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Recordo
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FL
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The SkyCatcher's First Catch
from Recordo
wrote 2 years 17 weeks ago
Don't get me started on Chinese quality, I did manufacture there. Never again. What troubles me is Cessna's marketing plan discarded the superior NGP airplane in response to Diamond and Remos and saw gold in LSA hills.
I'm not suggesting that we take our primary training in a Stearman and I haven't flown a Skycatcher so maybe, just maybe, it's an okay airplane.
But Chinese manufacturing bothers me greatly both for the quality thing and more fundamentally, for the way I feel about my country and how I see accountants making decisions that our own people bled for. I just can't like it.
Technicalities: Rules to Fly By
from Recordo
wrote 2 years 17 weeks ago
I remember the feature article in LIFE magazine showing how Whitcomb had "saved" the F102 from obscurity and how the area rule was going to be applied to everything that flew with a jet engine. But true to form, no one mentioned Frenzl. In an English movie of the time, Breaking Through the Sound Barrier, the mounting drag somehow worked some kind of laminar flow voodoo on the airframe. The Englishman in a dive approached the sound barrier and the ground simultaneously and at the last moment whipped the aircraft out of harm's way by shoving the stick FORWARD.
The SkyCatcher's First Catch
from Recordo
wrote 2 years 17 weeks ago
That PiperSport looks too good to be true. A Rotax 912, 138 mph and 600 lbs useful load! It's a Czech import that clearly outclasses the Slycatcher. Er, Skymatcher... I'll get it right.
We Can't Afford Everything
from Recordo
wrote 2 years 17 weeks ago
Well said, Halstead. I thought the plan was to update Loran and keep it as a fail-safe system, at least that was the plan a year ago. Make room for NextGen: next step in surveillance, taxation, and, incidentally, navigation and air safety. Loran's time was due, but if the OMB decides it can put VOR on the block as well, I'll take the subway.
Like a lot of other pilots, I got to rely almost completely on GPS carrying two, sometimes three hand-held units with me on long trips for (ahem) security. They were supposed to be backups to more traditional (old) navigation, but the panic attacks that came with their occasional failures opened my eyes again. Flying into a densely lit urban area and trying to pick out the airport beacon was a no-brainer with my GPS. Forget about steering to an outer marker for reference, I had my GPS to bring me home. Then on a Thanksgiving trip, two out of the three I was carrying went down on me. For some reason I was carrying charts and remembered how to tune the VOR and use the radio. I didn't need solar flares to remind me to remember how to fly.
Piper's LSA Entry Takes First Bow
from Recordo
wrote 2 years 17 weeks ago
I like this design a lot more than the Skycatcher: faster, stronger, much greater useful load, longer range, a more economical powerplant, and I would have to guess that a lot more engineering man hours went into this airplane than went into the Cessna.
Cessna has the marketing muscle, no question, but I'd take this airplane much more seriously as an entry level machine apart from the LSA category. My guess is the flight schools will, too. Time and repair of America's credit apparatus will tell.
If Piper (or Cessna for that matter) comes up with a creative financing plan, corn may just pop.
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