I went to Silver Sky Aviation hoping to get a chance to look at some aircraft and write a quick article about them. What I found was an organization for flight training, sport pilots, kit building and certified aircraft lead by a person with the aviation backgroud and business sense to make it all work.

I drove from Scottsdale to Chandler, AZ, and found Silver Sky Aviation's facilities located at the Stellar Airpark. The owner, who goes by Sky, greeted me with an enthusiastic handshake and started showing me around the building they share with Network Analysis, Inc., a company that produces thermal dynamics analysis software used around the world.

Sky explained that he really has two main companies. The first, Silver Sky Aviation, is a dealer for AMD's certified aircraft, a dealer for Zenith Aircraft Company's kit aircraft and has a builder's assist facility providing space, tools and assistance for customers building kits. The second company is the League of Extraordinary Aviators, a flight organization that specializes in initial and transition training for sport pilots, as well as providing an Elite flight simulator for instrument training.

Sky started my tour by having me shoot an approach in their sim. The 3-screen visual display provided a very realistic transition to visual at 200 - 1/2 on the ILS; however, the best part of their system is that it had interactive air traffic control communications. As I was flying, I had to listen for instructions amid radio chatter from several other aircraft in the virtual airspace. With this simulator, an instrument rated pilot can keep up currency or do an IPC in a very realistic communications and visual environment for far less than it would cost to do real-world. An instrument student could use this simulator to augment flight training in the company's Alarus and save a lot of money. (More on the Alarus later.)

After the simulator, Sky gave me an in-depth tour of their office and their brand-new builder's assist facility. I also got to see the types of aircraft they work with and I was very impressed. The remainder of this article gives in-depth information about the aircraft, the builder's assist facility and the flight training available from Silver Sky Aviation. Keep reading because you can't afford to miss out on this information!

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