Elsa

[Kevin_Richey]

Fara: There are ELSA gyroplanes. Some may have been the two seater training aircraft under the exemptions given by the FAA to EAA and ASC, nor were they the EABs that you think we are confused about.

These were for fat ultralights as well as machines whose owners chose to register them as ELSA instead of EAB. The FAA made lots of promises during this period, kept some of those promises, and broke others to the fliers and instructors of light aircraft in order to get them all into the fold, w/ N-numbers. Many believe it was to keep better tabs on all those pesky pilots...

The stage was about to be set for S-LSA gyroplanes, but none of the gyro manufacturers have been willing to spend the $$ to jump through the FAA's hoops.

If you still don't believe that there are such gyroplanes, would you like to see my registration and AW documents showing such? I must be too trusting of the FAA and their DARs, as they processed these docs as ELSA, and I believe them.

[gyroplanes]

Fara, You are correct. However the FAA had a "window" during which time gyroplanes meeting the ELSA requirements were allowed to be certified as ELSA without the currently requires SLSA "parent". Once the window closed, the EAA petitioned to keep it open a while longer due to the registration delays (and foot dragging by the applicants). There are still a bunch of mystery gyroplanes out there.... buyer beware.

I personally issued around 12 ELSA gyro certificates.
I wish they would offer us that exemption opportunity again.

[farmer jim]

I took the course from Dr Bob about a year ago, and HIGHLY recommend it !

fj

[fara]

Originally Posted by Kevin_Richey

Fara: There are ELSA gyroplanes. Some may have been the two seater training aircraft under the exemptions given by the FAA to EAA and ASC, nor were they the EABs that you think we are confused about.

These were for fat ultralights as well as machines whose owners chose to register them as ELSA instead of EAB. The FAA made lots of promises during this period, kept some of those promises, and broke others to the fliers and instructors of light aircraft in order to get them all into the fold, w/ N-numbers. Many believe it was to keep better tabs on all those pesky pilots...

The stage was about to be set for S-LSA gyroplanes, but none of the gyro manufacturers have been willing to spend the $$ to jump through the FAA's hoops.

If you still don't believe that there are such gyroplanes, would you like to see my registration and AW documents showing such? I must be too trusting of the FAA and their DARs, as they processed these docs as ELSA, and I believe them.

Huh?
Didn't I talk about grandfathered gELSA gyroplanes or did you miss reading the whole post and read just the first line before replying?
Give me your N-Number and I can assure you your E-LSA is nothing more than a gELSA (grandfathered ELSA) like I said.

FAA is not a person. It can't make "promises". Its a huge corporation like structure. Unless you sign a contract or get something in writing from a big corporation, you got no promises.

S-LSA gyroplanes are not there simply because (have to be blunt here)
1) Gyroplane safety record is pathetic looking at it overall (but that is not fair IMO because what we need to focus on is the last 10 years as the community has learnt how to stabilize the aircraft and increase safety. Putting in Bensons of yester year into the mix makes it look pretty bad indeed percentage wise)
2) Gyroplane community in the US has flame wars about CLT, HS and the like instead of talking about and mandating static and most importantly dynamic pitch stability and staying away from prescriptive methods of compliance as that is the ASTM mandate, not be prescriptive, simply require proof of compliance. How a manufacturer complies is left up to them but some in the gyroplane community didn't "get" it and had melt-downs in front of FAA (just going by what I am told) just like they have flame wars right on this site sometimes .
3) Yes the manufacturers may have a point not wanting to jump through hoops of ASTM compliance. I have read around this board and many manufacturers think because they are using AN hardware or just because they have done structural analysis in AutoCad, they will be compliant. Nothing can be further from the truth. Though having structural analysis or as a replacement physical load tests properly designed and reported are a start and perhaps using AN hardware can give you a start on being able to trace the critical bolts back to one single lot and associate them to each serial number aircraft in the field, that is all combined may be 10% of the work. I estimate roughly about 6000 man hours of engineer or technical man hours and $20k to $30k in systems, or software in place and in training to get to ASTM compliance. This I know about in excruciating detail. I did it. It cost me roughly $250k in software, systems development, configuration and change management, workflow processes and software, customized applications that captured decisions and approvals about COS (continued Operational Safety) during workflow, engineering time and resources etc. etc. to get to true compliance state. Fortunately I didn't just make one model or even one category of aircraft so I was able to spread the pain around so to speak.

