Soon to be a part of the GA flight line at a quaint country strip in western Mass. is the American Eagle.It's new home will be at
Great Barrington Airport (GBR), typical of small airdromes throughout our great land with its 2,585' paved strip, flight training and repair stations, charter ops and a loyal cadre of hangar-flyin' pilots, some of whom I met the other day when I dropped in to say hi.
The lovely airport is five minutes from the cultural mecca of Great Barrington, nestled in the Berkshire Hills, a great place to live and a draw for Gothamites (NYC) to the south and Bostonians to the east.
The strip was converted from a potato field in the '20s, (maybe that explains its appeal to those of us of the Irish persuasion.)
One regular who's flown out of GBR for decades, after I asked him when the new Eagle SLSA would arrive, shot back, partly in jest, "Whattya want one of them for?"
Once I told him a bit more about the industry and my little corner of it, we had a good yak about things all pilots love to talk about, starting with airplanes and ending with...airplanes.
The American Eagle is an all-metal, ASTM-certified (#62, Nov. 2007) high-wing airplane produced wholly in the U.S.
Plans are to train with it and also rent it for $100/hr.
It's an attractive airplane, and Cessna flyers, the yoke's on you - two of them in fact.
I'll report on it once I get a checkout, likely in March when we'll be looking for signs of Spring.
Apparently the production Eagle is built and just waiting for good weather to relocate to GBR from its birthplace - which, fittingly, is Oshkosh, WI.
---photo courtesy Eagle Aviation
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