9 Mk IV and ELA, and should satisfy that niche of sport pilots eager to fly acro, since there are few such light sport birds out there.
You can get more details on the German site, but here's a quick taste of what you can expect flying this acrobatic SLSA from Jon Hansen and son Mike.

Video of Sun 'n Fun Carnage

2011-03-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

Not long after the windstorm, I shot these videos.
There were other sections on the field I didn't get to that had more airplanes flipped, including, sad to say, a couple beautiful J3 Cubs. I hope the Grand Champion hopeful I videoed yesterday wasn't one of them...but everybody loses when this many airplanes are damaged and destroyed.

Rain 'n A Lot Of Pain

2011-03-31T22:55:00.000-07:00

Bad day at Sun 'n Fun, a day that no one likes to think about, but can happen anywhere at any time: Mother Nature threw one gigantic hissy fit, to the dismay of dozens of aircraft owners whose aircraft were amaged or outright destroyed.
A horrific thunderstorm kept feeding nasty tornadic weather right across central Florida, and at one point we had a funnel cloud which may have touched down, depending on who you talked to, and flipped airplanes around like so many child's toys.

Once it was over, tents were smashed, 2" steel flag poles were bent over like straw, and many planes were stacked like kindling. Zodiacs, Huskies, Aircams, Cubs: no type was favored over any other.
The two Dakota Cubs I flew out in from Sioux Falls were not spared. The 180hp Cub Speedy Richardson and I flew the last two days of our 6-day flight was destroyed. The Cub flown by Amy Gersch was damaged but should be able to fly home, though the cowling was dinged up pretty bad and the metal prop was gouged by the wreckage of the other Cub which flipped, ripping out its double tie downs like they were anchored in peanut butter, and landed on Amy's plane.

Millions of dollars of damage overall, and the show was cancelled for the rest of the day.
I hunkered down in the Sun 'n Fun Museum (big steel building) with a couple hundred other anxious showgoers, including Dan Johnson and his wife Randee.
Our sincerest regrets, condolences and wishes for solid insurance policies for all those who suffered losses today.

Sun 'n Fun 2011 Day One

2011-03-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

Well, Day One for me anyway; the show started yesterday but I was still stranded in Alabama by soggy and intractable weather with a couple Dakota Cubs.

Amy Gersch

We made it into Plant City at about 5:30 last night after squeaking under some very low ceilings, then running east once we hit the Gulf Coast.
A 6-day odyssey...and we're just glad to have made it at all. Several VFR pilots are still stuck in the South and the storms continue.
Here's a video I quick-shot today, thanks to Legend Cub's Dave Graham, who took me over to meet the owner of a fabulous Piper Cub J3 restoration.

Dave "Speedy" Richardson

LEGEND NEWS UPDATE

It's really gorgeous. My video doesn't do it justice but it'll give you a bit of a peak. The owner is having it judged and hoping to snag a Grand Champion Award. And it's sure got a shot: absolutely immaculate.
The restoration cost upwards of $80K! Now that's commitment.

Dave and Kurt Sehnert also clued me in a new airplane about to debut from Legend, as well as a quick glance on how this top selling American-produced LSA builder has weathered the sluggish economic recovery.
"Our new Super Legend Cub," says Dave Graham, "has a flapped wing for reduced stall speeds and we're putting a lot of carbon fiber into the structure, in doors, wing tip bows and other components. The tailfeathers are Super Cub size with slightly more area, and aerodynamically balanced for more control authority."
"Power is a Lycoming 0-233. It's a 115 hp, multi fuel engine to help address the ethanol fuel situation. The Super Legend will have the same power to weight ratio as the original PA-18 Piper Super Cub with a 150hp engine, so it will be a good performer."
Legend's anticipated timetable:
[] Lycoming expects to complete certification testing by the end of Quarter 3, 2011,
[] ASTM certification for the airplane end of 2011, and ready for the market by Sebring 2012
Intro price is $139,900. 20% down will hold a slot.
It will be an SLSA first, then a kit.

