"

I owned a Tomahawk for 5 or 6 years. A great little airplane. Compared to
the Cessna two seaters, it has more interior room, better visibiltiy, and
equal cruise performance. The stall speed is 10 mph faster, and the
airplane can/will drop a wing if you stall it (but I've done that trick
in a
C-152 as well). FBO gossip would have you believe that dozens of
Tomahawks
have spun in due to unrecoverable spins during training, wheras a review
of
the NTSB reports doesn't show this at all. Instead, it shows that quite
a
few have gone down due to low altitude stalls and/or spins. Anyone who
stalls an airplane in the pattern is looking for trouble, and the
Tomahawk
isn't as forgiving in that regime as a C-152.

Could Piper have done a better job? Certainly. They chose a high
performance
airfoil in an application where it offered more disadvantages than
advantages. Beyond that, they didn't design the tail structure properly,
which led to a series of AD's. Last time I checked, no Tomahawks had
been
lost due to structural failures, which is the other FBO rumor about the
Tomahawk - "the tail will come off"...

KB


So are you saying it is a really great plane,

or a real piece of **** ?


I am glad to read that it on;y stall/spins/kills folks in the pattern
and never during training.

I'll know just when to sell it !
--
Mark Smith
Tri-State Kite Sales
1121 N Locust St
Mt Vernon, IN 47620
1-812-838-6351

The point is that pattern altitude (or less) is a bad place to stall an
airplane. Stall on the base to final turn in all but the most forgiving GA
aircraft and your chances of meeting your maker are pretty good.

KB