Old complex training aircraft

Tarheelpilot said:
I worked at a school that had one but it was primarily a rental. The training use was primarily checkouts for people that wanted to go on trips.
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We had one at our school too. It was an awesome traveling airplane - it was flown mostly by young and dumb flight instructors. ;)
 
The 182RG is in a totally different class then the PA-28R, 172RG, early M20x, etc. It's a big comfortable reasonable fast airplane that can haul a big load a long way and work out of a 1400' grass strip with ease. Part of that is Cessna's choice of airfoil, which really shines at low speeds while being ok at higher ones. While later Mooneys are reasonably fast, the earlier ones seem to have 10 kts of marketing built in. The PA-28Rs and 172RGs still flying mostly have foundered having been put away wet. Always exceptions to these generalizations...
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Yup. It looked amazing with the gear up on the deck at the grass strip.

Wouldn’t do that again.
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Yup. Gear up or gear down, it spins great. Or so I've been told.
 
brien23 said:
Several GA aircraft were primarily used for complex training, they were not that good at anything else and cost was the primary reason for them. Those with retractable landing gear, flaps, and controllable pitch propellers, as defined by the FAA as "complex aircraft", popular examples include the Cessna 172 RG, Cessna 182 RG, Piper Arrow. After 2018 flight schools dumped them and people bought them up for their own use. With the extra cost of the propellers, complex landing gear and little better than or worse performance than a Piper PA-28-180 fixed pitch prop and fixed landing gear over the cost of a PA28R-180 why would you do that.
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Lots of things wrong with your premise.

I have seen many of the aircraft you mention that have never been at flight schools.

As for "not that good at anything else", my 182RG is a good example of a fast flying SUV. What other 4-seat aircraft can can carry three adults, baggage, with a range of 900nm at 150kts?
 
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donjohnston said:
Lots of things wrong with your premise.

I have seen many of the aircraft you mention that have never been at flight schools.

As for "not that good at anything else", my 182RG is a good example of a fast flying SUV. What other 4-seat aircraft can can carry three adults, baggage, with a range of 900nm at 150kts?
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Have a ton of time riding in a friends 182 RG. Fine plane but don’t know if the RG part worth the squeeze. Dem 75K gear saddles scare me.
 
Rcmutz said:
That’s because the Mooney can’t go 135Kts with the gear down to get an apples to apples comparison! ;)
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Mine can. :D But in the mid-teens. :D

But they WERE comparing to Arrow and Cardinal RG with their gear UP. :D

BTW, I am a Tiger fan. I did my PP in Tigers. And wanted to buy one, but the prices were nuts.
 
Haven't flown an Arrow in decades, but I recall being taught it had a gizmo to prevent gear-up landing. How reliable is that?

I loved flying the Arrow. I love flying the 182. I suspect I would love flying a 182RG even more. Those planes stood the test of time.
 
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donjohnston said:
Lots of things wrong with your premise.

I have seen many of the aircraft you mention that have never been at flight schools.

As for "not that good at anything else", my 182RG is a good example of a fast flying SUV. What other 4-seat aircraft can can carry three adults, baggage, with a range of 900nm at 150kts?
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Comanche
 
bonefishpete said:
Have a ton of time riding in a friends 182 RG. Fine plane but don’t know if the RG part worth the squeeze. Dem 75K gear saddles scare me.
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Had mine for 15 years. Never had a problem with the actuators. Mine was 20kts faster than the straight legs 182's that I flew. 90% of my flights for XC of 400nm or more.

Totally worth the squeeze to me.
 
bonefishpete said:
Have a ton of time riding in a friends 182 RG. Fine plane but don’t know if the RG part worth the squeeze. Dem 75K gear saddles scare me.
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$75K?!?!? No. The most expensive part in the system is the pivots which are still in 4-figure territory.

Ed Haywood said:
Haven't flown an Arrow in decades, but I recall being taught it had a gizmo to prevent gear-up landing. How reliable is that?
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Well, most of them have been removed. It's not that they weren't reliable so much as they could cause the gear to extend when you *didn't* want them to if you forgot to use the override... And if you later forgot to disable the override, you could still have landed them gear up.

I've flown one Arrow that still had the system. It wasn't awful, but one of the things we did on the checkout was to mess with the auto-extend system and I kinda felt like proper procedures would be a better solution.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
$75K?!?!? No. The most expensive part in the system is the pivots which are still in 4-figure territory.


Well, most of them have been removed. It's not that they weren't reliable so much as they could cause the gear to extend when you *didn't* want them to if you forgot to use the override... And if you later forgot to disable the override, you could still have landed them gear up.

I've flown one Arrow that still had the system. It wasn't awful, but one of the things we did on the checkout was to mess with the auto-extend system and I kinda felt like proper procedures would be a better solution.
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I think the Piper auto-extender ended up being more dangerous than it was worth. The risk of a gear-up landing is not as bad as a gear-up takeoff or gear-prematurely-down dead-stick glide. I seem to recall those being a couple of the reasons to remove the system as most planes had done (including the Arrow I used to own, long before I owned it).
 
donjohnston said:
As for "not that good at anything else", my 182RG is a good example of a fast flying SUV. What other 4-seat aircraft can can carry three adults, baggage, with a range of 900nm at 150kts?
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An RV-10. Or, the RV-10 could push up to 13-14 GPH and 175 knots, stop halfway for a potty and fuel break, and get there just as soon as the 182RG. That said, 182's (fixed gear and RG) are awesome aircraft.
 
kyleb said:
An RV-10. Or, the RV-10 could push up to 13-14 GPH and 175 knots, stop halfway for a potty and fuel break, and get there just as soon as the 182RG. That said, 182's (fixed gear and RG) are awesome aircraft.
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On the one hand, flying a two 2:45 legs in the RV10 sure sounds a lot more attractive than a single 6 hour leg in the 182RG.

But on the other hand it'd sure be nice to be able to fly 3 hours in the 182RG to someplace that doesn't have gas, hang out, and then fly back without a refueling stop.
 
182 RG is in a different class than the Arrow/Cardinal RG/Mooney aircraft.

Different mission.

Too bad someone hasn't come up with an STC for all those retract IO-360 powered aircraft to tweak the RPM to make them 202 HP and meet the High Performance requirements. Back in the day, there was only one sign off, and the cutoff was at or above 200 HP.
 
asicer said:
On the one hand, flying a two 2:45 legs in the RV10 sure sounds a lot more attractive than a single 6 hour leg in the 182RG.

But on the other hand it'd sure be nice to be able to fly 3 hours in the 182RG to someplace that doesn't have gas, hang out, and then fly back without a refueling stop.
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My point was that the -10 could do 6 hours at 150 knots at economy cruise OR get there just as fast with a comfort/fuel stop, but flying at a higher airspeed.
 
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