http://www.vashonaircraft.com/


This new LSA is one I haven’t heard of, anyone know anything about it? Interesting, the website says the metal is prepainted. Like all all LSA’s it’s unable to carry two adults with much fuel (445lb useful). It’s a shame the LSA class is hobbled with such a low max weight, the FAA created a class of unusable airplanes for most people of the modern world.

It seems like these are already on sale?

The prices on the website ($99,000-129,000) seem remarkable even by LSA standards. The specifications say the engine is a 200-series Continental.

Interesting, First impression is looks like a C162 with a fat wing and new paint.

Price point and performance seem to bee in the same ball park as the 162 was supposed to be when introduced.

Also Marketing to flight schools as a trainer, Im thinking maybe back filling the niche market that Cessna could not compete in.

Manufacturing low-end airplanes in a high cost labor market (USA, Seattle) is a tough market. The history of American LSA is a bunch of tiny, one-hangar manufacturing organizations making small numbers each with low profits. The alternative has been overseas manufacturing, but even the reduced labor costs didn't save the Cessna entry or a number of others.

Now with BasicMed, the market for LSA's is cut by half or more.... as many people who would have gone LSA are going BasicMed and keeping their airplane or buying a C150.

The LSA did not make great trainers, because it was hard to meet the weight requirements while carrying two of our larger modern humans... and hard to meet weight and cost requirements while making a plane robust enough to survive student pilots.

Unless they are doing something really different, I am afraid this will go the way of other small US-based LSA makers. Let's hope they have figured out something that the rest of us don't know! Perhaps the discount on the Dynon avionics (same owner) will make the higher cost onshore manufacturing work.

I missed the part that it has the same owner as Dynon Avionics, that should help with the pricing. I recently looked at a RV-12 with the latest Dynon panel, I was impressed. In the past I always thought their stuff was low end junk, but that panel was very impressive.

The chief engineer at Vashion is Ken Krueger. He was the chief engineer at Vans for 12 years and had a lot of input on the RV12, 10 an 14.

Nice review by AOPA. Seems like a pretty legit offering for LSA. Even positioning as a back country capable rig.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all ... ady-ranger