Sunday Flying...

All right, this was my last Qual-preparation special flight almost entirely devoted to flight dynamics and flight enveloppe exploration... Well that sounds ambitious, in fact we just did a couple of manoeuvers while flying to Blairsville in Northern Georgia. Once more, I hoped it had been as useful as could be for my friends. I believe I can only wish them good luck right now.

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N6344F is a rather old Cessna C172

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Going back to Cessnas after a few flights in the Piper Warrior II, one can definitely feel those 20 added horsepower. From 160hp to 180 hp with basically the same operating empty weight, the climb performances aka the excess power is tremendously felt. The time to climb and the take- off roll are drastically reduced. Still, I like more the look of Pipers...
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Something's fishy over there?

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The other difference is the stability of the aircraft. The Cessna is way more stable than the low wing Piper. The damping in Dutch Roll is huge with no more than one oscillation to get back to trim condition. The spiral mode is unstable but on the edge of being neutrally stable. This is clearly shown when changing the pitch attitude : spiral mode with a pitch down attitude is almost stable, spiral mode with a pitch up attitude is only slightly unstable showing only a 1° per 10 seconds divergence...