 | | Great news! Our/your TwinCo has had its first flight with its new engines, props, and LoPresti speed mods. And the first report is fantastic.
LoPresti Speed Merchants' shop manager, Paul Zanis, was the lucky test pilot. He took off from LoPresti's home airport at the Vero Beach, Florida airport, then climbed to 3,500 feet for the shakedown cruise. With manifold pressure set at the top of the green arcs and propellers set at 2,400 rpm, Zanis saw a very impressive 170 knots indicated airspeed. Indicated! Outside air temperature was 15 degrees Celsius/59 degrees Fahrenheit, so true airspeed for the flight works out to be about 180 knots. Quite an improvement over stock performance numbers (165 knots true is a stock, non-turbo charged TwinCo's approximate max cruise speed), and a testimony to the slipperiness of LoPresti's mods, the output of the Superior Air Parts Millenium engines, and Hartzell's Q-tip propellers. More performance numbers will follow as we gain more flying experience.
|   | | | Apparently AOPA members love the blues. In choosing a paint scheme for our Win-A-Twin Sweepstakes project, AOPA members got all jazzed up about the Bahama blue scheme, which garnered more than 5,500 of the 13,500 votes cast as of March 15. In other words, 41 percent of members preferred the contemporary design that features a white-over-Bahama-blue scheme, with swoopy stripe and �Win-A-Twin� mini-logos on the engine nacelles. More.. Click here to see the winning paint scheme.
|  | | The Twin Comanche will leave LoPresti Speed Merchants on or about February 21, bound for KD Aviation's paint shop at the Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, New York. The departure date isn't set in stone for a few good reasons. Last-minute work on the airplane's new Janitrol heater are being finished, as is work on an ill-fitting exhaust pipe, and new oil coolers are also being installed. Most important, the weather must be good VFR for this trip. I'll go down, get re-familiarized with the "new" airplane, then launch when conditions are right. It will be interesting to see how far I get with the airplane's 120-gallon fuel capacity. More.. | | | |
 | |  | | | | RAPCO, Inc. manufactures FAA-PMA (Parts Manufacturing Approval) replacement parts for a number of aircraft components. Among them are the model RA215CC vacuum pumps that have been installed in the Win-A-Twin Comanche. These pumps incorporate many desirable new features. These pumps’ cooling fins offer more surface area to cool the pump. Inside, the pumps use a new, beveled design at each rotor vane. The bevels let small particles pass through the pump without destroying the vanes. Particles can break off the vanes and seize ordinary vacuum pumps, causing them to fail. Finally, these pumps have an ingenious, dipstick-like go-no go gauge (RAPCO calls it a “Smart Stick”) that let you keep track of vane wear. To use the Smart Stick you open a cap screw on the pump body, then insert the plastic stick. Marks on the stick show when the vanes reach wear limits. The first inspection interval is at 500 hours; the rest follow at 100-hour intervals. Because of the improved cooling and vane design, RAPCO’s Mark Gaulke says that the Win-A-Twin’s pumps “should go 1,500 hours” before needing replacement. Formore information, contact RAPCO at 445 Cardinal Lane, Hartland, WI 53029; telephone 262/367-2292; Internet: www.rapco-rfs.com
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