When the light sport aircraft idea first broke ground 20 years ago, the idea was a new class of airplanes bridging between so-called “fat ultralights” and standard-category airplanes whose inflated prices made them unaffordable save for the wealthy few. Two decades later, has the experiment paid off? Yes, but with some qualifications. Light sport airplanes […]

In the cockpit, POV or action cameras have become as common—if not more so—as handheld radios. Driven by the action sports and social media markets, competition in these cameras is white hot and new models and accessories proliferate. For the purpose of this review, the choice is between the GoPro Hero 7 or Hero 8. […]

If your airplane doesn’t get an oil change between annuals—and many don’t—it’s likely that the engine cowl stays put for an entire year. Your only view of the engine room might be through the oil access door or the inlets. Although our review of the accident record doesn’t reveal engine failure as a high risk, […]

Engine failures are the stuff of nightmares. Maybe not quite so agita-inducing as your mechanic calling with a compression report, but worrisome nonetheless, even if aircraft engines are designed with reliability in mind. So are they reliable? Well, yes, if you let them be by slaking them with gas and oil, following the procedures written […]

At first glance, the photo might ignite a game of “which doesn’t belong and why.”  But when it bought Quest Aircraft last year and renamed it Kodiak after the utility aircraft of the same name, Dahar concluded just the opposite. With growth hard to come by in a single-engine turboprop market that appears to be […]

Cirrus and Daher, builder of the TBM turboprop, have different aircraft design philosophies, but they share one thing in common: Both build and sell airplanes to a select, moneyed clientele who seem perfectly happy to trade in a relatively new airplane on the latest new model. Call it community-style marketing. The sales guys know their […]

When aerodiesels first appeared nearly two decades ago, their maintenance requirements were eye watering. Gearboxes had to be inspected, pumps and alternators replaced, clutches attended to. Austro (and Diamond) learned from the experience and have reduced  scheduled maintenance  to a minimum. Diamond’s Ed Hollestelle says the list includes torsional vibration damper inspections at 600 hours, […]

The final assembly line at Diamond Aircraft’s London, Ontario factory has six stations. You can walk the length of it in minute. For at least the past year, the only engines coming down that line are Jet-A fueled diesel powerplants from Austro and many of those have been the DA40 NG four-place single. Improbable as […]

The autogyro is sometimes thought to be an American invention—who hasn’t seen a black-and-white photo of the famed Pitcairn PCA-2?—but it actually originated in Spain. And it’s Europe where this aircraft continues to thrive despite the fact that North America is still the largest and richest light aircraft market. But persistence might be about to […]

The SP-400 is ably manufactured by Japan Radio, but for the PJ2, Sporty’s found a new vendor called Rexon, a Taiwanese company with a modest line of portable radios, including a VHF aviation model. Because Sporty’s didn’t like the operating logic of Rexon’s off-the-shelf RHP-530, despite its $40 lower retail price, it commissioned Rexon to build a clean-sheet design for its new radio, says Sporty’s Doug Ranly. “No one knows about it [RHP-530] because it’s not very user friendly. That’s one reason we didn’t want to sell it because of complications in programming and using it,” Ranly says.

So in a market already choked with more choices than even the most diligent buyer can sort through, how can a late entrant hope to distinguish itself from the crowd? Texas Aircraft appears to be charging into the market with a two-place LSA that aspires to eventually achieve Part 23 certification and a follow-on four-place model, an ambition expressed by at least one other manufacturer-Flight Design-but thus far not achieved. Yes, Tecnam is noted here, but Tecnam began life in the world of certified aircraft and morphed downhill into the ultralight/light sport world.

Despite the lack of a refined regulatory framework, Pipistrel is finding buyers for the Electro around the world, although not in large volume. But between Electro sales, legacy gasoline models and an aspirational urban air mobility market, Pipistrel recently opened a new factory in Gorizia, Italy, just across the border from its headquarters in Slovenia. The new facility is large and has vastly more capacity then it’s using now. When I visited in May 2019, the company was building as many as five Electros a month.