Ancient Greek Philosophy and Perfect Landings

One of my students, Sebastian, has learned to land.  During the process of learning, it hasn't always been perfect or pretty, but as of Tuesday, he's been keeping them consistently safe.  The old "fly low and slow down the runway" trick is what did it for him.

But, the last landing that day ended with a slightly sideways bump, and it disappointed him.  Bringing it back to the ramp, I asked him to tell me how it went.

"I needed more right aileron, and more left rudder," he said.

And so, I was once again reminded of Aristotle's writings.

And now, you guys are thinking "Hmmn.  I'm pretty sure Aristotle didn't know anything about airplanes." And you're right.  But in his Ethics, he did have some pretty good ideas about the delicate art of getting things right.  The upshot of it is: "Doing the right thing, at the right time, the right way, and for the right reason."

So, the next question is: "How are we to know what the right thing, at the right time, the right way, and the right reason even IS?"  And the answer is: "Practice."

When you're landing an airplane, nothing is ever going to be exactly the same.  You'll be at all kinds of different weights, with different people in the plane with you, and at different points in the flight, as you burn fuel.  The air will be different temperatures and have different densities.  And the wind changes like... well, it changes like the wind.  Like many things in life, squeezing a great landing out of an airplane depends on a myriad of changing circumstances and timing.

 It took me a long time to realize this, because my first flight instructor, Jerry, wasn't an Aristotelian.  He, like many of my colleagues in this industry, was a Platonist.  In "The School Of Athens" by Raphael, the difference between the two is represented by the two central figures:

Plato, on our left, has his hand elevated with his index finger pointing up.  Aristotle, on our right, has his hand down and his palm level.  Both of these poses were meant to represent how each philosopher understood the ultimate nature of reality.  Both men are also, rather anachronistically, carrying what appear to be leather-bound copies of the books they wrote.

Plato (and Jerry) held that the physical world in which we live is merely a pale imitation of True Reality, which consists of  "ideal forms" of everything that has ever existed or might exist. Up there in some kind of heaven, where he's pointing, is the perfect idea of... (a table, a musical performance, a '67 Chevelle, a pretty girl, a crosswind landing).  The world we live in, being made of atoms, is at best a flawed representation of the divine ideas.

Aristotle's gesture means "No, no, you've got it all wrong, This Right Here is the real world."  Our ideas about things are made up from all the various examples of stuff we find lying around.  But those abstract ideas are not what's "real."  Anything with substance and essence is describable as a "This-Here-Thing."

I should probably note that when Jerry held up his finger like Plato, he meant "Listen Up," and when I hold my hand down like Aristotle, I usually mean "Keep your wings level," but neither of us are as profound.

When Jerry was teaching me to land, he (like many other instructors and pilots) took the position that there is such a thing as a Perfect-Ideal-Form of "landing" that we can never actually achieve, but to which we must always aspire.  The only way to come close to The Perfect Landing is by adopting a nearly religious adherence to certain "ideal" procedures and techniques, while despairing of the shabbiness inherent in this material world and our own sinful fallibility.

As an Aristotelian, I found this infuriating.  So, it took me an awfully long time to learn to land.  But, the FAA doesn't distinguish between Platonic and Aristotelian worldviews. So, a legitimate alternative is available for me and my student.  The quality of your landings is not merely a happy accident which follows a mechanical process- good landings, like Aristotelian Ethics, are an art, not easily quantifiable, display different qualities under different circumstances, and require skill and discernment born of practice.

Sebastian, thinking like a Platonist, evaluated his last landing on Tuesday as falling short of an Ideal, for the want of greater control inputs.  "I needed more right wing down, and more left rudder."  Alas!  If only he had followed procedure more closely, he would have come closer to the theoretical Form of a good landing!

Andy, thinking like an Aristotelian, replied "That's right.  You needed more right wing down, and more left rudder... this time.  But just seeing what went wrong this particular time isn't going to help you in the future.  There's three things I can point out that will."

