Affordable Aviation

UPDATE (5/28/18): Since this article was published, we’ve added our video interview from Aero 2018. For your holiday reading about flying machines, I want to veer off into the weeds for one article. Don’t worry; lots more conventional reporting will follow. After the Uber Elevate conference, mainstream media was all over eVTOLs like bees on […]

For the second year in a row, I was blown away with Lightning Bug. It changed enough that I tagged it Lightning Bug 2 even if designer/developer Brian Austein did not call it that. Let me make a key point: Lightning Bug was a $3,000 aircraft project, with the cost split between two engines — model radio […]

For three years at Aero Friedrichshafen, the wonderful April show in the south of Germany, I have admired one genuine ultralight called Swan. Yes, “ultralight!” Swan may not look like a U.S. “ultralight vehicle” as Part 103 rule writers deliberately named the type. Yet I use the term with care. So does the Swan producer. The […]

Dogs in the Cockpit? A few years ago, various stories began to pop in mainstream media discussing the car industry’s newest focus …no, not only on how many cup holders they could install in your new ride — but instead on accommodations for pets, mainly dogs. Why? Easy. Some high percentage of all auto trips […]

Sun ‘n Fun 2018 ended a great event on Sunday. After traveling home Monday, plans called for a very quick turnaround to jet across the Atlantic for Aero Friedrichshafen 2018, which started Wednesday. For an aviation buff, the month of April is something like being a kid in a candy store. So many fun airplanes. […]

What on Earth is going on in Airplane DesignerLand? Are we headed for a bifurcation, a parting of the ways among those engineering the next generation of aircraft? Perhaps. Will this affect you? How do you feel about non-fixed-wing aircraft? I am searching for a term to generically describe these emerging flying machines; “drones” doesn’t […]

Two years ago at my favorite European airshow, Aero Friedrichshafen, Bill Canino of Sportair USA urged me to go look at a cool Part 103 project. With a general appearance resembling a Chance-Vought F4U Corsair military fighter, designer Jörg Hollmann‘s ultralight Corsair is reasonably authentic including its highly distinctive inverted gull wing design. Two years ago when I […]

April has been busy… starting with a week of Sun ‘n Fun; then a gathering of LSA seaplanes at my home airport the day after; followed by three days of Aero Friedrichshafen in Germany (it runs four days but I had to miss the first); concluding with a journalists-only event at Rotax Aircraft Engines. As a result, my […]

Immediately following Sun ‘n Fun 2018 is Aero 2018. Crammed in on the lone repack day in between shows I photographed a great showing of six LSA or LSA-like seaplanes at my home airport. I’ll report more on that gathering in another post because blast off to Germany and Aero we did that afternoon. Aero Friedrichshafen […]

Sun ‘n Fun 2018 is done. The show actually closed early at about 1 PM due to forecasts of severe weather. Within hours, a bustling event began to look like a ghost town. Despite the rushed finish, the event appeared to be a huge success. Reports were that it was a all-time record result for […]