Coming up, see what its like, to fly the sleek
and speedy LX7 Turboprop.
Plus the story of a man who restored his dad's Cub
after it sat in a barn for decades.
And see all the latest and greatest avionics
from the AEA show in Dallas.
AOPA Live This Week begins in just a moment.
(upbeat music)
This is AOPA Live This Week
with Tom Haines and Alyssa Cobb.
Experimental, amateur-built airplanes
have come a long way over the years.
From plans built, to sophisticated kits,
the capabilities and versatility are remarkable.
AOPA editor at large, Dave Hirschman has the story
about an amazingly fast and powerful experimental,
the LX7.
What do you get when you take
a light, sleek airframe
and add a 680 horsepower PT6 turboprop engine?
Meet the LX7.
The LX7 is a remanufactured
and updated version of the Lancair IV-P.
The airplanes are made by RDD Enterprises
in Redmond, Oregon.
You just have a look at what we're doing here.
It's not what you would expect,
you know, four guys in a T hangar trying to slap together
a bunch of composite parts.
This is a very world-class manufacturing effort.
The company takes a donor Lancair IV-P
and each airplane gets entirely new wings with
a different airfoil and double-slotted flaps
that dramatically reduce stall speed.
Slower stall speed, which means we can have
a slower approach speed.
And then we wanted to also attack the stall
characteristics issue and by using the new airfoil
and some manufacturing techniques,
we've been able to get a very consistent wing, from one wing
to the next, which gives us excellent stall characteristics
and really good slow-speed handling.
They also get a larger, stronger
vertical stabilizer, a smaller rudder,
new instrument panels, and new engines.
You can choose either a PT6A turboprop ranging
from 500-750 horsepower,
or a turbocharged Continental engine
rated at 350 horsepower.
The LX7 has an IFR three-screen Garmin G3X panel,
leather interior, and custom paint.
Air conditioning and a BRS airframe parachute
are also standard equipment.
The number one thing about it is
the safety factor in it.
You feel more relaxed and comfortable flying the airplane.
The LX7 looks sleek and powerful on the ramp.
The muscular look is accentuated by a long, thin cowl
and the wide chord of its four blade MT prop.
Fit and finish is outstanding, and a clear coat
over the three-color paint scheme provides high gloss.
The LX7 is blazingly fast
and an efficient traveler.
In cruise, it'll do 300 knots flat out,
but a more typical cruise is 280 knots
at 25,000 feet, or 260 knots
at 17,000 feet, burning around 32 gallons per hour.
Really when you put the power to it,
it accelerates rapidly whether you're on a takeoff roll,
or if you're just in love with flying and you have power.
A turboprop LX7, including the donor airplane,
costs about $1.1 million.
And in an age when new piston singles regularly
cost that much, an as-new turboprop with dramatically
higher performance at the same price is intriguing.
Head and shoulders above anything else
on the market.
That's kind of what typically the feedback we get
from our customers that have LX7s.
Dave Hirschman, AOPA Live.
With efficient cruise under 18,000 feet,
the LX7 is also an ideal airplane
to fly under BasicMed.
We will have more about it
in an upcoming issue of AOPA Pilot Magazine.
The Aircraft Electronics Association is holding
its annual convention and trade show in Dallas this week.
More than 1500 attendees, even though the large contingent
of international members couldn't make it this year
because of COVID travel restrictions.
Some 120 companies are exhibiting there.
Some of the avionics manufacturers like to
use this event to showcase new gear.
Appareo, for example, is showing off
a new flight data monitor with 4K video.
The AIRS-400 will record video,
pilot intercom and radio audio, and flight data,
including altitude, ground, and vertical speed, attitude
and acceleration data,
and get this, it weighs just 11 ounces.
The device is crash-hardened
and it will set you back $12,500.
Genesys Aerosystems announced that its GDR product line
has received TSO approval.
GDR is a family of 11 remote-mounted,
software-definable radios that feature combined nav
and voice capabilities.
They're designed to interface with
a variety of controllers and displays.
Genesys also received TSO approval
for new enhancements to the S-TEC 3100 digital autopilot,
including support for GPS and route vertical navigation.
Garmin has added some new tricks
to the GI 275 electronic flight instrument.
You can now control various Garmin transponders directly
from the 275, including squawk code and ident.
Garmin also made it easier to switch
between GPS steering and heading modes
when interfaced with some third-party autopilots.
Garmin also touted its Smart Rudder Bias,
available on the GFC 600 digital autopilot
available for select piston twin engine aircraft.
The unit can detect an engine failure
and apply the correct flight control inputs.
It will also light up an alert
to show the pilot which engine has failed.
Avidyne announced STC approval
for the new SkyTrax 200 ADS-B receiver.
It will receive traffic and weather data
on both the 1090 and 978 megahertz bands.
It can be interfaced with a variety of displays.
Well, one of the latest trends
in avionics is multiple purpose units that can
replace old analog instruments or those steam gauges.
They'll fit right into the existing three inch hole
cut into your panel.
