THERE’S SOMETHING almost ironic about how the most affordable sport aircraft on today’s market traces its lineage to the Czech Republic, a country that wasn’t even on most pilots’ radar screens twenty years ago. Yet the Aeromarine Merlin Light Sport Aircraft represents perhaps one of the best answers to the age-old aviation question: “How do I get in the air without breaking the bank?” There Merlin’s story begins in the workshops of Czech Aircraft Works, where the original design took shape, in the former Soviet era Let a.s. factory in Kunovice, Czech Republic. When Chip Erwin, a serial aviation entrepreneur with four decades of experience bringing affordable aircraft to market, encountered this Czech-designed single-seater, he recognized something special. Excerpted from Kitplanes. Read more here