The plane so good it's still in production after 60 years.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170302-the-plane-so-good-its-still-in-production-after-60-years
I learned some good new stuff in the article :
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170302-the-plane-so-good-its-still-in-production-after-60-years
I learned some good new stuff in the article :
The 172 was based on an earlier Cessna design called the 150. This looked very similar apart from the fact it was a “taildragger” – instead of a wheel at the front, the 150 had a smaller wheel at the back, underneath the tailfin (like most aircraft before the arrival of jets). The 150 enjoyed the benefits of a light aircraft boom in the years following World War Two, as many of the companies that had produced tens of thousands of military aircraft now turned their attention to civilian aircraft.
The design was so clean and aerodynamic that Cessna’s marketing department dubbed it the “land-o-matic”
The Cessna 150 was a very successful design – nearly 24,000 were made in a 19-year production run – but it only had enough room for two; the pilot and one passenger. Cessna saw the gap for a bigger model that could take twice as many people. So the basic design of the 150 was modified, and made more robust – where the 150 was made of a fabric skin stretched around a frame, the 172 was made of aluminium.