Anyone Flown the 162?

Florida Cracker

Florida Cracker

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Florida Cracker
A guy at my home field has a new 162 Skycatcher. It looks like it might be fun to use as a poke around plane but it also might work for some east coast trips.

Anyone have one / floy one / know anything abou tthem beyond Cessna advertising material?
 
Only about half an hour in one, but my observations are:
  • The way the stick works is weird (if you don't know what I mean, just sit in one and move the stick in pitch and roll -- you'll see). I imagine one will get used to it eventually, but I did not adapt nearly as fast as I did to the Cirrus' side-stick, and I've flown a lot of different control configurations over my flying career.
  • The changes they made to solve the spin problems found in initial testing resulted in what I think is too-limited aft stick travel/elevator authority. You can't keep the weight off the nosewheel for soft field taxi or even takeoff/landing, or hold the nose off after touchdown (or even make a good mains-only landing).
  • If you're gonig to travel, it does not appear you can put much weight in the "cargo" area behind the seats -- very skimpy floor board back there.
  • Seems pretty quick -- faster than a C-150/152.
  • No apparent bad habits in slow flight, stalls, or steep turns.
All in all, I agree that it's probably a nice "poke-around" airplane and a good trainer, but not for real traveling or unpaved runways.
 
Our flight school just got one in December. I have about 10 hours in it.
 
Ron,

What you makes so much sense when you look at the way the stick comes out from the panel. I was watching the owner and another guy take off this afternoon and the little thing got off the ground much fast er than I was expecting. Their combined weight w/fuel ahd to be 620 ish and I would have thought they would be near, or at capacity at that weight.
It zipped right up, though, not the 150 -250 feet per minute the guys get in their 150's and 152's.
Imagine it is kind of good on fuel but it can't go much faster than 100 knots, I would think.
It just looked kind of nice.
 
The only comments I've heard about the 162 so far arent' too good, to say the least.

What strucked me the most when I saw one and sat in it... was the build quality and fit and finish... holly cow... :nonod:

There is much better planes available that the 162 IMHO...

Pipistrel Virus/Sinus, CTLS, Evektor Sportstar, Sportcruiser to name a few...
 
i did a 20 minute hop in one last fall. i had no issue with the stick. takeoff and climb performance is far superior to the 150/2 and probably 172. speed is good too. i did a few stalls in it and it was enjoyable. i really couldn't find anything i didn't like about the plane.
 
Someone was in the T&G pattern at KAPA today in one. I was sitting right seat while a friend did T&Gs in a rental Skyhawk.

The 162 was slowing the whole multiple airplane circuit down. :)

Controller kept having to bounce whoever was unlucky enough to be behind him, out into an extended downwind, let number three turn base late behind the Skycatcher, and then swap 2 & 3's positions by calling a long base for whoever was originally behind the 162, so everyone wouldn't overtake the Skycatcher.

Dude was messing everybody up. I don't think he could pedal any faster. ;)
 
It has a large cargo area for a Light Sport. It'll carry all the ping pong balls or styrofoam peanuts you can put in it but not much else. The useful load is terrible. I've only have sat in one. Didn't like the stick set up. I can think of at least a dozen SLSAs that have better performance in all stats than the 162.
 
sounds like a controller problem to me nate.
 
I've taught mainly in the 172 so the skycatcher seems squirrely to teach in to a first timer. From my personal experience flying it, once it's in the air it climbs extremely well. It's very responsive but yet will fly hands off or at least with a light touch. If you're used to the G1000, the G300 is very similar and an easy transition. It even has a menu page to calculate weight and balance for you. The visibility is awesome for taking pics and scanning for other aircraft. The downfalls are weight for one. Everybody puts the "big" guys with me which includes anyone over about 210 lbs. It's a bit of a pain to taxi but I'm not fond of differential braking for trainers. It has a max total demonstrated wind of 22....not crosswind...total. Even the test pilot said that was a pretty random number they pulled out of a hat and just told us that if it's over 25 kts, its really not a skycatcher day. I've flown it at that and lands fine. It's more of a challenge to keep it on the ground and not weathervane. It weighs 850 lbs empty (no fuel) and acts like it. Overall, it's a great little airplane to play around the local area within 150 miles or so but it's not much of a cross country bird. Just think of it like a Cessna 150.
 
tonycondon said:
sounds like a controller problem to me nate.
Click to expand...

Well, maybe. We do have a lot of trainee controllers.