1.  Doing touch-and-go landings is all very well and good, and it keeps you mentally flying.  But when you called for a full-stop, you were committed to the idea that you were putting the wheels down and keeping them down.  That made you "give up" flying the instant you felt the wheels touch.  Don't.  You are still flying until you've pulled off onto the taxiways.
2. Committing to the landing also got you thinking "up-and-down" instead of forward.  Remember, follow-through is important when you're swinging a golf club, karate-chopping through a board, or landing a plane.  When you fly as low as you can stand it, direct your attention to the far end of the runway.  Then, stay over the center line by tilting the wings, and point it straight with your feet.
3. Let the plane land itself.  Don't try to chop the power too quickly, or flare too hard, or too early, or try to plop it down at any particular point.  Do nothing to "force" the landing.  Slow down the way you always do- bring back the power, don't let the nose drop, and...  Slow.  Down.  And.  Wait. 

Sebastian went flying with me again yesterday.  Our lesson this time was on soft-field technique.  We touched down the mains and kept the nose up in a "wheelie" until we lifted off again.  We had a witness in the back seat who actually recorded several of his lovely landings with her camera. Good job, Sebastian.  And thank you, Aristotle.

Oh, Dear.

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

But... I break my rambling, pointless, soul-searching rants up into discrete paragraphs.  And, I don't do drugs and I've never had to spend time in rehab.  This thing must be broken.

Silly Rule #93

Working with an instructor candidate today, I was reminded of Silly Rule #93.  Specifically, 14 CFR 61.93(a) through (e), which deals with the endorsements a student pilot needs for "cross country" flights.  This is the kind of thing that happens when the rules about one thing are written at different times by different people lawyers.  I wouldn't recommend clicking that link, by the way.  The relevant parts of that rule come to four pages long.

• The way it's supposed to work:  Student pilots are not supposed to do cross-country flights of more than 50 nautical miles, unless their flight planning and weather have been checked by an authorized instructor, who signs a logbook endorsement authorizing it.  This endorsement is good for that day, that flight only, in that particular airplane, under the stated conditions.  It's supposed to be very tightly controlled.

• Inexplicable fact:  A student pilot flying solo can fly from one airport and land at another one 99 miles away, WITHOUT getting that special one-time-only cross-country endorsement.  In fact, it's perfectly legal for them to accomplish a flight that is LONGER than the "long solo cross country" flight required for the private ticket (61.109(a)(5)(ii)), as long as it involves more than the minimum required three airports... and yet it doesn't count towards meeting that requirement.  It wouldn't even count as "cross-country experience" at all.

If the Federal Aviation Regulations were computer code, it would crash.  The problem is that "de-bugging" it requires an act of Congress.  To show you the situation, here's a map of various airports... but I suppose it could also be used as plans to build a tinfoil pyramid hat:

Let's take "Jane," a student pilot. If she's been endorsed to fly solo, 61.93 prohibits her from:

1. Conducting a solo cross-country flight, or any flight greater than 25 nautical miles from the airport where the flight originated, 
2. making a solo flight and landing at any location other than the airport of origination..

That confines her to the small blue circle, encompassing airports "A" and "B" in my little picture, here.  She cannot land at airport "B," UNLESS she's been given an endorsement to go there for the purpose of practicing takeoffs and landings.  Technically, that's a "cross-country" flight, but it does not count as "cross-country experience" unless the airports are 50 miles apart.

Yeah, I know.

So, before Jane even gets a "Solo cross-country" endorsement, she can bop back and forth between A and B as much as she pleases.  She can't break the blue circle and expand out into the red one until her "Initial Solo Cross-Country Endorsement."  Then, items 1) and 2) above have been trumped.

That means that Jane can go as far away as she likes... as long as she doesn't make a "cross-country" flight that involves a landing at another point more than 50 miles away.  Jane could fly all the way across Texas, turn around, and come back, providing she didn't land anywhere else.  Doing so without refueling would be a nifty trick, but you get my point- to get "cross-country experience," she's gotta put her wheels down,* and in order to do that, she's supposed to get that super-special endorsement of the day.

