I fly, photograph and write about LSA regularly (20+ models so far) in my freelance gig as LSA editor for Plane & Pilot magazine here in the states. I’m 5’11″ so not challenged vertically in cockpits like you are but many LSAs are not only wide enough for people of considerable girth (the new Flight Design MC for instance is almost 52″ wide!) but have plenty of head room.
The posters above hit a lot of the high marks for LSA so I won’t be redundant…but I’m high on LSA for a number of reasons to do with comfort, performance, beauty and efficiency.
It’s a great way to get in the air and, with shared ownership or through a club, to keep flying without busting the bank.
Thanks for your thoughtful and thorough blog.
high flights
Jim
.-= Jim Lawrence´s last blog ..Canadian Bakin’ =-.

Performance compared to other aircraft? Depends on what you’re comparing to. The Remos will outrun a Cessna 152, and most C172s. It will climb at 1,000 ft/min fully loaded. The other day it was just me and a bag of gas and I sustained 1,300 ft/min. In a flight training environment we average 2.5 gal/hr fuel consumption. On a cross country, firewalled, I get around 6 g/hr and easily hit 115 knots.

Would I fly one again? Yup. To be honest, my favorite aircraft to fly are the kind with two engines. Some sort of power trip, I guess. And I love to go fast, so I dream of a Mooney Acclaim (a little out of my budget at the moment). But so far I haven’t found much that is as fun and simple to fly as a good-quality LSA like the Remos or the Tecnam.

Do I recommend learning to fly in one? Well, let’s be fair. I run an LSA training program. One of the largest in the nation, in fact. So sure, I’m biased. But there is no down-side to getting started this way. Half the cost, half the time. The restrictions: no night flying, don’t go higher than 10,000 MSL. Not many private pilots do that anyway! If you decide it’s not enough, simply transition to Private later. One word of caution: make sure you do your Sport training with a full CFI (not a Sport CFI) if you have any plans of moving on to Private.

One story to conclude. Yesterday I had to take a Remos to an airport, leave it there, pick up a C152 and fly it back to home base. It was me and another good-sized guy (I’m pretty small). We left home in the Remos with a full tank of gas, climbed out at 1,000 ft/min, 4 inches of air between my shoulder and his, and moved at 115 knots. On the way home, we had to carefully measure the fuel to keep us right at max gross, we climbed out at 200 – 300 ft/min after a very lengthy take-off roll, and our shoulders were smashed tightly together in a very awkward, uncomfortable, and far too personal configuration. The LSA wins hands-down.

So write this all off as biased if you must, but keep in mind that I left a good job flying bigger, more powerful, multi-engine planes and entered the world of LSA because one day on a whim I took a joy ride in a Tecnam Sierra and forever fell in love with the Sport Planes.

I wonder if the wing dips when you lean over to pick your pen up off the floor…