Let’s begin with the conclusion: American Champion’s decision to add 30 HP to the long-serving, 180-HP Scout, to make what it calls the Denali Scout—created the stud brute of the two-place, backcountry airplane set. It keeps the honest handling and excellent ground manners of the Scout while notching up the climb rate from very good to nearly breathtaking. There are some shortcomings that we’ll outline—they are all carryovers from the original Scout and not safety of flight matters.
Systems, loading
Adding power to an established airframe to get better performance seems like a no-brainer when it comes to improving the breed, but power is destabilizing—the airframe and control system may need significant changes. Second, there really ain’t a free lunch—more power means more weight in the engine room, accommodating a different, probably bigger, prop and figuring out how to store and supply fuel for a hungrier engine. Oh, yeah, there is going to be a whole new vibration harmonic for the airframe to compensate for (cracked structure is no joke), and the empennage is going to have to absorb higher intensity power pulses with each passage of a prop blade.