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I am going through the Icon registry and noticed that serial #200 N538BA took its first flight last week on Sep 5th. That is a huge milestone! Congrats to the whole Icon team.

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N538BA

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Well guys just finished my checkride on #196 in Vacaville and am headed east starting tomorrow. It’s feels great to be official and a part of this community!!

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Well guys just finished my checkride on #196 in Vacaville and am headed east starting tomorrow. It’s feels great to be official and a part of this community!!

Awesome welcome onboard! It is a long trip back to Florida but some exciting scenery for the first half of the trip!

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How was the flight home James? Looking forward to flying with you in FL this winter.

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Fun and challenging!! Departed Friday, overnighted in SDL(Phoenix), EDC(Austin) and NEW(New Orleans). Just made it to FTY(Atlanta) today and will stay here a week before taking it to Florida. Lots of long legs but it was comfortable and the XM Radio definitely made the time fly by! It’s slow as hell but had the performance when I needed it for a good ride!

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It’s slow as hell but had the performance when I needed it for a good ride!

I took ours "home" to Martha's Vineyard over a Fourth of July break. Vacaville to New Bedford MA, via Redmond OR (had other reasons to stop there), Great Falls MT, Cedar Rapids IA, and all the way east one last day with lots of thunderstorms, culminating in a night flight VFR over the top from Newburg NY to New Bedford where the solid cloud layer ended only 10 miles short of New Bedford. With no autopilot, that was a lot of hand flying in four days. I had to stop in New Bedford and not straight to the Vineyard to get its 25 hour oil change, etc. just from a day of transition training and the delivery. It's a great way to get to know a new plane, though. You at least I assume have an autopilot, and the G3X is great vs. the 796 for cross country flying.

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Oh yeah, the autopilot made all the difference for me as I did about 10 hours of flying that 2nd day. That sounds like an incredible and scenic journey you had across the northern part of the country!

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Oh yeah, the autopilot made all the difference for me as I did about 10 hours of flying that 2nd day. That sounds like an incredible and scenic journey you had across the northern part of the country!

It checked a few boxes off for me in my quest to take off and land in all lower 48 states - which I did just by places I naturally had to go, not making special trips. Ultimately, in the fall of 2021, nine years into my life as a pilot, we notched #48 - North Dakota - on our way to Alaska for the first time to also get #49 in the same trip. I'm going to need a larger plane to make it to Hawaii to get #50...

I don't fly much VFR, almost none other than in this plane now down low, so long distances flying VFR through several weather systems was very different from the turboprop (then) and jet (now) flying. Sneaking between layers in Montana and diverting to find ways around and through things was a new adventure for me, and realizing how far in advance I needed to be planning and climbing to get to 13,500' to get over some weather, etc. was unique. When the clouds can move and rearrange faster than you can get around them, it is very different!

To the credit of the Icon engineering, even without an autopilot it is a very stable and easy plane to keep within 20' of a target altitude up high, unless caught in real convection/turbulence. I flew across the country through all that mostly using only two fingers to fly it.

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In 2019 I hand flew all 10,447 miles of my 'round the US trip. It was spread out over 64 days, and I enjoyed *almost* every minute of it. Not gonna lie, there were a couple of times over all the farmland or Texas oil fields where I wouldn't have minded an autopilot but for the most part I stayed low and enjoyed winding my way across the landscape. If I got tired of flying left-handed, I'd rest my arm on the bag in the passenger seat and fly using just a couple fingers on the passenger-side control stick.

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Some more Icon #200 coverage:

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/...uces-200th-a5/

“Building 200 A5s is a significant milestone for us as a company and for the hundreds of ICON employees who have worked tirelessly to get this incredible airplane into the hands of owners,” said ICON CEO Jerry Meyer. “It has been quite a journey, and the best reward is seeing owners out there flying their A5s, having their own adventures, and connecting with our growing community.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cxs1aN9rWao/

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Congrats James!

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So happy to be the proud new owner of N538BA!