Airplane Gets Snagged In Power Lines

It's unbelievable that this seems to keep happening, but another plane got tangled up in some power lines this time in Germany. It happened today while the small sport plane was on approach to a rural airfield in the Bavarian town of Durach. The 65 year old pilot and his wife sat upside down in the cockpit for two hours after their landing gear snagged the 380,000 volt lines. The two were ultimately rescued by local emergency services with cherry pickers. Captions look like Hebrew or something so I can't quite tell what they're saying, but I'm sure it's along the lines of "lotse dummkopf".

[Daily Mail]

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Icon's A5 makes first flight, still very 007-ish

Less than a month after the Icon A5 was officially rolled out, the little amphibious Light Sport Airplane made its first flight last week according to an article from AVweb. The A5, with its sweet electrically folding wing design, launched from a lake in Southern California for the flight. "Everything went as well as an initial test flight possibly could go," said Jon Karkow, lead engineer and test pilot. This little carbon fiber beauty has garnered a lot of interest in its design and should be a crowd favorite at Oshkosh later this month where it will be on display. The $139,000 price tag is a nice incentive as well. Icon is anticipating deliveries in 2010 to all of those lucky pilots who will be making the rest of us green with envy. Who wouldn't want to fly this thing?


(AVweb)

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Tron Guy buys sweet Tron Plane

Tron Guy, also known as Jay Maynard in the real world, recently purchased a $140,000 AMD-Zodiac Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) painted in a scheme to match his uber-sweet Tron Guy outfit. You may have seen Tron Guy on Jimmie Kimmel Live or other TV cameo appearances sporting his babe attracting costume from the 80's sci-fi movie, Tron. According to Wired, Maynard has been wanting to purchase a plane since he got his private pilot's liscense 20 years ago. His exacting specifications for his airplane included custom graphics and paint to match his home-made electroluminescent bodysuit.

Watch out, ladies. Tron Guy is in the sky and he's got you in his eye.

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Foldable plane would make James Bond jealous

Finally, they have made a Swiss Army Knife that can fly. Well, not really. But the new ICON A5 Light Sport Airplane (LSA) is definitely the sexiest little plane I've seen in a while. Who wouldn't want something that looks like this? And it really flies to boot! This little guy can cruise up to 138 mph and even includes a deployable recovery parachute. Of course, if you choose to land it in the conventional manner (non-crashing), just fold the wings up and stick it in your garage.

Oh, did I tell you if you can't find a runway it can land on water too?



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SportairUSA gets tornadoed for squashing too many words together without a space

Light Sport Aircraft manufacturer SportairUSA was gearing up for the annual Sun-n-Fun (also too many words squashed together), when a tornado swept through and demolished their hangar at the Little Rock Airport on April 3rd and did to one of their Sting Sport display aircraft what they've been doing to their name. Another hangar at the airport was completely removed from it's foundation. Fortunately, Bill Canino, SportairUSA's CEO was in an unharmed hangar at the time. The company still plans on being in attendance tomorrow for the opening ceremonies of Sun-n-Fun in Lakeland, FL and pressing on with their operation minus their hangar.


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