EAA Sport Aviation - October 2009

division for the light sport department, and this division was tasked with implementing the sport pilot training regulations and teaching these regulations to the FAA flight standards district offices (FSDOs) around the country. It wasn’t until well into 2006 that FSDOs were starting to get up to speed on helping CFIs work with the sport pilot training regulations. A lack of knowledgeable CFIs and sport pilot-eligible aircraft made it tough to get training off the ground.

It was the ultralight training schools that got the ball moving, and they established a business model that seems to prevail in the sport pilot training industry today. This model is to provide training and aircraft sales as a joined operation. These schools used the sport pilot regulations to convert their ultralight instructors and training planes into sport pilot instructors and experimental light-sport aircraft. Like the ultralight training before sport pilot came along, they continued being flight schools that specialized in training and selling products for recreational fliers.

Many of us old-timers remember when it was possible to find some sort of flight training at many airports, both big and small. Nowadays, the one- and two-plane training schools seem to have faded away, and flight training is more specialized in larger schools. Unfortunately, many of these larger schools are aviation-career oriented and do not provide sport pilot training. This has resulted in the growth of large schools being established specifically for sport pilots. If a person wanting to become a sport pilot can’t find a local flight school to provide the training, he or she may have to travel to a training location that specializes in training for recreational flying. Several of the large sport pilot training schools are aware of this and provide accelerated training courses.

The Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) decided to add light-sport aircraft to its aviation training program and flying club. At the Sun ’n Fun Fly-In in Lakeland, Florida, this spring, FIT took delivery of a REMOS G3. Winston Scott, dean of the College of Aviation at FIT, along with Nick Fritsch, director of aviation, saw adding an LSA to their lineup as way not only to offer a different training option to its students but also as a way to introduce others on campus to aviation. Reaction to the airplane has been remarkable, Frisch said at AirVenture 2009, as the university took delivery of its second LSA, a REMOS GX. “The

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