Single Engine Piston

(December 2011) Remember Slovenia? It used to be part of what we now call “the former Yugoslavia.” Unlike Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, Slovenia did not lay itself waste, after partition, with ethnic warfare. Perhaps that is why we hear so little about it; peaceful, prosperous and progressive, it is a sort of Slavic Sweden. It […]

__It’s not often that an amateur aeronautical tinkerer will hit upon a business idea so perfectly suited for the times that it advances, almost overnight, to become a runaway success story. Such was the case in 1971, when a young engineer from Oregon named Richard VanGrunsven tried, in his own words, to “build a better […]

Marking a milestone in India’s first public-private partnership for aircraft development, the country’s CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories and Mahindra Aerospace have flown their jointly developed C-NM5 piston single for the first time. Engineers from CSIR-NAL and Mahindra Aerospace spent close to three years designing the airplane before building the real thing over a 10-month period with […]

The incredibly popular PA-28 Cherokee line was launched in 1961, but the 180 horsepower engine was not introduced until the 1963 models. This configuration was later to become the Piper PA-28-180 and PA-28-181 Archer. While the Cherokee 180 model underwent various upgrades through the years, its basic design has remained remarkably unchanged — a tribute […]

Like early models of many well-known airplane types, the first Cirrus SR22s felt lighter than they do today. In part, that’s because they were light, and in part that’s because Cirrus has learned over the years how to make an airplane be both substantial feeling, which we pilots like, while staying light. They also felt […]

Created in the late 70s and first delivered as a product about five years later when Piper delivered the first Malibu, the PA-46 has proven a remarkably versatile airframe. It has, in fact, been developed (by Piper or others) into at least six different airplanes. Its impact on the continued existence and success of Piper […]

Back in 1983, the new Piper Malibu was a revolution. In the nearly 30 years that have passed since its introduction, the ride has been anything but silky smooth, though the resultant product is a very satisfying one. Owners, it should be said, have pretty much always felt that way. There are options galore when […]

The Cirrus SR series of single-engine airplanes has been controversial since the beginning. The beginning, as some of you might recall, came in 1995 when Cirrus, which had before then been a kit manufacturer, announced the existence of “Hangar X,” the secret facility in which it was building its mysterious to-be-certified entry. When the mystery […]

When you look back at the historical arc of light general aviation, a few airplanes stand out as being so important that their introductions changed the way we flew and the way we looked at flying. At the certain risk of leaving out a few favorites, you can’t talk about the history of light aviation […]

My introduction to the Piper Mirage has been an unusual one, to say the least, because I came to fly the progenitor of the PA-46 line only after I’d flown all of the others, some of them a lot. Before the Piper Mirage, I’d flown three of its spinoffs, the turboprop powered Meridian, the unpressurized […]