Connie Sue White

(January 2011) Last November a group of 50 members of the F37 committee gathered for its biannual meeting. No, it wasn’t to test a futuristic stealth-fighter aircraft (though, interestingly, a Google search reveals the F/A-37 Talon is one of the fictional aircraft used in Hollywood films). Indeed, on the surface F37 is seemingly much less […]

(December 2011) October’s column discussed training in a light-sport aircraft for the private rating. Briefly, if the LSA is equipped for night VFR and if the manufacturer states so in the POH, you can do all of your training for the rating in the airplane. Upon learning this, I naturally wondered if, after receiving said […]

Wow, what an eye opener! Last night I completed 1.4 hours of my 3-hour night flight-training requirement for the private certificate, single-engine rating, with First Landings Aviation CFI Chris Esposito. I shot 8 full-stop landings in the Remos GX, leaving the last two of the 10 required for my dual cross-country night flight. All I […]

(October 2011) While I was training for my Sport Pilot certificate, there were several times after my instructor and I returned from a late-afternoon flight lesson when a sport pilot grad and another CFI would be next in line to take the Remos G-3 out for a lesson. A lesson that would clearly extend beyond […]

(September 2011) To be sure, Experimental amateur-built (aka homebuilt) aircraft are not light-sport aircraft and never can be. But does that mean sport pilots can’t fly them? Apparently, there’s still a bit of confusion about the answer to this very question among pilots and regulators seven years into the Sport Pilot/LSA rule, says EAA’s David […]

As I was reading the latest issue of Wired the other day, a tidbit updating the remote air traffic management system being developed by Saab and Sweden’s LFV air traffic control service piqued my curiosity enough for me to delve into the topic deeper. My first thought was simple: leave it to the Swedes to […]

After a demo flight in a light-sport airplane a few years ago, private pilot Steve Satter decided on his first airplane purchase. “Up until I bought the Flight Design CTLS, I had been renting standard category airplanes,” explains Satter, who earned his private ticket in 2003. “I discovered that the new LSAs offered affordability compared […]

(July 2011) Can light-sport aircraft be seaplanes? In short, yes. But only as long as the aircraft “intended for water operation” meets and stays within the LSA definition. And, as with land aircraft, that includes meeting a maximum takeoff weight. In the case of seaplanes, the magic number is 1,430 pounds instead of the 1,320 […]

Wednesday morning was one of those mornings I was “living the life.” At 0800 John Moreland, the southeast rep for SWT Aviation, a certified CubCrafters sales center, picked me up at Orlando-Apopka in a Sport Cub for a leisurely flight over to Deland and back so I could get a feel for the airplane. I […]

__The special light-sport aircraft market offers a range of airplanes — there are 115 S-LSA models approved by the FAA — that serve many missions. To gain a bit more perspective on the offerings, I arranged for demo rides in three S-LSAs during this year’s Sun ’n Fun in Lakeland, Florida. Each was touted as […]