This claims that no license or training is required:
jetson.com
It weighs almost 200lbs empty and can travel at 63mph at 1500 AGL (minimum of Class E airspace in the US).
How is it possible that our < 55lb drones (most are WAY less than that) that are limited to 400AGL require a Part 107 license or at a minimum a TRUST certification issued by the FAA but this doesn't need a thing to fly it except the $100,000 price of admission?
This makes no sense to me at all.
There is an old regulation on the FAA books for what is still called Ultralight vehicles under FAR Part 103, they never called them aircraft, on purpose. I was a flight instructor for many years and these Part 103 vehicle owners, were often some of the people I gave training to, I gave to new students who wanted to fly or owned an Ultralight.
Of course, it stated that this vehicle had to weight under 254lbs and carry no more than 5 gallons of fuel and have only one seat and there was a minimum stall speed and max straight and level flight speed. To fly it you did not need a medical, nor did you need a pilot license. With that said, it was strongly suggested that anyone contemplating flying such a machine, should get proper training in a similar flying machine prior to attempting to take flight in it. So many if not most owners, did get flight training from flight schools, well at least the smart ones did.
For the most part, people did take flight training before attempting to fly an ultralight and went on to be some very good pilots. It was the most fun form of flying as well as the most affordable form of flight ever. There were some extremely well-made flying machines on the market way back then and of course a few death traps about. Now some pilots did manage to teach themselves and I know of a number who tried and were unsuccessful and were injured or killed in trying to teach themselves.
These Part 103 regs. were formed when there were no 2 seat trainers around. The FAA wisely allowed an exemption in later years to allow a 2 seat training Ultralight to be used but the instructors had to have a min. of 100 hrs of flight time logged before they were allowed to begin their instructor training to be Ultralight instructors. I think the minimum training for instructors back then, was 25hrs of dual.
The 2 seat aircraft were only allowed to be used for training and never as a sight seeing type of aircraft with the Ultralight Instructor rating. As you would expect, more and more instructors we carrying out sight seeing flights, pretending to be training flights and eventually the FAA brought in new regulations for all those 2 seat ultralights. The new category was called Light Sport Aircraft and you did then need an FAA Light Sport Pilot license to fly one, though you still do not need a medical, as with a PPL. You do need to have a valid driver's license though, to show you are at least medically fit to drive a car.
With all this said, that old Ultralight catergory of Part 103 still exists today and that is the reason that you may be able to fly this with no license, though no one would ever suggest you try it with no flight training. One more point, under FAR Part 103, your vehicle had to be under 254lbs empty weight, no more than 5 gallons of fuel and a single seat machine plus it had to have no more than one engine, I believe. However, I am not 100% sure on that, because there was a nice little French aircraft called the Cri-Cri that had 2 tiny engines up front and that may have fallen under the Ultralight category.
I hope this give you a more comprehensive explanation as to why you may be able to fly the machine you were asking about, with no license. Also note that although flying an Ultralight gave you more freedom to fly around compared to a GA aircraft, you still had to abide by almost all laws of aviation that a GA PPL had to follow, so you were not simply allowed to do what ever you wanted to do or fly where ever you wanted to fly. One of those laws were that you could not fly your Ultralight over a group of people, which still holds today. There were other restrictions, but I don't have the time to go over everything. I hope this info helps you understand more now.