However, she can also be endorsed to make repeated flights to airports more than 25 miles away from her "original point of departure," but not more than 50.  So, with separate multiple-use endorsements for each airport, she could bop back and forth between A and C, A and D, A and E... as I've shown with red lines with double-headed arrows, or maybe that's the edges of my tinfoil hat.  I'm going to need one of those by the time I'm done with this.  I also seem to have spelled "ACADAE," which, I suppose, must be the Greek gods of cross-country travel.

Ergo, Jane could take off from A, fly West to C, take off again, fly East back to A, then touch-and-go departing straight off for D, despite the fact that C and D are more than 50 miles apart.  And, she can do so without the endorsement that says that an instructor checked her flight planning and dispatched her for that solo cross-country flight.

What Jane could NOT do is fly directly from C to D without stopping back at A (the green line).  That would require the special endorsement.  Someone has lost sight of the fact that it's easier to just keep flying.

What's less obvious is that I could endorse Jane to fly back and forth between C and E, as well as D and E, as well, as long as all of these airports are within 50 miles of "the airport from which the flight originated" (airport A), and I have provided instruction back-and-forth between all of these segments of "the route."  So A-C-E-D is also a possible flight which would not need the one-time-only (green line) endorsement, and it also describes what we've just done to Silly Rule #93, if we were playing tennis against it.

I'm sorry to say that this is not merely hypothetical.  Several years ago, a Designated Pilot Examiner in my district got into an argument with a Private Pilot applicant about this... and lost.  "Jane" accomplished the A-C-D-A flight, calling it her "long solo cross country" flight of more than 150 miles total, in accordance with part 61.109(a)(5)(ii).  The examiner, familiar with the area, said:

"Hey, this doesn't count.  You never went more than fifty miles from your original point of departure.  You're not eligible for this checkride."

Jane, who had read the rule pretty carefully, said:

"Like fun it doesn't count.  It doesn't say you have to go more than fifty miles away.  It says 'one leg' of at least fifty miles.  C to D counts as cross-country experience, and I had to get the endorsement that said my instructor checked my flight planning, and everything."

Jane appealed the examiner's decision to the Flight Standards District Office.  She must have written a hell of a letter, or been a lawyer or something, because they sided with her and suspended his DPE certificate for 30 days.  I suppose it also helps that she was technically right.

But at the same time, the examiner wasn't crazy, because cross-country flights are supposed to look like the A to F route, taking students away from the comfort zone of their immediately local area, where they might actually have to (gasp) navigate!  And, you have to consider that the A-C-E-D-A route, while actually longer and more complex than the A-C-D-A route Jane flew, does NOT satisfy 61.109(a)(5)(ii), because none of the "legs" between airports are more than 50 miles apart.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go into my tinfoil cubicle, where I receive transmissions from outer space that let me interpret FAA regulations.

* footnote- "Jack," flies bombers for the USAF. He takes off from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany, flies 2500 miles to bomb the bejeezuz out of Wherever-istan, refuels from a KC-135 on the way there and on the way back... and lands back home.  He never squeaked a wheel more than 50 miles away from where he took off, so according to the FAA, that's a "Local" flight, not a "Cross-country."  For that reason, the "landing at a point other than the point of departure" language was deleted from the cross-country requirements for the Airline Transport Pilot Certificate, but remains in place for the Private and Commercial Certificates, and the Instrument Rating.

A good day

Hey people.  Today I had a good day.  Two, count 'em, two of my students had their checkrides today, and both of them passed.  I pulled a 'twofer.  All credit and kudos goes to them.

That's happened to me before.  In fact, I once pulled a 'threefer.  But what struck me on my way home tonight was the fact that both of them (a) had worked with me before, (b) have since explored other programs and instructors elsewhere, (c) got significant chunks of their programs done without me, and (d) came back because they didn't think they'd be able to get finished the way they'd been going.

