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Just a couple interesting hangar-flying things...At the TICO airshow today I stopped in the Aero-Adventures tent (they guysthat make the Sventura series among other neat planes) and talked to agentleman who's going to be doing SP training soon. He said the total costfor someone off the street to get their SP license will be about $850 (no Ididn't forget a number there!) Ten lessons at $85 apiece, with no timelimit... you work on the lesson until you understand and can do what youneed to know how to do. This floored me... that's less than 25% of thecurrent cost of PPL training! No wonder that the FBO's refuse to acknowledgethat Sport Pilot even exists. (In fact, 3 weeks ago the local FBO told methat the reason they weren't going to offer any SP training was "we don'thave any high-performance instructors available." Umm, yeah, whatever.) Hesaid he didn't expect too many problems with being able to rent SP planes orin getting insurance... not too sure about that, at least for a while, butwe'll see.After hearing that, for the rest of today all my wife could talk about washow now we could both get our licenses soon. and when were we going to getstarted on the Piet? She almost beat me when I mentioned other neat planeideas that crossed my mind... "No! I'm all excited about the Pietenpol! Yougot me daydreaming about it! Dang it, that's gotta be first, THEN you canbuild something else!!" Well, I guess that settles THAT! :)I also talked to EAA HQ on Thursday, the gentleman there said that they'reexpecting Sport Pilot to be published by late April if we're lucky (but notto count on that, of course.) They also expect the weight limit to be raiseda little bit (maybe to 1300 lbs) and suspect that FAA will phase in variousaspects of it over a period of time... ie, existing private pilots who wishto fly as sport pilots will be able to do that first, since there's littleinfrastructure required, with other types of sport flying to be broughtonline at prescribed intervals. They sound pretty enthusiastic about it all.I know this has little to do with Pietenpols, except that I bet a lot of youlike Bird Dogs and L-4s and the like. Anyone interested in Forward AirControllers and their history (going back to balloons and biplanes) might beinterested to know that the very first ever FAC Museum is getting started,and we desperately need support soon to help it get off the ground. Only $20and you're a charter member. Details at http://www.ov-10bronco.net/ - tell'em Merlin sent you.-MikeMike Whaley merlin@ov-10bronco.netWebmaster, OV-10 Bronco Associationhttp://www.ov-10bronco.net/___________________ ... __________