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Doug Spencer writes:
Affirmative. You can fly anywhere in the US with a sport pilot certificate. You're restricted to day and VFR conditions, but otherwise it's pretty much the same as the private. Daytime and VFR would be quite a chafing restriction for me. Part of the fascination of aviation for me is flying at night and in IMC. Carefully watching and adjusting instruments for an hour or two in zero visibility and then seeing the runway magically materialize seconds before you land is always a fun experience. The drivers license for sport pilot is the medical certificate. If you lose your drivers license, you also lose your medical ability to fly sport pilot. Why should private and recreational be different? I don't know ... why? The driver's license notion sounds fine to me. The pilot is the primary safety device installed in a plane, and there's no 100% effective safety device, but the safety cage design, energy absorbing construction, engine designed to break away in a crash, 39kt stall speed, and ballistic parachute sure improve the odds. As long as the pilot understands that they just improve the odds _if_ there is an accident, fine. But a lot of people take the next step and unjustifiably assume that they can be less careful because they have all the gadgets to keep them alive in case they do something stupid. Being the aeronautical expert you think you are, you have undoubtedly seen Rod Machado's statement on energy dissipation in an airplane crash ... No, but I've done the calculations, which are straightforward. ... he states "The minimum distance you can travel and stay under 9 Gs when you land at 50 knots is 12.8 feet. If you travel at least that far before coming to a stop, the cockpit should not break apart." A well-braced person in normal health can withstand 46 Gs without permanent sequelae. The real key is the integration of acceleration and time. Extremely high accelerations are fine if they are of short duration. Lower accelerations can be deadly if sustained (like redout). Surviving in an accident involves limiting the peak accelerations and their durations. Most of these peak accelerations occur when a human body continues to move unrestrained after the compartment it is in stops; when it hits the stopped compartment, the short-term accelerations are much higher than they would have been if the body had moved with the compartment as a single unit. This is the theory behind seatbelts and harnesses. It works for any type of vehicle. Considering the FlightDesign CT is presently one of the most expensive light sport planes, as well as one of the best selling, the market apparently disagrees with you. Perhaps it has snob appeal. -- Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail. |
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