And we've already mentioned the Swiss army knife
of replacement units.
That's the Garmin GI 275.
But also for your replacement consideration
is the u-Avionix AV-30-C.
This unit can function
as an attitude indicator or a directional gyro
and includes a bunch of other functions as well.
It can also control the company's
tailBeacon ADS-B-out Mode S transponder.
uAvionix says the $2,000 AV-30-C is cheaper
than its Garmin competitor and easier to install.
And RC Allen and has digital replacements for the attitude
and heading indicators.
A little more expensive than the uAvionix units,
but very simple to install.
You can read much more about these
and other options on our website.
Bye Aerospace just announced the launch customer
for its new all-electric eFlyer 800 twin.
Jet It and JetClub signed a purchase agreement
for a fleet of eFlyer 800 aircraft.
Jet It is a fractional ownership company here
in the United States, and JetClub operates in Europe.
Currently, they operate HondJets.
The eFlyer 800 fits into Jet It's mission to
provide cost-effective travel solutions.
Now Bye says the eFlyer 800
will have similar performance to current turboprops,
cruise speed up to 320 knots,
35,000 foot ceiling, and 500 nautical mile range.
Company is targeting FAA certification in 2025.
Are you keeping up with your aviation initialisms?
Now you probably call them acronyms,
but our executive producer, Warren Morningstar,
can sometimes be a grammar nerd,
and he insists that if you can't pronounce it,
it's an initialism.
So here's a new initialism in the aviation world: EPU.
Electric propulsion units.
And magniX, the folks that have electrified a Beaver
and a Caravan, have just announced two new EPUs,
the magni350 and 650.
Both turn at 2300 RPM or less
and can drive a conventional propellor governor
and aircraft accessories.
The magni650 puts out 850 shaft horsepower.
And while Warren can be sometimes didactic, he wrote that,
not a word I would normally use,
he sometimes does have some useful information,
at least for some of us.
(cartoon drum beat)
(muttering)
Have you ever done that?
You know, I did an informal survey of pilots
and it seems like a lot of us keep doing it.
And you know what?
Here's a real simple solution.
Just turn your hat around.
That way, you've got your peripheral vision,
you'll see the trailing edge,
and you won't bang your bloody head.
Now, if you bang your head on a Piper wing,
there's not anything I can do for you.
(rock music)
Okay. Well thanks Warren.
And I confess, I have done that, although at my height,
that's usually not too much of a problem
hitting your head on too many high wings.
How about you, Alyssa?
You know, I've done that a number of times too
and have the little diamond imprint in my forehead.
Mine is usually though, because I'm looking
at other aircraft that are taking off
or something while I continue walking toward the airplane.
Yep. I've whacked my shin a number of times
on the Bonanza step, I have to tell you.
(laughs) Yeah.
Well, coming up, an amazing J-3 Cub barn find.
And looking to buy an airplane?
We have an event for you.
We'll be back in a moment.
(country instrumental)
I'm a full-time filmmaker.
And I integrate a lot of flying in with that
and primarily produced film and videos around aviation.
But I've got about 1700 hours,
about maybe 300 or 400 of that is dual given.
My ratings are a commercial airplane
single engine land.
And then I'm a CFII and just recently got my tailwheel.
So I use Sirius XM weather
hands down all the time on ForeFlight.
We were doing performance testing off the coast of Florida
and we needed unrestricted climbs with no clouds above us.
And we needed an unrestricted descent, no clouds below us.
And we actually use the cloud layer
that Sirius XM feeds to the iPad
and it was shockingly accurate.
I really tend to gravitate
toward using Sirius XM in the cockpit
because of the resolution of data that it's providing me.
I mean, what I'm looking at NEXRAD,
or weather on the horizon, or satellite cloud layers,
anything like that, the resolution
of the image that it's giving me is so much higher
and so much more frequent than ADS-B,
especially when you're operating in an IFR environment.
Welcome back.
The biggest baby Boeing ever has just flown.
The Boeing 737 MAX 10 took
off from Renton Field in Washington Friday,
and after a 2.5 hour flight, landed back at Boeing field.
The largest 737 yet can carry up to 230 passengers.
This was the first of a series of test flights
leading to FAA certification.
And in the wake of issues over
the original 737 MAX certification,
the FAA has launched a new safety reporting system.
The program gives FAA inspectors and other safety employees
a way to confidentially report issues and concerns.
While such programs have been in place
in other parts of the FAA, such as air traffic,
this is a first for the aviation safety office.
Congress made them do it after the 737 MAX crashes.
FAA administrator Steve Dixon said he wanted
the FAA safety troops to know they speak up
and somebody will listen.
The AOPA is supporting an important bill that would
fund the FAA, even during a government shutdown.
In early 2019, the government shutdown lasted for 35 days.
And that kind of a shutdown greatly affects the FAA
and takes a toll on safety.
If the Aviation Funding Stability Act passes,
the FAA would be funded through the Airport
and Airway Trust Fund during a funding lapse
The measure would ensure the FAA can
continue to operate as usual and essential employees,
like air traffic controllers, will continue to be paid.
