Affordable Aviation

UPDATE 1/14/21 — Regretfully, I must announce that DeLand has cancelled its Flyway to Highway event “due to Covid-19.” —DJ After a year of great uncertainty, the earliest airshows of 2021 are feeling the pressure. However, by spring, several organizers hope for great improvement. Here’s some review, good news first and then some cancellations. Flyway […]

As work on my Part 103 List continues, I have reached out to producers of the lightest, most affordable airplanes you can buy. The list is now 54 producers and yet I am aware more may show up to be counted. That’s good. More choice in affordable airplane benefits pilot consumers. In 2020, the most-read […]

Welcome to a New Year! …and to a new airplane, a new Part 103 entry to be specific. One of the most amazing discoveries of 2020 — the year Covid upset lives around the globe — is the particular and peculiar strength of Part 103 ultralights. In a year that has seen hundreds of thousands […]

Back when Light-Sport Aircraft were still youngsters in aviation (LSA are teenagers now), Ron Corbi imported the Direct Fly Alto 100. In those early days, competition was fierce and only a few of the nearly 100 manufacturers who entered the race were able to rise into the top 20 best-selling brands. Then, life got more […]

When I first reported about — and did videos about — Just Aircraft’s Part 103 entry back in 2017 and 2018, lots of readers got excited. Here was the company that astounded everyone with their thrilling SuperSTOL that can take and land on what seems little more than a postage stamp. With a background in […]

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 […]

On an overcast day with mild temperatures, my wife Randee and I hopped in an RV-12 and zipped from Daytona to Lakeland, Florida, home of the famous Sun ‘n Fun campus situated on the south side of the municipal airport. The occasion: Sun ‘n Fun’s Holiday Festival, a car and airplane show. Like many of […]

UPDATED (again!) 12/11/20: Still refining the list. —DJ A great many of you read the article about the new Part 103 List. Your enthusiasm plus lots of comments reflect the strong interest generated by these lightest, most-affordable, and fun-to-fly aircraft. With input from readers and through more research, I have increased the draft list to […]

As regular readers know, I promote ByDanJohnson.com as the home of “affordable aviation.” I even own the domain name AffordableAviation.com. Yet “affordable” is one of those very personal words. What each of us can afford — or chooses to afford — is different than almost everyone else. Therefore, an especially wide range of choices is […]

Then… In the 1990s, a pair of Canadian aircraft dominated the light aviation market in America’s neighbor to the north. The two planes are known to many Americans: Beaver and Chinook. Thanks to a rescue by second owner ASAP many years ago, both continued to be manufactured in Canada’s West. Long-departed Birdman Enterprises did a fine […]