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View Full Version : Light Sport (Ultralight) Runway Question.



jkkd
07-31-2011, 12:41 AM
Just got home from a fun filled week at Oshkosh! I spent a lot of time at the light sport end looking at the planes and watching them fly since I have a Quicksilver at home. My question is why could the helicopters make low passes down the runway, hover and even have multiple helicopters hovering on the runway at the same time, power chutes could make low passes down the runway and do touch & go's, but ultralights could only take off and fly a pattern west of the field until they wanted to land. Then they could land and exit the runway and wait in line to take off again. I was disappointed that they were not allowed to make any low passes down the runway! It would have been nice, since Quicksilver was being recognized, to have at least allowed them to make some low passes down the runway. There is always a lot of people watching the flying down there and you know there are several of them seriously considering buying one and they are trying to make up their minds and they would love to see a nice low pass down the strip to help them decide. I'm sure there is a reason for this and I'm sure safety will be the primary reason\excuse.

If nothing else & weather permitting, at the beginning of the air-show before the big boys make it too rough, pick a few of the available ultralights with radios (yes a lot of us have radios) with willing pilots to do a max performance takeoff and climb out to say 700 feet and then have them go directly to the grass strip pattern and land. I don't know if this is even possible with all the rules but if any of them were aerobatic rated with an aerobatic pilot, let them take off first and get some altitude while the others were doing their demonstration and then let the aerobatic pilot do a couple of loops and\or rolls before heading in to land on the grass strip to show that these are good to high performance aircraft.