Light-Sport Aircraft Yahoo group Re: Are LSA impractical?

Here's THREE ways in which many LSA's are much MORE practical than many conventional GA aircraft:

If, like many, your reason for flying is more to "get up in the air" than to get from point-A to point-B -- notice this:
Many LSA's will keep you in the air for an hour on 4 or even in some cases as little as 3 gallons per hour. A 172 Cessna will drain your wallet at about 8 gallons per hour and some 182s at 12 gallons per hour or more. And if you're up there for photography or even flying a long fenceline looking for breaks, or whatever both the slow flight characterisics make the LSA more practical.

If you seriously ding a propeller on a Cessna, etc, it can cost you $3000 to replace it. On many LSAs a replacement prop can be #300.
Even the high end high cost LSA engines such as the 4-cycle Rotax 912 4-cycle, as expensive as they are to overhaul or replace are still half the cost of the same event on a Cessna's Lycoming.

And, third:
If you want to fly in and out of short rural airstrips or even land on private flat property like a friends long driveway at his country cabin an LSA that easily does takeoffs and landings in 600 feet (and many do),
is defintally suddenly "more practical" than a Cessna 172 which will be cutting it close to do the same in 1500 feet of runway.
And suddenly WAY more "practial" if you ever have to do an emergency landing in a small flat piece of unprepared field in the boonies.

In short, as other's here, have in their own way said, what's practical depends on what you're doing with that aircraft.
No one said even a high end LSA is the ideal or practical aircraft for 700 mile communting <g>.

My two cents.

--- In Sport_Aircraft@yahoogroups.com, "Mark IV" <markiv200@...> wrote:
>
> Seriously, is the wing loading too light to use an LSA for travel? I like the Technam Sierra, Czech Sportcruiser, FK Polaris, or Arion Lightning style crafts. The instructors I deal with don't like LSAs much because they're "extremely touchy" or "aren't much use on windy days" or "are very unforgiving". They tell me LSA will "beat you to death". So...are they impractical to rely on for travel?
>
> Thanks, Mark

>

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