Having survived my adventure last week in a glider, I decided to try out an entirely new breed of aircraft – the Light Sport Aircraft. These planes are designed to be flown by pilots who are not into full scale flying. That means they cater to the pilot who wants to go for a short hop – to sight-see or just wander around enjoying the experience. To fly one of these, you need a restricted pilot’s license but no medical exam is needed. If you have a driver’s license you can fly. However, you cannot go into an airport with a control tower and have to obey speed limits of 120MPH. These planes are being used for training, since they are relatively cheap to fly.
The craft I flew today is an Apollo LSA, which has as much power as the Cessna I first soloed in, but weighs quite a bit less. That made it pretty nimble.
The wings on this little bird even un-clip and fold back to allow it to be towed home. You can put it in a trailer just to make it cheap to store when you are not flying. That is what garages are really for – right? Oh, and it even has a parachute big enough to lower the entire plane to the ground (if you break it in flight – which I do NOT plan on doing. Still, it is comforting to know it is there.)
It was fun to fly, and I even managed to take off, fly around for an hour and land without hurting either my instructor, the airplane or myself! Another fun-filled day aviating! I plan on doing this again next week. Cheryl is even going down – to watch! She is not sure about going up in one of these yet!
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