One of these guys felt like he was spinning his wheels.  He didn't have faith that the people he was working with would be able to get him done, and he was frustrated by his perceived lack of progress.  The other guy felt like he was finished, but his instructor wasn't willing to sign him off for the checkride and be done with it.  After his third "you're almost ready, just one more flight" flight, he decided that his wallet was being milked, and he was out of there.

The other thing that gets me is that I get A Lot Of Business like this; it's been at least 25-30% of my work over the years, and I've gained a reputation in this town as a "closer."  Is this normal?  I don't think so.  If it was, other instructors would be "batting cleanup" for me at least as often.  It's happened, but not a lot.  When I lose business, it's usually because I'm expensive or inconvenient, not because my clients aren't getting done.

So, I thought I'd share some of the war stories about how some pilots get stuck in bad programs to the point where they either give up flying, or jump ship and take their business elsewhere:

• There is a flight school out there somewhere that keeps your logbook "on file" with your student records.  A curious pilot, investigating her options, came to me thinking that she did not own a logbook, despite the fact that she'd been charged for one.  The school treated it as if it was theirs, not hers, and she did not have access to it.
• Some schools use their 141 programs the same way.  They create the impression that because you're in their program, what you've done doesn't count (or doesn't count for as much) in any other program, or that you'll have to "start over" if you leave.  In fact, everything you've done under part 141 also counts under part 61, regardless of who starts or finishes your program.  If you're concerned that part 61 takes more hours or is not as well-respected, you're mistaken.
• Lots of schools ask for all the money up front, which they hold "on account" for you.  If you want to pull out of their program and take your money with you, you're pretty much out of luck.  Please do not fall for this old chestnut.  As Admiral Ackbar said, "It's a trap!"

At the start of each lesson, you should know what you'll be doing, and how it will advance your program.  At the end of each lesson, you should know how much progress you've made, and how much closer you are to your checkride.  You should also know, before you leave, what you'll be doing with your next lesson, until your program is done.

If that's not the way you're doing it... come take a flight with me.

Logbook Lore

Ahhhh... Logbook time.

Once again, I've got a guy coming up for a checkride, so it's time to do a logbook audit and total up the hours. Applying for a Private Pilot Certificate is usually your first exposure to the complexities of accounting for your aviation experience.  Right away, it turns out that there's a big difference between how you're supposed to log your hours according to the regulations and they way they want you to report your hours on form 8710-1, the "Application for Airman Certificate or Rating."

They don't match.  At all.  This is a form of hazing.

If you have an old logbook, it won't have enough columns (or the right kind) to account for what you'll eventually have to add up, because the rules (and the application) have changed over time.  And if you're counting time that you flew in another country according to other rules, that time does count towards an FAA certificate, but you need to re-interpret how all those hours are organized.

These things can be dealt with.  It's a hassle, but it's not impossible.  I've gotten into the habit of putting people's time into an excel spreadsheet that counts up hours "8710-style." There's also a great piece of software, Logbook Pro, by nc-software, which totals up your hours six ways 'til sunday, and it's all but required for the professional pilots who wants to keep a resume up to date (in this job market, that pretty much means "everybody").  And Gleim publishes a logbook that keeps running totals of the data that the 8710 wants.  It's the only logbook I've seen that does this.  Go Gleim!

However... I have never seen a logbook (including my own) that didn't have something messed up in it.

• One of my old students had his logbook packed in a suitcase with a bottle of vodka, which broke.  As it turns out, alcohol is a great way to dissolve ink.  Fortunately, the vodka company had an 800 number, and the hotline operator found a procedure involving wax paper, patience, and an oven set at 200 degrees.  The result was a very wrinkly and funny-smelling, but still barely legible mess.
  
• Another student was going through a spiteful divorce, and his estranged wife put his logbook through the shredder.  According to the local FSDO, a signed and notarized affidavit with an honest estimation of his hours up to that point was okay, given the circumstances. Otherwise, he would have had to start over.
• I have a pet parrot.  She likes to chew paper- especially yummy-looking, colorful green paper.  She didn't do much damage to the data, but if I ever want to flip DIRECTLY to November 2009 through April 2010, it'll be easy.

