Sun ‘N Fun

Plenty of general aviation pilots here at Sun ‘n Fun are doubtless very pleased to know they will be flying home when the show is over in their very own airplane — instead of counting on airlines like American, which this week left more than a quarter million passengers stranded at airports across the country. […]

AVweb‘s only official blog is packed with off-the-cuff reviews, personal experiences, and fun diversions from our contributors on the ground at Sun ‘n Fun. Look for new posts from our own Paul Bertorelli and Kitplanes magazine contributors Rick Lindstrom, Marc Cook, and Amy Laboda – all of whom are enjoying the sights, sounds, and gadgets […]

About a half dozen Special Light Sport Aircraft are showing at Sun ‘n Fun for the first time this week, and each of them has an example on display in the LSA Mall. The Paradise P-I, a Brazilian design, has a classic Cessna 150 look on first glance, with a strutted high wing, tricycle gear, […]

True Flight Industries is continuing to develop plans to produce a modern incarnation of the Grumman Tiger at a plant in Valdosta, Ga. President Kevin Lancaster says interest remains strong in the sporty four seater with the unique sliding canopy. “I get people saying to me all the time that they can’t understand why the […]

While the training aircraft market in the U.S. more or less holds its own, it’s booming in other parts of the world, especially in China and in India. Melbourne, Florida-based Liberty Aerospace has been riding the wave with its sophisticated two-seat XL-2. At the Sun ‘n Fun show, Liberty’s CEO Keith Markley, told us about […]

Cirrus and Tornado Alley have enjoyed smashing success with the turbonormalized SR22. Now that Tornado Alley has caught its production up to Cirrus’s impressive demand, it’s doing what it set out to in the first place: making the turbonormalizing systems available to aftermarket SR22 owners. TAT’s Tim Roehl told AVweb about these systems when we […]

Demand for pilots is so great that ab initio candidates can now go from zero time to the right seat of a regional jet in a couple of years. But any pilot with designs on flying for a major airline will need a four-year degree, and to make that easier, Delta Connection and Embry Riddle […]

Along with EFIS displays, synthetic vision devices seems to be the must-have technological innovation of Sun ‘N Fun 2008. With its VistaNav product, Mercury Computer Systems stunned users of cockpit tablet computers with a sophisticated, easy-to-use software package that runs nicely on machines like Samsung SSDs and the popular Motion Computing platforms. At Sun ‘n […]

Since the FAA issued its report on the “51-percent” homebuilt rule a few weeks ago, the homebuilder community and kit manufacturers have been fretting over what changes will be made, and what impact they will have. AVweb caught up with Glasair CEO Mikael Via at Sun ‘n Fun on Thursday, and he was confident that […]

This year, when visitors walk through the gate onto the Sun ‘n Fun grounds, they don’t have far to go before they can start shopping for — or at least starting to dream about — their next airplane. Right inside the gate, 18 shiny new Light Sport Aircraft are arrayed, wingtip to wingtip, along the […]