8 Great Used Planes

The world’s first true, corporate, turbine single is also the fastest airplane in our analysis, no big surprise since it flies behind a 700 shp Pratt & Whitney PT6A-64 turboprop. (The Cessna Caravan was actually the first single-engine turbine, but the non-pressurized Caravan is more of a utility cargo van, whereas the TBM-700 is a […]

For many pilots, the regal Beech Baron 58 has always represented an ultimate in general aviation. Just as the straight-tail Bonanza was an icon to pilots of single-engine airplanes, the model 58 was often regarded as the peak of the twin-engine pyramid. New, well-equipped 58 Barons cost around $1.6 million today, and even a four-year-old […]

The straight-tailed Bonanza is one of every aviator’s favorite airplanes. Bonanzas offer a certain smoothness of response, an almost indefinable coherence between pilot and airframe rather than simply tactile communication with stick and rudder. The first Beech model 33s premiered in 1960 with a standard, three-member tail, a 225 hp Continental under the cowl and […]

Piper’s Dakota, follow-on model to the Cherokee 235, Pathfinder, and Charger, was intended as a head-to-head competitor with the Cessna Skylane. It featured the same horsepower, roughly the same interior dimensions, comparable performance in every parameter and the benefits of a low wing. Piper knew that recently licensed pilots tended to buy the type of […]

It seems Mooneys are forever. The first semi-four-seat Mooneys date back to the ’50s, and the little speed freaks could step along at 145 knots on about 9.5 gph. Those first, short-cabin airplanes were constructed with wood wings and empennage, but Mooney modernized the airplane to all-metal construction in 1961. The company soldiered on to […]

It seems anything Roy LoPresti touched was automatically a work of art. LoPresti transformed the stodgy GA Traveller into the Tiger with a series of much needed aerodynamic modifications, mostly by hanging a carbureted, 180 hp Lycoming O-360 on the nose. LoPresti also boosted fuel from 38 to 52 gallons, made a few cosmetic changes […]

Super Cubs are special to me, as my first flight in an airplane back in the last century was in a Super Cub on skis, though it would hardly qualify as “super” by today’s standards. The one-hour search-and-rescue mission was in a basic J-3 Cub in Alaska when I was 13, and the engine recently […]

As the most successful civilian trainer ever built, the Cessna 150/152 is dear to the hearts of tens of thousands of pilots. Born in 1978 as a Lycoming-powered upgrade of the earlier Continental-driven Cessna 150, the 152 solved most of the carb ice problems of the earlier model and added 10 hp in the process, […]