Frame of the new Super Legend

Kurt Sehnert weighs in on the new plane and the company's fortunes:
"The Texas Sport (kit) version will come after the SLSA version is done, probably by Sun 'n Fun 2012. The kit can be built either Experimental Amateur Built or as an ELSA. Of course we will offer our factory built program too as we do with our other models."
Kurt tells me the SLSA Legends continue to dominate sales, and buyers are ponying up for loaded versions with all the toys installed.
"Kit builders tend to build Experimental rather than ELSA because most want their own customized version, which you can't do with an ELSA, which has to be built to the same exact specs as the SLSA."

Super Legend frame detail

The amphib float option Legend offers had a curve ball thrown at it when Baumann Floats recently surprised the aviation world by closing its doors.
"We'll have to see what happens," says Kurt. "We're looking at other players, but it's been a bit of a shock and it's a shame, they made an excellent product. But like all business, we'll just go to plan B."
On the Economy: "Well, we figure if we got this far, we'll make it. It has been a skinny two years. But it feels like things are moving again."

Sun 'n Fun 2011 Takes Off Tomorrow

2011-03-27T10:26:00.000-07:00

SUN 'n FUN 2011 kicks off, even as scores of planes - yours truly included - remain scattered around at airports up to hundreds of miles away, trying to beat the storm system that’s prevented them from making it to Lakeland, FL so far.

The big airshow’s big boss, John Burton, promises an impressive line up:
* Blue Angels performances four different days, highlighting the celebration of the 100th anniversary of naval aviation
* a 20-year retrospective on Desert Storm
* a 10-year commemoration of September 11, 2001
* the formal opening of the new Central Florida Aerospace Academy (CFAA) on the SUN ’n FUN campus.
* F-22 Raptor flight three different days
* AvBid Airplane Auctions
* Hot Air Balloon Launch at dawn, Saturday, April 2
* Daily and nightly airshows with fireworks
* AOPA "Rally GA" Day
* Lindbergh Foundation Awards for electric-powered flight advances
* "Green Space” Exhibit of environmentally friendly, aviation-related products and services, anchored by Lindbergh Foundation.
* 75th Anniversary Cub Convoy mass arrival to SUN ’n FUN, Monday, March 28.
And of course all the mix of colorful booths, new aircraft (including new LSA) and a whole lot more.

photo courtesy Harvey Reidel and Sun 'n Fun

Be there or be square!
Speaking of square, I may have to pull the plug, rent a car and drive the last 500 miles from Sparta, TN...but I'm hanging in until the last minute because it would sure feel a lot better to land in the same Dakota Cub I started out in.

Stranded in Sparta

2011-03-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

Half way to Sun 'n Fun, thumb typing on my iPhone, we're sitting in the same place we've been in - the comfy lounge at friendly FBO, Sparta Aero Services - since 8 this morning.
It's 3:30 now.
Allow me one small comic book growl of anguish: aarghh.

Situation: 8:00 a.m.

Thanks, that feels better.
Our erstwhile Cub Crew, ably led by aviation Whiz Kid Amy Getsch who's interning in marketing at Dakota Cub, the Super Cub replica kit and certified maker, flew down this far yesterday, landed right around sunset after a lovely, mottled-sun trek at a leisurely 90 mph all the way at an average 3000 feet.
400 miles down, we stopped for a late lunch and picked up some reinforcements: two gents also en route to Florida, each flying their J3's.
Dick Pattschull of Iowa City and George Armstrong of Omaha, Nebraska launched, just after we got back from lunch, from Fulton Co., Mo.'s Hensley Airport.
We hurried along, Amy and I, in the Dakota Super 18 LT she calls Little Airplane, and the identically painted Super 18 she calls Big Airplane (it has a 180 hp engine; the LT has a C90 that puts out 113 hp).

Situation: 5:15 p.m.