But the very worst damage that pilots do to their logbooks is the stuff they do themselves.  That's mostly because the rules about how to log your flights are passed along by oral history.  The language in the regulations (14CFR 61.51) is very complex. Pilots usually don't ever even try to read it- they prefer to have it explained by someone with experience, and hilarity ensues:

• Every so often, somebody trying to fill space in a magazine will crack the books open and quote from the regs, but will try to wrap it up in a friendly "FAQ" or "Q&A" format.  Novice pilots are supposed to nod and say "ah, sooo" like apprentices to a zen master, despite the fact that these articles are not at all helpful.
• A wiseass who haunts message boards (or writes a blog) will cut-and-paste long passages of the neigh-incomprehensible gobbledeegook from the regs when people express confusion about the magazine articles.
• Your first flight instructor will "show you how to" fill out your logbook, and your second flight instructor will angrily cross out most of what the first guy did, claiming it's wrong.  By the time you're on your fourth instructor, you no longer let your instructors fill out your logbook for you.
• Your buddy swears that you're allowed to fill out something a certain way because he claims "it counts" or "there's a loophole" that lets you do it.  You believe him, and then find out he's wrong 378 flight-hours later, when you try to get a job.
• The ledger-green pages of your logbook are covered with white-out.
• You embark on a long, fruitless quest for "green-out."
• You find yourself in a heated discussion about using the "single line-through" correction method, which someone has found in an old advisory circular on a different topic.

Sometimes, it seems that the logic and lore of logbooks comes from a long game of "Telephone," where someone starts by whispering a phrase ("I like roast beef with mashed potatos") into someone's ear, then they whisper it to the next person, and so on, until by the twentieth person, the phrase has become something else entirely ("Why lick robot feet? Wish for more pot holes"). Here's a little story, and every word is true:

The very worst logbook I ever audited came from a guy who was just really, really, really bad.  He had no clear idea how to fill it out, and he wasn't even consistent about how he got it wrong.  He couldn't even do math.  Every single page was added up wrong, and he didn't carry the totals correctly from one page to the next.  It was soooooo awful, that I prepared myself to tell the poor guy that he needed to get another logbook and copy the entries into it so that it would at least make sense and add up right. He could keep this one so that he'd have his old instructors' signatures in it.

When I saw him again, I was just about to break the news to him, when he pulled out another, older logbook, and asked if I had any questions about his "new copy"- the one that I'd been auditing.

Yeah.  His original logbook was so awful and scrambled up that he'd already done what I was about to suggest, and the "corrected" result was still that bad.  He'd taken it to one of his old instructors and had the guy sign every line... again... and that instructor was no help in putting this new one together, either.  I doubt the guy knew how.  The numbers I finally totaled up were a best-guess, more of a historical reconstruction than an accurate accounting.

But most people don't have it that bad.  There are only a couple of pitfalls that pilots usually fall into, and those aren't explained well in the regs. It's almost always trouble over "Pilot-In-Command" time, and that's something I'll cover in my next post!  Fly safe!

Fumes

So, here's what my cube looks like after a lesson on the U.S. Airspace system...

Some of those markers are pleasantly-scented, and it left my cube smelling like a bowl of fruity pebbles with vodka poured over it instead of milk.  I need to go breathe clean air now.

What's an LSA? part 3 of 3: Six pounds of sugar

A few weeks ago, we got a visitor at my school who wanted to look at our LSA.  He was typical of such guys (see part 2 of 3), and when I walked him out to the ramp, he saw it from 50 feet away, beamed like a kid at Christmas, and said:

"Just like an old Cessna 150!"

Then, once he stuck his head in the door, he said:

"Oh.  Uhm. Whaa..?"

Technically, he's right on both counts.  It is like an old 150 in that it's a high-wing, tricycle-gear airplane with two side-by-side seats, and a single fuel tank in the fuselage.  And the resemblance ends there.


