Affordable Aviation

Recently, our good friends over at General Aviation News reported on the Bearhawk LSA. If you don’t receive GA News’ “The Pulse of Aviation,” I urge you to sign up for it right now (it’s free). Aviators are lucky to have several online news outlets — AVweb, ePilot, eBrief, and eHotline, plus some excellent news […]

The go-up-faster competition in Light-Sport aviation just got more boisterous. SportairUSA loves their S-planes and they just announced a new one: Cub-S. Why do I call them the S-planes people? How about this? They sell the Sting, Sirius, Savage, Snap, and now Cub-S with the Titan Stroker IO-340 engine producing a whopping 180 horsepower. The […]

Fact #1: EAA ArVenture Oshkosh is coming in mere days. Fact #2: In the world of politics (and for that matter in corporate communications), you announce good news to big crowds or at the beginning of the week and you bury bad news on a Friday afternoon when maybe no one is listening hoping they’ll […]

I was a little nervous, I admit. Oh, I wasn’t worried about flying the eSpyder as an airplane. Many years ago I logged plenty of hours in a Flightstar single place ultralight and this was essentially the same airplane. Except it wasn’t identical; this one was powered by an electric motor and it’s funny how […]

Snap! Crackle! Pop! It’s not just for breakfast anymore. Among the vast array of light aircraft I am only aware of a few other single seat models … Here’s a U.S. example (video) and here’s some European single seaters. None of these has yet gone through the process to become Special LSA but that might […]

You might not be in the market for a super slow flying aircraft like Dragonfly that stalls at less than 20 mph. You might not care that Ed Pittman took the lead winning Special LSA approval on behalf of Australian businessman and hang gliding pioneer Bill Moyes and American Dragonfly designer Bobby Bailey. However, as […]

“Isn’t it just a niche market?,” asked a reader in a recent email. The query came after he read about a flurry of new seaplanes and the writer wondered if it could be worth all the investment pouring in to these projects. Development progress in this particular sector-within-a-sector (LSA seaplanes) seems to be far outdistancing […]

Once upon a time the light aircraft industry announced new manufacturers and models at the rate of two, three, or even more every month …for several years. As with every maturing industry before, this torrid pace had to slow. Yet the party isn’t over, far from it. Contrarily, I am aware of several new projects […]

“How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm … after they’ve seen Paree?” That’s a timely reprise of an old show tune to bring our attention to the Paris Air Show, which is sending out some ripples in the “What’s New” Dept. Chances look better every year that electric flight will be a major […]

First Icon Aircraft wowed aviation enthusiasts with its sleek and uniquely featured amphibious A5 LSA seaplane. Over the years the company reported collecting around 1,000 orders, a success story that even beats Cessna’s Skycatcher. However, several years passed and the company did not enter production, although they reported a deal with Cirrus Aircraft to handle […]