Its our opinion that you cant go wrong with a cover from Bruces. The company has patterns at the ready for common and uncommon airplanes and plenty of experience making them work. Need a cover for your F4U Corsair? They can do that.

Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to common models, there are many options to choose from. We tested both a basic canopy cover for the Cirrus SR22 and their standard canopy cover for the Cessna 172. These covered the windows and doors on both aircraft. But the Cirrus one can be ordered to cover the fuselage and engine cowl in a single cover, and the Cessna can be made to cover more of the wing roots, more of the fuselage, include the engine cowl or any combination thereof.

The Bruces covers are heavy-duty, which could be both a benefit and a drawback. The cover will clearly take the abuse of the elements, and we hear from owners that the covers stand the test of time. But the Bruces covers for the Cirrus and the Cessna took up twice the volume of competing covers when packed perfectly in the bags that arrived from the factory. After stuffing the things haphazardly back in the bags during our testing-as the winds picked up and the temperature dropped-the difference was even more noticeable. The Bruces covers were also two to three pounds heavier than competing designs.

The covers have a soft liner on the inside and strapping material under the buckles to protect the aircraft. They also had bungee material strung through the edge of the covers. This worked we’ll to snug up the cover and made it easier to attach once the buckles were set for the right length, because we could stretch the cover a bit, connect and then it would pull tight on its own.

Two things we liked about the Cessna 172 cover was that it only used two straps underneath the belly (every extra strap matters when your fingers are turning