The bipartisan bill was just introduced in the house.
And if there's another reason to be grateful
for the freedom to fly, it's that incidents
of unruly passengers are getting frequent.
And the FAA is breaking out its meme game to help stop it.
Would you act this way at Meemaw's house?
That's what the federal regulatory body in charge
of aviation is asking on Facebook.
The feds sharing this humorous graphic in an effort to
educate the public about behaving badly on flights.
They point out that bad behavior puts everyone at risk
and it could land you in jail or with a $35,000 fine.
Not to mention a good talking to from granny.
Remember, she raised you better than this.
Business aviation traffic numbers
continue to outpace 2019 and 2020.
The latest figures from FlightAware
show even more of an uptick than we had previously seen.
Last week, there were close to 13,000 turbine
general aviation flights per day.
That doesn't even figure in piston aircraft.
It marks a 45% increase from last year
and a 20% rise from 2019.
And if you're an aircraft owner
or are interested in buying or upgrading an airplane,
we have a new event coming up just for you.
AOPA will host two aviator showcases this year.
One in Manassas, Virginia, one in Fort Worth, Texas.
So this will be exhibit hall, aircraft display,
a handful of seminars related to technology
and aircraft ownership and panel upgrades.
About a thousand folks gathered for this
this very personalized, upfront up close event.
You can have up close, high-touch connection
with our exhibitors and friends in the industry.
So it's really tailored towards aircraft owners,
folks that wanna upgrade equipment panels, so forth,
purchasing aircraft, it's really an event designed to
get you connected in a very up close way with the industry
manufacturers and technology folks
that we depend on for our flying.
The Manassas event will take place
August 27th, the Fort Worth showcase will be October 1st.
Registration is required and there's a $20 registration fee.
You can find show specials, a list of the exhibitors,
and register to attend on the event websites.
Well, the Sentimental Journey Fly-In
is happening this week in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania.
It's a large gathering of Piper Cubs and other varieties.
And the beloved airplanes were built by Piper in Lockhaven
for the first part of its run.
And this week, we take you back in time.
Not only for this story about Cubs, but to 2012,
when the late AOPA technical editor, Mike Collins,
found the story of a man who restored his dad's Cub
after it had sat in a barn for decades.
Hi, my name's Greg McKnight,
and this is my 1943 J-3 Piper Cub.
My dad flew this airplane in 1946,
and I found this airplane in 1999, in pieces,
in the second floor of a barn.
Put it back together in 2008 and enjoying it since.
It was a very interesting find
to go trace my dad's old logbook entries
through the FAA database
and find the registration of this particular aircraft.
Once I found that, I was able to then identify the owner
from the pilot database, and happened to be working
in the same neighborhood where the owner lived,
and found his name in a phonebook.
Called him up, and six months later,
I was the proud owner of pieces of a J-3.
The aircraft was originally owned by
the Department of Defense and it was bought
by Ernie Buehl, the owner of the Somerton Airport
in Philadelphia.
The aircraft stayed in the Southeastern Pennsylvania area
for all its entire life.
It ended up going up through a second floor
of a barn in New Jersey, just outside of Philadelphia
in the '70s, about '73 and it stayed there
until I found it in '99.
So it sat idle for a bunch of years.
I ended up coming here to Sentimental Journey
and talked with Clyde Smith and I brought
my fuselage identification number.
And found out that that was actually
a glider fuselage number.
And from that, we were able to then go talk to
the folks in the museum.
And we're looking at the uniqueness
of the square windows on the back,
rather than the round-shaped rear windows.
We were able to identify that this fuselage
was originally a glider.
The location of the throttle controls
are a little bit different on this,
because the throttle control location
was for the toe hook release for the gliders.
It was actually a three-person glider.
The front part where the engine is
lopped off and it was a third seat
that was sitting up front there.
(engine sputters)
And in '46, my dad actually flew this as a J-3
in Somerton Airport within the city of Philadelphia.
62 years to the date that my dad flew in July 7, '46,
I flew this plane around the paddock at Quakertown.
Just to be able to mark the same date that he flew it,
62 years later.
AOPA Live is planning to bring you more from this year's
Sentimental Journey on next week's show.
And Tom, I understand that you'll be speaking
at the event this weekend.
Yep that's right.
I'll be speaking at the banquet on Saturday evening
and I'll look forward to seeing a bunch of
Cub pilots up there.
It'll be fun.
Wonderful. I wish I could be there.
Well, your 170, you know, it'll come in close.
And that's it for our show this week.
Thanks for watching.
Yep, and don't forget to share your thoughts on the show
at the email address on your screen
or leave us a comment if you watch on YouTube.
We hope to see you back here next week.
(upbeat instrumental)
Purchasing your own aircraft
is an exciting experience.
AOPA Finance simplifies the process,
saving you money with lower interest rates
and hassle-free loans.
So you get into your new aircraft sooner.
AOPA Finance: the right approach to buying an aircraft.