Liberty XL-2

[Jetpig]

Who's flying them and if you have flown them, what do you think of them?
Thanks

[gcolyer]

OBA are flying them.

[Rod1]

Based purely on the reviews in the mags it appears to be heavy, slow and expensive so unless you are a flying school or flying IFR (if it is approved for this) I think it has little appeal.

Rod1

[Kolibear]

A fairly damning review in this months Pilot.

[stillin1]

Flew one a little while ago. normally fly a Europa.
liberty is a luxury Europa to look at and sit in.
It costs a bomb compared to a glass cockpit fully spammed up europa XS / Turbo.
IMHO - it IS fairly unresponsive, at 120 kts cruise = nothing speed-wise to write home about.
IFR however = yes it can, for even more money
Fat / tall = yes it can, eurpoa is fairly small if you eat a lot o pies
If you own a pink BMW 1.8d with every extra in the book, that you paid full price for, = you will love the liberty

[thirtysomething]

XL2 review

http://www.aopa.org/pilot/features/2004/feat0407.html

Im about to go out to OBA to do the PPL. While the FADEC sounds fancy will i be missing something in not learning about mixture ?

It looks nice to me , but what do i know , that review wasnt bad ?

[London Mil]

A fairly damning review in this months Pilot.

Did we read the same article? OK, he was a little concerned about the 'coarse' prop and had some difficulty with the finger brakes, but I didn't think that it was a 'damning' review.

[gcolyer]

thirtysomething
Im about to go out to OBA to do the PPL. While the FADEC sounds fancy will i be missing something in not learning about mixture ?

Persoanly I think you miss out when learning with FADEC. But the key thing is no matter what you fly later in life make sure you get a thourough checkout before you go off on your own.

[Rod1]

You will miss out on the mixture control if you fly a Rotax machine too. As we move away from the traditional aircraft a lot of the old info becomes dangerous. I read an article about changing the oil in one of the rags, if I did it as per the article I would seriously damage my engine. As has been said, understand the aircraft you are going to fly, the variation / complexity is increasing and people are getting it wrong.

Rod1

[mcgoo]

I've got about 20 hours in the liberty now, i'm 6ft 5 and 18 stone and can fit in no problems, its a lot more sensitive than the warrior I usually fly, it can drop a wing quite quickly in the stall and requires a lot more rudder input than the warrior due to the shorter fuselage, lots of height can be lost in the sideslip due to the large rudder, a nice aircraft in my opinion, the brakes take a little getting used to but no big deal, the warrior looks prehistoric inside now after the Liberty.