Piper PA-28 Archer II: Flight and review

Hello everyone!
So I finally found myself on a plane again! Which I have not been flying for about 6 months…

Today I will be giving you the pros and cons of my tour around Santa Monica, in Southern California!

So basically some background first. I have never actually been on a single engine, propeller plane in my entire life, and was a little nervous in fact. We then boarded, I sat next to the pilot, and got to see everything that he did. It was pretty cool, the flight was smooth, and it was a life changing experience for me.

Pictures:

Pros:
Low wing - more stable, made for a smooth flight
Flying the plane - I got the opportunity to take the controls, and fly the plane! (even though I don’t have a ppl)
Size - While the plane was small, the inside looked a lot larger than the outside.

Cons:
Flight was shorter than usual.
Not really anything bad about this tour!

This was not a super long flight, we took off and landed at KVNY.

Anyways here is a video I posted of the flight:

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Also, the pictures are free to use!

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This is a beautiful GA aircraft, it was the first plane I flew when I started training to get my PPL

Yeah, I heard that it is the plane that most people begin training with. This experience did inspire me to prepare myself to become a pilot.

Congrats! Must have been very fun!

I need to get on an air tour, Santa Monica is one or two hours away from my home in SoCal. I have been there and it’s nice beach, but too crowded.

@jdag2004 please read his pros list again

Thanks for the heads up! I skimmed the post, so clearly I went over it.

Actually the airport we took off from was in Van Nuys. But as a part of our tour package, we got to fly over Santa Monica.

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Beautiful aircraft and the scenery is breathtaking. Nice flight.

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It was breathtaking. I definitely plan on doing it again.

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It was very fun! I’m glad I got the chance to fly it!

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This is not entirely true. Low wing aircrafts aren’t necessarily stabler than high wing one. It is quite the opposite actually.

Most low wing airplanes have a dihedral angle meant to increase the stability though, including the Archer.

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That’s what I meant, because we saw Cessna 172s taking off and it was very ubstable. But when we took off it was very smooth.

Bad pilot skill/ weather? The C172 is one of the most stable aircraft on the market.

But of course if you don’t follow the correct take-off procedure, it is relatively easy to have an unwanted bank angle.

C172 unstable. Probably the pilot. I’ve flown cessnas all my flight training about 82 hours in 152s and about 90 in a 172. There some of the most stable airplanes ever flown. I personally think there’s more stable than pipers

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Gotta love Van Nuys… most of my training flights have been out of VNY or WHP.

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You know what, your probably right. A lot of those 172s could have been pilots that were training (also not to meantion it can be very windy in Van Nuys)

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