Kitfox 7SS for sale. CAUTION

[MKirkm]

Just spoke with this guy. He is claiming you can decrease certified weight to meet LSA requirements.
"Factory built kitfox 189k ask, 850lb empty 1550lb gross. Can be loaded at 1320lb" Everything I've read says you can increase gross but can never decrease gross wt.

[MKirkm]

SLSA cannot be changed at all. E-SLA could only be raised. This plane is neither. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Flybyjim]

SLSA cannot be changed at all. E-SLA could only be raised. This plane is neither. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Yes, I believe you are correct, weight can go up but not down. It looks like this was the plane flown in the air show at Airventure a few years ago, great performance, I thought this was a factory owned plane??

[MKirkm]

Interesting, it is listed as aerobatic.

[buckchop]

The factory built that plane for Kiel (cant remember last name) least i think thats his name, he the acrobatic guy that flys at air shows usually does his show in a black and silver supercub if i remember right. But ur correct u cant lower the weight once its set from what ive been told.

[buckchop]

Ill bet its not Kiel sellin it, ill bet he has someone doing it for him that is not up on info.

[ken nougaret]

Kyle Franklin

[109JB]

If I am not mistaken the airplane was owned by Kitfox when Kyle Franklin flew those airshows. It was then sold to a private individual. May have changed hands again afterward, but I do not believe that Kyle Franklin ever owned the airplane.

[Eric Page]

The broker is playing word games. Notice that he said, "Can be loaded at 1320lb." He did not say it can be made LSA compliant. Any Kitfox can be loaded at 1,320#, but that doesn't mean it can be legally flown by a Sport Pilot.

An S-LSA can be converted to E-LSA, but neither type can ever have a MGTOW above 1,320# (1,430# on floats). As others have noted above, once an aircraft has a MGTOW above those limits it can never go back to LSA-eligible status regardless of a new, lower MGTOW.

Furthermore, the only way a plane can be converted to an E-LSA is if it were an S-LSA in the first place. An aircraft that started out LSA compliant could be converted to the Experimental category and remain LSA compliant, but it still wouldn't be an E-LSA.

I'm a little fuzzy on how this plane ever got a 1,550# MGTOW in the first place. If it was factory built, then it had to leave Kitfox as an S-LSA, which means it had a 1,320# MGTOW. Even if it were later converted to E-LSA, it couldn't fly at a higher weight within that category. It would be ineligible for Experimental-Amateur Built, so that just leaves the other Experimental sub-categories.

Experimental-Exhibition seems most likely if this was Kyle Franklin's airshow plane, except that Franklin would have flown his airshow routine well within LSA weight limits, so neither he nor Kitfox would have had any reason to change it. The limitations inherent to the Ex-Ex category make it unlikely that a later owner would have made that change either.

Here's my bet: A later owner changed it to E-LSA, then made a bogus logbook entry raising the MGTOW to 1,550#, and it's been flying as a technically illegal E-LSA ever since.

[alexM]

I noticed the same thing as Eric, the "can be loaded to 1320" isn't a claim that it is an LSA. And holy crap, that price tag!

As for "factory built must be LSA", I'm not sure. What if the factory sells a Titan or 915 demo plane to make space for an upgraded example? I would think the factory could build and license their own plane as EAB, and when it comes time to surplus the plane it would be just like buying someone else's completed EAB plane - the only real limitation would be that you could never do your own condition inspections. Not a huge buzz kill for a beautifully built plane.

Experimental Exhibition isn't necessarily very limiting, though it can be. It all depends on "the letter" which accompanies the Ex-Ex airworthiness certificate. The letter for an F-101 or Mig 21 would understandably have some tight rules, but for the Yak 18 I recently scoured the logs of, it basically said it was limited to day VFR, no commercial use. It did say aerobatics were approved which isn't common. The only thing that jumped off the page was that parachutes were required at all times. I saw the letter for a nearly identical Yak 18 which did not allow aerobatics but also did not mention parachutes. Neither plane had the commonly referred to statement where the FAA must be notified in advance of all flight activity.

I would be shocked if there was a straight forward path from Ex-Ex to E-LSA