What is this sports pilot license about?

What is the point of this? I think it is crazy from what I have read. It
makes it sound like you all you need to do is show a drivers license and you
can fly a lighweight?

As it stands at present, you don't even have to show a license to fly
an ultralight, so the sport license would be a step up in that
respect.

Landing at Plum Island one time, I was cut off by an ultralight, or so
it seemed to us--actually, he landed on the grass beside the runway.
My instructor went ballistic: "I wish they'd give them licenses, so
they could take them away!" That's essentially what's being proposed.

There is a provision that you can fly a plane up to 12xx pounds under
the proposed sport license. This would be a radcial change for the
drivers of Cubs and lesser aircraft of 1940s vintage, since most of
these (J-3s, PA-11s, T-craft, Champs) would qualify.

It's not merely "show a license" and go. You also self-certify that
you are physically able to do the flying--which of course is what you
do every time you use your private pilot certificate. There are times
when I don't fly, when I have a cold, and once when I ground-looped on
takeoff and so scared myself that I didn't think I was safe. These
self-limitations over-rode the fact that I had a 3rd class medical,
and they would continue to do so if I went the sport-pilot route and
had no medical.



all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

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