Parentage

Apparently my previous post was noticed by whomever operates Piper's facebook and twitter. My line about the PiperSport resembling the lovechild of a Liberty and a Diamond particularly.

I haven't flown a DA-20 yet, but I have had the opportunity to fly a Liberty. I first learned of Liberty from a little ad in AOPA's Flight Training magazine. I liked the clean, simple panel featuring regular round dials (I like traditional instruments, to the point of boycotting Garmin) and it's claim of being a cheap, affordable trainer.

One day I was at the airport and there was one sitting outside the flying club next door. A salesman was trying to sell them on the plane to replace their aging fleet of C-152's. I love looking airplanes over and determining what systems they have on board and critiquing their instrument panels. I struck up a conversation with the salesman and he offered to take me up. I don't pass up those opportunities if I can help it.

First thing you notice about the plane is it's pudgy appearance. For it's length and wingspan, it just looks plump. An unusual feature for a low-wing airplane is that it's boarded from the front of the wings rather than the back. One reaches up, opens the DeLorean door, steps on one of those little footsteps, steps up on the leading edge of the wing, sits on the wing/doorsill, and slides into the chair. A clever way to keep students and passengers from stepping on the daggum flaps a la every other low-winged airplane ever.

Then the problems begin to stack up. First of all the trim is all electric. My experience flying this airplane is why I'm leery of electric trim. I found it difficult to find "just right" with this airplane because the trim only moved at one speed. With manual trim you can make precise inputs.

Now, there's trim where all you've got is the electric buttons and motor, and then there's the regular, manual trim that can also be electrically controlled like you find on newer Cessnas. I like the latter because you could trim the airplane in the event of an electrical failure.

The flaps of the Liberty are also controlled by the same style rocker switch (wouldn't suprise me if both switches were the same part number). The flaps are infinitely adjustable throught their range. Back in my days of flying Cessnas I would have seen this as a negative feature, but given the pre-selectable flaps of the Allegro (-2, 15 and 48 degrees deflection) I like the idea of being able to put the flaps wherever I please.

Then there's the brakes. Castering nosewheel, differential finger brakes. Next to the throttle are two small levers set like the throttles of a twin. They are spring-loaded forward; to apply the brakes, you pull the levers aft. Pulling aft on the left one applies the left brake etc. These are the only way of braking and steering the airplane on the ground. The rudder pedals control only the rudder and are useless at taxiing speeds. In fact, at the beginning of the takeoff roll, it's impossible to hold the plane perfectly straight using only rudder, so until you build up airspeed and gain rudder authority, you might have to apply a tiny bit of right brake, or maybe line up aimed a little bit to the right of centerline.

Also, don't try any short field landings in the XL2. Those brakes are hard to pull and aren't very effective. In short, don't try to taxi the XL2 without a tube of Preparation H on board, cause it's a pain in the ass. I seem to recall the Liberty Rep saying that differential toe brakes were a cost option, but IMHO they should be standard for a castering nosewheel plane.

The control stick was a pain too. It didn't get in the way as bad as the brakes or trim, but you'll find that the sticks (one for each seat) are actually one stick, kinda like the old Skyboy except much larger. There's just one set of linkage amidships under the floor, and the stick is a giant U to give both pilots an end to hold. This makes the stick feel odd, because applying left aileron (from the pilot's seat, it'll be backwards from the right) feels like it goes down toward your thigh, but right aileron feels like the stick is going up toward your shoulder.

Liberty really loses points from me by marketing their plane as "FADEC Equipped." It isn't. They claim FADEC because the engine is equipped with Electronic Fuel Injection. The throttle is still controlled directly by the lever in the cockpit via push/pull cables, ignition is still performed by a pair of magnetos, and the propeller is fixed pitch. But, where many airplanes are still carbureted and require manual mixture control (or are equipped with mechanical fuel injection and require manual mixture control), the Liberty is equipped with EFI which automatically adjusts the mixture.

Now sure, the pilot can't control the mixture, so he has no authority over the mixture, (thus the EFI computers have full authority) it is digital and electronic (the E in FADEC stands for Electronic, not Engine), and it does control the engine, but FADEC implies that all powerplant related things are controlled by two or more identical and redundant computers in a coordinated manner, so that the ignition timing, fuel injection timing and duration, throttle position, turbo waste gate and propeller pitch all work together, rather than as separate systems.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH EFI! But Liberty didn't call a spade a spade. They called a spade a soildynamic personal earth moving device.

