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Fred, You may be right that the FAA won't up the gross weight for LSA. And, you're right that we've been begging for an upgrade in the ultralight weight limit for 25 years. And the FAA has certainly rejected any increase in the part 103 weight limit and they've rejected an increase again, recently. There's pressure for them to up the LSA gross weight limit. 10,000 FBO/CFI operations have Cessna 150 or 152 trainers they'd like to use for sport but can't. Since the number of Sport Pilots is barely 342 after almost two years, the FAA is getting abuse for having created a failure. (Though the FAA may well feel like SP is a total success because it's bringing the BFI program to an end.) But the second part of SP is to revitalize the production of aircraft. So far, it's partly a failure since almost all the SLSA aircraft are foreign made. But it's getting started here as exemplified by Cessna showing a proof of concept SLSA aircraft at Airventure. If the LSA rules revitalize aircraft production, then there's pressure for the FAA to not change the gross weight in a way that would include all those used C-150/152s that can't provide any manufacturing jobs. You mention that the weights chosen for the various new rules seem odd. But, the weights do make sense. Even though America did a Luddite, dumb thing 30 years ago by not adopting the metric system, we have (sort of) adopted the metric system. The regulations are written with metric and antique-British units. The weights were chosen metrically. 115 kg ~= 254 lb. or exactly 253.53 lb. 600 kg ~= 1330 lb. or exactly 1322.77 lb. 650 kg ~= 1430 lb. or exactly 1433.00 lb. Since the rules explicitly include the metric measurements, you can make use of the extra couple or three pounds if you need to. Ed Burkhead http://edburkhead.com ed -at- edburkhead???.com (change -at- to @ and remove "???") ============================================================================== To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm
