Personally I’d prefer to buy and own the Cherokee. Simple is good, really and truly, and perfect is the enemy of good.
The more planes I fly, including those that are aspirational to some, the more I like stuff that feels good to fly in a tactile way, works without complexity and can be maintained indefinitely by almost anybody.
Silvaire wrote:
Personally I’d prefer to buy and own the Cherokee. Simple is good, really and truly, and perfect is the enemy of good.
There do exist some sweet spots in between “simple” and “fast tourer”. The Comanche is one of those. Albeit more complex than a Cherokee the additional maintenance – once understood – is not so much. And it is significantly faster, so that it justifies the additional maintenance. However, as always, it depends on what you plan to do. If you never or seldom fly farther than say 500 nm, you don’t really “need” a fast plane.
Although I never owned a Mooney, it is also said to be not so difficult in respects of maintenance.
However, both a Mooney and a Comanche need some training in landing (as does a Cirrus). A Cherokee lands itself alone.
UdoR wrote:
There do exist some sweet spots in between “simple” and “fast tourer”. The Comanche is one of those. Albeit more complex than a Cherokee the additional maintenance – once understood – is not so much.
Comanches are very nice planes. I flew around a lot in a friends 180 Comanche, the simplest of the bunch and became convinced it was the best value in that type of plane. It’s not a 4 seater for e.g. high altitude airports, but it’s pretty utilitarian regardless. Also flies nicely, good ailerons and you get used to the stabilator.
The only issue with that today is that RVs are much faster with the same engine, carry as much as most people need, do aerobatics on the way and are super easy to maintain. I none the less see Comanche prices rising….
Mooneys do the job they were designed for but the ailerons are too heavy.
172driver wrote:
Apparently it’s nigh impossible to repair these plastic wonders.
I wonder why? We’ve been repairing high performance fibreglass gliders successfully for decades at this point. A Cirrus has to be comparable for repairs.
alioth wrote:
I wonder why? We’ve been repairing high performance fibreglass gliders successfully for decades at this point. A Cirrus has to be comparable for repairs.
Agree and a good question. I don’t have an answer, but that’s the position of the insurers, at least in the US.
interesting thread here Luke: Bonanza vs RV-10…
alioth wrote:
I wonder why? We’ve been repairing high performance fibreglass gliders successfully for decades at this point. A Cirrus has to be comparable for repairs.
It may have to do with legal restrictions on extent of repair in the FAA approved section of maintenance manual, or given that its an insurance company policy that can be based on anything, as recommendations anywhere in the maintenance manual.
alioth wrote:
I wonder why? We’ve been repairing high performance fibreglass gliders successfully for decades at this point. A Cirrus has to be comparable for repairs.
Yes there is a huge expertise in gliders shops but that does not pass-through to SEP, at least in Europe most local repair shops don’t have fiberglass approvals, the usual answer when you bend or scratch SR2x/DA4x is to put duct tape and fly it to EPPO/LOAN airports…
Ibra wrote:
It’s a mix of: not being familiar & current on aircraft, getting distracted, putting lot of effort in futile things (e.g. RT), not flying the power & attitude numbers, not using checklists, not flying stable IFR/VFR circuit or approach and ignoring the various warnings…you can miss one of the items above but maybe not two of them !The other thing, never switch to anyone else technique (e.g. on short final, on downwind check…), even if it’s your mother let alone another pilot or instructor, just use it on top of yours, the more barrieres you have the better things get !
+1 for that last point; a friend of mine was getting his rating renewed using a GA-7 Cougar when he’d typically been flying Senecas. The instructor demanded he did things “his way” rather than the way my friend would always do things – in this case, my friend would check gear down on downwind. The instructor said “put it down on final”.
As part of the check ride, my friend had to perform a landing without flaps. My friend performed this approach with power set at higher than 13" MAP and, as recommended, he failed to perform his downwind check that gear was down because the instructor required it to be done on final. As they were intending doing a flap-less landing, there was no warning that the gear wasn’t down due to flaps position until he began to flare and reduced the throttles to idle.The instructor didn’t remind my friend to check that gear was down because apparently he wasn’t supposed to intervene in the flow as part of the test ride – even though he’d told my friend he wanted gear checks performed on final, and not on downwind. At the point the warning sounded it was too late, the plane dropped and the props / foot peg scraped along the runway.
The report couldn’t say who then took control of the aircraft, but one of them slammed the throttles opened and attempted to go around – unfortunately the damage to the propellers were so damaged that they couldn’t generate sufficient lift to sustain flight and the aircraft crashed into woods beyond the threshold. Fortunately both survived – however my friend was spitting feathers that he had a checklist where gear was to be extended and checked on downwind, but the instructor wanted it carried out on final; the final hole in the cheese was the fact that the gear down check was listed under downwind on his checklist, not on final – so he’d used his checklist but the instructor wanted it performed differently…..
Peter wrote:
You certainly can make fixed gear very efficient but you have to use spindly legs and small wheels, and the result is a pure hard (and long) runway only machine.
Lots of RVs used on soft runways. Steve Wittman (he who invented the spring steel gear) was a pretty smart guy 
The hot setup for soft runways in the 380×150×5 tires, fatter tires on the same 5 inch wheels, although with them you might only cruise at 165 kts.
