Aviation writers love to heap undiluted praise on the sheer fun of flying seaplanes. OK, I get it already. Float and boat flying is a ton of fun and you havent lived until youve done it. The question is, how to do it without spending a fortune and what to do with it after youve got it.
There’s nothing quite like fetching your bird from the shop after a high-quality engine overhaul. Done right, it should perform like it did when the aircraft came off the factory floor. In the world of aircraft ownership, thats a beautiful thing. But done wrong, you could be in for the time-consuming hassles of dealing with warranty work-or worse should the engine fail, despite it running great before handing it over to an overhaul shop. After all, engine overhauls are supposed to increase your confidence, not kill it or you in the process.
Buying a new airplane is both an act of passion and an act of faith. The very idea of sinking so much wealth into an asset used but 100 hours a year has to be driven by blind love for flight. The faith part has to do with the company remaining solvent to support such an investment.
The headline groups the Aztec and Apache as one, and sure, while the Aztec could never have been born without the Apache, they are quite different. From an appearance standpoint, the original potato-like shaped Piper PA-23 Apache is easily distinguishable from the sleeker Aztec.
Whether youve earned the A&P rating to wrench your own aircraft or plan to tackle the FAA-approved light maintenance items you can accomplish as an owner, you need the right tools and workspace for the job.
The charging system on the typical GA aircraft isn’t exactly what we would call ultra-modern. But its complex enough that an unexpected failure can leave you stuck far from home, while failures in flight can be full-up emergencies. Even if you don’t have the credentials and knowledge to tackle repairs on your own, there is some basic troubleshooting you can do to catch a failure early, while potentially saving some shop labor so your mechanic doesnt have to start from scratch. Heres a primer.
Aft of the firewall, a new Cirrus SR22 is the epitome of the technologically advanced aircraft. But the front end of the thing is pretty much frozen in the mid-20th century: old-school mechanical fuel injection, World War II magnetos, manual mixture control. This is so because buyers have wanted it this way; a Star Trek flight deck propelled by a 59 Buick engine room.
At nearly every airport you’ll find aircraft that havent flown in years. Some are hidden in private hangars, some are stashed in the corners of maintenance shop hangars and some are ramp derelicts that are begging for rescue from the harsh elements. Is it worth getting involved with these neglected birds given the number of airworthy ones on the current market? The short answer is maybe, but only with the right approach and a healthy dose of realism. Hint: Seldom is there a great deal.
Its long been recognized that an effective way of staring a fight in a bar catering to pilots is to innocently ask about procedures for hot starting big-bore Lycoming or Continental engines and then step back. The chairs will start flying. Thats about what happened when we started the research for this piece. We heard it all. Being either foolish or fearless, we immersed ourselves in the subject to see if we could come up with information as to why hot starting is a problem, find recommendations for maintenance and operating technique that can minimize the problem and see if there are aftermarket devices that can help. We did, we did and there are.
If Beech Bonanza ownership seems out of the budget, the good news is that there are plenty of vintage V-tail models on the market at affordable prices. The bad news is that unless those 50- and 60-year-old airframes have been we’ll maintained, you could be buying a money pit. Plus, shops wont feel sorry for you when you roll up in any Bonanza.
Now that cockpit GoPro cameras are as common as iPads, it’s only a matter of time before someone posts the ultimate deer-in-headlights moment: the shock and terror of a pilot just commencing an inadvertent gear-up landing, otherwise known as the $60K slide. It might be just as interesting if the camera kept running through the aftermath-the runway recovery, the call to the insurance agent and, ultimately, what to do if this happens to you.
For a moment, lets forget that the Cirrus SF50 Vision Jet is arguably the most technically advanced personal light aircraft weve ever flown. Or that Cirrus likely will achieve its goal of making it a safe step-up jet for qualified SR22 piston pilots. Moreover, its cabin and cockpit dwelling is perhaps the most satisfying weve experienced. But in our view, the most impressive thing about the Part 23-certified SF50 is that it even exists to talk about.
