Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
I think your description does not meet all of Scandinavia, but can still see your point
It meets the majority of Scandinavia by area. Maybe not the parts where most people live.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
here is one
OK, the exception that proves the rule.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Neither can I. Doesn’t that show that the current ruleset works?
No, because there are (still) more flying traditional GA airplane around than microlight. The principle is a purely academic construct that looks great on paper and it also looks great with numbers filled in. But, to this day there exist no relation to the real world in terms of actual risk for a third party.
there are more flying traditional GA airplane around than microlight
How can you tell? There may perhaps be less ultralights registered in some countries – but who registers flying hours?
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
How can you tell?
I think I remember traditional GA flies 3-4 times the hours all in all compared with microlight. Obviously a few number of aircraft fly a lot of hours, while a lot of airplanes fly relatively few, but this is also true for microlight, maybe not to the same extent, but still.
All respect for your thoughts and your memories…
But back to the matter: limiting the weight and speed of ultralights has worked for limiting damage to third parties even when things go wrong. Now imagine the weight limit were relaxed and damage on the ground did start to be going up, what do you think would happen next?
Do not change a winning team. The more so that, I say again, there is no reason for any change, now that the LSA status is available. If LSA does not work, as claimed, it only confirms there was no real need for a 600 kg category. But I think there may be, even if the advantages over the PA28/C172 category (what they call E-Klasse in Germany) are limited. A few are beginning to show up on the OO-register, mostly with flying clubs.
Well, according to this, page 90 and further. The total number of fatal accidents with an airplane was 53, while it was 30 for microlight. I would think all fata accidents are reported. Then when considered lots GA airplanes flies (professionally) on average several hours each day, the 4:1 relationship in hours flown shouldn’t be that far off.
I am not sure about your logics or mathematics. But it doesn’t even matter: the discussion is about damage on the ground, and I saw nothing about that in the document referred to.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Do not change a winning team. The more so that, I say again, there is no reason for any change, now that the LSA status is available. If LSA does not work, as claimed, it only confirms there was no real need for a 600 kg category.
The European LSA is useless. It’s much worse than the US LSA. It’s like taking everything that is bad for certified GA and inject it into microlight in the hope than people somehow will jump from GA to LSA. People go from GA to microlight to get away from the bureaucratic burdens of GA. Likewise, no one move from microlight to LSA for the exact same reasons you would like to prevent microlight going from 450 to 600 kg. It’s a dead in the water concept. If the result of going from 450 to 600 kg was some LSA-similar category full of bureaucracy, then I agree with you, it would be a terrible move.This is not the case however, or else the LSA would be OK as it is.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
the discussion is about damage on the ground, and I saw nothing about that in the document referred to.
Exactly, no personal damage reported to third parties, regardless of aircraft MTOW. It is simply not something that is even remotely likely to happen (but very easy to create equations and philosophies about).
So you would like to have the advantages of LSA without the disadvantages? That is not going to happen, not in a month of Mondays. You don’t believe EASA are going to admit they got it wrong, do you?
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
So you would like to have the advantages of LSA without the disadvantages? That is not going to happen, not in a month of Mondays. You don’t believe EASA are going to admit they got it wrong, do you?
For all intents and purposes (except 600 kg 
) this is what microlight aircraft is all about. LSA is the US answer to the European microlight, but poorly executed and planned. The only somewhat success-story over there has been the renaissance of the Cub, and unintentionally? so. The European LSA is an even worse version than the US LSA. There is no need to admit anything, and an “oops” should do just fine.
