Daytona Beach, Fla., Feb. 2, 2011 -- Caesar Yuen, EFT PR Officer
Courtesy Kevin Porter
Thanks to a high level of support from the Cessna Aircraft Company and the support of the administration of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, the Embry-Riddle Eagles Flight Team (EFT) is proud to announce the entry into service of two Cessna 162 Skycatchers at the start of 2011.
The two aircraft will be used in both short-field and power-off landing competitions in the coming National Intercollegiate Flying Association Safety Conference (NIFA SAFECON) which will be held at Columbus, Ohio in May 2011. The whole team is excited to fly the state-of-the-art aircraft and is confident that they will enable the team to be competitive in competition. Ground school sessions and flight instruction was conducted by Cessna’s Skycatcher training pilot to the first batch of EFT members before the spring semester had started.
The Skycatcher, announced in 2007, is Cessna’s entry into the popular light sport aircraft category. It features the Garmin G300 avionics suite and a Teledyne Continental O-200D engine. The Skycatcher also features 40-degree manual flaps, which will allow the EFT pilots to be competitive in the precision landing arena. The two-seat, single-engine aircraft has a maximum speed of 118 knots with a maximum range of 470 nautical miles. Fabrication and assembly is conducted at Shenyang Aircraft Corporation in Shenyang, China. Aircraft are then shipped to Cessna’s U.S. assembly site at Yingling Aviation in Wichita, Kan.
The aircraft have arrived in the Cessna-factory paint scheme (above) but will soon be redone in the paint scheme in the image below.
Courtesy Cessna Aircraft Company