This article was sent to me by Ken Moeller. Ken and I owned an Aeronca 7-AC on floats berthed at Richardson’s Bay in San Francisco. We had many enjoyable flights in “Snoopy”. Ken asked me if I would like to purchase an ICON-25 for $139,000 for delivery in late 2010. My response was “Wow, sure, however I am finding it difficult to raise funds to go bowling several times a week.”
SNOOPY – N2912E
A New Foldable Flyer
The Icon
A5 is user-friendly plane made for land, air, water—and your driveway
Posted 06.13.2008 at 10:54 am 4 Comments
ICON A5 Wings Extended: Wings
Extended ICON
First flight of prototype July 9, 2008
It's not
quite a flying car, but after landing, you can tow the Icon A5 home and
park it in a garage. It’s one of the first civilian flyers to feature automated
folding wings, which slim down the mini seaplane so it can fit on a custom
trailer. (An amphibious version offsets the extra weight of landing gear by
trading the motorized wings for a manually folding set.)
The A5
belongs to the FAA’s new “light-sport aircraft” class, whose planes don’t have
to go through the same lengthy certification process that discourages bold
design in larger planes. That classification freed Icon to develop the folding
wings and to install a modern engine that burns unleaded gasoline, whereas most
private planes use
decades-old,
lead-spewing powerplants.
ICON A5 Folding: Wings rotate
automatically ICON
You can fly
the A5 with a simple sport-pilot certification, which requires half the
training time of a standard license. A cockpit designed with input from
carmakers such as Nissan has minimal instrumentation and a GPS navigation
system, making the plane easier to pilot.
The wings are
designed to minimize the danger of stalling, where they lose lift because the
plane is traveling too slowly or its nose is pointed up too high. With the A5,
stalling occurs gradually, providing plenty of warning for the pilot.
ICON A5 Fully retracted: Wings
fold back for transportation or storage. ICON
The plane
made its debut this summer (July,2008), and Icon has begun taking orders. It
expects the first models to touch down in late 2010.