Page 31 - Volume 15 Number 1

From Australia, GripsAero’s turbocharged version of its Airvan utility airplane, a bit like a miniature Caravan, was on display. Soloy’s Rolls-Royce-converted Cessna Stationair and tricked-out editions of Cessna’s Caravan and Citation Mustang were in the Jet-A section of the static display. Hawker Beechcraft showed examples of its piston, turboprop and jet products. Beech also announced that the 2,000th 90-series King Air was soon to be rolling off the production line, a C90GTx.
Some of the more unique aircraft on site were a Grumman F7F-3P Tigercat twin-engine superfighter built at the end of World War II, a 1936 gull-wing Stinson SR-7B, a 1939 Lockheed 12A Electra Jr. and a 1960 Piaggio P.136 gull-wing amphibian. Sailplanes, brand-new Waco YMF-5 biplanes and a mockup of Piper’s new Altaire personal
jet vied for attention. Billed as a “celebration of aviation,” the airport display drew big crowds.
At the Long Beach Convention Center, the exhibit hall provided aisles of aviation purveyors (after all, even the Little Giant ladder belongs in a hangar) to stroll through. Full-size aircraft brought indoors included the Terrafugia flying car, an LAPD police helicopter, Cirrus’ SR22T and Michael Comb’s well- traveled Remos GT, Hope One, which had visited nearly all 50 states on a “Flight For The Human Spirit” – only Hawaii had yet to be reached.
The 2010 annual sweepstakes give-away airplane was a brand-new Remos GT, awarded a week before AOPA’s Summit to consultant Yorke Brown of Etna, N.H., in a surprise ceremony initially disguised as participation in a research study. For 2011, AOPA returns to a “Crossover Classic” path to its
Sweepstakes airplane, in the form of a 1974 Cessna Skylane. The original- condition 182P was at the static display for its “before” showing, exhibited as purchased except for an Air Plains conversion to a 300-hp IO-550 Continental engine. By the time it’s awarded to a lucky AOPA member, it will have had every conceivable upgrade.
As always, we couldn’t take in everything there was to see and hear, but some of the meetings just couldn’t be missed. John and Martha King spoke in both serious and amusing fashion about their detention at the hands of the Santa Barbara police department, all because the N-number of their “stolen” 2009 Skyhawk was on a 10-year-old registry that no one had seen fit to purge of errors. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then and it won’t be funny in the future, John King worries, when some innocent
JANUARY 2011
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