Affordable Aviation

Explore Affordable Aviation by Dan Johnson on Plane & Pilot Magazine — your guide to light-sport, ultralight, and experimental aircraft. With decades of Dan’s experience, this section offers pilot reports, model comparisons, buying guides, and expert tips designed to help you get airborne affordably and confidently.

What’s Going on at the Top? — Part 2

Earlier I wrote about several changes of leadership at LSA producers. Here’s a similar story, one I find quite amazing for its breadth. Consider this… The following organizations — some of the biggest and most influential in aviation — have seen longtime leaders depart: EAA, Sun ‘n Fun, Sebring Expo, and a couple years ago, […]

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AirVenture 2011 Wrap-Up and Summary

Oshkosh 2011 is history. By numerous accounts, this was a vast improvement over 2010 when the comments commonly went, “Well, I had some interest (in my airplane) and I hope to sell one or two… maybe.” This year I had easily 30 conversations revealing either outright positive successful results or varyingly robust mood indicators such […]

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Farewell to Oshkosh 2011

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 […]

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OshPourri

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. […]

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The “Doc’s” Prescription: Take Two of These Babies!

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 […]

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SplashKash 2011

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 […]

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Oshkosh Airventure 2011

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 […]

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World Aircraft Company Spirit Notches SLSA #120

Way over in Paris a new airplane has arrived just as large numbers of pilots head to Oshkosh for AirVenture. Only this Paris is in Tennessee as reviewed earlier. SLSA #120 Spirit comes from a new company but one whose leader earned his SLSA pedigree gaining four model approvals. That would be Skykits and their […]

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LSA Registration Numbers: The Gang of Six!

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 […]

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