Welcome to the 100th edition of Australian SportPilot!
While my team has only been delivering SportPilot for a little over a year now, it is a great opportunity to celebrate what has been achieved by all of the contributors over the last 100 issues. You’ll find some great reading in the 16-page special feature, which will show you some highlights of the publication’s history. This issue we are also continuing to add more submitted stories from readers and pilots. This publication represents an aviation community, so we think it’s important to have as many of you as possible contributing. Got something to say? Send it in! We have several significant new articles from the team at RAAus, and you’ll notice we have worked hard to make them informative and readable. There are great tips and insights in each one, so take the time to have a read of them.
They say that to live in interesting times is a curse. Well, we are certainly living in interesting times now. The commercial aviation market is suffering hugely as a result of COVID-19. As a consequence, training and support services are suffering. In the GA community, the interstate border closures and uncertainty have certainly had an impact. For the RAAus community, we are probably the least affected, but nonetheless affected. One of the less anticipated problems has been the delays in getting parts and materials from some suppliers. Supply chains have been affected. Manufacturing has been interrupted. To make matters worse, the demand for many items has ironically increased. During lockdown, people used their spare time and money to upgrade their planes. Yes, I’m guilty of that too. Clearly everyone decided to start their kit-built aircraft during the pandemic. Kit plane suppliers are reporting long delays. Van’s Aircraft are now stating a wait period of 12 plus months on most quick-build kits. I hope this kit rush means we will see a lot of new aircraft completed in the years to come.
I’m pleased to present the 100th edition to you and I hope you enjoy reading it.
