"Every AOPA member dreams of winning the sweepstakes airplane. The next best thing to owning it is flying it--and now, thanks to our partnering with Flight1 Software, all of our members will have that opportunity."
- AOPA President Phil Boyer
If you’re already an AOPA member, you’ve no doubt already heard about this year’s sweepstakes airplane: a decked-out, fixed-gear, 180-horsepower Cessna Cardinal 177B. The aircraft has been completely overhauled and refurbished. With a factory-overhauled Lycoming O-360 engine, new paint job, new interior, and a new panel full of the latest instruments and avionics, the result will barely resemble the aircraft the team bought from private pilot Ben Jones in Dallas back in January.
Your Cardinal
A few times each month, Julie Boatman has been chronicling the makeover on the AOPA web site. Her reports are well worth reading. You can learn all about what it takes to strip an old airplane down to bare metal and then build it back up again. One lucky person will win the real "Catch-A-Cardinal Sweepstakes" airplane early next year. If you’re an AOPA member, it could be you!
While Julie and the team from AOPA have been working on the real sweepstakes aircraft, our friends at Flight1 Software have been hard at work creating a virtual double of it for use in Flight Simulator X. If you’re an AOPA member, you can download it for free!
What a deal!
Join AOPA for the price of a typical
Flight Simulator add-on aircraft, receive all the benefits of membership, AND download your own virtual Cessna Cardinal. Sure, it’s not the real airplane (though you might win that too), but think of it this way: there are no taxes or tie-down fees to pay, no maintenance required, and fuel is free!
The virtual Cessna Cardinal 177B created by Flight1 duplicates nearly every detail of the real-world sweepstakes airplane. The high-tech instrument panel matches that of the real airplane, and is stocked with avionics that simplify VFR cross-country flight and serve as a stable and capable single-pilot IFR platform.
Features include:
This is AOPA's third sweepstakes airplane add-on for Flight Simuator. Flight1 Software created a virtual Commander 112A for AOPA's 2005 “Commander Countdown Sweepstakes,” and a virtual Piper Cherokee Six 260 for their 2006 “Win a Six in ’06 Sweepstakes.” Both of these add-ons were for Flight Simulator 2004.