Affordable Aviation

Most of our tandem Special Light-Sport Aircraft — Legend Cub, Courier, SportCub, Savage, Hornet, Hawk, and SkyArrow — are recreational airplanes. Except for the last one (Italy’s smooth, composite Sky Arrow) most might also fall into the “bush” category in that they are slower-flying, fabric-covered, rugged aircraft suitable for landing on unimproved airstrips. *** A […]

Wrapping (that’s moviespeak) yesterday’s item with Charles Thomson and Santa Monica Flyers, the erstwhile flight training entrepreneur happily reports a good start. “I haven’t done any marketing whatsoever; it’s all been word of mouth. People were waiting for a light sport airplane in this area.” *** Note: Photo at right is Charlie’s SportCruiser. *** That’s […]

Charles Thomson sounds wise beyond his 21 years, all the better since he’s just started up a flight training operation at Santa Monica Airport (SMO) in the general aviation-dense L.A. Basin. *** Santa Monica Flyers is its moniker, and transplanted Brit and CFII Charlie seems ideally suited to the task of teaching people to fly…since […]

Soon to be a part of the GA flight line at a quaint country strip in western Mass. is the American Eagle. *** It’s new home will be at *** Great Barrington Airport (GBR), typical of small airdromes throughout our great land with its 2,585-foot paved strip, flight training and repair stations, charter ops and […]

Fresh from the skies of Sebring, FL comes my short clip of the Tecnam P2008, a truly beautiful SLSA built in Italy. Construction is traditional aluminum skin and structure for the wings and tail and composite/carbon fiber for the fuselage and all the gorgeous curvy parts. *** The airplane will go for $170,000, making it […]

I readily admit to being a hang glider pilot at heart. After flying several hundred airplanes, I still consider flying a hang glider to be perhaps THE purest way to fly. I’ve always said that if I could just snap my fingers and be in the air — oh, that it was so simple and […]

Some long-awaited revisions to the Sport Pilot Rule have just been released and as we’ve anticipated in earlier posts, there are positive improvements. *** First up: the restrictive 10,000-foot maximum altitude limitation for Light Sport flight, which among other scenarios restricted flying over high terrain such as in the Rockies, was amended to allow flight […]

Merry Christmas 2009 from ByDanJohnson.com More LSA Content · Completely Free WORLD WIDE WEB / December 23, 2009 – A well-known aviation businessman once said, “Pilots are information starved; they read anything and everything that pertains to their area of interest.” With that in mind, leading Light-Sport Aircraft (LSA) website, ByDanJohnson.com, now offers a larger […]

I just had the pleasure of a nice long chat with Mike Adams, the always-helpful V.P. of Underwriting for Avemco Insurance, who updated me on the accident picture for Light Sport flying this past year or so. *** There’s good news and bad news: *** Bad news first — “The results are still not what […]

After five days of hustle and bustle to get the talking, shooting, flying and writing done at Sebring (I’m an Air Force of One), I got a real treat: pal Dave Graham, who’s worked tirelessly since the beginning to bring the Gobosh line of LSA to America and get the two lovely low-wing models they […]