The Ultimate Type Club?

If you want to know something about a specific type of aircraft, the best place to start is probably a type club. As a Cessna 170 owner, I'm a member of the International Cessna 170 Association. It has a catalog of useful and affordable STCs, a ton of corporate knowledge and a great community of owner/enthusiasts. There is a type club for pretty much every kind of plane in the sky, though some are more active than others. I think I've found what sounds like the club with the coolest opportunity out there.

LoPresti Aircraft has an amazing event for Fury owners.

According to their website, LoPresti offers Top Gun training to any interested owner. Each pilot gets two training flights on aerial combat maneuvers and strategy, then a practice combat flight against another Fury. Once training is over, they outfit each Fury with lasers, machine gun sound simulators and smoke generators that blow when a plane gets "hit." Then they run a tournament among all the participants and the winner is awarded the LoPresti Prize for their combat skills. Could that be any more fun?

Just hearing about this makes me want to buy a Fury just so I can go play. The planes are a tad pricey, but a recent article from the EAA gives me hope that I might even be able to acquire one for less. LoPresti has decided to develop a kit for the Fury. They want to produce the best, most builder-friendly kit possible so they're taking their time with it. They're getting help from experienced EAA member-builders on kit design and a training system to go with it. It sounds like it could be upward of 2 years before the kits are available, but I expect they'll be popular.

Whether you choose kit or factory built, it sounds like LoPresti definitely has good ideas for keeping flying fun for their customers. I'm glad they're keeping things interesting. Now I just need to get a flight in one!