James Lawrence

It’s enough to be proud of flying a “real” airplane for 50 years withoutaccident, incident, or citation for 50 years. But imagine if half of those years were flown in those crazy death wish machines: ultralights! Of course, those of us who’ve flown hang gliders, ultralights and other true birdexperience aircraft know just how safe […]

In a recent article in Flying Magazine, an editor volunteered his opinion that the Light Sport industry is on life support. There are so many good arguments to refute such a sky-is-falling assessment, it kind of makes you wonder why a respected journalist would go out of his way to attract a lot of heat […]

Back from a busy, weather-challenging (for photography) trip to the Bahamas, I stopped by to visit Dan Johnson and his soul mate Randee at their Spruce Creek air park digs north of Florida. If you haven’t had the pleasure, visit Spruce Creek sometime to see how cool an air park can be. Hundreds and hundreds […]

Sebring’s final day ended at 2 p.m. with the customary light attendance and gathering clouds. I spoke with a couple of the principals of the Expo staff that did such a superb job making this no doubt the smoothest running, most feature-packed event that I’ve certainly been too. Kudos to all: it was a beautifully […]

The big Saturday came and went, bookended by winds, overcast and raindrops of the intermittent kind. No doubt many potential showgoers were deterred by the non-Florida-like weather. LSA demo flights were conducted apace, although none of the three days of the show have shown the kind of flight activity of previous years because the weather […]

Just after I posted in the wee hours last night I got this late email from Greg Lawrence about his work with deaf flight students. Greg added a link to more information, check it out, it’s very interesting. “Nobody can hear very well in a small aircraft,” writes Greg, “and fewer than ‘nobody’ can process […]

More airplanes made it through the winter weather blanketing much of the midwest and east. Pipistrel’s much-awaited Alpha Trainer arrived at 8 last night thanks to its much-fatigued pilot Don Sharp who soldiered on through the crud all the way from Indiana. Highlights? Too many to list, but in the wee hours meself we’ll go […]

Sebring is off and running! The day in pix and captions…

This year’s LSA bash in Sebring which starts next Thursday, 17 January and runs through the weekend looks to be far and away the best ever. Jana Filip and crew have been working hard all year to make this a top professional event. Lots of new things in addition to the usual comfy, cozy gathering […]

With all the bright minds drilling down for electric flight gold worldwide these days, including extensive research into battery storage technology and electric motor development, you’d think it’s only a matter of time before a major aircraft company comes out with an off-the-shelf aircraft to officially “launch” electric flight for the masses. Yuneec, a Chinese […]