When I fly alone, I prefer to be by myself… Kudos to George Thoroughgood.

A recent informal survey published in Aviation ebrief showed that nearly 1/4 of pilots preferred to fly alone. No doubt for the quality of the social experience…..

I like flying alone. I also like taking passengers. I don’t like flying alone in an aircraft that burns 9 GPH of avgas and costs thousands for an annual. Plus just getting a bigger aircraft in and out of the hangar can be challenging. And I like flying a sporty aircraft. Yes, I am biased as the importer of the Merlin but I don’t promote aircraft I don’t like myself and I like the Merlin. A lot. And so does nearly everyone that flys one. As Jay says “it is a hoot’.  Jay flys every evening. Even if only for 15 minutes. The Merlin is so easy to prepare for flight and cost so little that it will be flown a lot more often than even an RV. Jay knows. He has both and the Merlin is now his fun aircraft with the RV when he needs the second seat.

OK, back to some news. I did visit the factory and our assembly center in the Czech Republic (and I bought a new tooth, part of my hockey budget). The good news is we have plenty of Merlin kits and plenty of Merlin parts to make more kits so we are ready for quick spring delivery. The green Merlin below with the HKS is prepared for the Czech LAA flight testing to get the HKS officially approved for Europe. It will be available after these tests are complete in a month or so.

We have enough quick-build kits now finished to fill the next container. We can fit 4 Merlins in each container. One spot left!!! End of February shipment if you can act quick.

I flew Jays’ Merlin to the Sebring airshow last month. We had a good show. Lots of potential customers and several that come just to see the Merlin. One of our taller customers tried to fit in just about every aircraft at the show and he could fit into only one other aircraft besides the Merlin. We have the ‘Biggest small aircraft, Small is the new big.”

I like this photo so you get to see it again. And yes, they fit in, just not both at the same time.

Also, a Mermaid showed up. For those of you that don’t know, the Mermaid and SportCruiser (Piper-Sport) are two of my designs.

The Mermaid can land on the water more than once! The A-10 just vaporizes the pond.

The next big show is Sun n Fun at Lakeland, FL in April, and a few days after that I will be at the big AERO show in Germany.

CWE