I took my first light in an LSA (somewhat long)

Last Friday at Sun-n-Fun I wandered around a number of LSA's. I've
been reading about them for a couple of years and was curious. The
idea of C-172 performance (for your typical $100 hamburger run) and
1/2 the fuel cost or less is really appealing.

Several that I sat in were just too small. I'm just under 6 feet tall,
and should weigh 200 pounds, so I'm not huge, but I'm not small
either. Also, I have a long torso and tend to sit "tall". The QT, for
example, I couldn't comfortably close the door because my shoulder was
in the way. Also, the main spar was just in front of my head and
interferred with visibility. One of my friends suggested I sit in the
Evektor SportStar, so I tried it. It was comfortable. I talked at some
length with the salesperson, and to make a long story short: I
scheduled a demo flight.

They were doing demo flights out of South Lakeland (X49), a ~4000'
grass strip a few miles from KLAL. So, 5PM rolls around and there I
am, first flight in an LSA, nearly first flight in a low wing, first
flight off of grass, first flight with a stick. I was told "The stick
will take about 30 seconds to get used to, the grass about 10."

I was concerned about performance - given 260lbs. of me, an
instructor, 100hp and grass. I have ~80 hours, virtually all in
C-172's with 160 or 180HP. I needn't have worried. That thing felt
like a rocket. When I opened the throttle for take off it felt like it
zoomed down the strip. It was much quicker feeling than the 172 on
pavement. Rotate at 40kts, which came in about 500 feet, climb out at
60kts and away we went.

The stick was no big deal, but the control sensitivity will take some
getting used to. I am way to ham fisted. I never really smoothed out
even though I switched to using two fingers and a thumb on the stick.
We climbed up to 2000' and flew south to do some turns and "Whatever
you want to do..." We did a power off stall. No tendency to drop the
wing and control was very positive through out. The break was not very
dramatic.

Now it was time to land. I started to turn and saw traffic crossing
the nose from right to left at our altitude, so I turned right to pass
behind. The visibility from the bubble canopy is tremendous for
someone used 172's. It took me a while to find the field visually.
There's lots of grass around Lakeland.

I set up a left base for 32 and the instructor walked me through the
power reductions (vernier throttle, other than pushing it in for
takeoff and stall recovery, it's all twist) and flap deployment. I
like manual flaps. I've liked them on all three planes I've flown with
them. It's a very positive feeling, I guess. Anyway, we used two
notches. According to the demo pilot, this things got 50 degrees which
we'd only use on a really short strip. He told me that he'd tell me
when to flare as I would try to high being used to 172's. He did and I
did and it was a very nice landing. We made the first turn off.

Overall impressions: This could be habit forming! It's like driving a
sports car after driving a delivery van. And it burns abour 3-4
gallons an hour (in the training environment) and 4-5 cruising @
105-110 kts. A new one is $107,000, which is more than I can swing
right now, but boy oh boy, if there was a place to rent these puppies
I'd be all over it. It could reduce the $100 hamburger back down to
$100!

I suspect many of the other LSA's are just as much fun. As one of the
home builders commented "Power's nice but weight's what really
matters." If you get the chance to try one out, go for it!

John Stevens
PP-ASEL