Last, the plane's handling was either docile or boring, depending on which hat I'm wearing while describing it. If I'm wearing the instructor hat, it's docile, very easy to control and ideal for a new student to learn how to climb, descend and turn. As an experienced pilot who's ready for some aerobatics training, it's boring. Great for primary training, but if I won one in a sweepstakes or something I would get weary of it quickly. "It's a nice day, I might go to the airport...or I would, except I've got that dreadful Liberty."

I just reminded myself of some of the folks who post on the PiperSport's Facebook fanpage. "Neat little plane, but can it hover in midair or land on a rooftop?" Don't buy an airplane if you need a helicopter. And don't buy a Liberty if you want a Pitts.

The demo model the Liberty rep had was sparsely furnished. The area behind the seats had no carpet, the fiberglass was naked and unfinished. I was told it was missing quite a few cost options which would make living with the bird more bearable.

The DA-20 Eclipse, from what I've read, seems to have it's act more together. The DA-20 is Utility category spin-certified, and has better thought out features. Trim and most secondary controls are manual, flaps are pre-selectable electric, and it comes with toe brakes. On the downside, there's a red-handled lever next to the throttle. But with a little hunting, you could find an older DA-20 Katana which was Rotax 912 powered.

And now onto a different topic: Why isn't there a utility LSA? Why can't you spin any of them? CFI-SP's can't take a sport pilot all the way to instructor without sending them to someone else because there isn't an LSA that can do spin training. I'm not rich enough to purchase a copy of the ASTM standards, so I can't get the answer from the jackasses mouth (I don't like ASTM because they're keeping aircraft certification standards a trade secret when it should be public information). Is it just prohibitively expensive to insure a spinnable S-LSA so they placard all of them against it?

And to one last topic before I bring this long post to a close. The PiperSport. If I may make a few humble suggestions to Piper Aircraft regarding their new acquisition. First, change the name to something less lazy, for the reasons mentioned in my last post. I also made fun of the Skycatcher by calling it the CessnaSport, which was that airplane's working title until they came up with Skycatcher. Please, just don't use the word Sport in the title, and no capital letters mid-word. Maybe call it the Skycoupe, a name Piper applied to a prototype in the 40's that was never produced. Piper Skycoupe a lot catchier than Piper PiperSport. Hell, I don't see what's wrong with Piper SportCruiser.

Once you've got that figured out, import it from the Czech Republic for awhile until you can tool up for American production and build those destined to fly over this continent on American soil. See, there are a lot of jobless people in America right now who don't like to buy products built by foreigners. Is it really more cost effective to build an airplane in another country 6 to 8 time zones away, box it up, and ship it across an ocean? If you built it here, you could wave an american flag over your entire product line and proclaim "The Piper Family, now built entirely in the USA."

Give us manual, or at least semi-electric trim. It's gotta be cheaper and lighter. ALWAYS offer a traditional panel, don't go to a 100% glass fleet. I would suggest doing that on all your trainer models, keep a traditional instrument panel as an option. Offer the parachute as an option and not as standard equipment. That thing costs like $10 grand and it weighs 30 pounds. Some of us would rather save the weight and carry superior training and skill in it's place. I bet you could sell a few more planes for $10,000 off. And maybe certify the ones carrying parachutes for intentional spins. An airplane that can be spun would be a nice addition to the Piper line (You've already got the only complex trainer, so if you had an airplane that could spin you could take a pilot from discovery flight to Instrument, Commercial, CFI, CFII, MEI all in Piper aircraft), and CFI-SP's could practice and become proficient in spin recoveries in the airplanes they teach in.

See, I took my spin training in a Cessna 150, an airplane I know I won't be training pilots in any time soon. It's spin characteristics are going to be different from that of whatever LSA I wind up with. And I can't practice the maneuver on my own, and examiners can't test instructors on spins. LSA's tend to be a bit twitchy about the yaw axis, so spins are easy to get into. I think instructors should be very sharp in spin recovery, not just "I've done them a few times as a prerequisite to taking the instructor checkride." Hell, I think pilots should all be trained in spin recovery.

I would just like to see an S-LSA without that placard on the panel. If Piper can do it, great.