Pistons

The Cessna 172 was based on the Cessna 170 taildragger, and in 1956 the most notable difference between the airplanes was the gear. The tricycle gear that helped make the Cessna 172 an excellent training airplane was named Land-O-Matic by the marketing department. Cessna’s idea to change the gear configuration most likely came from the […]

Automobiles with gull-wing doors are rare. For me, a Mercedes-Benz 300SL immediately comes to mind. Aircraft with gull-wing doors—such as the Cessna TTx and Socata Trinidad—are even rarer still, so when I first saw the Pipistrel Panthera from a distance at Chicago’s Waukegan National Airport (KUGN), I knew this airplane was something special. The company’s […]

This diesel-powered gem has undergone so many design enhancements and improvements it should be called ‘Diamond DA40 NG 2.0.’

For an airplane with an eye-popping paint scheme, N225HL stayed well-hidden for a couple of months prior to its debut on January 28. Cirrus Aircraft will mark 2021 with the delivery of number 8,000 of its SR-series aircraft, celebrating the milestone with a limited-edition series of eight special SR22Ts. Five-Hotel-Lima is the first of the […]

Long before I became a pilot, I read something somewhere about the extreme dangers of shock cooling a piston aircraft engine. The article didn’t specify which engines. It tossed a large, wet blanket over every Lycoming and Continental ever made. The idea of cylinders cracking on a steep descent with all that cold air passing […]

Universal Flight Concepts, based in Waco, Texas, has delivered its current Part 141-approved training programs using 10 Tecnam aircraft. On January 28, Universal announced that it has agreed to purchase an additional 18 Tecnam aircraft over the course of 2020, bringing its fleet to 28 total airplanes. The flight training organization has served Baylor University’s […]

More than 72 years have passed since the Cessna 172 first appeared on engineering drawing boards in Kansas, and the airplane still figures into the training plan for many pilots who learn to fly around the world. While the powerplant options continue to evolve, with the JT-A burning Jet-A, and an electric-powered version in the […]

It’s a rare pilot indeed who learns to fly in a single-engine airplane and never dreams of jumping into a larger, sleeker machine that carries more people, flies faster and farther, and of course, is outfitted with all the latest electronic navigation and communications gear. For pilots able to climb that ownership ladder—often men and […]

My circuitous path to the left seat of a seven-seat, million-dollar-plus, jet-A-burning Diamond DA62 twin didn’t come to fruition overnight. In fact, it took several years for me to arrive at this point. It all started with a chance encounter back in the summer of 2011, before the DA62 even existed as a certified product. […]

Cape Air celebrated its 30th anniversary in a special way last week, with the arrival of its first Tecnam P2012. The regional airline signed on to be the launch customer in the United States for the multiengine airplane in a collaborative process that goes back several years. Cape Air Senior Vice President, Fleet Planning & […]