Big Airplane is being flown by Dave "Speedy" Richardson, AKA the Resident Gypsy, a conundrum that describes his rooted history in Sioux Falls and his love of long XC flights.
Amy talks to "her" - Little Airplane - as if she were a beloved horse - there's even a little stuffed panda bear riding along in the wing root with a great bird's eye view of the tandem cockpit and what's a comin' too.
Half an hour later we slowly overtook the pokier J3s and pressed on toward Sparta.
Clouds to the east spread a long gray somber note to the end of the days flying
Dick, after a comm miscue, landed several miles south of Sparta. We looped back trying to find Speedy, who could transmit but not receive.
We finally touched down in a murky dusk. I was impressed with how easy the big 26" bush tires and stout tailwheel soaked up my landing imperfections
Up at 6 the next morning, we ate and headed to the field. Eight hours later, still here. More bad weather en route. I may have to hop a winged beer can from nearby St Louis if we get stuck.
And I say again: arrgh.

Touchstones: Honoring the Basics

2011-03-23T09:10:00.000-07:00

The FAA has a helpful publication that wouldn’t hurt us to check out now and then, whatever our level of experience and skill: the Airplane Flying Handbook.
Sure, it may seem like plain vanilla...but where would hot fudge sundaes and banana splits be without good old dependable vanilla?
We pilots need to maintain our good airmanship foundation, no matter how big a hotshot we sometimes imagine ourselves to be. Reviewing the essentials helps us recall those nuances we forget, or shortcut...and which, in a pinch, we may desperately need in our quiver of flying skills.
Once we start down that "I got this wired" slippery slope, the risk of incidents and accidents increases...and who needs that kind of education?

Criquet Storch SLSA

Case in point: FAA's Handbook section on porpoising.
I sometimes revisit a landing tendency that I've been working to correct: I will make a bigger-than-necessary pitch correction after bouncing a landing.
If I balloon up at a higher angle of attack then I want, I'll push the nose over -- too far. Instructors invariably tell me, "Whoa, just let it settle or go around, don't go chasing it."
I picked up that habit from hang glider and ultralight flying, where ultra-slow landing speeds and draggy airframes sometimes let you get away with...and even require...dramatic last-second pitch-ups to keep you from making hard landings.
The problem with such pitchy exuberance in an LSA or traditional GA airplane is the cleaner airframe's tendency to let you get it into "porpoising" flight, by chasing an ever-growing up/down nose angle...until a hard impact becomes unavoidable.
Porpoising is a classic scenario for collapsed landing gear. A local SportCruiser was recently destroyed when the pilot lost control after porpoising near the runway.
Rather than reprise in my own words how to avoid mimicking the happy undulations of our sea-going mammalian friends, I'll refer you to this excellent section (it's a PDF: go to page 8-31).
I know I picked up a few pointers I'd forgotten...and learned a couple things I'd never learned in the first place. After all, no one CFI can cover it all, no matter how skilled.
A pilot's license is our ticket to continue lifelong learning...and self-teaching through study and practice is an important component of it.
Speaking of the SportCruiser, I started to porpoise one the first time I flew it. The SLSA has a very sensitive pitch response, especially compared to its roll pressures.
I expected I would be easing the nose off the runway just fine on my first takeoff but we suddenly zoomed up to a 20-30 degree angle. Instead of easing the stick forward, I pushed it just a bit too smartly forward -- and we were instantly looking back down at the runway.
My instructor said "Whoa cowboy, easy does it!" as he eased the stick back to establish a proper climb angle. I became a pitchmeister with my pinkies in that airplane from then on.
The FAA Handbook's bottom line: if you get seriously out of sync in pitch inputs, just power up and go around.
We sometimes forget we usually have a choice. Doing a go-around is always a good mindset to keep in your mental skillbag: it's too easy to slip into the "I gotta land now!" syndrome.
Give that Handbook a look: I bet you'll find something in there that will make you a better pilot.

