Interesting point about questioning the longjevity of the jab. I'm noting that many of the Jabs are getting a hell of a lot of hours in a short time with lots of students coming and going over a short timeframe. I know of a school that's putting around 900 hours on their Jabs and in 3 years have clocked up 5,500 hours over 6 aircraft; overall they are standing up remarkably well. With the high resale values at the moment they are turning them over at the 2 year mark and getting most of the money back for them. They are a very profitable operation with that many hours on the clock.
Quite a bit different to the average 172 or Warrior sitting there doing bugger all and ageing. You really do need to keep them hangared along with the Tecnam's etc otherwise they will suffer. I think you'll find that the Tecnams will get replaced much sooner than you think, like in 3-5 years given the high resale values for RA-Aus aircraft.
As for the crank case, they were not "faults" with the engine as such but rather many users having vibrating props that were doing damage to the crank-cases. With such a new aircraft with new props I'd be very surprised if the crank case was cracking due to the vibration unless they had been very shodily maintainted.
The J160 and J230 have improved greatly in ergonomics with a dash mounted throttle.
The Boomerang looks like a new version of the Tommy. I've heard no feedback on them at all; would be interested to hear.
Last edited by VH-XXX; 18th Dec 2006 at 09:43.
Reason: update