There's a family of single-engine trainers like that- Cessna's 150 and 152, the Piper Tomahawk, the Beech Skipper, the Diamond DA-20, the Grumman Yankee, and probably a few others (just don't get me started on the Tomahawk).   These things were mechanically simple, easy to fly, inexpensive, and strong enough to withstand plenty of students' "bounce-and-slam" landings.


None of those planes qualified as "Light-Sport" aircraft when the rule came into effect.  Not one.

It's not because these are large, powerful machines.  They're not.  They're way too small for lots of people.  But these planes all have a max takeoff weight between 1500 and 1764 pounds.  They were certified as Standard aircraft, so their takeoff weights are based upon how strong their airframes are. They have to withstand at least 3.8 G of stress without damage.


If that much load factor is too much for the design, then they have to either lower the weight limit, or build in more structure. These planes all weigh about the same because they were all built for the same job, and form followed function.


But, with the "Light Sport" airplanes designed since 2005, the Tail wags the Dog.  LSAs are limited by definition to 1320 pounds max takeoff weight, so that rule gets used as the limitation, instead of the real capability or strength of the machine.  That's the pickle that LSA pilots are finding themselves in:

They want a "real airplane" that's comfortable and easy to fly, and it should have a bunch of really cool features, an emergency ballistic parachute, a modern electronic cockpit, and it should be able to carry two people and enough fuel to get somewhere.

BUT:

Two American adults and 22 gallons of fuel weigh about 500 pounds, give or take. That leaves 820 pounds of airplane.  And that ain't a lot.

The Wright brother's first-ever airplane weighed 745 pounds, which was as light as they could get it, and they were only trying to lift one guy and a pint of fuel.  Sure, material engineering has come a long way in a hundred years, but it's not MAGIC.  As Scotty says, "Ya cannae defy the laws of physics!" A well-equipped, comfortable, capable two-place airplane should weigh about 1100 pounds, empty.  That puts its fully loaded weight... right around where the older generation of two-place trainers are.  Oops.


So the designers of new LSAs are left trying to stuff 1650 pounds of airplane into a 1320 pound bag. They're not having an easy time of it.  By the time the design is in the air, they've realized that something's got to give. Here are some options:

1. Skimp on extras, and go stripped-down, bare-bones.
2. Make it flimsy, to save weight.
3. Let the pilots do the math, so it's on them.
4. Cheat.
5. Give Up.
6. All of the above.

If you guessed #6, you're right.  No, seriously, all of these strategies have shown up in the recent wave of LSA designs.  And here's what's happened with each of them:


Option 1- "Skimp on Extras":  Some old designs which did qualify as LSAs are enjoying a rebirth.  Some of these things lack an interior, or any kind of electronics, or even padding on the seats. But those planes are very old-school, and they're not doing well in the marketplace against the candy-colored new designs. The American Pilot's appetite for shiny gadgetry always wins out over elegance, simplicity, and old wisdom.  The result is hundreds of nearly identical designs which all brag about the same features:

• "Advanced materials," especially carbon fiber and composite construction.
• Electronic Flight Instrument Systems and moving-map GPS displays.
• A ballistic parachute system, in case the thing falls apart in midair.

If you'll recall part 1 of 3 in this series, the "Observer Effect" of the LSA rule doesn't just describe an existing class of aircraft, it creates an entirely new niche that LSAs are being "designed into."  So, even though none of these features are in the FAA's "Light Sport" definition, they might as well be.  A Piper Cub doesn't occur to anybody as a "real LSA."  Option 1= FAIL.


Option 2- "Make it flimsy": These are not Standard aircraft, so they don't need to pull 3.8 G of force, and they don't have to go through testing for certification... so you can take a lightweight plastic box and call it an LSA.  New designs are underbuilt, and that's just a fact. Traditionally, getting an aircraft design approved is an expensive, punishing process, but none of these things have gone through that.  The FAA has taken a very hands-off approach to aircraft with E-LSA and S-LSA airworthiness certificates, which is why so many of them have come to market at once. So, if you're wondering how they can get away with selling $120,000 rattletraps made out of fiberglass and spittle, there ya go.  What, you don't believe me?  Try one and see... if you dare!


