Experimentals

After almost 25 years of representing Zenith Aircraft Company, Roger Dubbert is one of the most recognized customer service individuals in the kit aircraft business. Like most of the people working for these relatively small producers of homebuilt aircraft designs, Dubbert wears many hats, shifting roles as needed among the flight line, front office, and […]

The theme for this year’s NBAA-BACE convention was the future of aviation and a lot of the companies attending embraced that theme. There were lots of virtual reality gizmos in the displays and an overall sense that profound change, from technology through hardware to environmental realities, is all around us. Please, I know some of […]

The rate of fatal accidents in experimental amateur-built aircraft dropped last year to the lowest rate ever recorded, EAA said last week. The annual activity survey conducted by the FAA shows the estimated number of hours flown in experimental aircraft rose from about 890,000 hours in 2016 to 950,000 in 2017. At the same time, […]

The CAFE Foundation, which works to promote new aircraft technologies, held its 12th Electric Aircraft Symposium in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in July, and now all 19 of the speakers’ presentations have been posted online. The forums explore the future of electric-powered aviation and opportunities in the sector. The speakers include representatives from Aurora Flight Sciences, Uber […]

A small company based in France has created a two-place hot-air balloon designed to be certified under U.S. S-LSA regulations, with production expected to begin early next year. “The system is available for sale as an experimental already,” designer and CEO Leandro Corradini told AVweb in an email. “I applied the ASTM standard since the […]

The Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) says that its Modernization of Special Airworthiness Certification (MOSAIC) rulemaking initiative has made substantial progress after a meeting with FAA officials in Washington, D.C., earlier this week. EAA also met with the FAA during AirVenture to discuss MOSAIC, which is designed to “relieve builders of well-proven homebuilts of some of […]

Vertical Aerospace, based in the United Kingdom, has built a full-scale eVTOL technology demonstrator and recently announced the aircraft began flight testing in June. It’s the first of its type to complete a flight test in the U.K. The single-seat aircraft, which weighs about 1600 pounds, is controlled by a remote pilot. It has a […]

The pilot and builder of the one-of-a-kind Jet Eze aircraft was killed in the crash of the airplane on approach to the airport in Covington, Tennessee, on Saturday afternoon. Lance Hooley, who adapted the canard design of Burt Rutan’s Long Eze to take a GE-T58-8 engine, died when the aircraft crashed 2,000 feet short of […]

Akka Technologies, a French engineering firm, pitched a futurist concept for a train-plane vehicle to Boeing and others last month at the Paris Air Show, according to Bloomberg News. Passengers would board a pod at a local train station, according to Akka CEO Maurice Ricci, then at the airport, a cockpit and wings would be […]