Aerial Strivings

Ultralights and experimental aircraft can enter your life in almost as many ways as a child can. You can adopt an orphan, you can rescue a waif, you can take in a foster child, you can get someone else to make one for you, or you can grow your own. These choices are even more complicated because the Federal Aviation Administration doesn't quite know what to do about all this aeronautical fertility down at the grassroots. The FAA has drawn a line that seems painfully arbitrary. On one side, it's pretty much every man for himself. On the other, a great edifice of federal code shadows the smallest move.

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The spirit of the demarcation between ultralights and airplanes is sensible enough: If you fly alone in a slow light aircraft and don't go where there are lots of people on the ground or big fast airplanes in the sky, you're free to take all the chances you want--it's your life. If you want to take someone else's life into your hands or fly heavier and faster, you have to be a real pilot in a real airplane and follow all the rules. The law puts the line down firmly, and both sides wail like King Solomon's pleaders over where it falls.

If it's a true ultralight you want, you can buy one like you would a garden tractor. You can set it up, start the engine, try out the controls and take it out for a spin--just stay off the thoroughfares. This would be the tack of a fool (smart folks get training), but it would be legal.

If you happen to need a second seat or a bigger engine, welcome to flight school; you'll need a student-level pilot license to fly by yourself and at least a private prior license to take someone along. You now have a bureaucratic plane, despite its virtual appearance as an ultralight, and it will have to pass muster with the FAA. It will need an inspection at birth and one each year of its life. It will have to have a fit-to-fly license of its own, as well as a registration number that works like a given name in radio conversations with other pilots or controllers.

There's nothing inherent in the machine itself that makes it an ultralight; most very light airplanes look like ultralights, and many larger ultra-lights look like little airplanes. But, since ultralights aren't certified airplanes, they can be built anywhere by anyone. If they required factory finishing, they would cost as much as a nice house because of all the government testing they would have to satisfy. --AH

UNDERSTANDING THE SKY Dennis Pagen. 1992; 280 pp. $19.95. Sport Aviation Publications.

Best local weather book. Best sport pilot's book. Best reading about wind and air and navigating freedom. -PW

PHOTOGRAPHS BY ADRIEL HEISEY Adriel's photographs can be purchased directly by calling 888/323-7435. $200-$1500 without frames; photographs are 8" x 10" to 40" x 50 ".

EXPERIMENTAL AVIATION ASSOCIATION PO Box 3086, Oshkosh, WI 54903. 800/564-6322, 920/426-4800, www.eaa.org. Annual membership ($40) includes subscription to monthly Sport Aviation magazine.