Dave Butler wrote:
: Could you possibly do a quick and dirty 172 Vs Warrior and why the Piper
: fits better?

: I'm not *that* Dave, but here's my q-and-d:

: The capabilities of the two are very closely the same. The price of
: Cherokees is lower due to lower demand from all the buyers who did their
: initial training in Cessnas.

I like to give a fellow pilot/cfi friend some ribbing about Piper vs. Cessnas (I have a PA28-180, he's got a straight-tail 172
and a 152 he does primary training in). As I like to put it, a Cessna is a pilot's airplane, and a Piper is an *owner's* airplane.
Everything about a specific Cessna design is pretty much from the ground up for that specific airframe. Piper on the other hand was
great about bolting on bigger engines, extending control surfaces, stretching fuselages, etc as incremental improvements. As such,
the Pipers a little big heavier, but also a little bit more overbuilt. Parts are a little more common, since they're used in a
variety of different models, often old and new.

Now before the Cessna crowd keel-hauls me, I'll say that the Piper might cruise slight faster, but the Cessna has a better
short-field and "overloading" capabilities. A Cherokee (my 180 at least) seems to have almost the same FPM climb whether it's empty
with just the pilot, or full fuel and three adults on board. It's not stellar, but it's enough... at least until you load it up a bit
much. Then the climb goes to crap in a hurry. The Cherokee wing has such a benign stall, it's not a very good trainer IMO. The
Cessna glides better, but the Piper handles crosswinds better due to its slight faster approach, more "cushioned" ground effect, and
*lower* wing in the crosswind.

Oh, and a PA-28 goes for around $5K-$10K less than a comparable 172.

-Cory
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* Cory Papenfuss, Ph.D., PPSEL-IA *
* Electrical Engineering *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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