Other new LSAs are older designs certified at a higher weight in other countries, which have been stripped of structure.  That makes it possible to operate them in the LSA category, but it also makes them floppy. It's the same trick they tried in 1977 with the Piper Tomahawk, which (famously) didn't go well. They refused to do it with the DA-20, which will never be modified for use as an LSA, thank god.  Chopped airframes are another area where the FAA has abdicated its responsibility, so now that ballistic parachute option is looking pretty good.


Option 3- "Let the pilots do the math": Okay, let's say we've gotten the weight of the aircraft down to 900 pounds, and that's as low as we can go, until we can figure out how to make airplanes out of cobwebs and shadow.  That means we've got 420 pounds of useful load.  That's one guy, 24 gallons of fuel, and maybe another 110 pounds.  Unless your flight instructor is Callista Flockheart, you're going to have to take off with a half-empty gas tank, and just two hours of endurance. Urgh. This exact situation came up at a conference I attended two years ago. The LSA producer said "a typical training flight is only about 1.4 to 1.6 hours, anyway, so that's all you'd really need."   Again, I say, Urgh.


It used to be normal to leave some fuel back in the pump with traditional two-place trainers.  But, that was a very different situation.  First of all, we didn't need to leave that much fuel behind- I recall something like four gallons from full, at most.  Second, it wasn't a design issue, because Americans have gotten fatter!  If you were taller than 5'8" and weighed more than 180 pounds in 1960, you were a BIG guy.  And finally, the max takeoff weight of those aircraft was based upon the things' real capabilities and limitations, and you knew that you had to take the weight-and-balance limits seriously!


But with a new LSA design, people are paying lots of good money for a new airplane with a fairly roomy cabin with two seats.  If you're big, you're big.  And if you're going somewhere, you're going to fill up the tank.  And if you need to bring your golf clubs... well, you get the idea.  It's the pilots' responsibility to stay within weight and balance, but these guys know that 1320 pounds is an arbitrary limit. It will get as much respect as a 25mph speed limit on a divided, four-lane highway in a rural area.  At night.  In a convertible.  With the top down.


Option 4- "Cheat": The people who are making these new LSA designs know perfectly well that what I've just described will happen most of the time.  Flying overweight is illegal, but LSA pilots won't feel it's unsafe, and for them, it will be a normal operation.  Yes, the responsibility for keeping weight within limits is on the pilots, not the LSA's designers, but accidents are bad publicity!  So, if I was building an LSA, I'd put the real, operational weight limits WAY in excess of 1320 pounds.  Because I don't want my pilots to die, and cost me money, I'd make sure that my airplanes could handle 550-600 pounds of useful load, in excess of 4 G.  Of course, I'm not making LSAs, but the companies who do are willing to make 'em flimsy, so I don't know WHAT the real limits are.


But whatever they are, it's got to be a secret.  Admitting that the airplane could safely operate at more than 1320 pounds would kill its status as an LSA, which is the whole point of the design.  So the airplane owners are in the dark about the real weight-and-balance, and they're left to figure out for themselves how much they can "safely overload" the airframe.


All the Certified Flight Instructor parts of my brain are screaming "DON'T EVEN SAY THAT!!!"  Of course, you can't "safely overload" ANY kind of airplane- limits are limits!  But I'm sorry to say that for this new generation of LSAs, 1320 pounds is a lie, and everyone knows it.  Saying that max takeoff weight is based upon what the plane can physically handle simply isn't true- that argument is gone.  So, as a CFI, I'm left with  saying you've got to stay within the 1320 pound limit because "rules are rules." That's pretty thin. It's a 25mph speed limit... and no cops.


I wish I was making this up.  But at the 2010 Sun-n-Fun expo in Lakeland, Florida, I spent most of my time in the new LSA area, getting a feel for this part of the industry.  When I asked the vendors about the 1320 pound weight limit, I got this response:

• Shrug and wink,
• Assurance that "of course, the aircraft can easily handle more that that," and
• A promise that "the FAA has said they won't be enforcing that rule."

