Page 82 - EAA78.Newsletter.Archives.(February.2017-July.2021)

CHAPTER CHATTER, EAA Chapter 78
Big News On Cessna Diesel Skyhawk
Textron Aviation announced on Tuesday that it had
earned FAA and EASA certification for its next-gen
Cessna 172 JT-A light single engine plane. The
Skyhawk, the most popular model in aviation history,
can now be operated on jet fuel, making it easier and
cheaper to operate everywhere, but especially in
foreign locales, where 100LL is hard to get and
prohibitively expensive.
Textron Aviation brings the most famous airframe in aviation history
into the Jet-A age.
The 172 JT-A has been a long time in coming, but little
of that can be blamed on Textron, which started the
program when German company Thielert was the
engine supplier. That company went into receivership,
and it wasn’t until Continental Motors acquired the
company, improved the design and restarted
production that this Skyhawk had an engine to call its
own.
The Continental CD-155 turbodiesel which boasts, you
got it, 155 horsepower, is a bit improvement over the
135-hp of the last diesel Skyhawk, and the difference
can be measured in performance. The new Turbo
Skyhawk is a pretty good climber, with a max rate of
climb under standard conditions of 767 fpm and a
cruise speed of 134 knots, around 10 knots faster than
today’s gas piston Skyhawk. The new model’s range,
at 963 nm, is also far greater than the 100LL Skyhawk.
Base price of the Skyhawk JT-A is $438,000.
Deliveries are slated to begin shortly.
7
Volunteer pilots for the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) are
standing by for final clearance to fly under the
BasicMed rule, according to Lt. Col. John W.
Desmarais Sr., the organization’s director of
operations, who reached out to insurance carriers,
the U.S. Air Force, and the FAA to confirm that
pilots would be able to continue their missions
under the regulations that went into effect May 1.
Doylestown, PA Composite Squadron 907
The organization was founded in 1941 to help protect
and defend the United States. In more recent years,
CAP has acted as an auxiliary arm of the U.S. Air
Force; patrol members are frequently tasked with
critical search-and-rescue missions, disaster
documentation, and other security functions.
BasicMed “kind of changes the way we do business
for some things, but it really opened the doors for
some other folks,” said Desmarais. He explained that
under third class medical regulations, CAP pilots had to
pay for a separate airman medical exam, “so in the
long run it’s less expensive for many of those pilots” to
fulfill their volunteer duties with the organization.
Desmarais described the three-pronged approach the
organization deployed to clarify its exemption to
operate under BasicMed rules.
“The first thing we had to do was check with our
insurance carrier to see if our folks were covered
under BasicMed” without premiums increasing, he
explained. “We are a nonprofit, so we had to make
sure that it would not affect our budget.”