Fly Light Sport CA

As the recreational flying season slows and northern states button down for winter, one Florida LSA supplier is headed further south, much further. As he prepares for the upcoming 2024 season, Deon Lombard is headed to South Africa where he will work with the Whisper factory for three months as manufacturer and importer prepare to […]

Problem: The fleet of aircraft trainers in the USA is getting old. The familiar, reliable standard is the Cessna 172. While these are being made brand new, their base cost has risen to half a million dollars. Meanwhile, much more affordable vintage 172s normally have dated instrument panels and the airframe often looks well-worn. Built […]

Fifty three years ago this month, Neil Armstrong made history when he declared first, “The Eagle has landed.” His words described a momentous occasion: humans about to set foot on the moon. Orlican can’t claim such high ground but through two years of Covid dislocations, the Czech Republic developer finished their second-generation LSA and the […]

Priced between an RV-7 and RV-14, Whisper is clearly a very similar aircraft but sleekly built of all carbon fiber composites. This was bound to happen and some readers may be delighted. While the RV series is the most popular kit-built airplane ever, it can be a demanding build for some and Whisper offers some […]

I hope you can attend 2020’s Midwest LSA Expo — the last airshow in 2020. If you cannot attend, rest assured your trusty reporter will be onsite and gathering all the info on the coolest aircraft I can find. What will be available? Well, if I am honest, we will have to see when we […]

While I continue to worry about the cash crunch faced by two of my favorite shows, I am still driven to provide content as if those shows had occurred this year and not been postponed to 2021. Of course, I refer to Aero Friedrichshafen and Sun ‘n Fun, the latter my focus for this post. […]

In case I don’t get another post up before (gosh, this is a busy time of year, isn’t it?)… let me wish all visitors and viewers a very warm and wonderful holiday. We so appreciate your visits to ByDanJohnson.com! We begin a new year shortly and will keep our focus on the many enjoyable light […]

If you are an ultralight enthusiast (as I certainly am!), then you are probably celebrating with me as FX1 joins the Special LSA fleet — which it does as Number 150 on our popular SLSA List. Here’s a secret: the SLSA List is one of the most-visited features on ByDanJohnson.com. Those who frequent that page know […]

Years ago, back in the late 1990s, I flew an aircraft called JetFox 97. It resembled the Flightstar of the day and both were modeled on talented European designer Hans Gygax’s designs. Along came Light-Sport Aircraft in 2004; years passed with not much word about the increasingly aged JetFox 97. It’s back and looking handsome, […]

This website was born in 2004 after a few years of laboriously uploading a large number of written pilot reports that had appeared in aviation print magazines over the years before. It was tougher to do then than it is now. The project started in late 1999, barely four years after the World Wide Web […]