Pistons

Walking into the softly lit hangar for dinner this night was to enter a pilot’s dream house. In one corner was a 1932 Staggerwing 17R serial number one, the very first Beechcraft manufactured, standing proudly in her elegant wheel fairings; in another was a 1938 S18D Twin Beech serial number 178, the 11th Model 18 […]

Last year when Bend, Oregon, company Columbia Aircraft exhausted its last gasp efforts at getting enough cash to stay in business and declared bankruptcy, there was immediate speculation that Cessna would buy the company’s assets at auction. As it turned out, Cessna had been looking at that possibility for some time already. And by the […]

It’s official. With the introduction of the G3 version, the seminal Cirrus SR20 piston single is all grown up. I hadn’t fully realized that until recently, when I had the lucky chance to fly a pair of SR20s, one really old one (well, as old as they get) and one brand spanking new one, in […]

SMA (Societe de Motorisations Aeronautiques) has a solution to the effect of higher fuel prices if you operate a Cessna 182. Its answer? The SMA SR 305-230-1 diesel engine, designed and developed from scratch as an aircraft engine. The engine, STCed for most Cessna 182Qs and 182Rs, is a horizontally opposed, four-cylinder, turbocharged, air/oil-cooled, diesel […]

**** It’s been almost 10 years since Austrian manufacturer Diamond Aircraft launched its all-composite four-seater, the DA40 Diamond Star, as a follow-on to its successful but payload-limited Katana two-seat trainer. I went to the Diamond factory in Austria back then to fly and photograph the Diamond Star, though I have to admit that based on […]

When Piper announced back in early November that it was going to produce an unpressurized, roughly $750,000 version of its Mirage six-place pressurized piston single, the reaction from the media was, well, downright tepid. At face value it seemed as though Piper was merely trying to lower the price point of its million-dollar-plus, cabin-class, pressurized […]

It’s the calmness with which they tell the tales that’s most striking. “One time I flew unconscious for an hour and a half. I lost my oxygen from shrapnel and passed out. I came to out of gas, with the engine dead, and in a spin.” “When I got shot down the second time, I […]

The manifold pressure and propeller rpm wound down abruptly on the engine in front of me. I lowered the nose a little and continued to climb. There was no roll or yaw change, and the only pilot task was to stay on climb airspeed, the same value I had been holding before the power loss. […]

The sun is not up yet in Afton, Wyoming, and the last I checked, the temperature was reading 10 degrees. Fahrenheit. I pull on two layers of long underwear, ski pants, turtleneck, a wool sweater, two pairs of socks and the Sorel boots and huge down parka-remnants from my old Minnesota days-that I dragged out […]

I swapped frequencies on the 430 and made my call to the controller. “Austin Departure, Cirrus Two Four Seven Sierra Romeo out of one-point-six for 4,000, one-five-zero on the heading.” “Cirrus 247SR, roger, climb and maintain 4,000. And Seven Sierra Romeo, uh, we have you down for 25,000 feet for your final altitude. Is that […]