The people one meets out and about are great – I agree. That’s one of the reasons I fly. And EuroGA meet-ups are really good 
RobertL18C 18-Nov-15 17:52 #106
Silvaire your Italian airfield reminds me of La Celsetta near Rome (Campagnano), great bunch of people quietly restoring some WW1 classics.
Celsetta: great place. Where I stay when visiting friends who live in Trevignano. Much closer to their house than Urbe.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Piper has further lost massively. No Warrior was sold, very few Archers and even less Arrows.
I wonder why Cessna can sell a relatively decent number of C172s, but Piper can’t shift a single Warrior? What’s up with the Warrior that makes it so much less desirable?
The 160 hp Warrior would be made by Piper AFAIK if there was a fleet order. The Archer with the 180 hp 360 engine is the right comparison to the 172, which has almost the same engine.
alioth wrote:
I wonder why Cessna can sell a relatively decent number of C172s, but Piper can’t shift a single Warrior?
Lack of willingness to actually sell some must be part of the issue. My club tried to buy a few Archers about 4 years ago, but negotiations somehow broke down and in the end they bought 4 172SP…
Maybe one other reason is, that there are some alternatives (e. g. DA 40, SR 20) among the low wings, but not so for the C 172?
I wonder why Cessna can sell a relatively decent number of C172s, but Piper can’t shift a single Warrior? What’s up with the Warrior that makes it so much less desirable?
I also agree with Europax above… the C172 has additional capability
whereas the PA28 family has to compete with every low wing plane there is, most of them are more modern, and the single door and the resulting need to climb over the seats like a monkey is an increasing handicap as time goes on and people get larger.
The PA28 fleet is huge but I don’t see it being replaced with the same type as planes get scrapped.
Peter wrote:
short / rough fields
Are you joking Peter?
We ran 3 bog standard Archers for at least 10 years, nobody seemed to have any issue getting in and out of our 500m grass field.
Now with the 172SP the club saw it a necessity to order them with a climb propeller to get in and out of the field, which makes them miss the already cruelly slow cruise airspeed figures in the AFM by another 5 knots. So the 172SP are now roughly 10 knots slower than the Archers, using the almost same engine (172 injected, archer carburetted) and same fuel flow at less load carrying capability (unless you get a ferry permit…)
Now 500m isn’t exactly short and our runway is rather meticulously kept, but still…
Peter wrote:
much easier for large / less flexible people to get into
But only if those people lack legs. Granted I’m much more used to getting in and out of low wing airplanes, with the C172 I tend to have to unnaturally fold my legs to get into and out. It’s far from comfortable.
a Cessna is much easier to land than a PA-28 due to the reduced ground effect of the former
Any PA-28 really almost lands by itself. The “ground effect” really only plays a role when you’re MUCH too fast.
I flew my 150 hp Warrior to 500 m grass strips regularly, and often to 400 m strips. Absolutely no problem (2 POB).
I agree with the above posts, and I have ~50hrs in an Archer too (and Wangen-Lachen has/had a number of Mooneys based there) but it’s all relative to the “market audience”.
A large % of pilots cannot control the approach speed and they need far more runway as a result, and you have more leeway in a high wing plane if you do that. Just after I landed at Zell am See, somebody landed a Seneca at around mid-point of the runway, and with about 300m left I guess he gets through a lot of tyres and brake pads
