The sour economy isn’t dissuading pilots from descending on Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wisc., this week. Organizers at the Experimental Aircraft Association are expecting about 100,000 planes and hundreds of thousands more people to come to AirVenture this week, similar to last year’s numbers, the Wichita Eagle reported. GA manufacturers have been hit hard in the last year, so AirVenture this week may not have as many unveilings as in years past. Even still, attendees can look forward to visits from the Airbus A380 and the WhiteKnightTwo in separate appearances later this week. Cessna will give an update on its SkyCatcher program, which was delayed when two of its test planes were involved in spin-related crashes. Hawker Beechcraft has said it will make an announcement, and Diamond is rolling out almost its entire product line. Diamond will have both new versions of the Twin Star on display, along with a mockup of the D-Jet and two D-Jet test planes. The company is also bringing the HK36 motorglider back to the U.S. market and will announce upgrades to the DA20, a two-seat plane used by a growing number of flight schools, it said in a news release.

Most airplane makers wait until Monday to make their big announcements, but not kit plane manufacturer Sonex. On Sunday, as crowds started arriving at Oshkosh, the company wheeled out its newest concept, a single-engine homebuilt jet it hopes to sell for less than $50,000, EAA reported. The Sub-Sonex will cruise at 250 mph, though it’s designed with a short endurance in mind—about an hour of tooling around. The single-seat plane gets its power from a small turbine more commonly used in remote-control jets, but which can produce up to 200 pounds of thrust. The Sub-Sonex’s designers don’t have a timeline yet for putting the plane on the market. It’s currently in ground tests and has not flown yet. The aircraft’s boxy profile with a V-tail empennage is similar to Sonex’s other designs, and it will carry 32 gallons of fuel.

Responding in part to concerns that the TSA was able to issue a security directive without any public comment period, some U.S. congressmen are backing changes to that agency’s funding bill that would limit how it can use the directives. In a letter to Congress, officials from six major aviation groups said they supported the changes. If the amended bill is approved, it would let the TSA use security directives in legitimate emergencies, but would otherwise require the agency to go through a public review process, just as many other federal agencies must do. Currently, the TSA can summarily issue security directives without first having to conduct a public economic analysis. And security directives aren’t published in the Federal Register. The agency often invokes national security reasons in issuing the directives and generally does not give specific rationale behind the directives.

Pilots flying in Canada won’t have to install 406-MHz emergency locator transmitters in their planes by a February 2011 deadline because the rule did not provide any alternative ways to meet the new requirement. Later this year, the government could revise the rule with an alternate option, such as requiring pilots to carry a personal locator beacon, the Experimental Aircraft Association reported. The 406-MHz ELTs can cost $1,000 or more to purchase and install, while a personal beacon operating on the same frequency costs less than $500. Earlier this year, search and rescue satellites stopped monitoring the old 121.5-MHz ELT frequency, leaving only ground stations and aircraft capable of picking up the signals. While 406-MHz signals are much more precise, the additional cost has many pilot groups opposing mandatory installation in general aviation planes. Canada’s rules would have applied not only to planes based there, but to planes traveling into Canada from elsewhere, such as the United States, where 406-MHz ELTs are not yet required.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association is claiming a victory in reworking a piece of Nevada legislation that would have restricted “high risk” flights at North Las Vegas Airport. The airport was the scene of two deadly crashes that damaged several homes last August, sparking community outrage about airport operations, AOPA reported. The state legislature had previously considered a law that would have given the county broad powers to restrict airport operations. The reworked bill, pushed by both AOPA and the Experimental Aircraft Association, calls for creating a committee of airport users, community members, politicians and businesses. It is charged in the coming months with coming up with ideas for making experimental aircraft operations at North Las Vegas Airport safer.

The next iteration of an aircraft that could someday help loft paying passengers on brief forays into space will appear at AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisc., this summer. WhiteKnightTwo had its first flight in December and is in the midst of flight tests. It will be flown to AirVenture and put on display for the week, the Experimental Aircraft Association reported. WhiteKnightTwo is set to start tests carrying an unmanned rocket – SpaceShipTwo – later this year. The Virgin Mothership, as it is also known, is a four-engine composite airplane with two hulls designed to carry a larger rocket ship in between the two. The plane can fly as high as 60,000 feet in parabolic arcs that simulate weightlessness.

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Clark County, Nev., officials have approved a non-binding resolution calling on Congress to give local communities control over which types of planes can use their airports. The move comes several months after an experimental Velocity plane crashed on takeoff from North Las Vegas Airport, killing the pilot and two people in a home the plane struck, Las Vegas’ Fox affiliate reported. Officials there said they should be able to balance the needs of airport users with safety concerns from nearby residents, such as by prohibiting experimental planes from flying over densely populated areas. While the county could lobby Congress to make the changes it requests, such a process would be lengthy and is unlikely to gain traction, because Congress gave the FAA authority to regulate the nation’s airspace. Aviation groups and even the FAA have said publicly that Clark County’s idea is a bad one that would harm the aviation industry and cause chaos in the skies as pilots tried to figure out each airport’s unique rules.

It is anyone’s guess how much one of the six remaining airworthy Frod TriMotors will fetch when it goes on the auction block Jan. 17. The plane, fully restored in 2005, has been in a private collection but is being sold on the open market and with no reserve price at the Barrett-Jackson Collector Car Auction in Scottsdale, Ariz., the Experimental Aircraft Association reported. “No exact dollar amount has been calculated, but as you probably well know, it was not cheap,” Michele Overton, a representative of the Overton Family Trust, wrote in an e-mail to StudentPilot. The Trust currently owns the plane. Ford’s airplane division only made about 200 TriMotors during their heyday in the late 1920s and early 1930s; less than 20 still remain, and only six are airworthy today. The 1929 model being auctioned was first sold to a Spokane, Wash., airline before going to Hawaii, where it was hit by bullets during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The plane later went to work as a crop duster and firefighting air tanker in Idaho and Montana. The 2005 restoration gave the plane seating for 9 passengers and a small lavatory in back. While the plane has an electrical system for its navigation and landing lights, it has no transponder, radios or other avionics.