Whether for work or a heck of a lot of fun, if you’re in the market for a STOL/utility airplane—one that will let you commune with nature in the most rugged of backcountry airstrips as we’ll as cruise at a reasonable speed and carry a little something—what’s out there and how do you choose among them?
We looked at what’s available in the production Part 23 (CAR3) world for airplanes that are purposefully built for short takeoffs and landings, yet also have respectable cruise speeds—a tough combination, as serious STOL usually means snail-like cruise—to see how they stack up. We did not include LSAs in the mix for a number of reasons, including useful load and trying to keep the sample size reasonable. We did, due to the exploding refurb market, include one machine that is the result of a modification of a production airplane because of its cruise speed and backcountry/STOL capabilities.