A first peek at AOPA's next sweepstakes airplane
Sometime early this year AOPA President Phil Boyer is going to surprise one lucky person with the AOPA Win a Six in '06 Sweepstakes aircraft. Even we don't know who it will be yet, but we do know what this year's sweepstakes aircraft will be.
AOPA's 2007 Catch-A-Cardinal Sweepstakes features a Cessna Cardinal 177B, with fixed gear and a 180-horsepower engine.
It's a sleek performer that you can fly well, afford to maintain, and use to get around in comfort and style - and we're going to make it sing.
The stock 177B cruises at 124 knots, burns about 10 gallons an hour at moderate cruising altitudes (5,000 to 7,000 feet msl), and can take off and land comfortably within 2,000 feet. We're stripping this Cardinal down to its bare metal and refurbishing the airplane from the inside out. With a factory overhauled O-360 from Lycoming and new airframe parts from Cessna, this will be one slick bird.
On the panel side, we'll be putting in a WAAS-capable Garmin GPS/nav/com avionics stack with a multifunction display, an S-Tec autopilot, an L-3 Communications Stormscope lightning detector, a J.P. Instruments engine monitor, and a backup attitude indicator. In addition, we're making the airplane conversant with ADS-B (automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast) datalink technology so the lucky winner can access free weather and traffic information in expanding coverage areas.
To complement our coverage of the project in the pages of AOPA Pilot, we'll be posting online updates featuring photos, video, and other multimedia treats every other week.
And if you want to be the first to know who wins the Cherokee Six, make sure your AOPA ePilot subscription is up to date.
January 1, 2007
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