"Jim Macklin" wrote in message
news:yR8yg.84361$ZW3.33772@dukeread04...
I think you completely misread my posts and the intention.

Landing gear down is important on land and gear up on water
is even more important.

So you are agreeing with my point.

[...]
It seems that even a sport pilot with just a few hours could
be taught to raise and lower the gear.

You'd think a full-fledged Private certificate holder could be taught the
same. And yet, landings with the gear in the wrong position continue to
happen.

And that's my point. The Sport Pilot rules are specifically designed to try
to remove some of the more common opportunities for error that the general
pilot population runs into. It seems plausible that the FAA was trying to
address one of those common opportunities by restricting the type of landing
gear an LSA airplane is allowed to have.

I think as much as
safety, the FAA position on LSA is based on retractable
landplanes exceeding the speed limit, something no
floatplane will do.

I doubt that. The airspeed limit can be exceeded even with fixed-gear
designs, and it's simple enough to flight test any design to find whether it
exceeds the LSA speed limit or not. There should be no reason to add
addition design restrictions for that purpose.

Pete