Icon A5 Request For Weight Increase Exemption Status

[Popeye]

You have to put limits somewhere or there aren't categories at all.

LSA weight limits are just fine for simple, light, two passenger aircraft with a low stall and low cruise speed operating environment, as has been demonstrated over and over again.

Raising the weight limit for ducks so that geese now fit in it does not make a swan a duck.

Using "safety" as a reason to disregard aircraft category limits due to poor design from the start speaks volumes to the integrity of the Icon team.

It's not like the didn't know the LSA rules before they began - to now say they can't safely design within those constraints isn't the FAA's problem; it's Icon's design team's engineering incompetence.

IMO, hands down the best comment on the entire thread! The A-5 doesn't look like a duck and doesn't quack one either, so what is it? Their one and only non conforming flying prototype is not even a LSA.

If spin resistance is that important to the Icon folks, wouldn't it have been one of the fundamental design criteria from the start?

I wonder about a team that designs an entire aircraft - an amphib, which is a tall design order - and suddenly realize that it needs to be spin resistant.

If they didn't work out the aircraft's stall characteristics in the fundamental design what else is wrong with it that they haven't foreseen due to a lack of engineering? The Icon may turn out to be the Corvair of the skies: unsafe at any speed.

You are right and to take it one step further, for a company who has done wonders in marketing their company how come spin resistance was only brought up 5-6 years into the project. According to some Icons spin resistance is the best thing ever invented, (hey, some people believe we faked the moon landings too, whats the joke "you cant fix stupid") but wouldn't you use that as a marketing tool from the start just like the push button folding wings?

That is what I suggested. There should tiers for each weight category or complexity category. One size doesn't fit all.

$5,000 that is what we will see in the Part 23 rewrite.

Sorry, Flo, but they're a "manufacturing company" when the production line is running. There's a bit too much Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch in claiming they're the best, right now....

Ron Wanttaja

Its the best cheese money can't buy!