Jim Stephenson talking about Sport Pilot Blitz

Crusty O'l Fart wrote in
. com:

This is crap. How is a 2 place Quicksilver even close to being too
heavy?

e sould talk, have you seen him lately.......Talk about FAT
ultralighters.........

Heh, :-)

Yup,

Him and CJ Campbell too. But i LIKE CJ Campbell.

Now,
tell me how many of the legal weight exempted Quicksilvers have EVER
trained anyone! Yes, there are some, but I would bet at least 75-90% of
them are pretending to be trainers so they can be flown for recreation
either with, or without a passenger.

On my last vacation, I visited an ultralight field in Arizona; there
were 25 UL's on the field in gang type hangers. 20 of them were 2
seaters. ONE offered training. ONE! One of them had an old cement bag
strapped to the passenger seat as ballast. The bag had obviously not
been moved for a LOOOONNNG time.

Now I'm not saying that maybe 103 "shouldn't" be changed to allow this
to be legal, I'm just saying it's not, and that's part of why Sport
Pilot came down the way it did.



--
-- ET :-)

"A common mistake people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete
fools."---- Douglas Adams

ET wrote:

Crusty O'l Fart wrote in
. com:

This is crap. How is a 2 place Quicksilver even close to being too
heavy?

e sould talk, have you seen him lately.......Talk about FAT
ultralighters.........

Heh, :-)

Yup,

Him and CJ Campbell too. But i LIKE CJ Campbell.

Now,
tell me how many of the legal weight exempted Quicksilvers have EVER
trained anyone! Yes, there are some, but I would bet at least 75-90% of
them are pretending to be trainers so they can be flown for recreation
either with, or without a passenger.

On my last vacation, I visited an ultralight field in Arizona; there
were 25 UL's on the field in gang type hangers. 20 of them were 2
seaters. ONE offered training. ONE! One of them had an old cement bag
strapped to the passenger seat as ballast. The bag had obviously not
been moved for a LOOOONNNG time.

Now I'm not saying that maybe 103 "shouldn't" be changed to allow this
to be legal, I'm just saying it's not, and that's part of why Sport
Pilot came down the way it did.

--
-- ET :-)

Then we are both disappointed how sprot turned out, related to the BFI
thing.

My beef is with the Orgs who let it happen. they knew the costs would
literally soar when the feds got involved. Jim immediately turned that
problem into a business helping folks get through the mess. the Blitz
for the flyers and some other deal for the manufacturers,,,,,,

I didn't care much for someone getting their BFI just to haul their
friends or even just to fly a two seat legally.

But i never aided someone withing the USUS system to do so. always sent
them to an ASC AFI for the checkride.

I never saw this as s safety problem either. few accidents were due to
BFI's flying their friends outside the training system intended by the
exemption.

most tried to stay below the radar





--


Mark Smith
Tri-State Kite Sales http://www.trikite.com
1121 N Locust St
Mt Vernon, IN 47620

On Fri, 25 Feb 2005 15:17:52 -0600, Mark Smith wrote:

My beef is with the Orgs who let it happen. they knew the costs would
literally soar when the feds got involved. Jim immediately turned that
problem into a business helping folks get through the mess. the Blitz
for the flyers and some other deal for the manufacturers,,,,,,

Not being tuned into the Ultralight stuff very much, I'm curious. What is the
nature of Stephenson's business? Is he offering assistance to people trying to
get LSAs certified, does he have a course for converting UL instructors, or....?

(Disclaimer: I've written for the ASC magazine in the past, but that was
through a friend who was then editor. Never dealt with anyone else in ASC.)

Ron Wanttaja