A great training aeroplane and in its day apparently slightly cheaper to operate than the C152 – due to manual flaps so i’m told.
I love to see a mark 3 with a rotax 912is and a get rid of the T tail so I can lift the nose out the mud on the short grass strips.
I’ve only flown a Traumatiser a few times, but it seemed like a fun plane to fly – good visibility, and it felt very responsive. I know they do operate out of Barton which isn’t very long and is not putting green quality grass, so they aren’t too terrible off grass runways (although I wouldn’t take one to anywhere “off piste” with those minuscule wheels)
I suggested to our flying club/school to buy one for PPL training, but no one else was interested. I have never flown one, but roomy, lively, economical, good visibility, that all sounds good. But I also seem to remember fatal spin accidents followed by notes from different CAA’s (Sweden?) with nasty restrictions. Anyone with a better memory?
The main reason for my original post was that while the PA38 is liked by instructors, it is a lot less popular with renters, so they tend to get shagged by the schools, without generating much self fly hire income.
But more importantly the student is getting bad value for money because he/she trains on a type which is not suitable for “fun” flying post-PPL, so they have to pay out for x hours “conversion” to something else.
I know you put it in parenthesis, but when I hear “conversion” as for changing from one type of fixed-gear-fixed-prop-tricycle-SEP to another, I quiver.
In most cases, at least for VFR, it is no more than an hour’s flying, sometimes less. All else is moneymaking by ATOs.
If anything, what should be added is about one hour of handbook-study, to find out noteworthy differences. This is often skipped because a) it’s simply no fun for the customer and b) it doesn’t generate much income for the FTO…
boscomantico wrote:
I know you put it in parenthesis, but when I hear “conversion” as for changing from one type of fixed-gear-fixed-prop-tricycle-SEP to another, I quiver.
Agreed. One should not need 10 hrs with CSIP at a CTC for a Cirrus “conversion”. 
I don’t agree here. I know that I did need the 10 hours to safely fly the SR22. That’s mostly becasue of the much higher performance than i was used to and the glass cockpit. It took about 25 hours until I felt “at home”. Of course you can fly it after an hour, but if you want to play it safe, the ten hours transition training is not a bad idea.
Every two years I fly the EASA required BFR hour in a Tomahawk. I consider it as a good challenge to my own C175 flying habits. Especially the t-tail needs a mental “reset” when I sit again in the PA-38. We even toured as a group with an Arrow, my Cessna and the Grenchen based Tomahawk to the Nordkap. In the picture you see them sitting on the tarmac of Ivalo airport in Lappland. If you are willing to sit the extra hours in the worn seat of a slow trainer you can get almost everywhere.
The reasons I did not buy the PA38 for training use was based on the fatiuge life of the main spar and the lack of parts back up form Piper, also the AD’s on the tail are quite labour intensive.
It is a much better trainer than the C152 until the parts become an issue and you can’t fly the PA38.
I did the GFT for my PPL in a Tomahawk shortly after the accident in 1980 when a Tomahawk spun in with two fatalities.
I well remember that there was a change to the POH rushed out to modify the spin recovery technique to mandate immediate full forward on the control column, rather than the more traditional forward movement until the rotation stops.
The unintended consequence was that on recovery there was a tendency for the novice pilot to pitch smartly beyond the vertical.
I did the spin on the test, recovered successfully, and then I recall the examiner (who I had never met before) saying “let’s just fly straight and level for a moment while you get over that…”.
As he had lost his clipboard in the recovery I suspect it was he who wanted to get over it!
The other thing that I once did was look at the fin during a spin. It was rather an alarming sight, wobbling around.
I haven’t flown one for years but my memories of those days were of light handling, good gliding characteristics, and flimsy construction.
