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STOL Kits: Bang for the Buck

There’s a good chance that there is some sort of STOL kit for your airplane. It will reduce stall and approach speeds, but is it worth the money?

Rick Durden
Verified

Edited By:

Omar Filipovic

That’s a Peterson King Katmai-modded Cessna 182 in the environment the modification was made for. It’s a descendant of the Wren 460, which was an airplane with a stunning 27-knot stall speed. The King Katmai has a stall speed that’s 4 knots faster, but, as a tradeoff, has twice the rate of climb and a few hundred pounds more useful load. But if you aren’t ready to put a Katmai in your hangar, Rick Durden’s best-bang-for-the buck aftermarket STOL mod article starting on page 8 covers some good alternatives.

That’s a Peterson King Katmai-modded Cessna 182 pictured above in the environment the modification was made for. It’s a descendant of the Wren 460, which was an airplane with a stunning 27-knot stall speed. The King Katmai has a stall speed that’s 4 knots faster, but, as a tradeoff, has twice the rate of climb and a few hundred pounds more useful load.

STOL kits for general aviation airplanes have been around for over 60 years because of two favorable circumstances: 1) They work, and 2) Manufacturers could have invested the money to lower the stall speeds of their airplanes, but at some point further improvements become too expensive for the expected demand and they stopped.

Rick Durden

Senior Editor Rick Durden has written for Aviation Consumer since 1994 and specializes in aviation law. Rick is an active CFII and holds an ATP with type ratings in the Douglas DC-3 and Cessna Citation. He is the author of The Thinking Pilot’s Flight Manual or, How to Survive Flying Little Airplanes and Have a Ball Doing It, Vols. 1 & 2.