Aviation Jobs, American Style

2011-03-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

Good news from Allegro LSA’s head honcho Doug Hempstead, as he spoke with our publisher Mike McMann.
Allegro, now a solely-American made, composite/aluminum S-LSA (my flight report is due out soon in the magazine) told Mike he expects to hire as many as 35 workers within the next year. These are jobs that were formerly held by Czech Republic personnel.
Allegro is a Czech-designed airplane (Fantasy Air) that, like so many LSA, was built in Czech Republic and assembled, test flown and delivered in the States.
Doug and his wife Betty bought the rights to produce the airplane here and production is now underway at the company's Sanford, NC plant.
More than 450 of the Kevlar-composite fuselage/aluminum wing Allegros have been sold since 1994, most overseas. The Hempsteads hope to change that proportion...and employ more Americans in the process.
Three Allegro models are offered: Classic Trainer at $89,000 (also configurable as an IFR trainer), Voyager at $94,000 (adds things like MGL Voyager EFIS, Garmin radio and transponder and vertical card compass), and Executive at $99,000 (adds two Dynon Skyview Synthetic Vision panels and Garmin GPS 500).
Those are highly competitive prices for a composite ship with lots of high-tech extras. It's an excellent airplane that fulfills a lot of missions from trainer to cross-country cruiser.

Deals! We Got Deals!

2011-03-18T12:11:00.000-07:00

I just finished a column that's becoming an annual event: talking with Avemco Insurance's VP Mike Adams, who filled me in on the general picture for LSA accidents, claims and what it says about pilot's flying habits and the market strength as well after two brutal years trying to grow a fledgling industry.

FPNA A22 Valor

That column will be out in the mag this spring. The short tell is: rates haven't gone up...and they haven't gone down. We're in a general market stagnation where new pilots are replacing those who are dropping out.
Pilot accidents are less frequent, especially experienced GA pilots, because Avemco's 5-hour minimum transition requirement before they'll write a policy for a new LSA owner is helping pilots get the touch they need to fly these aircraft well.
LSA are generally lighter in weight than the birds they've flown all their lives, and the initial experienced-pilot mindset tended to regard them as toys instead of a new type of aircraft that deserves respect.

Another thing Mike touched on is the high cost of repairs after an accident. That's because repairs require insurance companies to mostly buy new parts at retail price...there just isn't a deep supply of used and salvaged parts yet for LSA, while there certainly is for GA airplanes.
And that brought me to wonder just what used LSA are going for these days.
I checked Trade-A-Plane's website and pulled up around 20 for sale. Although many didn't list prices, the majority did, along with TT (total time on the airplane) and a list of installed instruments and other options.

American Legend Cub

I cherry picked a few to give you an idea what the used market is looking like for LSA that are one to five years old.
Prices have dropped considerably for many airplanes. Sometimes they're older models with higher hours. Sometimes the owner is simply moving on to a new bird.
Here's the sampling I picked.

2009 Gobosh 700S 250hrs TT $112K
2008 CubCrafters Sport Cub S2 80hrs TT $134K
2008 Jabiru J-230 $96K no TT listed
2007 AMD Zodiac CH601, all mods as of 3/19 155hrs TT $75K. (The modifications are significant: several 601 models, almost all of them homebuilt, had structural failures and fatal crashes, leading to extensive airframe modifications)
Zenair 601XL (2 available) both built by "old experienced A&P mechanic, rebuilt Lycoming 0-235s, one has 60 hrs TT, the other was just finished, $60K each, upgrade kits on each
2007 Dova Skylark 64hrs TT $160K invested, asking $119K
2007 Evektor SportStar Plus 135hrs TT $85K
2007 FPNA Valor 525hrs TT $55K
2007 Rans S-6S Coyote II, 100 hp, kit built, 102hrs TTAF $47.5K
2007 Remos G3 1450hrs TT, $59K
2006 American Legend Cub 495hrs TT, 120HP Jabiru $75K
2006 Flight Design CTSW 150hrs TT $75K
To my eye, we're beginning to see some real deals out there. That bodes well for the industry.
Some of these planes may go to schools, others will get more pilots flying, or keep those older dudes and dudettes in the air.
And since this is still a new fleet, you can likely find a top-shape airplane for tens of thousands less than new.
Here's your chance to get into the game if brand-new isn't on your must-do list.