Abid

[Resasi]

Which does a lot in explaining why there has been a reluctance on their part.

Sounds like you went through the mill. Was that on the flexwings?

[RotorTom]

Not to split hairs here, but the Airworthiness Certificate for my Xenon read: Experimental Light Sport Aircraft ... there is no designation (to my knowledge) for gELSA.

[fara]

Originally Posted by Resasi

Which does a lot in explaining why there has been a reluctance on their part.

Sounds like you went through the mill. Was that on the flexwings?

Flexwings and an airplane actually. For the airplane we had a major sub-assembly supplier from Hungry (Halley) who supplied welded fuselage and nacked wing that we could QA and QC and finish. But even down to the metal tubing used, I had to get their lot numbers for each sub-assembly tubing used. Halley has ISO9000 QA system so they have to follow and comply with that and I could use information from that to follow-on to ASTM compliance QA system

[fara]

Originally Posted by RotorTom

Not to split hairs here, but the Airworthiness Certificate for my Xenon read: Experimental Light Sport Aircraft ... there is no designation (to my knowledge) for gELSA.

Hi Tom,
Of course gELSA is not a FAA designation in a official capacity but that is what those grandfathered versions of ultralight trainers are called out in the LSA land generally. Otherwise, the real tech lingo for them is aircraft defined in FAR 21.191(i)(1) ... Yuk.

The following courtesy of Ed Burkhead:

SLSA = Special Light Sport Aircraft built by factory to consensus standards

dELSA = ELSA downgraded from being an SLSA (ELSA that is consensus standard compliant)

kELSA = ELSA aircraft built from a consensus standard kit (the normal consensus standard compliant E-LSA)

gELSA = ELSA aircraft not previously registered and NOT built from a consensus standard kit (i.e. "fat ultralight" or exempted ultralight trainer)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

gELSA - Ultralight type planes may be registered as ELSA until Oct 31, 2008. They are defined in FAR 21.191(i)(1) and get operating limitation 8 on page 144 of 8130-2F change one.
"This aircraft may not be operated over an open air assembly of persons, over densely populated areas or in congested airways."

kELSA - ELSA built from an approved factory kit are defined in FAR
21.191(i)(2) and get operating limitation 9 on page 145 of 8130-2F change one.
"This aircraft is prohibited from operating in congested airways or over densely populated areas unless directed by air traffic control, and only if sufficient altitude is maintained to effect a safe emergency landing in the event of a power unit failure, without hazzard to persons or property on the ground.

dELSA - ELSA that were orginially factory built SLSA are defined in FAR
21.191(i)(3) and get operating limitation 10 on page 145 of 8130-2F change one.
"Except for takeoffs and landings, this aircraft may not be operated over densely populated areas or in congested airways."

SLSA operating limitations are specified in Paragraph 126 on page
123 of 8130-2F change one. Since they are factory built aircraft, they have no operating limitation over congested areas.

ExpAB - Amateur built experimental operating limitations are specified in paragraph 153(b)(6) on page 162 of 8130-2F.
"This aircraft is prohibited from operating in congested airways or over densely populated areas unless directed by air traffic control, or unless sufficent altitude is maintained to effect a safe emergency landing in the event of a power unit failure, without hazard to persons or property on the ground."

Note: Change One has been updated by FAA to change two now but you get the idea.

[gyroplanes]

Originally Posted by fara

FAA is not a person. It can't make "promises". Its a huge corporation like structure. Unless you sign a contract or get something in writing from a big corporation, you got no promises.


Abid

I think it depends how high up the FAA ladder you go.
I'll bet that if the POTUS promised us SLSA in a week, we would have it.

The head of Sport Pilot? WHO KNOWS ? Not you or I.