You are cordially invited to join us for a plane picnic on Saturday, April 24 • 10 am - 4 pm at our new facility at the Anoka Airport, Key Air location.  

Come and enjoy the free day long barbecue, aircraft displays, flyovers, and war birds. This is an open house event for Malibu Aerospace, Key Air and several other aviation businesses. Dale Klapmeier (co-founder of Cirrus Design) will be speaking at the event as well.  http://www.fmfsim.com/picnic.html

We will have our FADEC Malibu on display in the hangar along with other products that we offer.  If you haven’t been to our new facility, now is a great time to come and check it out!  Bring your family and friends for a day of fun in Minnesota! 

If you would like to make a weekend out this event, please contact me and I would be more than happy to set up lodging and car rental for you.  It would also be helpful if you could let me know if you are coming or at least thinking about it so we can save you a prime parking spot. 

We would love to fill up the ramp with a bunch of PA-46 Aircraft!  Hope to see you there!  Let me know if you have any questions regarding this event.

The Plane Picnic will be held at:
ANOKA COUNTY AIRPORT [KANE]
Key Air Twin Cities
9877 North Airport Road NE
Blaine, MN  5544
888.539.2472
763.780.2802

-Ketti

There are so many perks from leasing space from Key Air.  One of them include having such a large hangar.  Not only does the hangar hold as many PA-46 airplanes as we wish, but it also the protective home to other aircraft on the field.

It’s fun to walk around and see some of the other aircraft that share the space with us.  When I walk outside of our office to the hanger, I just never know what I might see.

I thought it was about time to update everyone on what is new at Malibu Aerospace.  Well, for one, the name is new; we are no longer Malibu Power & Propeller, but now,(since November 2007), Malibu Aerospace.  We felt that this name better represents what we do and what we can offer to our customers.  We’re not just engines and propellers, but have other products and services to offer as well, such as custom interior components, cooling modifications, vacuum system upgrades, custom engineering projects and coming soon; LED landing lights.

Many of our customers continue to be very interested in upgrading to FADEC and we constantly get phone calls and e-mails asking for updates.  Well, we are working very hard to finish the FADEC STC and it is working and flying VERY well, but TCM needs to get the engine certified before we can complete the STC, so here we are, waiting for the FAA to grant them the Type Certificate for the FADEC engine so we can finish our job.  We are very hopeful that the engine TC will be granted very soon and it is our goal to complete the STC as quickly as possible after that. 

In the mean-time, we have decided to work in a couple new STCs while we are waiting to complete the FADEC STC.  First, we have started development testing for a Mirage cooling mod to help the Lycoming engine run cooler while you are waiting to upgrade to FADEC.  So far, we have been able to cool the engine 10 to 20 degrees during climb and cruise, with no speed or weight penalties.  We will continue to work towards even better results, but so far, it is a promising improvement. 

The other STC we have been working on is for LED wingtip Taxi/Landing lights and let me tell you, the results are very exciting!  Our prototype unit has proven to produce more than double the light output of the HID light upgrades with a much better light pattern.  These LEDs are the brightest on the market and with eight little LEDs on each wingtip, very efficient total internal reflection optics and half the power consumption of the original taxi lights, they are the lights of the future.  And the best part is… they last over 50,000 hours so you will never have to replace your taxi light again!

We hope to have both of these new STCs available by the MMOPA convention this September, with the FADEC engine upgrade to follow shortly behind.  For more infomation on these new projects, check out the “products” page on our website, www.malibuaerospace.com, or contact us here.

Chad Menne

Hello and welcome to the Malibu Power & Propeller Blog! This is where you will find the latest information and updates on the projects that we are working on, as well as information on how we analyze and test components and systems to improve them. We also invite you as a reader to comment on project ideas, problem areas that you would like to see addressed and ask questions about any of our capabilities or draw on our experience.

We will generally post one new subject each week and will respond to comments on an ongoing basis. The first subject that we solicit your comments about is what you think about our new website and what additional information would you like to see to make it more useful for you. Welcome and we look forward to hearing from you.