"Ice" that iPad 2!

2011-03-17T14:52:00.000-07:00

Now this sounds like fun: trying to blow up an iPad2!
Jeppesen, the aeronautical charting company, just ran a rapid decompression test on the iPad 2. The poor, innocent device was explosively decompressed at an altitude of 51,000 feet! It came through with flying colors, which ought to be good news for just about every private or airline jet passenger intent on finishing their latest World of Warcraft scenario (after getting to a safe altitude first of course.)
Jeppesen had previously tested the original iPad, part of a successful program to get initial FAA authorization for the Jeppesen Mobile TC charting App.
The Jeppesen Mobile TC App is available, of course, from the App Store or through iTunes, and it’s free for those already subscribed to Jepp’s electronic navigation service.
What does this have to do with LSA? Nothing much, I just thought the prospect of iPad2 coming through the fog of a rapid decomp unscathed was kind of cool.

Skycatcher: Too Right, Mate!

2011-03-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

Cessna marches on with its C-162 Skycatcher production. Latest milestone: it’s first international delivery to an Australian customer.

Aeromil Pacific of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast Airport took delivery and will use the bird for sales demos. The FBO also plans to display it at Avalon 2011: the Australian International Airshow in early March.
In related news, Skycatcher’s design team won the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Piper General Aviation Award for 2010. Congrats to those hardworking slide-rule pushers.
AIAA presents the award annually for outstanding contributions leading to the advancement of general aviation.
As I posted after Sebring, Cessna plans to deliver 150 Skycatchers this year.

Insider Tips From A CFI

2011-03-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

Here’s a thoughtful piece by John Zimmerman (for Sporty’s Pilot Shop online) that has the virtue of giving you a broader picture of the flight training experience.
I’ll share the highlights, then urge you to link on over and join the discussion – there are reader comments and you can weigh in yourself.
The article is 7 Things Your Flight Instructor Won’t Tell You. John isn’t out to accuse instructors of duplicity, but rather acknowledge that in order to pass on a wealth of information, things get unintentionally glossed over.
* Students are likely to take more than the minimum of 20 hours (Sport Pilot) or 40 hours (Private Pilot) to get their tickets.
* A Recreational license is still a viable alternative to both...if you can find a school offering the training.
* Don’t show up unprepared for a lesson...CFIs don’t like it and it adds to your training hours.
* You need both pitch and power to control airspeed and altitude. (This is fun, I talk to people all the time who fall on one side or the other of this tireless debate.
* Good crosswind landings use both slip and crab.
* Decision-making is hardest on the ground, i.e. “Should I really fly today?”
* Flying can, and will, change your life in ways you never considered.
It’s a good read, and good comments too from readers.

AOPA's Fuller: Let's Rally GA!

2011-03-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

In its declaration of 2011 as the year to "Rally GA", AOPA echoes the call to action of its President, Craig Fuller, who said recently, "We don’t just want to watch for a turnaround (in General Aviation), we want to do everything we can to make it happen!"
He's urging members from all sectors of flight to honor, protect and promote our common treasure: – the freedom to fly.
To do its part, AOPA put together a list of events for the coming year, places where we can all join in the celebration of flight and the discussion of how to move it forward.
Check it out to see what's coming your way.

The YouTube Cockpit

2011-03-08T10:16:00.000-08:00

"Personal Video" has gone mainstream. Seems like everyone from pilots to skiiers and snowboarders to skateboarders to mountain bikers to...well, anybody in outdoor motion is slapping on these small, rugged, HD-quality, purpose-built camcorders to immortalize every breathtaking moment.
Imagine how different memorial services are going to be in 2082.
All it takes is your desire to slap a camera onto a helmet, headband, monopod pole, suction cup or get some Ram Mounts and tape/sticky-back/bolt/clamp them to a vehicle hard point and you are Good To Go!
And by vehicle, I mean airplane, car, snowmobile, dune buggy et al, but also ski, snowboard, hang glider, shoe...you name it, the Adventure Vid gang is doing it.
We've talked about some of these tres' cool cams in the past but I just got re-seduced by the phenomenon yesterday.
After wrapping up my Phoenix motorglider pilot report, due out in late spring's Plane & Pilot, Jim Lee of Phoenix Air USA told me about a new POV camera he'd used to tape the 127 mile all-soaring flight he just made in that truly fabulous airplane.
Check out this video, it's an awesome teaser for the joys of soaring flight in a motorglider.

