General Aviation Modifications

Flying by the seat of your pants is more comfortable and fun when you’re nestled into a supercomfortable seat surrounded by first-class furnishings

Someone in the aircraft refurbishment business once said (or should have said), “The paint may be what you see, but the interior is where you live.” So it is with Plane & Pilot’s Project Skylane. Since buying the 1981 Cessna 182 on the East Coast three years ago as a fixer-upper, we’ve done equal shares of research, hand-wringing and procrastination. Eventually, we had no choice but to actually give birth to the project. As a result, we’ve finally managed to finish the panel, paint and interior.

Speed brakes can ease the process of descent and landing, and they can even decrease engine wear and tear on piston aircraft

I was flying with a buddy in my Mooney, returning from a Saturday hamburger flight. We’d come home from the desert via the tall road, high-jumping to 10,500 feet to clear the San Jacinto mountains on the short 120 nm hop back to Long Beach, Calif.

Let’s say you own a 1981 Cessna Skylane with adequate avionics, an old paint job and a pedestrian interior, but want to increase capability and safety. What would you do first?

Here at Plane & Pilot, we seem to enjoy lavishing full rebuilds on old Skylanes. Back in the late ’70s, I found and negotiated the purchase of a 1963 Skylane for the magazine as a reader project airplane. A few years ago, ex-editor Lyn Freeman purchased our current project airplane, yet another C182.

Power Flow’s tuned exhaust system works

Okay, I admit it. I was a hot-rodder as a kid. Shortly after I was old enough to drive, a buddy and I began campaigning an old Ford on the second-gear, stock-car circuit around Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska. Later, I raced a Triumph TR3B and an Austin Healey 3000 in Sports Car Club of America gymkhana events around New Mexico. I didn’t win very often, but I had great fun in the process (until I realized how much money it was costing me).

Turbocharging. Is it worth its weight and heat?

Let’s say you live in Wichita, Kan., where the highest terrain is about 1,600 feet. Normal aspiration should be adequate to cover virtually any situation, right?