AOPA offers resources to help you upgrade your bird
Get ideas from AOPA's sweepstakes aircraft restoration projects
 AOPA's Win-A-Six Sweepstakes aircraft will be an example of how STCs can improve your aircraft. |
Wanting to give your older, but still reliable aircraft a makeover that improves its utility, performance, and look? Well, AOPA can help you through the process. Follow AOPA's Win-A-Six in '06 restoration project to learn about avionics, engine, and airframe speed mods. Or get some ideas from our past sweepstakes restoration projects: Twin Comanche, Waco, Bonanza, Mooney, Stationair, Tri-Pacer, Arrow, and Cessna 172.
AOPA's Guide to Supplemental Type Certificates can help you through the approval process required to make some of these upgrades. The association recently added Advisory Circular 23-24 "Airworthiness Compliance Checklists for Common Part 23 STC Projects," which addresses the five most common categories of changes that have been made since 2002: installation of an autopilot system, installation of reciprocating and turbine engines with increased horsepower, replacement of a reciprocating engine with a turbine engine, installation of a different propeller, installation of auxiliary fuel tanks, and an increase in gross weight.
January 12, 2006
