ICON Aircraft announced that it has selected Vacaville, Calif., as its new home. It will be moving into a 140,000-square-foot facility adjacent to the airport in Vacaville later this year. Currently headquartered in Los Angeles, ICONs move to the new facility is intended to consolidate all company functions, including aircraft design, manufacturing, sales, training, service, and corporate headquarters. It is intended that demo flights and customer deliveries will take place on site. ICON said that its new home is in an area that offers ideal flying weather nearly year-round and provides access to sport flying terrain, including several lakes, for customer flight training. ICONs press release went on to say that the site allows easy access to compelling recreation destinations, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Wine Country and Sacramento.
The ICON A5 is a two-place flying boat amphib with a carbon fiber airframe and retractable gear. Power is provided by a 100-HP Rotax 912 iS. Rather than wing-mounted floats, it uses Dornier-style sponsons to provide hydrodynamic stability and house the retracted main landing gear. The wings can be folded aft for ground transport and storage. In June of last year ICON announced it had secured funding to take the airplane through certification and production. In July the FAA granted a 250-pound weight exemption to the Light Sport requirements to allow installation of structures to make the airplane spin-resistant.
