10 Cheapest Planes

When Roy LoPresti did his aerodynamic magic to the Mooney M20, it became magically the Mooney 201, the nickname boasting the plane’s top speed of 201 mph. Because it’s fast, the 201 is a desirable airplane, and so it holds its value strongly. Pre-201 Mooneys, on the other hand, can still be had for a […]

The term “ultralight” is shorthand for the FAA’s Part 103 Aerial Recreational Vehicle (ARV). True ultralights are single-place, very, very light planes that don’t need any kind of pilot’s license to fly or even any kind of certification. They are essentially unregulated. That said, almost every “ultralight” out there today isn’t really an ultralight at […]

The Stinson 108, built by Stinson Aircraft Company from 1946 to 1950, is a secret hiding in plain sight. Stinson built more than 5,000 of the planes, but it has what is largely a niche following. That could be because of what some describe as ungainly looks. A fabric-covered, steel-tube fuselage taildragger, the four-seat 108 […]

Planned as a replacement for Piper’s high-wing rag-and-tube Colt, the Piper PA-28-140 Cherokee arrived early in 1964. The all-metal, low-wing aircraft was primarily intended for use as a trainer, competing with the Cessna 150. It might not have won that battle, but it did grab market share, and for good reason. The entry-level Cherokee 140 […]

A lot of pilots refer to all two-seater Luscombes as “Silvaires,” but the first Luscombe to carry the name “Silvaire”—the Luscombe 8C—wasn’t built until 1940. Its engine was a rarity at the time, a 75 hp, fuel-injected Continental A-75-8J. The more common Silvaire models, the 8E and 8F, went back to carbureted engines. The 8E […]

We might just get in trouble for including this plane, not because it’s not a good one, but because the Skipper is such a carefully guarded secret. The all-metal, Lycoming O-235-powered Skipper was Beechcraft’s mid-’70s attempt to create the perfect new trainer to grab market share from Cessna, which owned the training game at the […]

You might find it odd that we’re grouping these two classic Cessna singles, as the 170 is a taildragger and the 172 a tricycle gear plane, but the two share so much in common it’s fair to say that they are two sides of the same coin. The 170 is, of course, the immediate predecessor […]

There are pilots who don’t need to be convinced of the Champ’s charm and value. This little taildragger, which was a direct competitor to the J-3 Cub for a time, is in some ways a better airplane than a Cub. Like the J-3, it’s got tandem configured seating, but unlike the Cub, a solo pilot […]

If there’s a reason why the Ercoupe doesn’t look all that weird to us, it might be because it’s been around so long, since the mid-1930s, in fact. Over the decades, it was in off-and-on production by at least five different companies, including Mooney, which made a single-straight-tailed version of the Ercoupe, the M-10. Overall, […]

Introduced in the late 1950s, the Cessna 150 was a revolutionary airplane at the time. A tricycle gear, side-by-side two-seater, the model gave instructors and students exactly what they were looking for, an easier-to-fly and -land trainer that held up to a seemingly endless succession of bad student landings. The 150 is sometimes trimmed out […]