Liberty XL-2
 

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

OBA are flying them.

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

A fairly damning review in this months Pilot.

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

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 ?

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.

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.

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

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.