The Corvalis TTx is raising the bar for the single-engine piston sector.
**With Continental turbocharged power, the aggressively styled Corvalis TTx is capable of true airspeeds of better than 230 knots at altitude, not bad for a fixed-gear airplane. ****Despite the enhancements, what hasn’t changed is the Corvalis’s great flyability. **The Corvalis not only offers pleasing handling, but also great climb performance and easy descent management.Widescreen LCDs let the pilot create multiple windows on the MFD. On one screen you can monitor the approach chart, engine gauges and moving map.For the Corvalis TTx, Cessna replaced the mechanical standbys with the L3 Trilogy all-in-one. There’s also a built-in pulse oximeter for high-altitude safety.Improvements include a completely restyled interior with new fabrics, accents, upholstery and trim. The redesigned seats are extremely comfortable and cool too.The redesigned seats are extremely comfortable and cool too.There are a few overhead switches, but nothing you need to use regularly in flight.The big pneumatic sealing gull-wing doors are a major differentiator.**The new Corvalis TTx takes advantage of a newly refined composite construction process at the Cessna TAM facility in Chihuahua, Mexico. ****The structure of the airplane is identical to that of the original Corvalis, but there are numerous upgrades. ****One of the most noteworthy traits of the Corvalis has been its flyability, and with the changes to the TTx model, that doesn’t change a bit. The leather wrapped sidesticks are well placed and provide easy, smooth control input. ****When Cessna looked at how customers ordered their Corvalises, it became clear that air conditioning was an option in name only. So the company made it standard. The A/C in the TTx works fine, and it was well tested on our near-100-degree day in Wichita. ****A phone cord on the door of the Corvalis? Hardly. The coiled air hose provides pneumatics to the door seal. When inflated, the seal helps make the Corvalis cockpit a quieter place, though as with any high-performance single, “quiet” is a relative term. ****Perhaps the least sexy component on the otherwise uber-cool TTx is the stiff-leg looking nose gear. At the same time, it does its job very well, providing reliably smooth arrivals even when the technique is short of perfect. One case of function rightly trumping form. ****Unlike with many new airplanes these days, the paint scheme on the Corvalis is actually done with paint. Cessna has worked with the FAA to allow it to paint more of the airplane than ever before and with darker colors. Dark colors, as you might know, draw and retain heat, which is a bad thing when it comes to composite airplanes. **For more on the Corvalis TTx, read the full-length feature here.