The Skyhawk in front of us couldn't seem to follow directions so badly that they had to bounce him over to the other runway just to deal with him, and a Skylane inbound told to remain West of I-25 didn't and was scolded for that too. He blasted past all three of us, close in, and the controller gave him a five mile base for that stunt. Ha.

It was kinda a cluster---- all afternoon. My buddy was appreciating the radio workout and his landings were quite respectable. He pulled off a bunch of squeakers. (Bastard! Ha. I bet him a Coke he couldn't put his short field in the center of the TDZ markers and that rattled him enough he missed 'em. I already owed him a Coke from a previous flight bet so we ended up even for the day.)

I asked if I could help out once on the radios and he said go for it, when the controller called traffic we didn't see but we had two others ahead on downwind in sight. Also once when the controller said, "Say position" right as we were lifting off on a T&G. That was kinda funny. (Come to think of it, yeah. Had to be a trainee. He got his strips out of order. Haha.)

I did laugh that my "IFR brain" kept kicking in and announcing "100 feet to go" to him without even thinking about it. He joked later, "I could tell you've been working on your Instrument..."

I didn't have the heart to tell him I was also watching the heading wander back and forth, the airspeed up and down 10, and other stuff all with quick glances from the right seat. ;)

Kinda fun to notice your own tolerances have dropped significantly by taking a ride with someone who's never done it yet. He's talking about doing it this year. It'll be fun to see what he says.

He likes utilizing the right seater to read checklists to him so that was fun too.

We were in a 180 HP Skyhawk with dual 530s so I played with comparing the TIS to the mess out the window and the maps a bit on the second one with his permission. Nice to play with the gadgets while you're not busy flying the plane.

Always fun to go flying with someone else and play "dumb passenger available to assist if you ask and watch for traffic". You always learn something about them or about yourself.
 
I found that the Skycatcher is the easiest of the SLSA's I've flown to fly. I had no issues with the control mechanism (whatever they call it). I have flown a Remos G3, Jabiru J170 and the CTSW. Of those, the 162 is easier to land for sure. Kind of hard to get into and has zero useful load.

I managed to get in a 162 after having not flown an airplane for 6 months and land it easily.
 
Haven't seen one yet but the pics on the 'net show that unusual stick. Does it rotate like a side stick, or swing side-to-side with the grip staying vertical?

Dan
 
Basically 162 has a normal yoke, not a stick. But for some reason they took the yoke out and mounted the grip on the yoke shaft instead. Probably saved a few cents on the plastic.
 
Haven't flown it yet but I finally got to look one over up close; very much less than impressed with the quality of the material finishes, especially the edges of the sheet metal. I imagine the stick is the same as the Avion Robin 2160, if so it's easily adapted to even for precision flight. The airframe IME costs $8k to build in China, there is nothing to it. The doors fly off because the hardware is the chintziest crap you can find in a Chinese flea market and mounts to a fairly unsubstantial structure. I'm quite sure I can rip the door off the plane with very little effort; as it was I could shake it around well over an inch with the slack in every interface of the hinges. This plane looked nearly new as well. I wouldn't buy one if I had an LSA mission, I'd keep looking.
 
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Tristar said:
The downfalls are weight for one. Everybody puts the "big" guys with me which includes anyone over about 210 lbs... It has a max total demonstrated wind of 22....not crosswind...total. ... Even the test pilot said that was a pretty random number they pulled out of a hat and just told us that if it's over 25 kts, its really not a skycatcher day. I've flown it at that and lands fine. It's more of a challenge to keep it on the ground and not weathervane. It weighs 850 lbs empty (no fuel) and acts like it....
Click to expand...

Hmmmm. Sounds like it flys like an LIGHT sport aircraft. :rofl:
 
Dan Thomas said:
Haven't seen one yet but the pics on the 'net show that unusual stick. Does it rotate like a side stick, or swing side-to-side with the grip staying vertical?

Dan
Click to expand...

Take your yoke shaft, weld a single piece of tubing vertically perpendicular to it. That is essentially the control. This is not a unique installation of this concept and works out just fine, it's just like a yoke but you swing a much smaller arc.
 
zaitcev said:
Basically 162 has a normal yoke, not a stick. But for some reason they took the yoke out and mounted the grip on the yoke shaft instead. Probably saved a few cents on the plastic.
Click to expand...
More importantly, it probably saved a pound or two.

S-LSA manufacturers are on a constant search-and-destroy mission against weight, ounce by ounce.
 
