Affordable Aviation

When I started this website back in 2004, even before Light-Sport Aircraft officially arrived on the aviation scene, I began by uploading hundreds of pilot reports that had appeared in various aviation magazines. Most were very detailed descriptions of many ultralights (both single and two seaters) and light kit aircraft. After flying nearly 400 models, […]

Article Updated: 9/18/17 (see below) Electric airplanes continue to catch the headlines… but don’t impact the market much (yet). That may be changing. You rarely see advertising for Pipistrel, the Eastern European builder of several very sleek Light-Sport Aircraft. The company feels they generate interesting-enough news that media organizations will cover their accomplishments. As this […]

“Oshkosh is all about airplanes, right?” asked The Airplane Factory USA‘s Jean d’Assonville. I loved his remark since that is how we promote ByDanJohnson.com. “It’s all about the airplanes!” is how we modeled our line after Apple’s Steve Jobs famously said, “It’s all about the music,” when promoting iPod (remember those!?) in the early 2000s. Jean — […]

In a eNewsletter to what they call “Breezerians,” the German company with the same name as their model reported a festive debut to their newest model called Breezer Sport. At their home field and despite weather problems for arrivals coming from the south, the airport got “overloaded” with traffic. The Breezer event was “not too […]

Article updated… Stuck as I am in Florida preparing for the onslaught of Hurricane Irma… with great regret, I am missing for the first time the Midwest LSA Expo in Mount Vernon, Illinois (about an hour east of St. Louis). Yet the good news is that some airplanes for which I expected to do Video […]

Belite entrepreneur James Weibe has successfully used his tech industry background to raise interest for his latest project, this time his first two seater called Chipper. (It was named Pipper but that apparently energized the anxieties of Piper Aircraft lawyers so James altered the name.) James has informed his Facebook and email readers with continual […]

As we work on PlaneFinder 2.0, our one-of-a-kind method to help pilots find the best Light-Sport Aircraft — watch for it in a few more days — we have another list-in-waiting. It is our FIRM List or FI.R.M List, meaning it helps you find Flight Instruction (FI), Rental (R), or Maintenance (M). These two — […]

I believe you should applaud Milan Bristela. Now a veteran of the Light-Sport Aircraft sector, he has steadily built a successful aircraft manufacturing enterprise — BRM Aero — that recently rolled out Bristell #300. With its first delivery to a customer in 2011, this represents an average pace of 50 aircraft per year, a wonderful […]

We reported on FX1 shortly after it began flight trials in the hands of American light aviation expert John Hunter. This article offers John’s perspective on flight characteristics along with specifications; you should definitely read this if FX1 stirs your imagination. InnovAviation is an Italian company founded in 2001 by Alfredo Di Cesare, who began his […]

Before America becomes completely consumed with Eclipse Viewing Fever, you might want to pull your (solar filter-protected) eyes away from the soon-to-darken sky to catch a few glimpses of intriguing aircraft from EAA’s summer celebration of flight. In this pre-Eclipse weekend post, I’ll show you some images of cool flying things I saw at the big […]