Sport Pilot 2.0, second edition

MOSAIC threw out the 1,320-pound weight limit and replaced it with a stall-speed test: 59 knots calibrated. With that one change, aircraft that had been closed to sport pilots for twenty years opened up, the Cessna 172 among them.

The hard part is no longer whether the rules changed. It is working out what they changed for the aircraft on your field, and nobody had written that down.

This book does it aircraft by aircraft. Appendix C works through 117 aircraft. Each entry gives the stall speed at maximum certificated takeoff weight as its source gives it, and names that source, because the number moves with weight and most published figures never say which they used. Where the only figure published is indicated rather than calibrated airspeed, the entry says so instead of quietly converting it. Where no approved figure could be found at all, the entry reads Unverified rather than guessing. Five of them do.

WHAT IS INSIDE

What MOSAIC changed and what it did not: the aircraft eligibility criteria of 14 CFR 61.316, the operating limits of 61.315, and the medical pathways, each set against the rule as published.

Every endorsement a sport pilot can add: night, Class B, C and D airspace, the 87-knot VH speed tiers, retractable landing gear, controllable-pitch propellers, high performance and tailwheel. The exact wording an instructor signs is reproduced from AC 61-65K.

117 aircraft assessed in Appendix C, with the source named for every figure.

Pilot scenarios that run the rules through real decisions, including the trap that catches pilots who trained in one speed range and then move to the other.

A chapter for higher-certificate pilots flying on a driver's license, and which limits follow them when they do.

Currency: the flight review and recent-experience clocks, which sit outside the sport pilot subpart and catch people out.

Covers Phase 1, effective October 22, 2025, and Phase 2, effective July 24, 2026. Regulatory citations were checked against the current eCFR text, and the Federal Register citations are given so you can read the rule yourself.

Written by a sport pilot, not about one. The author took the sport pilot checkride at 49.7 hours against a 20-hour minimum, and wrote the book he could not find while training.

Scope: airplane. Single-engine land, with the single-engine sea class privilege covered as an add-on. Glider, gyroplane, weight-shift-control, powered parachute and lighter-than-air are mentioned where the rule treats them differently, but they are not the subject of this book.