LSA Fun Foreign and Domestic

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 of homes, condos, hangars and "planeports", even on-site business and a restaurant make this a wonderful aviation destination. It's my fourth visit over the years and always a pleasure...as it is to visit with Dan and Randee.

This time I got to meet Dan's partner-in-aviation Brian Boucher, a long time, big-jet professional pilot and one of four owners of the new Flight Design CTLSi I flew for the magazine up in CT at Tom Peghiny's US HQ just before it left for Spruce Creek. The opportunity came up for Dan to join the partnership and the numbers added way up, so now the Johnsons are part owners of that lovely fuel-injected CTLSi.

He and Randee flew it over to the Bahamas and joined the LSA flyout organized by Bahama LSA Ambassador and Breezer dealer Mike Zidziunas and Aviation Hotline's Jacob Peed. Look for my story on the four-day event soon in the mag.

Meanwhile, here's a few pix to whet your appetite for the Bahamas, and the new biplane Super Petrel, a long-time Brazilian biplane amphib currently in the process of going for S-LSA certification through the ASTM process.

James LawrenceWriter

"If it flies, it's cool" pretty much nails the ethos of James Lawrence. Milestones along the taxiway include boyhood obsessions with airplane models and science fiction; first flight lesson at 15 (Piper Cub); cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy, (class of '67); sailplane lessons in the California desert when he could afford it; built and flew his first hang glider (1973); magazine and book author and actor (TJ on tv's SWAT); former Editor (Ultralight Aircraft, Outdoor Photographer, Plane & Pilot); freelance writer/photographer since 1992; current LSA Editor-at-Large. Rents a local Piper Cub in Great Barrington; still loves the sky, from ground and air.