Henning said:
Take your yoke shaft, weld a single piece of tubing vertically perpendicular to it. That is essentially the control. This is not a unique installation of this concept and works out just fine, it's just like a yoke but you swing a much smaller arc.
Click to expand...

Way back in the late '70s or early '80s Peter Garrison proposed (in Flying magazine) that manufacturers chop off the right-hand side of the pilot's yoke and the left side of the copilot's. Those bits are seldom used anyway and are mostly in the way. That would seem to me to make more sense than the 162's setup.

But that's just me. Maybe the 162 would feel just fine if I tried it.

Dan
 
Today was EAA day at our field. About forty - fifty kids came for a free ride and there were about 14 aircraft showed up to give rides. The weather was breezy but manageable and blowing almost right down 11.
The guy with the Skycatcher (162) was there and needed a safety pilot for some air work. I volunteered and after he did his thing, I flew for another 1.2 hours. Between us we did every maneuver except spins. The plane has a very sweet stall. It just simply slows down, then you get a shimmy, then breaks down and right. Nothing dramatic, and it would be easy to teach stalls to a student pilot in that bird.
The castering nose wheel is awful I felt like a spas trying to get comfortable taxiing. Other than to save weight, it's a terrible feature.
The stick/yoke - stoke, has very little movement, so any twitch, close to the ground is going to cause a big movement. If you pull up to flair, you will go up and then come back., faster than you wanted, I suspect.
You use a dial on the floor to move the pedals out and in. The seats do not adjust. The fuel tanks have a cross over tube, so you might have to remember to check both fuel gauges, which are over the door, on either side.
The engine is all that and more. We were not lightweights and with 24 gallons of fuel and climbed at over 1000' per minute. Nothing to sneeze at.
The panel is expensive, for a little bird. The twin 300's give you everything, but I can't say I like not having at least a wet compass, and ball.
The radio worked great. It has a first class panel even without any steam gauges to back up the electronics.
Not terribly roomy but not any worse than a 172, as far as i could tell.
Very easy to land. You want to avoid any sudden adjustments and keep it pointed at the numbers, a slight up twitch to flair and you are on the ground.
All in all it was what you could expect in a tiny plane but it also has all the toys, so there's trade off.
45 degree turns were nothing, I could easily have done steeper but ran out of time.
 
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Florida Cracker said:
The panel is expensive, for a little bird. The twin 300's give you everything, but I can't say I like not having at least a wet compass, and ball.
Click to expand...

How do they get around this FAR?

§ 23.1303 Flight and navigation instruments.

The following are the minimum required flight and navigation instruments:
(a) An airspeed indicator.
(b) An altimeter.
(c) A magnetic direction indicator.




Dan
 
Dan Thomas said:
How do they get around this FAR?

§ 23.1303 Flight and navigation instruments.

The following are the minimum required flight and navigation instruments:
(a) An airspeed indicator.
(b) An altimeter.
(c) A magnetic direction indicator.
Click to expand...
By certifying it under the LSA rules, not Part 23.
 
I find the funniest comment the ones about the castoring nose wheel. It's really not that hard folks. Just spend a couple flights fighting it and it will become more natural.
 
Jabiru has an LSA that was originally certificated as a 4-seat aircraft. They took out the rear seats, cut some weight, and did some other things to qualify it for LSA. Supposedly built solid, stout. If I was looking, I would certainly look that way.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
I find the funniest comment the ones about the castoring nose wheel. It's really not that hard folks. Just spend a couple flights fighting it and it will become more natural.
Click to expand...

People I talk to that claim to teach in one say that it is easier to teach a new student to taxi in the 162 because they don't have a lifetime of the normal way behind them.
 
Mason said:
Jabiru has an LSA that was originally certificated as a 4-seat aircraft. They took out the rear seats, cut some weight, and did some other things to qualify it for LSA. Supposedly built solid, stout. If I was looking, I would certainly look that way.
Click to expand...

Oh Eric...! Paging Eric!

(One of our members here owns and flies one. It's nice.)
 
Florida Cracker said:
People I talk to that claim to teach in one say that it is easier to teach a new student to taxi in the 162 because they don't have a lifetime of the normal way behind them.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't doubt it. I did most of my initial training split between a 172 and Diamond DA20/40's, so the nosewheel is no big deal to me. The Grumman bunch are likely to not have problems either (flown one of those too). Tailwheel guys probably find the nosewheel on the 162 not that different.
 
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