Piper PA-28 Archer II: Flight and review

Real World Aviation
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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:

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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!

19 Likes
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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

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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.

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Congrats! Must have been very fun!

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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

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

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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.

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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.

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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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