After seeing Jim's vid, I was hooked; started searching around the net; found this friendly company which offers three top-selling, small, HD-quality cameras that you can mount about anyplace to make some very cool videos...and yes, I bought one! (I am a tech junkie, why do you ask?)

For my LSA coverage, which includes inflight video of pilot reports and to supplement GA photo shoots, I jumped on the same camera Jim has: the Drift Stealth HD 170 "helmet camera".
Two main reasons: the remote control and the several HD modes.
Here's a few more notable highlights: I'm hoping to do a Tech Talk column soon on the Stealth for the mag.

Drift Innovation's Stealth HD170. That little button at left is the (wrist wearable) remote

* HD Video: 1080p at 25 or 30fps, 720p at 25, 30, 50 or 60 fps
* Zoom: 4x Digital zoom in 720p and WVGA
* Microphone: Built-in. Optional external mic jack (for radio and intercom chatter using a headset Patch Cord (Aircraft Spruce has it, I use it with my tape recorder for inflight note taking)
* wireless remote control (several brands don't have that!)
* slow-motion/interval shooting (one pic every 3/5/10/30 seconds for cool time lapse sequences)
* lens rotates to support any mounting angle
* Sensor type: CMOS
* Video format: MOV (H.264)
There's a lot more to check out, I'll leave you to it.
MyPOV360 has other top POV cam setups too, but it's got a great package deal going on right now for the Stealth, and no, I don't get a commission. This is the setup I jumped on because once in awhile, you just gotta grab the tech and join the party.

"Preflight? You don't need no steenking preflight!"

2011-03-07T09:29:00.000-08:00

As I preflighted a rental J3 Cub last fall, an older gent, kind of scruffy looking, was keeping me company, though we'd never met.
A pilot and airport regular, he quickly revealed his belief about preflighting in general.

Even the well-intentioned can compromise a good preflight

“Aw,” he said, rubbing his grizzled chin, “just go. It’s a Cub, it's fine, just get in it and takeoff."
I looked at him, wondering if he was kidding. He wasn’t.
“Well, thanks...I think...,” I replied, mildly annoyed, “but I think I'll just finish up here if you don't mind."
“Naw," he said, waving at the air, "just jump in and go, it’s alright.”
I ignored him and his distracting insistence, wondering what his game was.
We didn’t know each other. He had no reason, or right for that matter, to try and persuade me to skip a vital part of good airmanship practice.
Perhaps, I thought, he's an angel sent to cement my determination to do things right. See, I get excited about flying. I tend to want to rush through the essential but boring stuff, like a proper preflight, and get to the fun stuff, like grabbing some air.
So I have to consciously discipline myself to slow down and do things right -- hitting all the points on a checklist is another example -- otherwise I might scatterbrain myself into an emergency.
And who thinks trading off that five or ten minutes on the ground is worth the minutes of sheer panic or hours of fixing whatever went wrong that can come of it?

