Has General Aviation Missed the Potential of Basic Ultralights?

[steveinindy]

What was the "registration" you mentioned the 2-seat ultralight had you got dual instruction in if it was prior to the 2-seat exemption? The only legal registration it could have had was an "N" number prior to the instructor exemption.

No clue what the N number was. I lost most of my logbooks when my apartment was robbed a year or so ago which is why I don't give a hard number for my total time (somewhere between 500 and 600 hours, maybe 700 hours on the high end; all but about 100 was in ultralights). I've flown in so many aircraft- nearly every ultralight I've flown has been registered so that adds to the mix- that I can't recall the tail numbers for more than a handful of them.

As for your instruction and the other ultralight pilots you know that learned in the 1990s, it was undoubtably a 2-seat ultralight being used legally under the exemption. Part 103 went into effect October of 1982. The 2-seat exemption happened several months after that. There would have been no reason for an ultralight instructor to instruct illegally [with all the associated liability that entails] when the exemption was in existence.

I didn't realize that permutation of 103 was put into place so long ago but I probably should point out that my original instructor (in fact all of the instructors I knew back then) was a CFI. Not sure how that effects anything but it was a registered (N-numbered) ultralight and my instructor was qualified as previously mentioned so that might have overridden the "exemption" issue.