LoPresti Speed and Lighting Mods

[Guptar]

Has anyone had any experiance with the LoPresti mods for Piper singles. Flap and aileron gap seals, hoerner style wingtips, flap hinge speed spliters and the latest is a wing root fairing. Theirsales brochure say they should add up to about 10 kts better in cruise, does this hold out in real life, coupled with improvements in handling.

Also, are the Boom Beam lights worth the expense, do hey last the 5,000 + hrs as claimed, as they are pretty exxy. Someone told me recently that they(the HID lights) actually out out less light than the old lights.

Cheers

[bushy]

There was a piper saratoga in Alice Springs that had the gap seals etc, and the pilots did not even know. No-one mentioned more speed.

[jamsquat]

Check out the forums on mods on www.piperowner.org (http://www.piperowner.org)

The wingtips on slab-wing pipers are probably worth upgrading as the hoerner types were standard on the taper wing models The rest of the fairings are a bit of a wank, very minimal gain for the price and the extra time to remove for maintenance adds to the cost of your 100hrlys

JS:ok:

[ForkTailedDrKiller]

Best speed mod for a Piper single?

Trade it for a Bonanza!

Dr :8

[Cap'n Arrr]

or the new piper jet... thats a single!:E

[Biggles_in_Oz]

The gap seals improve handling at slow landing speeds (slightly).
The wheel fairings haven't appeared to improve cruise speed in my experience.
Individually, each mod doesn't do very much, and the cost to buy and install all the mods isn't worth the total improvement.

The HID lights use much less power, produce a much whiter light and more of it, and do last last longer than filaments. When comparing light output make sure the beam patterns are similar.
Last time I checked (a while ago now), the LoPresti HID lights were much more expensive than the XeVision equivalents.

[Peter Fanelli]

and the nose wheel door was staying open in cruise.


Then why is it still flying and not in the hangar being attended to?

Larger tires???

Bull****.

Don't forget, book speeds are obtained from a fresh production airframe flown on an ideal day without all the antennae and crap hanging off it that owners like to install.

[bushy]

Many pilots would not know if it was a few knots faster. How many bother to calculate a tas? I have quizzed CPL holders about tas, and many only seem to know what the ground speed readout is on the GPS. So they have to have electronics to do it for them.

[ForkTailedDrKiller]

"How many bother to calculate a tas?"

So what else are you going to do while sitting there watching George strut his stuff?

I only ever carried a "prayer wheel" for show, cause the numbers on the one that fits in your pocket are too small to read - but the Garmin 296 will calculate TAS in a flash.

I also have a computer program on the LS800 tablet that lets you calculate TAS by hold headings on N, S, E and W and entering the GS diplayed on the GPS while on each heading. Takes a little time but is supposed to be super accurate.

Guess what - it agrees with the TAS calculated by the GPS.

Ah, the age old issue of how fast is any particular aeroplane!

The FTDK at MTOW: 9-10000', 2300/21" (60% power ?), 160 kts TAS, 50l/hr.

Does it hour after hour after hour after hour ...............

Dr :8