LSA/Sport

Icon Aircraft last week released the details of its remarkable week at AirVenture. The startup LSA manufacturer scored a total of 143 deposits for its composite folding-wing Icon A5 amphibious sport airplane, which pushes the order book to nearly 700, the company said, turning the calendar for first available delivery positions into 2015. The company […]

Aircraft distributor SportairUSA is bringing a new LSA option to the American market, and an aerobatic one at that. On Tuesday at EAA AirVenture the company unveiled a prototype of the aircraft, which is a single-seat, 130 horsepower aerobatic LSA known as the Snap. The Snap is a low-wing taildragger manufactured in Italy by Dallair […]

As the 2011 AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, hit the halfway mark, Icon Aircraft had received deposits for 65 Icon A5 airplanes during the show. Crowds filed into Icon’s dimly lit booth to watch the A5’s wings fold and unfold, and to place their $2,000 show special deposits. For each deposit accepted at the show, Icon […]

(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 […]

ICON Aircraft, the California developer of the ICON A5 amphibious sport airplane, announced receiving $25 million in additional equity funding that will allow the start-up company to complete engineering development work and enter production as early as next year. The primary financing sources come from venture capitalists Satyen Patel, the former head of Nike’s Asia […]

__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 […]

DO YOU REMEMBER THE Venn diagrams used in math and logic classes to illustrate relationships between sets? That is what comes to my mind when trying to understand who can and can’t fly light-sport aircraft … well, actually there is no “can’t.” Most of us in aviation know that six years into the Sport Pilot/LSA […]

(April 2011) WEIGHT MATTERS. EVEN in the light-sport aircraft world. As I wrote in last month’s column about the LSA categories, the maximum gross weight is one of the key factors in determining whether or not an aircraft meets the FAA’s LSA definition. How did the FAA come to that final 1,320-pound figure? Well, it […]

(March 2011) AS MANY OF YOU MIGHT BE aware, Sport Pilot students and certified sport pilots can solo and fly only light-sport aircraft, commonly referred to as LSA. You also might know that these aircraft must meet requirements and limitations, with the big one being a maximum gross weight of 1,320 pounds for land airplanes. […]

Yeee-Haa! That was the unbridled reaction to my first solo takeoff in a Carbon Cub SS, the new LSA from CubCrafters. When I pushed the little black knob forward to unleash the 180 hp CC340 engine, the tail lightened swiftly and the airplane quickly started dancing softly on its 29-inch Alaska Bushwheel Airstreak tires before […]