Case in point: I learned to take preflight seriously in my hang gliding days in the early '70s. More than once, I personally witnessed pilots assemble their gliders on a high mountain ridge, check everything over, climb into their harness, walk to the launch... then charge off the hill, only to discover in sheer terror they’d forgotten the most essential part of pre-launch hang gliding: to hook the harness into the glider!
Hanging helpless by their hands from the bottom of the control bar, the glider, catastrophically weighted well forward of CG, would plummet toward the ground at a negative 30 degree or more angle.
I know, it sounds stupid: who would forget to hook in, after all?
You'd be amazed.
Many veteran pilots and newbies alike get so comfortable, so casual, they simply hurry to the launch, eager to get airborne, and forget to clip in. In fact, it's one of the biggest causes of injury and death in that sport. And to this day, I read now and then of a forgotten hook-in.
Pilots may do everything right with the glider and his harness, but think they're beyond needing to ask for a “hang check” -- an important part of preflight where someone at launch holds the nose level so the pilot can lay out prone and make sure the harness and 'chute lines aren't tangled.
Of course, the prime benefit of a hang check is that you verify you're hooked in.
I personally screamed at a pilot not long ago, seconds before he launched, that he wasn't hooked in.
I might have saved his life.
Shook up by how close he'd come to disaster, he moved the glider away from launch and sat down to think long and hard about why he'd spaced out such an essential step.
Skipping preflight for a Cub, or a SkyCatcher, or a Boeing 787, carries the same risk of catastrophe. Why even go there?
Back to my Cub preflight: I asked my "airport angel" why he would ever suggest someone skip a preflight?
“Aw, it's a Cub, it’s been flying for 60 years, nothing’s going to happen to it.”
Giving him a look, thinking that a senior citizen like the Cub deserves even closer scrutiny, I gave him a look, politely disagreed and finished up, then went for a nice flight.
After I landed, having thought about his casual indiscretion, I looked for him but he’d left.
I did tell the guys who run the FBO that they had a guy wandering around the field spouting dangerous advice. What, I pondered, if he’d given the same spiel to some young, impressionable, easily-intimidated student pilot?
Looking out for each other when we fly is an important piloting virtue. It doesn't serve us, nor the flying community, to act like Top Gun loners who neither volunteer, nor accept, needed advice.
The next time I see that dude, I’m going to both thank him for reinforcing my good habits, and ask him this: “What the hell do you think you’re doing suggesting that pilots skip preflights?”
Because that kind of dumb thinking, plain and simple, is what gets pilots killed.

REMOS: New Dealer & Boy Scout Pow-Wow

2011-03-03T09:18:00.000-08:00

Remos continues to build its ever-expanding U.S. sales/service network. The company just “promoted” Tom Pekar’s Success Aviation, near Houston, from a Pilot Center to it’s 16th Aircraft Dealer in the U.S.
The new dealer has two Remos GX demos, one with an autopilot. Both are used in the school.

“Most flight training operations involving the GX use about 3.2 gallons of fuel,” he says, “compared to over 5 in a Cessna 152 and close to 9 in a Skyhawk.”
With the price of avgas jumping up the way it has been of late, flight schools nationwide have to at least be giving renewed thought to adding LSA trainers to their fleets.
One of the tangible bonuses the GX brings to its quality build and superb handling characteristics (my personal view: it’s as sweet to fly as any LSA out there) is its capability of flying with the doors off. In summertime Texas, that’s a definite asset!
Success Aviation hopes to draw on the 7-million-population Houston megalopolis. The school is licensed to administer FAA tests, provide training from Sport Pilot to Commercial and CFII, and service aircraft in its two large hangars.
Meanwhile, out on the right coast, longtime aviation innovator LoPresti Aviation is hosting its annual First Saturday Aviation Experience at the company hangar, Sebastian Municipal Airport (X26), Florida.
More than 100 members of the Indian River Boy Scouts will gather at the annual weekend event for breakfast and an introduction to the world of aviation. Face-to-face chats with pilots and climbing around a variety of airplanes are scheduled.

The late, great aircraft designer Roy LoPresti dreamed of making it easier for kids to gain exposure to the joys of aviation, not such an easy thing to do in these days of guarded airports and security checks.
Childhood today must be so overwhelming for kids, with all the digital distractions their generation is heir to. Anything that gets kids closer to hands-on experience with airplanes can only be for the good, for them and for aviation.
One can only get so much joy from a computer game joystick.
Tim Clifford of RAF (Recreation Aircraft Foundation) will also speak to the kids. RAF is a private group dedicated to preserving backcountry airfields and creating new public-use recreational airstrips.