Lucky me. On a warm, sunny day I drove less than a mile to the airport’s Downwind Cafe restaurant where I met the developers of MySky (the company) and their MS-1 (a new LSA model). After a tasty lunch we strolled over to their facility and hangar. All the while I was within a mile of my home; last year my wife and I caught a good deal at Spruce Creek, an upscale residential airpark. *** MySky is located on this airport and quietly, their team has been developing what I’d call the first of the “high-performance tandem LSA.” We have seven other tandem LSA (check at PlaneFinder 2.0) but none cruises near the 120-knot limit. MS-1 will, with its 120-hp Jabiru 3300 6-cylinder powerplant. *** Company VP, Tim Plunkett (an engineer and pilot of airliners to Pitts Specials) has been flight testing for 140 hours. They felt ready for a reporter’s first glance. The short report: MS-1 is a hot rod flying machine with excellent stability and proper manners in steep turns or stalls. Engineers need to shave prototype pounds, ease the aileron input forces and provide more cabin air, but the MySky team did an excellent job of clean-sheet designing president Dieter Canje’s dream machine. In particular, landings were cool. Once I followed Tim’s spot-on advice, MS-1 displays perfect ground-effect behavior. Now the team is turning to finalizing the design and gearing up for production.
