[STEVE]

STEVE on March 12, 2025 at 9:12 am #23042

Hi Joel,
Great feedback.
Thanks for “doing the research” and writing it up. 
For what it’s worth, I’ve never heard of a collection of speed mod installations improving the performance as much as the total of each mod seems to promise.
But you definitely improved your airplane.

Best,
Steve

[Eric Parks]

Eric Parks on March 11, 2025 at 6:44 pm #23041

So far the only speed mod I’ve installed has been wing fairings to my Piper Apache (PA-23). To be honest if there is a speed increase it’s probably about 1 mph but I think they look great!! The original fairings were sheet metal and were pretty beat up and were actually getting to where they didn’t look like they would last much longer. So I pretty much needed to replace them anyway. I picked fairings from DiamondAire, the Geronimo upgrade folks and they are made of carbon fiber and have nice compound curves instead of the simple curves on the original ones. Also, the new fairings gave me a fairing outside of the engine where there had not been a fairing before so I considered that a big plus too. They did have to be custom fitted and they may be sized to fit the Aztec as well, I don’t know. 

My Apache already had some other Geronimo mods on it when I bought it including the squared off wing tips, dorsal fin and flap gaps seals. Since they were already on the plane I don’t know if they helped with speed increases or not. Since my Apache is fairly slow as twins go I always want a bit more speed so in the future I’m planning on a speed slope windshield and perhaps putting a more sleek beacon than the huge one sitting on top of my vertical stab. Both of these mods are more for esthetics than speed but one can always hope! I also would like to add electronic ignition and that might help a tiny bit on speed but also perhaps fuel burn and keeping the plugs cleaner.

[Joel]

Joel on March 11, 2025 at 3:06 pm #23040

Hi Steve,

On my PA24-250 I have installed the Knots2U flap/gap seals, the wing root fairings, wing fillet kit, gear lobe fairing and vortex generators. I purchased everything from Knots2U except the VGs which I purchased direct.

I did the VGs last and after the installation they would be the absolute first thing I installed. My stall speeds went from 70mph clean to 62mph and 62mph dirty to 55mph; it was a drastic change and it’s fantastic. I have not done any climb tests, but I can easily get on and off 1000′ of my home runway (KSZT) with two people and full mains (60 gallons of fuel).

As for the speed mods, I have done informal testing (including two 2600nm round trip flights). I would say that at econo cruise (21″ @ 2100rpm) I true about 6-7mph faster and approximately 5mph at 75% power settings. So, real world isn’t what’s “claimed” but it’s a definite improvement and the best part is the “feel” of the plane (I recognize it’s subjective). The plane feels much more responsive if you throw it into a turn, recover from a stall or just go on a “training” flight. Climb is about 2-300fpm improved but I never had a problem in climb previously starting at 2140′ airport elevation (depending on weight, I climb between 1200-1500fpm on any given day with one person and 50+ gallons of fuel for a normal load; 2000+fpm in winter is pretty normal). The real trick is the mods increased the altitude I get best performance; the plane trues out best around 8500-9500 instead of 7500 previously.

I know this was a long-winded post, but I hope it helps someone else looking at mods. My recommendation would be VGs are fantastic and a first choice; everything else is just a bonus on an already great airplane.

The only mods I’m looking at would be dual exhaust (stress relief and weight reduction) and the Eagle XP cowl if it were ever to be available again.

[STEVE]

STEVE on February 7, 2025 at 2:14 am #22990

Hi,
Steve here.
Looking for any and all feedback on the benefits of installing speed mods on your airplane. I would appreciate feedback such as:

Where did you get the mod kit?

Which kit(s) have you installed?

Did the speeds/climb rate/performance improve noticeably?

Did you measure the improvements? What did you find?

Do you plan to add more speed/performance improvement mods?

Thank you,
Steve