James Lawrence

Yes, as the pics show, I did indeed take advantage of a rare, calm, beautiful, warm (for winter) day in New England to drive over to Tom Peghiny‘s Flight Design USA and take my first hop in a fuel-injectedRotax-powered LSA: the new CTLSi. Company Chief Pilot Jonathan Carter did me the honors as we went […]

In case you don’t know about Able Flight, here’s a link to the organization’swebsite, and another to itsdonation page. This wonderful endeavor helps paralyzed and otherwise physically challenged people, both civilian and war-wounded, to achieve their dreams of flight by taking them through a complete Sport Pilot training course. Able Flight uses specially-outfitted Sky Arrows […]

U.S.Sinus motorglider owner/dealer Rand Vollmer recently flew 1170 statue miles nonstop at mostly economy cruise settings from Oshkosh to Florida on one 24.5 gallon fill up in his Pipistrel Sinus, 49-foot span motorglider. Color me green with envy and drooling from sheer lust for flight. For the trip, Rand’s average speed was 102 knots. Fuel […]

Tecnam North America‘s CEO Phil Solomon dropped me a line yesterday to make sure I heard the news that there’s a new, all-metal, budget-priced Tecnam LSA, just released, that should generate some enthusiasm among the “LSA: too expensive!” crowd. It’s called the P92 Echo Classic Light. It’s priced at$74,999, and that’s fly away from Richmond, […]

Last Spring I had the pleasure of photographing the severalaircraft that make up the stable of the re-emergent Quicksilver Aircraft company. Quicksilver is the once-and-future, Cessna-style flagship of the ultralight industry back in the 70s and 80s, when it sold almost 15,000 single seater and two-seat aircraft kits under the FAA Part 103 regulation. What […]

There’s been a hue and cry from the seaplane community over New Mexico‘s proposed ban of all seaplane operations in the entire state! The rationale for the ban, as put forward by the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Dept., would seem to be the danger to boaters from seaplanes landing on water, and […]

I posted this in a comment to my SeaMax story yesterday after finding it on an Aussie website. One of the big no-no’s in traditional floatplanes and perhaps (I honestly don’t know) traditional amphibs like the Lake Amphibian and others is landing with the wheels down. On a float plane, it can cause a disastrous […]

While looking for images for my RV-12 post the other day, I came across the smile-worthy video below. It was put up on YouTube by an RV-7 owner who treated his little brother to a flight, with some aerobatics thrown in for grins, and what a delight to see the sheer joy on the little […]

AOPA during its annual Summit convention that ended this weekend announced during the event a program that makes a lot of sense: a national network of flying clubs with the aim to grow general aviation at all levels. We’ve been talking about alternatives to the modern steep cost of private flying for some time now, […]

We’ve been wondering when/if the highly popular Van’sRV-12E-LSAkit airplane would ever be produced as an SLSA. That question is now answered with the newly announced SLSA version, and at a very attractive price: $105,000. In addition, 12 “Signature Edition” models with all options at $115,000. The purpose, says Van’s, is to “define and codify the […]