This happened FOUR TIMES.  If I'd been trying for a scientific study, I'm sure I could have gotten that same response from dozens of other vendors, but to tell the truth, I was so disgusted that I gave up.


Option 4- "Give Up": You may have noticed that I've avoided using any specific names of the new LSAs. That's because (a) I don't want to get sued, and (b) I don't want to badmouth anybody in particular when the whole industry is committing the same crime.  But I specifically commend and applaud Cirrus Design for a very responsible approach to their LSA- the "Cirrus SRS."  They suspended the project indefinitely in April, 2009.  Good Call!


The Cirrus SRS, like most of this generation of LSA, was supposed to be powered by a Rotax 912S engine, use composite construction, EFIS/GPS instrumentation, and their own proprietary CAPS ballistic parachute system.  It was also supposed to have a useful load of "at least" 500 pounds, and still fall exactly at the maximum limitations of the LSA rule.  To do the job, they acquired the rights to a German light airplane called the Fk-14 Polaris, and attempted to whittle down its speed and weight.  But when it came to Option 3, the fuel tank was a measly 18.6 gallons, eliminating an hour of endurance and at least 100 nautical miles of range in favor of more reasonable weight and balance.


I suspect that they pulled the plug for two reasons- First, they realized that they couldn't stuff six pounds of sugar into a five pound bag.  No "Cirrus" could ever be an LSA.  Cirrus has always been Over-The-Top when it came to airplane design- they're very fast, very heavy, very powerful, and packed to the gills with all the bells and whistles they can think of.  Twin turbochargers from Tornado Alley, the latest and greatest Garmin Synthetic Vision EFIS/GPS/FMS, integrated with a Forward-Looking Infrared camera, weeping-wing TKS de-icing system for the outside, air conditioning for the inside, and fold-away cupholders.  Cirrus putting its name on an LSA is like Hummer putting its name on a skateboard.

The second reason is because they realized they had nothing to gain with this product!  Cirrus has always been a premium aircraft company, and their target market has money to burn.  The guys who just have to have the "Best Of The Best" aren't interested in a "cheap" LSA.  Last week, I met a pilot who's just ordered his fifth Cirrus.  His name is Ken Griffey, Jr.  That's who's buying their planes.  These people want the jet!  So why get involved in the furball of the new LSA market?

Epilogue:  I did a flight review a few days ago with a guy who's been a pilot for more than forty years.  He's not small.  I'm not small.  We had 500 pounds of front-seat weight between us.  We went up in a 1979 PA-28 Piper Warrior.  It holds 48 gallons of fuel.  Our center of gravity was too far forward, so we loaded a 47-pound self-inflating life raft into the aft cargo area.  That made us weigh a bit too much, so we left each tank four gallons shy of full.  We flew for 1.7 hours and came back... and tied down in the wrong spot.  The tail rope had an orange rubber sleeve on it, which we use to protect the tail cone of the LSA we've got online, because that plane doesn't have a tail tiedown loop.  No, it's not broken, they just never put one on that plane. I pointed out that the rubber thing was on the rope because it was the LSA spot, and he said... "Ah, that LSA... now that seems like a nice plane..."

I suppose it didn't occur to him that we'd just enjoyed a useful load of 787 pounds in the Warrior, which would have been impossible in any LSA.  And, he hadn't seen firsthand what an airplane that only weighs 700 pounds looks and feels like.  He'd just felt nostalgic about the good ol' Piper Cadet he'd trained in (which isn't an LSA), and he'd read the press, drank the kool-aid, and momentarily stopped worrying about his medical.


Caveat Emptor.  True Light-Sport Airplanes have their place for enthusiasts.  The LSA rule, and the planes it's spawned, try to take it mainstream, but I doubt that their place has changed all that much.  And, I have to worry about the newer planes and older pilots who feel like the usual rules won't apply to them.