They quote about $50K installed, here is the link to their page. I have the TAT system on my A36 and can't say enough good about it. Thinking of how that would have improved high altitude performance on the Cardinal, that would be amazing. Paul Milner, who is VERY active in the Cardinal community, has one. I would definitely speak to him about it.

I have the IO 390 in mine and a Powerflow. I doubt it improves the cruise speed much, the real benefit being take off and climb. I bought it with that engine so I have nothing to compare it with.

I plan at 145 knots and get that reliably. In calm conditions and cooler air it will true out at 150 knots. Did that recently on a 3 hour flight at 8000’.

I fly ROP as I am speed greedy. LOP my fuel flow is 33 litres per hour for a tas of 137-138.

I have the original two bladed prop which is said to be a bit faster than the three bladed props.

Cardinals were super cool. Was looking at several for my first plane back in the naughties. The carry-through spar issue was just raising its head, but it sounds like it's a well understood issue these days, and most have been handled.

Best,
Rich

Yeah, it's really a nothing-burger. Almost all the airplanes passed the inspection, and I know of at least one that didn't where Textron gave them an AMOC. These spars are massive overkill to begin with. It's a variant of the 210 spar, which has much higher gross weight, speed, etc... In fact the entire genesis of the AD comes from a single 210 operating for 10,000 hours on the salt air coast of Australia doing low level, high speed geophysical survey work. It was getting pounded every day with turbulence, was corroded, and finally gave in. 1 airplane, that's it.

In some sense, the AD is actually a good thing as it's forcing everyone to go in and inspect, clean up, and epoxy prime the spars. These spars will now last forever. This has greatly extended the life of the fleet.

Beautiful airplane!

Yeah, it's really a nothing-burger. Almost all the airplanes passed the inspection, and I know of at least one that didn't where Textron gave them an AMOC. These spars are massive overkill to begin with. It's a variant of the 210 spar, which has much higher gross weight, speed, etc... In fact the entire genesis of the AD comes from a single 210 operating for 10,000 hours on the salt air coast of Australia doing low level, high speed geophysical survey work. It was getting pounded every day with turbulence, was corroded, and finally gave in. 1 airplane, that's it.

In some sense, the AD is actually a good thing as it's forcing everyone to go in and inspect, clean up, and epoxy prime the spars. These spars will now last forever. This has greatly extended the life of the fleet.

Yeah, it's really a nothing-burger. Almost all the airplanes passed the inspection, and I know of at least one that didn't where Textron gave them an AMOC. These spars are massive overkill to begin with. It's a variant of the 210 spar, which has much higher gross weight, speed, etc... In fact the entire genesis of the AD comes from a single 210 operating for 10,000 hours on the salt air coast of Australia doing low level, high speed geophysical survey work. It was getting pounded every day with turbulence, was corroded, and finally gave in. 1 airplane, that's it.

In some sense, the AD is actually a good thing as it's forcing everyone to go in and inspect, clean up, and epoxy prime the spars. These spars will now last forever. This has greatly extended the life of the fleet.

The windshield is a long way from the spar, so probably not. However there was an issue with the scat tube Cessna used for the air vents. They used the cheap black stuff, and the rear vent tubes went through lightning holes in the spar. Condensation and any water that got in would leak from the tube onto the spar and cause corrosion. Most of these got changed out to the orange scat tube years ago.

The windshield is a long way from the spar, so probably not. However there was an issue with the scat tube Cessna used for the air vents. They used the cheap black stuff, and the rear vent tubes went through lightning holes in the spar. Condensation and any water that got in would leak from the tube onto the spar and cause corrosion. Most of these got changed out to the orange scat tube years ago.

Where are you located?

Looks like Oconto, Wisconsin.

Dan

The windshield is a long way from the spar, so probably not. However there was an issue with the scat tube Cessna used for the air vents. They used the cheap black stuff, and the rear vent tubes went through lightning holes in the spar. Condensation and any water that got in would leak from the tube onto the spar and cause corrosion. Most of these got changed out to the orange scat tube years ago.[/quote]

Yea, they original black CAT tubing was very cheap fabric that had a spring steel wire in it. The fabric would disintegrate over time, exposing the wire. It would rub against the spar, or whatever was next to it, and you'd get dissimilar metal corrosion, plus the abrasion from the rubbing.

That stuff was the apocalypses for many, many GA aircraft. I know Mice especially had a bad, bad time with that stuff that ran down the sidewalls behind the panel.[/quote]

I think there is more to it than the steel causing dissimilar metal corrosion. There must be some kind of carcinogenic property to aluminum and stainless that gasses out from the fabric. I see intergranular corrosion frequently just in the vicinity of that type of tubing. It even causes corrosion on the swaged stainless steel cable ends on Bonanza aileron cables without contacting it.

These pics are from behind the forward side panels in a Beech sport that I parted out that had very little corrosion elsewhere.

The airplane is at KOCQ. Only 30 miles north of Green Bay, WI, and cheap fuel!

That's where the water enters the cabin. The most common source of the water is the wing root fairings. They were once sealed by Cessna with (toxic) zinc chromate putty which has hardened and cracked in that flexing service after 58 years.

The easiest fix is to remove the upper wing root fairing, scrape off as much of the dried zinc chromate putty (don't get it on you or in you, chromates aren't good for living things), and add one to three layers of Styrofoam sill-seal from the home improvement store, as required to close the gap between the fairing and the wing. This will prevent water entry. That's the water that migrates to the top of the windshield. The windshield sealant may also be defective, but typically that's a much smaller source of water than the wing root fairing.

We have a page detailing this fix, plus alternatives, on the Cardinal Flyers website. www.cardinalflyers.com

Paul

Nice cardinal, can you contact me? BT private message inop on my end.